Page 17 of Mad for Madison

He blinked slowly, looking down.

“Just once,” I offered, stepping closer. I didn’t know the person I was at that moment. “Just one night.” This man was a mystery to me, a confident, honest, attractive person. “No regrets and no promises.”

Madison looked into my eyes again. “Don’t think for a second that I haven’t wanted you since the first time I saw you,” he whispered.

I hadn’t had a clue. Part of me refused to believe it even now.

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

“If that’s true,” I said and licked my lips, “prove it.”

Madison made a single step forward, closing the distance between us, and grabbed the lapels of my jacket. His lips smashed against my mouth in a starved kiss that was as abrupt as it was needed. I was desperate for it, and I didn’t hide that.

He kissed me with the sort of needy passion that couldn’t be faked. The grip he had on my jacket trapped me against his body, but I wrapped my arms around his lower torso and held him close.

I decided in that instant not to think anymore. The time for thinking was behind us. It was also ahead. But it wasn’tnow.

Instead of worrying if Madison was simply making my wishes come true out of a sense of gratitude or indebtedness, I shut my mind off. I kissed him back. The violent eruption of the volcanic fire between us slowly passed, and we kissed in a much better way. There was still the same neediness in the way we held one another, but the kisses were softer, more intimate, more exploratory.

We can’t fall in love, I told myself.You can’t fall in love. And as I decided not to, I surrendered to him. I kissed him slowly, parting my lips and letting his tongue enter my mouth. We explored each other, stumbling around the foyer until my back pressed against the wall with a thud, and a breath of air burst out of my mouth.

Madison smiled—I could feel him smile—against my mouth.

A shudder passed through me so swiftly and powerfully that Madison pulled his head back. “Are you alright?” he asked.

I couldn’t find the words. I only gazed up at him, my lips still parted, and my body heated like a fireball.

“Do you still want this?” he asked.

“I do,” I whispered. Perhaps it was the fact that I smiled as I said those two words that convinced Madison. I wasn’t lying.I wanted him more than I wanted my next breath of air. Yet I shivered whenever the reality tried to sink in.

It was impossible and unexpected and so incredibly unlikely that this would be happening. For years, I had watched Madison walk through my life, always in a hurry, always just passing by, and I had known that there went someone I had always wanted and never could have.

Yet here he was. All mine.

Madison relaxed his hold, pulling my jacket over my shoulders and letting it fall while keeping his hands on my biceps. All my insecurities flared as his hands moved along my arms. Would he like me when he saw more of me?

Again, I shut the doors to the fact that Madison could have anyone he wanted. He’d been with the sort of guys whose only job was to be fit and attractive. I couldn’t compare myself to them and survive it. So, I refused to think about it.

I kissed him harder as if trying to prove my worth. The silky softness of his lips made me lose myself in the feel of him. How could anyone be so perfect? How could anyone exist without a single flaw?

Thoughts seeped away as I moved my hands from his back to his front, feeling my way up his torso until I could slide the jacket off his shoulders. It fell off, and I worked my way through the buttons of his shirt.

It was slow and deliberate work. I wasn’t skilled in it, but Madison wasn’t an impatient lover. He only kissed me and inhaled the scent of me just like I did in return. He waited until all the buttons of his shirt were undone to do the same to me.

I let him undress me there in the foyer, my shirt opening and revealing inches upon inches of my body. And when he was done, he took a step back and shrugged his shirt off, giving me the space to do the same.

Some small part of me thought,This is it. He’s going to change his mind now.But as I let the shirt fall on the floor, Madison’s eager gaze moved all over me. He took another step back, making my heart drop, and extended his arm. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

I took a moment to appreciate him in the light of the foyer. Every muscle of his torso was defined. His chest was broad and his waist narrow, his shoulders were rounded and set wide, and the muscles of his upper back curved sharply from his shoulders to his neck. His nipples were dark and large, pecs swollen, and smooth skin glistening.

I took his hand and let him lead me to our room.

If looking at me disappointed him, he didn’t show it. Instead, he moved with such haste that I believed his reaction completely. The way his pupils had dilated and the corners of his lips had ticked upward at the sight of me made me feel beautiful for the first time in years.

We rushed into the bedroom and slammed the door behind us. Madison spun around and kissed me again, pinning me against the door. The large, decorative lamps in the nightstands were on, bathing the room in their subdued yellow glow. Heat rose impossibly high when Madison leaned against me, his bare torso pressing against mine. Skin on skin, muscles on muscles, we melted into one another and used everything we had to feel each other’s bodies. My hands ran over his bare back as if I wanted to feel him before I lost my chance. My lips explored his lips and face, my tongue playfully clashing with his. I inhaled the strong, fresh scent of his cologne and made a permanent association between the sea breeze and Madison’s beauty in the depths of my mind.

When the ecstasy of feeling his heated body against mine was so overpowering that I couldn’t control myself any longer,I dragged my fingernails along his back, resisting the urge to scratch him any harder.

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