Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 45531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 228(@200wpm)___ 182(@250wpm)___ 152(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 228(@200wpm)___ 182(@250wpm)___ 152(@300wpm)
I can’t wait for her response, kissing her instead. Another victory… she doesn’t push me away. Instead, we grind our bodies together, sinking into the kiss. My heart has never pounded this hard. The tension in me has never tightened to this degree. Then she does push away. She climbs off me, staring down, lips red from kissing, eyes glassy.
“This is what Mom always warned me about,” she says.
“What?” I growl.
“Men tell you what you want to hear, what you dream about, what you wish would happen. They’ll tell you anything to—”
I wince when my cell phone cuts her off.
“Do you need to take that?” she asks.
I want to tell her no, but she must be able to read me.
Of course, she can.
“It’s fine. Take it. We can talk about this after.”
“If the business wasn’t about to explode…”
“I get it. Really.”
She sits on the chair as if making a point of choosing a spot not on the couch.
Brad’s on the phone. The lawyers want another meeting.
“If it was just the money on the line,” I say once the call’s over, “I’d tell him to go to hell, but it’s the jobs, too, Maddie. I’m sorry. I have to go.”
She stands.
“Where are you going?” I say.
“I thought…”
I walk over to her and grab her hips. I do it firmly, not giving her the chance to move away from me. This might be the last chance I get to hold her like this.
“You’re staying right here until I get back. We need to talk about this. We need to talk about us.”
I kiss her, then keep my lips close to hers. I could spend the rest of my life holding her this way.
“Listen to me now. This. Is. Not. A. Trick. I swear.”
We kiss again, and then my phone buzzes. It’s urgent. I’ve got no choice but to leave her here, the last thing I want to do.
I ride the elevator to the lobby, my hands behind my back because it’s the only way to keep them still. There’s too much passion burning in me after telling my woman the truth. Now I have to wait hours to hear how she feels about it. That’s if she’s there when I get back.
The doorman quickly puts his phone away as I approach. There’s something skittish about how he does it. Normally, he nods and smiles hello, but he’s not meeting my eye.
“It’s fine, Jerry,” I tell him. “I know you’ve seen it.”
“It’s none of my business, sir,” he says stiffly, “but for what it’s worth, I’m happy for you.”
I’m in a rush, but this feels like a lifeline after leaving Maddie upstairs. “That’s probably a rare opinion,” I say.
He shrugs. “I don’t look at this like other people might. My parents had a thirty-year age gap. They got lots of strange looks, sure, but I saw their relationship. I saw the love. I saw the dedication, and they were the best parents a boy could ask for.”
I offer him my hand. “Thank you, Jerry. I needed to hear that.”
He shakes my hand, and then I leave, hurrying through the lot to my car.
All I can do is pray Madison waits for me, and she feels the same. If not, my world crumbles. Now that I’ve held her, tasted her, and heard her laugh, I can’t imagine returning to my regular life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Madison
I stand on Jacob’s balcony. It’s spacious out here, with more room than I can believe, bigger than some people’s apartments, but that’s not why I like it.
Leaning against the railing, I can look across the city and imagine Jacob in his office, rushing around and attempting to fix the deal with Trent. Attempting to kill the deal is more like it.
The cool, caressing air keeps me awake, alert enough to think about what Jacob said before he left. His words replay in my mind. He wants me. A marriage, kids, all of it. Then he left before I could tell him I feel the same.
I freaked when he told me, Mom’s voice hissing in my mind, warning me men will say anything, do anything, and be anyone if that’s what it takes to get what they want from a woman. Jacob was going to get what he wanted from me, anyway.
The more lust we share, the more steam, the closer I get to handing in my V-card and shutting down the cruel voice inside of me whispering I’ll never be good enough. He didn’t have to invent false stories.
Now, an hour later, Mom’s voice has faded away from my mind. I’ve tried calling her, but she’s not answering, and she’s not responding to my texts. I have to remember how she reacted when she saw the photos. It was like we were both high-school age and the jock asked me to prom—something which would never happen—and Mom couldn’t take it.