1. The Braise #3
I slowly crossed the dining room, the way you approach something you're not sure is really there, half expecting her to turn out to be somebody else entirely by the time I got close enough to really see her face.
She must have felt me coming, because she turned around on the barstool before I said a word, and there it was, that same look from years back.
"Dillion Duckworth III." She said my whole name, like she was trying it out again after years of not needing it. "Look at you."
And for about three seconds I was fourteen years old in a rented tux that didn't fit right, standing in a ballroom wondering if a girl like that would ever look at me twice.
Sitting at my bar twenty years later, she was exactly as forthcoming as I recalled, direct about what she wanted without letting it curdle into desperation, asking her questions with her chin up.
An honest woman. I respected that more than I could explain to anybody who'd never spent years living on the opposite diet.
And some part of me, the part that still remembered being an unremarkable teenager in a room full of people who mattered, took the whole thing as a sign.
Like the universe circling back to hand me something I'd wanted before I even knew what wanting properly looked like.
Felt like something closer to fate than convenience, honestly.
Our playing field more leveled. I wasn't standing awkward in some ballroom anymore.
She'd found me in my own award-winning restaurant, the one her parents actually frequented these days, calling ahead for a table like everybody else in this county.
I told myself God didn't hand a man a second look at something like that for no reason.
Told myself maybe this was finally the summer I was finally qualified for her.
Good enough, at last, on paper and everywhere else that used to matter.
I had the last week of June to myself, my solo week. Mine since the summer my father made me Head Chef, before I ever owned the place, seven days on Everhart Hollow to let the ringing in my ears die down before the whole Duckworth line came down on the estate like weather.
Seven days of nobody, then seven days of everybody. Then back to the mainland, and the restaurant, and whatever afternoons I could steal back from it the rest of the summer.
I'd guarded that week from girlfriends. From investors. From my own mother, who has never in her life accepted no as a complete sentence. From Aurelia.
One reservation in my life that never got moved. The one nobody knew to ask about, because nobody was ever getting a seat at it.
I gave it to Madeline.
"What about this one?"
She kissed my neck before I could answer, and then her hands found mine underwater and moved them where she wanted them – the curve of her plump ass, full in my palms, no apology in it.
She swung a leg over and settled onto my lap right there on the pool steps, water shifting around us like it was giving us room, and put her mouth back on my neck.
"Madeline." Her name came out strained, and my body was already answering her in a language I hadn't authorized.
My hands tightened where she'd put them, half a second behind the decision, if there was a decision.
She made a small sound against my throat, satisfied, like a cook hearing the sear hit the pan right.
She shifted her weight, just enough to feel exactly what she was doing to me and let me know she'd felt it too.
Everything in me leaned toward the easy version of the next hour. It would have been simple. It would have been good. Those two things had been enough for every man she'd ever done this to, and I was working hard to remember why I wasn't going to be one of them.
She pulled back and looked at me with eyes that already knew where this was going and had gotten tired of it.
"I know," she said, dropping her voice into something half impression, half indictment. "You wanna take it slow. Be respectful." She rolled her eyes dramatically enough to make sure I caught the whole rotation. "Blah blah blah."
"So now I'm the bad guy for being a gentleman?" I asked with a raised brow.
"Don't do that." The playfulness went out of her voice all at once. "I'm sitting on your lap, Dillion. I can feel how bad you want me. Your hands are doing one thing, your mouth is saying another, and I'm supposed to just sit here and act like there's no contradiction?"
She sat back an inch, giving my dick some relief.
"You're the bad guy," she said, calmer now, "for looking like this.
For being perfect every time I'm with you.
Still being that same charming boy I met all those years ago, except now you know exactly what that does to a woman and use it anyway.
Everyone in this county wants you. Women who've never boiled water in their life are taking cooking classes just to have a reason to have something to talk to you about, and you chose me.
You gave me this week. The one week you keep for yourself.
Your mother told me you don't even answer her calls while you're out here. "
"So if I chose you, out of every woman throwing herself at me, why would you want me treating you the same way I'd treat them?"
"That's not —" she started, I watched her look for the hole in it and not find one right away.
I sighed. "If I wanted easy, Madeline, easy's always been available to me. I didn't pick easy, I picked you. Seems strange to be mad at me for treating the woman I actually want differently than the women I don't."
"I appreciate the pedestal you put me on, Dillion, I do, but I'm used to that.
Men tiptoeing around me my whole life because of my family.
Men who come around secretly wanting to get close to my father, use me as the door in.
That's never been you. You don't care about any of that.
You wanted me before you even knew whose daughter I was, or what being a DuBois in Roena County even meant.
" She took a breath. "But I'm not that girl at the cotillion.
I'm a grown woman who knows what she wants, and I want you.
I love how respectful you've been, you make me feel safe.
I just want a little more, Dillion. You know?
I'm willing to give you all of it, with my whole consent, and I'm tired of being subtle about it. Do you not want me?"
"Course I do. Are we really about to argue about sex right now?"
"Not sex. That's not what I'm saying." She shook her head, seemingly frustrated with herself as much as with me.
"What I'm saying is I want something more with you, something you're not giving me.
Would I like you to touch me the way you clearly want to?
Sure. I'm not going to lie about that. But it's like there's something invisible standing between you and giving me more, and I can feel it even when everything else is perfect. And I want it gone."