Page 27 of The Cuddle Clause

Roman

I drove with one hand on the wheel and the other clenched tight in my lap, knuckles aching from the strain.

The silence between us wasn’t peaceful. It was sharp-edged and brittle, like a pane of glass someone might breathe on wrong and crack straight through the middle.

Every few seconds, I glanced sideways at her, hoping she’d turn her head, say something, look at me…

but Maggie just kept staring out the window like she couldn’t bear to exist in the same space as me right now.

Her arms were crossed. Jaw set. I kept hearing the words over and over, looping in my head like a curse I couldn’t shake.

You just did that to upset Seraphina, didn’t you?

She’d asked that the second we were in the car, yanking the ground out from under me and leaving me flailing.

That was not what it was. Not even close.

But the fact that she thought it was, that she could go from unraveling under my mouth to thinking she was a pawn in some pissing match with Seraphina, made me want to scream.

I clenched my jaw, kept my grip on the wheel steady, and drove.

When we got to the apartment, I killed the engine but remained in my seat, keys heavy in my hand. Maggie got out without a word. She didn’t wait for me. She didn’t even glance at me.

I did a few breathing exercises before I followed her up the stairs, but the weight in my chest kept getting worse with every step.

When I shut the door behind me, it was like a lock sealing around everything we weren’t saying. The apartment was dim and quiet, full of shadows and the ghost of everything that had happened. I took my boots off with more force than necessary. One clattered against the wall. I didn’t care.

Maggie walked straight toward the kitchen, putting a barrier between us. She still wasn’t looking at me.

My thoughts were a tangle of frustration and panic and the ever-louder echo of Lucien’s voice in my head. You need to claim Maggie as soon as possible. That stupid timer ticked down like a bomb I didn’t know how to defuse.

I couldn’t tell her. If I told her, she’d think I had manipulated her. Cornered her. That none of it had been real.

I couldn’t lose her.

I dragged my hands through my hair as I paced the living room once, twice, then spun and faced her, heart threatening to tear out of my chest.

“You really think I did that for her?” My voice was too low, too tight. “To make her jealous?”

Maggie flinched. “I don’t know what you did it for. But I know how it looked when we got back to the table.”

That hit harder than I wanted it to. She wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t make it fair.

I stepped toward her, jaw clenched. “You think I’d touch you like that, look at you like that, just to get under Seraphina’s skin?”

She crossed her arms like a shield. “I think you don’t know what you’re doing anymore.”

My temper flared. “You’re not serious.”

“Oh, I’m very serious.”

“You think I’d fake that?” I snapped. “You think I’d put my mouth on you for the drama?”

“I think you’re a walking contradiction, Roman,” she shot back, eyes flashing. “One minute you’re reminding me of our fake-dating rules and using me as an escape plan, and the next you’re acting like I’m yours. Which is it?”

I didn’t have a straight answer. What I did have was rage and confusion and an aching, clawing need to make her understand.

“You scare the shit out of me, that’s the problem!”

The words cracked through the silence. We both froze. Breathing hard. Eyes locked across the room like we were on opposite sides of a canyon.

She stared at me, lips parted, chest rising and falling too fast. “What did you just say?”

“I said,” I ground out, taking another step toward her, “you scare the shit out of me.”

I didn’t raise my voice this time. The words hung there, bare and honest and ugly.

Because it was true.

I didn’t know what to do about how she made me feel. I didn’t know what to do with the part of me that needed her—not as a fake girlfriend, not as a strategic out from Lucien’s mating mandate, just her.

I needed Maggie.

I stepped closer. She didn’t back away.

“Say it,” I growled. “Say you don’t feel it too.”

Her lips parted, but nothing came out.

That was all it took.

We collided like magnets, mouths crashing together in a kiss that was more war than peace. Her fingers dug into the collar of my shirt, mine found her waist and hauled her closer. I couldn’t stand there being even an inch of space between us.

We stumbled toward the couch, bumping into the corner of the table, still half-arguing through the kiss. Still wrapped in tension and heat and things we didn’t want to say.

Maggie shoved me down and straddled my lap, hair wild, breath ragged.

I looked up at her, dazed and laughing through my disbelief. “So, this is how we’re handling things now?”

Her only answer was another kiss. Fierce. Deep. Reckless.

I didn’t think. I didn’t breathe. My hands found skin, the hem of her dress. We didn’t undress fully… didn’t have the time, the space, the calm. Everything was too frantic, too wired. My shirt was open. Her bra pushed aside.

She was warm and real and in my arms, anchoring me to the world.

I couldn’t tell what part of it was anger and what part was need. I didn’t know whether she kissed me because she despised me or because she didn’t know how else to say don’t go. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

Maybe this whole thing was fucking doomed.

But when she gasped against my neck and clutched my back like she was afraid I’d vanish, I thought that perhaps it didn’t have to be. Maybe this could work even if it scared the shit out of me. Even if we didn’t know how to stop breaking each other’s hearts with our mouths.

We moved together on the couch in a mess of tension and want and words we couldn’t say, limbs tangled and touching each other hungrily. Her fingers curled into the hair at the nape of my neck, and I pressed my forehead to hers.

And for one brief, breathless second, I stopped thinking and just felt.

I lay on my back, lungs still working overtime from the storm that had just torn through us. My chest rose and fell like I’d run miles, but I hadn’t moved. Maggie had done that to me with nothing more than her mouth and a few brutal truths.

Sunlight striped across her shoulders as she hovered above me, casting gold into the hollow of her throat and the bend of her waist. Her hair was a mess—wild and falling into her eyes—and her lips were parted just slightly, still pink from kissing and biting and telling me exactly who I’d been to her tonight.

I didn’t deserve this. I didn’t deserve her. But that didn’t stop me from wanting her like I’d never wanted anything else.

She shifted lower on the couch, the heat of her bare skin dragging against mine as she moved.

I sucked in a breath when her fingers slipped under the waistband of my jeans.

Her hands were unhurried. Gentle but sure.

She pushed the denim down my hips and freed me from my boxers, her knuckles brushing the underside of my cock with just enough pressure that my entire body tensed.

I looked down at her—half desperate, half wrecked already—and her eyes caught mine, holding. No shame. No hesitation. Just quiet intensity. As if she wanted this. Wanted me.

When her mouth touched me, my brain went quiet.

It was like being submerged in heat. Her lips were soft, slow, almost teasing at first, like she was figuring out exactly what I liked and how I liked it.

Her tongue dragged along the tip, just a flick at first, then a steady, deliberate swirl that made my hips twitch.

A groan clawed its way up my throat at the sensation.

She wrapped her hand around me and took me deeper, tongue pressed to the sensitive spot at the underside of my cock.

I gritted my teeth. “Maggie—”

My name on her lips always undid me. But my cock on her lips? That was a whole different kind of destruction.

Her cheeks hollowed out as she took me deeper inch by slow inch. Her tongue swirled around me as she sucked, her lips tightening around me as she worked me over. Each motion was smoother. More confident. More devastating.

I couldn’t think. Couldn’t speak. I dug my fingers into the couch cushions to keep some semblance of control.

My hips flexed without permission. She didn’t pull away. She moaned around me, the sound vibrating through her throat and down my spine like an earthquake.

“Jesus,” I gasped, head slamming back into the cushion. I threaded my fingers through her hair, not pulling, just needing to touch her. To tether myself to her. “You’re gonna kill me.”

She didn’t stop. If anything, she got bolder, taking more of me in one fluid motion, her nose brushing my stomach. I choked on air, every nerve in my body lighting up like a flare.

And still, she kept eye contact.

That was the part that shattered me. She watched me while doing it. She wanted to see me fall apart. She needed to see it.

And I gave it to her.

My thighs trembled. My abs tightened. I was trying—fighting—to hold on, to make it last. But every slick, warm slide of her mouth pulled me closer to the edge. Her hand stroked what her mouth couldn’t take, twisting just right, keeping perfect rhythm with her tongue as she sucked me back in.

My whole body locked up. “Maggie,” I groaned, helpless now.

My hips lifted off the couch, her name breaking on my lips. She didn’t stop, didn’t pull back.

And I broke. Hard.

The world narrowed to the heat of her mouth and the sound of her breathing and the overwhelming rush of her. My climax ripped through me in a violent, glorious crash. She kept her mouth on me until I was shaking, ruined, chest heaving like I’d run through a thunderstorm.

When she finally let go, lips swollen and chin slick, she looked up at me with that same unreadable expression on her face.

I felt bare in a way I never had before.

Not because I was physically undone, but because I wanted more. All of her. Every stubborn, smartass, wild-haired inch.