wake. Although to say I slept much would be a lie. Maddy didn’t either. I heard her in the hallway during the night, outside my bedroom door. But when I opened it, she was already walking back into her own room down the hall.
I’ve fucked everything up.
I touched the one girl I have no right to even think about touching. One of my best friend’s little sisters. I’d punch myself in the face if I could. I’ve never overstepped that mark before. Ever. I’m a loyal friend. One who can be trusted to look out for someone. Keep other guys away. Make sure she’s safe. I’m not the snake that goes behind someone’s back.
Only now, it seems I am.
I throw back the duvet and pull on a pair of joggers. I open my bedroom door and almost walk into Maddy.
“The machine made too much. I couldn’t figure it out.” She thrusts the coffee into my hand and then casts her eyes down to the floor.
It’s a lie. She used the penthouse coffee machine fine yesterday. But I don’t call her bluff. This is the nearest to an olive branch I’ve ever received from Maddox Harper in my life. I’m too stunned to question it.
“Thanks.”
She glances up at me, then turns away.
“Mads, wait.”
She pauses, inclining her head over her shoulder toward me before turning back to face me with a small sigh. She’s wearing a thin cotton nightdress that does nothing to hide the hardness of her nipples beneath.
I drag my eyes up to her face. “We need to talk about last night.”
“Nothing to talk about.” Her eyes hold mine and I place the mug down on a table near my door.
“That’s how you want to play this?”
Her expression closes off as she frowns. “Play this? There is no this.” She stalks over to me. “I don’t want you,” she says, as though saying the words out loud makes them true. “I didn’t want anything to do with you last night. And I don’t want anything to do with you now, either.”
“Doesn’t change the fact it happened.”
Her mouth opens, then closes and she glares. “Nothing happened.”
“Seriously?” Anger pricks at my veins.
“Nothing that I’d ever want to happen again, at least.” She lets out a frustrated sigh and crosses her arms. The movement pulls the neckline of her nightdress lower until one strap slides off her shoulder. I reach up and smooth it back into place. She sucks in a breath, her eyes dropping to my lips.
“You sure about that?”
I curse inwardly. What am I doing? Everything about this screams at me to shut my mouth. If Maddy wants to forget it, then so should I. It’s best for everyone. Yet, the idea has my blood heating in my veins.
I smirk at my own stupidity. You don’t forget nights like last night, no matter how hard you might wish you can.
“God, you’re so sure of yourself,” she spits. “Drew told me to give you a chance. I said I’d make an effort, but I don’t know why I bothered.”
My brows shoot up my forehead. “Having sex with me last night was because you told Drew you’d make an effort?”
Saying his name has guilt gnawing away at my insides.
“What? No. I didn’t say that.”
“Well, what was it then?”
Her mouth flaps. “It was… a mistake. A huge, enormous, gigantic, stupid regret I’ll carry for the rest of my life. We’re clear about that, right?” Defiance glitters in her eyes.
I don’t know what’s gotten into me since coming to Italy, but my patience has been sucked away day by day by this girl.
“Oh yeah. We’re clear.” My voice booms. “Real crystal fucking clear! But just to set things straight, you didn’t get off, did you? You weren’t grinding down onto my cock like you needed it more than fucking air? You didn’t scream out my name?” I jab a finger into my chest angrily. “When you came so hard your whole body shook.”
“I—”
“Twice!”
“That’s not what—”
“You don’t think I know it shouldn’t have happened, either?” I continue. “You don’t think I know I can’t take you home and say, ‘Here you go, Drew, here’s your little sister. I looked after her, she’s in one piece, but oh yeah, she’s full of my cum! We’re good though, yeah? Still mates? What’s a little betrayal and sibling fucking between friends?’”
“You’re gross.”
“Yeah?” I bark out an empty laugh. “Seems gross is what makes you come so hard you scream.”
“I can’t…” She holds a hand up. “I can’t do this with you.” She stalks away down the hall.
I should leave her be. Not fan the flames. But I’m already racing after her as I disregard all sense of reason.
“Mads.”
I catch up with her in the kitchen, reaching for her elbow. She whirls around. I expected fire in her eyes. Anger. But they’re shimmering with unconcealed lust.
“I don’t want you, Logan. Not then, not now, not ever,” she says, her chest rising and falling.
I step closer, dancing with the devil on my shoulder as I move into her space until her body heat rolls into mine.
“I haven’t fucking slept because I’ve been thinking about you. Why were you outside my bedroom door in the night?”
“I wasn’t.” Her cheeks flush.
“Liar.”
“I wasn’t coming to demand a replay if that’s what you’re thinking. I still hate you.”
A swell of arousal rushes to my dick as her eyes drop to my lips.
She’s thinking about when we kissed. She must be. How can she not think about it when it was like that moment on a rollercoaster as you reach the top of the highest drop. The ultimate thrill, the anticipation, and then the stomach lifting exhilaration when you roll over that peak.
And fall.
“I know you do. You hate me all the time. It’s like you have to say it out loud to remind yourself.”
“Shut up,” she snaps.
I move closer, logic and reason being blown out of my head as desire takes over. I’m a shit friend. I’m already going to hell. Does it make it worse if the betrayal is more than one time? I know the answer, but it doesn’t stop me from taking Maddy’s hand in mine and pressing it onto my rock-hard dick.
I dip my head until my lips graze her ear. “And yet you still do this to me. Imagine what would happen if you told me you like me.”
She stills, and I wait for her to rip her hand away. To slap me. To yell at me. To hammer some sense back into me. Because it all seems to desert me when she’s around.
But instead, she wraps her fingers around me as I grunt in response.
“I tolerated your dick last night, Logan. Don’t get it confused for anything else.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up and my cock swells with more urgency.
“Fuck,” I hiss as she slides her hand beneath the waistband of my joggers. When she wraps it around my dick again, skin to skin, I thicken more in her palm.
“Just tolerated it, that’s all,” she breathes.
Then she starts to jerk me off.
I fight not to fall back onto the tiled kitchen floor as I groan. Maddy stares at me, a mesmerized expression on her face, her brows pulling together in question like she isn’t the one controlling her hand. But she doesn’t stop. She slides it up, using her thumb to smear pre-cum around the crown, before sliding back down again.
She watches me the entire time, and faster than I expect, I’m tensing and groaning, my balls pulling close to my body with the need to come.
“Mads,” I hiss in warning.
“Logan,” she counters.
Her grip tightens and she drops her eyes to my cock as the first spurt fires out, hitting her nightdress and sinking into it. Drop after drop fires out, spraying a pattern all over the light gray material until it’s ruined by patches of darkness. Each one is a glaring mark of how far past the line we’ve stepped.
I shudder as my balls empty all over her. The final pulse leaves me and before I can give it any rational thought, I slide my hands under the ruined material, curving them over Maddy’s bare hips.
She lifts her arms in silence, letting me pull the nightdress over her head.
I stand back to look at her. My throat tightens as I take in her naked body. Curves and soft skin. Inches and inches of it I want to run my tongue over.
And her breasts.
I stifle a groan as I step forward, cupping each one. I rub my thumbs over her puckered nipples. Maddy freezes, and I hold her eyes as I bend to take one into my mouth.
“I’ve never seen a body as beautiful as yours.” I let my eyes flutter closed as I wrap my lips around her and suck with a deep moan of appreciation. “So fucking sexy.”
“Logan.” Her hands sink into my hair and tug.
“Please don’t stop me.”
I drop to my knees on the tiled floor in front of her and run a hand up from her ankle to her inner thigh, encouraging her to part her thighs.
“Tell me you hate me if you want to. But do it while my tongue’s buried in you, tasting you.”
I press my tongue to her, teasing her lips apart and finding her entrance. I slide inside, unable to fight the pull in my gut to taste her repeatedly and make her mine.
“I don’t… I don’t—”
I pull back.
“You don’t what? Want to come on my tongue?” I groan as I dive back into her, smiling against her as she gasps and twists her fingers in my hair until my scalp stings. “Is it worse than coming on my cock, Mads? Because we’re way beyond that.”
“I don’t want you to talk,” she gasps. “Just… stop… talking.” Her words morph into a moan as I replace my tongue with two fingers and suck on her clit instead.
I fuck her with my fingers in the exact way she liked last night, tracing my tongue over her clit. I drink up everything she gives me until her inner thighs shake around my head.
“I hate you,” she cries as I hit her G-spot and she comes with a force that has her legs buckling.
I grip one hip with my free hand and guide her to lean against the kitchen counter as I growl against her swollen flesh. “Hate me again. This time around my tongue.” I switch my fingers to her clit and sink my tongue back inside her again, taking full advantage of her heightened senses as her orgasm still pulses on. If I can catch her before she’s down and keep the pressure on her clit, then maybe—
“Fuck.” She pulls my hair as her pussy erupts around my tongue, clenching down onto it as she comes again.
“Good girl,” I groan. It’s muffled, but the extra yank of my hair means she heard me.
“Stop.” She grinds on my face as her orgasm continues. “I’m not doing this with you again,” she pants.
I wait until the last pulse leaves her and then slide my tongue from inside her, kissing my way up her body until I’m standing. “And yet you are.”
Her eyes are bright, her lips and cheeks a deep pink.
“Don’t read anything more into this than it is.”
I curl a hand around her waist and stroke the skin there as I wait for her to catch her breath.
“You and me, we’re… never going to happen. You know that.” She swallows, then takes more deep breaths as she waves a finger back and forth in the gap between our naked torsos. “This is… marginally better than fighting with you, that’s all.”
“Marginally better?” I cock a brow, desperate to kiss her again.
“Only just.” The deep line I like to tempt out between her brows appears. “I don’t get a headache with this.”
“That’s what this is? Avoiding a headache?”
“It’s choosing not to fight with you for a change.”
She gathers up her nightdress from the floor and clutches it to the front of her as her eyes scan up and down my body.
“Right,” I murmur.
Her eyes snap to mine, her usual fire back in them. “Don’t be an asshole.”
“I said one word. But just so we’re clear, you don’t want to fight with me anymore?”
She purses her lips, then jerks her head side to side quickly like a stubborn toddler.
“But you fight with me every day. Multiple times.”
Her eyes rake over my body, and I twist subtly to make my abs flex.
“Then I guess this could happen again.” She frowns, her attention glued to my stomach. “But it’s only until we get back to London. No one can know, and if you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.”
“Mads.”
“Logan.” Her eyes meet mine, a steely determination in them.
I’ve just been told she’s up for no strings sex for the rest of this trip. I can’t deny the idea is a hell of a lot more appealing than her usual hatred toward me. But as I nod back at her, my lips set in a firm line, I know this is probably the worst deal I’ve ever agreed to in my life.
I don’t even fucking negotiate.
I glance at Maddy as I make us both a coffee. She’s sitting in my kitchen window seat, tapping away on her laptop in the sun, her legs folded underneath her on the seat. It’s day one back in Rome and she’s barely spoken since we left Milan. She hasn’t mentioned a thing about what happened.
“You working on the article?”
“I was.”
“You going to let me read it?”
Her head snaps up and something passes over her face before she schools her features. “No. It’s… No.”
“Okay. So, what are you working on?”
She looks up and her eyes brighten. “Book fairy mail.”
I screw my face up in confusion.
“I send out books from people’s wish lists to them.” She spins her laptop screen toward me. There’s a list of books as she scrolls down.
“Is this part of what you do, then? At work? Send them out as a marketing thing?”
“No.” She turns the screen back to face her. “It’s just something I like to do myself.”
“You gift people all those books yourself?” I hold out her coffee mug and she closes her laptop and takes the mug from me. “When I came for the meeting with Eve, your desk was covered in boxes. Was that—?”
“Yep. More fairy mail.” She shrugs as she blows the steam from the top of her mug. “Books give people—”
“A safe place. An escape.” I smile as I take a seat next to her and sip my coffee.
Her eyes narrow, accompanied by an impressed smile, rather than her usual frown. “You do listen.”
“To you, Smiles? Always.”
She snorts and looks into her mug. “It makes me feel like I’m helping a little. It sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t,” I interject, but she rolls her eyes.
“I’m not a doctor. I can’t heal people. I’m not a teacher with the skills to help someone learn. I’m not an engineering genius who designs world-changing rocket engines.” She side-eyes, her lips twitching. “I’m not anything like that. My imprint in the world is a small one. But this makes me feel like I’m making a small difference. Even if it’s only to one person at a time through words. It’s still… something.”
I rest my head against the back of the seat. “I’d say it’s everything to that one person. Don’t underestimate how much of an impact you can have on someone, Mads.”
Her eyes drop to my lips. And mine drop to hers.
My phone rings on the table in front of us and her face lights up. “It’s Drew.”
“Go ahead.” I gesture to my phone, and she scoops it up with the biggest smile I’ve seen on her face since we were at the opera. She pauses, swiping something off the screen before she connects the call.
“Drew,” she answers with undisguised delight. Her eyes flick to me, then away. “Yeah, he’s here. I was just closer to the phone.”
I drink my coffee as I listen to the easy way they chat. I always wondered what having a sibling would be like. Growing up with Drew is the closest I have.
“I can’t wait to tell you all about it,” Maddy muses, stroking the book stickers that decorate the lid of her laptop. “Oh, Chloe’s staying longer at my place now. So those things you and Tan were going to help fix for me, maybe wait until I’m home? Or at least, check she’s okay with you doing it while she’s there. Thank you.” Maddy pauses. “How are Mum and Dad?”
She gnaws on her bottom lip, mumbling the odd “yeah”, and “I know”. Then she says, “Love you too,” and holds the phone out to me.
I take it and walk over to the rear doors, staring out over the formal gardens and pool. Guilt twists at my gut before I even get my first word out.
“Hey.”
“All right?” Drew asks.
“All good here.” I had sex with your sister.
“How’s funding going?”
“Nearly there.” Then I ate her out in the kitchen.
“That’s great. Be good to have your ugly face back.”
My eyes dart to Maddy, but she’s typing on her laptop again.
“Missed me, have you?” But that’s all, I swear. I haven’t touched her since. And I won’t again. I can’t.
“Like you’d miss an infection in your dick. But you make me look better. And I need that lucky charm. It’s time we had another double date. It’s been too long.”
I chuckle. “You’re full of shit.”
Drew laughs. We’ve always made a good duo when it comes to women. He’s dark and broody, with an air of danger about him, which women seem to go mad for. Even though he and I both know his bad boy days are way behind him. Behind both of us. And I’m fairer and can break out the charm when I need it.
“I thought we weren’t dating together again. What happened to the lawyer?”
Maddy’s eyes snap to mine, then away just as fast. I clear my throat and turn away, looking back at the garden.
“She’s dating someone.”
“Since when did that stop you?” I resist looking back at Maddy and instead step to the side so I can make out her reflection in the glass of the doors. She’s closed her laptop and is drinking her coffee.
“Since she threatened me with a restraining order, remember?”
I swallow my laugh and cough instead.
“She was joking,” Drew adds. “Obviously.”
“Obviously.” I smirk. Drew’s been hung up on this lawyer since he met her. And when he wants something, he goes for it. Only, where persistence has paid off for him in the past, this woman’s having none of it. It’s like the harder Drew tries, the more she resists.
“I need a distraction. We should set something up. And since you’re no longer getting married…”
“Thank God.” I drag a hand down my face with a groan. “Gabrielle ripped that thought out of Spencer’s head. I’m hoping he’ll have already spoken to Dad before I get back. Make the blow less of a surprise when I confirm it.”
“I don’t know. Your dad’s a stubborn bastard.”
“Lucky for me that I’m one too.”
Since talking to Gabrielle all thoughts of the wedding that never was, have been pushed to the back of my mind. Apart from that one reaction to the comment Maddy made after the opera about Pinkerton marrying someone else. That one comment that got me all fired up and fucking my friend’s sister on a piece of furniture.
I stop laughing and look at Maddy. She looks away and takes another sip of her coffee.
“Right. Better leave you to it. I’ve got a load of Tan’s work to do.”
“Where’s he gone?”
“Rachel called,” Drew says, not needing to explain further.
Tanner’s wife is pregnant with their third kid and horny as hell. Poor fucker can’t keep up. She phones him mid-day, insisting he sorts out the problem he caused, and the lucky bastard drives home, does the job, then comes back to work. Drew says the record is three times in one day. Tanner likes to seek our sympathy over how exhausted he is. He’s the only one with kids. But he also has a horny wife demanding sex multiple times a day. So yeah, we’re real sympathetic.
“Lucky bastard,” I say.
“Yeah, fucker.” Drew snorts.
“You can get him back when it’s your turn.”
Drew sucks in a breath. “Yeah, pregnancy sex.”
Maddy shuffles on the sofa. I doubt she knows that her brother is obsessed with pregnancy sex. I’ve never thought about it. With the right girl, I can see its appeal. But Drew is mad for it. Despite seeing how drained Tanner is, he still looks at him like he’s discovered the meaning of life every time he comes back from answering one of Rachel’s calls.
“Go. I’m not talking about it with you again. Not now.” Not when your sister is sitting behind me and all I can think about is that I’ve tasted the inside of her body.
I swallow the guilt down from re-surfacing as I hang up.
“Why’s my brother asking you to double date with him?”
I turn to face Maddy. She’s scowling.
“You don’t like that idea?” I step closer to her, but she stands in a rush and gathers up her laptop.
“You can do what you like. I just don’t see why you need to double date with my brother when you have that dating app you’re usually addicted to on your phone. When do you find time to sleep?”
Tension knots my brow as I look at my phone screen. There’s a notification from the app. Lookingforfun26 wants to send you a private message. Maddy must have seen it when she answered Drew’s call.
“I haven’t been on here in weeks,” I answer honestly.
“You don’t need to explain to me.”
“Yet somehow it sounds like you want me to.”
“Get over yourself, Logan.” She stomps to the other side of the kitchen.
I follow her, my fingers tapping fast on the phone screen at the same time. “Here.” I thrust it at her so the button confirming I want to delete the app is at eye-level.
She shoves it aside. “What are you doing?”
I touch the button and watch as the app disappears. All my old contacts. My random call ups I had in my back pocket. Gone.
“I don’t know. Losing my fucking mind, it seems.”
Maddy scrunches her nose up. “I’m going to my room until it’s time to leave for the meeting. Thanks for the coffee.”
She leaves without looking back, and I drop my phone onto the counter, placing my palms down and leaning forward as tension creeps through my shoulders. Mads is impossible to work out. She hates me, but then acts jealous.
Maddox Harper is getting under my skin. And rather than keeping her out, I’m welcoming her with open arms.
I screw my eyes shut. I’m the worst fucking friend.
