the man who’d thrown her out of his house before she was old enough to vote, or the man who simply wanted to take her out for coffee? A date. All Jameson asked for was a date.
What if, indeed…
Her heart beat with nervous excitement. Could she do this? Be brave and strong just a little while longer? After all she’d done tonight, could she walk those few steps down the hall and open that man’s door? Go to him? Be with him?
The thought of intentionally defying TEAM rules went against all Maddie was. After what Alex had done for her, she hated to betray him. She wanted to serve, she did. But for once in her life, she also wanted something that was just hers. To take those few steps, she’d have to be wrong to be right. It’d be the biggest, most daring risk of her life to walk between Eric and Harley’s doors, but—
That solid door between them opened, and…
OhGodOhGodOhGod. There he was, his head cocked, but facing her as if he knew right where she was standing and deliberating and chewing her fingernails. He’d changed into running pants, The TEAM logo stamped in bright gold on the cuff of one pant leg. But no shirt. His wet, tousled dark hair gleamed in the dim light from the kitchen behind her, making him look boyishly handsome even as his body declared he was all man.
“Maddie?” he whispered, his face turned in her direction, but his eyes seeing nothing.
Didn’t matter. Her pulse raced at the sight of all that bare, masculine skin. “Jameson?”
He waved her to come to him, and she did. Quickly, without hesitation. Her doubts fled the second she reached his door, and he pulled her inside his room. So did all thought. The door closed noiselessly, and she was lost in the warm steel of his arms. He pressed her back to the wall as his mouth covered hers and swallowed her baseless worries and fears. They were chest to chest, belly to belly, and thigh to thigh. Both breathing hard.
For the first time in her life, Maddie was exactly what and where she wanted to be. Breathless. With every lick of his tongue, he fed the fire she’d kept sequestered for right darned now. Just for him.
Her fingers seemed to adore his body. Of their own volition, they smoothed eagerly over the sleek, sculpted muscles of his chest. She gasped in his mouth when all ten digits tingled at the dusting of crisp, coarse hairs on that rock-solid plane. Her thumbs searched for the flat nubs of his nipples, found and teased them until he shivered. Then, over the smooth rounded bulges of his shoulders, and onto those massive corded biceps. Jameson wasn’t like Mark or Zack, all pumped and heavily-muscled. He was cut out of leaner, smoother granite that quivered under her touch. A mighty stallion full of eager energy. Right at her fingertips.
By the time her trembling fingers ended their exploration, those carefully banked embers were a roaring fire in her ears, and heat, not blood, pumped through her veins.
She moaned in his hot mouth. Just once. And Jameson took over.
One hand turned into a gentle bracelet around her wrist as he married her wrists together over her head. Holding her taut and still, he kissed his way over her lips and cheeks. Which wasn’t very fair. He’d showered and changed and smelled delicious, but she’d only washed her hands before fixing omelets. For sure, her hair smelled of smoke and sweat, her underwear, too.
Yet with every heated breath over her skin, and with each sweet, tender kiss, he turned her from lowly wait staff into a princess. Maybe even a queen.
Silly, foolish tears stung her eyes when his free hand pulled her borrowed TEAM shirt out of her pants and began a slow exploration of her bare tummy. The tips of his fingers moved up her centerline to her breasts. The difference between this sleek, sure champion and the imposter at his fingertips grew too much. She was drowning in so many sweet, lovely sensations she’d never known before. This whole thing was a mistake.
Yet just as she was about to beg him to stop, Jameson breathed into her neck, “You have a habit of holding your breath when you’re tense, did you know that?”
Her head bobbed even as tears spilled over.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m scared.”
“Of me?”
“No. Of what I want you to do to me. With me.” Even with her eyes closed she