CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Maddie
“Madalyn. Dammit. Are you okay?”
As if emerging from some dream, I pulled the pillow off my face and blinked up at the man staring down at me. The man who’d given me the most spectacular orgasm any person in the entire world could ever experience.
My legs were still trembling, my core still pulsing when I recognized how worried he looked.
Then I saw it. Blood. Not much, but enough to be visible.
My first reaction was… good. His fingers had destroyed the tissue that had made me coveted as a prize. I was glad to be done with it, especially knowing it was taken by someone I knew I was coming to care about.
But Xander didn’t look happy at all. Disgusted? No. “Are you hurt?” Just worried.
Pushing up to my elbows, I shook my head, closing my legs. “No.”
His brow furrowed, like he was working through some difficult puzzle. “Is it time for your period?”
I squirmed, uncomfortable with such open discussions. Moving until I was sitting, I shook my head again. “No. It’s weeks away.”
He looked at his hand again, then back at me. Cold shock spread over his expression. “Are… are you a virgin?”
I didn’t understand why he didn’t look happy about it, why he looked so stricken.
Standing, I moved toward him, but he moved away.
“Is that bad?”
He just stared at me, then turned on his heel and stalked into the bathroom. The water turned on, then he was back a moment later. He looked angry now.
“Bad?” he repeated and picked his boxers up from the floor, stuffing his legs through the holes.
I groaned. At this rate, I was never going to have sex. Ever. “Why are you angry?” I asked, genuinely perplexed. It was my virginity. My loss. His gain. At least that was what my sisters and I had been led to believe all of our lives.
He waved his hands around. “Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice was high, a little squeaky at the end.
I waved my hands around too. I was still naked, but I didn’t care. He was acting as if I’d done something wrong and it made no sense as to why. “If it’s such a big deal to you, why didn’t you ask?” I retorted, planting my hands on my hips.
His mouth fell open. “Me?” He sputtered the word a few times. He was genuinely, authentically upset. “Why would I think to ask? What twenty-two-year-old is a virgin now days?”
That took the wind out of my sails. Was I really that unusual? A freak?
Tears filled my eyes, but I lifted my chin, daring them to spill. “My… my parents were very protective.” Dammit. A tear fell, and I brushed it away. “My life… it’s…” How did I explain without shedding light on the truth of who I was?
The anger faded from him, almost as quickly as it had arrived. He muttered something under his breath, a curse most likely. Then I was in his arms, enveloped in his scent and his warmth.
The kindness was nearly my undoing, and I fought desperately for control.
“I’m sorry,” I said when the emotion had been swallowed. “I didn’t think it mattered.” In truth, I didn’t want it to matter. It had been too much of a focus. A tie to my past.
He kissed the top of my head before tipping my chin up until I was looking at him. “Of course it matters. The first time a person has sex is supposed to be special.”
I met his eyes. “It is special. This is special.” I made a sound that was like a scoffing little snort. “If we ever get to actually do it.”
To my relief, he laughed. It wasn’t a ha-ha-ha laugh, but it was enough to feel the tension in the room slipping away. “I wish I’d known.”
“Why?”
He seemed to search for an answer. “So I could have been more gentle or something.”
“I don’t want you to be gentle.”
His cock pulsed against my stomach. “You don’t?”
I pressed against him, lowered my hands to his ass to draw him even closer. “No. I want you to do what you were going to do before that stupid little membrane messed everything up.” I was pouting. I didn’t remember ever pouting as an adult.
He was growing even harder. “It’s not stupid. It’s special.”
“Please stop saying that. I don’t want it to be the focus. I want what we were doing a few minutes ago to be the focus. You. Me. Nothing else.” Moving my hands into the waistband of his boxers, I pushed them down to the tops of his thighs. “Make love to me, Xander. Please. Show me why it’s so special. Take me there.”
He growled, deep and low in his chest, but he didn’t say a word.
Feeling desperate now, I stepped back a few inches. His cock followed, falling until it was touching me again. For some reason, it made me feel powerful. Brave. Brazen.
Wrapping my hand around him, I tried to make a fist, but he was too big for that. I added my other hand, securing him completely in my grip. It was alive, almost a being of its own, pulsing and twitching in my hand as I stroked down to the base.
Xander’s head fell back onto his shoulders as I brought my hands back up to the tip. There was fluid there, and I swiped my thumb over it, felt the warm, slick texture. It made stroking down him again easier, and when more appeared at the tip, I took advantage.
He moaned and raised his head until he was looking down at me again. “You want me to take you there?”
I stroked down. “Yes.”
His hands moved to my shoulders. “There’s no going back. There is no undo button with this.”
I stroked up. “Good.”
His nostrils flared. “I was wrong. You’re not an angel, you’re a witch, and you were sent to cast some spell over me.”
I stroked down. “Is it working?”
His hands moved to circle my throat. “Yes.”
I sighed and stroked back up. “Then for the love of god, please stop this torture.”
His hands squeezed, and his eyes darkened. I swallowed, felt my larynx move under his fingers, but I wasn’t afraid. Because I didn’t have time. His lips were on mine again, his tongue licking into my mouth when I opened for him. Then I was on my back, taking his weight.
“Are you on birth control?”
“No.”
He cursed and pushed away. With fascination, I watched him roll on a condom, watched him lick his palm and move it across the tip.
My heart rate picked up when he moved between my legs, and I began to breathe faster when he positioned himself at my entrance. This was really going to happen.
But instead of connecting us, he looked at me and grinned. “I swear to god, if a kid wakes up, or a dog goes into labor, or aliens land in our backyard, or the house begins to burn, I’m not stopping this time.”
I laughed, and he plunged.
It wasn’t pain, not exactly. It was a stretching of my body to accommodate his.
He held still, and when I opened my eyes, he was watching me closely.
“We did it,” I said, in awe of how our bodies fit so perfectly together.
He chuckled and lowered down onto his elbows. “We certainly did. We made it to step one. Now, I’m going to show you everything else we can do.”
Mouth on mine, he began to move, withdrawing slowly at first. Running on instinct, I wrapped around him, shifting my hips to meet his stroke for stroke.
This was sex.
I was beginning to understand what all the fuss was about.
It was everything I’d ever imagined. Hoped. Dreamed. Even fantasized of.
Pleasure, yes. Fulfillment, yes. Fun, yes.
And something deeper, primitive and raw that started taking over my body and mind. Our connection became everything, my entire universe, and my entire being revolved singularly on the man.
This wasn’t just sharing my body. This was a sharing of the deepest part of myself.
He picked up speed, thrusting faster, harder, our bodies slapping together.
“So good,” he growled against my mouth and hooked an arm under my knee, spreading me wider. With the movement, the angle changed, and I cried out as I stretched, my body burning as I accepted him even deeper, to the very foundation of my being.
I was lost.
No. I was found.
I was with the man destiny chose for me, thumbing its nose at my father and my responsibilities. And I’d be grateful to my mother and destiny’s intervention for all of time.
Opening my eyes, I found him watching me intensely. “Do you feel how much I want you? Can you tell how much I need you?”
I could. “Yes. I need you too.”
Harder, he drove, and I felt my breasts rock on my chest, felt the sheets shift under my back. I felt everything, every sense alive. The scent of our sex making it that much more vivid.
My body tightened, and Xander gritted his teeth but didn’t stop. “That’s right, baby, explode all over me.”
I really thought I might. It was like I was being wound up, like he was turning some key I didn’t know existed.
“Xander.”
His name was only an exhalation of air, and I held on to him tighter as he drove into me. His hand tightened in my hair, and he pulled until my throat was exposed. Then his teeth and tongue were rough on my skin, but I didn’t care.
“Tell me, baby. Tell me what you need.”
There was no need because with his next stroke, I was there.
Jumping. Soaring. Knowing.
He captured my scream in his mouth.
But he didn’t stop, even when I couldn’t breathe or think. As if my orgasm had fed him, gave him strength, he moved with even more urgency.
“Is that what you wanted, my angel, my witch? It’s what I wanted too. And I’m going to want it again. I want to feel that tight little pussy squeezing down on me.”
His words were a surprise and so erotic, a seduction of their own. He drove into me harder, deeper, faster. My vision dimmed, but I didn’t close my eyes. I didn’t want to miss anything about what he was doing to me.
His breathing changed, and it was like I could feel him grow close to his own release. His cock thickened more, spreading me, burning me. I didn’t care.
“Don’t stop.”
He dripped sweat on me, and I loved it. “I won’t, baby. I won’t.”
It was messy. Unexpectedly so. Nobody told me that.
The scents were sharp, and I inhaled deeply of them.
We were loud. The hissing of our breaths, the slapping of our flesh on flesh. My cries, his curses.
It was everything rolled into one amazing experience I knew I’d never forget.
And when I came again, my body contracting around him, I took him with me. Watched his face as he fought it, then surrendered to his need. And I held him as he shuddered and collapsed.
“It will be better next time,” he said as he rolled over, taking me with him.
I was too tired to even lift my head from his sweaty chest. “Not possible.”
But when he made love to me sometime in the middle of the night, then again as the sun rose across the Atlantic, it was true.
And even though I was sore, I looked forward to doing it again.