Nadiah’s attention was on the screen, on the food, on Mosley, but she didn’t look back at the door. Mosley did though, acknowledging me with a smile before he shifted to get Nadiah’s attention. I shook my head, not wanting her to know I’d come looking.
She was having a good time.
There was no reason to bother her.
By myself, I headed back around to the other side of the staircase where the entrance to the club was. I approached the guard there, not knowing what to say, but as soon as he saw me, he stepped aside, opening the door for me to enter.
So I did.
Downstairs, I let memory guide me through the crowd, pressing past throngs of people to reach my destination. Memory, plus the enticing smell of food that would probably be just as good as last time – my only chance to taste something like that before I went back to eating whatever I could afford on the meager earnings left after the bills were finished with me.
I never made it to the dining area.
Instead, my attention was arrested by the sight of Maddox and the twins, out on the dance floor. He was sandwiched between them, looking as if he were having the time of his life while the one in front – I couldn’t tell which – ran her hands under his shirt, revealing his abs, and the one behind him practically crawled up his back.
They were moving. Dee or Dem – the one in front – turned around, pushing her ass into his pelvis as she rolled her hips, fluid motion in perfect time to the music. In a perfect position for Maddox to rest his hands at her hips, keeping her right there while the other twin took over the – required? – exposing of his abs.
I couldn’t look away.
I was all too familiar with the feeling coursing through my veins. I experienced it often, watching the carefree existence in the Apex.
Envy.
Not grudgingly though.
I didn’t know these people, had no reason to resent their happiness, or question if they deserved it, none of that.
I wished it could be me.
Hilarious.
The realization that I should look away before they caught me staring came too late. Maddox met my eyes just as I was about to return to my set path, and once he was looking at me, I was stuck right there. At first, his eyes widened in surprise, but then a slow smile spread over his face as the song faded into a different one, and he came straight to me.
“This is unexpected,” he said, leaning to speak into my ear, so I could hear him over the noise. “You came to dance?”
I pulled back, putting a little distance between us as I shook my head. “No, I…” my words caught in my throat as I realized something was different about him. Underneath his hat – backward again – his hair was unbraided, a mass of glossy crinkled waves under the brim. Without the hat, I imagined it was a gloriously fitting leonine mane.
I wanted to take his hat off, so badly.
So badly my fingers itched.
He squinted at me, probably confused by my open-mouthed stare. Suddenly, his hand was in mine, and he was leading me off to a slightly more-quiet corner.
“You good? Nadiah good?” he asked, still squinting as he looked at me, concerned.
I glanced around, noting the couples we were surrounded by, who’d staked their own territory in the dark, for privacy. Privacy to do things that weren’t vulgar, but right over the line for too risqué for the dance floor.
Things Maddox would probably do – or wanted to do – with the twins right now, if he hadn’t spotted me gawking at them.
“Yeah,” I nodded, finally answering his question. “You don’t have to check on me. You can get back to your fun with the twins.”
Even in semi-darkness, I could see that smirk. “Why are you saying it like that?”
“Saying it like what?”
“Like you’re bothered.”
“What? Bothered? I’m not bothered,” I defended, in a – dammit – very bothered tone. “Why would I be bothered by what you do with them?”
His eyebrows went up, but he saved me the embarrassment of stating my obvious jealousy out loud. “Do you want to dance?”
“What? No!” My voice was too loud. I swallowed, shaking my head. “No,” I repeated, at a more appropriate volume. “I can’t. I never really have.”
“Never?!”
I sucked my teeth. “I’m from the Mids, remember? We don’t have the same privileges as you. The only music I grew up with was when my mother would sing, and it wasn’t exactly things to shake your ass to,” I snapped.
His expression softened. “My bad, I’m just surprised. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“I’m not offended. I’m embarrassed,” I admitted, dropping my gaze.
Immediately, his hand was at my chin, lifting until I met his eyes. He smiled. “Don’t be. It’s the easiest shit in the world. I’ll show you.”
Wait, what?
Before I could protest, he’d turned me around, putting his hands at my hips. He didn’t pull me directly against him, but I was close enough to feel his body heat.
“Just feel the music,” he said, in my ear again, leaving so little space that his lips grazed my skin. “And move with it.”
I shook my head. “In front of all these p—”
“Nobody is paying you any mind. They’re in their own worlds, like you should be,” Maddox chuckled. “Close your eyes.” When I didn’t, still giving my best deer-in-headlights impression, his fingers sank into my hips a little more. “Close them.”
I did.
But the song was over now, with a different one filtering in – something slower.
Sexier.
I couldn’t have identified the instruments, and certainly not the singer, but I didn’t need her breathless words to know what it was about. I felt it, in my breasts, and between my legs, and all the way down to my fingertips as my arms hung awkwardly at my sides.
I had no idea what to do with them.
No idea what I was doing, period, and a clanging siren in my brain was screaming at me to leave, before I embarrassed myself further. I couldn’t though. Stepping away from the gentle pressure of his hands as Maddox rocked me back and forth seemed like an impossibility.
I inhaled deep through my nose, then pushed the stream of air back out with my mouth, letting my overwrought mind go with it. Instead of thinking about how stupid I had to look, wondering what Nadiah was doing, thinking about how exhausted I’d be at work tomorrow, I let it go.
I did as Maddox said and focused on the music. Hearing and feeling, letting my hips sway from side to side in time with the music, letting it guide me. Maddox shifted, removing his hands from my hips, but before I could miss them, his arms were around me and he’d stepped closer, finding the beat again and moving with me.
“See?” his warm voice rumbled in my ear, amused, but not laughing at me. “Told you it was easy.”
“This is,” I agreed, looking at him over my shoulder. “But it’s nothing like what Dee was doing with you. To you.”
“Dem,” he corrected, then stopped moving to smirk. “You’re trying to do what she was doing?”
Heat rushed to my face. “I mean, I—”
His hands were back at my hips again, pulling my ass into him. “Bend a little,” he directed, as yet another song started, this one a little faster. “And imagine you’re winding up, with your waist.”
“What?”
He laughed. “Just move your hips in a circle. Don’t worry about the music, just do it.”
I wondered if I looked as uncertain as I felt. But I did what he said because the thought of chickening out at this point was more embarrassing than trying and getting it wrong. To my surprise, once I did it, I realized how naturally the movement came.
“Like keeping a hula-hoop up,” I said out loud, remembering one of the very few toys from my childhood – hell, on up through my teen years.
Maddox nodded. “Yes, like that. If you can do that, you can do this,” he said, his warm encouragement lighting severa
l fires in my body. “Do what you were doing, just find the music now.”
He pulled me into him again, letting his hands drop to my thighs, resting against my bare skin as I moved. I did my best to tune out the electric warmth of his touch, focusing on the music as I let my hips move with the rhythm of whatever this was pumping through the speakers.
It was intoxicating.
My anxiety dissipated. There was no room for apprehension or shame when I felt this unrestricted, doing something that came naturally. I didn’t have to think about it anymore, I moved. Maddox slid his hands back to my waist, keeping me close, but not contained. My hands weren’t awkward anymore – they covered his, affirming the connection, or my fingers found the beat and snapped along with it, or they lifted in front, moving with me.
That glorious feeling stayed with me until I’d built up a light sheen of sweat – the kind of exhilaration I hadn’t felt in forever. At least not from doing something fun.
That’s what this was.
Fun.
Yet another sensation I could barely remember and didn’t want to let go of. That resistance drove the disappointment I felt when Maddox tugged at me, pulling me away to sit down.
“So I see you’ve got a few moves on you, huh?” he asked once we sat down, on a tiny bench that couldn’t have been meant for two people. I was practically in his lap, but I didn’t mind.
I shrugged. “I don’t know about that. I did what you said.”
“Instructions only go so far,” he countered, draping his arms across the back of the booth. “You’re just a natural at it.”
“A natural at a useless skill. Sounds about right for me.”
Maddox chuckled, shaking his head. “Definitely not a useless skill.”
“What could I possibly…” I stopped, noting his raised eyebrows, and the smirk wrapped across his face. “Oh.”
My gaze dropped to my hands as he laughed.
“You are so…”
“Ignorant? Inexperienced? Underdeveloped?”
“I would say refreshing.” I peeked up to find him staring right at me, silent for a moment before he elaborated. “You’re not trying to make yourself seem like something you’re not, you’re not scared to… hell, be scared. Or embarrassed. Or admit you don’t know something, or you need help. Everybody else around here is trying to be a certain degree of badass – which is necessary in a lot of ways to survive this shit, but still, you’re just being you. No bullshit.”
My eyebrows went up. “Dude, I’m scared of all those things,” I laughed. “Every single one. I either don’t know how to hide it, or my need is greater than my fear.”
“I get it,” he nodded. “You’re courageous.”
I shook my head. “No. No, not at all. That’s not a word I’d use to describe myself. I’m not brave.”
“I didn’t say brave, I said courageous. Bravery requires fearlessness. Courage is doing the shit anyway, even though you’re scared. Or are you about to tell me it was nothing for you to hike the bridge ruins in the middle of the night and attack two big motherfuckers in an alley because you were looking for your sister?”
“When you put it like that, I guess it wasn’t easy.”
“Don’t you still have bruises?” he asked. “Should you be down here in this loud ass music, when you had to have had a concussion?”
I raised an eyebrow. “You brought me down here last night though.”
“I wasn’t thinking then.” His arm came down from the booth, draping around my shoulder instead, pulling me into him. “Now I am. You good?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I’m fine.”
How could I not be, tucked under his arm in a dark corner, my energy still high from dancing? I wasn’t thinking about a concussion or tender bruises, and my hunger was long forgotten, replaced by a yearning for this closeness to go on, and on, and on, until it had to end.
Not a moment before.
“You’re going back tonight?” he asked, eyes locked on me, giving the vague impression that his thoughts had been in the same place as mine.
I nodded. “Yeah. Nadiah has classes, and I have to go to work. It was sheer luck that I had today off, to do all of this. But I have to go back.”
“Have to?”
My breath caught in my throat for a second, but I nodded again. “Yeah. My grandmother, my job, Nadiah’s schooling, my parents’ house… my whole life is there,” I explained, then sighed. “A life that feels like a lie now that I know what I know. How did I not know the truth about the Burrows? It seems impossible.”
“Well, you don’t strike me as the type who would believe it without seeing it,” Maddox chuckled. “Not to mention, the flow of information isn’t free between those gates. You can only cross on official business, and your government has done an excellent job scaring the shit out of people. This isn’t like it was back in the days where the internet was available to everybody. Anything not sanctioned only travels through word of mouth, and if people are scared to talk about it for fear of running their mouth to the wrong person and ending up in jail… it makes sense, when you think about it.”
“All that is true, but I could get here with basically no barrier. I walked right out of the Mids, right into here, simply because I was following someone who knew where to go.”
He pointed at me. “There it is right there though – you were following somebody who knew. Everybody doesn’t know, and that’s on purpose, because if too many people – or the wrong people - knew, they’d fuck it up. Somebody isn’t careful, the APF notices, and now you’re in a dragnet cause somebody couldn’t keep their mouth shut.”
“I guess that makes sense. It doesn’t change that I feel stupid as hell though. They basically have us imprisoned, and I go about my little worker bee life, at a job I’m naïve enough to be grateful for, like I’m not barely keeping my family afloat,” I spilled, giving much more than I’d intended when I opened my mouth. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Don’t apologize for that shit,” Maddox insisted, shaking his head. “Better than keeping it bottled up, and you won't get any judgment from me. Not for that.”
He was staring at me so intently that I forced myself to look away. Tried to come up with something – anything – to say, as I stared at the moving crowd in the dark. Dee and Dem were out there somewhere, waiting for him to finish whatever the hell he was doing with me. Sure, I had his attention now, but I wasn’t sexy. I wasn’t cool. I wasn’t smart, like Nadiah.
I was just an out-of-place pawn, who needed to get back to her own board.
I’d been in “Wonderland” long enough.
My intention was to tell Maddox. But I looked up at the same time he reached for me, cupping my chin in his hand – a barely there touch that damn near consumed me.
Definitely made me forget what I was about to say.
Suddenly, his lips were on mine, and I wasn’t sure words mattered at all anymore, because lips – his and mine – were made for soft brushes and long presses and subtle licks and brazen sucks, and parting for access, and everything between. I’d been kissed before, but not like this. Not with careful nibbles that set off heat between my legs, deep licks into my mouth that turned my nipples into hard, sensitive pebbles, not with an urgency that made me feel like I was on the verge of melting, in the best possible way.
But then he released me.
Pulled back, with an apology in his eyes I didn’t want or need, that damn near offended me. How must he view me, to think he needed to apologize for a kiss?
“Let’s dance again,” I said, speaking up before he could verbalize what I saw on his face. Standing, I moved back to the floor, dancing alone. It was different without Maddox behind me, but I caught on, not thinking about it too hard. I didn’t dare look back for him, focusing instead on the music, and letting my body do what it wanted.
A few moments later, I felt him behind me.
It was another of those sensual songs, and this time I had no hesitation. His fingers dug
into my hips as I wound against him with abandon, ruled by the music, by pure instinct. There was no faltering, no apprehension, just the two of us moving together in tandem.
Until I felt him growing hard against me.
I wasn’t sure what the hell I’d expected, but I didn’t move away. That siren in my brain was going off again, but I couldn’t seem to make my body listen.
Instead, I went harder.
Maddox wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me tight against him as I moved my hips. My mouth fell open in a gasp at the sensation of his lips, then his tongue, and teeth, on my neck, sucking and biting and licking and all I could bring myself to do was angle my head to give him better access. I didn’t care if he left a mark – I wanted him to leave a mark, something tangible to anchor the memory, even if it was just temporary.
But it wasn’t enough.
Deep, vulgar satisfaction rippled through me as his hand slipped under my dress. Briefly, concern over being seen flickered across my mind, but was eclipsed by a different feeling as soon as he touched me.
Ecstasy.
We weren’t even skin-to-skin.
He was touching me through the super-soft fabric of the lightweight cotton panties I wore, and it was still like being struck by lightning. Maybe because I hadn’t been touched in so long, or because I’d never been touched by someone who elicited the feelings he did. Whatever the culprit, I was so sensitive there, so overwrought with nerve endings that in next to no time I was panting, then damn near biting a hole in my lip to keep from moaning out loud.
His mouth went from my neck to my shoulder, biting me there before he moved up to my ear. “You want me to make you cum?” he asked, just loud enough for only me to hear. My eyes were closed – I didn’t know if anybody was watching, and was feeling too good to care. When I didn’t answer, his arm that had been around my waist released its’ hold, and then I felt his hand on my neck, his thumb curving around my jaw like a lever to turn my head. “Do you want me to make you cum?” he repeated, and I nodded against the weight of his palm. As if the answer could be anything else with his hand between my legs, strumming me like a guitar.
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