Chapter Five #2
She had known that there would be some compromise on the never-seeing-him-again thing; she had just hoped that it wouldn’t be seeing him now.
“Sam,” she said, because she would be damned if she appeared like she had been caught unawares. “I didn’t expect you to be here.”
“Your father wanted to make sure that all of the horses were in good shape before the holidays, since it was going to delay my next visit.”
Maddy gritted her teeth. Christmas was in a couple of weeks, which meant her family would be having their annual party.
The festivities had started to become a bit threadbare and brittle in recent years.
Now that everybody knew Nathan West had been forced to sell off all of his properties downtown.
Now that everyone knew he had a bastard son, Jack Monaghan, whose existence Nathan had tried to deny for more than thirty years.
Yes, now that everybody had seen the cracks in the gleaming West family foundation, it all seemed farcical to Maddy.
But then, seeing as she had been one of the first major cracks in the foundation, she supposed that she wasn’t really entitled to be too judgmental about it. However, she was starting to feel a bit exhausted.
“Right,” she returned, knowing that her voice sounded dull.
“Have you seen Christopher?”
His question caught her off guard, as did his tone, which sounded a bit hard and possessive.
It was funny, because this taciturn man in front of her was more what she had considered Sam to be before they had spent those days in the cabin together.
Those days—where they had mostly been naked—had been a lot easier.
Quieter. He had smiled more. But then, she supposed that any man receiving an endless supply of orgasms was prone to smiling more. They had barely gotten out of bed.
They had both been more than a little bit insatiable, and Maddy hadn’t minded that at all. But this was a harsh slap back to reality. To a time that could almost have been before their little rendezvous but clearly wasn’t, because his line of questioning was tinged with jealousy.
“No. As you guessed, I lied to him and didn’t call him.”
“And he call you?”
Maddy lifted her fingernail and began to chew on it, grimacing when she realized she had just ruined her manicure. “He did call,” she said, her face heating slightly. “And I changed his name in my phone book to Don’t Answer.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Obviously you can’t delete somebody from your phone book when you don’t want to talk to them, Sam. You have to make sure that you know who’s calling. But I like the reminder that I’m not speaking to him. Because then my phone rings and the screen says Don’t Answer, and then I go, ‘Okay.’”
“I really do pity the man who ends up wanting to chase after you.”
“Good thing you don’t. Except, oh wait, you’re here.”
She regretted that as soon as she said it. His gaze darkened, his eyes sweeping over her figure. Why did she want to push him?
Why did she always want to push him?
“You know why I’m here.”
“Yes, because my daddy pays you to be here.” She didn’t know why she said that.
To reinforce the difference between them?
To remind him she was Lady of the Manor, and that regardless of his bank balance he was socially beneath her?
To make herself look like a stupid rich girl he wouldn’t want to mess around with anyway.
Honestly, these days it was difficult for her to guess at her own motives.
“Is this all part of your fantasy? You want to be...taken by the stable boy or something? I mean, it’s a nice one, Maddy, and I didn’t really mind acting it out with you last weekend, but we both know that I’m not exactly the stable boy and you’re not exactly the breathless virgin.”
Heat streaked through her face, rage pooling in her stomach. “Right. Because I’m not some pure, snow-white virgin, my fantasies are somehow wrong?” It was too close to that wound. The one she wished wasn’t there. The one she couldn’t ignore, no matter how much she tried.
“That wasn’t the point I was making. And anyway, when your whole fantasy about a man centers around him being bad for you, I’m not exactly sure where you get off trying to take the moral-outrage route.”
“I will be as morally outraged as I please,” she snapped, turning to walk away from him.
He reached out, grabbing hold of her arm and turning her back to face him, taking hold of her other arm and pulling her forward. “Everything was supposed to stay back up at those cabins,” he said, his voice rough.
“So why aren’t you letting it?” she spat. Reckless. Shaky. She was a hypocrite. Because she wasn’t letting it rest either.
“Because you walked in in those tight pants and it made it a lot harder for me to think.”
“My breeches,” she said, keeping the words sharp and crisp as a green apple, “are not typically the sort of garment that inspire men to fits of uncontrollable lust.” Except she was drowning in a fit of uncontrollable lust. His gaze was hot, his hands on her arms even hotter.
She wanted to arch against him, to press her breasts against his chest as she had done more times than she could count when they had been together.
She wanted... She wanted the impossible.
She wanted more. More of him. More of everything they had shared together, even though they had agreed that would be a bad idea.
Even though she knew it was something she shouldn’t even want.
“Your pretty little ass in anything would make a man lose his mind. Don’t tell me those breeches put any man off, or I’m gonna have to call you a liar.”
“It isn’t my breeches that put them off. That’s just my personality.”
“If some man can’t handle you being a little bit hard, then he’s no kind of man. I can take you, baby. I can take all of you. And that’s good, since we both know you can take all of me.”
“Are you just going to be a tease, Sam?” she asked, echoing back a phrase that had been uttered to her by many men over the years. “Or is this leading somewhere?”
“You don’t want it to lead anywhere, you said so yourself.” He released his hold on her, taking a step back.
“You’re contrary, Sam McCormack—do you know that?”
He laughed. “That’s about the only thing anyone calls me. We both know what I am. The only thing that confuses me is exactly why you seem surprised by it now.”
She was kind of stumped by that question. Because really, the only answer was sex. That she had imagined that the two of them being together, that the man he had been during that time, meant something.
Which proved that she really hadn’t learned anything about sexual relationships, in spite of the fact that she had been so badly wounded by one in the past. She had always known that she had a hard head, but really, this was ridiculous.
But it wasn’t just her head that was hard.
She had hardened up a considerable amount in the years since her relationship with David.
Because she’d had to. Because within the equestrian community, she had spent the years following that affair known as the skank who had seriously jeopardized the marriage of an upright member of the community.
Never mind that she had been his student.
Never mind that she had been seventeen years old, a virgin who had believed every word that had come out of the esteemed older man’s mouth.
Who had believed that his marriage really was over and that he wanted a life and a future with her.
It was laughable to her now. Any man nearing his forties who found himself able to relate to a seventeen-year-old on an emotional level was a little bit suspect.
A married one, in a position of power, was even worse.
She knew all of that. She knew it down to her bones. Believing it was another thing.
So sometimes her judgment was in doubt. Sometimes she felt like an idiot. But she was much more equipped to deal with difficult situations now. She was a lot pricklier. A lot more inured.
And that was what came to her defense now.
“Sam, if you still want me, all you have to do is say it. Don’t you stand there growling because you’re hard and sexually frustrated and we both agreed that it would only be that one weekend. Just be a man and admit it.”
“Are you sure you should be talking to me like that here? Anyone can catch us. If I backed you up against that wall and kissed your smart mouth, then people would know. Doesn’t it make you feel dirty?
Doesn’t it make you feel ashamed?” His words lashed at her, made her feel all of those things but also aroused her.
She had no idea what was wrong with her.
Except that maybe part of it was that she simply didn’t know how to feel desire without feeling ashamed.
Another gift from her one and only love affair.
“You’re the one that’s saying all of this.
Not me,” she said, keeping her voice steely.
She lifted a shoulder. “If I didn’t know better, I would say you have issues.
I don’t want to help you work those out.
” A sudden rush of heat took over, a reckless thought that she had no business having, that she really should work to get a handle on. But she didn’t.
She took a deep breath. “I don’t have any desire to help you with your issues, but if you’re horny, I can help you with that.”
“What the hell?”
“You heard me,” she said, crossing her arms and giving him her toughest air. “If you want me, then have me.”
Sam could hardly believe what he was hearing. Yet again, Madison West was propositioning him. And this time, he was pissed off. Because he wasn’t a dog that she could bring to heel whenever she wanted to. He wasn’t the kind of man who could be manipulated.
Even worse, he wanted her. He wanted to say yes. And he wasn’t sure he could spite his dick to soothe his pride.
“You can’t just come in here and start playing games with me,” he said. “I’m not a dog that you can call whenever you want me to come.”