Montana Reunion (11 page)

She stayed silent, walking into the
room, standing still for a heartbeat before turning to face the man she was
about to spend the night with.

Jack had followed her, was standing
close but not so near that she could touch him, which meant he was leaving it
up to her to make the next move.

“You’re a tease, you know that?”
Jack growled.

Suddenly
Maddison
didn’t want to spare any more time for words.
Didn’t want to
talk to him, to undress slowly – nothing.
She wanted nothing but to rip
all their clothing off and throw Jack down on the bed.
 

She licked her lips, moistening
them, smiling at the look on Jack’s face as he watched her.

He started walking, placing one
foot slowly in front of the other.
Maddison
inched
back, before changing her mind completely.
She
wanted Jack now. She didn’t want to play games and she didn’t want to wait for
him to make the move.

Jack took her into his arms and
walked her backwards until the back of her knees hit the bed, pushing her down
and landing on top of her, his weight heavy over her body.
Maddison
pushed him up, forced him back, so she could undress him. Her fingers fumbled
on his buttons but she was insistent, keeping hold of him even as he unzipped
his jeans.

His shirt was open, jeans half way
down, and
Maddison
wasn’t wasting any time. She
wriggled from her own jeans, laughing as Jack grabbed hold of them and tried to
tug them off for her.

“Fuck,” he cursed, yanking harder,
the skintight denim harder to remove than his jeans had been.

He finally got them off, leaving
her in her bra and panties.
Thank god
she’d worn something pretty.

“Damn,” he muttered, looking down,
admiring her if the smile on his face was anything to go by.

It
gave her the confidence she needed. The confidence she’d always wanted to have
but been too scared to embrace.

Jack gave her a slow smile, teasing
her, looking up and down her body slowly before his eyes stopped
down low.
He slid his fingers into the
lace of her panties, slid them off so slowly it was nearly unbearable.

Maddison
waited, tried not to move, let him take his time,
but then she was taking charge.
Jack flicked her g-string across
the room before turning his attention back to her.

She boldly reached for him, slid
his boxers down, eyes on his until she got them low enough for Jack to kick
off. There was an intimacy between them that delighted her, a closeness drawing
them together, but there was also something raw, something explosive that
compelled her to give herself to him completely. There was no time to go slow,
to take time in pleasuring one another,
not
this time
, because she wanted Jack and she wanted him now.

“
Maddison
?”
His whisper was gravelly, his eyes on her
body, but he was holding himself back.
Was giving her one
last chance to back out before things changed forever between them.

Maddison
reached for Jack, stroked his back, grabbed the back of his head and jerked him
forward so she could kiss him. His lips were hard, insistent,
desperate
. She was
in control one minute and not the next, as he pinned her hands above her head
again, lips still against hers, tongue teasing her, body heavy over hers.

She refused to let him hold her
down, fought him until he let her go, flipped him so she was in charge, legs
pinning his thighs down as she sat astride him.

Jack reached for her bra,
unclasping it, throwing it out of the way and reaching for her breasts. She
tilted her head back and shut her eyes, lost in the moment, loving his hands on
her, his body fitting perfectly to hers.

“Look at me,
Maddison
,”
he murmured, fingers so attentive, pleasuring her as she started to rock back
and forth above him.

She did as she was told and looked
into Jack’s eyes, but she only had a moment to watch him, before he flipped
her
, his movements fast,
furious
, as he took control again.

She let her eyes slide shut again
and lost herself to the pleasure of the moment.
Because this was what she’d been waiting for. This was what she’d been
wanting from a man.

Only Jack was the first man to make
her feel this way.

And
she didn’t ever want him to stop.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

MADDISON stretched before opening
her eyes.
Oh my God.
She shut her
eyes again.

She’d been in such a deep sleep
she’d woken up expecting to be in her apartment back in L.A. Only she was at
Jack’s house, lying in Jack’s bed and with his leg firmly pressed against her.
Not to mention the fact that she wasn’t in her usual pajamas…
she was naked.

Maddison
opened her eyes again, peeking at the man beside her.

“Hey.”

So
Jack was awake.
Maddison
swallowed, wished for a
toothbrush, anything to make her feel less like she’d just woken up.

“How long have you been watching
me?” she asked, turning to lie on her side so she could look at him.

Maddison
kept the sheets pulled up high to cover her breasts, a lot less sure of herself
than she’d been the night before. The way she’d brazenly told Jack what she
wanted, the way she’d responded to him… just the thought of the night before
sent a shiver down her spine
. But it was
a shiver that told her she’d willingly go back for more.

“Long enough to listen to you
snore.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I do
not
snore.”

Jack laughed, running a hand
through his hair and turning to mirror the way she was
lying
,
propped on one elbow. “It’s cute. Kind of how I’d imagine a small dog would
snore.
All snorts and heavy breathing.”

Maddison
went to tug the covers higher as she stared at Jack’s bare chest, but they
wouldn’t budge. “What the…”

“Speaking of dogs,” Jack said,
nodding his head.

Maddison
clutched the sheet tight and pushed up to look where he was indicating. “You
let your dog sleep on your bed?”
No
wonder she couldn’t pull the covers up.

“I haven’t exactly had company for
awhile,” he told her, sitting up so he could lean down and
give
his dog a scratch on the head.
“Off the bed, girl.
Off
you get.”

Rosa obeyed and jumped off, so
Maddison
took her chance to regain the fallen covers. She
looked away, not wanting to stare at Jack’s naked form, or what she could see
of it.
She wasn’t entirely sure she could
keep herself from attacking him again.

“What are you thinking about?”

His question was innocent enough
but the look on his face was anything but pure.

Maddison
nestled back down again, head on the pillow. Being seduced in the bright
morning light was nothing like getting carried away in the heat of the moment
at night.

“I was just…” she had no idea what
to say, what to pretend she’d been thinking about.

“Marrying me?” he asked, waggling
his eyebrows. “You were thinking about marrying me, right?”

Maddison
laughed. She couldn’t do anything
but
laugh.
Jack made her smile, made her comfortable,
made
her
feel all sorts of things that she hadn’t felt in a very long time. And she
liked it. More than liked it, she was starting to love it.

“One night together and you’re
already proposing?” he joked.

She tried to do the eyebrow waggle
but failed dismally, making Jack smile even wider.

“Seriously,” he asked, reaching out
to her, stroking the back of his fingers down her cheek. “Have you given it any
more thought?”

She shut her eyes, loving the way
his touch tickled. “You mean in between talking at dinner and you seducing me?”

Jack stopped stroking and gave her
a play punch on the arm instead.
“If I remember correctly, it
was
you
seducing me, you little
hussy.”

His low voice sent shivers through
her again, made her tug the sheets closer to her body. “You’re a bad
influence,” she told him.

“And you’re a good one.”

Maddison
stared into his almost-black eyes. She trusted him. Hand on her heart, she
trusted the man, even though she’d sworn it could never happen again.

“So if we do get married…” she
started.

“We’d need to renegotiate the
benefits part,” he teased, leaning closer, stealing a quick kiss that left her
wanting more.

“Let’s say we both agree on
those
type
of
mutual benefits, then,”
Maddison
said.
There, she’d said it.

“Agreed.”
He
lay
back, hands folded beneath his head on the
pillow.
“
Especially
if we keep up with last night’s performance.”

Maddison
snuggled back down herself, pulling the covers
over her head. Being with Jack was one thing, but
talking like this
wasn’t something she’d ever be comfortable with,
no matter how much she tried to play the game.

Jack stayed in bed and watched as
Maddison
stretched then walked across the room. She’d
reached for her underwear and slipped it on before getting out of bed, so he
wasn’t getting quite the view he wanted, but it was good enough. Long slim
legs, pert, rounded backside,
long
hair falling down
her back… he gulped. There was a reason why they’d let things go so far last night,
why the tension between them had been unbearable, and he was looking at it. He
wouldn’t be a man if he didn’t find
Maddison
Jones
attractive.

“Jack, joking aside, we are
actually going to do this? Get married I mean?”

She was looking back at him as she
pulled on her jeans, wriggling to get them up.

He tried to switch off the visual
part of his brain and focus on her question.

“Do you still want to?”

“I know it would make my dad happy,
and I know it would help you out.”

He shook his head. “That’s not what
I asked.” It should have been enough to hear those things, to know that they
were doing it for the right reasons, but he wanted more.
Needed
to know that it wasn’t purely convenient.

“Do I have to spell it out to you?”
she asked.

Jack continued to stare at her,
wanting her to say it. “What?”

“I think after last night it’s
fairly obvious that we’re more than just friends,” she said, voice low like it
wasn’t something easy for her to say.

Jack smiled. “I guess we’re
actually doing this, huh?”

“Well, yeah. I guess we are,” she
said, a shy expression on her face even though she was grinning. “Not as
romantic as I’d hoped for, but I guess I can go without the proposal story.”

He chuckled. “I’ll propose,
sweetheart. We said we’d make this look real, didn’t we?”

She was still in her bra because
he’d gotten rid of her top downstairs.
Maddison
came
slowly back toward the bed. “So we’ll discuss the other details later? Like me
moving some stuff here, the wedding,
all
those
things?”

Jack wished it didn’t feel like
such a business arrangement, but it was what he’d said he wanted. It was a
marriage in name, and hopefully sometimes in pleasure, but without the
problems. They’d agreed on not having children, agreed they were doing this to
help one another out, which meant they were going into marriage as adults.
Having made a decision that wasn’t based on passion or emotion.
Pleasure maybe, but not emotions.

“I might swing by later on. Have a
chat with your father perhaps.”

He watched a smile slowly spread
across
Maddison’s
lips, a grin that was so infectious
he ended up grinning back at her.

“You’d do that?” she asked.

“We said we’d make this genuine,
didn’t we?”

Maddison
crossed the room and leaned on the bed, long hair falling over her shoulder as
she dropped a long, lingering kiss to his mouth. “My dad is going to love the
idea of you as his son-in-law. You know that, right?”

Right
now he was more interested in getting to know her lips better.
“If you plan
on rewarding me like this all the time, I’d have proposed the minute you
arrived home.”

Maddison
sat up and reached for his hand, fingers playing across his palm. “I mean it,
Jack. It’s going to make him so happy. You’re already part of the family, but
this will mean a lot to him.”

“He means a lot to me,
Maddison
. Your whole family does.”

Jack reached for her, stroked the
side of her face, watching as she shut her eyes and sighed.

“I can’t believe I was supposed to
be marrying someone else this spring, and instead I’m marrying the boy who was
my best friend.”

He laughed. “Maybe we’ve stayed
best friends all these years,
Maddie
.
Even if we haven’t seen each other.”

“Maybe,” she said, opening her eyes
and smiling before standing again. “In a way it’s like picking up straight from
where we left off.”

“Marrying your friend makes sense,
don’t you think?” he asked. “I mean, we don’t have to worry about all the other
stuff that makes marriage so complicated sometimes. No passionate love affair
that could turn volatile, no children complicating things, no secret past that
we’re trying to keep hidden.”