Three to Tango (30 page)

Madeline made a sound like a hissing cat at those words.

“You’re the one who betrayed me by letting another man touch you in front of my face,” Walker said. He grabbed her arm and led her over to Tony. “Hold her shoulders.” He pressed down on Madeline’s back, forcing her to bend over in front of Tony. Tony followed his direction, taking the bulk of Madeline’s upper body weight while she bent over, hands cuffed at her middle back and her bottom in the air.

His cock tingled in anticipation as he stared at Madeline’s bare ass. She didn’t typically swim or sunbathe naked—no, that was just a device she’d been using lately to torture him—because her bottom was pale next to her tanned skin. Her ass had always pleased him, round, tight and surprisingly fleshy for her slight figure.

He swung the paddle, giving her a healthy crack in the middle of her buttocks. Her weight went forward slightly at the blow, but Tony braced her. Walker paddled her several more times, the whapping sound of hard wood striking firm, supple flesh making his cock lurch in his swim trunks. He continued until he heard her moan.

He paused and grabbed a handful of sun-and paddle-warmed ass. Tony smiled encouragingly at Madeline when she lifted her head while Walker soothed her bottom. He noticed that Tony’s erection hadn’t diminished in the least since Madeline had stopped sucking him so forcefully. He seemed to be enjoying the sight of seeing the defiant Madeline being punished. Walker could just imagine what a woman like her could do to a man if he let her.

He stepped back and swatted her plump buttocks again several times, trying to gauge from the sound of her cries and moans if he was causing any real harm. He was trying to make a point, but he’d never cause her any serious pain. He landed the paddle on her ass, appreciating the subtle shiver the blow wrought in the taut flesh. Her ass was starting to glow pink. He was uncertain about the meaning of her low, desperate moan, so he sent his finger between her thighs.

Her pussy was drenched. The moan hadn’t been from pain or humiliation. Definitely not. She groaned louder and squirmed against the pressure of his finger.

He dropped his hand and swatted her ass with the paddle, the spankings forceful enough to cause Tony’s arms to flex as he held her in position. He paused, knowing he’d been hard, and rubbed her bottom. Her taut flesh radiated heat into his palm.

He stepped back and lowered his swim trunks, grimacing at the feeling of the heavy weight of his cock pulling down on the root. He fisted his erection briefly, but it didn’t give him any relief. He was hard enough to pound wood with the damn thing.

He held the paddle at the ready.

“I want you to tell me you’ll never let another man touch you just because you’re trying to punish me. You can get mad at me all you want, Madeline, but I won’t have you acting like a selfish little brat to make your point.”

When she didn’t speak, he swung his arm and paddled her briskly. Tony caught her, his cock leaping in his lap at the same moment.

“You always were stubborn, Maddie,” Tony told her with a small, sad smile. “I could never tame you.”

Walker paddled her again. He heard her moan.

“Say it, Madeline,” he warned at the same time he squeezed a buttock in his hand.

She whimpered, but still … no promise.

He used the tip of the paddle to spank the captured flesh in his hand. She began to groan and thrash her head, but she didn’t speak. Walker grabbed her other butt cheek and treated it to the same focused, stinging spanks.

She gasped raggedly.

“All right. I … I promise.”

Walker released her buttocks and struck both cheeks with the paddle. “You’ll promise to never let another man touch you in an attempt to punish me.” She gasped for air and he paddled her again.

“I do. I promise never to let another man touch me to try and punish you, Walker,” she squeaked.

“You’ll never do this again unless I say so, Madeline,” he added grimly, the paddle poised at the ready in his hand. But she shook her head.

“No,” he heard her say hoarsely. “It was … it was only for Tony.”

Tony’s face collapsed briefly with emotion. “Maddie,” he whispered feelingly as he pushed her hair out of her face. “You always were too much of a woman for me. Always.”

Walker frowned at the tender display, even though he was moved by it. So much conflicting emotion stormed inside him, he felt like he was ready to explode. He flung the paddle onto the couch. He hadn’t locked the handcuffs. They released when he hit the spring.

“Stand up, Tony,” he said gruffly. “Madeline’s going to finish what she started.”

Tony sprung up from the couch. Walker guided Madeline with his hands on her sun-warmed hips, guiding her into the position he wanted her to take.

“Put your hands on your knees, Madeline. You too, Tony,” he added. He didn’t think he could stand to see them caressing each other. He felt like lifting Madeline and kissing her until they both melted into hot goo when she immediately did as he asked, placing her hands on her supple thighs. She bent over, her face to Tony’s cock, her ass to his.

Surely Walker was big enough to give him these minutes of rapture after he’d betrayed Tony’s trust, no matter how justified he’d been in doing so.

“Now take him in your mouth,” Walker ordered hoarsely. He saw Tony’s face transported by ecstasy when she followed his order.

“Oh, yeah,” Tony moaned through a sublime smile.

Walker couldn’t take this anymore. Madeline always did know how to dish out her own form of punishment.

He took his cock in his hand—it felt like it was about to burst through the skin he was so aroused—and arrowed it toward Madeline’s drenched, tender cleft. They all moaned at once. She was hot and wet and so tight he had to thrust firmly to make way in her flesh. He gritted his teeth, watching as he slid into her and she gloved him like a muscular fist and melted around him at once.

“My pussy,” he growled roughly and began to thrust with long, thorough strokes, popping against her pink ass with his pelvis rhythmically. Sunlight beat down on them and Walker fucked the woman of his dreams while she caused their friend’s eyes to roll back into his head with her strong suck. Slippery, slurping sounds and grunts of pleasure filled the air as the yacht swayed them, its lulling motions a direct contrast to the frenzied storm building on board.

Walker watched Tony, unintentionally matching his fucking motions to the same rate Tony thrust into Madeline’s mouth. She began to keen, low and deep in her throat. It drove him crazy to see the expression of ecstasy on Tony’s face as he experienced the vibrations of her bliss.

“Hold her shoulders steady, Tony,” Walker ordered tersely. He’d said he didn’t want Tony touching her, but she was going to need stabilization with as hard as he planned to fuck her. Tony complied. Her constant keening turned to sharp whimpers as he began to hammer into her pussy. It must have aroused her as much as it did Walker, because Tony’s cock slid all the way into her, and Tony cried out in surprised pleasure.

“
Don’t
come inside her,” Walker commanded as his pelvis smacked against Madeline’s ass.

He watched, a snarl on his face, as Tony hurriedly withdrew and turned slightly. He jacked his penis and groaned as semen arched into the air and spattered onto the deck. His arms continued to move rapidly as he ejected his seed. His eyes remained closed, lost in his own private pleasure. Finally, he gasped and fell heavily back onto the couch, panting.

Walker withdrew from Madeline. He felt tight with a potent combination of lust, love, loss and fury. He touched Madeline’s shoulder, and she glanced up at him from her bent-over position. What he saw made him caress her, for the same wicked brew of emotions seemed to storm behind her dark eyes.

“Go down on your knees, Madeline.” His command had been gentle despite the untenable pressure building in his chest and balls.

She knelt before him. He could see how erect her small nipples were and that her cheeks were even pinker than her bottom.

He guided his cock into her mouth, stretching her lips. Next to them, Tony groaned between pants.

For the next several minutes, Walker was lost in a tossing sea of focused pleasure and cresting emotion. He dominated Madeline thoroughly, not just because he wanted her until it hurt like an unhealed wound, but because she let him. As she gazed up at him as he slid into her throat, he knew that Madeline had accepted what he’d said to her last evening in the bathroom.

“You’re mine,” he grated out between clenched teeth. Seeing her acknowledgment in her gaze made him bellow in anguished pleasure as he came.

He didn’t feel turned inside-out this time; he felt ripped inside-out.

When his thunderous orgasm finally quieted, he reluctantly withdrew and lifted Madeline to a standing position, murmuring to her softly as he kissed her sweat-and tear-dampened eyelids, cheeks and lips.

Seven

S
he’d lost all remnants of propriety or shame. She’d forgotten her anger at Walker and even her sadness for Tony’s foolish, life-altering mistake.

Nothing existed for Madeline in those moments that she was on the receiving end of the force of nature that was Walker Gray. His possession had been fierce, focused and forceful, but behind his sexual mastery, she’d sensed the unspoken lesson he strove to teach her.

Despite the long years of separation and Tony Hallas and Madeline’s stubbornness—despite it all—she was still Walker’s, body and soul.

And he was hers.

“I didn’t come after Tony to hurt you, Madeline. I love you,” he whispered gruffly next to her ear as he took her into his arms. He stroked her back and hips and buttocks while Madeline cried softly, her cheek pressed to his expanding and contracting chest. Walker’s gruff voice in her ear and caressing hands made her shiver uncontrollably.

“I know,” she replied almost inaudibly. She spoke the absolute truth. The power of his possession had opened her eyes. Walker Gray wasn’t the type of man who would have allowed what had just occurred unless love was involved. She understood Walker well enough to know what he’d just sacrificed. She whimpered when she felt his hand between her legs, moving, pleasuring tender, swollen flesh.

A moment before she was about to climax, she felt Tony press against her from behind. They both held her while she shuddered in climax, Walker taking what was his by nature’s decree, Tony experiencing for the first and last time what he’d always craved.

Madeline’s surrender.

Madeline didn’t turn around later that evening when she sensed him approach. She sat at the end of the long pier, her feet dangling off the edge, her gaze glued to the crimson-and-gold sunset. Walker didn’t make a noise as he approached her from behind, but she knew it was him, nonetheless.

He sat behind her, his long, jean-covered legs bracketing her hips. He pulled her back against his chest, his arms surrounding her. She leaned her head against him, her eyes fixed on the blazing departure of the sun.

It’d been a hell of a day. Wonderful and awful in equal measures.

“You okay?” he asked, his mouth near her ear as he nuzzled her hair with his chin.

“Yes,” she whispered. She reached back with her hand and cupped the side of his head. “I can’t believe Tony is in jail. It seems surreal. He seemed so resigned when they took him away.”

That wasn’t the only thing that seemed surreal. So was the entire sunlit, sex-drenched memory of being out on the yacht this afternoon with Tony and Walker. It was the memory of her good-bye to a friend she loved.

It was also the memory of her complete surrender to Walker.

Her feelings for Walker were strong enough to overcome the paradox of emotion, Madeline acknowledged as he lowered his head next to hers and pressed against her, cheek to cheek.

“I regret having to do it, Madeline. But Tony needed to be stopped. I was the only man who could do it.”

“I know,” she replied softly as they both stared at the sinking sun. “I wish to God he hadn’t been born so impulsive … so foolish. The degree of damage he created with his actions—not just real, but potential—boggles my mind. I can’t imagine what his parents must be going through right now.”

“They’re gone now. Victor plans to hire the best lawyer money can buy for Tony’s defense,” Walker said, referring to the Hallases, who had come to speak with Walker and Madeline after Tony had been taken by two members of Walker’s team and the Truckee police. Madeline had wandered out to the pier after Walker had regretfully described the charges against Tony. She’d been too hurt by the lost, wounded expression on Victor Hallas’s face at the news of the proof against his only son.

“Madeline?”

“Yes?” She turned her chin. His eyes were two perfect mirrors of the fiery waters of Lake Tahoe. An upsurge of emotion swelled in her chest. She recognized the sensation as her love for him, liberated. Her anguish for Tony remained, but her feelings for Walker reigned supreme, giving her comfort.

“I wasn’t lying. I did plan to come back to Lake Tahoe for you. I could have gone anywhere to start up my business. I’d already made my plans for leaving the Secret Service—for returning here—when all of the intelligence arrived on Tony.”

She swallowed thickly, her gaze glued to his.

“I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, seeing you after all these years and under these circumstances,” he continued gruffly. “But I have to admit, I’d forgotten just how stubborn you can be, Madeline.” His eyes narrowed on her mouth. “How beautiful. I didn’t plan on seducing you. I couldn’t stop myself, though. I did a lot of things that could have cost us this investigation because I was so bowled over by seeing you again.”

She gave him an arch glance. “Are you saying you put your job at risk because of me?”

His nostrils flared. “I put everything at risk. My job. I might have ruined everything with you, as well, after what I did out there on that yacht.”

Her small smile faded. “You didn’t ruin anything, Walker. I’m here, in your arms. I’m not going anywhere as long as you don’t.”

“I told you, I’m here to stay,” he rumbled before his mouth settled on hers. Madeline opened her eyelids heavily a minute later only to see him studying her with fiery blue-green eyes.

“You do understand, don’t you,” he said, rather than asked. “Why I reacted the way I did out there, Madeline?”

“Yes. I wanted to hurt you, after what you told me about Tony … and when I believed you’d come for your job and not me. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” he admitted. He glanced out at the setting sun. “But I’m not, as well. You’ll never know how hard that was for me, seeing you and another man together.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?” he asked hoarsely.

“I could see it in your eyes. The whole time. I could hear it in your voice. I see it now, as we speak.” She touched his cheek and he met her stare. “We did it for each other, Walker. We were acting out our own stuff, our own past. But we did it for Tony, too. What you did wasn’t a betrayal of your job. It wasn’t a betrayal of me, either. What we did was between us—Tony, you and me.”

She leaned up and touched her lips to his lightly.

“Everything from here on out is between you and me, Madeline.”

“Yes,” she whispered before his mouth fastened securely on hers.