I stop, my words trailing off.
I’m gushing, I think in horror. I’m gushing about a man’s looks.
“Don’t stop on my account,” Nat smiles. “It’s nice to see you this into a man. Usually, it’s a very cold event.”
“Sorry, Nat, I didn’t mean to bombard you.”
“I don’t mind,” Nat says. “So, he’s just that hot, is he?”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “Yeah, he is. The thing is, I like to think myself above that. You know, gushing over a man because he’s hot. But this man, it’s different. Maddox: he looks dangerous and protective at the same time.”
“Oh?” Nat’s smile is snakelike, all gums. “So he’s one of those men we’re always murdering in our game?”
That’s true. In our video game, the female leads go to the city and fight men, and the men are invariably like Maddox. Tough men. Alpha men. Men who objectify women, just as Maddox objectifies me.
“I don’t know what to think,” I say, gripping my knee, trying to still it.
“You do sound conflicted.”
“I am.” I shrug. “One second I’m neck-deep in code, the next I’m on the back of some stranger’s bike. The weird thing is, he didn’t do anything. There were moments when he leaned in like he was going to kiss me, and even moments where he touched me—”
“Woo-hoo!” Nat giggles. “Touched you?”
“Not like that,” I say. “Just held my hand or put his hand on my shoulder. And then I thought he was going to kiss me, make a move, but he didn’t. And the strange part is that he seemed to know he was toying with me. It’s hard to explain, Nat. He was one of those jerky men, but he was also incredibly insightful. He seemed to know me. How to play me.”
“Is that a good or a bad thing?”
“Usually I’d say bad, but with Maddox…” I exhale slowly. “My thoughts aren’t even close to straight on the subject, to be honest. All I know is I’d love to—” I cut myself off. Was I really about to say that? I snap at myself. I was going to say: I’d really love to fuck him.
“Love to what?” Nat asks.
I think quickly. “… know exactly why I’m so into him when I’ve never met him before.”
“Ah.”
There’s a pause. Outside, in the street below, some kids are skateboarding. The sound of wheels against pavement filter up to the second-floor apartment. The sun is beginning to set, throwing orange-yellow light against the blinds, glowing into the room. In the apartment opposite mine, Mr. Michaels is making fajitas, the scent of spices and herbed chicken drift into the living room.
Then Nat says, “So, are you going to see this Maddox again?”
Yes, tomorrow, when I go to pick up our code from him. But I’m reluctant to tell Nat about the code. She might panic, and I wouldn’t blame her. After all, I did give our precious project to a complete stranger. So instead I just lift my hands in an I-don’t-know gesture. “Maybe,” I say. “I guess it depends.”
“On what?” Nat says, rubbing her hands together. “How badly you want his junk?”
“You, Natalie Smith, are a disgusting, repressed human being.”
“And now you are, too, my sweet Eden. Welcome to the club!”
I don’t deny her words because they’re true. No longer can I call myself Miss Aloof, Miss Don’t-Give-A-Damn, because now I do give a damn. Maddox – a muscular, tattooed, outlaw biker of all things – has changed me.
“Do we get badges?” I ask, with a small laugh.
Chapter Twenty Two
It takes me a long time to fall asleep that night. I feel like a little girl on Christmas Eve, wondering what presents Santa has placed under the tree for me. I want to sleep so I can find out, but I also can’t sleep because I’m too excited to find out. Only the present is seeing Maddox again, seeing if the code is different, seeing if sparks still fly.
Finally, my eyes grow too heavy, and darkness surrounds me. I curl up on the bed and sink into it, sink down and down and down until I’m sure I’m floating through the floor.
I land in a bathtub, the water forming around me. The bathroom is ethereal; the features won’t stay solid but keep shifting and reforming. I stretch my legs out and close my eyes—but open them a second later. The door – a door that has suddenly appeared in the dream – creaks open. Maddox walks in, completely naked. He has huge, rippling muscles. I gasp and the water seems to swirl around my clit, tickling it. (I am half-aware that I’m touching myself, back in my bed, but that seems distant.)
Maddox kneels down beside the bathtub and then darts his hand out, grabbing the back of my neck. Not hard, but not soft, either. He grabs it like he owns me. And I don’t fight. Instead, I crane my neck back and let out a moan, the sounds of my lust filling the room.
“Beg me for it, whore,” Maddox says, his voice calm, matter-of-fact. “Beg me for it. Beg me to fuck you so hard you can’t take it anymore.”
I’m desperate to beg. I want it. I want it so, so bad.
“Please, Maddox,” I breathe. “Please, fuck me. Please, do it hard. Please, please, please.”
He reaches into the bathtub, hooks me under the armpits, and heaves me out.
“Good slut,” he says, bending me over.
I push my ass out for him. “Do whatever you want,” I say. “I’m yours.”
“Good girl—”
I wake sweating, hand lodged between my legs, rubbing my underwear. I remove my hand and turn over onto my back, staring up at the moonlit ceiling. A series of facts flit through my mind, without cohesion: I’m an empowered woman, but when I fantasize, it’s about being dominated. Maddox is now the man who dominates me in my dreams.
I wait until my breathing has steadied, and then try and make sense of it. I just want a man who isn’t intimidated by me. Or maybe I just want to be taken charge of for a little bit. Or maybe I just want…
But then sleep drags me down into the mattress once more, and I don’t think anything. I return to the dream, and Maddox is fucking me. Hard, brutal, animalistic, and not like a gentleman making love to a feminist at all.
Chapter Twenty Three
Maddox
I wake up earlier than usual, sitting upright in one of the clubhouse bedrooms, rubbing my eyes. It’s Sunday, and there’s no work. I could lie in until at least midday, but Eden is on my mind. She’s coming by soon – early, anyway – and I want to be ready when she arrives. I long to see her more than I can logically explain. Women have a code, sure, and I’ve cracked it—that’s certain, too. But my own code? I have yet to figure that one out.
I take a quick shower in the separate bathroom and then get dressed in a t-shirt with The Miseryed’s sigil on the front, jeans, and my boots. Then I walk through the clubhouse toward my office. A couple of the men lay slumped over the tables, snoring, half-finished drinks clasped in their sleepy hands. The clubhouse is a mess, with chairs upturned and a deck of cards scattered on the floor. But that’s a Saturday night at a clubhouse for you, especially when there’s no job on the next day. One of the pledges will clean it up - earn their stripes.
I go into the office and sit behind my desk, leaning back in the chair and firing up the computer. I run the game, and it works smoothly: still no glitches or problems. And there’s the little addition I made. I can’t wait to show her that. It might make her blush, and when she blushes, I get damn horny. I want to see what else I can do to make her blush. Where I can touch her to make her hot. How long she can go for before she gets tired. How many times I can make her cum. Thinking back, I realize I’ve never been this obsessed with a woman. Not once.
Women come and go. You pick them up, have a fun few days (maybe as long as a couple of months, if you’re feeling adventurous) and then let them go. Whenever I’ve been with a woman before, she’s left my thoughts the second I leave her. Fuck, leave—and I forget about her. The only possible exception is Cassandra, but that’s only because she was insane, batshit, and it’s difficult to forget an insane batshit person. But all t
he others, all the writhing, and fucking… all of it is meaningless.
But now I sit here, a teen on prom night, anxious to see a woman. I laugh into the silence of the office. It’s crazy. It’s unlike me. And yet I can’t deny it’s the way I feel. I can’t deny my cock, and my mind is hungry for her. I want to talk to her and fuck her, and that’s strange. Usually, it’s just the latter, and the former is a boring necessity.
I want to tear her apart and hold her, choke her, kiss her, make love and fuck.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter. I pick up the flash drive and fiddle with it. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”
***
I’ve been sitting here for I-have-no-idea-how-long when somebody knocks on the door. The soundproofing turns the noise into a faint thumpf-thumpf. I stand up, go to the door, and open it. Markus is standing there, his large frame blocking my vision of anything else. His cheeks are faintly red, which tells me that either he has just had to talk to someone he doesn’t know too well; maybe one of the men’s girlfriends has been teasing him. The big lump doesn’t do well against women.
But then he mutters,“She’s here, Boss.” He steps aside in one large stride to reveal Eden.
She came back!
“Thanks, Markus.” I nod to dismiss him, and he lumbers back into the bar. Then I step backward and wave her into my office. “Come in,” I say.
Eden walks in, brushing close to me, and I breathe in the smell of her vanilla perfume. She’s wearing a pale blue dress, which cuts high on her thighs, showing lots of leg, so much leg that it immediately gets the cogs of my dirty mind grinding. Those legs… And when she walks to the desk, I watch the way the light fabric hugs her peach-perfect ass.
I shut the door and walk to my chair, dropping into my seat. “You’re here,” I say.
She smiles. “I’m here.”
“Couldn’t stay away, eh? Was up all night dreaming about me?”
I mean it as a joke – just being cocky ’cause being cocky can be a lot of fun – but she flinches as if I’ve slapped a nerve. “No,” she says, her voice strained. “I was up all night thinking about how silly I was to trust an outlaw criminal with my project, actually.”
“Right, of course.”
Does she wear her bras like that to drive men wild? She’s wearing a white lacey bra. Today the straps of it are riding down her shoulder again. It tempts a man, makes him wonder what it would be like if the strap of the bra fell all the way, makes him wonder how goddamn hot she’d look. Just to bite it, tear it free with my teeth, to reveal those breasts. Goddamn!
“Well?” she says, throwing a pouty expression at me. “Aren’t you going to show me the game? Or didn’t your programmer turn up?”
“You owe me a kiss, remember,” I say.
She rolls her eyes, sassy, sexy.
I gesture to her. “Come round here. I’ll show you now.”
She stands up and rubs the creases out of her dress, pressing her palms against her legs. The way that dress hugs her legs. Does she know what that does to a man like me? Does she know how it pokes and taunts the beast inside of me? Does she know goddamn crazy it makes me?
She walks around to my side of the desk. I turn on the game, and it fires to life. Then I look up at her and watch her face as my trick plays. My face appears on the screen like a company logo, a small animation: I appear and wink. The text beneath the animations reads: You’re welcome. At first, her face is confused, the skin of her nose wrinkling, and then it relaxes, and a cute smile spreads across her face.
“Very funny,” she says. “I hope that’s not all your man did.”
I wave at the computer screen. “Go ahead.” I push backward, the chair moving, and Eden leans forward and places her hands on the mouse and keyboard. I watch over her shoulder as she plays the game. She chooses her character, drives into the city, and starts the mayhem. She plays for around five minutes – the sounds of gunfire and screams filling the office – and then she rocks back on her heels, letting out a quick series of gasps.
“Holy shit!” she squeals. “Holy shit! Holy shit!”
She jumps up and down on the spot, showing me just how bouncy she is, and then she claps her hands together, giddy. She turns to me with an awed expression. “That problem…” She claps her hands again. “Maddox!” she cries. “Don’t you realize… I’ve worked on that problem for ages. I can’t believe you did this for me! A stranger!” Her words are high-pitched. Her sarcasm and cynicism, at least for the moment, is gone.
I rise to my feet and walk up to her, stand close enough to feel the heat of her body. “Now,” I say, looking down at her face, “you owe me that kiss.”
She bites her lower lip, looking up at me under her eyelashes. “A kiss?” she says sweetly. “Is that really what you want?”
I step even closer so that her breasts press into my chest through my t-shirt. They are small, round, pert. When she breathes, it is hot on my neck. The heat rises around us. My cock is rock-hard, super-fucking-hard, harder than it’s been since I was a teenager who first discovered masturbation. I think my balls will explode. My mind is frantic: That cute face, those cheekbones, that wavy sexy careless red hair, that tight body, those long legs, fuck, fuck, those lips, those lips begging to be kissed.
“A kiss?” she repeats, and it sounds as though she’s psyching herself up for something.
I lean in—and meet air. She backs away and heads for the door.
“Where are you going?” I ask. Is she running? Have I read this wrong? I don’t think so, but then why is she . . .
Oh.
She turns the lock on the door and then dances back across the office toward me.
“I think you’ve earned more than a kiss,” she breathes.
This woman is perfect.
Chapter Twenty Four
It’s as though she lets out everything that’s been boiling inside of her.
She launches herself at me, pushing me back into my chair. I slump down onto it and look up at her, shocked. My cock is pressing so hard against my jeans now I think the button might pop. Her tongue hangs casually from her mouth, and her eyes are wide, fascinated. Then she leans down and unzips my jeans and yanks on them. I sit up so she can pull them down. She pulls my underwear and my jeans around my ankles. My cock springs up, and her eyes go even wider.
“You’re big,” she says sweetly.
I suppose it’s big, I reflect. Nine and a half inches and harder than steel right now, balls aching for this tight bouncy redheaded wildcat.
She stands and lifts her dress up around her hips, showing me her panties, lacy and white like her bra, panties that cause my cock to get so hard I can barely think. “Come here,” I say.
She slides into the chair and down onto my lap. My cock bends forward against her pussy, and then she begins to grind, her panties rubbing against my cock. I can feel her pussy beneath them, wet, her clit brushing my cock. She starts to moan, softly at first, and then louder, grinding. I reach up, meaning to grab her breasts, but before I can, she takes my wrists and leads my hands to her throat. “Fuck,” she moans, grinding, grinding.
Fuck, this woman, fuck, fuck, fuck.
I shift my hips as she grinds, moving in time with her movements, back and forth. My hands get tighter around her throat, and I watch as her face turns bright red. Fuck, yes, I think, my animal side taking over. Fuck, fuck.
I let go of her throat and lift her to her feet. “Underwear off,” I sigh, staring at her legs. So slim, so long, so well-defined.
She turns around, showing me her ass, and then bends over as she slides her red panties down to her thighs, her knees, and then to her ankles. She arches her back and shows me her pussy. It spreads open, the pink of it tempting me. It’s tight, cute, and shaved, and it drives me fucking crazy. Then she turns around, and the hem of her dress falls around her pussy. I catch glimpses of it as she walks back to the chair, and it drives me crazier than anything any woman has ever done before. She’s fucking perfect.
/> “We need to get it wet first,” she says, falling to her knees. “Don’t you think?”
She kneels between my legs, looking up at my cock, her brown-red eyes wide. Then she grabs my cock at the base and strokes it up and down, slowly, and then – oh, fuck – she takes it in her mouth, her lips opening around the tip of it. She sucks me hard, going deep until the tip of my cock hits the back of her throat, and then coming all the way up, up. Spit and pre-cum spill out of her mouth over me.
TANGLED WITH THE BIKER_Bad Devils MC Page 47
