“Naked pictures of me in the tub,” he answers without pause for thought. “A stallion doesn’t grow into his dick. He’s born with it.”
Even though I’m aware he’s slipped back into his coping mechanism of flirting to hide his anguish, I slap his chest, playing along with his ruse. His groove has lessened the longer we talk, but it’s still very much prominent. “Your bragging will get you in trouble one day, Mister.”
“I fuckin’ hope so.” He hits me with a cocky wink before nudging his head to the top of our bed. “But for now, how about we call it a night? I’m wrecked.” He doesn’t need to say he means both emotionally and physically. I can see it in his eyes.
I watch him like a hawk when my slip beneath the sheets sees him removing his boots, jeans, and shirt. He has such a gorgeous body, compact yet fitted with muscles inallthe required places.
His underwear covers the most impressive muscle on his body until he enters the bathroom attached to our room. It’s basic compared to the many others in this residence, but it has the essentials you need after a hard day, such as endless hot water, and it’s minus the one thing we’d happily live without—security cameras.
Our bathroom is the only room in this entire twelve-bedroom residence without monitored surveillance. This isn’t a feature my uncle insisted on after demanding we stay with him. It was installed long before we moved in. Dimitri is so accustomed to being spied on, he thinks it’s normal. From what I’ve gathered from Rocco, his newly built mansion is similarly wired. Every room has eyes in it,exceptthe bathrooms.
A lack of trust is another annoying Petretti trait, but the recollection sees me slipping out of bed and tugging off my dressing gown. The amount of steam in the bathroom assures me even if my uncle could see through walls, he’d have a hard time witnessing me removing my nightie and panties.
I take a couple of seconds to relish the visual of a naked Maddox before cracking open the glass door. It releases a heap of steam. It has nothing on the sigh Maddox disperses when I band my arms around his midsection, though. I hug him fiercely, aware that this moment in time is about more than a sexual attraction. He’s struggling, and it’s my job as his girlfriend to help him through the darkness engulfing him. I’d rather remove him from it entirely, but since that isn’t an option right now, I take what I can get.
After several heart-fixing seconds, I mumble, “Talk to me, Maddox. We’ll be nothing if we lose the ability to communicate with one another.”
It takes me loading up a shower puff with a scented shower gel and scrubbing half of his back before he mutters, “There was a girl today, probably a couple of years older than us.” I find it odd that he calls her a girl since she’s older than us, but discover why when he mutters, “She wasn’t quite with it. I wouldn’t say she’s slow. She just…” he pauses to consider how to explain her demeanor, “… doesn’t live in reality.”
When he spins to face me, I commence cleaning his torso. I’m dying to prompt him, but I realize that would be wrong of me to do. He’s talking, which is all I ask of him. “That’s why I asked if you remembered camp. I swear I’ve seen her before.”
“Is she from our school?” I inwardly scold myself for butting in, but it couldn’t be helped. I am as curious as I am attracted to Maddox.
Reddish-blond locks fall into Maddox’s eyes when he shakes his head. My uncle’s bad hack of my hair could only be fixed by making my hair as short as Maddox’s. He has sworn on multiple occasions that he loves my new ‘do,’ but I plan to grow it back. “But I think she was at camp.”
My brows join as confusion makes itself known with my gut. “She couldn’t have been. That was a Seaforth Academy camp. If you weren’t a student, you weren’t allowed to attend. My dad found that out the hard way.”
Maddox plucks the shower puff out of my hand, reloads it with gel, then sets to work on getting me clean, even with me recently showering.
It dawns on me what he’s doing when he says, “That’s when I saw her. When your dad came to visit.” He’s distracting me. Under normal circumstances, it would work, but when it comes to my dad, there’s no recommended form of distraction. “She was sitting in the back seat of your dad’s truck.”
“No… he came alone.” I swallow when my memories fail me for the second time in my life. The memory is hazy, but I think Maddox is right. There was a girl in his truck the morning my father arrived at camp headquarters unannounced. I didn’t pay her much attention because I was so mortified watching my father being marched off the property, I had my hand slapped over my eyes.
My lips quiver when I ask, “Do you know her name?”
It feels like minutes pass before Maddox jerks up his chin. “Megan Shroud.”
My chest deflates like a balloon. I don’t know why I thought the girl with mousy-brown hair would have been Kaylee. That would make my parents snatch of my memories even crueler. I guess I just don’t want to believe the obvious—my sister is dead.
Ignorance seems to be a favorite pastime of mine lately.
The woes of my childhood are pushed aside for adult worries when Maddox’s scrub of my torso has him taking in the sliver of silver in the middle of my breastplate. I barely felt the cut my uncle inflicted to assure Maddox knew he was serious about hurting me. The pain in Maddox’s eyes that night hurt more than any knife wound ever could. He was truly gutted, unhinged, and on the verge of a mental breakdown.
Only one time previously have I seen a man on the brink like that. It was my dad the morning after my uncle took Kaylee. He didn’t hear my tiptoes out of my room, meaning I not only saw the pain in his eyes when he gathered Kaylee’s blanket from the floor, but I also saw the tears he shed when he brought it to his nose to smell it.
I scrub under my nose to ensure my newfound memory didn’t cause anything gross to spill there before diverting my focus back to Maddox. I can’t bring Kaylee nor my father back, but I can do everything in my power to ensure Maddox isn’t swallowed by the same dark world that ripped my family apart.
“Still bad at multitasking, I see,” I murmur with a smile, teasing Maddox about his still hands. “Can you do this?” He cocks a brow when I rub my belly and pat my head at the same time. “It’s never too late to learn new tricks.”
When my tease doubles the electricity crackling between us, Maddox moans like he’s in pain. “Don’t… please. Not here. I can’t.” He’s so distrusting by my uncle’s motives, we haven’t been sexually active since we moved in. I can’t say I don’t understand his hesitation. I’ve witnessed some sick things in my life, yet I’m still aware there are many more ways my uncle can hurt me.
In an endeavor to lighten the mood, I mention the one thing capable of de-masting Maddox by the sheer mention of his name. “I saw Max today.”
“Yeah?” Maddox replies with a ghost-like grin. He’ll never admit it, but I’m confident he’s missing Max as much as me the past ten days. “Has he bitten any of Jude’s suitors on the ass yet?”
My laugh bounces around the steam-filled space. “Not yet, but Ty assures me he’s willing to take one for the team if the opportunity arises.”
“Of course he would,” Maddox replies with a chuckle, his earlier anguish almost fully dispersed. “He has nothing to lose and—”
