Chapter Twenty-Seven
God almighty, he loved her like this.
This was the Eve he’d long suspected she hid under the cool, controlled surface and what a fucking privilege that she’d chosen
to take off her mask for him. If he’d done something, anything to make her feel safe enough to lay down her armor, he’d consider
it a life well spent.
In theory, showering wasn’t a sexy undertaking when a man had to wrap his bandage in plastic and avoid the shower spray, but
as he stood there with a towel wrapped around his waist at one end of the bathroom, watching Eve bend forward in a bra and
panties to test the temperature of the water, Madden concluded this was already the best night of his life.
“Okay, honey . . .”
Honey, she was calling him.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
“The water is exactly how you like it. Which I know, as your wife,” Eve said with a sparkle in her eye, her voice a little
muffled by the shower spray. “You’re going to stand in the tub while I wash you, sort of like a dog.”
“You’re saying all the right things, love.” A smile burst across Eve’s face without a hint of hesitation and Madden never,
ever wanted to leave that bathroom. “Should I . . .” he started, gesturing to his clothes. “Strip?”
“Yes, please,” she purred, coming up in front of him to help take off his T-shirt, very carefully, her forehead lined with concern as they navigated his bruised shoulder.
He didn’t realize she was holding her breath until they dropped the garment to the floor, and she let it out in a gust, her relief obvious as she slipped her finger beneath the waistband of his sweats and briefs, pausing before she could lower them.
“I can’t help but notice you wouldn’t let me help you out of the car, but you’re willing to let me help take your pants off. Very telling.”
“I believe that’s called splitting hairs.”
“Is it?” She laughed the question, but her mirth dissolved quickly when she tugged his pants and briefs down to his ankles
and came face-to-face with how his cock felt about her lack of clothing. “Bad Madden, indeed.”
Madden didn’t recognize the sudden pressure in his throat. Did he have the urge to laugh or cry? He wasn’t the best at letting
other people take care of him, but he was compelled to drop his walls, same as her. Allow himself to treasure the chance to
be at the mercy of this woman. He closed his eyes, because he could barely handle the sight of her kneeling and untying his
shoelaces, the brush of her fingertips on his ankles sending waves of warmth up the insides of his legs and tightening his
balls.
She dragged those same magical fingertips up the front of his body as she rose, running a single digit along the heavy length
of his dick. “Let me wash you?”
The plea in her tone made him dizzy, so he focused on the little mole that sat on her shoulder. “I’d only let you do something
like that.”
“That’s good,” Eve said, taking Madden’s wrist and guiding him to the modern, sharp-edged tub, stepping inside in her strapless bra and panties, bringing him inside with her before turning them and shutting the glass door that was already fogged, closing them in a hot, misted, and private environment that he’d never look at the same again. “Because I’d only do it for you.”
“That’s good.” He managed to echo her words, barely, due to the water running over her body and soaking the bra, those sexy,
waist-cinching panties, plastering them to her wet hips, that mound he ached for between her thighs. Lord, he’d never given
a second thought to the features of the shower, but the multiple vertical nozzles built into the walls were a blessing now,
because they were both dripping in seconds. Eve had totally abandoned worry in front of him, showing no sign of stress or
hesitation, just letting her hair dampen, the spray painting her body with water from four different directions, while she
poured body wash into her palms and rubbed them together. Madden’s stomach knit up like a drum when she rested those sudsy
hands on his shoulders, scrubbing his neck, his chest, even thumbing his ears.
Maybe he’d died at home plate today and this was heaven.
How else could he explain the way she cleaned him, head to toe, like she was born knowing his body and the effect of her stroking
palms over his knees, nipples, abdomen, down his buttocks and in between, looking him right in the eye as she did it.
“I was thinking . . .” she said, leaning in to sip shower water off the middle of his chest. “We should definitely put Christmas
lights on the balcony rail this year.”
We’re playing house.
She wanted to play house.
And all while his brain was in the process of going offline, handing off the reins to his downstairs brain, because yeah, Eve’s hands were perfect, so bloody perfect, leaving his erection hanging there, untouched and throbbing, while she circled around behind him and worked shampoo into his hair.
But Madden stifled his groan of the word tease and focused on the world they were living in their minds.
Maybe if he was convincing enough, it could be their real future.
“Christmas lights. I like that idea.” He tried not to moan over her fingernails on his scalp. “We’ll pick a color no one else
has. Purple, maybe. And when I fly into LaGuardia after being on the road, I’ll be able to pick out our apartment from the
sky.”
“Everyone on the plane will wonder who buys purple Christmas lights.”
“And I’ll just smile to myself. Because I know it’s us.”
She pressed a smile against his spine, and in a state of total bliss, he searched for a way to keep the game going. “We’re
not one of those dinner party couples, are we?”
“God, no. But we make up for never hosting because we always bring some obscure dessert from the cool, experimental downtown
bakery. Like matcha rice pudding. Everyone rolls their eyes at us for being city people, but we have the last laugh because
we come home to no dirty dishes.”
“And we never have to shovel the snow. But we tip the super generously.” Madden turned around because he couldn’t stand not
seeing her face anymore. “Although someday, I wouldn’t mind shoveling the snow again.”
Eve nodded, following his line of thought while shower water trickled down her cheeks, the makeup smudging around her eyes.
And if he had a camera in that moment to steal the image and make it immortal, that photo would be the next one he framed
for her, because she was magnificent in her relaxed, playful state. “You’ll retire, naturally, and . . .”
“And what?”
She took a moment to breathe. “And Lark and Landon will be in college by then, so we’ll just . . . go anywhere we want. Maybe Wyoming or South Dakota.”
“Definitely somewhere I can shovel snow.”
“And I’m a new face to all our neighbors. I’m just Eve. New in town. No one knows anything about me. ‘She’s kind of serious,
but she does her part for the neighborhood.’ That’s what they’ll say.”
“And her husband kisses the ground she walks on,” he added, even though his throat was burning over the wistful wish she’d
just made. For a clean slate. What he wouldn’t give to hand her that wish on a platter, even if he hated the fact that she
needed one. Everyone else should have to change. Not his wife. “Her husband decorates the whole house in those purple lights
every year, because it’s tradition.”
She slipped her hands up his wet chest, tracking her progress with glassy eyes. “Deep down, we’re still those annoying city
folks who never host the dinner party.”
He pressed his mouth to her temple. “We like our privacy.”
“Yeah,” Eve whispered, lifting onto her toes to rub their mouths together, her fingers finally, finally, cupping his erection,
running her palm all the way down to his balls and massaging their way back up. “Most of the time.”
Madden’s pulse was already pumping a thousand miles an hour, but the implication of the words most of the time brought him back to the parking lot a week earlier when he’d fucked his wife against the side of the building, because a
little risk of exposure fulfilled her needs and his job was to make that happen. Every goddamn time she asked.
Without taking his mouth off Eve’s, he reached over and slapped off the shower.
His shoulder could have been blown off by a shotgun that afternoon and he wouldn’t have felt the pain in that moment.
There was only getting inside his wife and in the immediate interest of that, he ripped the plastic bag off his shoulder, using his one good arm to lift her out of the tub, leading her out of the bathroom.
She didn’t ask where they were going. And the expression on her beautiful face when he pulled her out onto the balcony into
the warm spring night was so trusting, Madden had to swallow the words I love you and, Jesus, they were heavy and got stuck in his windpipe, even as he sat down on the one reclining deck chair that had come
with the condo, Eve gasping for air as she came down on top of him, straddling his lap, their mouths fusing in a frenzied,
moaning kiss, her silk-covered pussy pressing down in just the spot and gliding front to back. Fuck.
“We can only fuck out here if you’re going to be quiet, love,” he said, gripping a section of her hair and holding her steady
so he could look her in the eye. “Eve?”
“I’ll be quiet. I’ll be quiet,” she babbled, mascara under her eyes, her long blond hair stuck to her cheeks and shoulders.
Disheveled. But her gaze was so clear when she looked at him. There was lust, aye, but there was knowledge there, too, that
her request for risk had been heard loud and clear. That he wasn’t a man who only talked the talk, he walked the fucking walk
too. And it got her hot. “You’re going to relax and let me do the work tonight,” she said, reaching back to unsnap her bra.
The sight of her bare tits made Madden’s vocal cords sound rubbed with dry sand. “I won’t relax until we’ve been married six
months and one day.”
Something flickered in Eve’s eyes. “Tonight, we are. Tonight, we’re the purple Christmas lights couple,” she said, pressing the high globes of her tits to his chest, angled in a way that wouldn’t disturb his injury, her tongue slipping into his mouth in a slow French kiss.
It went on and on, neither one of them willing to stop and draw oxygen, drawing only on each other, her wet thighs shifting around his hips, excited, her cunt flexing and rubbing on his hardness.
And when a plane flew overhead, she whimpered into his mouth, the kiss kicking into a frantic pace, Eve reaching down to shift aside her underwear, leaving them on but allowing soft to welcome hard.
Welcome the slick friction of their nearly joined sexes.
“We’ve been married two years. Long enough to make the lights a tradition,” she whispered, breathing erratically against his mouth, jacking off his cock now, the tip already buried in the warmth of her creases.
“You know I like to play nurse when you’re injured, and you let me. You secretly love it.”
Every color of the rainbow flashed in front of Madden’s eyes when Eve pushed his tip into her heat and dropped down, her ass
smacking off his lap with a closemouthed cry.
Motherfucker.
This woman was perfection.
Being inside her was the epitome of being spoiled.
An indescribable indulgence.
And on top of her body fitting his like a glove, she was in a dirty mood.
“You secretly love having your dick ridden,” she leaned down to whisper, her hips already moving in hot little writhes, her
pussy tight enough around him to have his left hand flying out to grip one of the slats of the balcony rail, holding it in
a white-knuckled grip and begging himself to last. “It’s almost good enough to get injured on purpose, isn’t it, honey?” she
said, rubbing their noses together while she wrecked him.
Wrecked him.
His sides puffed in and out, his cock being treated to a slippery rhythm she composed on their behalf, her stiff nipples dragging through his damp chest hair as her hips rode, her enjoyment so clear, so unfettered, he could only watch her parted lips and glazed eyes in awe, her thighs opening and sliding, almost like she was army-crawling with the lower half of her body, her pussy starting to spasm; and she only moved faster, faster.
“Do you like that?” she said in a halting whisper, sitting up to play with her tits, kneading the supple flesh and teasing
her nipples into buds that had him salivating. “Do you like being bare inside your wife?”
“Love,” he managed, bearing down on his lower body to prevent himself from spilling. “You’re going to make me bust.”
That admission made her tremble. “But do you like it?”
“I fucking love it. Don’t stop.” His cock gave an ominous throb, his lower spine pulling hard. Hard. “Oh god, don’t stop.”
“Shhh.” Watching his face closely, Eve pumped her hips faster. “Someone will hear you. They’ll know I’m on top of my husband,
making him moan.”
“Exactly where you belong.” Madden lifted his hips and held, grinding. “Right where I should have put you that night we danced
at graduation. You were mine even then, Eve. And if you’d crooked your little finger at me, I’d have taken you behind the
tent in your white dress and shown you how true that was. How true it’ll always be.”
The glow in her eyes was a crossroads of lust and regret.
But he wanted to banish the latter and live in the now, the togetherness of them.
To hell with the impropriety of it all, she was his number one priority and the only thought in his head was Eve’s pleasure as he lifted his hips, again, again, and fucked her from below with vicious upward drives, bouncing her until she wailed, loud and long, the sound carrying god only knew how far until Madden jackknifed and stamped their mouths together, the contact of their tongues ending them both, the girl fairly melting in his lap, her hips jerking, her head falling back on her shoulders as she clenched around him viciously, pitching them over the edge together.
“Mine.” He ripped the word hoarsely against her neck.
Seconds later, she slumped into his embrace, whispering, “Unequivocally.”