“At the foot of the bed.”
A few seconds later, he carried her silently out of her opened bedroom door into the moonlit hall.
He'd said he wanted to talk to her, but neither of them spoke as he deactivated the alarm and then reactivated it once they left the lodge. They remained silent even when he set her in the passenger seat of his car and they drove through Tony's lush grounds and exited the security gate. The tense excitement of a midnight secret mission tightened her chest and tingled in her limbs as he drove through the silent, seemingly enchanted streets of Carnelian Bay and eventually turned onto Route 12, the road that encircled the entire lake. Madeline saw the moonlight shimmering in the dark water.
“Where are we going?” she asked in a hushed tone.
“I bought a house in King's Beach. It's large enough to live in as well as run the business until I rent some commercial property.”
“Wasn't one of your staff guarding me?”
He glanced over at her. “I have watch of you tonight.”
A ripple of sensation shivered through her, and she pulled her robe closer around her. Neither of them spoke another word until Walker turned onto a winding mountain road and finally pulled into a drive. Once he'd put the car into park, neither of them moved. It seemed the air was so thick with anticipation, she had trouble drawing breath. He put his hands on the wheel and bowed his head slightly. Madeline examined his handsome, stark profile in the dim light.
“I regretted leaving you. More than you'll ever know. But I can't apologize for who I was then any more than I can say I regret what I've become. I needed to go and find my own way, Madeline. I was a kid. I didn't have anything to offer you.”
“I never asked for anything but you,” she said, staring blindly at the house in front of her.
He gave a dissatisfied grunt. “You may have had a child's dreams then, but you're a grown woman now. Are you really going to punish me indefinitely for establishing a career for myself? I couldn't have done what I wanted to do in Lake Tahoe. I'd have ended up doing rich people's lawns for the rest of my life, like my dad.”
“Do you think I would have cared?” she exclaimed heatedly, turning toward him.
“No. But
I
would have, Madeline.
I
would have. Do you understand?”
Her breath burned in her lungs in the seconds that followed. He exhaled suddenly, informing Madeline he'd been holding his breath, too.
“It isn't as if I didn't try to contact you. I was miserable when I heard about your dad dying while I was doing my basic training,” he said gruffly. “I tried like hell to get you on the phone during those seven weeks. You were just as religious about avoiding me.”
She looked at her hands clasped in her lap through a haze of tears.
“I suppose you think I'm a fool, still hurting about a boy I fell in love with when I was nineteen years old,” she said angrily.
He put his hand on her shoulder, but she continued to stare at her lap, not wanting him to see her tears.
“I don't think you're a fool. It's hard to know when you're that young that what was happening between us was such a rarity . . . something so special.” He stroked her shoulder. “I told you I came back for you, Madeline. Do you really think I'd blame you for being set off balance at the sight of me? I'm fucking thrilled about it.”
Laughter popped out of her throat at his wry tone. A tear spilled down her cheek, and she furtively dried it with her fingertips.
“Madeline?”
“Yes?”
“Will you let me tell you now how sorry I am about not being here when your dad passed? I know how much he meant to you.”
A spasm of grief went through her. She hadn't realized until that moment how long she'd waited to hear Walker say those words. “I'm so sorry about your dad, too,” she mumbled wetly.
She felt his fingertips on her cheek, drying tears that now flowed freely. “I wish you would have taken my calls back then. We might have avoided all this, Madeline.”
She shook her head as emotion clawed at her throat.
“I couldn't. It would have hurt too much to hear your voice, knowing you were gone.”
“Shhhh,” he soothed as he took her into his arms. “I'm back. I'm back now.”
After a minute she gained control over her upwelling of emotion. She became increasingly aware of the feeling of Walker's hard chest beneath her cheek . . . the steady, strong beat of his heart . . . the feeling of his chin resting on the top of her head and how he occasionally turned it to kiss her hair.
“Are you ready to go inside?” he asked.
She nodded. The pavement of the driveway felt cool beneath her bare feet. She glanced around the house curiously once he'd let her in the door and locked it behind them. She'd never shown the house but she'd noticed it on the MLS listing for sale. Three bedrooms, a den and a lake view. If Walker had purchased it, he must be doing all right for himself.
He hung his keys on a hook in the entryway. He grabbed her hand and led her upstairs without turning on the lights, moving with a confident stride in the darkness. She thought of what he'd said about how he hadn't felt he could offer her anything as a young man. Part of her had always vigilantly resisted that explanation. Tonight, as she held Walker's hand and followed his tall shadow down a hallway, she examined that part of herself that had blamed Walker for leaving Tahoe . . . for leaving her.
She hadn't wanted what he said about finding his way to be true because then she'd officially have had to let him go.
Had she really been so selfish that she would have denied him his dreams . . . his desire to forge his character into something of which he could be proud?
The full moon reflected off the lake, creating a palette of shifting dark blue shadows and silvery white light in the bedroom where Walker led her. He paused at the foot of a bed and turned to face her. She put her hand on his forearm, halting him when he started to reach for her.
“You're not the only one who owes an apology,” she said softly. Emotion swelled in her throat when he said nothing, but drew her into his arms. He pressed his nose to her hair and inhaled deeply. “My father always did say I was a spoiled brat, remember? I think you agreed with him more often than not.”
“Your father adored you,” Walker rumbled.
“Yes.” She pressed her lips against his chest, seeking and finding the flat, hard disc of a nipple and kissing it. Walker went very still beneath her caress. “But he was right to say I didn't particularly like being told âno.' I wanted things my way or no way.”
He spread his hand along her back and stroked her. She spoke next to his chest, hiding her humiliation over what she was about to say.
“If I couldn't have you on my terms thenâ”
“You didn't want me at all,” Walker finished gruffly.
She inhaled and stepped away from him, searching out his face in the dim light.
“If you abandoned me, then I abandoned you just as much,” she whispered.
He put his hand on her jaw. “I never forgot you, Madeline.”
“I wished I could forget you. When I saw you again, I realized why I couldn't.”
Her fingers moved fleetly around his waist and slipped beneath the edge of his jeans. She began to unbutton his fly. She felt powerfully aware of him, his hardness, his maleness, his scent . . . his heat. The moment felt full, tense and delicious somehow. He said nothing when she grabbed the waistband of his jeans and fell to her knees before him. She removed his shoes and socks, then helped him out of his jeans. When he was finally bare from the waist down, she leaned forward and placed a kiss on the satiny-smooth head of his cock. She turned and brushed her cheek against the head, absorbing his texture and heat. His hand closed in her hair, forming a gentle fist.
“Turn toward the windows,” he rasped. “I want to see your face.”
They both moved in profile to the moonlight. She held the stalk of his cock in her hand, thrilling to the sensation of hard, teeming flesh. She opened her lips and drew the head of his cock into her mouth, giving him a firm, sucking kiss.
“I'm sorry, Walker,” she breathed against his cock.
He brushed her hair away from her face before he cradled it.
“Then welcome me home,” he whispered.
She closed her eyes and guided his cock into her mouth.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
Walker watched his cock sliding between her lips, held spellbound by her lovely face, excited by the way he stretched her lush lips. He'd fantasized about Madeline's mouth for a decade or more. He'd never known a woman as naturally gifted at giving head.
She polished him with a firm, wet tongue while she worked her way down his shaft. Madeline may be petite and delicate, but she sucked with the strength of a virago. He furrowed his fingers through her hair and gently urged her up and down on his cock.
It was sublime.
He recalled as he watched her why he'd loved having her give him blow jobs when they'd been younger. It was because she gave herself so fully to the experience. She seemed enthralled as she quickened her pace, bobbing her head back and forth, applying a firm, steady suck that had him crossing his eyes. She twisted her head slightly on the back stroke, giving him a teeth-clenching extra jolt on the swollen vein just beneath the head.
“Jesus, you remembered,” he murmured as he watched her, touched and aroused that she not only recalled the location of his sweet spot after so many years but that he liked having that area treated to a helping of rough love. She responded by scraping her teeth gently against the sensitive patch of skin on her down stroke. He gasped and tightened his hand in her hair.
“Little tease,” he said.
He felt the twitch in her stretched lips as she smiled.
His cock was large enough that he was used to women not taking him fully during fellatio. He found himself fantasizing about full oral penetration in that moment, though, as he recalled all too well that the stunning woman on her knees before him had given the venture a hell of a run in their younger years.
He grunted in tense arousal when she eased him into the narrow channel of her throat. The semen in his balls seemed to leap at the erotic sensation of being encased in such a small channel. She jerked at his invasion and he withdrew quickly, wincing at the electrifying back stroke along her tongue.
“Madeline,” he growled when she took him in her throat again, deeper this time.
He pushed back on her head and his cock popped out of the vacuum she'd created with her steady suck. He resisted an urge to slide his cock back into the heaven of her mouth. She seemed confused as he bent down and lifted her to her feet. The evidence that she'd been so involved in giving him pleasure made something wild and powerful surge in his chest. He wanted to hug her and not let go, fuck her until he filled her with his come, love her until they were both too exhausted to move.
“I'm going to let you finish that sometime very soon, but right now, I want to bury myself in you, Madeline,” he said roughly. He lifted her, his hands on her ribs, feeling acutely aware of how small she was, how finely made. She sighed when he laid her on her back on the bed. He stood and whipped off his shirt, his gaze never leaving the moon-kissed vision of her. He bent and lifted her gown to her waist, making short work of the silk panties she wore.
“Open your legs, Madeline. Let me in,” he whispered, mesmerized by the sight of her shapely thighs, the erotic span of her belly, the dark, trimmed triangle of hair at the juncture of her legs. When she immediately spread her thighs wide, he muttered a curse that was meant as a blessing.
A groan ripped out of his chest when he slid into her hot, welcoming clasp. It was like being turned inside out every time he fucked her. She was too small for him. She was fucking perfect for him. She squeezed every remnant of rational thought out of his brain.
“I'm not going to last,” he said as he pumped. He hoped she forgave him, but the experience of having her give herself to him so freelyâfirst with her sweet, sucking mouth and now with her tight, total embraceâwas causing an unbearable tension to grow in him.
“I'm not going anywhere, Walker.”
He gave a gruff bark of laughter and put all of his energy into showing her he was there to stay, as well. His exuberance over his task caused both Madeline and the springs on the mattress to squeak and moan. His entire world narrowed down to the feeling of her sleek, juicy pussy pulling at his cock, tempting him until he turned into a wild-eyed animal intent on claiming his mate.
And her face . . . he couldn't remove his eyes from Madeline's moonlit face.
When he felt himself cresting, he jerked his cock out of her, the sensation a little like removing one of his own organs with a dull knife. He pumped his cock with his hand and roared, his semen shooting onto Madeline's belly, anointing her, claiming her . . . marking her yet again.
He wanted to drench her with his come.
When his frenzy quieted, he opened his eyes and saw her belly glistening in the pale light. He touched the side of her body with his hand and groaned when he felt how wet she was. He'd made his fantasy a little too realistic.
“I'll get you a towel,” he muttered, moving toward the edge of the bed. She didn't speak when he came back with a warm washcloth and a towel to dry her. He cleaned her of what seemed like a gallon of his come, then helped her out of her gown and robe, which had grown damp as well.
He kissed her softly while his fingers moved between her thighs. He absorbed the whimpers of pleasure and shudders of her body when she climaxed against his hand a moment later.