Maddie and Wyn

by Cameron Dane

  By the end of his speech Maddie bumped against him, like one animal offering companionship to another, but didn’t frown or cry or throw a fit on his behalf. “That I can believe and accept. Here you go.” She shoved one of the plates into his hands. “Start enjoying right now.”

  After getting the phone call off his chest, and Maddie letting it go with only an acknowledgment of the facts between them, Wyn did actually feel a weight lift from his chest. Making a genuinely happy hum, he lifted the plate to his nose and sniffed. “Pork?”

  “Yep.” The triangular shaped flaky pastry was piled high with shaved pork. Maddie inhaled and moaned softly too. “Then there’s some puff pastry on the bottom with a black bean paste, and the chef said the fusion is that the pork is infused with some Asian flavors.” She stuffed half the delicacy in her mouth, and around a mouthful of food mumbled, “Dig in.”

  Wyn popped the whole thing in his mouth at once and chewed. The flavors were so bright and layered they exploded in his mouth and made his knees weak. Maddie’s facial expressions as she ate were akin to what Wyn imagined ecstasy would look like on her. The sight filled him with lightness and snuffed out the last of the darkness lurking in him from his phone call with his father.

  As she licked her fingers, Wyn asked her, “New favorite?”

  She paused for a good long moment, squinting as she looked toward the sky, but eventually only waved her hand in a so-so gesture. “Maybe in the top three.” She perked back up again fast, almost skipping in place. “But I’m willing to keep looking for an upset that will topple my list.”

  Sliding his sunglasses back over his eyes, Wyn offered his arm to her. “I’m game too. Let’s go.”

  Elbows hooked together once again, Wyn kept Maddie at his side as they began working their way back through the crowd. And all the while Wyn tried to keep from noticing how Maddie was becoming an even more beautiful woman with each passing day. Or how that at the end of any day spent in her company, he never regretted a minute of it or wished he was doing something else.

  Forget his growing attraction to her; Maddie was becoming important to Wyn. Maybe, other than Ethan, the most important person in his life.

  Under the bright and warm sunlight, Wyn trembled.

  * * * *

  Stars and lights around the park’s central pavilion twinkled in the night sky, and Wyn clapped and chanted along with the local pub band playing on stage, the quintet melding traditional Irish sounds with modern alternative rock. A few feet in front of him Maddie twirled as part of a circle, hand-in-hand with three other women, strangers who had pulled her into their dancing trio, making it a quartet. She’d jumped in without hesitation, laughing and easy, dancing with these free-spirited women who appeared roughly her age. As Wyn watched, a healthy dose of pride pumped through his blood.

  Arousal lived and breathed there too. Christ, Maddie was spectacular. It wasn’t even that she was technically prettier than the other woman—although hell, if up to him, she was—but she was just so damned alive. And to see her interacting with such confidence with her peers now, when he knew how much she’d struggled with that as a kid and teen, imbued her with a powerful dose of sexiness. When mixed with her natural girl-next-door features, it all made Maddie downright dangerous to Wyn, who still possessed a healthy sex drive, yet could not let himself dive into this woman yet.

  Maddie had kept her end of their bargain from that night by the creek at Ethan and Aidan’s cabin. She didn’t push him inappropriately or try to sneak kisses from him. In fact, if not for an occasional, innocent tease—such as when she’d flashed him at his house earlier—Wyn might not think Maddie was interested in him anymore for anything other than friendship. And they had become that. They were now true, real friends in every sense of the word. Which was good. Except that unlike Maddie, who was putting herself out there in the world so much more now, Wyn was so distracted by her he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone on a date.

  His focus drifted to Maddie again, and the sight of her spinning in a circle, arms spread wide, hair flying, cheeks and lips the rosiest pink, pure joy radiating through her, stirred Wyn to life. His shaft swelled pleasurably, responding in a way no other woman had evoked in months.

  Right then Maddie looked up and caught his gaze. She smiled at him in a way that lit the granite in her eyes to molten silver, and Wyn went from pleasantly aroused to sporting half wood. Fuck. At least the flannel shirt he’d put on after the sun had gone down gave him some cover. For all that Maddie had gone on at least a few dates in the last year, she still seemed innocent to the baser responses of raw sexual attraction.

  The band on stage brought their song to a rousing crescendo, the crowd erupted in applause, and the lead singer thanked everyone for coming and told them to have a good night. With the end of the concert upon them, the fans surged in a wave toward the back of the park to leave. Wyn lunged to grab Maddie, encircling her in a protective hold to keep her from being trampled or pushed away from him within the throng of people.

  Instantly Wyn’s forearm brushed the underside of Maddie’s breasts and his erection nudged her ass, the crease between the lush, soft hills of her buttocks the perfect home for his length. Fuck, yes. As he grew harder on the spot, he sucked in a sharp breath. Inwardly Wyn cursed himself, but he kept Maddie close and only muttered, “Sorry,” against her ear as he turned them around and pointed them in the direction of her truck.

  “Don’t apologize.” Getting them moving, Maddie kept tight hold of Wyn’s arm, digging in with her fingers every time they were jostled from behind. A particularly rough push jammed Wyn’s cock between her cheeks even harder. Maddie jumped, but said, “If this is the most I can get out of you for the next two years I’m going to enjoy the goosing and cheap feel for the thirty seconds I can get it.”

  Wyn groaned. He wasn’t sure if due to her brashness or his own arousal. “Christ, woman.”

  Within a few more steps the crush of people thinned and began to disperse, and Wyn reluctantly, but with desperate necessity, let Maddie go.

  Maddie smirked at him, but he ignored it and said, “Tell me again what we’re going to do now?”

  Quickly animated again, Maddie spun to face him and skip-walked backward. “Now we’re going to drive over to Bixby,” she mentioned one of the counties north of Redemption, “because they are having a fright-night horror mystery hunt that lasts all night.” Her eyes suddenly went big, and she bounced and grabbed his forearm. “And the first person to solve the murder mystery presented wins five hundred dollars.”

  “I can’t participate in that,” Wyn argued, even as he laughed. “I’m a cop. I have an unfair advantage.”

  Maddie’s grin grew a mile wide. “Why do you think I want you on my team?”

  “Maaaddddieee.” Wyn drew out her name, trying with everything in him to cover the humor bubbling inside him. “Come on.”

  “Okay, okay.” Waving him off, she shook herself and attempted a serious expression. “I’m kidding about dragging you there to use your skills as a cop. But let’s be serious for a minute. These things are created by entertainment companies, designed for people to get some scares and have some fun. Whatever the mystery ends up being, it’s not necessarily going to follow any kind of logic that you could use to attack solving it as a cop. You could very easily be the most stumped if the story doesn’t make sense.”

  “True enough.” Wyn’s mind skipped through dozens of rented Netflix movies he’d sat through while yelling at the TV over the last ten years. “That’s definitely the case with pretty much every horror movie I’ve seen. For Christ’s sake,” hints of irritation rose, and he ranted, “why the hell do the people always stay in the house with the demon or ghost? It makes no sense, and this won’t either. I’ll be just as confused as everyone else. Okay.” He threw up his hands, coming to a stop beside her vehicle. “You win. Let’s go.”

  “Yay!” Moving with speed, Maddie unlocked the passenger side door of her ancient truck and
then ran around and let herself in behind the wheel. Once there, after putting the key in the ignition, she rubbed her hands together like an old-timey villain. “It’s gonna be so good. Strap in. We have less than an hour to get there and check in.”

  Wyn put on his seatbelt, and a moment later the truck’s engine revved like a contented jungle cat. Wyn wasn’t sure this whole horror mystery hunt was his kind of thing, but without a doubt Maddie would have a good time. And whether he wanted to admit it or not, her having a genuinely good time inevitably became his joy too.

  * * * *

  The sun slowly rose across Wyn’s backyard, and Wyn, with a blanket in hand, moved across his sunroom to the woman dozing on the rattan couch. Folded half over on her side, Maddie clutched a three-foot tall, tacky plastic gold and silver trophy against her middle.

  Looking at Maddie in the dappled wash of early morning light, affection wound its way through Wyn, grasping and reaching into places he’d shut down inside him long ago. Tired but drowsily happy after a very long but amazing day and night, Wyn eased the trophy from Maddie’s hold and settled the blanket over her, leaning in to tuck the fleece fabric securely behind the small of her back.

  Maddie suddenly shot up straight. “Wait. What? I’m awake.” Her eyes still cloudy with sleep, she touched up and down her torso and across the couch. “Where’s my prize?”

  “Relax.” Wyn threw himself back into his cushioned swivel chair and stretched out his legs. “Nobody stole your trophy. I put it on the table so you don’t stab your eye out with it.” He eyeballed the crisscross ax and magnifying glass that was part of the design. “It’s practically a weapon.”

  Quickly Maddie picked up the chintzy statue again. “When I signed us up I didn’t know there would be a trophy for winning.” She repeatedly petted the darn thing as if it was made out of fur-covered twenty-four karat gold. “It’s so much better than the money.”

  Settling in, Wyn steepled his hands against his stomach and luxuriated in her enjoyment. “They are both rightly yours. You figured out the murderer and motive, not me.”

  With one last caress to the trophy, Maddie leaned back, hugged it against her stomach, and put her focus on Wyn. “You had some key insights in the middle that kept me from submitting my answer too fast and being eliminated.”

  “Yeah, right.” Wyn snorted. “Except you went against nearly every logical point I made.”

  “True,” she agreed. “However that was just because I had to take a leap and go with my gut that the creators wouldn’t go with anything straightforward in terms of the storyline. There is never just one or two twists in a horror film or murder-thriller these days. There have to be at least three, and usually more. Playing against your common sense pointed me in the right direction.”

  “However you got there, congratulations.”

  “You keep the cash,” dipping the trophy on her lap like a baby, she studied it with a wistful grin on her face, “and I’ll keep the real prize.”

  Five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills sat on the coffee table between them, almost like a pretty disease neither one of them wanted to touch. “You keep the money too,” he told her, knowing she could use it. “I didn’t earn it.”

  Maddie didn’t move in to grab the cash. “If you don’t want to keep it, then give it to a charity.” She lifted her gaze to his, and a gentleness warmed the cool color. “Choose one your mother would have supported.”

  Wyn jerked. For a moment a tight pain squeezed his chest, but then a memory of his mother talking openly, with quiet conviction and passion, to him and Ethan about the portion of her estate she intended to leave to her most important causes rushed into his head, and a soothing balm eased the burn in his heart. “I like that idea.” He rubbed his chest through his shirt, but the hurt there now was sweet rather than crushing. “I like it a lot.”

  “Good.” Yawning, Maddie put the trophy on the floor by the couch—within touching distance, Wyn noticed—and wiggled to lay down on her side, the arm of the rattan couch her pillow. She stared past him, and her eyelids became heavy and her gaze hazy once more.

  Wyn thought she was seconds away from drifting off, when she blinked and murmured, “I love your backyard. It’s so peaceful and calming and beautiful.” The early morning light twinkled through the glass surrounding the sunroom, and it cast an almost ethereal glow over everything inside and beyond the clear walls. “It must be nice to come out here to relax and unwind.”

  Wyn shifted in the swivel chair, rolling languidly one hundred and eighty degrees to look upon the splendor of his small but unique backyard. Very little actual grass, most of the area consisted of various breeds of bushes and leafy plants along the wood fencing, with two zones of container flower gardens with flowers planted around the bases of the pots, and finally two benches back to back in the middle to relax and admire the splendor during the months weather allowed it.

  As Wyn stared, the peace Maddie had mentioned washed over him like the trickling water of a cool creek. “I tried to do the upkeep on it when I first moved in,” he shared, “but I just didn’t have the time. My mom loved gardening so much she gobbled up the task for as long as she could. I pay someone to keep it up now; I would hate myself if I let it die.”

  Maddie murmured, “I’d like a garden one day.” Behind him only a handful of feet away, she sounded far away, her voice soft and muddled. “I’ve never had one; I don’t know if I have a green thumb; I might be terrible at it.” A loud yawn filled the sunroom just then, before she finished, “I just always liked the idea of a home with a garden.”

  Fast flowing images of slipping between Maddie’s thighs, surrounded by the beauty of nature in his backyard, of slowly pushing every damned inch of his cock into her tight heat while she moaned for him as the sun beat down on their naked bodies, sucker punched Wyn hard in the gut. Volcanic heat rushed through his system, flooding his dick with blood, making him instantly hard as a rock. At the same time, a chill went down his spine, and his neck broke out in a sweat. Wyn knew Maddie hadn’t said what she did to provoke a sexual response in him, it was Wyn conjuring pictures of the two of them sharing this house in the future all on his own. It was him experiencing the extreme reactions about their future, ones he wasn’t sure he was comfortable with yet or liked.

  “Maybe one day it will happen,” he told her, his voice husky as hell, unable to get anything else past his throat right now.

  “Maybe.” Her voice was faint as a whisper. “I hope so.”

  They fell into silence then. For long minutes Wyn remained facing away, cataloging the flora and fauna in his yard, trying to pull the focus away from the deep throb in his cock. His balls had thickened with seed too, and celibacy taunted him like a specter, telling him to turn around and take Maddie right there on the wicker couch. The sane part of his brain kept him rooted in his seat, focused straight forward, employing the discipline his training as a police officer had given him. Eventually his erection subsided.

  Wyn turned slowly in his chair then, and his gaze landed on Maddie fast asleep, so deeply gone a little bit of drool pooled at the edge of her mouth. She would not love that he’d seen that. Chuckling softly, Wyn pushed out of his chair with the last of his strength, slipped his arms under Maddie’s knees and shoulders, and lifted her into his arms. Without waking, she settled against his chest, zonked out, dead weight.

  Maddie was not a petite woman, but then again Wyn wasn’t exactly small or a slouch himself, and he had no trouble carrying her to his room. She’d kicked off her moccasins the moment they’d walked in the front door, so without disrobing her any further, he put her in his bed and drew the comforter across her body. She immediately curled onto her side, dragged one of his pillows in and hugged it tightly against her breasts and belly. Watching, Wyn ached behind the zipper of his jeans all over again.

  Ridiculous jealousy over the pillow taking the place in his bed where he wanted to be, Wyn muttered a litany of curses at himself and left the room. He would slee
p on the couch—his second bedroom was set up as an office—and hope by the time Maddie woke up the only stiffness he would have would be in his neck from sleeping on a couch too small for him, and that the seemingly perpetual rigidness in his dick would be long gone…

  * * * *

  …An agony-filled crreeeaakk filled Wyn’s ears and yanked him out of his runaway memories. He ran from the middle of the garden to the front gate, but nobody was there. Only another gust of wind ripped through the open land and pushed the creaky gate closed again. No Maddie. No intruder to catch. Nobody.

  Glancing at his watch, Wyn frowned when he saw the lateness of the hour. He could no longer say Maddie would normally still be at work. It now appeared she was avoiding him.

  Fuck.

  Wyn didn’t want Maddie to be afraid to come home. He didn’t want to ruin this house for her. For a split-second he considered leaving. Then just as fast, he remembered the lab results of the candy wrappers he’d gotten back from his buddy this afternoon, and he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. The saliva on those wrappers had identified a male, not female, as the suspect for Maddie’s intruder. As per part of their public service record, Aidan, Ethan, and Devlin were all in the system and the markers did not match any of them. Maddie had stated that nobody else had been in her home, therefore that left an individual who did not have a criminal record or have another reason to be in the various state and national databases. So Wyn for damned sure wasn’t leaving until he figured out who in the hell had been inside Maddie’s home.

  But Christ, he didn’t want his presence to kill the love she had for this house before she’d even had a real chance to enjoy it. Not again. He growled at himself.

  He’d forever ruined the cottage for her. Hell, he’d ruined it for himself, which was why he’d sold the home four years ago and now rented an apartment. If he intended to continue invading her home—and he did—the least he could do was spend his free time working on her garden. The gesture wouldn’t fix things between them—Wyn had begun to think nothing would—but maybe by the end of two weeks she’d hate him a little less. He could at least hope. It was a place to start.