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I’m too scared to look around and see if the other sets of eyes are as sceptical as Liam’s.
“I don’t know. I haven’t asked,” he admits.
I exhale slowly. “So kiss me.”
“Braxton, I don’t give a shit about what these guys do and don’t believe.”
“I do.”
“Are you sure?” he asks, and I meet his stare, my heart catching at how open his eyes are.
“Yes,” I say instantly. “Please.”
His eyes drift across my face before he’s moving. Big, strong hands grip my cheeks as he takes my face in his hands and dips his head, bringing our mouths a breath apart.
“Relax,” he whispers, and I force my tensing muscles to relax, not realizing I had tensed them in the first place.
I swallow, and as I dart my tongue out to wet my lips, he’s kissing me, stroking the tip of my tongue with his. Fingers tangle in my hair, pulling me closer, and I whimper into his mouth, flames flaring to life beneath my skin.
On a moan, I lift my hand to rest on his jaw, letting the scruff tickle my palm as his cheek warms my fingertips. The kiss is quick and hard and full of something that makes my chest ache. Like magic, the music and the lights and the dozen sets of scrutinizing eyes on us fade to nothing. Suddenly, it’s just us. Maddox and me.
God, how I wish we could stay right here forever.
“Fuck yeah!” Colt shouts, and I barely register the words.
If it weren’t for Maddox pulling away, I would have stayed in his embrace for hours. The realization is nothing short of terrifying.
The openness in Maddox’s eyes is gone as he looks away and sits back, leaving me heaving in breaths, feeling like a complete idiot for letting this happen again. He’s put distance between us with a simple twist of his body, and I’m not above admitting that I hate it.
But it’s when he keeps that distance throughout the rest of the night, even as he walks me up to my door only an hour after such an explosive, toe-curling kiss and offers me a forced goodnight, that it becomes obvious hate is not a strong enough word.
I’m left watching him walk away from me through the tiny hole in my door, a promise of another fake date lingering and a cold fist clenched around my heart.
20
BRAXTON
It’s beena long few days of silence.
Other than the couple of texts exchanged with Maddox confirming our date for tonight, neither of us has mentioned the kiss at the club nor the way it’s furthered the rift between us.
I’ve put everything into work, hoping that it would help, but I should have known better. After eight years of doing everything I could to forget about Maddox, not once did it work.
He’s a thorn in my side. One that I can’t seem to find the strength to yank out.
Maybe I’m a masochist. When it comes to him, I very well could be.
That would explain why regardless of how much I thought I would be dreading dinner tonight, I found my best dress and shoved it into my work bag this morning. A tiny—okay, maybe huge—part of me wants to blow him away. Make him completely weak in the knees when he sees me.
But now that I’m thinking about it . . . I don’t remember taking the dress out and hanging it up.Wrinkles. So many wrinkles.
“Shit,” I breathe, snapping out of my thoughts and handing Dex the Doberman back over to his owner—a gentle yet sharp-tongued brunette named Cherry—and getting them situated with Micaela at the front desk. I throw my hand up in a quick wave to Cherry and rush off to my office.
My sneakers squeak on the waxed floor with each hurried step, and I nearly fall into my office in search of my bag. I find it beneath my desk, in one of the little cubbies I like to store my lunch bag and water bottle that I never seem to actually drink from, and rifle through the contents before gripping onto the velvet material of the dress and pulling it out. Hanging it up in front of me, it’s just as I suspected.
It resembles the skin of a hairless cat.
Groaning, I drop my arms and curl my fingers in the velvet. It’s too close to when Maddox told me he would be here to go home and swap dresses, but there’s no way I’m going out to whichever fancy restaurant he chose in this.
