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around the tangle of sheets. Her mind raced through a thousand possibilities of what her life would be like as Adam’s wife. Where would they live? Would her family accept him? Would the world accept her—a nobody—as the wife of a guitar legend? How often would she get to see him? Could she tag along with him on the road? Would she even want to? It seemed such an unsettled life, if fun. At least for a while. Would he change his mind about wanting children? Having kids was important to her. Having stability was important to her. As much as she loved him, could they forge a future together that satisfied them both? And how would she know the answer to any of these questions if she couldn’t get him to fucking talk to her?
Patience, understanding, and listening when he was finally ready to talk had worked with him before, but this situation wasn’t only about him. It was about her as well.
She growled in frustration and threw a pillow across the room. Her breath caught when she heard the door open.
He stood on the threshold for a long moment with the door wide open. Madison tucked the sheet around her bare hips and watched him, afraid to say anything because she was sure if she did, he’d leave.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
Odd that he’d ask. It was his hotel room.
“Of course.”
He approached the bed and stood at its edge. His gaze moved over her face, her bare shoulder, the curve of her hip beneath the sheet. He sucked in a breath and lifted his eyes to stare toward the window on the far side of the room.
After a moment of watching him and finding his expression entirely unreadable, she asked, “Are you ready to talk?”
He shook his head. “Still too . . . raw.”
“You might like what I have to say.”
“But I might not.”
He was such an unusual mix of strong and sensitive. She hadn’t realized that she had such power to hurt him. Since his mother had left, he hadn’t given anyone that amount of power over him. He’d trusted her with his heart, and she hadn’t been careful enough with it.
“Can I touch you?” she asked.
“If you don’t, I might very well die.”
Madison rose to kneel on the bed, the sheet falling to pool around her legs. She slid both hands up his T-shirt, drawing the soft fabric upward as her palms bumped over the hard contours of his muscular belly and chest. Impatient, he yanked the shirt off over his head and tossed it aside. She planted a row of gentle kisses down his belly, her fingers working at his fly as she made her way toward her final destination.
He groaned in pleasure as she took him into her mouth, sucking and kissing and licking his length until he was hard with excitement.
“Madison,” he whispered, his fingers threading through her hair and tilting her head back.
Lips pressed against his tip, she lifted her gaze to his.
“Tell me what I need to hear,” he said.
She wasn’t sure what he wanted her to say. She wanted to say she loved him, but was afraid he’d throw it back in her face, the way he had earlier.
“I want you,” she said.
He eased away and then tumbled her back onto the bed, covering her with his body, sinking his hips between her thighs.
“Close enough,” he said, claiming her with a solid thrust.
Chapter Thirteen
Adam knew that Madison needed time to think about his proposal, but he had never been a patient man.
“I know you’re against marrying me,” Adam said, idly trailing his fingertips back and forth over her bare shoulder. “But we could just move in together. Would that be a more reasonable next step?”
She was silent for so long, he lifted his head to see if she’d fallen asleep on him. He had taken her rather enthusiastically, glad that she still wanted to be with him on a physical level, even if she wasn’t sure about marriage. He found she wasn’t asleep though. She was staring wide-eyed at the wall.
“Madison?”
Her gaze met his.
“I don’t think I’m ready to take the next step,” she said. “Any next step.”
“Ever?”
She bit her lip and looked away. “I don’t know when I’ll be ready. I just lost my job and my life got complicated all of a sudden.”
Less complicated, he’d say, but apparently they saw eye to eye on little.
“I don’t think now is the right time to add more complications.”
So that was what he was to her, a complication? Did she seriously see him that way?
“Maybe we can go back to how it used to be,” she said. “You know, before we got serious.”
Realization hit him like a steel beam through the chest. “You don’t love me.” Even when he’d prompted her to say it earlier, she’d said she wanted him, not that she loved him. Had she ever loved him?
“Of course I do, Adam. I just think we were hasty in taking our relationship to the next level so quickly.”
A year was too quickly? He knew he’d reacted badly to her rejection of his out-of-the-blue proposal, but he hadn’t thought that it would make her fall out of love with him. The thought made his chest ache so badly that he rejected the idea immediately.
Maybe all she needed was time to sort things out. He shouldn’t have tried to sway her in his direction. He should have been patient. He should have behaved like a loving, understanding boyfriend instead of a selfish prick. This being good was really a challenge for him. It was so much easier to take what he wanted or find a new means of excitement to distract himself. But he didn’t want to give up on Madison. He loved her too much. So he was going to try to compromise even if it killed him. And it just might.
“I didn’t mean to blow up on you like that,” he said. “I know things are rocky for you right now, especially since you just lost your job. Take as much time as you need to sort things out, find a job, get your head on straight, and then we’ll go from there. Do what you need to do. I’ll wait.”
She shook her head vehemently. “Adam, I don’t want you to wait.”
Ouch. He winced as his heart panged.
“I want to be with you now,” she said. “I’m just not sure I’m ready for what comes next. Can’t we just have fun, make love, no pressure?”
He had to laugh at the irony. Less than two weeks ago, he hadn’t been ready to call her his girlfriend, and now he was set on her being his wife. He couldn’t go back to where they’d been. He’d leapt over the hurdle of fearing commitment and jumped straight into being all in. He wanted it all or he wanted nothing. He wouldn’t be able to go back to having a frivolous relationship where they hooked up—shared great sex, a few laughs, and what she’d consider a grand adventure—but ultimately parted without any promises. He couldn’t believe he’d actually liked that type of relationship, and he really couldn’t believe that she wanted to go back to it.
“So let me get this straight,” he said, hurt rapidly turning to anger. “You want to meet up every so often, get fucked properly, and then go on your merry little way?”
“You make it sound so negative. It worked just fine for over a year.”
“Just last week you were the one who said you had to have a commitment to stay in this relationship.”
“I do want a commitment,” she said. “I want to be your only hook-up. And you’ll be my only hook-up. It’s just that this . . . this is getting too serious too fast. I’m not ready.”
Hook-up? Was that all she wanted from him? He couldn’t believe what she was saying.
“You can’t have it both ways, Madison. You can’t have my utter devotion and treat me like I mean nothing to you.”
She captured his face between her hands. “Baby, you mean everything to me.”
He pushed her hands away and shook his head at her. “How can you say that?”
“It’s true.”
