Tempt Me
The woman in her wanted that dependence—that tie between them—but the counselor knew it wasn’t healthy. “Adam.” She turned on his lap and cupped his face in her hands. Her feelings for him bubbled to the surface, making her chest ache and her voice raw. “Baby, you need to stay clean for yourself, not for me. You can’t fully recover that way. What happens to you when I’m no longer in your life?”
He went very still, his eyes clouding with hurt or anger or some combination of the two. “Are you still planning on leaving?”
“Breaking it off would be the most logical thing to do,” she said. Especially now that she knew he had latched on to the wrong reason to fight his addiction.
His gaze shifted to her forehead, and he sucked a deep, ragged breath into his chest. “Fuck.”
She touched her fingertips to his chin and waited until his stormy gray eyes focused on hers. “Sometimes a girl has to listen to her heart instead of her head.” Because even though her heart was blind and dumb, it was still clever enough to befuddle her head with constant thoughts of Adam.
His arms tightened around her. “What’s your heart say?”
She clutched the fabric of her dress over her chest. “My heart says you rock.”
He chuckled and pressed a kiss to her temple. “But your head doesn't say that?”
“Nope. My head says you're trouble.”
He chuckled. “Smart head.” His hand slid over her breast and squeezed gently. “So what does your body say?”
Arousal uncoiled low in her belly as her breast swelled in his hand. “My body screams you rock.”
His thumb slipped inside her clothes and brushed her nipple, rubbing it until it puckered and strained against his maddening touch. She failed to stifle a groan of longing.
“That’s two out of three. Majority rules,” he said.
Adam eased her onto her back on the sofa and shifted his hips to rest between her legs. Supporting his weight on his arms, he stared down at her with the strangest expression on his face.
“Madison?” he whispered.
She couldn’t find the presence of mind to answer—could only stare up into his handsome face with her pulse thrumming wildly in her ears. He’d never looked at her with this level of intensity in the past. She wasn’t sure if her pitter-pattering heart could take the passion behind his gaze.
“I have something I need to tell you. I want you to promise you’ll believe what I say. Don’t question my words the way you question everything.”
“I don’t ques—”
“Shh, baby. Listen and accept.”
“Adam?”
“Believe, Madison. Promise.”
“Okay. I promise.”
He took a deep breath. “I lo—”
A loud knock at the door cut him off.
Chapter Nine
Adam closed his eyes and swallowed. “Fuck,” he growled, squeezing his eyelids together as tightly as possible. “I’ve lost my nerve again.”
Usually overflowing with confidence, his inability to say three simple words—or not so simple words—rattled him to the core. True, he’d never said them to anyone in his life, but he knew love was what he felt for Madison. It was more than gratitude for saving his life and his career and his sanity, he loved her. Not for things she’d done for him or the things she continued to do for him, but because she was his heart. He’d been missing that fragile organ for so long that he hadn’t realized it was gone until she’d filled the hole inside his chest. And now whenever she so much as hinted at taking his heart away again, he couldn’t tolerate the pain. It clawed at him, deep within his chest, threatening to leave him the shell of a man he’d been before he’d met her.
So why couldn’t he just say the words? I love you, Madison.
Because maybe she wouldn’t say them back.
A second more vigorous knock rattled the door. “Yo, Adam!” someone called from the hall. “Before you get too naked, I've got your stuff out here.”
Maybe this wasn’t the best time to tell her. So far their night together hadn’t been the romantic rendezvous he’d envisioned. Life kept kicking him in the nuts.
Adam pecked Madison on the lips and climbed from the sofa. He yanked open the door and grabbed his bags from Jordan, who was usually in charge of the beer. Knowing Jordan was one of their more incompetent crew members, Adam glanced down to make sure the bag he’d delivered was the right one. “Thanks.”
Jordan beamed and opened his mouth to speak, but Adam closed the door in his face before the guy could get a word out. Didn’t these people understand that he wanted to be alone with his woman? Fuck, did he have to hang a sign on the door or what? He tossed his bag on the floor and took a step in Madison’s direction, before he realized a sign on the door was exactly what he needed. Clutching the do not disturb sign as if it were a golden ticket, he opened the door and hung it outside. Jordan was still standing there, looking more befuddled than usual. He opened his mouth to speak again, and Adam pointed at the sign before slamming the door in Jordan’s face a second time. Adam locked the deadbolt and turned toward the living area of the room. Madison lay sprawled on the sofa, one booted foot on the floor, one resting on the sofa arm, and her skirt hiked up just high enough to show the juncture between her thighs. Those panties needed to go.
So he couldn’t tell her his feelings, and he couldn’t erase her disappointment in him, but he could give her pleasure. He knew that for certain. He crossed the room and paused at the end of the sofa, admiring her disheveled appearance and committing it to memory.
“What were you going to say before you were interrupted?” she asked.
His heart slammed into his ribcage. “Um, why are you still in your dress?”
And why was he such a coward when it came to this woman? What was the worst she could do if he confessed his feelings? Okay, he didn’t even want to contemplate possibilities.
Madison offered him a sexy grin and rose from the sofa. She slid her mass of dirty-blond hair over one shoulder and presented her back to him. “Unzip me?”
When his fingers brushed the skin along her spine, her soft, pliable flesh warmed beneath his fingertips. At last, she was allowing him to be gentle with her. Heart full to bursting, Adam pressed his lips to the nape of her neck and kissed a trail down the center of her back as he slowly lowered the zipper of her dress. Her throaty moan grabbed him by the balls and made his c**k rise inside his jeans. Lower and lower he went—tasting and sucking the sweet skin down the length of her back—until he ran out of zipper and was on his knees behind her.