Page 21 of Maverick (The Bull Riders #3)

Chapter Nine

Maverick

I let the hot spray of water sluice over my head. Tonight’s been an absolute shit show. My second shower, and now I have her staying down the hall from me.

It’s ridiculous.

My whole body throbs. The sex was… Now that my head has cleared a little bit, the sex is even more amazing. All I can think about is how she tasted. How it felt to sink inside of her. Now that I’ve cleared out some of the guilt, and it’s weird that acknowledging Sadie made me feel less guilty.

But maybe that’s it. Maybe part of it was needing to have some honesty with Stella. Now she understands. She understands why I can’t give her a whole ass relationship, or even half of one. I gave my heart away a long time ago, such as it was, and I don’t intend to ever do that again.

But damn… I’d give my body to her. Over and over again.

She’s my fantasy.

I feel a little bit guilty thinking about that. But then, I’ve felt guilty. Because about the time my fantasies shifted from wishing that I could be with Sadie again, to wanting to rail Stella Lane, things got a lot more complicated for me.

But here I am. Complicated.

Yeah. It’s all complicated.

It’s too easy to imagine being with her again. Too easy to imagine going down the hall and pulling her into my arms. Stripping her out of those ridiculous pajamas.

I’m sure that I hear the bathroom door open. And then footsteps. I turn and look through the glass door. I see the shape of her. No way.

That girl…

I’m about to tell her to go away. I’m about to tell her she has no boundaries even as my cock gets hard, but then the door to the shower opens, and she’s there. Naked, holding a condom.

“Maverick–”

I don’t say anything. I can’t think. I can’t speak. I wrap my arm around her waist and I pull her into the shower. I claim her, kiss her. Consume her. I’m so desperate for her it’s like I didn’t have her just a couple of hours ago. I’m so desperate for her it’s like I haven’t had sex in years.

But I guess outside of this, I haven’t. The drive that I felt to take her in the first place was beyond me. It was something entirely out of body. Something that I couldn’t control. I don’t want to control it now. All I want is her.

I push her up against the shower wall, feel her water-slick skin, her softness. Her curves. I cup her breast, angle my head so that I kiss her deep as I move my other hand down to her hip, then push my hand between her legs, feeling her to see if she’s wet for me.

She is. Of course, she is; she’s the one who came in here with the condom. I didn’t expect it.

But then, I didn’t expect her. I didn’t expect her to have a hunger that matched mine.

It seems impossible, improbable, and more than amazing.

A miracle that I damn sure don’t deserve.

I’m giving in to something dangerous here. But I don’t have the strength to turn away. Not now. So I kiss her, harder. Put that sweet body right up against the wall and move my hands over her curves. She’s whimpering, arching against me. It’s the hottest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen.

The drive that I feel is insatiable. It’s beyond explanation. Beyond anything. I need to be inside of her. That desire drowns everything else out.

I grab the condom out of her hand, tear it open, roll it over my cock.

I need it. I might even say that. That I need to be in her. That I need to fuck her. Need to have her.

All while I kiss her, grab her thigh, and drape it up over my hip, thrust into that tight, wet heat as I have her over and over again.

As I take us both to the edge, again and again.

She’s whimpering, rolling her hips against mine.

I reach between us, and I move my thumb over that sweet clit.

She cries out my name, her internal muscles clamping down hard on my dick.

I pound my fist against the wall by her head, try to hold back.

Try to keep this going as long as I can.

It’s been so fucking long. So long since I’ve known the touch of a woman.

Since I’ve been close to someone. And now there’s her.

Now there she is, in all her glory. Toned, athletic, beautiful. Stella.

Brave, impulsive, ridiculous. How much of it is that she is twenty-four, and how much of it is that she is determined? An enigma. Different from anyone that I’ve ever known. I can’t be sure of the answer to that question.

I only know that she’s put some kind of spell on me, and I don’t even want it to go away.

Because what I want is her. Her body. Her mouth.

I drive myself into her, over and over again. I lose myself. It’s the most blissful feeling I’ve had in five God damned years. To just lose track of myself for a second. To lose everything except what it feels like to be in her.

Then she says my name, and I lose it completely. It brings me back to the moment, but the moment doesn’t suck. I come on a roar, my voice bouncing off the shower walls.

I step back from her, leaning back against the wall across from her. “Fuck,” I say.

“Sorry. I guess you wanted to be alone.”

“I don’t know what I want,” I say.

Honest. Maybe a little bit too honest. I’m not sure that I am glad that I said that. But I’m not sure about much of anything.

“That seems out of character.”

I shut the water off.

“You don’t really know my character.” I get out of the shower, take the condom off, and throw it in the trash basket.

I stand there for a moment. I didn’t plan this.

Didn’t plan on reigniting my sex life. But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t happy with it.

Happy. What a weird word. A loaded word.

It’s been so long since I was actually happy, I’m not sure if it’s the right one. Yeah. I’m really not sure.

But it doesn’t suck.

“I can… Go back to my room.”

“Not right now,” I say.

I don’t know that I want to take her into the room that I used to share with Sadie. I don’t know that I can. But I don’t want her to leave just yet. So there has to be some space between those two things. Thankfully, she doesn’t turn tail and run.

I consider what to do with her for a long moment.

It makes sense to me to put off being away from her for a bit.

It makes sense to me to keep her with me.

But I don’t want to take her into the bedroom.

I don’t even especially want to sleep in a bed with her all night. But I don’t want to be done with her.

“What’s your favorite movie?”

She wrinkles her nose, looks at me like I’ve grown a second head. Maybe that’s fair enough.

“I don’t know. I can’t think of one off the top of my head.”

“You can’t think of even one off the top of your head?”

“How definitive are we being here? How favorite does it need to be? I think that’s valid.”

“Yeah. That is valid. No pressure. Favorite movie that you can think of right now.”

“Two Weeks Notice.”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“It’s a rom com.”

“Oh, good,” I say.

“Well, you asked. And why?”

“Because I thought we could maybe watch something.”

The look on her face is something I can’t quite read. Her cheeks go pink, and I think she looks happy. Maybe I have trouble with happiness in others as well as myself. It’s just been a long time since I’ve made anyone happy.

A lot less time since I’ve made someone come, though. So there’s that.

“I’d like that,” she says.

I feel seized with the urge to wrap her in a blanket.

Something. I don’t want to cover up her body, but I do want to just…

I want to give her something. For everything that she just did for me.

Which sounds more transactional than I mean it to.

But I feel like she gave me something real.

Something soft. Something sincere. I don’t have softness or sincerity, but I do have some blankets.

That’s when I decide to take her hand and lead her from the bathroom.

I take her down the hall to the guest bedroom that she’s staying in.

That’s where I find her pajamas on the floor.

I pick up that cute pajama top and put it over her head.

Help her get back into her pajama pants.

Then I take a blanket out of the closet, and drape it over her shoulders. She blinks quickly. “What is this?”

“I want you to be comfortable. For the movie.”

I’m wearing my sweats, and nothing else. What I don’t do is pick her up like a little bundle and carry her down the stairs, even though I want to. That’s a little bit too far.

Instead, I lead the way down the stairs, and she thumps behind me, wrapped like a ghost in the white blanket.

It’s oddly domestic, and yet doesn’t feel like my experience of domesticity.

Neither my childhood version, nor the version I had a bit during my marriage. There’s nothing comfortable or familiar about this. Nothing painful or frightening either.

“Have a seat on the couch,” I say.

She obeys without argument, which I find weird. Maybe I really did screw her brains out. God knows I’m not sure where I left mine.

“You just want to… Watch a movie?”

I don’t want to get into the minutiae of my thought process. I don’t really want to share everything that I was just thinking with her.

“Yeah. I don’t think I could sleep now if I tried.”

She seems to consider that. I grab the remote and fiddle with the TV until I find a streaming service that has the movie that she mentioned.

Then I put it down and sit beside her.

There’s a space of couch between us, which I realize isn’t the customary way to watch a movie with somebody that you just had sex with. But she doesn’t move to close the distance between us, so neither do I.

At first, we just sit there. I’m not really taking much of the movie in. I’m more marinating in the strangeness of all this. That someone is in my house. But I’m sitting with them on my couch.

That I just had sex. That we talked about Sadie. And screwed in my shower.

All of that.

She suddenly makes an exasperated-sounding sigh and scoots closer to me. The movement is sudden, and not at all subtle.

“Yes?”