His Taste of Temptation: In the Line of Duty, Book 3 (3 page)

He could have stayed and fought for her, but any girl who would sleep with another man and lie about it while her fiancé was overseas fighting for their country wasn’t worth the battle. And after seeing the same thing happen to a few of his comrades, he’d come to learn that long-distance relationships never worked. Since Brad’s work continued to take him out of state, he decided never to get himself in that kind of situation again. No, now he was into casual sex, no commitments.

“Besides,” Jonah said, “Brad can help us turn any space into a bakery. Right, bro?”

“Yeah, sure.” Brad looked at Madison, and when she turned her bright-eyed smile his way, his heart nearly stopped.

She ran paint-chipped nails along the deep hollow of her throat, and as he watched the movement his mouth watered, his tongue wanting to follow the path of her hands. Heat throbbed through him, and his cock thickened once again, aching to pound into her, hard hot strokes that would leave them both sated and breathless and would finally,
finally,
get her out of his head.

“And if something else goes wrong with the place while I’m away, Brad’s your man,” Jonah said.

As Brad pictured himself stepping in for his brother, his mind ran wild with one delicious idea after the other, and he forced himself to cough, hoping it would rattle some sense back into his lust-drunk brain.

“Isn’t that right, Brad?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I can help you out with anything you need.”

Something flitted across her face when she asked, “Anything?”

“Yeah, anything,” he assured her, but when she drew her bottom lip between her teeth, and her eyes glazed over like she had other things on her mind, he wondered if they were still talking about her run-down rental…or something else entirely.

Chapter Two

Madison stepped into Brad’s apartment, dropped her bag onto his scratched and pitted hardwood floor, and spread her arms wide, enjoying the coolness of the place.

“Air conditioning,” she said as her eyes slipped shut. “It’s heavenly.”

Brad’s boots scraped the floor and her lids flicked open in time to see him pick her bag up and place it on the end table next to his tattered sofa.

Jonah darted off to the shower as she exhaled slowly, her nose clearing when she breathed back in. “I think I’ll stay right here for the rest of the summer.”

Brad grinned. “It’s fine by me, but you should know that it’s only a one bedroom.”

“I don’t care. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

He drove his hands into his pockets, pulling his jeans lower on his hips, and his tone was sexy, teasing when he said, “Now what kind of guy would I be to let you sleep on the floor when I have a perfectly good bed you could use?”

Madison swallowed hard, heat curling a lazy path to her sex as she thought back to when she was a hormonal teen with a vivid imagination. She spent many nights in Brad’s bed back then—without him in it. Their parents had been good friends back in the day and when her mom accompanied her dad on one of his many business trips, Brad’s mom always opened her house to Madison. She’d spent many weekends there, and because Brad was usually hanging at his best friend Garrett Andersen’s house, his mother used to put Madison up in his room. God, how many nights had she fantasized about him coming home unaware she was there, crawling in next to her, kissing her, touching her, making love to her all night long?

A loud noise from the street below jolted her out of her daydream. As her skin flushed hotly, she looked for a distraction. Needing a moment to compose herself, she padded across the small room to look out. Realizing Brad’s place wasn’t in the best of neighborhoods, she asked, “How long have you lived here?”

Brad stepped up behind her. The heat of his body engulfed her as he leaned in to look over her shoulder to see what had her attention. “Not long.” His warm breath tickled the fine hairs along her neck as his raspy voice sent a barrage of erotic sensations through her body. “Just since I got back a couple months ago.”

She bit back a breathy moan, her body tantalized by his closeness. She touched a crack in his window, carefully tracing the jagged pattern with her fingertip. “And you accuse me of living in a run-down place,” she managed to get out as his primal essence overwhelmed her.

He gestured toward the air conditioner propped up in the open kitchen window. “Hey, at least I have air conditioning.”

As she continued to trace the crack running the length of glass, he reached around and took hold of her hand. “Careful, I don’t want you to cut yourself.”

The work-roughened pads of his fingers scraped over her skin, reducing her once more to that hormone-driven teen of years ago. It would be so easy to lean back, just for a minute, to see if he felt as good in real life as he did in her dreams. Instead, she stared at the crack in the glass and asked, “Do you plan to stay here long?”

His hand lingered on her wrist. “I’m not home much, so it doesn’t matter where I crash. This place is as good as any when I’m not on the road.” When she heard the melancholy in his voice, she turned to face him. His jaw flexed, and when she caught the intense way he was looking at her, desire singed her blood. He dipped his head, his gaze settling on her mouth, and for the briefest of moments she thought he was going to kiss her.

He inched closer, close enough for their breaths to mingle, and she wet her lips, the sweet taste of cherries dancing on her tongue. God, what would it be like to kiss him, to taste the sweetness of his mouth?

Struggling to form a coherent sentence, and looking for a distraction because she was sure she had to be misreading him—every instinct she had told her she was—she asked, “When do you go back on the road again?”

“At the end of the month.”

“After Jonah returns?” she asked.

At the mention of his brother, his nostrils flared and he jerked back like a grenade had just gone off. “Yeah,” he said, his tone harder. “When Jonah returns.” There was a moment of tense silence as he hovered close, then he spun around and walked away from her. “I…uh…I have to get some supplies from storage.”

As she watched him stalk to his door and slam it behind him, she once again wondered if the brothers had had a fight. She stepped away from the window and walked around his sparse apartment, thinking how desolate the place looked. It occurred to her that Jonah traveled just as much as Brad, but he at least added some personal touches to the bedroom he rented from her. Brad didn’t just live like a bachelor, he lived like a nomad. With no commitments or attachments, he was ready to pick up and leave at a moment’s notice.

Madison gave a sad shake of her head, understanding his ex-fiancée had done one hell of a number on him. Too bad really, because Brad was a great guy who deserved a house full of kids and happily ever after, considering there was a time when he wanted that. And she couldn’t forget he had that big old Victorian house just waiting for him, yet he preferred to live in a one-bedroom rental. Madison’s heart grew heavy. What would it take for him to get over his ex’s betrayal and move on? Of course, for all she knew, he could be pining for Jocelyn, hoping she’d come back to him.

Brad returned, clutching what looked like a welding torch, just as Jonah stepped from the steamy bathroom.

Jonah raked his hand through his wet hair, tossed his bag over his shoulder and gave Madison one last look before he made his way to the door. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay? You still look flushed.”

She stifled a yawn, exhaustion from the cold once again pulling at her. “I just need a shower,” she assured him.

He pointed toward the bedroom. “And maybe a nap.”

At the mention of Brad’s bed and his offer to share it with her, need gathered in the pit of her stomach and her sex clenched with want.

Once again a strange noise crawled out of her throat and Jonah eyed her with uncertainty before he slapped his brother on the back. “Promise me you’ll take care of her while I’m gone?”

Brad turned, averting his brother’s gaze. “Yeah, sure. I promise.” Then he looked at Madison just as a sneeze wracked her body. Something in his face softened when he said, “I’ll lock up on my way out. There are clean towels in the closet. Go get a shower. You know where the bedroom is if you want to lie down. I’ll be back after I get your plumbing fixed.”

She glanced at the clock. “I have an eleven o’clock appointment at the country club. I have cake samples made back at the bakery and need to bring them to the bridal party.”

Brad gave an understanding nod. “Okay, then. I’ll come back and get you before I head to your place.”

Madison watched them go and after she heard the lock click into place, she walked into the steamy bathroom. She stripped off her clothes and folded them neatly, then wiped the mirror, hardly able to believe one of her fantasies was about to come true. Of course, in her fantasies, when she climbed into Brad’s shower, he was always in there with her.

She turned on the hot spray and stepped into the stall. After locating a bar of soap on the ledge, she picked it up and ran it over her body. Her eyes drifted shut, imagining it was Brad’s hands on her, slicking over her breasts and toying with her hard nipples. She ran the soap lower, until it was between her quivering legs. She brushed it over her engorged clit and shivered, her skin tingling all over as she indulged in her erotic fantasy for an extra moment.

When the water started to turn cold, she yelped, quickly rinsed off and climbed out. She searched her bag for deodorant. “Shoot,” she mumbled, then glanced at Brad’s medicine cabinet.

She did a quick shoulder check, even though she knew she was alone in the bathroom, but couldn’t help feeling like she was invading his privacy as she inched open the mirror. She peeked inside, and her knees weakened when she found a box of condoms. Madison gulped and picked up the box. It gave her an odd sense of satisfaction to find it unopened. It was silly really. Of course Brad had sex. Hell, so did she! Well, not recently, but still…

She put the box back and nosed around in his cabinet a bit more. She gave a small spray of his cologne, then grabbed his stick of deodorant. She uncapped it and drew in the scent.
Brad…
She applied it to her underarms, recapped it and put it back in his cabinet. Making sure she had everything back in its place, Madison closed the mirror and dressed for her eleven o’clock meeting. Turning her attention to her tangled hair, she took out her blow dryer and flat iron. Once she fought her wayward curls into submission, she slipped in her contacts, presenting Made-Up Madison to the world, instead of “Fatty Maddy”.

Even though she was more comfortable dressed in her loose-fitting clothes and glasses, with her hair tied back in a ponytail, she reserved that look for home, or for when she was elbow deep in pastry dough at the back of the bakery. When she was out on deliveries or showcasing her product to potential clients, she presented a different side of herself, even though she wasn’t all that comfortable in form-fitting clothes. But she was a businesswoman and had to present herself as one, which meant sweats were out.

Feeling more like her old self after showering and dressing, she padded around Brad’s small apartment. She stepped over his laundry basket of clean, neatly folded clothes, honing in on a pair of boxer briefs lying on top of the pile. She resisted the urge to pick them up. With the way her day was going, Brad would likely catch her in the act, or worse, think she was some kind of underwear perv. Instead she gifted herself with a moment to visualize him in them and nothing else, and as a warm whisper curled around her thighs, she plopped down on the sofa, where she grabbed her phone from her purse in search of a distraction. As she scrolled through emails, she heard the key in the lock.

Nervous anticipation welled up inside her and she worked to tamp it down. Good God, she’d known Brad her entire life, and it was damn well time she stopped acting like a love-struck schoolgirl around him. She took a centering breath and squared her shoulders.

“Hey,” he said. Despite the fact that she’d just lectured herself on keeping her cool around him, the second she set eyes on him her knees went weak.

She climbed from the sofa, walked around his laundry basket and tried for normal. “Were you able to get the parts?”

“Yeah,” he answered, then he angled his head, his eyes clouding with something that resembled desire as his gaze trailed the length of her body. His throat worked as he swallowed and, if she wasn’t mistaken, she thought she spotted hunger in his baby blues as he looked at her form-fitting dress clothes. But she had to be mistaken. Brad had never looked at her as anything more than his kid brother’s friend. Then again, she’d only started wearing professional outfits after opening her bakery last year, which meant that until today, until this very moment, he’d never seen her dressed in anything but unflattering sweats that hid her body before. Had never seen her dress like one of the put-together, brazen women he’d normally go for. And from the way he was currently staring at her, interesting flickering in the back of his eyes, it seemed like he was actually noticing her.

Still, she had to be mistaken, right?

Laid out on his side on Madison’s wet, tiled bathroom floor, Brad finished cutting the wall away to give him better access to the pipes, but how he was supposed to concentrate with Madison prancing around in those high heels of hers was beyond him.

She stopped by the bathroom door for the umpteenth time. “You sure you don’t need anything before I go?”

Oh, he needed something all right.

“I’m good.”

She pointed to her medicine cabinet and he watched the way her blouse tightened on her breasts. “I just have to brush my teeth, then I’ll be out of your way.”

“Yeah, okay,” he managed around a tongue gone thick. She went up on her toes, and he shifted restlessly at the sight of her curvy ass in that tight pencil skirt, her high heels giving her lush cheeks a sexy lift.

“Fuck,” he murmured under his breath as he assessed the pipes.

“What?”

“Nothing. There’s just some water still leaking so I have to drain the system.”

“Oh, did you want me to do that for you?”

“Not dressed like that I don’t.”

An almost uncomfortable look came over her face as she gave herself a once over. “My meeting—” she started to explain, but he climbed to his feet and cut her off.

“I’ve got it,” he said, his cock needing a reprieve from the sexy yet professional clothes draping her body before he did permanent damage to himself. Honestly, it didn’t matter what she wore. Even dressed in sweats she rubbed him the wrong way, or the right way…or…fuck…if only she’d rub him.

He took the stairs two at a time until he reached the basement. He found the water tank and went to work on draining the system. Once complete he hurried back upstairs. He stepped back into the bathroom, and his feet splashed on the water still pooling on the tile. The hurried sound of Madison’s high heels clicking on the stairs behind him had him spinning around.

Her voice sounded rushed when she rounded the corner and said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you… Whoa!”

She hurried into the bathroom so fast, her body crashed with his. His feet slipped on the floor, and he tried to grab on to something to right himself, but the impact had him faltering backward.

“Shit,” he yelled, knowing he was going down for the count and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

His boots went out from underneath him and he fell backward with an undignified oomph, Madison crashing to the floor right along with him.

His head connected with something unforgiving on the way down, but he couldn’t concentrate on the pain shooting down his arm, not when Madison’s floral hair fell over his face in a tumbled mess, and her soft body landed on top of his in the most erotic ways.

“Sorry,” she squeaked out. “I didn’t expect you to be standing there.”