CHAPTER SEVEN
TROY
“D o you want me to pour you some more?”
Maddie’s simple question and big, hazel eyes were like a spear through my chest. With the fireplace crackling behind her and the entire cabin coated in warmth and ease, I knew the answer to her question.
“I think I’ve had enough beer.” If I took another sip, I’d scoop her into my arms and take her up to the loft. After a full day of exploring town, crunching through the woods around the cabin, and sharing both lunch and dinner with her and Grace, my heart felt fuller than it had in…it was too long to remember.
As a result, I was hanging by a thread around this woman.
“Well I hope you won’t judge if I have some more. After all, it’s adult time.” She stuck her tongue out at me as she filled her glass again. We’d been sharing one big bottle of beer that we found tucked in the back of Len’s fridge, something light and locally brewed. Grace had gone down to bed about twenty minutes ago, after a bustling evening of playing a game I’d accidentally invented with her called Twisty Monkey. I’d let her dangle from my bicep earlier, made the mistake of spinning, and then Twisty Monkey was born. The girl was obsessed with it. I could almost feel myself still spinning. Maddie and I were now alone at the kitchen island. I told myself this was just a regular adult hangout session.
I needed to convince myself it wouldn’t go further.
“Have as much as you want, Maddie.”
Her cheeks flushed after I said it, which had me curious.
“Why are you blushing?”
“I’m not.”
“You clearly are.”
Her cheeks stayed rosy. “It’s just hot in here.” She twisted to look at the fireplace, then made a display of fanning herself. “See? It’s just so warm.”
“Take your sweater off then.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “Uh…I don’t know about that.”
It was cute to see her squirm. Maybe she had her mind on the ‘adult’ side of things like I did. “Should we go outside? I can make a fire.”
Her eyes lit up. “Can we?”
I curled my hand into a fist beneath the table, resisting the urge to tug the end of her loose ponytail. Fuck, she was gorgeous. Rosy-cheeked and decked out in leggings; sipping beer and talking about everything with me from world travel to how to sprout an avocado. She was a little brunette snack that I wanted to gobble up.
“We can do anything we want,” I told her, wondering if she knew how literally I intended that. My knee groaned as I stood, but I ignored it. “Len’s got a firepit and some chairs out back. Let’s go.”
I wanted to grab her hand and keep her close as we walked outside, but I didn’t. Over twenty four hours with this woman and I was losing my head. I wasn’t the type of guy to ‘play house’—that had never been my goal in life, and it still wasn’t.
The only women that graced my beds were the type that didn’t stick around for long. That was by design, because that was the only thing that felt right to me. After my chaotic and vagabond upbringing, I kept my distance from the family unit. Stability had never been within reach back then, so I created it the only way I knew how as an adult: staying the fuck away from anything permanent.
Everything about Maddie and Grace screamed permanent. Getting involved in that was not a wise choice…but I couldn’t help myself, either.
I needed to clear my head, and the cold night air would do the trick.
We shrugged on our coats and boots before slipping out the side door. The firepit sat several yards away from the window of Maddie’s bedroom, so we weren’t too far from Grace as she slept. Amber exterior lights illuminated the area around the house, allowing me to select the best logs from the woodpile against the house. Maddie hung around the firepit as I stacked the firewood and got the kindling going. I had a fire going within five minutes. She applauded me once the wood was crackling.
“You’re such a good fire starter,” she cooed, settling onto the wooden bench. I plopped down next to her, admiring my handiwork.
So are you, but a different fire. Also not a thing I would say out loud to this woman.
“I spent a lot of time out in the wild growing up,” I told her.
“What, were you raised by wolves?”
I snorted. “Not technically, but it must have seemed like it to those on the outside.”
Silence settled between us as the fire grew, consuming the dry wood.
“So your parents were like wolves,” she said slowly.
I rubbed my hands together, enjoying the slow build of heat in front of us. But the few inches of space that remained between me and Maddie annoyed me. I wanted them gone. “They were just…trying their best, I guess?” I laughed, but it came out bitter. Because that’s how I still felt about the whole situation. “My dad had some mental health issues that he chose not to take care of. So it meant that me and my mom and my little sister were constantly dealing with the consequences.”
Her frown shone brightly in the shifting light of the fire. “That must have been so hard.”
“We traveled the US like vagabonds. Or maybe like someone in the witness protection program, I don’t know. We lived in a shitty RV and never stayed anywhere for longer than a week.”
My voice gave out, though there was so much more I could have said. Those details alone sounded embarrassing enough. I’d spent my entire adolescence trying to hide the evidence of how broken my family life was. Living in the shadow of my father’s mental illness made it hard to keep friends, much less attend school. My mother cycled us in and out of public schools, depending on how long we’d stay in the same area. When we weren’t in school, she home schooled us. It had been a shit show with a capital Shit.
Maddie reached for my hand, crossing her legs and facing me on the bench. “Seriously?”
“It’s okay.” I couldn’t move my hand away from hers, even though I knew I should. “Ancient history now.”
Her frown deepened, and I could tell she wasn’t satisfied by my response. “It sounds difficult.”
“Well, upside is I got to see a lot of the country. From sea to shining sea.”
“That’s…definitely unique,” she said with a laugh.
“When kids were looking at the Grand Canyon in their textbooks, we were there in the flesh, making breakfast sausage over an open flame after staying illegally overnight in the state park,” I went on.
She grinned, but it faded quickly. “Is your father okay now?”
My stomach sank like a rock to my feet and I pulled my hand away from hers. “No. He’s worse than ever. I haven’t heard from my parents in months and I don’t know how to find them. I just gotta wait until he snaps out of it and reaches out. Sometimes my little sister will hear from them and let me know but other than that…”
I swallowed a knot in my throat. It had taken me a long time to realize that my upbringing wasn’t normal, much less healthy. It had taken me even longer to realize that all that fear and suspicion I’d absorbed from my father wasn’t mine to carry either. Made sense why I’d gravitated toward the military as soon as I was able. Having structure and rules felt like a relief after living in the opposite for so long, while the movement and constantly changing scenery was what I was used to.
“Maybe you could put an airtag on their RV…”
“He’d sniff that out immediately.” I rubbed at my face, unsure how deep I wanted to get into my father’s mental health concerns…and whether it might change her opinion about me . “He’s pretty paranoid, worried that the government is tracking him and shit. If he found out I actually was tracking him, it would just confirm all his delusions.”
Silence settled between us, broken only by the crackling fire.
“I don’t usually talk about my parents with anyone,” I admitted after a few moments.
She scooted closer to me, legs crossed as she faced me. “I don’t usually escape to a safe house with anyone, either.”
My gaze drifted back to her pretty face. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold, and the way she looked at me had me rethinking my need to keep space between us. After all, she’d kissed me—that elephant in the room had to mean something, right? We hadn’t brought it up, but maybe we needed to talk about it.
“You picked the right guy to escape with,” I told her. “You don’t have to worry about any funny business. You can even kiss me again if you need to and I won’t make a big deal about it.”
Her eyes flashed, reminding me of just how strange this predicament was. I’d connected with her harder and faster than almost anyone in my entire life. But the bodyguard-client rules were ones I believed in and obeyed. Yet she wasn’t technically my client…and I wasn’t doing anything more than just getting her out of a stressful situation temporarily.
The lines were blurry. I wanted to erase them altogether.
“I might need to again.” The teasing tone in her voice was more than clear. A smile curled at her lips.
“Do whatever you need to, Maddie.”
She bit her bottom lip, her knee knocking the side of my leg. “Is that thing you said in the restaurant true?”
I propped my arm up on the back of the bench, trying to think back on all the things I’d said there. “Help me out. Which thing? I said a lot of them.”
Her cheeks flushed, but not from the cold. She yanked her gaze to the fire and watched it while she spoke. “That you’d been wanting that kiss to happen since New York.”
I rubbed at my face again. I’d admitted that in a kiss-drunk moment of honesty. But now, I wasn’t sure which way to play it. That was before I’d taken her away to a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
“I probably shouldn’t admit that, but yeah. It was true.”
She snapped her gaze back to me. “Why shouldn’t you admit it?”
I tipped my head, pinning her with a look. “I’m supposed to be helping you, not making out with you.”
Her hazel eyes danced in the light of the fire. “What would you do if I kissed you again?”
“Why don’t you try it and find out?”
She held my gaze, almost as if waiting to see that I was serious. Then she lifted her chin, looking back toward the fire. “I don’t know. I’ve already kissed you first. Kissing you first the second time would just look desperate.”
She had a point. One that my internal gentleman couldn’t resist addressing.
I hooked my arm around her waist and brought her against me in a swift, fluid motion. She inhaled sharply, looking up at me with question marks in her eyes.
“Let me make it easier.” My voice came out low, hoarse. She was mere inches away now. Her hazel eyes drank me in and the weight of her in my arm, pressed against my body, felt too natural. Like she could stay there forever and I wouldn’t even mind. “I’m acutely aware that this is not the time or the place to be coming onto you. But you should know that not a single day has gone by since we met at Seven’s party where I didn’t think about you or wonder what it would be like to kiss you. And when you showed me the other day at the restaurant, it’s all I’ve wanted since.”
Her breath caught, and for a moment, time shuddered to a stop around us. Nothing existed except the endless hazel paradise of her eyes, the amber tang of her perfume, and the crackling fire that had nothing on the energy pounding between us.
I’d laid my cards on the table.
And fuck, I couldn’t play the chivalrous part any longer.
I tightened my grip around her and pulled her into me, our lips meeting in a warm, hungry kiss. The scent of her enveloped me, sending me deeper into desire. I traced the contour of her waist through her coat, fingers twitching with the urge to find the hot silk of her skin beneath. Maddie whimpered, fisting the front of my coat as our tongues met. Without even deciding, I hauled her onto my lap, her legs opening up to straddle my waist.
Her thighs tensed around me, locking me in, as our kisses went from tentative to deep and delicious. I traced the edge of her lip with my tongue, coaxing more from her. She hooked her arms around my neck, pressing her curvy frame against my chest. I hated that we had these coats on; I would have done anything to feel the softness of her against my body, to finally get handfuls of her tits like I’d been imagining for weeks.
She pulled back suddenly, resting her forehead against mine.
“I didn’t think there was any way you felt the same,” she whispered, her gaze darting back and forth across my face.
I grunted, shifting slightly beneath her. My cock had gone from semi to fully hard and the weight of her on top of me had me dizzy from desire.
“From the second I laid eyes on you, Maddie.” I kissed the tip of her rosy nose, followed by her cheeks, then along her jawline.
She laughed softly. “We connected pretty hard, didn’t we?”
“Like nothing I’ve felt before.” The words tumbled out of my mouth before I had a chance to filter them. But maybe it was okay to say them. “I was so close to begging you to stay in New York, but I knew…it just wouldn’t have been an option for you.”
Her gaze dropped to the space between us, and I could feel something inside her shift. She nibbled on her bottom lip as I nibbled on her earlobe.
“Yeah,” she finally said.
When I tried to kiss her on the lips again, she pressed softly on my chest. There was sadness in her gaze, and something else I didn’t fully understand.
“I think I should just go inside,” she whispered.
“Why?” I nuzzled her neck, trying to remind her of what we were on the precipice of exploring.
“I don’t want to do something I’ll regret.” She gnawed on the inside of her lip, avoiding my gaze. She slid off my lap, a whoosh of cold air replacing her.
Maybe she didn’t mean for the words to be a spear. But they landed like one anyway.
“All right. Goodnight, Maddie.” I reached for her hand as she stood from the bench but missed her by an inch. I listened to her steps toward the house; the door creaked open; and then a moment later, it was just me and my thoughts in front of the crackling fire.
There were a thousand reasons why Maddie’s decision to pump the brakes was a smart one.
So why couldn’t I fully convince myself of it?