Maddox
I wake up earlier than usual, sitting upright in one of the clubhouse bedrooms, rubbing my eyes. It’s Sunday, and there’s no work. I could lie in until at least midday, but Eden is on my mind. She’s coming by soon – early, anyway – and I want to be ready when she arrives. I long to see her more than I can logically explain. Women have a code, sure, and I’ve cracked it—that’s certain, too. But my own code? I have yet to figure that one out.
I take a quick shower in the separate bathroom and then get dressed in a t-shirt with The Miseryed’s sigil on the front, jeans, and my boots. Then I walk through the clubhouse toward my office. A couple of the men lay slumped over the tables, snoring, half-finished drinks clasped in their sleepy hands. The clubhouse is a mess, with chairs upturned and a deck of cards scattered on the floor. But that’s a Saturday night at a clubhouse for you, especially when there’s no job on the next day. One of the pledges will clean it up - earn their stripes.
I go into the office and sit behind my desk, leaning back in the chair and firing up the computer. I run the game, and it works smoothly: still no glitches or problems. And there’s the little addition I made. I can’t wait to show her that. It might make her blush, and when she blushes, I get damn horny. I want to see what else I can do to make her blush. Where I can touch her to make her hot. How long she can go for before she gets tired. How many times I can make her cum. Thinking back, I realize I’ve never been this obsessed with a woman. Not once.
Women come and go. You pick them up, have a fun few days (maybe as long as a couple of months, if you’re feeling adventurous) and then let them go. Whenever I’ve been with a woman before, she’s left my thoughts the second I leave her. Fuck, leave—and I forget about her. The only possible exception is Cassandra, but that’s only because she was insane, batshit, and it’s difficult to forget an insane batshit person. But all the others, all the writhing, and fucking… all of it is meaningless.
But now I sit here, a teen on prom night, anxious to see a woman. I laugh into the silence of the office. It’s crazy. It’s unlike me. And yet I can’t deny it’s the way I feel. I can’t deny my cock, and my mind is hungry for her. I want to talk to her and fuck her, and that’s strange. Usually, it’s just the latter, and the former is a boring necessity.
I want to tear her apart and hold her, choke her, kiss her, make love and fuck.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter. I pick up the flash drive and fiddle with it. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”
***
I’ve been sitting here for I-have-no-idea-how-long when somebody knocks on the door. The soundproofing turns the noise into a faint thumpf-thumpf. I stand up, go to the door, and open it. Markus is standing there, his large frame blocking my vision of anything else. His cheeks are faintly red, which tells me that either he has just had to talk to someone he doesn’t know too well; maybe one of the men’s girlfriends has been teasing him. The big lump doesn’t do well against women.
But then he mutters,“She’s here, Boss.” He steps aside in one large stride to reveal Eden.
She came back!
“Thanks, Markus.” I nod to dismiss him, and he lumbers back into the bar. Then I step backward and wave her into my office. “Come in,” I say.
Eden walks in, brushing close to me, and I breathe in the smell of her vanilla perfume. She’s wearing a pale blue dress, which cuts high on her thighs, showing lots of leg, so much leg that it immediately gets the cogs of my dirty mind grinding. Those legs… And when she walks to the desk, I watch the way the light fabric hugs her peach-perfect ass.
I shut the door and walk to my chair, dropping into my seat. “You’re here,” I say.
She smiles. “I’m here.”
“Couldn’t stay away, eh? Was up all night dreaming about me?”
I mean it as a joke – just being cocky ’cause being cocky can be a lot of fun – but she flinches as if I’ve slapped a nerve. “No,” she says, her voice strained. “I was up all night thinking about how silly I was to trust an outlaw criminal with my project, actually.”
“Right, of course.”
Does she wear her bras like that to drive men wild? She’s wearing a white lacey bra. Today the straps of it are riding down her shoulder again. It tempts a man, makes him wonder what it would be like if the strap of the bra fell all the way, makes him wonder how goddamn hot she’d look. Just to bite it, tear it free with my teeth, to reveal those breasts. Goddamn!
“Well?” she says, throwing a pouty expression at me. “Aren’t you going to show me the game? Or didn’t your programmer turn up?”
“You owe me a kiss, remember,” I say.
She rolls her eyes, sassy, sexy.
I gesture to her. “Come round here. I’ll show you now.”
She stands up and rubs the creases out of her dress, pressing her palms against her legs. The way that dress hugs her legs. Does she know what that does to a man like me? Does she know how it pokes and taunts the beast inside of me? Does she know goddamn crazy it makes me?
She walks around to my side of the desk. I turn on the game, and it fires to life. Then I look up at her and watch her face as my trick plays. My face appears on the screen like a company logo, a small animation: I appear and wink. The text beneath the animations reads: You’re welcome. At first, her face is confused, the skin of her nose wrinkling, and then it relaxes, and a cute smile spreads across her face.
“Very funny,” she says. “I hope that’s not all your man did.”
I wave at the computer screen. “Go ahead.” I push backward, the chair moving, and Eden leans forward and places her hands on the mouse and keyboard. I watch over her shoulder as she plays the game. She chooses her character, drives into the city, and starts the mayhem. She plays for around five minutes – the sounds of gunfire and screams filling the office – and then she rocks back on her heels, letting out a quick series of gasps.
“Holy shit!” she squeals. “Holy shit! Holy shit!”
She jumps up and down on the spot, showing me just how bouncy she is, and then she claps her hands together, giddy. She turns to me with an awed expression. “That problem…” She claps her hands again. “Maddox!” she cries. “Don’t you realize… I’ve worked on that problem for ages. I can’t believe you did this for me! A stranger!” Her words are high-pitched. Her sarcasm and cynicism, at least for the moment, is gone.
I rise to my feet and walk up to her, stand close enough to feel the heat of her body. “Now,” I say, looking down at her face, “you owe me that kiss.”
She bites her lower lip, looking up at me under her eyelashes. “A kiss?” she says sweetly. “Is that really what you want?”
I step even closer so that her breasts press into my chest through my t-shirt. They are small, round, pert. When she breathes, it is hot on my neck. The heat rises around us. My cock is rock-hard, super-fucking-hard, harder than it’s been since I was a teenager who first discovered masturbation. I think my balls will explode. My mind is frantic: That cute face, those cheekbones, that wavy sexy careless red hair, that tight body, those long legs, fuck, fuck, those lips, those lips begging to be kissed.
“A kiss?” she repeats, and it sounds as though she’s psyching herself up for something.
I lean in—and meet air. She backs away and heads for the door.
“Where are you going?” I ask. Is she running? Have I read this wrong? I don’t think so, but then why is she . . .
Oh.
She turns the lock on the door and then dances back across the office toward me.
“I think you’ve earned more than a kiss,” she breathes.
This woman is perfect.