I squeeze my legs together, the same way I did when my Smolder, my Max, had his face against my sex, his tongue working furiously as it flickered up and down my lips, over my clit. The memory alone makes my skin tingle excitedly.
“Is it good or bad?”
“I don’t know, Maddie. I can’t say. It’s good from where I’m standing.”
“Okay.” I take a bolstering breath. “Let’s video-chat.”
“I’ll send you the link via email. It’s a secure connection.”
I giggle. “I didn’t know you were a secret agent.”
“A man in my position has to be careful.”
Is he ashamed of me? Maybe he doesn’t want to be hacked and for people to find out who he’s been talking to.
After thirty seconds of waiting, a link pops up in the private chat window. There’s a warning about the dangers of clicking outside links, but I dismiss it and quickly press down on it, not giving myself time to talk myself out of it.
The game minimizes and a browser window pops up, showing a large black window with a smaller one in the corner. I glance at myself in the smaller one, at my damp hair all scraggly around my shoulders.
Spinning in my chair, I look around the room for a scrunchie, but then Maxton’s voice is in my ears.
“Maddie,” he growls, his tone impossible to read.
It could be angry. It could be passion. It could be anything of the twenty-seven emotions a person can feel, he’s holding back.
Turning back around, my gaze lands on him as he leans in closer to the camera. He’s taken off his headset, leaning forward, forearms laid on his desk. The shape of his shoulders press through the fabric of his shirt, and his eyes seem even more fervent, shinning in his lamplit room. I can’t make out anything behind him.
I take off my headset and turn up the external volume on my speakers. My webcam microphone will catch everything I need to say.
“So.” Out of sight, my hands attack each other, going into a fidgeting frenzy. “Is this the part where you tell me you’re no longer interested? That would make things easier. I get that. Then we wouldn’t have to deal with the dad-shaped elephant in the room.”
He shakes his head slowly. “I’m more interested now than I ever was.” His voice fills the room like he’s here. “But I need to explain something. It’s going to sound crazy.”
Crazier then my thoughts right after he made me orgasm when my mind spirited away to an impossible future, a family and a home?
“Go on…”
He grins tightly. “Honestly, you’re going to think I’ve gone completely nuts.”
“Hey, I showed you mine…”
He swallows, throat bobbing. I’ve never seen him look this unsure. But most of my experiences with him have been either through PR pieces or in the game, when I didn’t know, couldn’t have imagined he was Maxton Miller.
“I’m just going to say it. And then you can make up your own mind.”
I wait, forcing my hands to be still. But I can’t stop the way my heartbeat is hammering.
“During the months we spent together in the game, I started to have some really crazy thoughts. Bat shit crazy. I started to think that I’d finally found the woman for me, the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. It’s hard to explain, but I felt it, like a… like a command deep inside of me. I’ve never felt this way about anyone, and definitely not someone I’ve never even seen in real life.
“But I couldn’t deny it. I wanted you. I wanted a family, a future.”
My cheeks burn red hot as he repeats my thoughts back at me, my heart daring to hope even as my mind cautions against it.
“And when you found out it was me?”
He leans forward, staring directly into the camera.
“I wanted it even more. The second I laid eyes on you – the real you – I knew I had to have you. I knew there was no fucking way I could ever let you go. I mean, hell… your body is made for sex and childbirth, Maddie, so curvy, so perfect.”
He grits his teeth. “Goddamn, I wish I was there. There’s so much I need to do to you.”
“You mean it. You really want…”
“What?” he growls.
“What I want,” I whisper.
“Maddie? I didn’t catch that last part.”
I close my eyes and a vignette of dad briefly passes across my mind. He’s towering over me, a big teddy bear under his arm, grinning down as the fair lights up all around us, music playing loudly. He was always a good father, even after the divorce.
“I can’t fight it either,” I say, opening my eyes and pushing away the past. “I feel the same, Max. As crazy as it is.”
“What?”
He leans back in his chair, gripping his desk, and then rocks forward. It’s like he doesn’t know what to do with himself.