For a single beat, I contemplate staying there and letting her discover me, allowing her to see the state simply listening to her moan has put me in. I consider the consequences of her opening the door and finding me with my rock-hard dick straining to be free of these pants. To be in her hands, her mouth, her pussy. I would kiss her and send her falling back on the bed before taking what I know now is mine.
What’salwaysbeen mine.
Her footsteps reverberate on the floor.
Fuck.
She throws open the door. I’m already jumping over the side of the staircase. Darkness shrouds me as I hang onto the wooden steps a few feet off the ground. I have to get out of here before she or anyone else discovers me.
Her door closes again, and I finally exhale.
My. Fucking. Name.
CHAPTER SEVEN - ANDI
THERE’S A LINGERING tension between Maddox and me that I can’t put my finger on. It’s almost like a longing for him, to touch him, to smile at him, laugh with him. It isn’t in cheesy jokes back and forth or the picking on one another that I’m accustomed to with him.
It’s a craving energy.
I felt it in the small smile he gave me this morning over breakfast, in the licentious gleam in his eyes when he stared at me over his coffee cup.
And, most especially, I feel it in the back of the Escalade where we are now. It’s so thick that gravity has me edging closer to him each time I shift in my seat.
How are you feeling today?Maddox texts me from the opposite side of the bench.
My gaze drifts his way, and I find him watching me. I wonder if he’s as eager to learn if last night affected something deep within my soul as I am to know if it did him.
Because it had.
I’m here, I reply, and it’s the best way to describe the numbness I’m trying to ignore. Every instinct within me has told me to shut down and mask, dissociate from the rest of the world, throw myself behind my camera, and ignore everything.
That’s the only way I’ll survive the anxiety of not only possibly seeing Adam again and being back in this town but also the sudden want to get closer to Maddox.
It’s terrifying, and I know I shouldn’t want him as badly as I do. I know I shouldn’t put him at any risk of his friendship with Reed or the band and the career he’s worked so hard for.
I want to be alone with him. I want to know if he’s feeling this same thing. However, the very thought of what might transpire is a different sort of scary that I’m not used to. I’m used to the genuinely anxious horror. The monsters under the bed and the creeps at night. I’m used to the scare of physical violence—of a mother screaming and running after me with a knife, of a boyfriend beating me and being so good to everyone else. I’m used to the abuse life has thrown me, and I know how to shout back at it.
However, this couldn’t be more different.
Thank you for last night, I text him.
Maddox reads the text, and for a moment, he simply stares at the screen as if he’s trying to think of how to reply. A numbness swells inside me. I have to swallow out of nervousness.
Maddox finally moves, and I try not to watch him too closely. He avoids looking at me the entire time he sits up and shifts to the middle of the bench seat, his ass on the edge like he only means to chat with Reed.
“I thought we could have some fun at practice today,” Maddox says to Reed as he leans up between the front seats. “Try a few songs we haven’t covered in a while to mix things up. Just jam for a bit.”
“I could use some range stretches,” Reed agrees. “What did you have in mind?”
Maddox is talking to Reed and reaching for me in the back. His fingers graze against mine, and the moment we touch, we flinch as if we’ve never touched one another before. It’s charged and tense. I inhale sharply, yet I can’t take my eyes away from the side of his face or draw my hand away from his, and when our palms sink together, my heart leaps into my throat.
Reed mentions an older song, and Maddox takes out his phone as if he’s looking it up. He connects his phone to the radio and plays it, and while it plays, I see him pull up his messages again.
I mean it, he says.Every piece, beautiful.
“Is that Bonnie?” Reed asks, turning in his seat and referring to who Maddox is texting.
Maddox drops my hand as if it’s on fire and pretends he was just scratching his side. It’s so abrupt that the surprise nearly makes me flinch. I quickly pull out my camera and pretend to be going through photos from the day before.
