A Knight In Cowboy Boots (11 page)

Now she regretted the decision not to partition the room. It felt like the bed behind her had a big neon arrow over it.

As Maddie gave the baby his bottle of warm formula, the music changed. Tucking the cover around Jesse, Maddie’s hands trembled as Josh Turner wrapped his baritone voice around her. She flipped on the nightlight behind Jesse’s crib and turned to meet Zach’s gaze. Her stomach suddenly clenched with what felt like fear, though she wasn’t sure what she had to be afraid of. This time, Rachel wouldn’t be calling, and Jesse would sleep for at least a couple of hours before waking up again.

That was it, she decided. There was no way to escape gracefully. But why would she want to?

Zach had a fresh beer waiting for her.

Maddie tucked her legs under her as she sat on the other end of the couch. A deep pull on the bottle helped.

She thought for a minute that they were just going to sit there, looking at each other, and the way he was looking at her made her stomach flutter. Now that she’d settled on the far end of the couch, she couldn’t figure out how to get out of the corner she’d painted herself into.

At last, he said “C’mere.”

“I’m good.” Immediately, she wondered why she’d said that. Maddie dropped her eyes and started picking at the label on her beer.

When she refused to meet his gaze, he finally said, “Do you want me to go?”

She took a breath to speak, but she didn’t know how to tell him to stay without committing to more.

Zach started to stand.

“Don’t go,” Maddie blurted.

“All right,” Zach said, but he didn’t sit down again. Instead he walked over to his iPod and changed the tracks. Josh Turner started singing
Your Man.
Zach flipped off the overhead light, leaving just the lamp by the couch on.

A pleased smile pulled at the corners of Maddie’s lips. She put her beer on the end table as Zach held his hand out to her. Her lack of furniture quickly became an advantage and soon, they were smiling easily at each other as he took her through his version of the country-swing two-step. When he spun her, her skirt flared, and she started feeling the heat between them again.

They danced through the next two songs. When
White Noise
began to play, Zach moved into full-blown country swing. Dancing with Zach was a lot like riding a roller coaster; not smiling would have been as impossible as not screaming when the roller coaster car started down. She had no say whatsoever about where she was going, but with Zach at the controls, it was a hell of a ride.

She was laughing and breathless when the song ended. Zach pulled her close. They looked into each other’s eyes as they tried to catch their breaths. As Josh started to sing about the girl who was out of his reach, Zach lowered his lips to hers.

Too full of music and dancing for her doubts to assail her, she answered his hunger with her own, moaning when his hand cupped her breast. Maddie tugged at the back of his T-shirt. When she got it untucked, she ran her hands up, over the hard muscles of his back.

Zach’s fingers found the zipper in her dress. The work of unzipping it kept his arms around her, but as soon as the zipper was undone, she was pushing his shirt up. He didn’t question her impatience, just lifted his arms and let her pull it off him.

When he emerged, his eyes were gleaming. Maddie’s gaze dropped to the bandage on his arm, but Zach lifted her chin with his fingers, denying her moment of remorse.

He pushed the straps from her shoulders and the top fell to her waist. She started to push it down over her hips, but his hands stopped her.

“Za—”

He put his index finger on her lips, then wrapped her in his arms, kissing her hard. His kiss left her gasping as he moved on to nuzzle her neck. When he bent and kissed the upper curve of her breast, just above the lacy edging on her strapless bra, Maddie’s knees began to feel weak. His hands held her torso, his fingers splayed across her back.

When he nipped at her nipples through the bra as his thumbs slid under the lower edge to stroke the tender underside of her breasts, she felt as though she’d just been zapped with a stun gun.

Zach dropped to one knee, his lips caressing her stomach. It seemed like the only thing that kept her standing were the rough, masculine hands that framed her waist. Between his thumbs, his lips were doing soft, gentle things that started her stomach fluttering again. Her hands fell to his shoulders.

Zach’s thumbs gently pushed her skirt down. When it puddled around her feet, Maddie began to tremble all over in anticipation. He trailed a line of kisses across the top edge of her panties, but instead of moving further down, he suddenly stood, catching her up in his arms. Before Maddie understood what had happened, Zach carried her to the bed and dropped her on it.

Then he just stopped for a moment, looking down at her. “God, you’re beautiful.”

“Zach.”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

Zach laughed. “Anything you want, sweet Maddie.”

“I want you to come here.”

Zach twitched an eyebrow. “Is that your way of saying please?”

Maddie smiled at the game they were playing. “If that’s what you’re waiting for, then yes.”

Zach started to climb onto the bed.

“Wait!” Maddie sat bolt upright.

“Wha—”

She was breathing fast, and if she stopped to think about it she wouldn’t have the nerve, but fair was fair. Her fingers found the tab on Zach’s zipper. Instinctively, Zach pulled back, but Maddie grabbed his hips. “Don’t make me do this with my teeth.”

Zach inhaled sharply. “That could be interesting.”

“Too late. Maybe next time.” She popped the button on his jeans. “Oh! No skivvies?”

He caught her shoulders and pushed her down as he fell onto the bed beside her. “I’m not done with you yet.”

“Why? You always—”

“Maddie, I’ve been offshore for five months with hardly any breaks.” Zach’s voice was low and raspy. “I’m not going to last very long. If you start touching me, I’m gonna be done before you even get started.”

“Oh!”

“So let me do this my way. Okay?”

Maddie nodded. “Okay.”

“That’s my sweet Maddie.”

Zach proceeded to turn her bones to Jell-O. Soon her lace bra and nylon panties were on the floor. About the time she started to feel like a harp string vibrating at high C, Zach pulled away. He rose up onto his knees, dug into his jeans pocket and pulled out a condom.

It took several deep breaths before Maddie could form a question. “Would you like help—?” Her voice was thin and reedy.

Zach stepped off the bed. “Maybe next time,” he echoed back at her. He left his jeans lying on the floor beside her bra. In the brief moment before he was back on the bed beside her, she caught a glimpse of what he’d been saving for her. Some sane part of her wondered if he could really fit all that inside her, but her body didn’t care about logic or sanity. She wanted him, and she was too close to a climax to care about anything else.

He kissed her hard and deep as he settled between her legs. Slowly, Zach eased in. Maddie stopped breathing as they clung to each other. Their lips still touching, they breathed each other in through open mouths, but the focus was where they were joined. Zach touched bottom and stopped. Maddie felt the world stop spinning. Then he moved inside her in what felt like a circular motion and the world turned again. Zach’s movement seemed to buy him the little bit of extra room to bury himself all the way inside her.

He kissed the corner of her mouth and started to pull back. Maddie whimpered as her muscles tightened, trying to hold him inside. Zach drew a ragged breath through clenched teeth. The breath came out in a moan.

As he pushed back into her, he said something into her ear. Maddie no longer had the faculties to distinguish words, but the masculine timber of his voice sent exciting chills down her spine. Suddenly, a thrumming started deep within her. Zach arched above her and drove hard into her, once, twice, and once more, deeper than ever, before his body went rigid. The thrumming spread through Maddie’s body, carrying her away to where nothing but physical sensation existed. It was like falling into oblivion from a very high cliff. Her only remaining awareness of Zach was of him buried deep inside her as she pulsed and melted around him.

Chapter Eight

Maddie’s first coherent thought was that Peggy had been right. She felt as though someone had just hit a long-overdue pressure release valve inside her. Or like she’d dropped a couple of fifty pound weights and been filled with helium.

She felt like melted ice cream.

Her second coherent thought was that Zach was damned heavy.

The phrase “dead weight” ran through her mind. If he weren’t breathing in her ear like an asthmatic steam engine, she would have thought she’d killed him. “Zach.”

“Mhm.”

“Zach, you’re crushing me.”

“Mhm.”

“Zach, move.”

“Can’t.”

“Yes, you—”

“Can’t ‘til you … let go,” he panted.

And Maddie realized that, at some point near the end, she’d wrapped her legs around him and locked her ankles.

“Oh. Sorry.” She found her muscles didn’t want to respond.

When she managed to release him, Zach rolled off. He lay on his back beside her. Maddie was content to do the same. Between them, he intertwined his fingers with hers.

“Smells like sex in here,” Zach said at last.

“That’s a phrase a girl waits her whole life to hear.”

“Aphrodisiac.”

“What?”

“Wanna do it again?”

“What?” He was breathing like he was oxygen deprived, but he wanted to do it again?

“In a few minutes, maybe?”

“You are a sex fiend,” Maddie accused, but her tone contained no bite. “Maybe even a pervert.”

Zach breathed a few times before answering. “Unfair,” he finally said. “I ain’t asked you to do anything kinky … yet.”

Maddie giggled breathlessly.

“Hints,” Zach said.

“Hints?”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Like clues maybe?” Maddie guessed, utterly bewildered.

“No. You said … I thought you said ‘hints.’”

“Hints? Why would I say hints? When?”

“At the end. Is there something … I could do better? Thought that might be what you meant.”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember saying anything.” And then her face grew hot. She was grateful Zach wasn’t looking at her. She was even more grateful he’d misunderstood what she’d said.

Vince.

She’d called him by another man’s name.

Desperate to turn the conversation in another direction, she said the first thing that came to her mind. “Where did you get that assault weapon?”

“
Assault
weapon?” Zach turned his head to look at her. “Well, lookey there. You’re cute when you blush.”

Maddie’s face grew hotter, but at least he’d mistaken the reason for her embarrassment.

Zach turned his face back toward the ceiling. “That there’s standard equipment, darlin’.”

“There’s nothing standard about that.”

“I didn’t hear you complaining.”

“Of course not. You sprang it on me when I was mentally incompetent.”

Zach laughed out loud. “That you were, sweet Maddie. That you were. As to where I got it, I assume it runs in the family. Have you ever noticed that folks will say ‘Look, he has his mama’s eyes’ or ‘his daddy’s nose,’ but they never say ‘We’re so proud! Look! He’s hung just like grampa’?”

It was Maddie’s turn to laugh. Every time her laughter started to wind down, the picture Zach’s words painted in her mind struck her funny all over again. Zach started out chuckling along with her, but her amusement proved infectious, and soon they were laughing helplessly together.

In their laughter, they turned to each other. Soon more than their fingers were intertwined.

The pace was more leisurely this time. Maddie discovered that, just as when they danced, Zach set the pace, leading her to the edge of another climax several times before taking her over the precipice. They fell into oblivion together.

*

Maddie dreamed about her sister Laurel almost every night. The dreams were sometimes near-memories of their shared childhoods. She woke up crying of loneliness for those days.

Those were the good ones.

The bad ones focused on what Maddie imagined Laurel had endured before she died. She woke up crying after those, too, but her emotions were much too complicated to name only one.

Occasionally, Vince wandered through her dreams, but it was as though he had been hired for a walk-on role. He never spoke to her; never even looked at her, and Maddie’s heart was too full of the emotions her sister evoked to feel much about his appearances.

Until tonight.

Maddie felt the dream fading. She tried to fight it, tried desperately to stay asleep. The beginning of the dream was already lost to her, and if she couldn’t hang on, she’d never know the end. She’d never know what Vince was saying to her. But the harder she fought, the quicker it slipped away.

She opened her eyes. The room was murky, illuminated only by Jesse’s feeble nightlight and the lamp they’d left burning by the couch. Her face was wet with tears. Her whole body shook with quiet, gasped sobs. It took her a moment to realize that Zach was spooned against her back. She started shifting away a little at a time. When she reached the edge of the bed, Maddie curled up and let the grief she’d never been able to find for Vince take her.

*

Somewhere in Zach’s dream, a child sobbed, a child he couldn’t find to comfort. The quiet despair of abandonment that filled each gasping, muffled sob tore at his heart as he searched through the shifting landscape of his dream. He suddenly thought, “I’m awake,” but the sobbing had followed him into the real world. For a moment, he wondered how that could be, then he realized he had it backwards. He could see Maddie’s shoulders shake where she clung to the edge of the bed.

“Maddie?”

Zach saw her try to stifle her sobs in her suddenly rigid muscles.

He scooted closer to her. “Maddie, what’s wrong?”

She put a hand out to stop him from touching her. Zach hesitated, but Rachel was right about him; he could no more stand by and watch someone suffer without doing something than he could keep the sun from setting at the end of the day.

He caught Maddie’s shoulder and turned her toward him. As soon as he had his arms around her, the sobs she’d tried to stifle exploded, and she wept into his chest. Zach fought down the urge to make comforting noises. The quiet intensity of her sobs broke his heart, but it also made him believe these were tears she needed to shed. He couldn’t help rocking her gently.

By the time her tears began to wind down, he’d begun to think she’d end up seriously dehydrated. She’d wrapped her arms around him and hung on like he was her last hope of salvation, and even when her tears turned to hiccups, she didn’t let go.

He couldn’t guess how long they would have stayed like that if a tentative cry hadn’t issued from Jesse’s crib. Maddie tried to pull away.

“No. You stay here. I’ll take care of him.”

“Zach—”

He waited for her to finish, but she didn’t seem to know what she wanted to say. Zach kissed her lightly on her temple. “Does he get a bottle?”

Maddie nodded. “There’s one in the fridge.” Her voice was so fragile. “He’ll sleep better if it’s warmed. He usually needs changed, too.”

Zach found the bottle. He hadn’t noticed earlier that Maddie didn’t have a microwave, but he noticed now. While the bottle was heating in a pan of water, he changed Jesse’s diaper on the couch. Zach knew she was watching him.

“How did you get so comfortable with babies?” Maddie asked in a subdued voice.

She’s trying to find her way back to normal, Zach thought. The emotions behind the tears were likely too tender to address head on yet. “I’m the third of thirteen kids.” He pulled the last tab on the diaper.

“Thirteen?” Even in her thready voice, he could hear the astonishment.

“Yup. And only four girls.” Zach hoisted Jesse onto his hip and went to check the bottle. “So we boys got to change plenty of diapers.”

“So I guess you’d know what runs in the family then.”

“What runs—? Oh.” Zach grinned. “You mean the weaponry.” Jesse kept reaching for the bottle. Zach eventually plopped him on the floor on his well-padded rump so he could test the formula on the back of his wrist. “Well, you can only judge so much by what they’ve got as babies. After they’re potty trained, you don’t see so much. But, yeah, if I had to guess, I’d say the men in the family have been … blessed.”

The formula was warm enough. He turned off the stove, scooped up Jesse, and gave him the bottle. On his way back to the bed, he turned out the lamp by the couch.

“You’d have to guess? What? All those boys and no pissing contests?” Maddie teased him gently.

By the light of the nightlight, Zach brought Jesse into the bed with him. Settling the boy between them, he propped himself on one elbow. “When I was at the age for pissing contests, I was more interested in getting distance than in checking out my brothers’ equipment.”

“I guess I should be grateful for that.” Maddie snuggled Jesse up against her body.

In the dim light, it didn’t take much for Zach’s imagination to paint the bottle out of the picture and visualize her putting a baby to her breast. He pulled the sheet up over his hips, so she wouldn’t see how turned on he was getting, but he couldn’t resist brushing a stray lock of hair back from her face. “Sweet Maddie,” he said just to say it.

“Don’t.” Maddie’s voice choked. She kept her eyes locked on Jesse.

“You gonna shoot me again?” Zach teased.

She swallowed then, with a stronger voice, said, “I might.”

“Better load it then, coz I took the bullets out.”

He’d caught her by surprise. Her eyes rose to meet his. Zach took the opportunity to lean forward and kiss her gently. She froze, but her lips were soft under his. Neither of them closed their eyes.

“Are you really afraid I might?” she asked when he pulled back.

“You did it once. It ain’t hard to imagine it happening again.”

“I don’t understand why you’re here then.”

“Don’t you?” He reached over Jesse to run his hand down her back and over her bare bottom. She trembled under his touch.

“Is sex worth getting shot again?”

“Maddie, some women are worth any price.” With that he laid his head down and pulled her down with him, so that her head rested on his outstretched arm. They cradled Jesse between their bodies.

“I’m not one of those women, you know,” Maddie whispered.

“You don’t get to judge that,” Zach said softly. “I do.”