Chapter 17

I'm on autopilot as I drive to Maddie's place. The Pike land is adjacent to our land, on a parcel that was exempt from the liens that Wendy Madigan held on all the property in Snow Creek that wasn't ours.

I can't worry about that now.

Uncle Joe…

I don't think any of us ever thought anything would happen to him. He was always so big, so strong. He and my father are so close, like brothers.

This is going to kill my father. I could see it in his eyes today at the meeting. He was holding it together—being strong for Mom and the rest of us—but losing Uncle Joe will fucking kill him.

It will kill all of us.

So much to digest.

Pat Lamone is a member of our family.

Uncle Joe will probably be dead within a year.

It's just too fucking much.

I pull into the driveway of the Pikes' ranch house, exit my car, and walk to the door. I knock softly.

No response, so I ring the doorbell.

Maddie opens the door, and my God, she looks beautiful. She's wearing simple jeans and a bright-green sweatshirt.

I want to grab her and kiss her.

"Let's go," I say.

"Wait a minute," she says. "I need you to say hi to my mom."

I raise my eyebrow. "Maddie, I can't right now."

She widens her eyes at me. "Dave, please. My dad's out working, but you do need to say hi to my mom before I can leave with you."

Fuck.

I'm going to have to paste on a smile like we're dating.

Which I suppose we are. But pleasing someone's mother right now is pretty low on my list of priorities.

I sigh and follow Maddie through the small foyer into the great room. Maureen Pike is sitting on the couch reading a magazine.

She stands. "Hello, Dave."

"Mrs. Pike."

She narrows her gaze. "Please call me Maureen. Where are you and Madeline off to?"

I'm thinking she's looking for an answer other than my place to fuck.

I blink. "We haven't really discussed it."

"Maybe we'll just walk around town and then have some dinner," Maddie says.

I nod quickly. "Yeah, that sounds good."

If walking around town having dinner means fucking like rabbits at my place.

Mrs. Pike crosses her arms. She's not fooled. "That sounds great. When will you be home, Madeline?"

Maddie rolls her eyes. "I don't know, Mom. I'll be home when I get home."

Mrs. Pike smiles, but her eyes are betraying her true mood. "All right. But if it gets to be too late, please at least give me the courtesy of a call."

"Sure, Mom." She kisses her mother on the cheek. "Bye."

We leave the house, and I open the car door for Maddie. Then I get in on the driver's side.

We're quiet for the first few moments, until?—

"I'm sorry about my mom," Maddie says.

I shake my head. "It's okay. I'm just not in the mood for putting on an act today."

"There's no reason to put on an act with my mother. Just be yourself."

"That's the problem, Maddie." He sighs. "Right now myself is a mess. It's certainly not someone you want to have talking to your mother."

I place a hand on his upper arm. "You want to tell me about it?"

He takes a deep breath. "I do. But not just yet. Right now, what I need, Maddie, is you in my bed."

She smiles. Sort of. Her lips twitch. It's like she wants to smile but doesn't want to.

"That okay with you?" I ask.

"Yeah." She scratches her arm. "I mean, I love being with you. But at some point, we have to?—"

"Talk about us?" I blurt out.

She swallows. "Well… Yeah."

"Sure, Maddie." I tighten my grip around the steering wheel. "We can talk about us. But quite frankly, in order for there to be an us, I have to know who the hell I am first. Right now, I just fucking don't."

She bites on her bottom lip, and I keep my eyes straight on the road.

She doesn't say anything else for the rest of the drive.

When I pull into the driveway of my place, she finally turns to me. "David?—"

I raise an eyebrow. "David?"

"David, Dave, whatever." She grabs my hand. "I want to be with you. Totally. I'm already wet thinking about it."

"Good, because I'm already hard as a fucking rock."

"But…I don't want to just be a fuck to you."

"You want to be my girlfriend?"

She doesn't reply.

But she's right.

"Maddie, last night I told you that I could give up being a Rake-a-teer for the right woman. I wasn't yanking your chain. Obviously I was referring to you. But man, my life has been turned upside down in the last couple of hours. So could we please just fuck now and talk later?"

She nods slowly. "Sure, Dave. Let's fuck."

I get out of my car, open the passenger door for her, help her out. I hold her hand as we go to the house. Gary is still at my parents' house, so as soon as we're at the door, I flatten her against the wall and crush our mouths together. She opens for me, and I devour her mouth with my tongue, taking her with a kiss.

She wraps her arms around me, and I grind my hard cock into her pelvic bone.

She sighs into my mouth.

I break the kiss then, lift her in my arms, and carry her through the foyer down the hallway to my bedroom.

"Too many clothes," I say.

I disrobe quickly as she watches.

"Strip," I command.

She takes her green sweatshirt off, exposing a lacy red bra.

I suck in a breath. "God, you're fucking beautiful."

She unclasps her bra from the back, tosses it, and her perfect breasts fall gently onto her chest.

Her nipples are already hard and puckered. I want to bite on them, suck on them, nibble until she screams.

But what I need more than any of that is to sink my cock inside her.

I'm already naked, my dick jutting out, ready for action.

She flips off her clogs and then removes her jeans, sliding them over her perfect ass along with her red bikini.

I take a moment to look at her—appreciate her sheer beauty.

But I need more than that. Need to get inside her, fuck her, take a little of today off me.

"Lie on the bed," I command.

She obeys me without challenge, which surprises me, but I know better than to question it now. She's willing to give me what I need, and I'll see that her needs are met later.

I hover over her, look into her warm brown eyes—eyes that draw me in, make me want to give her everything.

And right now, I want to give her my big hard cock.

I dangle it over her clit a few times, making her moan, and then I thrust inside.

God, the sweet suction. The perfect fit.

But my needs overtake me, and I pull out and plunge back in.

I fuck her hard, fuck her fast, fuck her better than I've ever fucked another woman.

It doesn't take long until I'm ready, on the brink?—

So I slow down a bit, wanting to last just a bit longer.

But knowing I'm going to explode at any moment.

Because that's what I need. What I brought her here for. For release. Escape.

To run away from the shit that's still going down with my family.

If I thought I needed a vacation before, I really need one now.

I'm going to take it in Maddie Pike's body.

I pull out and thrust back in, emptying myself into her tight cunt.

And with that release, I let go—if only for a moment—all the evil in the world, all the impurity in the world, all the shit in the world.

Everything going on with my family.

Because one day—one fucking day—everything will be right again. As right as it feels coming inside Maddie Pike.

I stay inside her for a few moments, and then I roll over so that we're both on our sides, facing each other, still joined.

"Thank you," I say. "You have no idea how much I needed that."

"I'm happy to help you any way I can. But Dave, I was serious when I said I don't want to be just a fuck to you."

I shake my head. "You aren't, Maddie. I guess we're…dating?"

"You don't sound too confident in that assessment."

I sit up, run my hands through my hair. "Christ. I didn't go looking for this. And you know as well as I do that I didn't go to Europe to follow you there."

"Yeah, you've made that clear," she says dryly.

I scoff. "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't be like that, Maddie. We're great together."

"We're great in bed, Dave. We hardly know each other outside of the bedroom."

"That's not exactly true. We spent time together in Europe. We saw Paris together." I finger the gold chain around her neck. Dangling from it is the pearl, sapphire, and ruby pendant I purchased for her in Paris.

She puts her hand over mine. "We did. But before Paris was that awful experience on the plane, and we were both screwed up over that. Now we're home, and something's clearly up with your family again." She sighs. "You're inside yourself, Dave, and you can't be with me if you can't be with me."

She's right, of course. But…

"I do want to go there, Maddie. Not yet. I want to give you an orgasm first. I want you to feel good."

"Dave." She cups my cheek. "I don't care about an orgasm. I care about you. Something has you completely troubled. I can't force you to tell me, but I'm also not going to force you to give me an orgasm if your head's not in it."

"Maddie, giving you an orgasm is hardly a hardship."

She exhales sharply. "You've given me plenty of orgasms, Dave. Right now, you seem to need me. What can I do for you?"

I lie back down on my side. "You did it."

"Damn it." She moves away from me. "I will not be just a fuck to you. Talk to me. Let me help you."

I roll over onto my back, cover my eyes with my arm. "I don't want to lay this on you."

"Lay it on me. Because if you don't, this will be the last time you'll lay me."

I remove my arm from my eyes. "You're so much more than a good lay, Maddie. I never meant for it to be more than that, but you are."

She snuggles into my shoulder. "I'm glad for that. And I'm proving to you now that you're not just a fuck to me, Dave. I don't expect you to give me an orgasm when you're clearly bothered."

"God, you don't know the half of it."

"Tell me. Let me help."

I look her straight in the eyes. "You can't tell anyone what I'm about to tell you."

"Of course not."

"It's a lot of things, but the biggest one right now is that my uncle Joe is sick."

She nods slowly. "I'm sorry to hear that. I hope he gets better soon."

I shake my head, feeling a lump forming in my throat. "You don't understand. He has cancer. Brain cancer. A glioblastoma, which is pretty much a death sentence."

She rolls away from me, sits up, slaps her hand over her mouth. "I'm so, so sorry, Dave."

"You know the worst thing about it? I love my uncle, and I feel so awful for him and my aunt, but the first thing I thought was how glad I was that it wasn't my own father."

"That's not bad," she says.

"But it is. You've probably heard Brianna say this. All of our aunts and uncles are like parents to us. All of our cousins are like siblings to us. We're that close, Maddie. Joe is the oldest Steel brother. The patriarch of our family. It's like he's the base of our house of cards, and without him, we'll fall."

"The Steels are built on a much more solid foundation than that," Maddie says.

Are we though? She doesn't know everything.

She knows about Wendy Madigan, about Lauren and Jack, and even Pat Lamone. That has all become common knowledge around town. She knows about Brittany Sheraton, that she's under mental health care now.

She doesn't know about the human trafficking. She doesn't know about Dale and Donny and Uncle Talon. About what Wendy Madigan ultimately cost our family.

She doesn't know about my grandfather, Bradford Steel, who wasn't the pillar of society everyone thought he was. That we were raised to think he was.

And she sure as hell doesn't know about the three rapists connected to our family—Theo Matthias, Larry Wade, and my own grandfather, Tom Simpson. Tom Simpson, who killed himself right in front of Uncle Joe twenty-five years ago. Took his own life rather than face the music for what he'd done. I have the blood of Larry Wade as well. He was the half brother of my maternal grandmother, Daphne Steel, who lived her own private hell inside her head because of him and the other two.

I sigh. "I pray you're right."

She bites her lip. "And you never know. Your uncle may just survive."

"One percent of people, Maddie. One percent of people with this cancer survive for ten years."

"Then there's still hope."

I roll over, facing away from her. "Maybe."

"Dave, I am not going to let you go back to that place." She grabs my shoulders and rolls me back toward her. "You know what everyone loves about you is your optimism, your jovial personality. After that plane almost crashed, I saw you lose that, and then I saw you regain it, now only to lose it again." She places her hands on each side of my face. "You're still you, Dave Simpson. You're still you."

She's right, of course.

The family is going to need me more than ever now.

I pull her back into my arms, kiss her lips gently. "You're something else. I think I could fall in love with you, Madeline Jolie Pike."

I think I already have.

But she doesn't push that subject any further, to my surprise. She simply snuggles into me, kissing my shoulder.