Thunder (Big D Escort Service Book 1)

by Summers, Willow

  She shrugged. “I don’t think you’re remembering things right. I jumped in your lap, Colton.”

  “Because I was overbearing. It wasn’t your fault.”

  She sighed and looked down at the bar again. “I feel like we’re going in circles. Bottom line: if you don’t want to kiss me, fine. If you do, fine. If I dive headfirst into your lap because I don’t realize you’re backing off…my bad. If you dive in my lap, be a dear and give me an orgasm while you’re down there.”

  Laughter bubbled out of him. He shook with it, caught off guard by that last comment. Without thinking, he grabbed her and pulled her to him, claiming her lips. She moaned, opening her mouth to him and letting him take the lead. He deepened the kiss until her fingers dug into his chest and his cock throbbed.

  He backed off slowly this time, lingering. Enjoying the moment. This wasn’t for show, and it certainly wasn’t because he was getting paid. This kiss was to feel her passion raging through him. To taste her again.

  His hands slipped down farther, trailing over her round butt. He pulled her closer, his hard-on grinding against her body. For the first time in a long time, he wished she had bought the whole package. He wished she expected him to stay the night.

  “I did it again,” he said against her lips, remorse overshadowed by his raging desire.

  “Did what?” she whispered, running her hands over his shoulders and then entwining them around his neck.

  “The girls here will probably make nasty comments about you being a whore.”

  “Little do they know that you’re actually the whore. Boy will they be surprised.”

  He chuckled. “Catty girls can be unpleasant. I’ve seen it before.”

  “Trust me, I know. I have no idea why women are so hard on each other. But I’m not worried about them. They can go ahead and be jealous. I’m worried about asshole boys.”

  He broke away from her with a smile, placed an order, and leaned against the bar. She sidled closer until they were touching.

  “How long have you two been together?” an older woman asked as she came around them and stopped at the bar. Her husband stopped with her, smiling.

  “A little over a year,” Madison said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “Young love,” the man said, chuckling.

  “No ring?” The woman made a show of frowning at Colton. “You guys are obviously head over heels in love. What’s the point in waiting?”

  “You better seal the deal before someone else gets her.” The man shook his finger at Colton.

  “I have to get her to move in with me first.” Colton smiled down on Madison, but the joke was short-lived. The realization that he wanted that felt like an elephant settling on his chest. He wanted this woman in his arms in a way he’d never wanted anyone.

  “I think I’ve gone insane,” he muttered without meaning to, looking over her beautiful face and losing himself in her intelligent hazel eyes. There was no way he should feel this strongly about a perfect stranger.

  “I’ll say,” the man said. “Snatch her up. That’s the way to do it.”

  Madison chuckled as their drinks came, easily shrugging off the light banter. If only it were so easy for him.

  A cheer went up, an echo from a distant room.

  “Uh oh, I think we’re missing the cake.” The woman patted her husband. “You get the drinks and I’ll go take pictures.”

  “Sure, sure.” The man waved her away. When she was gone, he leaned a little closer to Colton, as though about to impart some secret information. “It’s women who care about all this stuff, isn’t it? Weddings and flowers and cake. Give me a cold brewski, my chair, and Monday Night Football. If only they wanted to get married during the intermissions.”

  Madison laughed. “Not all women care about those things.”

  The man straightened up with a smile. “You say that now, but wait until he proposes. Then suddenly you’ll have to have all those things, and he’ll say yes to absolutely everything because he wants to give you the world. Take it from me. I’ve been there. Heck, I’m still there whenever she wants something. I just can’t say no. Don’t want to. She makes me happy, so I’ll do anything to make her happy. That’s all you can ask for.”

  Madison leaned her head on Colton’s shoulder. “That’s sweet.”

  “Two glasses of Merlot, please,” the man said to the bartender. “But something better than that stuff in the reception hall.” The bartender stalked away. “You aren’t married for fifty years without learning what’s important, let me tell you. The good times far outweigh the bad. When you have someone to weather the storms with, the thunder doesn’t seem so bad, do you know what I mean?” Colton started at the guy’s choice in words. The man waved his hand through the air. “Give her whatever she wants. Trust me. It’ll help you in the end.”

  “Within reason.” Madison narrowed her eyes at Colton. “I can go crazy, baby. You’ll need to put your foot down when I start talking about a stuffed teddy bear the same size as me.”

  The man laughed as his drinks arrived. “A real pistol.”

  “Let’s go dance, Maddie,” Colton said, liking how her eyes lit up when he used the nickname.

  She said goodbye to the man and entwined her fingers with Colton’s. “How do you know it’s time for dancing?” she asked as they made their way back to the reception hall. “They’re probably still doing the cake.”

  “A hunch.”

  After a moment, she said, “That old man was nice. I’ve never heard someone talk like that. Usually men make light of love and sentimentality and everything.”

  “Maybe he stopped caring what people think.” Someone had dimmed the lights in the reception hall and the music was flowing. “I’m always right.”

  “Is that a challenge?” She scrunched her nose at him. “Because I will prove you wrong at some point.”

  “We’ll see.”

  The song was fast, but it wouldn’t matter if it were slow. He’d always owned the dance floor. He swung her around, twirling her before pulling her close to grind against her. Her dress pulled across her chest, letting more cleavage peek out. When the beat slowed, so did they, their movements perfectly in sync with the music and each other.

  He slid his lips down her neck and nibbled at the base. She shivered in his arms and brought her face around, her lips glancing off his. He grabbed the back of her head and kissed her, coarsely sticking his tongue in her mouth. She moaned and tugged at his neck, keeping him there. Gyrating against his leg.

  They were so far gone it wasn’t funny. Tonight may have started innocently—with a literal handshake—but that felt like the distant past. They’d joked about sex on the cake table, but sex on the dance floor was starting to seem like a real possibility.

  Come the morning, he was terrified she’d look back on all this and reality would come crashing down. The temporariness of it all. Would that crush her? He thought it probably would.

  Struggling for some sense of control, he backed off, hating how much he loved it when she clung to him. “I have to slow it down,” he said next to her ear.

  “I have to get my room still. Will you walk me?”

  “Yes. But I can’t go in. I don’t want it to be like that, Maddie. Okay?”

  “Obviously. We’re just playing a part. I’m not the sort of woman who buys prostitutes.”

  “Wrong again, since clearly you are.”

  “This doesn’t count. It was a dire situation.”

  Just like the pounding of his cock.

  “I have to use the bathroom first,” she said, breaking away.

  “You do that. I’ll grab our stuff.”

  She shot him a thumbs-up and sauntered away, the best dressed and most sensual woman in the place, and she made no apologies for it. He loved that about her.

  When he turned to go to their table, he didn’t notice James slip out of the reception hall after her.

  Nine

  Madison stared in the mirror for a
second, a little buzzed and a whole lot turned on. What the hell was she doing? He was a prostitute, for God’s sake. The man had sex for a living. He was paid to go on dates.

  She’d paid him to go on a date.

  So what was she doing craving each touch? Begging for another kiss?

  She was losing her ever-loving mind, that’s what she was doing. She was dangling over the edge of I’m an idiot cliff. Shit had hit the fan, and she had been sprayed in the face.

  Her wiggle looked like the pee-pee dance, but her lady bits wouldn’t stop throbbing. It was really distracting, and frankly not very helpful to her efforts to get back on the straight and narrow.

  Because she’d been on the straight and narrow in the beginning. She really had. A hug, maybe holding hands—that was all she’d planned to do. Now here she was, humping the man’s leg in public.

  Quite the detour.

  She washed her hands and turned to the paper dispenser. A woman about Madison’s age stood beside it, with brown, tightly curled hair and a pug nose that turned up at the end. She looked vaguely familiar. Madison didn’t want to know why.

  “Excuse me,” she said, grabbing a paper towel.

  “What are you doing with yourself these days, Nerdison?”

  The taunting tone instantly took Madison back in time to the thousand and one things the “cool” crowd had done to torment her after James made her a laughingstock. Sticking gum in her hair. Putting red paint on her seat. Defacing her locker. Drawing penises on her backpack. After every offense, they’d followed her around, ridiculing her.

  “Sorry, have we met?” Madison asked, her voice quivering. Strength had seemed so easy when Colton was standing next to her. But some memories were too deeply ingrained for her to shake. Without the presence of paid security, she felt like a lamb in a wolf’s clothing.

  What a horrible realization. She definitely should’ve run earlier.

  “You don’t remember me?” The woman sneered. “Does Patty Doolittle ring a bell?”

  Patty. The ringleader for the mean girls. Of course.

  Madison’s luck was the absolute worst.

  “Your money might have bought you a boob job and a model boyfriend, but it didn’t give you any class.” Patty shifted as one of the stall doors opened. “Here you are, crashing the wedding so you can parade yourself around, trying to get the groom. It’s disgusting.”

  “She always was a bitch,” said the newcomer, an overweight woman with a large nose and a bad dye job. She seemed familiar, too, but Madison couldn’t place her. Added pounds and aging acted as a great disguise, it turned out.

  “I was invited,” Madison said, horror-stricken. “My boyfriend is here. I’m not trying to get James back. He invited me.”

  “He had to, didn’t he?” the newcomer said, jabbing the soap dispenser. “You’ve been messaging him on Facebook at all hours. He said you’d try to barge in anyway. At least now Becky can watch you in person.”

  “We’re watching you, too,” Patty said. “Don’t even think of straying too close. He just got married, for Christ’s sake. He doesn’t want you.”

  “Never did,” the other said. “Or did you forget the way he dumped your ass?”

  Anger simmered in Madison’s gut, overriding the pain. She shook her head and strode for the door. “I didn’t do any of that. I brought a boyfriend. I’m not interested in James.”

  “You probably paid that guy.” Patty’s eyes sparkled with malice.

  “She probably did,” the other said. “He’s way too hot for the likes of her. I bet she paid him just to make James jealous, as if that would help. She always was a slut. She’s probably hoping for a pity lay.”

  “Like James would screw trash, no matter how much she spent on plastic surgery.” They cackled, the sound echoing through the too-small bathroom.

  Madison’s stomach churned. What they were saying about Colton hit a little too close to home. Not only was he clearly too hot for her, but yes, she’d had to pay someone of his caliber to be seen with her. She couldn’t even hold on to Frank—how could she have ever thought she could sell someone like Colton as her boyfriend?

  Breathing laboriously, trying to ignore the heat prickling her eyes, she pushed up her chin and strode for the door, not letting them see how deeply their words had cut her. Trying not to feel the pain of being hated so vehemently. She couldn’t understand what she’d done to deserve that treatment. That raw anger. It bothered her now just as much as it always had. She didn’t need people to like her, but being hated like this—blindly and for no apparent reason—was intolerable. She shouldn’t have come. She knew that now.

  Pushing through the door, needing to get away, she ran right smack into a male body. Apologizing, she tried to get around the human barrier, but hands grasped her and pulled her to the side.

  “Are you okay?” James asked, holding on to her shoulders.

  Panic flooded her. “No! I can’t be seen with you. Sorry, James, but—”

  The bathroom door opened again and the two women walked out. It took two seconds for them to notice James holding on to Madison, her hand on his chest, the two standing close together in a darkened area.

  Madison yanked her arms, trying to break free of his grasp. He held on tightly.

  “What’s going on?” Patty asked, jamming her fists into her hips.

  “I’m going to go tell Becky,” the other said, and hurried away.

  “I ran into him. That’s all. He just kept me from falling,” Madison said.

  “Get lost, Patty,” James said, turning his back on her. He leaned closer to Madison. “Hey, I wanted to talk with you really quickly. Can we go somewhere else?”

  “I’m not going anywhere, James,” Patty said. “We all know what’s going on between you two, even if Becky won’t admit it. That woman there has always done nothing but cause problems. She won’t stay gone.”

  “You’ve got nothing to do with this, Patty,” James said, his anger showing on his face.

  “Let me go, James.” Madison struggled, finally getting free.

  “Don’t let those hags chase you off.” James reached out again as he shifted, blocking her in. “I just want to catch up, is all. Don’t listen to them. They meddle in everyone’s lives.”

  Madison’s heartbeat sped up. “Let me pass!”

  Her breath caught when James’s body was suddenly ripped to the side. Colton, all strength and brawn, slammed the smaller man against the wall and held him there for a moment. When James made no move to defend himself, Colton stepped back, his hand curling around Madison’s waist and pulling her in protectively.

  “When a lady asks you to move, you move,” Colton said with a dangerous edge to his voice. “From now on, don’t try to contact her. After she blocks you on social media, don’t try to friend her using a dummy account. Don’t even think about her, unless you want me showing up to teach you a lesson. Got it?”

  “Don’t trust your girl, huh?” James asked, the contempt in his voice ruined by the quavering.

  “I trust her implicitly. What I don’t trust is a man who doesn’t hear the word no. That’s when I need to step in. And I will step in, James. Hard. Think on that if her face ever crosses your mind.”

  “What’s going on?” Becky rushed into the fray. When she saw Madison and James, her eyes narrowed. To Madison, she said, “I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but clearly you are the home wrecker everyone says you are.”

  “Oh my god, I literally came out of the bathroom and he was there,” Madison said, gesturing at James. Tears welled up. “I tried to get by him and he wouldn’t let me. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve never wrecked anyone’s home!”

  “I’d like you to please leave,” Becky said, hands on hips. The bridesmaids gathered behind her, the other mean girls from the bathroom in their midst. They were clearly lapping it up. “We don’t need your kind here.”

  “You mean classy and successful?” Colton shifted so he and Madison were faci
ng the exit. He moved his arm up to her shoulders, so damn smooth and confident. If he was ruffled by any of this, he did not show it. “I’d watch your man if I were you. He’s not one to trust.”

  “Is that right, bro?” James said aggressively.

  Colton turned back, his glare making James shrink where he stood, his spine bowing.

  “We were fine until she came around,” Becky said, pointing at me. “Get out.”

  “Do you want me to escort them?” one of the bridesmaids asked.

  “Sorry your wedding didn’t go how you wanted,” Madison told Becky as Colton started forward.

  “Don’t waste your time,” Becky said to her bridesmaid, ignoring Madison.

  “Are you okay?” Colton asked when they were out of earshot. He pulled her clutch from the back of his pants, where he’d stuffed it between his back and his belt. Clearly he’d gotten wind of the fact that they wouldn’t be returning to the reception hall.

  She held it to her chest, the small sentiment of goodwill offsetting the horribleness of those women. Tears welled up, overtaking her.

  “Hey, shhh. Hey, now.” He hustled her into the lobby before pulling her to one side and wrapping her up in his arms. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. I won’t let anything happen to you. If they come after us with pitchforks, I am confident I can run faster than them while carrying you. Those zombies will not get us. Trust in me.”

  She laughed, the sound muffled by his suit jacket. “Sorry. I just have no idea why they hate me so much. I mean, they really, really hate me. I wish I could apologize for whatever it is I’ve done.” Sobs choked her as past memories bubbled up, adding to the sting of what had just happened. “I thought I would get over this.”

  “You will, I’m sure of it. What happened? Did they ambush you?”

  She told him.

  “They are jealous, petty cows,” Colton said, rubbing her back. “Making you out to be the villain when he clearly is. It really sucks, I know it does. But you know you were telling the truth, and his new bride will find out the hard way that she made a grave error in choosing him. None of this is your fault. The fact that you still care about her big day shows what a lovely person you are. Try to move on from this.”