The Rebel (The Millionaire Malones Book 3) (14 page)

And then it all became too much.

She’d turned her life into order out of chaos. She was organised now and practical and was raising a beautiful young boy. She was a great daughter and a reliable accountant.

What had happened to the woman? The one who jumped on a plane at
a moment’s notice and lived?

Maggie tossed back the sheets, pushed herself up to sitting and planted her feet on the floor. It had been too long, and Cooper had offered no strings attached. All she knew was that if she didn’t orgasm in the next, oh, ten minutes, she would melt from the inside. All that heat needed somewhere to go.

In the room next door was a man she liked. Okay, a man she’d
always wanted to have sex with, maybe a man she’d always loved. And if she were going to break this drought, she needed someone who was damn good. She didn’t want tentative. She didn’t want sweet talking. She wanted someone who could handle her fireworks.

Because, oh brother, there were going to be fireworks.

Maggie walked to the door, every nerve ending throbbing. She doubled back to reach
for her perfume bottle and was about to spray her neck and wrists before stopping herself.

She didn’t want any scent on her body but his.

*

She didn’t even
knock.

Maggie opened the door to her bedroom—Cooper’s temporary bedroom—walked in and closed it behind her. He was sitting on the edge of the bed in the dim lamplight, his injured
leg out straight, his shoulders hunched. He turned his head in her direction, looking rueful. He’d pulled off his T-shirt but was still wearing his shorts. Half naked. All man.

He didn’t move to cover himself, just exhaled, big and loud. ‘Listen Maggie, I’m so not in the mood for …’ he lifted his hands and made quote marks in the air, ‘… talking anymore about what did or didn’t happen. And I’m
especially not in the mood for you calling me out on what I just did.’

Maggie propped her hands on her hips, lifted her chin. ‘Me, neither.’

He thought for a moment. ‘So what are you doing in here?’

Maggie strode to him. ‘That offer before. About having sex. Is that still on the table?’

He shook his head and closed his eyes. ‘Very funny.’

She poked him on the shoulder. ‘Well, is it?’

He
looked up. His eyes widened. ‘What the fuck, Maggie?’

She moved closer, found a space between his straightened leg and his other one, nudging it aside to get closer. Her thighs moved against the inside of his.

‘Yes. I want to have sex with you,’ Maggie declared and then realised maybe she should qualify. ‘Well, with anyone really, but you’re here in my house and you offered so, you’re it.’

He paused. ‘Are you drunk?’ She thrilled at the way his shoulders tightened when she rested her hands on either side of his neck.

‘No. This might make more sense to me if I was, but no, not drunk.’

His eyes took a long, slow trawl up her legs, past her knickers—stopped at her breasts—and then he met her eyes.

That thing that had freaked her out earlier in the living room, that dark-eyed raw
desire? It was back.

‘The thing is, Cooper, I used to be like this. I used to be the kind of person who takes risks and has fun and does crazy things. I used to be spontaneous. You reminded me tonight of who I used to be. So for one night, I’m going to not think about tomorrow.’

Cooper stared up at her.

She slid her hands from his shoulders up around the back of his neck, tangling them in his
blond hair.

He looked at her for a long, languorous moment. ‘Give me a minute to get in the mood,’ he finally mumbled.

She pulled her hands from him, reached for the hem of her top and pulled it over her head.

Cooper’s eyes flickered down to her breasts. ‘That’ll do it.’

His arms were around her in a hot second, pulling her to him and his mouth was on a breast, his tongue sucking and flicking
her budded nipple, and she almost buckled at the knees. She threw her head back and heard herself moan and didn’t care. She found his hair once again and pulled him closer, wanting to feel him all around her, wanting that exquisite pleasure. He got it; he gave it to her. He found her other nipple and repeated his sucking and licking and she felt weak and strong all at once. When Cooper tore his
lips from her, his teeth nipping a little as he let go, he pulled her closer and kissed her on the mouth, really kissed her, and she felt it in her sex and everywhere else on her body. The sound of it, the lipsmacking sound, the wet promise of his lips on hers, was such a turn-on that Maggie kissed him harder, desperate to feel him. She pushed herself against him, skin to skin, breast to chest,
as they kissed more, deeper, tongue meeting tongue, his teeth nipping her lip, and it felt so good and right and made her hunger for more.

It made her hunger for everything about Cooper Malone.

‘Fuck, Maggie,’ he ground out and, as he pulled her up to straddle him, she tucked a knee on either side of his hips, cradling his head in her hands, holding on as he kissed her and turned, to the left,
to the right, tasting and savouring every corner of her mouth. When he fell back onto the bed—or had she pushed him?—she held on and spread her legs wider, pressing herself against his hard and throbbing cock, which was still encased inside his shorts. She propped herself up with splayed hands on his chest, panting, trying to get a breath, then threw her head back, loving the sensation, grinding
on him, knowing that was going to light those fireworks of hers that had been primed and ready for so long.

‘You got a condom?’ he whispered into the hormone-charged space between them and Maggie nodded breathlessly. She reluctantly slid off his body, tugged open a bedside drawer and found a foil packet. It was her emergency stash that she kept refreshed in case of emergencies. Thank God she
was about to have one. She held it between her lips while she slipped off her panties. When she looked back at Cooper, this big man on her bed, he’d freed himself and was lying back, propped up on his elbows, grinning at her.

Naked. Beautiful. Strong. Her friend. A man like no-one she had ever met.

She ripped the packet open with her teeth. He watched her every move, as she slipped out the condom
and climbed back on his thighs.

‘That okay?’ she murmured, wondering if she was too close to his knee. His hands shot to her hips and held her there.

‘What do you think?’

She looked down at his cock, flat against his belly, his smooth tanned belly. And then watched until it wasn’t. She raised an eyebrow and held up the condom. ‘Hope it fits.’

‘It better not have expired,’ he groaned.

And
then she began the teasing torture. She leaned over, pressed her lips to his cock, and then licked him, in one smooth, wet stroke from balls to tip, once more, twice more. When she sheathed him, she smoothed her fingers down his hardness and width, relishing his groans of pleasure, which made her more desperate that he should be inside her. Her pulse throbbed in her temple and her sex ached beyond
control. When she couldn’t wait one more second, she straddled him again, slid over him and onto him, teasing, back and forth, until with a thrust from him she was filled with Cooper.

‘Oh, God,’ she moaned when his hands gripped her hips, and she rode him and he moved under her, slow then fast and then faster still and when those damn fireworks exploded in every nerve ending in her body, she
forgot to breathe.

‡

T
he only sound
in the room was their breathing.

Like they’d just run a hundred-metre sprint kind of breathing.

Maggie had thrown herself on the bed next to Cooper, while her orgasm shimmied its way through her body. That delicious, delirious heaviness dragged
on her sex and she felt like a lead weight under it.

It was dark—or she didn’t have the energy to open her eyes, she couldn’t tell—and Cooper was silent next to her.

‘Well, aren’t you Little Miss Firecracker,’ he finally said with a husky laugh.

Maggie felt her own laugh burble up inside her. ‘Funny how it comes back to you. Just like riding a bike, I guess.’

Cooper laughed, the big hearty
laugh that she knew, and it reached right inside her as it always did.

‘You know, Maggie, that was …’

‘Yeah,’ she said first and turned to him.

He was looking at her, too. ‘Yeah.’

In the space between their bodies, his fingers found hers and they gazed at each other, in wordless wonder about what had just happened.

‘Thanks, Cooper,’ Maggie finally said, not sure about the words but knowing
the sentiment was right. She had so much to thank him for. Tonight, she didn’t feel like a born-again virgin anymore. Or a mom. Or a bedraggled thirty-something shell of a female. She felt like a woman.

‘Believe me when I say that the pleasure was all mine.’ He squeezed her fingers and smiled at her, so honest and true and so, so Cooper that it made her eyes water.

‘And, Maggie Mac,’ he turned
so his body faced her and he draped an arm over her stomach. ‘That is the problem.’

‘No problem from where I am, in case you didn’t notice.’

Cooper smoothed his hand up her stomach, cupped her breast with a gentle squeeze, and then circled a nipple with his index finger. She involuntarily arched her back. It hadn’t been so long since that first orgasm and, if he kept that up, she would be on
the brink of another.

‘Oh, I noticed.’ Then his fingers walked a trail back down, past her belly button and then down into the curls of her hair. And lower.

‘But since it’s been six years, I think we need to increase your average, don’t you?’

And Maggie let go, and as he slid his fingers into her wet folds, expertly finding her clitoris, she thought of nothing but the fireworks and Cooper and
his lips on hers as she rocked and came.

*

At three a.m.,
like clockwork, Maggie woke and this time she left her bed—Cooper’s bed—and returned to the sofa bed in her office. After sex, they’d slipped under the covers and talked for a while, about nothing really, and drifted off to sleep. He’d crashed first and Maggie had watched him
as he slept. One arm above his head, the curve of his muscles there round and strong, those golden hairs on his chest catching the light from the open window.

And the next thing she knew she was wandering the hall in the dark and awake enough to go back to her bed, the one Evan would expect her to be in the next day. Monday. A day in which Evan would be at school and she would be alone with Cooper
in the house.

She tried to think about all the work she had to do the next morning. But all she could think about was Cooper and how he’d blown the lid off her born-again virginity not once but twice. And with a leg still recovering from surgery.

Which led her to wonder what he’d be like at full strength. Fully fit.

‘Mommy!’

Maggie blinked her eyes open. How could it be light already? Hadn’t
she just gone to sleep?

She didn’t need to see her clock radio to know it was six a.m. Goodbye Little Miss Firecracker. Hello Mom.

‘Hey, sweetie. Did you have a good sleep?’