by Maisey Yates
So she would be in the mood to put out. And nothing more. Certainly no emotional reasoning behind that.
He couldn’t do that. Not ever again.
“Okay,” Anna said, “you’re always cagey, Sam, I’ll give you that. But you have to give me a hint about what’s going on.”
“No,” Sam said, turning to go. “I really don’t.”
“Sculpture? A woman?”
Well, sadly, Anna was mostly on point with both. “Not your business.”
“That’s hilarious,” Chase said, “coming from the man who meddled in our relationship.”
“You jackasses needed meddling,” Sam said. “You were going to let her go.” Of the two of them, Chase was undoubtedly the better man. And Anna was one of the best, man or woman. When Sam had realized his brother was about to let Anna get away because of baggage from his past, Sam had had no choice but to play the older-brother card and give advice that he himself would never have taken.
But it was different for Chase. Sam wanted it to be different for Chase. He didn’t want his younger brother living the same stripped-down existence he did.
“Well, maybe you need meddling too, jackass,” Anna said.
Sam ignored his sister-in-law and continued on out of the house, taking the steps on the porch two at a time, the frosted ground crunching beneath his boots as he walked across the field, taking the short route between the two houses.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, looking up, watching his breath float up into the dense sky, joining the mist there. It was already getting dark, the twilight hanging low around him, a deep blue ink spill that bled down over everything.
It reminded him of grief. A darkness that descended without warning, covering everything around it, changing it. Taking things that were familiar and twisting them into foreign objects and strangers.
That thought nibbled at the back of his mind. He couldn’t let it go. It just hovered there as he made his way back to his place, trying to push its way to the front of his mind and form the obvious conclusion.
He resisted it. The way that he always did. Anytime he got inspiration that seemed related to these kinds of feelings. And then he would go out to his shop and start working on another Texas longhorn sculpture. Because that didn’t mean anything and people would want to buy it.
Just as he approached his house, so did Maddy’s car. She parked right next to his truck, and a strange feeling of domesticity overtook him. Two cars in the driveway. His and hers.
He pushed that aside too.
He watched her open the car door, her blond hair even paler in the advancing moonlight. She was wearing a hat, the shimmering curls spilling out from underneath it. She also had on a scarf and gloves. And there was something about her, looking soft and bundled up, and very much not like prickly, brittle Maddy, that made him want to pull her back into his arms like he had done earlier that day and hold her up against his chest.
Hold her until she quit shaking. Or until she started shaking for a different reason entirely.
“You made it,” he said.
“You say that like you had some doubt that I would.”
“Well, at the very least I thought you might change your mind.”
“No such luck for you. I’m curious. And once my curiosity is piqued, I will have it satisfied.”
“You’re like a particularly meddlesome cat,” he said.
“You’re going to have to make up your mind, Sam,” Maddy said, smiling broadly.
“About what?”
“Am I vegetable or mammal? You have now compared me to both.”
“A tomato is a fruit.”
“Whatever,” she said, waving a gloved hand.
“Do you want to come out and see the sculptures or do you want to stand here arguing about whether or not you’re animal, vegetable or mineral?”
Her smile only broadened. “Sculptures, please.”
“Well, follow me. And it’s a good thing you bundled up.”
“This is how much I had to bundle to get in the car and drive over here. My heater is not broken. I didn’t know that I was going to be wandering around out in the dark, in the cold.”
He snorted. “You run cold?”
“I do.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
She lifted a shoulder, taking two steps to his every one, doing her best to keep up with him as he led them both across the expanse of frozen field. “Well, I’m usually very hot when you’re around. Anyway, the combination of you and blankets is very warming.”
“What happens when I leave?”
“I get cold,” she returned.
Something about those words felt like a knife in the center of his chest. Damned if he knew why. At least, damned if he wanted to know why.
What he wanted was to figure out how to make it go away.
They continued on the rest of the walk in silence, and he increased his pace when the shop came into view. “Over here is where Chase and I work,” he said, gesturing to the first building. “Anna’s is on a different section of the property, one closer to the road so that it’s easier for her customers to get in there, since they usually have heavy equipment being towed by heavier equipment. And this one is mine.” He pointed to another outbuilding, one that had once been a separate machine shed.
“We remodeled it this past year. Expanded and made room for the new equipment. I have a feeling my dad would piss himself if he knew what this was being used for now,” he continued, not quite able to keep the thought in his mind.
Maddy came up beside him, looping her arm through his. “Maybe. But I want to see it. And I promise you I won’t...do that.”
“Appreciated,” he said, allowing her to keep hold of him while they walked inside.
He realized then that nobody other than Chase and Anna had ever been in here. And he had never grandly showed it to either of them. They just popped in on occasion to let him know that lunch or dinner was ready or to ask if he was ever going to resurface.
He had never invited anyone here. Though, he supposed that Maddy had invited herself here. Either way, this was strange. It was exposing in a way he hadn’t anticipated it being. Mostly because that required he admit that there was something of himself in his work. And he resisted that. Resisted it hard.
It had always been an uncomfortable fit for him. That he had this ability, this compulsion to create things, that could come only from inside him. Which was a little bit like opening up his chest and showing bits of it to the world. Which was the last thing on earth he ever wanted to do. He didn’t like sharing himself with other people. Not at all.
Maddy turned a slow circle, her soft, pink mouth falling open. “Wow,” she said. “Is this all of them?”
“No,” he said, following her line of sight, looking at the various iron sculptures all around them. Most of them were to scale with whatever they were representing. Giant two-ton metal cows and horses, one with a cowboy upon its back, took up most of the space in the room.
Pieces that came from what he saw. From a place he loved. But not from inside him.
“What are these?”
“Works in progress, mostly. Almost all of them are close to being done. Which was why I was up at the cabin, remember? I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. But I can always make more things like this. They sell. I can put them in places around town and tourists will always come in and buy them. People pay obscene amounts of money for stuff like this.” He let out a long, slow breath. “I’m kind of mystified by it.”
“You shouldn’t be. It’s amazing.” She moved around the space, reaching out and brushing her fingertips over the back of one of the cows. “We have to get some for the ranch. They’re perfect.”
Something shifted in his chest, a question hovering on the tip of his tongue. But he held it back. He had
been about to ask her if he should do something different. If he should follow that compulsion that had hit him on the walk back. Those ideas about grief. About loss.
Who the hell wanted to look at something like that? Anyway, he didn’t want to show anyone that part of himself. And he sure as hell didn’t deserve to profit off any of his losses.
He gritted his teeth. “Great.”
“You sound like you think it’s great,” she said, her tone deeply insincere.
“I wasn’t aware my enthusiasm was going to be graded.”
She looked around, the shop light making her hair look even deeper gold than it normally did. She reached up, grabbing the knit hat on her head and flinging it onto the ground. He knew what she was doing. He wanted to stop her. Because this was his shop. His studio. It was personal in a way that nothing else was. She could sleep in his bed. She could go to his house, stay there all night, and it would never be the same as her getting naked here.
He was going to stop her.
But then she grabbed the zipper tab on her jacket and shrugged it off before taking hold of the hem of her top, yanking it over her head and sending it the same way as her outerwear.
Then Maddy was standing there, wearing nothing but a flimsy lace bra, the pale curve of her breasts rising and falling with every breath she took.
“Since it’s clear how talented your hands are, particularly here...” she said, looking all wide-eyed and innocent. He loved that. The way she could look like this, then spew profanities with the best of them. The way she could make her eyes all dewy, then do something that would make even the most hardened cowboy blush. “I thought I might see if I could take advantage of the inspirational quality of the place.”
Immediately, his blood ran hotter, faster, desire roaring in him like a beast. He wanted her. He wanted this. There was nowhere soft to take her, not here. Not in this place full of nails and iron, in this place that was hard and jagged just like his soul, that was more evidence of what he contained than anyone would ever know.
“The rest,” he said, his voice as uncompromising as the sculpture all around them. “Take off the rest, Madison.”
Her lashes fluttered as she looked down, undoing the snap on her jeans, then the zipper, maddeningly slowly. And of course, she did her best to look like she had no idea what she was doing to him.
She pushed her jeans down her hips, and all that was left covering her was those few pale scraps of lace. She was so soft. And everything around her was so hard.
It should make him want to protect her. Should make him want to get her out of here. Away from this place. Away from him. But it didn’t. He was that much of a bastard.
He didn’t take off any of his own clothes, because there was something about the contrast that turned him on even more. Instead, he moved toward her, slowly, not bothering to hide his open appreciation for her curves.
He closed the distance between them, wrapping his hand around the back of her head, sifting his fingers through her hair before tightening his hold on her, tugging gently. She gasped, following his lead, tilting her face upward.
He leaned in, and he could tell that she was expecting a kiss. By the way her lips softened, by the way her eyes fluttered closed. Instead, he angled his head, pressing his lips to that tender skin on her neck. She shivered, the contact clearly an unexpected surprise. But not an unwelcome one.
He kept his fingers buried firmly in her hair, holding her steady as he shifted again, brushing his mouth over the line of her collarbone, following it all the way toward the center of her chest and down to the plush curves of her breasts.
He traced that feathery line there where lace met skin with the tip of his tongue, daring to delve briefly beneath the fabric, relishing the hitch in her breathing when he came close to her sensitized nipples.
He slid his hands up her arms, grabbed hold of the delicate bra straps and tugged them down, moving slowly, ever so slowly, bringing the cups down just beneath her breasts, exposing those dusky nipples to him.
“Beautiful,” he said. “Prettier than anything in here.”
“I didn’t think you wanted the word pretty uttered in here,” she said, breathless.
“About my work. About you... That’s an entirely different situation. You are pretty. These are pretty.” He leaned in, brushing his lips lightly over one tightened bud, relishing the sweet sound of pleasure that she made.
“Now who’s a tease?” she asked, her voice labored.
“I haven’t even started to tease you yet.”
He slid his hands around her back, pressing his palms hard between her shoulder blades, lowering his head so that he could draw the center of her breast deep into his mouth. He sucked hard until she whimpered, until she squirmed against him, clearly looking for some kind of relief for the intense arousal that he was building inside her.
He looked up, really looked at her face, a deep, primitive sense of pleasure washing through him. That he was touching such a soft, beautiful woman. That he was allowing himself such an indulgence. That he was doing this to her.
He had forgotten. He had forgotten what it was like to really relish the fact that he possessed the power to make a woman feel good. Because he had reduced his hands to something else entirely. Hands that had failed him, that had failed Elizabeth.
Hands that could form iron into impossible shapes but couldn’t be allowed to handle something this fragile.
But here he was with Madison. She was soft, and he wasn’t breaking her. She was beautiful, and she was his.
Not yours. Never yours.
He tightened his hold on her, battling the unwelcome thoughts that were trying to crowd in, trying to take over this experience, this moment. When Madison was gone, he would go back to the austere existence he’d been living for the past five years. But right now, he had her, and he wasn’t going to let anything damage that. Not now.
Instead of thinking, which was never a good thing, not for him, he continued his exploration of her body. Lowering himself down to his knees in front of her, kissing her just beneath her breasts, and down lower, tracing a line across her soft stomach.
She was everything a woman should be. He was confident of that. Because she was the only woman he could remember. Right now, she was everything.
He moved his hands down her thighs, then back up again, pushing his fingertips beneath the waistband of her panties as he gripped her hips and leaned in, kissing her just beneath her belly button. She shook beneath him, a sweet little trembling that betrayed just how much she wanted him.
She wouldn’t, if she knew. If she knew, she wouldn’t want him. But she didn’t know. And she never had to. There were only five days left. They would never have to talk about it. Ever. They would only ever have this. That was important. Because if they ever tried to have more, there would be nothing. She would run so far the other direction he would never see her again.
Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she would stick around. But that was even worse. Because of what he would have to do.
He flexed his fingers, the blunt tips digging into that soft skin at her hips. He growled, moving them around to cup her ass beneath the thin lace fabric on her panties. He squeezed her there too and she moaned, her obvious enjoyment of his hands all over her body sending a surge of pleasure through him.
He shifted, delving between her thighs, sliding his fingers through her slick folds, moving his fingers over her clit before drawing them back, pushing one finger inside her.
She gasped, grabbing his shoulders, pitching forward. He could feel her thigh muscles shaking as he pleasured her slowly, drawing his finger in and out of her body before adding a second. Her nails dug into his skin, clinging to him harder and harder as he continued tormenting her.
He looked up at her and allowed himself to get lost in this. In the feeling of her slick arousal beneath his hands, in the c
ompletely overwhelmed, helpless expression on her beautiful face. Her eyes were shut tight, and she was biting her lip, probably to keep herself from screaming. He decided he had a new goal.
He lowered his head, pressing his lips right to the center of her body, her lace panties holding the warmth of his breath as he slowly lapped at her through the thin fabric.
She swore, a short, harsh sound that verged on being a scream. But it wasn’t enough. He teased her that way, his fingers deep inside her, his mouth on her, for as long as he could stand it.
Then he took his other hand, swept the panties aside and pushed his fingers in deep while he lapped at her bare skin, dragging his tongue through her folds, over that sensitized bundle of nerves.
And then she screamed.
Her internal muscles pulsed around him, her pleasure ramping his up two impossible degrees.
“I hope like hell you brought a condom,” he said, his voice ragged, rough.
“I think I did,” she said, her tone wavering. “Yes, I did. It’s in my purse. Hurry.”
“You want me to dig through your purse.”
“I can’t breathe. I can’t move. If I do anything, I’m going to fall down. So I suggest you get the condom so that I don’t permanently wound myself attempting to procure it.”
“Your tongue seems fine,” he said, moving away from her and going to grab the purse that she had discarded along with the rest of her clothes.
“So does yours,” she muttered.
And he knew that what she was referring to had nothing to do with talking.
He found the condom easily enough, since it was obviously the last thing she had thrown into her bag. Then he stood, stripping his shirt off and his pants, adding to the pile of clothing that Maddy had already left on the studio floor.
Then he tore open the packet and took care of the protection. He looked around the room, searching for some surface that he could use. That they could use.
There was no way to lay her down, which he kind of regretted. Mostly because he always felt like she deserved a little bit more than the rough stuff that he doled out to her. Except she seemed to like it. So if it was what she wanted, she was about to get the full experience tonight.
