Chapter 28

28

Madeline

Life moves at a much slower pace after I pack some of my belongings and move them to New York. After weeks of hectic back-to-back interviews and appearances to help build my new brand that Judy and I are creating, that all eases. Tucker is out there being a dick and I think a lot of people are starting to see him in a new light, which means the negative publicity I was enduring has decreased. And Judy was right: people find other scandals to get invested in and they move on, forgetting the one they were just fixated on.

Once I'm in New York, I divide my time between songwriting, doing some PR, and spending time with Ethan, learning so much more about him and enjoying the kind of domestic life I've never had with a man. We do everyday couple things like taking in a movie, having date nights, enjoying lazy reading afternoons together, cooking together, and laughing a lot. Ethan snaps a million photos of me and I start writing songs that have pieces of him in them.

I also spend Tuesday nights having dinner with the Black family and it's becoming a favorite part of my week.

Two weeks after I make the move, I wake on a Tuesday morning to Ethan cursing as he checks the time. "Fuck, I'm gonna be late for my shoot." He throws the bed covers off and strides into the bathroom.

Ethan has gone back to doing what he loves for work: photography. He's still consulting for the company he sold his app to, but after spending a lot of time with them initially, he now only has to work a few days a month with them. Last week, he opened his books for portrait photography for the first time in years and people are excited he's back.

By the time I wander into the bathroom, he's in the shower. I brush my teeth and then step into the shower, moving behind him and wrapping my arms around his body.

"Miller," he growls, "I haven't got time."

I kiss his back, keeping my arms around him but letting one hand glide down his body toward his cock. "You have got time."

He grasps my hand and stops it moving any lower. "Baby, I can't afford to be late." He turns in my embrace, looking down at me with both lust and frustration. "You need to get out of the shower."

"Wow. I never imagined the day you'd boss me into leaving you alone."

He groans and I see just how much he wishes he could say, "fuck it all" and push me back against the tiled wall.

"You absolutely have time," I say and when he opens his mouth to argue, I silence him with a finger to his lips. "I don't know what time you think your shoot is, but if you fuck me fast, you definitely have time."

"Babe, my shoot is at nine. I don't even have time for a five-minute fuck."

"Without touching the idea of a five-minute fuck, which, you should make note of, I never want, your shoot is at ten."

He looks truly frustrated with me now and it's the first time he's ever clenched his jaw with me. "Maddie, I think I know my own schedule."

"Okay, Black, here's your next girlfriend lesson: women know their man's schedule better than their man does. We memorize that shit like it's our own schedule. There's this little thing you can do where you share your digital calendar with someone else, which I've done with yours. Every night, I note what you've got on the next day, so I know that your shoot does not start until ten today."

He's stopped clenching his jaw and is eyeing me questioningly. "How the fuck do you share a calendar with someone?"

"Well, I mean, it's hard to do if they have a password on their phone, but since you refuse to have any kind of security on your device and are more than happy for me to access it, I sent it to myself." I pat his chest. "And look at this, you get two girlfriend lessons in one morning. Put a damn password on your phone."

Before I can take another breath, he's got me up against the tiled wall and his mouth on mine, and he's kissing me with everything in him.

Our hands are everywhere.

Desperate.

Possessive.

Claiming.

Ethan brands me with his touch, and when he tears his mouth from mine, the searing hunger in his eyes continues to mark me as his. "Your smart mouth will get you in trouble one day, Miller."

I dig my fingers into his skin. "Promise?"

Without answering me, he roughly grabs my hips and spins me to face the wall. His breath is hot on the back of my neck when he rasps, "I'm gonna do my best to make this longer than five minutes, but here's your lesson for today: you wanna speak to me like that, you're gonna get fucked fast and hard."

It's like my pussy has never met a man before with the way she reacts to that. At this point, I don't care if he only fucks me for one minute, I just need him inside me. Now.

With my cheek pressed hard against the tiles, I moan. I couldn't even stop myself from doing that if I wanted to.

"Fuck." It's practically a grunt that falls from his lips after my moan fills the bathroom. He reaches one hand down to my clit while his other one comes to my breast, and not in a gentle, loving way. His touch is as crude as his mouth is at times. "Do you have any idea what you do to me?" He kisses my neck, biting and sucking me in such a way that he may as well just stamp his name there, all the while rubbing my clit and continuing to be indecent with my breast.

I rock my hips and grind my pussy against his hand, which causes him to make obscenely masculine sounds as he bites me and presses his dick against my ass.

I vaguely think about reaching for his cock but the pleasure he's delivering has my brain so scattered that I think I may have forgotten how to move my arm in order to do that. My body has completely taken over and I'm moving to the beat of Ethan, unable to focus on anything but that beat.

By the time he takes hold of my hips and thrusts inside me, I'm so high on pleasure that it seems impossible to feel a greater high. I should know better, though, because there is nothing in this world that feels better than having Ethan deep inside me.

He fucks me like he can't get what he wants fast enough.

I'm not sure we've had sex this intense. This wild. This reckless.

It's like Ethan's lost his mind and is just taking, taking, taking.

And it may be the greatest sex of my life.

I want him to take everything from me that he wants.

Ravage me, wreck me, ruin me.

He can have it all.

His thrusts speed up and his breathing turns ragged.

"Fuck, Maddie," he grunts as the sounds of our skin slapping together fills the bathroom. "Fuck." His fingers dig into my skin painfully and oh so rudely, and my cheek gets forced harder against the wall.

In amongst all of that, I make so many filthy noises that are almost pornographic.

By the time we come, I'm a hot panting mess, desperate for release. Ethan leans into me afterward, resting against my back while he catches his breath.

"You should clench your jaw at me more often," I say.

"What?" He kisses the nape of my neck, staying right where he is.

"You fuck me real good after you clench your jaw all angry like."

I can't see him, but by the way his body gently shakes, I think he's shaking his head at me and silently laughing. Which kinda was my goal with the words I chose to string together for him.

He pulls out and turns me to face him, and yep, his eyes have that amused look in them. "I wasn't angry."

"Well, you were definitely frustrated with me. And you did clench your jaw."

He swoops in and steals a rough kiss as his hand settles on my stomach. "And you had a smart mouth." He traces his finger over my lips. "What time today do our calendars get in sync?"

My body arches into his. "Twelve thirty."

"Can you edit my calendar from your phone?"

"Yes."

"Add lunch in at twelve thirty. Pick a place. Let me know."

I pull his mouth to mine again, taking the kiss I need before letting him go.

"And babe?" he says.

"Yeah?"

His hand on my stomach presses against it a little harder, a lot more possessively. "I'm never adding a password to my phone."

Ethan arrives five minutes late for lunch, brushing a kiss across my lips before taking the seat across from me, pulling his sunglasses off, and saying, "I'm sorry I'm late. I just got off a call about a conference I've been invited to. It took longer than I predicted."

I rest my elbows on the table and lean forward as I swoon over so many things about this moment. The absolute domesticity of it. Having lunch with my partner on a weekday. Him arriving wearing quad-hugging jeans, a casual black T-shirt, and the kind of facial scruff I die for. The middle-of-the-day kiss that couples sneak when they have the chance. Being able to catch up during the day and share things that we now won't have to wait until the end of the day to share.

"What conference?" I ask.

He grabs the menu. "It's an international conference for photography and theory. I've always thought it a bit pretentious, but the team behind it changed a few years ago and it's become a prestigious event to the point where receiving an invite is a huge thing now. I haven't been able to accept their invites, though, because work kept me too busy." He pauses while perusing the menu. "What are you gonna eat?"

Ethan likes to share food. I learned this after the up-front stage of things with us. He's always eyeing my plate, reaching across to steal food, and happily sharing his. I've never done this with anyone, so it took me a hot minute to get used to it, but now I'm well-versed and know what to expect.

I tell him what I've decided on and then say, "Are you going to accept the invitation?"

He nods as the waitress comes to us. He then rattles off our order, stopping to ask what I want to drink. Once we're alone again, he says, "Yeah. They want me to run a workshop too, so I said yes to that. The timing is great now that I've decided to go back to photography and am looking to rebuild my profile."

He shares more about the workshop and I see the fire in him. Ethan loves the craft of photography as much as I love the craft of singing. And while I think it's taken him a lot of introspection and soul searching to get to the place where he is, ready to go back to doing what he loves the most, he's all in now.

"When's the conference?" I ask, sipping some water.

"The same week you'll be in London for your PR week there. And since the conference is also in London, I figured we could stay a few days afterward and play tourist." His eyes crinkle with a playful smile. "Unless you've got shit on your calendar I don't know about because I don't have access to it."

I motion at him. "Give me your phone and I'll put my calendar on it. And yeah, I have some free time then."

I'm in the middle of adding my calendar to his phone when a text notification arrives. The sender's name is Melanie and I swear I stop breathing for a second. My fingers still as I read the lines of the text that I can see.

Melanie: Miss you, Ethan. When can we hook up again? I'm in New York in a couple of weeks. We should grab a drink and...

"Miller," Ethan says. "What's wrong?"

I tell myself not to jump to any conclusions, not to suspect the worse. I mean, this is Ethan. The guy who lets me into his phone whenever I want; the guy who got on a plane almost every night to come see me; the guy who protects me at all costs; the guy who values transparency and hates playing games.

But, holy hell, the baggage I'm carrying over Tucker that I didn't even realize I was carrying has my mind racing down some crazy paths.

"Babe," Ethan says again. "What is it?"

I slide his phone across the table and meet his gaze. "You just received a text from Melanie." I hate that I watch him so closely right now, looking for any little sign that Melanie is more than a friend to him.

"Okay." He gives me nothing. Either he has no tells or she really is only a friend.

I really, really, really don't want to ask him who she is. Jealousy isn't something I've ever had a problem with, but here I am, my entire body blazing with that emotion.

Shit.

Ethan narrows his eyes at me. "Maddie, what's going on?"

I inhale a breath.

Transparency.

No secrets.

No lies.

No fucking games.

Those were the things Ethan told me are important to him, and they are to me too. Asking him a simple question is my right as his girlfriend. And fuck Tucker for making me think it wasn't a right I had.

"Who's Melanie?"

Ethan's a smart, intuitive man, and he quickly connects the dots. "She's a friend I've known for about five years. No benefits. We met through Callan who worked with her for a while. She's been living in Hong Kong for two years. I imagine her text is either telling me she's coming back to the States and wants to catch up, or that she's finally divorcing her dickhead husband."

"Fuck," I breathe, my legs feeling wobbly even though I'm not standing. "I'm sorry for asking that."

His eyes remain fixed to mine. "You have nothing to apologize for. That was a reasonable question to ask a guy you've been dating for seven weeks. And I'm glad you asked it because not asking that kind of stuff is what leads to games and bullshit."

"I know you're right. I think I just have some work to do after Tucker, you know?"

His eyes are so intense right now. "I've dated five women and slept with two others. I told you I hate one-night stands and I meant it. Sex is meaningless to me without the connection." He leans forward. "This"—he motions a finger back and forth between us—"is what turns me on. Sitting here telling you about a conference I feel privileged to be invited to while we discuss what we want to eat together for lunch. Knowing I'll see you at my parents' place tonight where at least one of my brothers is sure to piss me off while you make that bearable. Knowing I'll get to sleep next to you tonight. I fucking love sex, but this is what I love more. And Miller?"

"Yeah?" I manage to croak out, all up in my feels over what he just said.

"I hadn't had sex for fifteen months before you. I was trying not to fuck you that first time because I wanted to wait for you to be ready for me. And I would have waited because this connection we have is something I've never had with anyone."

If I could crawl across the table and curl up on his lap, I would. I'd sit there and try to untangle all my thoughts and all my feelings, and I'd tell him every single one. I'd maybe even tell him I love him. Because I do. This man has practically removed my heart from my body and taken ownership of it.

Since I can't crawl across this table, and since I don't know that either of us are ready for the "L" word yet, I say, "Thank you for telling me all of that." I'm interrupted by the waitress bringing us our meals. Once she's finished delivering them, I find his eyes again. "I've never had a connection like ours either."

"I have nothing to hide from you, Maddie."

I reach for his hand, needing his touch. "I know this. I just had a moment."

He watches me for another few moments before appearing settled over this. Then, eyeing my plate, he leans across to steal some of my chicken. "Tell me about your morning. Did you finish that song you were working on?"

Ethan's right: this is what turns me on too. Having a man's heart in this way.