Taken by Storm (18 page)

He grabbed her chin between his thumb and forefinger and pulled her head up. “You don’t say anything I understand, so stop talking before you piss me off again.” To make sure she did, he lifted his head and kissed her, sucking her bottom lip, then her top before closing his mouth over hers and claiming her with his tongue.

His slow, rhythmic thrusts urged her to rock against him. She couldn’t help herself, or the tickling, burn of desire that had to be sated between her legs. She was so wet, she could feel the dampness as she slid against him.

Their kiss broke, and she rested her forehead against his as they panted and she rode him. He ran his hands up the back of her thighs not stopping when his fingers traveled under the legs of her shorts and reached the edge of her panties.

Maddie was dying for his touch. She whimpered when his fingers stopped their progression. MJ groaned and ran his fingertips over the thin material. “Fuck, you’re dripping wet.”

She gazed into his eyes, silently begging. He pressed his lips together, and she saw him battling with himself. Then his mouth took hers as he pulled back the scrap of material between her legs and his fingers plunged inside her.

She bucked her hips and moaned against his mouth. He
could always make her come so easily. She was so close. She felt his other hand wiggle under her panties and his finger ran between her buttocks. He teased her opening while the fingers inside her circled and stroked.

He’d never done this to her before. Nobody had ever touched her like this. She melted against his chest, arching her back, giving him access to take more, give more. “God, MJ, that feels so good,” she said.

She closed her eyes and let him take her under. She was all feeling and sensation. There was nothing to her but the places he stroked and teased.

A knot tightened in her belly and grew until she was crazed with the need for release. She held on to MJ’s shoulders, almost afraid, knowing when it hit, she’d shatter.

His thumb found her clit, circled once and she was gone. Blackness spiraled behind her eyes, her blood rushed like thunder in her ears, her body spasmed and quaked.

MJ slowed his fingers as she came down from her orgasm. She realized she’d been biting his shoulder and kissed him where she’d left teeth marks before collapsing back down on his chest.

He rubbed her back and kissed the top of her head.

A calm came over her that she hadn’t felt for over a year since she’d been away from him. Her soul was at ease. It latched onto his and quieted. Without MJ there was a constant clawing and gnawing inside her to find something to fill what was missing. Whatever she did, however she tried to fill the void, it wasn’t enough.

MJ silenced the part of her that was always aching for more. It was a blinding truth that she couldn’t deny. A blinding truth she’d have to live without.

He tucked her hair behind her ear. “Do you love him?” he asked.

She closed her eyes against the assault his words released on her heart. She’d told him she wasn’t marrying Talan. Why was he asking her this? “MJ, I—”

“More than me?” he said, tilting his head to try and see her face.

She tucked her chin to her chest, unwilling to look him in the eye.

“I know you must love him,” he continued. “You wouldn’t even consider marrying him if you didn’t.”

Maddie had aimed to ease his pain, and all she’d done was open the floodgates. She pushed up and held herself above him. “Don’t.” She kissed him. “Don’t.”

Determined to finish what she started, she eased down his body, kissing and caressing his chest, resting her hand on his key tattoo that marked him forever as hers. She trailed her lips down across his abs, pausing at the defined V that led down into his shorts. She knew he liked it when she glided her tongue along the ridges.

MJ sucked in air through his teeth in a hiss and wove his fingers through her hair. Maddie unfastened his button and zipper and freed his hard length from his boxers. She kissed the tip before wetting it with her tongue.

Squeezing his thighs, she took him deep in her mouth,
silently begging for his forgiveness. Not only for the past, but for the future when she wouldn’t ever be his again.

She asked herself for forgiveness as she bobbed her head up and down his shaft. She hurt herself as much as him. More. She sacrificed her entire life to make sure his heart was protected from the awful secret his grandfather kept.

It wasn’t fair to either of them.

He was the one she’d planned to marry. He was the one she’d planned to have babies with. He was the one… always the one.

Her desperation to please him had him thrusting into her mouth. He couldn’t help himself, and she loved when she made him lose control. She felt his muscles clench and tremor and knew he was close.

“Jesus, Mads,” he groaned, and spilled himself into her mouth.

She licked her lips and crawled back up his body to lie in the crook of his arm. “Spend the night with me here. Just hold me and don’t let go until morning.”

MJ lifted her chin and kissed her. “I won’t let you go for the rest of your life if that’s what you decide. All you have to do is ask.”

H
e couldn’t believe he had her here like this. Those ice blue eyes of hers had cracked him open. His soul had seeped out and now lay bleeding on the couch downstairs. Or maybe she’d devoured it along with his heart. In either case, they no longer resided inside of him.

God, he hoped this was the right thing to do.

He couldn’t live in fear of getting hurt again.

He couldn’t live without his Maddie.

Entwined on the big bed upstairs, a warm breeze blew over MJ’s bare chest. He twisted a piece of Maddie’s hair at the back of her neck around his finger. He watched her chest rise and fall as she slept, her skin a silky shimmer in the moonlight.

Above them, he could barely make out the etchings in the wooden beam that ran the length of the room. Two hearts with two different sets of initials inside. M.R. + R.D in one. A.W. + I.B. in the other. Even if he didn’t know Rachael’s last name, who the first set was in reference to was obvious, Merrick and Rachael, but he had no clue about the second set.

Maddie murmured in her sleep and rolled over to her side. She’d been out cold for a couple hours, but MJ couldn’t
sleep. He couldn’t believe she was here beside him again. He couldn’t stop the fear he kept swallowing back. Fear that this was only one night and she’d leave him again.

MJ rubbed his eyes trying to clear his mind. He couldn’t lie there awake any longer with his thoughts running rampant. He needed air. Slipping out of bed, a flash of light outside caught his eye.

It was a round orb deep in the trees, like a flashlight in the distance. MJ moved close to the window and pressed his palms against the pane. The circle of light was moving, getting closer, making a jagged path through the brush.

He padded silently across the room, down the spiral staircase and out the front door. Under his feet, the wooden deck was still warm from the sun even though the moon cast long, obscure black shadows across it.

At the side of the deck, he pushed his fear of heights aside in favor of curiosity and leaned over the railing. His mind kept yelling,
curiosity killed the cat,
and giving him visions of lying on the ground below with a broken neck for being so stupid. He told his mind to shut the fuck up and tracked his eyes through the trees, straining to find the light.

There it was, even closer, but completely still.

Abruptly, it was gone, but MJ caught the sound of branches snapping underfoot and a flash of long, dark hair in the moonlight.

“Hello?” he called. “Rachael, is that you?”

He had no idea why Rachael would be walking through
the trees, alone, in the middle of the night with a flashlight. If she had such an inclination, she’d stick to the path.

Against his better judgment, or maybe because of poor judgment, he jogged down the tree house stairs to the ground below and trod across the dew-damp grass to the tree line. “Hello?” he said, too low for anyone too far in the trees to actually hear.

A rustle in the brush a few yards in and to his right prodded his curiosity. With measured, deliberate steps, MJ followed the noises hoping to catch a glimpse of light or the mystery woman again.

Reaching the spot where he thought he’d heard the noise, he bent and leaned forward to peer through a grouping of saplings.

Two wide dark eyes stared back at him.

The woman gasped and bolted through the trees.

“Wait!” he yelled. “Who are you?”

She didn’t answer, and he chased after her, sticks and rocks prodding and poking the soles of his bare feet. She wasn’t far ahead. MJ wove his way through the trees and ducked under low limbs. Brambles scratched his legs and snagged his shorts. He heard her panting as she ran, each of her footfalls cracking branches on the forest floor.

Sweat glazed his face and chest. Gnats buzzed around his head. Why the hell did she keep running? Who was she and why was she hiding?

There was a loud snap under his feet and his ankle twisted. He fell with an
oomph
of air being knocked from
his lungs. He rolled through two dense bushes into a clearing and stopped flat on his back on the ground. The woman scrambled to the far side and backed against a tree. In the shadows of the moon, she appeared like some wraith-like being his imagination dreamed up. Her long hair snarled around her face, a white dress torn along the hem from traipsing through the woods.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said holding his hands up in front of him. “Who are you? Are you supposed to be here?” He didn’t think so, or she wouldn’t be running around in the dark hiding in the woods.

“You can’t trust her,” she whispered, her voice deep and raspy. “Everything she says is a lie. Don’t believe what she tells you.”

Her words were a wrecking ball crashing through his mind. “Maddie?”

The woman’s hands moved along the tree bark behind her like she was looking for a secret trapdoor to make her escape. “Don’t believe her,” she said again, and disappeared around the tree into the darkness.

MJ’s ankle throbbed but it wasn’t swollen. He could walk on it just fine, if a little slowly as he made his way back to the tree house and up the stairs. At least it was a distraction from his fear of heights.

A distraction from the mutterings of a stranger—who might have been a delusion conjured by an emotional
breakdown—in the woods. God knew the past few days had taken their toll on his mental stability. Not that he was all that stable to begin with.

Why the hell would some lady in the woods on a remote island be here to warn him against Maddie?

Christ, he was losing his mind.

“What are you doing out here?” Maddie’s voice startled him. He jumped back with his hand to his chest.

“Jesus. Don’t do that.”

She laughed and rested her hand over his pressed against his heart. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Her hair was tousled from sleep, her lips were red and puffy from being kissed. “Why are you awake?” he asked, brushing thoughts of mistrust from his mind.

She wrapped her arms around herself. “I got cold.”

He knew she meant she woke because he wasn’t there. It was hot and muggy, there was no way she was actually cold.

“So why are you out here?” she asked.

He gestured behind him. “I thought I saw a woman in the woods with a flashlight.” He’d skip the embarrassing details of chasing a woman whom he was ninety-nine percent certain was imaginary, tripping and twisting his ankle.

She furrowed her brow, skeptical. “Who would be out here in the woods at…” she glanced at her wrist where she habitually wore her watch, but wasn’t wearing it. “At whatever time it is right now?” She gave him a playful smile. “You’re seeing things.”

He shrugged. “Probably.”

Maddie stepped past him and leaned against the railing gazing out into the trees. “A flashlight, huh?” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Like a glowing orb of light?” She spun around. “Are you sure it wasn’t a ghost?” She launched at him, grabbing his hips to try to scare him.

Maddie had always been addicted to everything paranormal. She read books and watched TV shows about vampires, werewolves and ghosts. For the longest time when they were little, she was even convinced that there was a ghost living in the west wing of the Rocha Estate.

She probably still believed it. “No,” he said, pulling her in close, “it wasn’t a ghost.”

She kissed his chin and trailed her lips along his jaw, standing on tip toe to reach his ear. “Whoever it was, she’s gone now. Come back inside with me.”

At her sultry voice, a flame of lust licked low in his groin. He swept an arm behind her knees and scooped her up, parting her lips in a deep kiss. Whatever his subconscious was warning him against could wait until morning.