Chapter 12 #2
The banter between us comes easy, always has. Afternoon light spills in, gilding the new display, and something in the air between us tightens, charged and close.
Maddie picks up a paint marker from the counter behind me, opens it with a teasing glint in her eyes, and without even a warning, swipes a streak of it across my shirt collar.
I look down at the wet bright blue paint for a moment, then back at her, raising an eyebrow in challenge.
She doesn’t say sorry, doesn’t even blink. She just looks at me, blue eyes bold, a smile twitching at her lips, the pen still in her hand like a dare.
Time stretches thin. I can hear my own heart pounding, which is ridiculous, but what are you going to do when Maddie Weiz is three inches away, paint on her cheek, with that look in her eyes?
Without breaking my gaze, she reaches behind me to set the pen down again. Before pulling away, she reaches for my hand, and with a little smirk, turns and drags me toward the back room.
I follow her without a second thought.
The back room is exactly as cramped and chaotic as I remember, with stock shelves crowding the walls, that oversized wooden desk shoved against the far wall, and exactly enough floor space for two people if they don’t mind breathing each other’s air.
Maddie kicks the door shut behind us with her foot and doesn’t wait.
She presses me back against the desk and kisses me like she’s been planning it all afternoon, which, given the paint on my collar, she probably has.
My hands find her waist on reflex, solid and warm through the thin cotton of her dress, and for a moment we’re both still, catching up to what’s happening; her mouth on mine, the desk edge digging into the backs of my thighs, the dim light from the single bulb overhead casting everything in gold.
Then my grip tightens, and I kiss her back, hard, because holy shit, Maddie Weiz has her hands in my hair and her body against mine, and I am not wasting a second of this.
She works my shirt up with those paint-smudged hands, deliberate and unhurried, like she’s got all the time in the world and intends to use every bit of it.
Her palms skate over my ribs, warm and soft, and my breath goes ragged against her mouth.
She pushes my binder up just enough, and her mouth finds the tattoo along my sternum, and the heat of her lips on the sensitive skin there makes my whole body tighten.
My calloused hands fist in the back of her dress, bunching the fabric, dragging her closer.
The desk edge is digging into my ass in a way that’s going to leave a mark, and neither of us mentions it because who the hell cares about furniture when Maddie’s tongue is tracing the line of my collarbone and her teeth are grazing the spot below my ear that turns my knees to water.
She sets the pace. That’s the thing that undoes me—Maddie, who second-guesses every decision, who cycles through paint samples for hours, who once spent forty-five minutes deciding between two nearly identical shades of white—is absolutely certain about this.
Her hand slides under the edge of my binder, thumb brushing over my nipple, and she pauses, raises an eyebrow, a question in her eyes.
I nod, breathless, incapable of speech.
She smiles, slow and satisfied, and does it again, harder this time, and the sound that tears out of me is not dignified, and I do not care.
She shifts me, guides me to sit on the edge of the desk, and steps between my knees, her dress riding up her thighs as she moves. My hands span her hips, thumbs pressing into the softness there, and she makes a low, hungry noise that goes straight through me.
A box of toggle bolts rattles off the shelf behind us and hits the floor with a plastic clatter.
We both freeze.
Then Maddie laughs, bright, surprised, her head dropping to my shoulder, and I laugh too, the sound rusty and genuine, and for a second we’re just two people in a cluttered back room laughing at the universe’s terrible timing.
Then her mouth finds my throat again and the laughter stops, replaced by something heavier, warmer, her lips working against my pulse point like she’s mapping it for future reference.
I’m used to being the capable one. The fixer.
The person who shows up with tools, a plan, and steady hands.
I’m not used to being the one whose composure cracks, whose breath comes short, whose thoughts dissolve into static because someone’s mouth is on their skin and their hands are shaking.
It’s new and terrifying…it’s the best thing I’ve felt in years.
Maddie’s dress is rucked up around her hips, my hands under the hem, tracing the warm skin of her thighs, and she rocks against me, deliberate and slow, and the friction is—
“Jordan,” she breathes against my mouth.
“Yeah.”
“Tell me if—”
“I’m good. I’m more than good. Don’t stop.”
She doesn’t. Her hand slides between us, under the waistband of my jeans, and the first brush of her fingers against me draws a groan I don’t bother trying to swallow.
Her touch is sure, confident, and I let my head fall back, eyes closed, one hand braced on the desk edge and the other tangled in her hair, holding her close while she works me with a focus that would be intimidating if it wasn’t so goddamn perfect.
I come apart quietly, forehead pressed to her shoulder, her name in my mouth, her body warm and solid against mine.
She holds me through it, her free hand stroking my jaw, her breath soft in my ear, and when the world filters back in I’m boneless against the desk, shirt half-rucked up, binder askew, and Maddie is smoothing her dress down with both hands, a satisfied smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
We lean against the desk, shoulder to shoulder, not talking. The silence is easy, comfortable, the kind that doesn’t need filling. My hand finds hers on the desktop and laces our fingers together, and she squeezes once, gently.
Then she says, “I’m not selling the store.”
I go still. Every muscle locks as the words land like stones in still water, ripples moving outward.
She turns to look at me directly, her blue eyes clear and certain. “But I’m not keeping it the way it was.”
The air between us shifts. Something electric, charged, bigger than the desk and the back room and the paint on our clothes. My chest tightens, my throat works, and behind my sternum, three words rise up like they’ve been waiting there for months, maybe years, patient and inevitable.
I love you.
They sit on my tongue, ready. I open my mouth.
And close it.
Swallow.
Say nothing.
Maddie watches my face. She doesn’t push, doesn’t fill the silence. She just waits, her hand warm in mine, her eyes steady on mine in the dim light of the back room, and the unsaid thing sits between us, not heavy, not painful, just present. Real. Waiting for its moment.