Maddie and Wyn (30 page)

A world of acceptance lived in Maddie’s silver eyes. “I do. I didn’t want to leave Redemption when my dad wanted to move right after my mom died, but it would have felt nice if he’d fought for me a little bit. Instead the second I proposed that I could live with Dev, he was all over it and couldn’t get out of town on his own fast enough. We hardly ever talk. If we do, for a holiday or something, it’s always me who calls him.”

“It sucks.” Wyn’s voice wheezed a little, and ridiculous unwanted pressure built behind his eyes, threatening tears. “I hope I’m never like that when I’m a parent.”

Without hesitation, Maddie lifted his hand to her lips and kissed the back. She held him there, her mouth pressed to his skin. “You won’t be.” It was as if she breathed the vow into his flesh, planting it in his heart. “I know it.”

“I don’t want to,” Wyn uttered with too much gruff, unable to control his emotions. He dragged Maddie to him, pulling them both to their feet, and crushed his mouth on hers. “I don’t want to.”

He bit roughly at her lips, but Maddie took hold of his jaw and instead grazed gentle kiss after gentle kiss across his mouth, soothing the frantic destructive beast feeding his need. Within a minute she’d calmed his soul. At the same time she stroked the small of his back, dipping her fingertips under the waistline of his jeans and underwear to toy with the sensitive skin at the cleft of his ass, and each touch sent sizzling lines of new need straight to Wyn’s cock.

Back in control of himself, Wyn dipped past Maddie’s lips for a taste of her sweetness. She dug her fingers into his back, moaning as she tangled her tongue with his, and that one softly raw sound ramped his desire back up to ten. Slipping his hand between her thighs from behind, he slashed his mouth across hers and rubbed her pussy through her shorts. The thin cotton fabric and panties no barrier at all, he worked her slit through the material, pressing and stroking her through her clothes. Within seconds Maddie whimpered and gyrated against him, scratching against him like a cat at a pole, the fabric between her legs damp with her excitement.

Grinning against her lips, Wyn slipped his fingers under her shorts from the side, needing to feel the slick heat she’d created just for him. The moment he brushed her crease and dipped his fingers into her pussy, Maddie cried out and scratched from his back all the way around to his waist and tore open the button and zipper on his jeans.

Her breath coming in sharp pants, her cheeks flushed pink, Maddie pushed her shorts and panties down her long, curvy legs and yanked off her tank top. “Tacos can wait.” As she undid her bra and tossed it on the floor, the gleam of passion in her eyes lit like chips of sparkling diamonds. She wound her arms around his neck and pleaded, “Fuck me now.”

Fuck.
Wyn’s cock instantly went hard as a rock, but a piercing jab sliced him through the middle too. Every time they had sex Maddie asked him to ‘fuck’ her and referred to what they did as ‘fucking’. She removed any meaning and connection and bond in what he felt they were doing, making it seem as though they truly were just hooking up until her mystery thief case was solved. When she said that one word over and over again, it poked holes in the fragile progress Wyn told himself they were making during this time they spent together.

Right then Maddie shoved Wyn’s jeans and underwear down to his thighs, spit in her hand, and stroked his cock with a firm grip from root to tip.
Jesus
. She pumped his shaft so damned good he shuddered.

Maddie went from stroking him to winding her arms around his neck. She climbed up his body, and against his lips, told him, “I want it against the wall,” her tone thick with heat. “It’s so sexy that you’re strong enough to pin me there and hold me up the whole way through.”

Then, her lips clinging softly to his, adjusting herself against him, she sank onto his cock, enveloping his whole damned shaft in her snug, damp hold. As her body accepted the last inch, she sighed his name against his lips and squeezed his outer legs with her inner thighs, and Wyn groaned and slipped under her spell.

Turning them while stealing her breath with a deep, hard kiss, Wyn slammed Maddie into the wall and lost himself in claiming her, no matter what she needed to call it.

For him, he knew it was love.

Sitting on the new back deck at Aidan and Ethan’s cabin home, Maddie lifted her hair off her neck and let a glorious evening breeze cool her skin. “I swear it must be fifteen degrees cooler up here than it is at my place.” Lightness floating through her, she flicked her gaze upon everyone sitting at the round table; Aidan, Ethan, Devlin, Garrick, and Wyn. “I also swear if I wasn’t so heavily invested in my house I might have some serious cabin envy right now.”

Scrunching his face and shaking his head, Wyn toed Maddie’s foot with his. “Don’t even try to pretend you aren’t crazy in love with your house and that only an act of God could get you to leave it.”

“You don’t know.” Kicking him back, Maddie feigned an obnoxious teenage voice. “You don’t know me. You don’t know my life.”

A glint of golden light flashed in his brown eyes. “I’ve been getting a whole hell of a lot better at it real fast, M and M.”

“Screw you, Ashworth.” Making a stink face at him, Maddie shot him the finger, but her heart still pitter-pattered ridiculously, probably worse than when she was a teenager and first crushing on him. She put her hand up like a wall in front of his face. “For calling me that name again, you’re dead to me.”

Grinning like a madman, Wyn jabbed his fist against his chest. “Thunk.” He spread his fingers in trickling lines down his stomach. “Your cruelty is like a sword right into my heart.”

Maddie smirked. “It’s what you deserve for ever doubting me about my ghost.”

“What!” Aidan suddenly roared to life across the table, all big and dark with piercing pale green eyes. “What the hell is this ghost talk crap again? This is your safety at risk here, Maddie, not an episode of
Ghost Hunters
.” He swung his fiery focus to Wyn. “I thought you were serious about figuring out who was breaking into Maddie’s house.”

Wyn instantly went granite rigid and cold. “I am. Make no mistake about that.”

“He is taking this seriously,” Maddie jumped in, needing Aidan to give Wyn credit where it was due. She noticed Ethan put his hand on Aidan’s forearm and stroke the tension in him too. “Very seriously. It’s just that he now accepts that I also really do have a ghost.”

Devlin slapped the arm of his chair. “No shit?” His jaw dropped to his lap. “Truly?”

Gripping the chair, his muscles still tight, Wyn said, “Truly.”

Whistling low, Devlin shook his head. “Hell. What made you believe?”

“Compelling evidence.”

Wyn plowed into the story of Maddie’s multiple experiences with an otherworldly spirit that could not be explained away, in addition to the incidents he’d now heard multiple times himself and could not rationally explain. He shared specific moments that had occurred over the last six days, to a rapt audience around the table. As Maddie listened and watched Wyn’s sincere defense of her reasons for believing in the ghost, her chest banded with such powerful emotion she reached out and slid her hand into his, unable to remain unconnected for a second longer.

Glancing at her for only a moment, warmth infused Wyn’s dark stare and in the way he threaded his fingers through hers.

The moment Wyn paused in his story to take a breath, Devlin jumped in. “So if this ghost can manifest enough energy to bang on walls and break stuff, you don’t think it’s possible it could generate enough energy to move things around in the house, make you think they’re missing, or even be powerful enough to open the garden gate? Maybe Maddie doesn’t have an intruder after all.”

Wyn shook his head. “Even if I conceded that was all the ghost, which I’m not ready to do quite yet, there’s still the candy wrapper with the DNA and partial fingerprints on it. She didn’t manufacture that. The ghost is real. But the intruder is also still very real too.” He swung his focus back to Aidan. “And I promise you I will catch him.”

Aidan’s jaw clenched. Leaning in, he parted his lips, but before he spoke, Ethan touched his forearm again. Aidan turned away and murmured, “Excuse me, I need to put together the salad.” He squeezed Ethan’s hand and then got up and strode into the cabin.

Watching her brother disappear into the house, pricks of guilt poked at Maddie. If she hadn’t brought up the ghost then Aidan never would have gotten tense with Wyn, and Wyn wouldn’t have turned into a statue and gotten tense right back at Aidan, and they might still be enjoying their drinks and good conversation.

Pulling her hand from Wyn’s, Maddie pushed back her chair and stood. “I’ll be right back.” She stayed Ethan with a hand in his direction, and shook her head at Wyn. “I’m going to give Aidan a hand.”

Entering the cabin through a door at the side, Maddie moved across the open area toward the kitchen at the front. Aidan tossed vegetables into a big wooden bowl, the colorful mess scattering around the bowl an indication of his distracted state. A wall of windows at the back of the house would allow the others to watch them and try to dissect the conversation if they wished, but the double-paned glass would keep their talk to only their two sets of ears.

Maddie paused at the kitchen island, locked in on her stony brother, and bluntly asked, “Did I do something wrong? You’ve been subdued ever since we got here, and then you jumped on Wyn back there, and I can’t figure out if you’re just in a mood or if I’ve done something specific to piss you off.”

“I’m not mad at you.” Aidan’s words were as clipped as the chips of jade in his stare. “You know better than that.”

Planting her hands on the island, Maddie didn’t back away one bit. “Then what’s up with you today? Because there is definitely something, so don’t try to tell me there isn’t.”

Aidan studied her for a drawn-out moment. This scrutiny from her brother, someone she loved and worshipped and craved his respect, poked at Maddie’s confidence; she kept her chin up and forced herself to hold his gaze though. His mouth thinned to a hard line, but she ignored the prick to her heart and instead just arched her brow back at him.

He suddenly broke the silence and blurted, “You and Wyn look a lot closer than I expected you to be.”

A frog got caught in Maddie’s throat. “Oh.” Her voice came out in a croak. But heck, maybe she’d been naïve, but she had not expected her brother to come at her about Wyn. Glancing to the left, seeing Wyn still sitting quietly while the others chatted outside, the spark of a tigress lit in her soul.

Strength fired inside her, but looking back to Aidan, seeing the lines of worry on his face, Maddie took a breath and tempered her tone. “I’m not sure how to describe what Wyn and I are right now, but yeah, there is some renewed closeness between us. Do you have a problem with that?”

Once again, for the longest heartbeat, Aidan kept his mouth sealed tightly shut. Then, like a shaken can of soda, he exploded. “I should be ecstatic because I love Ethan and know what a good man he is, and therefore I should expect Wyn to be the same. Except I’m not a blind idiot, so I know at some point he did or said something that hurt you so badly it forced you to put on this mask and pretend you’d never even shared a friendship with him at all, when we all know that was a lie. And yet now you seem closer than ever. And on top of that, you still have this predator breaking into your home on a regular basis, which scares the crap out of me, yet I’m being sidelined and forced to hope Wyn is doing a good job keeping you safe, when in reality I’m your big brother so I feel like I should be camped out at your place until this bastard is caught.” Taking a breath, the rest of the fizz in him going flat, Aidan shrugged and finished, “It’s all getting mixed up inside me, and I’m having a hard time with everything right now. And when Wyn and you teased the way you did about the ghost, it felt like he wasn’t taking the threat to your home seriously, and it pissed me off.”

Her heart splintering, Maddie rushed around the island and threw her arms around her big brother. Aidan uttered a rough curse and wrapped his arms around Maddie too, crushing her in the strength of his hold. His sure warmth surrounded her, and giving into his protection for a moment, Maddie buried her face against his solid shoulder and basked in the tight squeeze of his brotherly love. She hadn’t always had this closeness from him when she’d wished for it, and she was so very thankful to have him back in her life.

Still, she was her own woman now, and eventually Maddie forced steel back into her spine and stood up straight. She smiled up at Aidan though, a full display of love filling her heart. “Okay, now that we’ve hugged it out, first, thank you for wanting to protect me. It’s very outdated, but very sweet. Second, Wyn is not some bodyguard in my house with the sole responsibility of keeping fragile, inept, little ol’ female me, safe. I am capable of protecting myself. I have lived successfully on my own for quite a while now, if you will recall.

“Now, having said that, I will concede Wyn and I had a couple of bumpy days in the beginning of this whole intruder mess, but now we are working together to try to solve this mystery of who has been coming into my home uninvited.

“But third,” she took Aidan’s arms, shook him, and forced him to stay looking at her, “and one hundred percent most important, whatever happened between me and Wyn years ago, happened between Wyn and me, not you, and will be resolved between the two of us. You don’t get to be suspicious and angry on my behalf, and you certainly don’t get to hold a grudge on my behalf. What you have with Ethan is your thing, and what I have with Wyn is mine.”

Snorting, Aidan raised his brows comically high. “You didn’t think that when you and Dev butted in and forced me to go fix things with Ethan back when we were screwed up and veering off the path of being together.”

“That’s different.” Keeping deadpan, Maddie batted her eyelashes prettily. “I’m always right, and you should always bow to the perfection and wonder of my advice.”

Aidan suddenly barked with laughter, and the sound filled the cabin. He laughed hard and shook his head, and Maddie chuckled and grinned right along with him, pleased to see him shake the heaviness from his mood.