Chapter Eight

It was clear to Maddie as Cole approached her that he had an internal battle going on. He put his hands on her shoulders. “I thought this was going to be a cut and dried deal. I use you, you use me, we both win. Only now I know that you’ve been hurt, and I don’t want to add to that. I don’t want to use you, but I’m going to.”

The part of Maddie’s heart that she kept walled off wanted to reach for him like a flower seeking the sun’s warmth. But she knew what he wanted, and she couldn’t serve up her grandfather on Cole’s altar of revenge. “Don’t overthink this. We agreed that it’s just sex.”

“What’s it going to do to you emotionally once you and I become lovers and then I destroy your grandfather? When your family is left completely penniless? When the Russell name is dragged through the mud in the media like mine was?”

“I don’t believe you’ll follow through on your threats. I think you’ve been bitter for so long you’ve forgotten that underneath all that you’re a good person.” She lifted her hands and turned his face toward hers when he looked away. “That you have a heart with a giant capacity for giving and loving.”

“We did agree it’s just sex, and it’s better for you if you remember that.” He reached up and gently pulled her hands down. “I will follow through, and I will crush anything that stands in my way.”

Maddie freed her hands from his. “The fastest way to self-destruct is to harbor revenge.”

“The fastest way to wimphood is to let people walk all over you.”

“Forgiveness means freedom,” Maddie said quietly.

“Justice does,” he countered.

“Fine, but right now I want to see how good you are at breaking a sweat.”

“Maddie, I told you—”

“Relax. This isn’t about me getting you naked. The closet door is stuck, and I can’t get it open. I need to put my clothes away.” She started up the stairs and paused on the second story landing to read a text from her sister. Apparently their father had sequestered their grandfather at a villa in Costa Rica. Because of her grandfather’s dementia, her father was taking control of what remained of the family fortune. A fight was brewing between her father and his brothers over who would get dominion. Maddie rubbed her forehead. She wasn’t concerned about what was left of the family money. All she wanted was to make sure her grandfather was taken care of.

“Trouble?” Cole asked as he came up behind her.

“Not at all,” Maddie said as she tucked her phone out of sight. If she told Cole where her grandfather was, he’d go after him, and she couldn’t allow that. She walked into the bedroom, but Cole stopped in the doorway.

Maddie waved him forward. “I promise I’m not going to handcuff you to the bed.” She put her hands on her hips and grinned. “I don’t know which box my handcuffs are in.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the door, is there?”

She went around the bed and gave the closet door a hearty yank. “See?” She winced as soon as she lowered her arm. “I think I pulled my shoulder.”

Cole came around her to try the doorknob. He managed to yank it open after the second try, and when he did, a cascade of haphazardly stacked boxes tumbled forward from a shelf.

“Be careful!” Maddie rushed forward to help, and a box caught her forcefully in the center of the back, pushing her against Cole.

He tried to stop their forward plummet, but it was useless. She landed with her face pressed against his abdomen. His hands covered her ears as if he’d tried to protect her head. Maddie couldn’t help it. She started laughing.

Cole leaned up on his elbows. “You think nearly getting beat to death by boxes is funny?”

“No, I was thinking if my head slammed into your body a few inches lower, you’d be spending the night with a bag of frozen peas.” She scrambled off him but was still chuckling about the mishap as she rubbed her shoulder.

“Turn around. Let me see your shoulder.”

Maddie turned and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Cole. He gently pressed his hands against her. She let her head fall forward and bit back a groan. “It’s been too long since I’ve had a massage.” His hands worked magic on her body, and her muscles relaxed. “Oh, that’s good. Right there. Mmm.”

“Maddie.” His hands stilled on her shoulders. Then he let go.

“My back feels like it’s going to bruise.” She went to the boxes. “What’s so heavy in these?”

He joined her and thrust his hands into his pockets. “Books for the mobile library in Cutler County.”

Maddie opened one of the boxes. Cutler County was one of the poorest in Butler Field and so rural that the population was less than five hundred people. Getting a consistent internet connection there was a gamble, and most residents couldn’t afford that luxury. She picked up a couple. “These are new books.”

Cole took one of them from her and ran his thumb across the title. “I thought this would help some of the kids until the area builds up a little.”

“That’s why you go back to Butler Field on your business trips, isn’t it? You’re trying to build up Cutler County?”

Maddie was amazed at the transformation in Cole as he began to speak. “The kids there…especially the teenagers, they don’t have much to do or to look forward to. A lot of them are like strays. They roam the streets with nothing to do and no one to care.”

“You lived out at the far end of Cutler County.”

He nodded and lowered the book back into the box. “Yes.”

“Mom mentioned a new school being built out that way, but no one knows who… You’re the one doing that?”

He nodded.

“And the grocery store…you’re moving jobs into that county.”

“I only helped with the financial backing. If the people have the means to provide for themselves, then maybe the kids will end up better off. It’s no guarantee but—”

Maddie couldn’t help herself. She flung her arms around him in a hug. “I knew I was right,” she whispered against the side of his neck. “You do have a good heart.” She stepped back.

“I’m not a hero.”

His voice was sharp, his emotional “keep out” firmly in place, but Maddie ignored it, wanting him to see what she did.

“Tell that to the people whose lives you change.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Think you’re a good person? Look at you like I want you? Because I do.” She ached with the need to be with him.

“Don’t read something in me that doesn’t exist. You’ll end up disappointed or with a broken heart.”

“I don’t think so. I know the score. Besides, you said it yourself. You don’t want to use me.” Maddie stepped closer.

“Exactly.”

“Which only goes to prove me right about your heart.” She brushed her lips against the side of his mouth. “I’m ready whenever you are. Kiss me. I want you to touch me, and I want to touch you. Everywhere.”

His eyes darkened before he pressed himself against her, walking her backward to the bed.

The mattress hit her in the back of her legs, and she let go, let herself fall. Cole put his knee on the mattress between her legs and balanced his weight on his arms. “I will take you, and it won’t mean anything to me. Do you understand that?”

“Same here,” she said. Wanting him to kiss her, Maddie focused her attention on his lips. She wanted to taste him, to feel him against her.

He lifted her up farther onto the mattress in one easy move as Maddie held onto his forearms. Then he lowered his body, settling between her legs, letting her feel the evidence of his desire.

Maddie loved the weight of him, and her head spun from the force of longing. She wanted him inside of her, wanted to see his eyes darken when the awareness sank in at the same moment that he did. His dark gaze swept over her face, paused briefly on her lips, then met her eyes. “Are you sure this is what you want? Because if we do this, there’s no going back.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she groaned out, wondering what else she could do or say to prove that she had thought through the consequences. Contract or no contract, this was what she wanted, what she’d wanted since the first time she’d laid eyes on him.

Still, he hesitated, and it was then that Maddie realized despite his revenge plot, despite him acting like he was closed off, there was gentleness in his eyes.

She decided to take matters into her own hands. She brought her lips up to meet his and kissed him the way she’d been dying to since the night of the ball. She drank him in and whispered against his lips, “I want you.”

…

At the brush of her lips against his, Cole knew he could easily become addicted to her. He’d suspected it the night of the ball before he’d known who she really was, and now he was faced with the realization this woman could drive him crazy simply with her lips moving under his.

Her mouth opened, and he drank her in, tasting the sweet promise of what was yet to come. She’d started the kiss, but he took control, caving in to the hunger demanding to be fed. He kissed her gently, then fiercely, taking what she offered.

He slid his tongue in between her parted lips, and Maddie moaned, arching her back up to push her chest against him. Cole dragged his hands up the sides of her body to find her breasts, hating that her shirt was a barrier preventing him from touching her skin.

He rocked his hips, moving against her body, and she tore her mouth away from his in a gasp. “Is this what you want?” he whispered as he drew his lips across the side of her neck and kissed the sensitive skin there.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she said in a husky breath as she tried to kiss him.

He turned his head and rolled from the bed, pulling her to her feet and catching her against him when she swayed. “I want to see every inch of you.” He worked the end of her shirt up until he reached her bra. He pushed it up over her breasts and let out a long whoosh of air as his breath escaped.

She was more than he’d fantasized about. His erection strained to be free as his fingers found the hard peaks of her nipples, and he lightly teased them before he lowered his hand and took one in his mouth.

She bunched her fingers in his hair as he sucked. He tried to unbutton her jeans, and she immediately stopped him. “Hold on a second. Fair is fair. Take your shirt off, too.”

Cole whipped his dress shirt off so fast he damn near got whiplash. When he was bare chested, she stepped closer until they were skin to skin. The contact did nothing to calm the fire threatening to burn him alive. He reached for the button of her jeans again, and this time, she didn’t stop him. He pulled them down her thighs, and she wiggled enticingly. In seconds, she stood in front of him in a scrap of black lace panties that the caveman in him wanted to rip off.

He couldn’t make his brain work as he drank in the sight of her body. He’d thought he’d be prepared for the moment that he’d have Maddie Russell standing before him, ready and aching for his touch, wanting him as much as he’d wanted her. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

He felt as inept as a teenager with raging testosterone full of hope of getting lucky because this was Maddie. The girl it felt like he’d wanted all his life. Beautiful, unattainable, back then. Now his.

He wanted to take her hard and fast, gentle and slow, in ways that would leave them both satiated, nearly boneless. Tangling his fingers in her hair, he urged her head closer, taking a moment to drink in her desire-heavy eyes, her lips, the sweetness of her body.

“This is where the foreplay comes in,” Maddie said with a grin when he’d yet to make another move. “You did agree to that, remember?”

He laughed and lowered his hands to the flat of her abdomen, about to show her what was in store, when his phone rang insistently. Cole’s first instinct was to hurl it against the wall. His second was that the reason for the call might be important. He answered impatiently, listened, then said, “I’ll be right there.”

Maddie pulled the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around herself. “What’s going on?”

“Something that I need to take care of at the office.” He’d never hated phones as much as he did at that moment.

“Is it anything I can help with?”

“No.” His body throbbing with unfulfilled need, Cole grabbed his shirt and put it back on. “We’ll pick up where we left off when I get back.”

“Fine by me.” Her sultry smile slipped, and she bit her lower lip. “Was the call about my grandfather?”

Cole hesitated, then decided to tell her. “My investigators found him in Costa Rica, but something tells me you already knew where he was.” She looked away, and the action let him know his words had hit the mark.

She looked back at him defiantly. “I don’t feel guilty for not sharing that information. I told you I would protect him.”

“And I told you that you wouldn’t be able to. Not against me.” Cole strode toward the doorway. “I will get him and drag his ass back to the States. He’s going to pay for what’s he done.”

“He was the only one who cared about the heartbroken little girl I once was. Please.” Her eyes glistened with tears.

Cole looked away from the pleading expression on her face and braced himself with his hands on the doorframe. He fought the surging emotions. The bastard in him wanted to walk away, wanted to get to Samuel Russell, but the emotional wreckage he’d learned about in Maddie’s life kept him rooted to the spot. He silently cursed himself as the thick ice encasing his heart thawed enough to make him turn and face her.

He didn’t know if he believed her, and he wouldn’t make any promises, but for tonight at least, he wouldn’t do anything. He took out his phone and made a quick call to Jake to let him know he wasn’t coming in after all.

When he hung up, Maddie took a deep, shuddering breath. “Thank you.”

“Not going after him tonight is a postponement, not an agreement to stop.”

She nodded and crawled onto the bed, stretched out, then yawned. After a second, she patted the empty spot beside her. “Do you want to continue?”

He was still revved up, but he sensed the vulnerability, her need for something more than sex. “We can wait,” he said, his body wanting to weep from frustration.

“I am a little tired.”

He started to leave.

“Stay?” Her eyes were wide, needing the comfort of a friend, of someone who cared.

Even knowing that would never be him, he moved to lie beside her. She slipped closer and put her head on his shoulder. Then with a deep sigh, she drifted off, leaving Cole awake with the past clawing at him once again.