Chapter 1 #3
“So?” I waited, eager to see what Maddox would say. His plate was empty. I’d barely managed a handful of bites from mine. Now he was moving on to the soup, twisting the cap off in one meaty fist, and sipping at it much more slowly than he’d eaten the pasta.
Maddox didn’t reply.
Which probably meant he wanted more information.
Damn, he was good at interrogation.
Really letting me sweat it out.
I took the opportunity to explain.
For fifteen minutes, I hashed out my—again—somewhat amicable breakup, my contention with Janis’s brother, my history with the contest, and finally, the reason I’d messaged Maddox in the first place.
Maddox showed no indication that he recognized me from the previous competitions. Though he did listen intently, face as stoic and unreadable as it’d been when he’d walked through the door to the shop.
I ran out of words.
Talked his ear off, really.
And Maddox remained quiet.
“I don’t have feelings for her,” I concluded, cheeks flushed. “I just…for once in my life…I want…to be on the winning team.” My voice faded, the childishness of the statement striking me as soon as it was out. It was a compliment, too, the fact that that was how I viewed Maddox. As a winner.
I wasn’t sure how I expected him to react. If he’d think I was acting like an asshole. Immature. Petty. Competitive. If he’d be upset because I was dragging him down to my level. Childish and insecure.
But…the steady, perceptive look in his pale gray eyes made those worries fall away as quickly as they’d risen.
His eyes said, I’m flattered.
They said, I know what you mean.
They said, I understand.
He nodded, a slow up and down that set my nerves alight. “It’s a couples’ competition,” Maddox finally said, his voice a gravelly rumble. It shook through me like his feet had shaken the floor. “People will make assumptions about us. They always do.”
I had no doubt that he was speaking from experience. He’d taken a different partner to the competition every year, and there had been no lack of town gossip about it.
“Let them,” I waved off Maddox’s concern like it was nothing, because it was.
Who cared if people assumed we were together?
I wasn’t afraid of anyone thinking I was bisexual.
I wasn’t. But if I had been, I’d be at peace with it.
You couldn’t be a close-minded, ignorant prude and own a bookstore. It didn’t make sense.
It was up to Maddox whether or not he decided he wanted to devote time to my cause. He had more risk than I did. Hell, for all he knew, I’d be the reason he lost his ten-year streak.
But…maybe my cause would sway him?
Maybe…that look in his eyes hadn’t been fictitious.
Maybe…he really did understand.
“I’m not petty,” Maddox finally said.
His thermos was empty. My plate was empty. I was due to return to the shop in less than ten minutes. Outside, the family that’d entered the bakery was leaving it. They did indeed have bread.
“Right.” I deflated.
“But.” Maddox’s gruff voice tacked on, low and soft. I perked up. “I’ll help you.”
“You will?” I perked up, grinning at him.
He nodded, eyes catching on my mouth once more. “On one condition.”
“Name it.” I was too excited to care what it was he wanted. Unless he was asking for my kidney, I’d give him whatever it was he desired.
“You’ll cook for me. When you come over to practice.”
I hadn’t realized practicing was part of it? But, hell. Maddox was the expert, not me.
“Deal.” When we shook hands, Maddox’s skin was rough and dry. His palm enveloped my own, his broad fingers skimming when we parted.
His touch lingered for hours after he’d left.
“You are a horrible teacher.” My hands were frigid, and Maddox was laughing at me.
Laughing, I think, anyway. Because no sounds left him, but his eyes danced.
He’d put away a small family’s worth of the stew I’d brought him and was silently coaching me as I hacked at a slab of ice he’d put on a pedestal outside for me.
He had a whole system.
A whole system that he did not explain as he watched me whittle away at ice chips, a cloud of fog in front of my mouth. He’d pulled the chisel out of one of his many coat pockets, and I couldn’t help but wonder what other random objects he kept inside it.
“That’s supposed to be a candle,” Maddox growled as I hit the wrong angle and chipped a groove in my cylinder that certainly gave it a phallic appearance.
“I know that.” I scowled. “It’s not like I’m trying to turn it into a penis.”
My next jab went no better.
Once again, my candle was slowly turning into something a lot more pornographic. Christ. Maybe I really had been the problem all along.
Maddox rose from his seat.
Slowly, deliberately, he crossed the yard. He was a wall of heat at my back, blocking out the chill as he held one massive hand out, hovering it beside mine. He didn’t talk, he simply waited for me to give him what he wanted.
My pulse skipped.
“Did you…want the chisel?” I asked, my cheeks warm for reasons aside from the cold. Reasons I tried not to think too hard about, because such thoughts would only be a distraction. And were also confusing.
When he didn’t respond verbally, I guessed and handed the chisel to him.
“Watch,” was all Maddox said gruffly as he took the chisel to the ice.
He was gentle with it. Almost comically so.
Not the way I’d jackhammered the surface into submission, but…
as though he was coaxing it into shape. Convincing it that it wanted to be good for him.
That it wanted to be…obedient. That he didn’t expect it to want to do any of the work.
Maddox was happy to take care of everything.
My skin flushed at the thought.
Slowly but surely, all the horrible grooves I’d accidentally left behind in the candle began to disappear. When it was mostly complete, the stalk smooth, only the dip in the top remaining to be carved open, Maddox offered the chisel back to me.
I took it, and the metal was warm.
Warm because of his bare skin. Maddox wore a coat, but nothing on his hands. I supposed he must run hot, if the evidence I’d gathered was any indication.
I could feel it through my gloves.
There were butterflies in my belly as Maddox’s breath puffed along the shell of my ear. I felt a little bad for calling him a horrible teacher. Because when I finished the top of the candle, it looked far better than anything I’d done before he’d stepped in.
He didn’t praise me.
I hadn’t expected him to.
In fact, he didn’t say anything at all. He simply walked away, grabbed a new slab of ice for me to practice with, plopped it onto the pedestal after removing the candle, and took his seat on his “watching log” again.
Smoke plumed from the chimney of Maddox’s log cabin, a pile of wood stacked neatly around back. The fireplace was, no doubt, keeping his home warm for his inevitable return. He’d taken the meal I’d brought him inside without allowing me a peek of the interior of his house—and I hadn’t complained.
Moments later, he’d been back outside with his coat on, leading me around the small cabin to the back where our lessons would begin.
Again, Maddox was sitting on the log, watching me.
His eyes were paler than the mountains that sat in a ring around us, looming above the barren winter trees.
Their skeletal branches drooped from the weight of a fresh snowstorm.
It was warmer today. The way it always was right after buckets of snow fell to the surface.
This training session was going better.
If only because Maddox’s wordless lesson had taught me something valuable about him. He was a shower, not a talker. And if I messed up badly enough at the beginning, I had no doubt he’d cross the yard and help me again.
I was proven correct—in record time, when one purposeful, “accidental” whack of my chisel hacked an entire chunk off the ice rose I’d been forming, and Maddox rose from his seat.
Once again, he crossed the yard deliberately before looming behind me. He held his hand out—rinse and repeat. I handed him the chisel, and like before, he began to work.
Flicks of his wrist, far more dexterous than a man his size had any right to be.
Back and forth.
Up and down.
Gentle, gentle, gentle.
There was something about the play of light on his hands that had me hypnotized. Or maybe it was his veins? Or his knuckles. So broad and worn, little grooves in the skin that looked wind-whipped and chilly. He desperately needed lotion.
Maybe ice-sculpting geniuses were allergic to self-care?
Even if they were clean and smelled delicious.
Either way, I decided to bring Maddox some lotion along with his next home-cooked meal.
He didn’t wait till the end of the project to give me the chisel this time.
Only halfway through, and he was offering it to me expectantly.
I didn’t look up at him. I don’t know why—but I simply couldn’t.
Couldn’t look at his face. Looking at it would force me to acknowledge the squirming in my belly.
And the way my mouth had gone dry when I saw that his arm hair was the same shade of white as the hair on his head.
It looked soft. I had the strangest desire to pet it.
“My turn?” I guessed, taking the chisel back.
Maddox didn’t move away.
He continued to hover over me, watching as I began to work once more.
Observing what he’d done was certainly helpful.
A hands-on approach. I was faster than I’d ever been when working alongside Janis, better too, even after only two lessons—and yet it felt like a century had passed before the rose finally looked okay.
Maddox didn’t praise me this time either.
He did, however, ruffle my hair.
Warm, thick fingers scratching along my scalp for a few glorious, mind-boggling moments.
It was no wonder that when I went home, I jerked off to thoughts of callouses and gray eyes.
When I came, it was the memory of Maddox looming at my back that danced behind my eyelids. Lost in the aftermath, sticky and sated, I had no choice but to conclude that I might be more bisexual than I’d thought, after all.