Within five minutes of Madeline passing out, it was obvious that rest would not come for me until I took care of business. The tub was still warm, so I stripped and slipped into the water. Once I lay back with my knees up and my hand fisting my cock, it didn’t take long to finish.

Once I slipped into bed beside her, my skin still hot from the bath, my brain refused to shut down even though my body was spent.

I kept staring at Madeline, taking the opportunity to memorize the curve of her ear and the exact color of her lips. Her courage and commitment impressed me more than the soft lines of her body and the sounds and taste of her climax. When I finally fell asleep, it was to dream of her as a mermaid trapped in a fisherman’s net.

When I woke up Sunday morning, the coolness of the sheets beside me indicated that Madeline had been gone for a while. I fished the robe out of the closet and shoved my arms in the sleeves, determined to find her.

I didn’t have to look far.

She was dressed in her matching robe, sitting on the couch with her feet on the postage stamp coffee table and her laptop open. The smell of coffee lingered in the room, but twenty bucks said that the full cup by her feet was stone cold. Absorbed in her screen, she didn’t even hear me come up to the back of the couch.

“What are you doing?”

“Aaahhh!”

There went the coffee, as her flailing foot connected with the mug. We both watched the liquid arc out and land on the floor like a rainbow. She swiveled around and glared at me.

“You have to stop sneaking up on me like that.” She shut her laptop, her arms not so casually resting on it.

I shrugged. “I can’t help it if you don’t pay attention. What are you doing?” It had looked like she was online, but it was mostly text-based.

“Nothing.”

The robe had fallen open to show off her legs, and if I leaned over the back of the couch and looked down I could peek into the gaping vee above where she’d belted it. Her hair had dried into a wavy auburn mess while she slept, which I swept into my hand and wound around my fist. Her head tilted back when I tugged, so she looked at me almost upside down.

“Tell me?” I wouldn’t force her, but I was curious. “I want to know about you. More about you.”

She wrinkled her nose in thought. “I hate the color pink.”

“Okay. Random, but a good example, I guess.” I moved around the couch, avoiding the coffee-soaked carpet, and sat beside her on the loveseat. There was no need to sit so close, but I liked the way her thigh melded to mine. “What else?”

“I have an irrational fear of spiders and I like sleeping alone.” She arched an eyebrow at me.

It was probably foolish to smile so much this early in the morning, but I couldn’t help it. “I’m sure you could get over it if you tried.”

“The spiders?”

“The sleeping alone.” I tapped the laptop. “So what were you doing?”

For once, her face was easy to read. Should I tell him? What would he think? The indecision in her expression worried me. Was it something really bad? Was she into something horrendous, like human trafficking or—god forbid—decaf coffee?

“It’s personal,” she finally said, tracing the seam of her laptop with her fingers.

I manacled her slim wrist with my fingers, frowning at the faint mark left there by the rope. Damn it. I’d been too rough the night before. “I’m pretty sure we’re past a business relationship now.”

She exhaled heavily—whether in relief, recognition, regret, I couldn’t tell.

“I’m adopted,” she confessed.

I blinked. “That’s… fine?”

What was the big deal? Why was she clinging to her laptop like it was a nuclear briefcase?

She sighed. “Do you know how lucky you are to have a sister?”

“That’s debatable some days.” I snorted. Maybe I was adopted. It would explain why I seemed to have little in common with my mother and Bobbie, who were two of a kind.

She punched my thigh. “Seriously. I would have loved to have grown up with someone to share things with—other than five other foster kids that changed more often than underwear.”

“Share, fight—six of one, half a dozen of another…” I stopped mid-shrug. This was clearly important to her. I pried her hand off the laptop and laced her fingers with mine. “Uh, do you want to talk about it?” Part of me wanted her to say no. I wasn’t good with situations I couldn’t clearly fix.

“Meh. My father died, I guess, and my mother couldn’t deal. Actually, she did deal—mostly Ecstasy, and some meth. When she went to jail, I went to foster care.”

It was a sad story, but I had a feeling it would get worse. “How old were you?”

“About four. But I guess I didn’t talk for a while—I don’t really remember.” She tried to rub the frown from her forehead, like her fingertips could erase the memories. “I only found out recently that she wasn’t actually…”

“What?”

“Dead.” Her voice was lifeless. “She just signed her rights away instead while she was in prison. She didn’t even wait to get out. Poof!” Her hand expanded like an exploding fist bump. “Evanesco! No more daughter.”

I couldn’t even imagine that. My mom drove me crazy, but I knew she loved me to distraction—literally. She was like a kitten with a laser pointer.

Madeline smiled, but it looked fake. “At least I was lucky enough to get adopted. I knew some kids who ended up aging out.”

“Did it happen quickly?” I tried to picture Madeline as a small child.

“I was fourteen.”

Fourteen? What? I didn’t know much about the foster system, but that seemed like a long time to be in it. Or had she been in an orphanage? My imagination went to a weird place where she asked for more gruel, and I shook my head.

“Your mother is still alive then?”

She shrugged. “I guess so. She stared at her lap. “I’ve been kind of trying to look her up.”

My surprise must have shown on my face, though, because hers shut down like an airport in a thunderstorm. Why would she want to search for the woman who basically abandoned her? For that matter, how could anyone give her up like that? I couldn’t even give up a tell at poker.

Her hunched shoulders widened the gap in her robe lapels, drawing my attention. My cock stirred, drawing her attention. “When do we have to check out?” she asked, her gaze on the tent forming in my robe.

“I paid the day rate for everyone today. We have the rooms until six o’clock, but there’s still another retreat exercise today.”

She cocked her head, her gaze shifting from my lap to my face. The freckles around her eyes stuck out against her creamy skin. She was one of those women who looked better without make-up. Or clothes.

“Do you really think this retreat thing is working out?” she asked.

That gap was just too tempting. She shivered as I traced her collarbone with my index finger. “Are you questioning my leadership, Madeline?”

“Not at all, sir.” She sighed. “What form of group torture is planned for today?”

“I’m not sure of the details, but it’s some kind of assertiveness exercise.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I don’t think you need help with that.”

“But maybe you do. And I know you changed the subject. If you want to talk about, uh, your past…” Most conversations I’d had with women about their “pasts” involved numbers, not notaries.

With a pat to my knee, she effectively and patronizingly closed the topic. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.” With a sly smile, she slid her hand further up my thigh.

“Believe me, my ‘pretty little head’ is not exactly ‘worried’.”

I leaned in to kiss her. She tasted like toothpaste, my guess that she hadn’t touched the coffee validated. With one hand, I moved the laptop to her side on the couch. It had left her thighs warm, but I suspected she was even warmer in other places. She sighed softly into my mouth, deepening the kiss. If she was trying to distract me… well, it was working.

“Madeline,” I whispered against her lips. “We can’t—”

“Why not?”

My eyes squeezed closed as her hand wandered into my robe. “Christ. I wish we could, but we’ve got something at nine.” And I wanted to take my time with her. With protection.

“I found something at nine o’clock already,” she said archly, reminding me of our failed strategy at the dinner table two nights before.

My whole body was stiff with need, my blood coursing through my body but going nowhere near my heart.

“Believe me, when I take you it will not be with a clock ticking down.”

With black spots starting to bounce in my vision, I regretfully peeled her hand away. My kiss was an apology, a promise, and a rain check.

“Shower with me?” she said shyly.

God, she wasn’t making this easy for me. “You’re too tempting.” I should get a medal for this. “Rain check, definitely.”

When I prodded her towards her bathroom and I headed for mine for separate showers, I found myself wishing for a violent thunderstorm. It was somewhat ironic that an hour later, I was wishing for lightning to strike me.