Tell Me Lies (23 page)

C.L. laughed and Maddie watched the best friends she had and thought,
He fits in. It’s like he never left.
And the thought made her hotter yet.
Think of something else.

She remembered them all back in high school: Howie serious behind his glasses; and Treva bouncing around in her cheerleader skirt with bows on her ponytails, flirting with everybody; and Brent in his letter sweater, looking cool; and C.L. with his shirt out, looking cooler. There’d been others—Margaret Erlenmeyer and her amazing collection of Pendleton skirts; Candace, sober and driven; Stan, always one step behind and bluffing to catch up; Gloria, a pale little nobody of a freshman watching them all, especially Brent—but it was the people in this room who’d meant the most to her. These people and Brent. When she looked at them now, they were an odd group without much in common except shared good humor and history, but that was a lot.

C.L.‘s fingers stroked over her calf and her mind went blank with lust.

The kids came in with Phoebe and the room returned to general chaos. Em edged close to her mother.

“Where’s Daddy?” she whispered.

Guilt made Maddie pull her legs up under her. “I’m not sure, honey. I guess still out on business.”

Em’s face was worried. “Is he coming back tonight?”

Maddie ached to reassure her. “Probably. Probably really late, like usual.”

“Hey, Em,” Three called. “Mel and I are going for Dairy Queen. Want to come?”

Maddie wanted to say no, but Em said, “Can I?” and she thought,
This is a distraction, and Brent won’t find her if she goes.

“Yes,” Maddie said.

“Can Phoebe come?” Mel asked. “Phoebe’s never seen our house.”

“Which is why there are no dog-vomit stains on your carpet,” Maddie pointed out.

Treva looked at Maddie and then at C.L. “I think Phoebe should spend the night,” she said brightly. “Em can come, too, if she wants.”

“Really?” Me\
said on an exhale of delight, while Howie looked at his wife as if she were demented.

“Really,” Treva said. “Go get Em’s pajamas.”

Em seemed taken aback, but Mel was tugging her along out of the room, and Phoebe romped beside her, so Em went along, casting one confused look back over her shoulder at her mother.

This was not a good idea, she should be keeping Em close, but the thought of being alone with C.L. soon, naked, moving against him, him moving inside her—

But there was Em.

She had to keep Em with her. She couldn’t choose sex with C.L. over her daughter. “Treva,” Maddie said, and Treva said, “It would be good for Em to spend the night at our house, what with
the prowler
and all. Howie and Three can protect her.”

“Oh,” Howie said.

“What?” C.L. said.

Treva nodded. “And you need some time to yourself. Selves. Somebody should stay with you in case the prowler comes back.”

Pretty heavy-handed, Treva,
Maddie wanted to say, but the thought of having C.L. was too overwhelming.

“I like you,” C.L. said to Treva. “I have always liked you.”

“Maddie?” Treva said.

All right, she was a bad mother. But Em would be safer if she was at Treva’s. And she wanted C.L. so much she was screaming with it. “Good idea,” Maddie said. “About taking Em for the night.”

While Maddie waved them all good-bye from the front porch, C.L. went around the house, checking window and door locks, and met her in the front hall in time to lock and chain the front door. “How are you doing?” he asked, moving closer to her. “You’ve had a rough couple of days here.”

He looked wonderful standing there, strong and sure, broad shoulders and hot eyes and great hands, and the closer he got, the shallower her breath came.
As long as you’re here, I’m fine.
“I’m pretty good,” she said. “I sold all of Brent’s clothes in a garage sale today.”

C.L. started to laugh. “Remind me to never piss you off. You’re ruthless.” He put his arms around her, and Maddie felt her breath go completely and leaned into him, trying not to moan as she finally felt him tight against her. She was not going to take him seriously, she was definitely, finally, going to be free, and there were a hell of a lot of questions he hadn’t answered yet, but she did love the way he looked and moved and the way she felt right now, pressing closer to him. Asking him a bunch of questions that would make him move away seemed like a bad idea. Later for questions.

He spoke into her hair. “I suppose this is the part where you throw me out.”

Take me right now on the floor.
His car was in the driveway, screaming sex while it stood there, and she should throw him out, but she wanted him—

“You’re thinking again,” C.L. said. “I have warned you and warned you about that.” He bent and kissed her slowly, his tongue tickling her mouth, and his hands moved under the back of her T-shirt, his fingers stroking her closer, and the heat flared so high in her she almost screamed. “You need me to protect you, honey,” he whispered. “I better stay all night.”

His arms tightened around her and he kissed her on the neck, making her speechless as her hands closed on him convulsively. She closed her eyes to imagine him naked against her, moving inside her. It was a terrible thought to have, given her situation, but she was ready to explode, and Treva had just kidnapped her child so she could do just that. And tomorrow Frog Point would know about the divorce anyway.

We’ll be the good guys,
she’d told her mother, but tonight she didn’t want to be good. She wanted to be the way she’d been in the backseat at the Point: powerful and defiant and triumphant and savage and satisfied. The new Maddie wouldn’t be good. She’d take it all, even if it was just for one night.

“Yes,
”she told him, and his fingers dug into her. “You can stay.” She swallowed, “But you have to go out and act like you’re leaving and park your car down a couple of blocks and come in the back way.”

“You’re kidding,” C.L. said.

Hurry up,
she wanted to scream at him, but she made her voice calm to say, “You want Henry to know?” and he winced.

“All right.” He let go of her and stepped back and she almost reached for him. “I’ll go move the car, but you’d better be naked when I get back.”

“You bet,” Maddie said, and when he left, she ran upstairs to take her clothes off in the spare bedroom. It was a good compromise, she thought as she climbed into the bed, shaking against the cool sheets. Naked but not in the bedroom she’d shared with Brent.

Hurry up,
she thought again, and slid a little farther down in the bed and thought about C.L.‘s hands.

“Took you long enough,” Maddie said as she moved over a little, and his mind clouded with the way her voice was warm with laughter and husky with what he hoped was desire, and the way her body shifted under the sheet.

He sat on the edge of the bed to shuck off his pants, and his weight bounced her a little toward him. “Parking in Columbus was your idea,” he said, his voice trembling a little, and then free of all his clothing, he rolled into bed next to her and pulled her close and forgot how to breathe. She was so soft and round everywhere, cool against his heat, tender against his roughness, and her body tensed and shivered against him, muscle and nerve moving infinitesimally so that he had to touch her everywhere just to feel her shudder.

Steady,
he told himself. His cheek traced down her shoulder to the slope of her breast, and her skin smelled of flowers and, strangely enough, of Anna’s kitchen. “You smell like cookies,” he said, his voice thick with wanting her, and she sighed and said, “Vanilla.”

He moved up and caught her mouth while it was open from the word, letting his tongue take her softly, pressing her down gently onto creamy pillows that gave like marshmallows under them. He stretched against her and felt her hands trail down his back, her tongue on his collarbone before she nipped his skin with her teeth, and he shuddered and tightened and wanted to take her then, to go hard into her, to pound them both into oblivion, but that wasn’t right for Maddie. Not here, it wasn’t.

It was something about the house, Maddie’s house, a Frog Point settled-kind-of-family house. He’d basked in the warmth and the family feeling of being with everybody all night, and the house and especially this bedroom seemed as if it belonged to another era. Maddie moved against him, and he ached for her, but in the back of his mind while he moved slowly over her—discovering her centimeter by centimeter while stomping on every animal urge he had and reciting the occasional baseball statistic when stomping didn’t do it—he felt the house and especially this pretty blue room slowing him down. It was an innocent, civilized, married kind of room, the kind of room he and Maddie would be sleeping in forever once this mess was over. For the rest of his life, he could pull her down onto creamy cool sheets and feel her hot, round body stretch against him and wrap around him, and he could rock them both into settled satisfaction, careful and slow and secure.

Maddie pulsed under him again, and the old desire slammed into him so that he had to stop moving, stop touching her, while he fought down the need to lay rough hands on her and plunge into her hot, slick wetness and drive her to the kind of screaming cataclysm they’d both barely survived in the backseat two nights before.
Jesus, don
V
even think about it,
he told himself as his whole body throbbed. That’s not what they were now, theirs was a different kind of passion, a Frog Point-approved, married, serious, controlled kind of passion, which had never had much appeal before, and didn’t have much now, to tell the truth. But if it kept Maddie sighing beneath him in large cool beds, then it was all he wanted.

She had everything she wanted: privacy, safety, room to maneuver, no worries about Em, and C.L., big and broad and gorgeous and hot and crazy for her, reaching for her with so much lust in his eyes she’d almost come just from being wanted that much.

And then everything had slowed down. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a huge fan of foreplay, but she’d been thinking about him all weekend and especially all night—his hot dark eyes with those thick lashes that should not have been wasted on a man but were devastating on C.L., and that firm mouth she lusted to bite into, and those hands, oh God those hands, hard on her, all over—so she’d done the extended foreplay thing already without him. It was past time for that.
Way
past time.

She moved against him, but he hesitated, so she kept herself still so he wouldn’t stop. It wasn’t that the things that C.L. was doing so slowly with his hands and his mouth and his body weren’t great, because she was feeling very warm, thank you. It was more that if things were going so well, why was she having time to analyze it? She arched up a little, rocking against him to speed things up, and his hands clenched hard on her hips, but just as she was bracing herself for the kind of sex that would set her free again, he let go and moved away.

“C.L.?” she said, and he said, “Shhh,” and kissed her softly.

Well, terrific. There was a time and a place for soft kisses, but hot and naked wasn’t one of them, damn it. He pulled her close gently, and the part where her body hit his and felt muscle and bone and heat was incredible, but the gently part was out.

All right, think,
she told herself, which was only a little difficult since at the moment he seemed to be memorizing her shoulder with his mouth, nice enough, but not a major erogenous zone. She had at least a minute before he worked his way to the hollow of her neck and hit some good stuff.

The problem was not C.L. Any man who could do to her what he’d done to her in the back of a car was obviously capable of even greater heights in a bed. The problem was his approach. This respectful, slow-motion stuff had to go because she wanted him inside her
now.

However, telling him that was not a good idea. From sixteen years of marriage to Brent, she knew that critiquing a guy’s performance
in media res
only led to grief. So grabbing C.L. by the ears, and screaming, “Will you please just fuck me?” was not going to work, even if she could bring herself to talk dirty.

It would be fun to do that, to demand what she wanted, to scream it all out. But he’d be shocked. He was still working on the theory that she was Maddie the Perpetual Virgin, which might explain why he was worshiping at her shrine instead of blowing her mind. And the last thing she needed was C.L. turned off. He’d move even slower.

C.L. stopped to put on a condom, and Maddie felt a spark of hope. His lips were warm on her neck, and she let herself sink into the sizzle he was sparking there, shivering a little against him. This was more like it. She was being too hard on him; she was being passive, too, with all this thinking. His hands smoothed up her back and she bit her lip. The hell with thinking.

She twisted against him as the tickle of his lips against her neck percolated to her breasts and stomach and thighs, and then it went deeper, and she scraped her nails lightly down his back.

C.L. exhaled and pulled away, taking the sizzle with him, leaving her so frustrated she wanted to scream.

Hell.

Okay, he didn’t like aggressive women who clawed at his back. He returned to her neck, and Maddie settled into the glow he was re-creating there. Too bad she was past glow and into inferno. She felt his mouth move to her breast, and she arched closer to him with anticipation, wanting the mind-bending pressure that was so close to pain, but he was gentle there, too. She moaned with frustration, and he must have taken it for encouragement because he went slower.

Maddie gave up. If that’s the way it had to be, that’s the way it had to be. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had boring sex before; she’d been married to Brent.
Fantasize,
she told herself, and conjured up a vision of the sexiest man she could think of, but this time instead of getting Dennis Quaid or George Clooney, she got C.L., hard against her in the backseat, his fingers wound in her hair, jerking her head up to meet his hot, hot eyes while he thrust deeper into her and made her writhe, his mouth bruising hers, his hands rough on her breasts, rougher on her hips while he clamped her to him and rocked hard into her, hard, hard, hard—

She opened her eyes and saw C.L. above her, gorgeous as ever, looking abstracted, thinking about something else so he wouldn’t lose control,
the dumb ass,
and she screamed with frustration.

C.L. stopped stroking her breast and said, “Maddie?” and she propped herself up on her elbows until she was nose to nose with him and said, “Listen, it’s not that I don’t appreciate the attention, but will you please stop screwing around and
Just fuck my brains out now?”

“What?” C.L. said, and then before she could take it back, he said, “We need to talk about this,
later,
”and jerked her hips down to meet his, throwing her back onto the pillows as he moved into her slickly, so hard and fast she cried out.

“No?” he said, stopping, and she said, “Oh, God,
yes,”
and arched up to bite his shoulder, and after that it was only the hot bulk of his body, and the wetness inside her as he went into her fast and hard, and his shoulders against her fingernails as he bore down on her, and his mouth savaging hers. He felt so wonderful she almost wept with gratitude. His hand clenched in her sweat-damp hair, his mouth tortured her breast, his fingers marked her hips as he held her down, and she moved to meet him, wanting all of him, all C.L. hot against her, thick inside her.

Her body shuddered each time he moved into her, each shudder a surge in her blood, and the rhythm took over and left her nothing but sensation and C.L. and the shattering conviction that he could never stop or she’d die. “Don’t ever stop,” she said, and then she saw his eyes, so black with lust they looked blank, and she realized he couldn’t hear her, that he was lost in her, out of control with wanting her, and that made her shudder more. She arched harder into him, clenching her teeth because he felt so good, and he pressed her tighter against him, going higher into her, making all the need she felt for him twist into one tight, hot spiral, and then everything broke and she jerked, caught in spasms that left her writhing against him while he pinned her to the bed with his shuddering weight, mindless in his own climax, the best fantasy she’d ever had.