Chapter Eight
Eve closed the door behind her departing bartender, turned, and pressed her back to the cool wood, sighing the evening from
her lungs. Her employees hated being left at the Gilded Garden alone. Something about the low lighting, sultry music, and
among these walls, they were better behaved than humans.
She checked the time on the phone in her hand. Just after midnight. The kids would be long since asleep. Tonight had been
slow at the club, an unfortunate recurring theme lately, so she’d had ample time to check in on Lark, Landon, and her apparent
new babysitter, Veda. After starting antibiotics this afternoon and being given some over-the-counter medicine to relieve
their symptoms, her niece and nephew were on their way to recovery. No temperatures as of nine o’clock, thank god.
Veda needed to leave soon. That gave Eve a smidge of time to herself.
And she knew exactly how she needed to use it.
Humming along with the swing music that filtered in from the performance area, Eve pushed off the door and sauntered down the hallway, freeing her long hair from the clip she’d used earlier to create a twist on top of her head.
Sank her fingers into the tumbled-down mass and rubbed out the kinks and soreness of her scalp.
When she reached the audience seating, a half circle of tables and chairs, her pulse started to flutter in her wrists and throat, a mixture of excitement and nerves bumping around in her belly.
She stood center stage in the blue spotlight and closed her eyes, letting her imagination conjure up a crowd of people, well
dressed and stirring with anticipation. Their eyes tracked her every movement and she made a meal out of each and every one,
starting with her heels. Giving the crowd her profile, she staggered her legs and slowly bent forward without bending her
knees, slipping off one shoe, then the other, setting them neatly to one side. But when Eve straightened and settled her fingertips
on the buttons of her sweater, that’s when her blood truly started to pump.
The members of the audience were faceless, but it was the imagined change in their energy, a growing eagerness on their part,
that made her stomach ripple with butterflies. Made her hips and breasts feel like weapons at her disposal. A means to entice.
One by one, she released the buttons, but instead of opening the black wool of her cardigan, she gave the audience her back
and slowly, slowly, slipped the material down to expose one shoulder. All she heard now was the music of her own blood, the
pumping rhythm of it, how the tempo sped up when she shimmied the garment down to her wrists and let it drop, leaving her
center stage in a bra and high-waisted skirt.
They’d have to wait for more, though.
They were rapt, dangling from a string. Watching her.
Afraid to blink as she swayed from the stage into the dining room and perched herself on one of the front tables, leaning back in an arch and shaking out her long tresses to the low, slow boom of bass.
She lifted the fingers of her right hand and dragged them down the curve of her throat, lips tilted in a wicked smile, the front snap of her bra between her index finger and thumb.
Eve flicked the snap open but used both hands now to keep the silk cups together, preventing them from opening. Uncrossing
her legs, crossing them again with the opposite thigh on top, moving her shoulders to the music, knowing they were all holding
their breath, silently begging to see her breasts. And that projection of hunger gave her a melting sensation between her
legs, prickled her skin from toes to scalp, made her thrum.
Everywhere she thrummed.
She wasn’t the only one.
Madden had to be dreaming.
What the hell had he walked in on?
Eve was sitting on a table in the empty lounge, her sweater and shoes discarded on the floor, her opened bra being held together
by delicate fingers while she moved with the music, a flirtatious smile on her mouth. Eyes closed.
Speak up. He needed to announce himself.
If he had the ability to speak, he would have. Immediately.
But he could only stand at the mouth of the hallway, arrested by the mind-blowing sight of Eve performing a striptease for
no one. Although it seemed to be . . . for her. Her chest rose and fell on heavy breaths, proof she was enjoying herself.
She uncrossed her beautiful legs, as if to give the slightest peek between them, and Madden’s throat went fucking dry, his
pulse noisy and erratic in his ears, his chest.
Hungry eyes devoured the parts of Eve he hadn’t seen in way too long.
Since last summer when they’d gone swimming in the Pages’ backyard.
He’d seen her in a bathing suit then. A high-waisted vintage deal that reminded Madden a lot of the skirt she wore tonight.
The delicate curve of her spine, the breadth of her hips, the wild waves of her hair when she wore it down.
The tight swell of her ass. All those ingredients that composed Eve .
. . he knew them better than he knew himself.
When she slipped off one side of her bra, but quickly covered her breast with the palm of her hand, Madden made a sound in
his throat, guilt over his stiff cock taking hold. In total, he’d probably been standing there in the shadows for less than
two minutes, but that was too long. He needed to make her aware of him before she removed the bra completely.
“Eve.” She gave no sign that she’d heard him. “Eve.”
The other side of her bra slipped off, leaving her in that tight skirt with her hands cupped over her tits, and it physically
hurt to walk at that point, but he started to pick his way through the chairs and tables, no choice but to get closer and
be heard.
“Eve,” he barked.
Was it a tragedy or a revelation the way her hands left her breasts, baring them, her palms closing around the edge of the
table for stability as she screamed.
“Madden?”
“I called your name,” he said, hoarse, turning around like a gentleman ought to, but not before seeing her high, lush tits,
in full. Those rosy, pebbled nipples. The flush running up her neck and down the center of her torso. Eyes heavy lidded, bottom
lip swollen from self-inflicted bites.
Aroused.
Eve was aroused. From taking her clothes off in front of an empty room.
The mystery she’d always represented deepened. He was simultaneously turned on by the knowledge of what made her breathe so
hard . . . and galled to be only finding out now.
“I-I told you not to come here,” she rasped, followed by the sound of her bare feet hitting the ground, the snap of her bra reengaging. A flash of blond to his right told Madden she was retrieving her sweater from the stage. “Dammit, Madden.”
He didn’t respond.
All his concentration funneled into a grip on his willpower, also known as the one thing stopping him from throwing her back
up on the table to see if she’d uncross her legs for him, as smoothly as she had for the nonexistent audience.
Patience sapped, he glanced back at her over his shoulder. The sweater was back on over her bra, but she hadn’t engaged any
of the buttons, leaving a swath of her upper stomach on display along with her cleavage. He wasn’t going to say it out loud,
but good god, she might as well still be topless for the effect she was having on him.
Eve fumbled with her phone where she’d left it on one of the tables, her fingers tapping on the screen a few times before
the music stopped playing.
Silence dropped like a velvet curtain.
They were both breathing hard.
“What was that, Eve?” Madden said, turning around fully.
A flippant shrug. “What was what? I’m short on dancers these days. I need to know what I’m doing in case I ever have to fill
in.”
Madden laughed, the low incredulous sound echoing off the stage. “I was against you performing before, but now that I’ve seen
what it does to you? No, I don’t reckon I’d like anyone to see you like that.”
“Like what?”
Slowly, he wove around the single table that sat between them, noting the way she stared at his chin, instead of meeting his
eyes. “Hot, love. Turned on.”
Her breath hitched. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.” When she closed her eyes, Madden stepped into her space, stopping just short of their bodies touching, no idea
how she’d react if she felt how hard she’d made his dick. But the pleasure he got from pressing his mouth against her ear
made up for the pain. He’d take all the pain in the world to spend any length of time this close to her. Close enough to smell
her smoky peach perfume, close enough to hear her breathe. “What do you like about taking your clothes off in front of a room?
You can tell me.”
“I don’t know,” Eve whispered after several seconds.
His lips brushed side to side against her ear. “Are you sure?”
She reached back and gripped the edge of the table behind her. As if she was in danger of losing her balance. “If you tell
anyone—”
“Eve, you know me better than that.” Madden took a chance, settling his hand on her hip, beneath the flap of her cardigan,
his thumb brushing the smooth skin of her stomach, the rush of southward heat making him burn inside his clothes. “Why would
I tell anyone a goddamn thing about you when I want to be the only one who knows?”
“Madden,” she said on a gasp, on the verge of pulling away.
He pressed his thumb gradually into her hip abductor. “Tell me.”
Eve closed her eyes for a moment. When they reopened, they were more arresting than he’d ever seen them and that was saying
a lot. “It’s empowering. To me. Being . . .”
“Being?”
“On . . . display like that. Being wanted. The . . .”
“Lusting.”
Her stomach hollowed against his hand, as if the word itself had inspired some relief. Or an increasing lack of it. He couldn’t
be sure, but he wanted to be. “I guess.”
“You guess or you know?” he pushed in a low voice against her temple.
“I know.”
Christ.
Eve had an exhibitionist streak. He hadn’t seen that coming. At all.
If he hadn’t driven here tonight, he might never have found out.
What the hell was he going to do about it, though? This was the closest she’d ever let him get to kissing her, touching her,
and he suspected the reason for that was he’d found her in a vulnerable moment. She needed to be touched.
“Have you done anything to . . . explore it?”
“No. This is enough.”
“Is it?”
“No.”
That endearing confession had Madden chuckling out of pure affection for this woman. This woman he’d seemingly been chasing
unsuccessfully since the beginning of time.
And he’d be chasing her until the end of time unless he got creative.
It wouldn’t be right to use the information he’d just learned to his advantage. But here was the thing about Eve Keller. To
be there for her, to effectively help her, one had no choice but to get creative. That’s how it had always been. And whether she wanted to admit it or not, she needed help now. Madden would
use whatever he had at his disposal to make life better for this woman. End of story.
“Eve.”
“Yes?”
He gave in to fulfilling half of tonight’s fantasy by picking her up by the waist and settling her butt on the closest table.
“I dropped by tonight for a reason.”
It took her a moment to speak, her gaze slipping down to his hands where they grasped her waist. “Dropped by? You drove almost four hours.”
“Believe me, love, it was fucking worth it.”
Eve shoved at his chest, but the assault was half-hearted.
In fact, she appeared to be hiding her pleasure over the compliment.
“Go on.”
“Go on telling you I’d pay every penny in the bank to see the show again?”
“No.” Her color deepened. “Go on, tell me why you ‘dropped by.’”
“Oh, that.” Madden wanted to remember this moment for the rest of his life, so he dropped the teasing tone and lifted her
chin in his hand, waiting for her to lock in on him. “I came here to propose, Eve.”