“Ellie,” he says my name to stop my nervous babbling. His eyes roam my face, and it feels like he’s actually touching me. He takes a step closer. “God, you are fucking adorable when you’re nervous.”
You calling me adorable is not helping my nerves!
He just called me adorable, but he looks so serious. Not my usual smiley Maddox. Despite his size, Maddox always comes across as gentle. But right now, the way he’s looming over me, all bare-chested muscle and insane levels of eye contact, doesn’t feel gentle at all.
I try to take in a breath, but suddenly there’s no air in this hallway. “I’m sorry, I just…” I screw my eyes closed. “I’m not adorable. I’m such an idiot.”
He eats up the space between us in one stride, until somehow my back ends up pressed against his front door.Oh, holy mother of all creation.
“What have I told you about talking about yourself that way?” He growls and the sound rumbles through every part of me. “You are sweet and kind to worry about me, Ellie, which comes as no surprise, because you’re one of the sweetest, kindest souls I’ve ever met. But let me assure you, I absolutely didnotinvite you to that party to be my chaperone. I’m constantly surrounded by people who drink or take drugs. My brothers sink enough Scotch on an annual basis to keep an entire distillery in business. My sobriety is my responsibility alone. There are many reasons Ilike being around you, but none of them involve you helping me stay sober. You’re not my sponsor.”
He inches forward, closing the distance between us. Now there’s him—a wall of solid muscle—there’s the door, and between them, trapped and trembling, is little old me.
“I do think it’s kind of cute that you were so worried about me.” He takes a half step, and, oh wow, he’s almost touching me. So close I can actually feel the heat of his body radiating onto my skin. “And besides…” he adds.
“Besides what, Maddox?” My voice shakes as much as my legs. Am I imagining this? We’ve been physically close before, but this feels so very different. This is intense. He’s gazing at me like he wants to devour me whole, and there’s a dark fire in his eyes that both terrifies and excites me.
“There is only one vice I’m ever close to giving in to when I’m around you, Ellie.” He pulls his key from his pocket and reaches behind me before quickly opening the door. I stagger back and he catches my wrist before walking inside, pushing me into his apartment along with him. “Now. Tell me why you didn’t come to the party last night.”
I stare up at him, my breathing and my heart rate erratic, but I don’t answer. I can’t.
“Ellie?” He’s saying my name again, in that firm tone I’ve never heard from him before. The tone that makes me want to drop to my knees and call him sir, or daddy. Or whatever the hell he wants me to call him.
I suck in a breath and squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, trying to block out the thoughts flooding through me.This cannot be real. This cannot be real.
Except it is. Opening my eyes again, I find him still searching my face. “You really want to know?”
“Yes,” he says, voice a raspy growl. “I really want to know.”
Here goes nothing.“Because I like you, Mad. I really like you, and not just as a friend. I do love being your friend, and I’m not saying that has to change, but I don’t think it’s enough for me. It’s too hard, being around you so much when I feel this way and when I know you don’t. Or you choose not to, or whatever. I know it’s complicated, and I know neither of us has done anything wrong, but I can’t carry on like this. We can’t keep being each other’s go-to person.”
“Why not?”
“Because it hurts too much, okay? It hurts too much to keep doing this with you when I want so much more,” I blurt out the words like it’s hurting me to keep them in.
As I talk, he’s herding me toward the wall in his hallway. I stumble backwards, dropping my gym bag and my purse onto the floor, delicious panic rising in my chest. Messed-up as it might be, him stalking towards me, so dark and intent, is doing something for me. I’m practically panting here.
“What makes you think I don’t want more too?”
My heart is about to hammer out of my chest. I must have fallen asleep on the cab ride here. This has to be a dream. “Because you don’t date.”
He shakes his head. “I’ve never actually said that, have I?”
“No, but...I’ve never known you go on a date. And there’s, uh, the other thing.”
He shrugs. “Dating can be difficult when you’re celibate, I guess. But I still enjoy the company of women. I still like spending time with them. One in particular, actually.”
He’s edging even closer, an apex predator closing in on his prey. Which I guess is me—the naïve little baby gazelle walking right into the jaws of the lion. This is a whole different side to Maddox. He’s dominant, alpha, hotter than the surface of the sun. “Th-that’s what I mean. The celibacy.”
He runs a single fingertip over my cheek, and somehow I feel that barely-there touch right between my thighs. “I guess I really should do something about that, then.”
I don’t have time to speak, or act, or even think, because Maddox James kisses me. He seals those wickedly delicious lips over mine and slips his tongue inside my mouth.
He kisses me like I’m the air he needs to breathe. He kisses me like I’ve never been kissed before, and it is ev-er-y-thing. Far from being complicated and messy, nothing in my entire life has ever felt so right.
For a long moment, I let him devour me, my back pressed flat to the wall while I recover from the shock and simultaneously melt into the brick. Then his hand slides over my hip, dangerously close to my ass, and it wakes me up from my dream-like state. This is actually happening. I’ve fantasized about kissing this man since the moment I met him, and now it’s really happening.
And it’s better than I could even have imagined.
