Chapter Ten #3
Maddie planted her eyes on him. “Why wouldn’t I want to?
” she asked. He shrugged, and she knew he was giving her an out, in case she needed one.
The tension between them was palpable, and any private time spent together was likely headed in only one direction.
She poured herself and James a cup of tea each and avoided his gaze.
She wished, not for the first time, that she was more like Bluebell — fearlessly sexual and unabashed.
James was a man with experience. He knew her well enough not to be expecting theatrics, but she still wished she was a little more forward.
Mainly because it would help her confidence.
She picked up her teacup with one hand and grabbed his hand again with the other.
“I think it’s pretty obvious I’ve changed my mind.
” She ran her thumb across the back of his hand.
She thought she felt him shudder at her touch, but she couldn’t be sure she wasn’t the one shaking.
James had not changed his stance — he looked anticipatory but relaxed, like he was waiting for an important meeting.
But his breathing belied his composure. He was nervous or excited, she couldn’t figure out which.
“I want you to be comfortable,” he said.
“I am.”
He stared into her eyes and she stared right back, nodding reassuringly. His expression changed almost instantly from one of caution to lust.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, James was pressing a passcode into the keypad of a mint-green beach hut on stilts.
He pulled open the wooden barn door to reveal a teeny-tiny space.
The hut was no more than twelve feet long and six feet wide.
It had a small tea-making station on the back wall, complete with a bright orange kettle that sat on a gas stove.
There was a pretty patterned rug on the floor and a bench along one wall, covered in fluffy scatter cushions.
The owners had made some attempt at decorating for Christmas by placing a small Christmas tree on a shelf on one wall and hanging several paper snowflakes from the roof.
James closed the door, set down their bag of goodies and opened the shutters to let in the light.
They took off their coats and stood side by side for a moment, admiring the view.
The horizon was heavy with rain clouds, the waves violent, the sea a murky grey.
Maddie shuddered involuntarily. The movement prompted James to look at her.
“Cold?” he asked, closing the shutters.
“A little,” she said, eyeing him. She thought he’d come for her the second they were enveloped in privacy, but he didn’t.
Instead, he used a bottle of water to fill the kettle and lit the gas ring.
He appeared to be avoiding her gaze. Maddie didn’t know how to take that or what to do about it, so she just stood there, staring at him as he made them each another cup of tea.
He passed her a cup and then perched on the bench, his eyes roving over the shack’s shabby-chic walls and rugged edges.
“I reckon I could make one of these,” he said.
Maddie didn’t doubt it, but she didn’t say anything.
Small talk was so far from what she wanted from him right now, she couldn’t bring herself to participate in it.
She stared at him instead. “Bit of wood, a few nails,” he said, knocking the bench with his fist. Still, Maddie stood there, her heart beating madly, her mind drilling through potential next steps at a million miles an hour.
She’d expected them to jump on each other, and had prepared herself for it.
Her nervous system was not reacting well to this deviation from proposed events.
She could feel herself getting flustered, feeling weak.
Because she hadn’t imagined them doing anything in here except attaching themselves to one another, she didn’t know what to do next, and her body — which had admittedly been privy only to almost exclusively predictable things for six years — was panicking accordingly.
For want of anything else to do, she put down her mug.
“It’s not very big, is it?” James said, still avoiding looking at her.
“James,” Maddie heard herself say. He stopped talking and finally met her gaze, looking not unlike a deer caught in headlights.
Maddie felt a lump rise in her throat, and wondered what she had done or said to mess things up between the café and the beach hut.
“Have you changed your mind?” she asked, before she could stop herself.
James snapped to attention and planted his eyes on her.
He put down his cup, stood up and marched towards her.
She thought he was going to grab her, but he didn’t.
Instead he stood right before her. “Maddie, I have never once for a single moment since the first time I laid eyes on you not wanted this.” He reached for her hand as he closed the gap between them.
Every bit of him was now pressed against every part of her.
He deftly swept her into his arms, and before she had time to say anything else he was kissing her.
Maddie felt like she might lose her footing, so she wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned in.
That was all the encouragement he needed to pick her up and carry her towards the bench.
He sat her upon it, urging her thighs apart with his knee and setting himself between them.
He removed his mouth from hers, cupping her face and encouraging her to look at him when she chased his lips with her own.
“I really like you,” he whispered. His confession gave her the confidence she needed to participate beyond doing what his actions told her to.
She ran her hands down his chest to the bottom of his T-shirt and touched the skin of his torso, right beside the button of his jeans.
He watched her, his breathing heavy with desire.
She spread her hand across his erection.
“We can take this as slow as you need to,” he said.
“I know.” But they couldn’t. With the power of what was happening between them, it would be virtually impossible for them to do anything except go all the way.
And she needed them to go all the way. Then he was kissing her again, her mouth, her neck, her mouth again.
Maddie pulled his T-shirt up over his head and dragged him towards her by the belt loops on his jeans so that she could feel his skin pressed against her.
He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her harder.
Maddie moaned and hitched her legs around him, urging him to move rhythmically against her.
He complied, groaning as though he was actually fucking her.
She briefly thought she might go mad. Suddenly, he pulled away and stared down at her, drinking in her reaction to the pleasure, the torture, the yearning.
He set about unhooking the straps on her dungarees, pulling them down to her waist. His hand slipped up under her T-shirt and landed on the cup of her thin, satin bra.
Carefully avoiding her new tattoo, he trapped her nipple between his fingers and kneaded.
Maddie gasped, tossing her head back, exposing her neck once more to his tongue and teeth.
He leaned over her, hooking his arm around her back and pulling her upwards so that her dungarees fell to the floor.
That took the layers of material between them from four to three.
Maddie grappled with the button on his jeans and pushed them down with her feet.
As she did, she put her hand down the front of his boxers and grabbed him.
He moaned and stopped kissing her, his legs buckling slightly so that he was leaning heavily against her.
“Floor?” she suggested. He nodded and picked her up, holding her with one hand and using the other to throw down the scatter cushions.
He kicked them until they formed a sort of bed, then lowered her onto them, following her body with his own so that he was never not between her legs.
Desperate for more of him, Maddie pulled her own top over her head and tossed it.
James put some space between their bodies, sitting up on his haunches.
His eyes travelled from her face all the way down her form and back up again. Maddie blushed, suddenly shy.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Maddie resisted the urge to laugh off his compliment.
Nobody had ever said anything like that to her before.
She knew if any other man had spoken those words to her she wouldn’t have believed them — they might, in fact, have given her the ‘ick’ — but there was something about the way he said it.
She reached her hands out towards him, grabbing the air playfully until he complied and set himself back between her legs.
He kissed her deeply, his tongue against hers.
She grasped his back and tensed her hands, running her fingernails gently from his shoulder blades to the small of his back.
He groaned, tearing his lips from hers and kissing her breasts, then her stomach, then her thighs, using his fingers to pleasure her through the thin fabric of her underwear as he did.
When his fingers searched to move the fabric to one side, Maddie must have visibly tensed, because he stopped and crawled back up her body so they were face to face again.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Do not apologise.” He shook his head, kissing her sweetly on the lips.
“Nobody’s ever done... that to me before.” She gestured with her eyes. He gazed at her, quizzically. She shook her head in confirmation.
“I apologise on behalf of men everywhere.” He sounded so earnest that it made Maddie laugh. “Seriously,” he continued. “I bet you have some skanky ex-boyfriend somewhere who let you suck his dick but never went down on you, am I right?”