He grasped my wrists. I murmured as he forced my hands over my head. Now I was in trouble, but my core clenched, hard. Wanting. Needing.
“You never visited me.” Maddox grunted between kisses, his lips heating a trail as he captured the soft hollow of my neck. “You never came to check on me. To make sure I was okay.”
No. I hadn’t visited him in prison. I couldn’t.
What was I supposed to say?
His kiss became a bite, pinching the sensitive skin of my neck. It’d leave a mark. Always did.
Maddox loomed over me, pinning me to the wall and savoring the view of my body exposed for his amusement. His pleasure. He forced me still. I once loved knowing that his strength controlled every part of me.
That desire had never faded.
“I was innocent, Josie.”
We both knew that. Difference was, I couldn’t say it.
“We’d broken up,” I whispered.
“You still loved me as much as I loved you.” He reached for me, brushing my cheek, pushing me too hard into the wall. “Don’t lie. You’re still in love with me.”
I shook my head. “We can’t do this.”
His touch cascaded shivers over my body. “Can’t do what? Love each other? Be together? Feel each other?”
Yes, yes, and yes.
I wasn’t ready to face him again. I couldn’t prepare for the heat of his breath on my neck or his rough fingers tugging on the hem of my shirt. He didn’t strip me to see what he had missed this past year. He was after something more…rewarding.
His fingers flicked the button of my jeans. My heart raced my flipping stomach, daring the other to punk out first. This was too much. Too fast.
I had no idea the prison released Maddox, but I should have known he’d find me the instant he gained his freedom. He got drunk on the words I offered, the kisses he took. It would only get worse and better and out of control.
Why was this so hard? I fought every instinct to surrender to my wild, emotionally crazed ex-boyfriend who had taken me so many times before. We couldn’t do this.
My lips refused to breathe the word no, but what would happen if I didn’t refuse him? If I let him back into my life? My bed?
My body.
He unfastened my jeans, and my breath squeezed too tight in my lungs. God, I was unraveling. I was always a few chocolate chips short of a functional cookie in his presence. Now, I melted at his feet. His stare was too much to handle while my memories danced through our every romantic moment and passionate embrace.
I couldn’t free myself from his grip. The zipper on my jeans lowered.
I quieted. He didn’t have to hold me. Maddox could’ve pinned me to the wall with just his raptor gaze.
“If you knew how much I missed you.” His voice boiled, a slow and dangerous rumble. He traced the exposed patch of my belly hiding under the zipper. “I spent every minute of my sentence thinking of you.”
What might have been romantic only made this so much harder. “Maddox—”
“I worried about you.” His hand tightened on my wrists. I heard the bite in his words, but it hung as a fearful question rather than a lunge for my throat. “Were you safe?”
I nodded.
“Don’t lie to me.”
My voice wavered. “I’m not lying. I was fine.”
“Someone burned down your store, Sweets. You almost died. I had nightmares that they’d try again and I wouldn’t be there to protect you.”
My heart pounded. “I’m not yours to worry about anymore.”
“Like hell.”
He released my hands if only so he could hold me with both of his. His lips crushed me, and he pressed me into the wall. I shivered, trapped between heat, muscle, and an undeniable desire that layered me in the goose bumps only he could create. Every shift of his body churned a deeper, desperate urge for his touch, his kiss, his…
Everything.
I groaned against him. Maddox tugged my jeans down. My panties tucked inside the denim. I had only a moment to prevent this mistake.
I was too slow.
Maddox remembered everything about my body, including how to tease where I was the most vulnerable. He stroked between my legs, finding shamefully slick folds. I learned how to pleasure myself once he was gone, but nothing rocked me harder than the flick of his fingers against my clit.
Fireworks and sprinkles and a crash of desire.
It had been so long since anything felt as good as his invasive, dominating, and skillful fingers. I’d humiliate myself by coming before my jeans were even kicked off or I could reprimand him for his behavior.
Before I could tell him no.
“You’ve always been mine,” Maddox whispered, as if he could read the unspoken words falling from my parted lips. “You promised me, Josie.”