Tempting the Best Man

chapter Eight



Well, that hadn’t gone as planned. Not that Chase really had a plan. Over an hour later, his cheek was still stinging like hell and the bathroom door she had slammed shut in his face was still ringing in his ears.

God, he’d mucked everything up in the worst kind of way.

As he had sat on the couch, wondering how in the hell he could fix this, he’d heard the water running in the bathroom and knew she wasn’t showering again. Maddie was too proud.

She’d turned the water on to mask her tears.

Damn it. The last thing Chase wanted to do was hurt her and damn if he hadn’t. He felt like the worst kind of son of a bitch.

Finally, she had emerged from the bathroom, eyes puffy but face clear as she stalked past him, dressed in another pretty little dress that matched the green flecks in her eyes, and left the cabin without saying a word, her spine unnaturally stiff.

He’d tried to stop her, like he’d gone to the bathroom door several times over, but he’d said nothing, because really, what could he say now? How could he fix this? He should’ve just kept his damn mouth shut and let it go.

By the time he stood from the couch and changed into a pair of dark slacks and a light dress shirt for the formal dinner, he was already running a few minutes late.

Most everyone had arrived to the dining hall in the main lodge by the time Chase finally trudged in. Mitch and Lissa sat at the head of the table, side by side, holding hands. And then on either side of them were their parents, followed by the… God damn, the bridal party.

Maddie sat, one leg primly crossed over the other, hands folded in her lap, and spine still straight. The seat beside her was empty.

The seating was assigned.

Squaring his shoulders, he headed to his seat, nodding in response to various greetings.

Maddie didn’t look at him, didn’t say a word.

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. Her jaw was tight, lips pressed into a small line.

Across from him, Chad stood with a glass of wine in his hand. “Now that we’re all here, it’s time for a toast.”

“And hopefully something to eat,” Mitch said, grinning. Lissa playfully smacked his arm, and he laughed. “Go ahead, Chad.”

Chad cleared his throat melodramatically. Half the table was leaning forward, dying to hear what he was actually going to say. One never knew with him.

“I think we can all agree that no one is surprised to be here,” he started out, raising his glass high in the air. “From the moment Mitch and Lissa met, we knew he was whipped.”

Laughter followed, and at the head of the table, Mitch shrugged, accepting what was true. Even though the two had started off as friends, it had been obvious that Mitch had the hots for the pretty blonde.

Chase’s gaze met his eldest brother’s. Chandler quirked an eyebrow and then glanced at Maddie.

“Most of us were taking bets to see how long he went before asking her out.” Chad grinned at Lissa’s surprised expression. “Yep, I said a week. Chandler called two weeks, and good ole Chase said a month and a half.”

Lissa gasped and then grinned. “Mitch asked me out when we’d known each other close to two months.” Her wide smile turned on Chase. “You won.”

He shrugged as he toyed with the stem of his wineglass. Although a lot of eyes were on him, a lot of smiles, Maddie stared straight ahead.

“Betting aside,” Chad went on, “we all knew that Lissa and Mitch were the real deal. No two better people could’ve met. So cheers!”

Glasses rose and a roar of liveliness filled the room. Chase was surprised his brother had relatively behaved himself during the speech. Then it was his turn, and as the best man, he was honor-bound to humiliate his buddy, but like Chad, he kept it simple: short and sweet.

The food arrived and the dinner progressed as it should, for the most part. Everyone around him was celebrating the union of two people who deserved it, but him? He was thrilled for them, but…

Chase glanced at Maddie as she spoke to one of the bridesmaids.

He was an a*shole. There was no way around it, and he knew deep down that she was never going to forgive him for his offer. Not that he blamed her. It was tantamount to offering her money for sex. Worse than anything his father did.

Appetite vanished, he pushed his plate back and tried to listen to what one of his college buds was saying. But he noted that Maddie stayed away from the wine. At least there would be no repeat of her dancing with the dickhead.

A possessive feeling surged inside him as he recalled the guy putting his hands on her hips, lifting her off the bench. That guy had no right touching her.

Chase sucked in a sharp breath.

Hell, he had no right to touch her.

When dinner was over, the party broke into small groups and he couldn’t help but notice Maddie steered straight toward her brother and family. Pressure built in his chest, like a sudden weight, settling hard.

Knowing he needed to fix things, but not sure if he could, he felt his mood plummet from bad to shit, which wasn’t improved when Chad sauntered up to him and dropped a heavy arm over his shoulders.

“Little brother,” he said. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

Chase casually shrugged his brother’s arm off but took the beer he offered with his other hand. “What look?”

“The same look you had before you knocked the crap out of Rick Summers for getting too friendly with Maddie in the car that one night.”

Chase didn’t like where this conversation was going.

“It’s the same look you got when Maddie was a freshman in college and some guy in your econ class said he wanted to tap that ass.”

The muscle in Chase’s jaw started to tick. Only Chad knew about that. He’d witnessed it. Recalling the little punk and the horseshit he’d been saying pissed him off all over again.

“And it’s the same look you got on your face last night when she was dancing with that guy,” Chad went on. He smiled when Chase sent him a look. “Yeah, I noticed. And you’ve sat through dinner like someone kicked your puppy into traffic, burned down all three of your bars, then pissed in your face and shoved a fat one up—”

Chase laughed dryly. “I get what you’re saying.”

“You didn’t even smile during my toast.”

He rolled his eyes.

“And man,” Chad said after a moment. “What did you do to Maddie? Because she had the same look on her face the entire time.”

“It has nothing to do with Maddie.” He downed half his beer. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

Chad shook his head and ignored Chase’s words. “It’s always her.”

He went stock still, staring at the bottle of beer. “Is it that obvious?” he asked on a choked breath. He expected Chad to joke with him, but he remained dead silent.

“Yeah, it’s that obvious,” Chad said finally. “Always has been.”

“Great.”

Chad smiled then. “So what happened?”

He took another long draft of his beer and then told Chad a brief, not-so-explicit version of what happened. As expected, his brother stared at him like he was the biggest kind of idiot.

“I can’t believe you made that offer.” Shaking his head, he laughed. “What did you expect? For her to jump right on that?”

Honestly, looking back, Chase wasn’t sure what the hell he’d expected. Somewhere between the incident in the wine cellar and seeing her in the bathtub, so absurdly sexy surrounded by bubbles, it had been the best thing he could come up with.

Chase tugged a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“That’s the problem,” Chad said. “You were thinking too much.”

Chase scowled. “That makes zero sense.”

“You don’t get it. You’re overthinking this whole thing when you should be doing what your heart is telling you.”

Chase busted into laughter. “Wow, been watching a lot of Oprah reruns?”

“Shut up,” Chad said, stretching his arms over his head. Chase could tell he was uncomfortable as hell in the dress clothes. While Chase favored the nicer stuff, Chad was comfortable only in jeans.

His brother flashed a wild grin. “Okay, how about starting to think with what’s between your legs? Either way, the Mitch thing is bullshit. You know he wouldn’t have a problem with you getting serious about Maddie. Unless you’re only interested in hitting it, and hey, I can understand that; she’s a fine piece of—”

“Finish that sentence and I’ll shove this bottle up your ass,” Chase warned.

Chad tipped his head back and laughed. “Yeah, so like I expected, it’s not a one-night thing, so I doubt Mitch would have a problem with it.”

“Let me ask you a question. If we had a sister, how would you feel if one of our friends was snooping around her skirt?”

“That’s a bad example.” Chad folded his arms, eyes narrowing on one of the pretty bridesmaids. “Our friends suck.”

Chase snorted.

His brother fell silent again, another oddity for Chad. Several seconds passed. “Bro, all of us are a little f*cked up.”

“No shit.”

Chad let out a dry laugh. “What we saw our dad do to our mother was messed up. Father was a dick, dead or alive. But you know what the messed-up thing is? That we’re still letting him screw up our lives for us, and he’s not even around.”

Part of Chase wanted to deny it, but he couldn’t lie to his brothers. Of all people, they knew. “I’m just like him.”

“You’re nothing like him,” Chad said heatedly. “But you make yourself like him. I don’t even know why. It’s like some kind of twisted self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“There’s that Oprah shit again.”

“Shut up, a*shole. I’m being serious.” Chad placed his hand on Chase’s shoulder. “Out of all of us, you’re the best one and don’t even try to deny it. All your life, you’ve wanted Maddie. She’s been the one thing that kept your ass grounded and for whatever reason, you keep pushing her away.”

This conversation was starting to go into no-man’s-land. Mainly because it was starting to make sense. “Drop it—”

“I’m not finished. Hear me out, bro. You’re not Father. You would never treat Maddie like he treated Mom. Hell, those women you date? You even treat them better. If anything, they prove you’re not like him.”

“What kind of effed-up logic is that?”

Chad shot him a knowing look. “You’re not leading on a single one of them. You haven’t lied to them. You’re not married and flaunting your whores in front of your wife’s face.”

A sharp pang of fear—of actual fear—hit him in the gut. What if he did do that? He could never forgive himself. “I’m not married. That could be the reason.”

“You’d never do that to Maddie,” his brother said. “You know why?”

“I bet you’re going to tell me.”

Chad took a long swig of his beer, finishing it off. “Because you have something that Father never had—the capacity to love. And you love Maddie too much to do that to her.”

Chase opened his mouth to deny it, but damn if the words weren’t there.

His brother started to back away, brows raised. “You aren’t going to taint her, bro. You aren’t going to screw her up. I think the problem here is that you’re not giving anyone credit, especially yourself.”

…



Madison had seriously considered camping out on the floor of her parents’ cabin, but the whole second-honeymoon thing just grossed her out. Most of the wedding party was paired up with the exception of Sasha, who was Lissa’s friend from Maryland, but it looked like she’d be entertaining Chad for the evening.

That left her great aunt Bertha, and yeah, that was so not happening.

Besides, she told herself as she entered the dark, empty cabin, I’m not a teenager anymore. She wouldn’t run from Chase. It didn’t matter that once again she had held her heart in her hands and he’d taken it, dropped it on the floor, and stomped on it. All she needed to do was make it through tonight and tomorrow, and then for the rest of the weekend, she’d have her own cabin.

She changed quickly, grabbing the shirt Chase had dressed her in last night. A pang hit her in the chest when she remembered how sweet he’d been.

Sweet and sexy, and it meant nothing.

All he wanted was to have sex with her and get it out of his system.

What a douche.

Her hands trembled as she reached for the faucets. Sitting next to Chase for most of the night had been a practice in pure torture. Several times she wanted to turn and say something to him—anything. Or take her glass of water and throw it in his face. The latter would’ve made her feel better, at least for a few moments.

But there was nothing to be said, and after this weekend, she would go back to her life and finally forget about Chase Gamble.

Washing her face, she tugged her long hair into a ponytail and went to the bed, settling under the covers. Tonight she didn’t feel bad about him ending up on the couch rejected from the sixties. Served him right.

Madison rolled onto her side, placing her back to the door, and squeezed her eyes shut. Mentally tallying up the e-mails she’d need to answer and phone calls to be made when she returned to work next week, she tried to bore herself into sleep before Chase returned.

No such luck.

When the moon was high, its pale light slicing through the wooden shutters, the door creaked open and his footsteps broke the silence.

“Maddie?”

Holding her breath, she pretended to be asleep. Way to act like a grown-up.

The footsteps drew closer and then the bed dipped under his weight as he sat. Silence stretched out, taut and tense as her nerves. What was he doing? She was half afraid to find out.

Chase’s heavy sigh overshadowed the pounding of her heart. A second later, she felt the very tips of his fingers brush back the strands of hair lying againt her cheek, tucking them behind her ear.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, but she heard him. “I’m sorry for everything.”

Her breath caught, reminding her that she had indeed been breathing. Madison wasn’t sure what his apology should mean. Should it undo everything? Should it just lay between them, a proverbial white flag so there was some hope for a friendship in the future, because there wasn’t a future without him, no matter what?

And she wasn’t sure who was to blame the most for this catastrophe. Sure, Chase wasn’t innocent, but it was she—and the feelings that she’d brought into this—that complicated everything.

Madison squeezed her eyes against the rush of tears and clamped her mouth shut.

Chase hovered for a few more seconds and then the bed shifted as he moved to stand. Unable to stay quiet, to pretend that this wasn’t happening, she rolled onto her back. “Chase?”

He froze, one hand planted deep in the covers beside her hip. In the darkness, his eyes looked black, his features stark, strangely open and vulnerable.

She really didn’t know what she was doing. Her body was at war with her heart and thoughts, and ever since she was a child, she’d had terrible, horrific impulse control.

She reached up, placing her hand on his smooth jaw. Instead of pulling away, he pressed his cheek into her hand and closed his eyes.

“This has been a wedding to remember, huh?” he said, his cheek rising against her hand as he gave a little smile. “And there hasn’t even been a wedding yet.”

Then he placed his hand over hers and slowly brought it to his lips. He pressed a kiss to her palm, and her heart flipped over. “I’m sorry, Maddie. I really am. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking to say that to you earlier. Getting it out of my system isn’t what I want.”

Her fingers curled around his. Confusion swept through her. “I don’t…I don’t understand.”

He drew in a deep breath. “I don’t even know what I’m thinking. Chad was spouting all this Oprah bullshit and some of it made sense—as insane as that is.”

“What?”

Chase smiled a little, and then his eyes met hers. “I want you.”

Madison’s breath caught. Hope was back, beating at her insides. With Chase, everything was like a roller coaster. Up. Down. Up. Down. “You said that earlier.”

“And I meant it.”

So much confusion still churned inside her, but her heart moved on, creating more space for him. The word that left her mouth pretty much sealed her fate. “Stay?”

Chase hesitated, his body going so still, so tense that she could feel the edginess rolling off of him. Then he sprang into motion, kicking off his shoes as he unbuttoned his shirt. It fluttered to the floor like a white flag.

Her heart was in her throat as her gaze flickered over the expanse of his well-defined chest, across the dips of his rock-hard abs. He was beautiful, something straight out of her fantasies. In the pale light of the moon, in the shadows of the cabin, she swept aside her reservations and fear. She existed on what she always had—her love for Chase.

And in an instant, she believed this was the turning point that had been building for years. There’d be no going back. And if she couldn’t prove that he wasn’t like his father, no one could.

Chase shifted onto his side, facing her with very little space between them. Neither of them said anything as she twisted toward him, their faces and bodies inches apart.

Slowly, tentatively, Chase placed his hand to her cheek. His fingers trailing along the arch of her face, down to her parted lips. She felt the light touch in every cell of her body and her response was immediate, consuming.

His fingers drifted down her throat, to the edge of her cotton shirt. A small smile played across his lips. “Do you know that seeing you in my clothes is a huge turn-on?” He edged his fingers under the collar, brushing them across her collarbone, and her toes curled. “I don’t know why that is, but it is.”

She wondered if he felt the same when she was out of his clothes. Then she remembered the hard length that had pressed against her in the bathroom and she went with a yes.

“What do we do, Maddie?” he asked, voice deep and husky.

Madison swallowed, her body joining her heart and already making up her mind for her. Before she even knew what she was doing, her body moved toward his.

Rising up on her knees, she placed both hands on his shoulders and pushed him until he was flat on his back. She straddled his hips, biting back a moan when she felt his erection straining through the rich material of his trousers, hot against the V of her thighs.

“Make love to me,” she whispered. “Please.”

Chase stilled and then his thick lashes lifted, his stare piercing her. He didn’t answer, but he placed his hands on her thighs, sliding them up to the hem of the shirt. His fingers bunched the material. There was a pause, a moment when the only thing moving was her pounding heart, and then he lifted the shirt up.

And that was her answer.

By the time the borrowed shirt joined his on the floor, her mouth was on his and his big, warm body was under hers. The kiss wasn’t soft or gentle. It was deep and scorching, a product of years of pent-up desire on both their sides. His lips swallowed her breathy moans as his hand landed on the small of her back and jerked her to his chest. The feel of his skin flush with hers swamped her senses. Chase kissed her like a man starved, possessed by need…need for her. Madison’s hands clutched his shoulders as he staked his claim.

A hand tangled in her hair. “If we’re going to stop,” he whispered against her swollen lips, “we need to stop now. Do you understand me?”

She shuddered as his teeth nipped at her bottom lip. “I don’t want to stop. Ever. Do you understand me?”

He stilled again, and then with a near-feral growl, he moved so quickly that in a heartbeat, she was on her back, open and vulnerable to him, and he hovered above her. Concentration marked his striking features, emphasizing his full lips.

Then he was on her. His mouth clamping down on the tip of her breast as he hastily worked on the buttons and fly of his trousers. Madison let out a strangled cry as her back bowed off the mattress.

Flesh against flesh, she felt him hot and hard against her thigh, and she gripped his arms, placing tiny kisses all over his face and down his throat.

Chase caught Madison’s chin, held her as his mouth plundered hers again, kissing her until she writhed and thrashed beneath him. He was in control. Part of her wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Some reality snuck back in, and she placed a hand on his chest. “I’m on the pill, but…”

A wry smile tugged on his lips. “I got it covered.” He was off her, rummaging around in his luggage for a few moments before he returned with a foil package in his hand.

Madison arched a brow. “Planning to get laid this weekend?”

“Not really,” he admitted. “But I always have some with me.”

There wasn’t any time to let jealousy seep in because her gaze dropped and her stomach hollowed as she watched him slide the condom on his thick shaft. Then his lips were on hers and he was guiding her back, stretching out over her.

Amazed by the power in his body, she ran her hands down his ripped stomach and around his taut hips. His skin was like satin stretched over steel. Perfect.

The taste of him was on her lips as the kisses slowed, turned tender as she felt him hot at her entrance. Rolling her hips, she moaned at the feel of him there, close but not close enough. She was so ready, had been ready for what felt like an eternity.

Rising up on his elbows, Chase stared down at her. His eyes were a heated, vibrant sapphire, penetrating and intense as they locked onto hers.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered. “I want to feel you inside me.”

“I couldn’t stop now, even if I wanted.” He kissed her, marking her with all the passion and yearning she had felt for so long. “I need this. Damn it, I need you.”

And then he plunged into her with one deep stroke.

Madison let out a keening cry at the feel of him stretching and filling her. None of her fantasies, none of the men she had been with in the past, had ever felt like this, because this…this was completion.

He stilled, seated deep inside her. One hand came up, brushing the damp hair back from her forehead. “You’re so tight…” His voice was guttural, near animalistic. “Are you okay?”

She nodded and then wrapped her legs around his hips. Chase tipped his head back, groaning, and then she rocked her hips up. The veins in his neck protruded, as they did in his arms. And then he started to move, slow and languid strokes that drove her crazy. The friction of their bodies moving together, the sounds in the otherwise silent cabin, heightened her pleasure.

Lost… Madison was lost.

For so long, he held back while she cried out for more, and when he finally gave it to her, she gasped as his hands clamped down on her wrists, holding her still. He thrust hard, her hips surging to meet his.

Pressure built inside her, zinging through her veins like bottled lightning. It was too much—too intense. Her head kicked back, her body trembling.

“Come for me,” Chase whispered against her neck. “Let go.”

And Madison did. She came apart, shattering around him as she called out his name. Two quick, hard thrusts later and she felt him find his release, his huge body spasming over hers as aftershocks racked his body.

When it was over, he eased out of her and onto his back, gathering her close so that her cheek rested above his pounding heart. Both of them struggled with their breathing.

She’d never felt anything like that before and knew she’d never feel it again. Heaven.

Madison closed her eyes. There was a good chance she’d regret this in the harsh light of the morning and after weeks, maybe months from now. But in a few years, she’d be able to look back and know that she’d had him, if only for one night.