Chapter 9 West
Nine
West
We fall into a rhythm of sorts. A steady, torturous rhythm of seeking each other out in the grounds or the halls of the manor, then tumbling against tree trunks or bookcases in a desperate embrace.
A rhythm of swapping secret glances when I duck into Mrs Ainslie’s kitchen while the staff is there for their meals, pretending to need a snack when really it’s another glimpse of Maddy that I’m hungry for.
Every time she smiles at me, shy and blushing in public, I want to snatch her up in my arms and kiss her for all the world to see.
Most of all, we meet every night in my study after midnight, the fire burning lazily in the grate, its heat nothing compared to the inferno scorching my insides.
A large part of me is relieved that Maddy never feels the need to dress alluringly for our nightly encounters—that she always taps on my study door while bundled up like the Michelin man against the cold.
She’s comfortable with me, not trying to seduce and impress, and I treasure that fact.
Almost as much as I treasure the press of her soft body against mine.
Her lips parting on a sigh, her breath tickling my chin.
The little noises she makes as I spread her out on my desk and worship her like the goddess she is, my research notes crinkling beneath her bare ass.
Maddy is a goddamn fever dream, and I burn up with each kiss, each touch, each moan. These secret nights spent together in my study are like one long hallucination, and cold dread eats at my gut whenever I picture them coming to their inevitable end.
“Yes,” Maddy hisses tonight, her fingers twisting and tugging at my hair.
She’s perched on the edge of my desk, her bottom half completely nude, bare feet propped on the arms of my chair.
I’m bent forwards, trying to bury my whole fucking face in her pussy.
Eating her like a starving man. “Oh god. West. Yeah. Just like that.”
Goosebumps prickle across my back beneath my clothes, as they always do when Maddy moans my name.
There’s something so primal about it. So brutishly satisfying.
It’s me making her moan like that. It’s my teeth scraping the sensitive bud of her clit.
The firelight flickers against the white ceiling, and a frosty breeze rattles the window behind me, poking invisible tendrils through the hairline gaps in the wooden frame. The chill dances across the back of my neck, but it’s nothing compared to the heat swirling between Maddy and I.
“Oh, shit.” Maddy tilts her head back, eyes hazy with pleasure. “Oh god, I—whoops!”
For a split second, she almost leans back too far and loses her balance, hands flying out to brace herself against a crumpled pile of my notes on ferns. Maddy blinks down at me, owlish in her shock, then bursts out laughing.
I smirk and nip at her thigh.
“Did you swoon for me, darling?”
“No. No way.” Maddy shakes her head in denial, her knitted sweater slipping off one shoulder to show a glimpse of collarbone. “That is not what happened.”
My fingertip traces a gentle line up her seam, and Maddy’s breath catches above me. I circle her entrance, teasing as I get closer and closer. “Are you sure? It certainly looked that way from down here.”
“I—no.”
“No?” My free hand grips Maddy’s leg and squeezes. She’s soft but athletic, with hard muscle beneath her curves. Mouthwatering. “No, you didn’t swoon? Or no, you’re not sure?”
And I’m teasing us both at this point, because Maddy’s nibbling on her plump bottom lip, her hips rolling hungrily toward my touch, while my hands tremble and my heart thuds against my rib cage.
I’m so close.
A mere twitch of the finger away from sinking inside her.
From claiming Maddy in a whole new way, stroking the sensitive spots inside her until she wails.
From pressing inside her tight channel and feeling her body clamp down on me, massaging my knuckles, silently begging for my cock.
Sure, I’ve licked inside her more times than I can count, but I’ve never done that.
Maddy’s breath catches, like she can hear the pulse thudding in my temples. Like she can picture exactly what I’m contemplating, the last threads of my control vibrating like plucked strings. Like she can see the movie playing in my head, and she’s spellbound too.
Then my hand draws back, leaving a glossy trail on Maddy’s bare thigh, and she exhales shakily.
Clearing my throat, I lean down and lick her again, forcibly wrenching my brain back on track.
Trying to lose myself in her salty-sweet taste, her twitching thighs, the breathy moans that float through the quiet study.
“Holding out on me,” Maddy jokes weakly, but I’m a coward and pretend not to hear. It’s easier than admitting that she’s right. Than admitting the truth.
Because here it is: if I cross another line with Maddy, if I make her mine in that way, if I feel her body cleave to me like that… I fear I may never be able to let her go.
And already, the evenings are getting brighter.
The sun is getting stronger, and springtime wildflowers have started to dot the grounds.
They peek through the grass as I stride to the greenhouse each morning, mocking me.
My countdown with Maddy began weeks ago, and at this point, I’m on borrowed time.
Ignoring the hollow desolation in my chest, I crane my neck to lick and suck and nibble at the slice of heaven between her thighs.
Yes, it’s an arbitrary line.
Yes, it’s surely far too late to protect myself from eviscerating heartbreak.
But I’ve known enough grief and loss in my life that I can’t help trying. Can’t help bracing myself, trying to hold back just enough that I won’t fall into complete despair the moment Maddy leaves.
This girl was never mine to keep. She blew onto my island on a winter breeze, and soon the spring tide will carry her back to the mainland then on to distant lands.
Maddy’s told me enough about her life so far, about the adventures that she’s had, for me to know a fellow explorer when I meet one.
She won’t be satisfied in this hushed, empty manor, trapped on this barren rock in the foaming sea. Not for long.
It will start to feel like a prison. I should know.
And when that time comes, I will let her go. Hear this: I will not trap Maddy here, frozen in amber with me in my misery.
But until that day…
I hitch her thigh over my shoulder, rubbing my whole face against her glossy folds before latching onto her tight bud and giving a long suck. Maddy’s cries echo around the study, loud enough to be heard across the manor, but I can’t bring myself to care. Let them hear.
Because until that day comes, I want to fucking bathe in this woman.
* * *
An hour later, Maddy sits in my lap, lazing back against my chest and playing with the fingers on my left hand. Her fingertips rub at the faint lines of scars, at the hard patches of old calluses and blisters. At the proof of a life lived beyond this study.
She’s slipped her sweatpants and chunky socks back on, and a fresh log spits in the fireplace. The room is warm and golden and hazy, and strands of caramel hair keep tickling my nose. I stroke them down, my throat clogged with unspoken words.
“Your hands look strong,” Maddy murmurs, flipping my left over to inspect my palm.
“They are,” I say simply.
It’s true. After the accident, once my leg healed—as much as it ever would, anyway—I faced a choice. I could either let my new limitations define me, curl in on myself and give up, or I could find workarounds. Find new ways to keep my body strong, my muscles primed, my reflexes sharp.
Besides, there’s not much else to do on this island except work and exercise. And endless push ups are an excellent way to punish oneself for overwhelming survivor’s guilt.
Done with her inspection, Maddy places my hand on her stomach, then sighs and tips her head back against my shoulder. For a moment, we’re silent together, breathing in sync, as the fire dances in its grate. Maddy’s cinnamon scent weaves its way through my lungs.
“I could sleep here,” she says.
“Indeed you could.”
I certainly wouldn’t be the one to stop her.
“Sometimes,” Maddy confesses, “I feel like I could stay here forever, in this study with you.”
My arms tighten around her reflexively. “You could do that too.” My voice is light, casual. No hint at all that my heart is throwing itself against my rib cage, hitting hard enough to bruise.
Maddy snorts, shaking her head back and forth against my shoulder. “Hardly.”
I say nothing, but my arms loosen an inch.
She’s right, of course.
As though sensing my plummeting mood, Maddy sits up and spins to face me on my lap. Her eyes are bright and determined, her hair wild from our activities tonight.
“Come with me,” Maddy says. Her words sound rehearsed, like she’s played this moment over and over in her head. “There’s some weird pagan festival on the east coast of the mainland next week. I’ve been reading about it, and I want to go and watch. Come with me, West.”
My throat closes, and my head shake is jerky. Maddy’s expression falls, but it’s nothing compared to the ashen despair coating my insides.
“Why not?” she pleads. “It doesn’t have to be a big deal. We can come back after.”
Can we? For how long?
How long will this bright, adventurous young woman be happy here? Be happy with me?
And how can I let myself head out into the world, out toward joy and laughter and fun, when half my expedition notes are still untouched and my friends’ legacies are incomplete?
“I can’t,” I rasp.
This manor is a prison of my own making, and I haven’t served my sentence yet.
Even though every cell in my body yearns to say yes to Maddy, to sweep her off on a grand adventure, I can’t do it.
The proof that I’m not done here yet is crumpled across my desk, the endless sheets of notepaper thrown into disarray by Maddy’s earlier thrashing.
Maddy’s jaw sets. She raises her chin in challenge, her whole body rigid in my lap.
“So you’re just going to rot here for the rest of your life. Locked in a cage of man pain. Is that it, your lordship?”
I scowl at her but say nothing. What is there to say?
“And you’d rather let me go—” Maddy’s voice is so raw that my chest splinters down the middle “—than consider any other option. Than try for some kind of—of future.”
My scoff is cruel. Maddy flinches back, and I hate the pain in her eyes, hate the tense set of her shoulders, hate every fucking thing about this, but there’s no other path.
And perhaps, a cool voice whispers in the back of my brain, if you break her heart now, it will be easier. You can both move on.
Is that kinder to her? To me?
I don’t know. Can’t think straight, not with anguish seeping like hot acid through my veins, and the dying cries of my friends echoing in my ears. My hands shake as I let go of her waist and grip the arms of my desk chair.
“We never had a future.” My words are crisp. Clear. I hold Maddy’s gaze as I say them, watching each word strike her like an arrow. “I’m your employer. Nearly twice your age. What did you think was happening here, Madeleine?”
Her sweet face crumples, and Christ, I’ve never loathed myself more than this moment. Even when I was laid out on a stretcher with a ruined leg in the Himalayas, the deaths of my friends still sickeningly fresh in my brain, I didn’t plummet this low.
God.
What have I done?
“Maddy,” I start to say, blood rushing in my ears, but she’s already scrambling off my lap. The chair creaks and her elbow jabs into my gut, then her socked feet hit the woven rug. “Wait, Maddy—”
I take her wrist, but she snatches it out of my grasp. Practically hisses like a cat as she whirls on me, teeth bared.
“Don’t you dare touch me.” Trembling from head to toe, dressed in baggy clothes that hide her perfect shape, Maddy glares like I’m a stubborn stain she needs to scrub clean.
My gut lurches, but some distant part of me is proud of her, too.
Maddy is right. She deserves infinitely better than this.
“Don’t you ever touch me again, Lord Westmore. ”
“Wait. Let me explain—”
She’s across the study in a blink, yanking the door open so hard that it bounces off the wall. Then she’s gone, swallowed up by the shadows beyond.
“Maddy,” I call, struggling to my feet, but an hour of having another person sit on my bad leg has taken its toll. Pins and needles prickle along my bones, and the nerves send jagged bolts of lightning as I test my weight, snatching for my cane.
Though the pain makes my teeth grit so hard they ache, I limp to the doorway. Beyond, the hallway is cloaked in darkness, and there’s no sound except for the distant tock of a grandfather clock.
“Maddy!” I call again, not caring who hears.
No answer.
I sway on my feet, misery and regret pounding me from all sides.
Is this really the only path I could take?
Neck stiff, I turn and stare at the research notes crumpled across my desk.
At the photograph we took before that fateful expedition to the Himalayas, the one that forever sits framed at my right hand side.
It’s been knocked over, my friends and I grinning up at the ceiling.
My breaths are shaky. I swallow hard, my eyes dry, as I limp back to the desk and pick up the frame, staring down at each face in turn.
Though I’ve kept this photograph close to me every day for the last eight years, I’ve barely ever looked at it directly.
Always kept it in my peripheral vision, because it was too raw, too hard, too much.
Now I look directly at each of my friends in turn, and try to conjure up their voices. Try to imagine what they’d say about the mess I’ve just made; the way they’d curse me out for being a prick. What they’d urge me to do next, research notes be damned.
They all died for their work, yes, but first, they knew how to live.
“Right,” I say, and place the frame carefully back on my desk. “Okay.”
I have travel plans to make.