Chapter 13 #2
“They’ll have a great time with their cousins.”
“True.”
Mac drove up to the hotel’s main door a few minutes later. He’d gotten the room key from his mother earlier in the day so he could take Maddie directly to the room when they arrived. “Be right around for you, love.”
“You shouldn’t be hauling me around. If you throw your back out, where will that leave us?”
“I’m not going to throw my back out.”
“And you know that how?”
Mac leaned across the center console and looked her in the eyes. “The day I can’t carry my own pregnant wife around is the day I’m ninety-two and feeble.”
“I will not still be pregnant when you’re ninety-two, because you’re getting that thing snipped.”
“On behalf of my thing, we’re offended, and don’t talk about the snipping in front of him. It makes him shrivel up and die.”
Maddie laughed, as he’d hoped she would. “He’s of no use to us at the moment anyway.”
Mac shot her a horrified look. “Speak for yourself.”
His lovely wife was crippled with laughter.
Pleased to see her laughing, he got out of the truck and walked around to retrieve her. “Hold on to me, my love.”
She curled her arms around his neck and held on as he lifted her out of the truck and into his arms.
One of the young bellmen opened the door for them. “Welcome, Mr. McCarthy. May I help with your luggage?”
“Yes, please,” Mac said. “It’s in the backseat.”
“Very good. I’ll bring it right up and take care of parking the truck for you.”
“Thank you,” Mac said, adding for Maddie, “The keycard is in my shirt pocket if you’d grab it for me.”
She fetched it and held it up to the new electronic readers his parents had installed a year ago as part of their efforts to modernize the old hotel. Their room was on the second floor and had a balcony that looked out over the family’s marina and the vast Salt Pond.
Mac deposited Maddie gently on the bed and went to open the drapes to let in the view.
“We should ask for a different room,” Maddie said.
He turned to her, surprised. “Why?”
“You shouldn’t be looking down at work while you’re supposed to be relaxing.”
“It’s no problem. I’ll pretend like the marina is someone else’s problem while we’re here. Besides, if my lovely wife is around to distract me, I won’t even notice the place.”
“Your extra-pregnant wife can’t do much to distract you these days.”
After accepting the luggage from the bellman and handing him a ten-dollar bill, Mac shut and locked the door and went to stretch out next to her on the bed.
“That is absolutely not true. My lovely wife distracts me by being in the same room as me, by breathing, by looking at me with those eyes that remind me of melted caramel. She distracts me by being such a wonderful mother to our kids—the ones we already have and the two she’s taking such good care of while they wait to join the party. ”
“You’re very good at this.”
“Good at what?”
“Making your wife feel better about not being able to do much of anything.”
“Making my wife feel better about everything is my most important job.”
“I miss being able to, you know…” She waggled her brows suggestively.
“Don’t say it, or I’ll want it. Don’t even think it, or I’ll want it.”
“Don’t say what? That I miss sex?”
Mac groaned, immediately interested in something they couldn’t have for months yet.
“It’s gonna be a really long summer.”
“It’ll go by fast,” Mac said, praying that was true.
“I don’t know about you, but ever since David told us we can’t, it’s all I can think about.”
Mac covered his ears. “Don’t tell me that either.”
She rolled onto her side and studied him with those beautiful eyes that saw right through to the very heart of him. “Have you lost the bet yet?”
“I have not,” he said, indignant that she would even ask.
Her brow lifted. “Not even once in the shower when no one was looking?”
Before her, Mac had never found eyebrows to be particularly sexy. Hers were. Everything about her was sexy to him. “Not even once, and I’m appalled that you’d even ask. What about you?”
Her snorting guffaw made him smile. “First of all, I couldn’t reach it if I tried—”
“Try.” Strangled by the epic surge of desire that crimped his windpipe, Mac pushed himself up on one elbow. “Right now. Let me see you try.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“It’s a fantastic idea. Do it.”
“Mac.”
“Please? I won’t be able to think about anything else until I know whether or not you can.”
She released a nervous-sounding laugh that only made him more determined to make this happen.
He slid closer to her, resting his hand on the huge baby bump. She was already as big as she’d been the day she delivered Hailey and Mac. “I’ve never seen you back down from a challenge. Don’t start now.”
“I’m not sure I can do that in front of you.”
Words alone had never turned him on more than those did. “Maddie, sweetheart, if you don’t do it, I’m going to die from wanting you to.”
“Don’t talk about dying after you recently had me thinking you were going to.”
“Better safe than sorry.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve never seen this manipulative side of you before.”
“Yes, you have.” He moved his hand to her leg, inching the hem of her dress up to her waist. Then he reached for her hand and brought it down to where he wanted it, noting that she could, in fact, reach.
“There. Now you know.”
“Don’t stop now.”
“I have to! I’m not supposed to—”
Mac covered her hand with his and pressed it into the warmth between her legs as he leaned in to kiss her neck.
“We have to stop.”
“I know,” he said, panting, “but I so don’t want to.”
“You don’t have to.” She pulled her hand free of his grip and stroked his hard cock through his shorts. “David said no sex. He didn’t say anything about this.”
“Doesn’t this count as sex?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Right. This is like an appetizer. It’s the main course he was concerned about.”
She dissolved into helpless laughter at his metaphor. “If we could’ve been having appetizers all this time, why haven’t we?”
“Because I was afraid to go near you. I’m really, really starving for the main course.”
“I’m so sorry, Mac—”
He kissed her before she could finish that thought. “You, my love, have nothing at all to be sorry about. Look at what you’re doing. You’re growing two little ladies in there. You’re a freaking badass goddess. Don’t ever apologize for what we can’t do while you’re making babies.”
“Well, since I’m not growing any more babies after this.”
“Less talking.” He kissed her as he covered her hand with his. “And more of this.”
She continued to stroke him. “I like this.”
“Me, too. It’s gonna take nothing.”
“Let me do it.”
“Those words might be enough.”
Maddie laughed as she pulled at the buttons to his shorts, her hand brushing against the tip of his impossibly hard cock.
For a second, Mac thought that alone would finish him off. Somehow, he managed to hang on until her soft hand was wrapped around his shaft. “Madeline.”
She squeezed and stroked. “Yes, Malcolm?”
That was all it took. He came so hard, his heart nearly stopped. “Holy crap.” Mac opened his eyes to realize Maddie was laughing uncontrollably. “What is so funny?”
Between gasping bursts of laughter, Maddie said, “We suck at abstinence.”
“We suck so hard.”
“Don’t say suck.”
“Because it rhymes with fuck?”
She lost it all over again, taking him with her until they were both helpless with laughter. They laughed harder than they had in a long time.
He reached over to wipe away her laughter tears, leaving his hand on her sweet face. “I hate to say my sister was right about something.”
“Same. It goes against everything we believe in to confess such things. However.”
“They were right. We needed this.”
“We need this, and we needed appetizers.”
“I’m a big fan of appetizers,” he said. “In fact, they’re my new favorite food, and I can’t wait to have more.”
“I’m very happy to be able to just kiss you. That’s all the appetizer I need for now.” Maddie’s smile was his favorite thing in the world, especially when it was directed at him. “Why did we ever think we could stay away from each other?”
“We tried. We really did.”
“I hate feeling like I need to keep my distance from you. It’s the opposite of what I want and need.”
“Same, babe. It’s torture to stay away from you. I actually think that’s been adding to my stress.”
“Me, too. So let’s not do that. And forget the bet. If you need to take the edge off, I’m your girl.”
“Yes, you are. My best girl.”
“Remember the day we met when I kept trying to get you to go away?”
He chuckled as he recalled the most important day of his life. “You were very hard on my fragile ego.”
“Oh, please. Your ego was and is robustly healthy.”
“It took some hard dents that day.”
“I just want you to know that I’m really glad you didn’t listen to me.”
“Even knowing you didn’t want me around, I couldn’t stay away from you or Thomas.”
“I was afraid to want you around. I was so used to taking care of myself and Thomas that the idea of leaning on you, of getting used to having you around and then you leaving.”
“You didn’t know then that I’d never leave. How could I when everything I want and need is right here in one beautiful package who came with a son I love more than life itself?”
“I just hope you know that despite how I treated you at the beginning, I’m so, so thankful for you and this life and our family and everything we have.”
He caressed her face and smoothed his hand over her soft hair. “I’m just as thankful to you. You’re the one who makes it all happen.”
“We make it happen together.”
“Yes, we do.” He slid his leg between hers and grasped a handful of soft ass cheek as he placed a series of strategic kisses on her neck. “How about some more kissing appetizers?”
Maddie shivered the way she always did when he kissed her right there. “I’m down with that.”