Page 91 of Spades

“Perhaps.” I get to my feet. “Well, shall we?”

“Alissa, it’s late. It’s not safe for you to be going into the middle of some park in the dead of night.”

“Of course it isn’t.” I hold out my hand. “That’s why I want you to come with me.”

30

MADDOX

I shoot my eyebrows up.“What? Right now?”

“One of the staffers of Aces Underground wouldn’t have planted this note on you if it weren’t urgent, Maddox.”

“But we really should wait until morning.” I gesture to the window in Alissa’s living room. “I need you to be safe. It’ll be safer when it’s light out.”

“Obviously that would be safer, but that’s why you’ll come with me,” she says. “Besides, there will be fewer people milling about in the evening.” She points at the picture of the Monument Park waterfalls on her phone. “Besides, we’ll be right across from the airport. I bet plenty of light will be coming from there.”

“Then I’ll go alone. You stay here. I need you safe, Alissa.”

She grabs my hands. “Maddox. All my life, I’ve taken the easy path, the risk-averse path, the way forward that offered the least resistance. But you awoke something in me, a small flame that was dormant in me for years, the small flame that only ever grew when I performed an ornate flute sonata for a crowd of hundreds. The flame that I thought I extinguished when I decided to forsake my musical training for a more stable job as a nurse.” She places my hand over her heart. “But you brought it back, Maddox. Taking me to the club, telling me about your passions, kissing me”—her cheeks flush—“fuckingme.”

My own cheeks warm at her words. “But Alissa?—”

She holds up a hand. “No. Nobut Alissa, Maddox. I want to go there, and I want to go there tonight. And not just because there will be fewer people around, and not just because the lights of the airport should keep us well lit, but also because…” A wicked grin crawls across her face. “Because itisscary. Because it’s risky. And there’s no man I’d rather share an adventure with than you, Maddox Hathaway.”

Her words make my dick harden.

“Fuck, Alissa.” I brush a finger over her cheek.

“And if you come with me on this errand, I will let you doanything—and I meananything—to my body when we get back.”

I swallow. I know I’m thinking with the wrong head. This is a fool’s errand. Some patron at the club probably put this note in my jacket and is pulling a prank on me.

But I don’t care.

I’m in.

Mad Maddox is in, too.

I crush my lips to Alissa’s.

The kiss is raw, feral, perfect.

I’m ready to forget this expedition of hers and fuck her senseless?—

But she breaks the kiss.

“Damn, Alissa,” I growl.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I intend to deliver on my promise to you, Maddox.” She leans into my ear. “Like I said,anything.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I love this woman. This woman who turns me on like no other, who can nearly make me jizz my pants from a few whispered words.

And I think she loves me, too.

But it’s too soon to express those feelings. I’ve known her for all of three days.

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