by BETH KERY
“That doesn’t give you the right to me.”
Her heart caught in her breast when he reached out and touched her cheek. It amazed her . . . frightened her a little, even, to see the raw emotion in his handsome face.
“Nature gave me that right, Madeline.” He seemed a little heart sore with his answer, but it was his certainty that left her breathless.
Her mouth opened, closed and then opened again. She looked wildly around the tiny room, feeling as if she’d never seen it until that moment.
She lunged toward the door, pulling up short when he grasped her hand.
“I told you I’d make it up to you, but you have to give me a chance. I’m going to be installing some equipment down by the lake perimeter tonight, but we’ll be finished by eleven or so. I want you to meet me at midnight down by the gazebo in the gardens. I want to talk to you, Madeline,” he added when she dared to glance back at him.
She thought he’d try and stop her when she fled, but he didn’t. The hallway was shadowed and silent. When she neared the grand staircase, she heard the sound of Tony’s and Hal’s voices emanating from the terrace. Something about their casual banter made her suspect they hadn’t heard Walker’s and her wild coupling. She raced up the stairs toward her private suite like the devil was snapping his teeth at her high heels.
Four
She told Tony she wasn’t feeling well when he tapped on her suite door at around eleven thirty that night. She’d showered and put on a sapphire blue low-cut nightgown. When Tony entered, she greeted him while lying in bed reading a book, the sheet pulled up to her chest. She suspected he’d drunk his fill with the Margraves after she’d excused herself earlier. His tread was steady enough, but there was a telling glassiness to his brown eyes. He’d been drinking more lately—ever since he’d become involved in this business of convincing the senate that U.S. banks were at high risk—and it concerned Madeline.
“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well,” he consoled as he sat at the edge of her bed.
“I just have a headache from spending so much time in the sun today.”
“I think you’re angry with me, for asking Walker and his crew to the lodge.”
She sighed when she saw his downcast eyes. “I’m not angry, Tony. I just think it’s an inconvenience and a waste of time.”
“But I need Walker,” Tony exclaimed. “Above and beyond his help in protecting you until we figure out the identity of this shooter. He’s going to make the Aspen Lodge impenetrable, and he’ll do the same to my house in Half Moon Bay. He’s the best, Maddie. I won’t have you harmed. I’d die if something happened to you because of something I—”
“You have nothing to do with this!” Madeline exclaimed.
He winced. “You don’t know that. I’ve had nutcases threaten me before. It’s inevitable, owning a company like Hallas Technologies. Walker can keep you safe. I know he can.”
Madeline interrupted him before he started to once again list Walker’s list of honors, accomplishments and commendations, one of them awarded by a former president. She’d heard the list already four or five times today.
“I resent being trapped here at the lodge,” she said.
“It’s only until the police and Walker investigate the shooting a little more. Abigail would shoot me herself if I let you go after what happened,” Tony said earnestly, referring to Madeline’s mother. While he talked, he idly grabbed the edge of her sheet and drew it down to her waist. Madeline pulled back on the fabric, but he held firm.
“Let me look at you, at least, since you won’t let me touch,” he muttered as his eyes roved over her bare shoulders and chest. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Tony, you’re drunk,” she said in exasperation.
“It’s true,” he said simply. He looked sad as he met her gaze. “I wish I’d had the sense to realize it when you were in my bed.”
She smiled and shook her head when she saw his expression. “But you didn’t believe it when I was in your bed, Tony. That’s the whole point. There was always something just a little more beautiful, a little more desirable in the corner of your eye.”
“I was a fool. There was no one more beautiful, Maddie, just more willing. It was childish of me, to think I wanted a woman to submit to my every whim. You always kept me in line.”
“You only think you want me because I never did submit to your every whim. If I would have, you would have gotten over me quick enough, as well.”
He shook his head soberly. “It was—is—my ultimate fantasy to imagine you submitting, Maddie. Just a little.” He gave her an imploring look. “When are you going to marry me? We’re not getting any younger.”
“Yes, we’ll have to pick out our cemetery plots any day now,” she chided with a smile, even though she was concerned about the moroseness of Tony’s mood.
He looked so crestfallen that Madeline held her protest in her throat when he casually moved aside a band of satin, baring one of her breasts. He stared at it as he spoke distractedly. “I came to a weird realization while I was watching you and Walker sitting side by side this evening.”
Her breath froze in her lungs. “What . . . what do you mean?” she asked after a moment.
“You used to have a thing for Walker, years back. It used to make me insane with jealousy, seeing the way you two looked at each other. I don’t know why I’d forgotten . . .” He trailed off as he touched her nipple with a fingertip. Maddie exhaled and rapidly moved the gown back over her nipple. It didn’t surprise her that Tony had forgotten their youthful love triangle. Affairs of the heart for Tony were as common as casual conversations about the weather.
“We were kids, Tony. It was a long time ago. Why don’t you go to bed? You promised to take me out on the boat tomorrow.”
Tony glanced up at her with dark shining eyes. “You’ll always love me, won’t you, Maddie? No matter how stupid I am?”
She sighed. He must be drunker than she’d thought. She pushed back a dark curl off his forehead.
“Always. Because you’ve always been there for me, Tony, you and your mom and dad.”
He gave her such a sweet smile she didn’t turn away when he softly kissed her on the mouth. After he’d left her room, she glanced at her bedside clock. It was ten until twelve. There was just enough time for her to throw on some clothes and meet Walker. She thought of him waiting for her there in the shadow-shrouded gardens. He’d said he wanted to talk. He’d said he wanted to make it up to her.
She wanted him to try more than she cared to admit.
You’ve always been there for me, Tony.
Her spine stiffened at the thought. Walker hadn’t been there for her when she needed him. All she’d gotten from him was some phone calls, which she’d ignored. He’d said his good-byes, although Madeline refused to reciprocate. She’d rushed out of his arms, not wanting to hear Walker’s promises and soothing words. She recalled perfectly the evening she’d gone to his Incline Village apartment and knocked at the door. Some thin, fraying remnant of hope had remained.
It’d evaporated when she heard the hollow quality of her knock. Walker’s tiny apartment where they’d shared hours upon hours of joy and rapture was empty.
She shut out the lamp and curled on her side. Her indecision caused a pain of sorts in her belly that she tried to alleviate by pulling up her knees until she rested in a fetal position. Her brain seemed ablaze, making sleep impossible.
The glowing numerals on the bedside clock read 12:17 when she heard her bedroom door click open. She clamped her eyelids shut. It might have been Tony returning to woo her, but it wasn’t. Madeline just knew somehow.
His tall shadow loomed over the bed.
“Are you awake?” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He tossed back the sheet. His arms slid beneath her, and Madeline rolled toward him as he lifted, hitting his chest with a thud. His scent—clean, spicy soap and the fresh odor of the pine forest—filtered into
her nose. She inhaled deeply. He paused next to the bed.
“Are you going to scream?”
“No,” she whispered.
His hands moved slightly on the back of her thigh and along her ribs, feeling the skimpiness of her gown. “Do you have a robe?”
“At the foot of the bed.”
A few seconds later, he carried her silently out of her opened bedroom door into the moonlit hall.
He’d said he wanted to talk to her, but neither of them spoke as he deactivated the alarm and then reactivated it once they left the lodge. They remained silent even when he set her in the passenger seat of his car and they drove through Tony’s lush grounds and exited the security gate. The tense excitement of a midnight secret mission tightened her chest and tingled in her limbs as he drove through the silent, seemingly enchanted streets of Carnelian Bay and eventually turned onto Route 12, the road that encircled the entire lake. Madeline saw the moonlight shimmering in the dark water.
“Where are we going?” she asked in a hushed tone.
“I bought a house in King’s Beach. It’s large enough to live in as well as run the business until I rent some commercial property.”
“Wasn’t one of your staff guarding me?”
He glanced over at her. “I have watch of you tonight.”
A ripple of sensation shivered through her, and she pulled her robe closer around her. Neither of them spoke another word until Walker turned onto a winding mountain road and finally pulled into a drive. Once he’d put the car into park, neither of them moved. It seemed the air was so thick with anticipation, she had trouble drawing breath. He put his hands on the wheel and bowed his head slightly. Madeline examined his handsome, stark profile in the dim light.
“I regretted leaving you. More than you’ll ever know. But I can’t apologize for who I was then any more than I can say I regret what I’ve become. I needed to go and find my own way, Madeline. I was a kid. I didn’t have anything to offer you.”
“I never asked for anything but you,” she said, staring blindly at the house in front of her.
He gave a dissatisfied grunt. “You may have had a child’s dreams then, but you’re a grown woman now. Are you really going to punish me indefinitely for establishing a career for myself? I couldn’t have done what I wanted to do in Lake Tahoe. I’d have ended up doing rich people’s lawns for the rest of my life, like my dad.”
“Do you think I would have cared?” she exclaimed heatedly, turning toward him.
“No. But I would have, Madeline. I would have. Do you understand?”
Her breath burned in her lungs in the seconds that followed. He exhaled suddenly, informing Madeline he’d been holding his breath, too.
“It isn’t as if I didn’t try to contact you. I was miserable when I heard about your dad dying while I was doing my basic training,” he said gruffly. “I tried like hell to get you on the phone during those seven weeks. You were just as religious about avoiding me.”
She looked at her hands clasped in her lap through a haze of tears.
“I suppose you think I’m a fool, still hurting about a boy I fell in love with when I was nineteen years old,” she said angrily.
He put his hand on her shoulder, but she continued to stare at her lap, not wanting him to see her tears.
“I don’t think you’re a fool. It’s hard to know when you’re that young that what was happening between us was such a rarity . . . something so special.” He stroked her shoulder. “I told you I came back for you, Madeline. Do you really think I’d blame you for being set off balance at the sight of me? I’m fucking thrilled about it.”
Laughter popped out of her throat at his wry tone. A tear spilled down her cheek, and she furtively dried it with her fingertips.
“Madeline?”
“Yes?”
“Will you let me tell you now how sorry I am about not being here when your dad passed? I know how much he meant to you.”
A spasm of grief went through her. She hadn’t realized until that moment how long she’d waited to hear Walker say those words. “I’m so sorry about your dad, too,” she mumbled wetly.
She felt his fingertips on her cheek, drying tears that now flowed freely. “I wish you would have taken my calls back then. We might have avoided all this, Madeline.”
She shook her head as emotion clawed at her throat.
“I couldn’t. It would have hurt too much to hear your voice, knowing you were gone.”
“Shhhh,” he soothed as he took her into his arms. “I’m back. I’m back now.”
After a minute she gained control over her upwelling of emotion. She became increasingly aware of the feeling of Walker’s hard chest beneath her cheek . . . the steady, strong beat of his heart . . . the feeling of his chin resting on the top of her head and how he occasionally turned it to kiss her hair.
“Are you ready to go inside?” he asked.
She nodded. The pavement of the driveway felt cool beneath her bare feet. She glanced around the house curiously once he’d let her in the door and locked it behind them. She’d never shown the house but she’d noticed it on the MLS listing for sale. Three bedrooms, a den and a lake view. If Walker had purchased it, he must be doing all right for himself.
He hung his keys on a hook in the entryway. He grabbed her hand and led her upstairs without turning on the lights, moving with a confident stride in the darkness. She thought of what he’d said about how he hadn’t felt he could offer her anything as a young man. Part of her had always vigilantly resisted that explanation. Tonight, as she held Walker’s hand and followed his tall shadow down a hallway, she examined that part of herself that had blamed Walker for leaving Tahoe . . . for leaving her.
She hadn’t wanted what he said about finding his way to be true because then she’d officially have had to let him go.
Had she really been so selfish that she would have denied him his dreams . . . his desire to forge his character into something of which he could be proud?
The full moon reflected off the lake, creating a palette of shifting dark blue shadows and silvery white light in the bedroom where Walker led her. He paused at the foot of a bed and turned to face her. She put her hand on his forearm, halting him when he started to reach for her.
“You’re not the only one who owes an apology,” she said softly. Emotion swelled in her throat when he said nothing, but drew her into his arms. He pressed his nose to her hair and inhaled deeply. “My father always did say I was a spoiled brat, remember? I think you agreed with him more often than not.”
“Your father adored you,” Walker rumbled.
“Yes.” She pressed her lips against his chest, seeking and finding the flat, hard disc of a nipple and kissing it. Walker went very still beneath her caress. “But he was right to say I didn’t particularly like being told ‘no.’ I wanted things my way or no way.”
He spread his hand along her back and stroked her. She spoke next to his chest, hiding her humiliation over what she was about to say.
“If I couldn’t have you on my terms then—”
“You didn’t want me at all,” Walker finished gruffly.
She inhaled and stepped away from him, searching out his face in the dim light.
“If you abandoned me, then I abandoned you just as much,” she whispered.
He put his hand on her jaw. “I never forgot you, Madeline.”
“I wished I could forget you. When I saw you again, I realized why I couldn’t.”
Her fingers moved fleetly around his waist and slipped beneath the edge of his jeans. She began to unbutton his fly. She felt powerfully aware of him, his hardness, his maleness, his scent . . . his heat. The moment felt full, tense and delicious somehow. He said nothing when she grabbed the waistband of his jeans and fell to her knees before him. She removed his shoes and socks, then helped him out of his jeans. When he was finally bare from the waist down, she leaned forward and placed a kiss on the satiny-smooth head of his cock. She turned and bru
shed her cheek against the head, absorbing his texture and heat. His hand closed in her hair, forming a gentle fist.
“Turn toward the windows,” he rasped. “I want to see your face.”
They both moved in profile to the moonlight. She held the stalk of his cock in her hand, thrilling to the sensation of hard, teeming flesh. She opened her lips and drew the head of his cock into her mouth, giving him a firm, sucking kiss.
“I’m sorry, Walker,” she breathed against his cock.
He brushed her hair away from her face before he cradled it.
“Then welcome me home,” he whispered.
She closed her eyes and guided his cock into her mouth.
* * *
Walker watched his cock sliding between her lips, held spellbound by her lovely face, excited by the way he stretched her lush lips. He’d fantasized about Madeline’s mouth for a decade or more. He’d never known a woman as naturally gifted at giving head.
She polished him with a firm, wet tongue while she worked her way down his shaft. Madeline may be petite and delicate, but she sucked with the strength of a virago. He furrowed his fingers through her hair and gently urged her up and down on his cock.
It was sublime.
He recalled as he watched her why he’d loved having her give him blow jobs when they’d been younger. It was because she gave herself so fully to the experience. She seemed enthralled as she quickened her pace, bobbing her head back and forth, applying a firm, steady suck that had him crossing his eyes. She twisted her head slightly on the back stroke, giving him a teeth-clenching extra jolt on the swollen vein just beneath the head.
“Jesus, you remembered,” he murmured as he watched her, touched and aroused that she not only recalled the location of his sweet spot after so many years but that he liked having that area treated to a helping of rough love. She responded by scraping her teeth gently against the sensitive patch of skin on her down stroke. He gasped and tightened his hand in her hair.
“Little tease,” he said.
He felt the twitch in her stretched lips as she smiled.
His cock was large enough that he was used to women not taking him fully during fellatio. He found himself fantasizing about full oral penetration in that moment, though, as he recalled all too well that the stunning woman on her knees before him had given the venture a hell of a run in their younger years.
