Page 50 of Slow Burn
Pinching my eyes shut, I bowed my head. The last thing she deserved was me freaking out on her. I took another deep breath through my nose and opened my eyes again. Pivoting slowly, I felt her hand drop from my back. Without thinking, I reached forward and grabbed her wrist.
Her pulse was racing against the tips of my fingers. It matched my own heart's wild thundering. "You didn't overstep," I assured her. "I'm not a good person, Maddie. I've done things I am not proud of." I gave her a long, hard stare. "And you really shouldn't look at me through rose-colored glasses."
Maddie pressed her free hand against my chest, splaying her fingers across the general vicinity of my heart. "No one's perfect. And when I look at you, glasses or not, I like what I see."
"You shouldn't."
She shrugged her bare shoulder. I wanted to lean down and sink my teeth into her skin just so I could lave it with my tongue. "There are a lot of things people tell me I shouldn't do, and yet I still do them."
"Like dancing?"
"Yeah." Gaze never leaving mine, her hand moved from my chest to my arm, the tips of her fingers brushing over the sharp lines of the ink crawling up my skin. "Tell me, Adam, are you passionate about something?"
It wasn't just the curiosity in her eyes that pushed me to speak; I actually wanted to tell her about this part of me. This part that I hadn't spoken to anyone about in years. "I used to be. Since I was a little boy, I'd wanted to fight fires. It always fascinated me how firefighters ran into burning buildings when everyone else ran out. The day I put out my first fire, I knew why. There's this rush I can't explain. You know you might die doing it, but at the same time, you can't fight the pull it has."
At the mention of firefighting, her eyes trekked over the scars visible to her, but she remained silent.
"How come you never ask me what happened?"
Maddie's stare never wavered. "It's not that I don't wonder about it because I do. It's just…I don't know." She shook her head slightly. "It's your truth to tell, and you should be able to do it when you're ready not whenever people ask."
I was done for.
This woman. This gorgeous, incredibly smart woman was burrowing so deep beneath my skin, I didn't think I'd ever get her out.
Or that I wanted to.
24
MADDIE
I was in too deep.
Way too deep with the very real possibility of drowning. In all things Adam, of course. We'd had a moment the previous night. Right there under the stars in my backyard, we shared something. It wasn't deep or overly personal, but somehow it only cemented this indescribable connection I had to him.
And although there was no kissing, everything about it had felt intimate. Almost as if, piece by piece, our souls were bared to each other.
Or it was possible that I was so ridiculously sexually frustrated I'd started sprouting some weird-ass poetry. With the lack of stimulation I was getting, I definitely wouldn't count it out.
Leaning back, I dug my fingers in the sand. The sun had only just made its appearance; shades of pinks and oranges streaked through the sky while the waves gently lapped at the shore.
I took a deep breath through my nose and shook my head at Sheldon, who was scavenging for crabs.
"Mind if I join you?"
The butterflies in my stomach immediately took flight at the sound of Adam's gritty voice. Cupping a hand over my eyes, I turned and tilted my head back. In the crisp morning light, he was so damn hot, it made my heart stutter.
A light gray t-shirt hung loosely from his torso. The arms were ripped off, giving me just a peek of the stacked muscles hiding underneath the cotton. If he was standing at the other side of me, I probably would've gotten a glimpse of the scars there.
My gaze traveled lower and I bit down on my teeth. Hard. He was wearing those can't-really-hide-anything gym shorts again. The ones that left no doubt about the fact that he went commando.
The kind that promised whatever the fabric was covering would most likely be a welcome stretch that would feel oh-so-good.
Because my legs were stretched out in front of me and crossed at my ankles, it was easy to squeeze my thighs together without him noticing. I cleared my throat and tried very hard not to think about his shorts or rather what was under them or the things I could and seriously wanted to do.
"Not at all." I sounded all kinds of pitchy but if Adam noticed, he didn't say a thing.
Keeping his eyes on me, he lowered that massive frame of his onto the sand with zero amount of effort. He pulled his legs up and casually draped his forearms over the tops of his knees. His focus shifted to Sheldon still furiously digging. "No dancing today?"
