Chapter Twenty
Eve didn’t consider herself a nurturing person. She valued those people tremendously. They were the volunteers helping during
a natural disaster. They were the nurses who’d cleared up her confusion about asthma. They were kindergarten teachers and
caretakers. On the flip side, she loved a few people very fiercely, if quietly, and didn’t count herself among the ranks of
those who cared for others.
The impulse to soothe Madden in that moment was as foreign to her as holy matrimony. As foreign as having a husband walk through
the door, give her a bouquet of perfect-for-her flowers, and ask how she’d been. All she could say was . . . Something strong
and unrecognizable compelled her to expose herself physically to him, as if trading one vulnerability for the kind he’d shown.
Resting their lips together, she placed his warm, extralarge hand on her breast, heard his breath stutter at the contact,
and licked the seam of his mouth, making the barest contact with his tongue, but, whoa mama, that was enough to send a roll
of thunder all the way down to her sex and grip her flesh with anticipation.
“Hold on,” he said, the words muffled by their almost-kiss. “Let’s talk awhile more. I want to be sure this isn’t out of sympathy.”
“It’s not,” she gasped when his thumb brushed over her sensitive nipple.
“I don’t know why I told you all that now—”
“I’m glad you did.”
Intense blue eyes searched her face, as if for proof. “Why?”
“I like knowing things about you.” Okay, apparently, she was going for way more than physical vulnerability this morning.
With their breaths picking up and blending, Eve couldn’t seem to remember why she shouldn’t say anything and everything on
her mind. “I feel closer to you after you told me about your family. It’s not sympathy. It’s . . . intimacy.”
The brackets around his mouth softened just slightly. “You’re sure?”
Briefly separating their lips, Eve turned to straddle Madden, scrubbing her palms up and over his broad shoulders, beginning
to feel drunk on the freedom she had to touch this man. Not Skylar’s crush. Just Madden. Her husband. A man she wanted to
be honest with.
As much as she could, anyway.
“There might be a teeny tiny feeling of . . . wanting to soothe you because you had to talk about something that upset you.
There might even be some . . . need to reward you for being honest with me.”
Madden was already shaking his head. “Eve—”
“What’s wrong with letting me have it, though?” she whispered, tilting her head slowly to the right and licking into his mouth,
tasting his heated groan, feeling the rising thickness of his shaft against the seam of her shorts. “We both want this, no
matter what it’s about.” She slid her knees wider on the couch and rocked forward, watching his pupils dilate to the size
of dimes. “Don’t we?”
“Fuck me, Eve. You have no right being so goddamn sexy.” Before she could issue a flirty rejoinder and watch his eyes go black again, Madden turned them sideways, pressing Eve’s back to the couch and pinning her there, fitting his hips right where they belonged.
Between her thighs. “I’d rather make you forget your need to soothe me. ”
She lifted her knees and shifted, teasing, while biting her lip. “How are you going to do that?”
“Showing you I don’t need soothing.”
“Everyone needs soothing once in a—”
Madden grabbed the back of his collar and hauled off his shirt, tossing it toward some unseen destination, because she couldn’t
look away from the raw strength suddenly staring her in the face. The rugged beauty of him already had her around the throat,
but then his hand added even more pressure, his palm sliding up between her breasts and closing gently around her throat.
“You kiss your husband hello next time he walks through the front door,” he said, leaning down to deliver a kiss so thorough,
her fingers dug into the edge of the sofa. She was left gasping by the time it ended, her lips swollen and tingling. “That’s
the first thing you do, love. That’s how you greet me. If I only get this mouth for six months, I’m going to make good fucking
use of it.”
“I don’t feel the need to soothe you anymore,” she panted, not wanting to move or breathe or do anything to disturb the decadence
of being pressed down by his weight and told what is what. “I’m over it.”
“Good.” He marauded her mouth again, his tongue moving with blatant, erotic ownership, his thumb stroking the hollow of her
throat, reassuring her and flustering her at the same time until she was whimpering, an aggressive ache spreading between
her legs. “But, Eve? Eve.”
“Huh? What?” Who was that woman talking? She sounded frantic.
“You’re going to get my mouth for six months too,” he rasped, that possessively confident hand turning her head left so he could stroke his tongue
down, downward over her collarbone, his lips ending at her stiff nipple; without hesitating, he covered her with his mouth,
her tits firm in his hands while his mouth savored, worked, licked over the distension of her with a precision that had her
gasping and burying her fingers in his hair.
“Oh my god,” she moaned.
“One week into this marriage and you already know getting topless for me is going to win any argument.” He licked across to
her other breast, his brows drawn together tight as he lapped at her nipple slowly, kissed it, then delivered a vicious drag
of suction that made her back arch off the couch. “Smart girl,” he said when he finished twisting her into a pretzel. “I’ve
been obsessed with these tits for fucking years. Now you’re going to come from having them sucked.”
“Not possible,” she gasp-laughed. “No.”
He released her right breast, sliding his hand down between them, waiting for her to nod before he delved his long, blunt
fingers inside her sleep shorts and gripped her sex through the cotton material of her panties, rubbing until her folds were
separated between the gentle but firm touch of his fingers. “Jesus Christ, if your pussy can get this wet, I reckon you can
do anything.”
Was praise her thing? Is praise my thing?
Her eyes were literally in the back of her head, chest heaving, her sanity hinging on his full, massaging strokes between her thighs, the character of which was so cocky, so unlike his personality, that the shock of his skills was going to blow her fuses.
And the likelihood of that increased tenfold when he started splitting time between her mouth and her breasts, giving them equal hungry attention, slanting his mouth over hers with a vengeance one second, licking and suckling her the next until .
. . until it started to happen, a hot quickening at the equator of her body, the prickle of goose bumps raking up her skin like an assault, her skin flashing hot and cold, hot and cold, gold flashbulbs snapping at the edges of her vision.
“Okay, it’s really happening,” she gasped, ordering her core not to flex on instinct, but to let the orgasm crest naturally
and prolong itself. Tricks of the single girl trade. “You weren’t lying. Don’t stop.”
“Never, love.”
She’d take issue with her whiny tone of voice later and how it sounded ridiculous in the presence of Madden’s perfect baritone,
but right now Eve had something brewing in her belly, fierce and twisty and agitating—and when she looked down at her shiny
nipples and saw him bare his teeth at them, the pleasure sped up and imploded, rocketing her hips upward, her inner walls
bearing down, buckling, a scream churning out of her, both knees shaking on either side of his waist. Every part of her shaking,
the smell of sweat and sex and soap heavy between them, his gaze riveted by her body as it writhed through the worst/best
agony, committed by him.
“Madden . . .” Weakened by the thorniest, most unique climax in recent memory, she turned into a puddle of bones on the couch.
“What . . . what?”
He loomed over her, propped on one elbow, his expression almost thoughtful as he watched her huff and puff through her recovery.
“How do you not look cocky right now?”
“Should I?”
“Yes.”
He hummed, a line snapping in his jaw as he slowly ground his bulge between her thighs, then punching his hips forward once,
twice, the friction against her sensitive sex making her want to grab his butt and keep him there. “Catch your breath, Eve.
I’m going down on you now.”
Panic made a slow slice through the fog, like the bow of a ship. Going down on you. He’d . . . he’d have to take off her panties for that. In the light.
He’d see the scar. He’d know.
Madden was already sitting back, his eyes glittering with intention in the dull morning light, the dainty waistband of her
panties pinched between his fingers. How would she ever explain that scar? He’d react badly for so many reasons. Because she’d
never told him. Because she’d made herself vulnerable to long-term health risks. But most of all, if Madden saw that scar,
there would be no convincing him to end this relationship at six months. His commitment to her would be lifelong and she wouldn’t
do that to him.
Stop him.
“Wait. No.” Despite Eve’s lethargy, she sat up and ordered herself to soften the alarm in her tone. “No,” she murmured, climbing
onto her knees—and it didn’t require any effort to sprinkle seduction into her movements, because he was thick and gorgeous
and pissed he wasn’t giving her oral sex right now. Put that at the top of his list of good qualities. “You have to let me
recover first,” she said, closing the short distance between them on her knees and running her nails down his hard chest,
leaning in to kiss the dip between his pecs, dragging her mouth sideways to breathe hot air against his nipples.
“Eve . . .” Madden was starting to breathe harder. “Let me get a goddamn taste.”
The raw vibration of need in his voice almost made her give in, damn the consequences, but she bit him playfully, instead,