Page 15 of Forgiveness
CHAPTER EIGHT
Maggie
Maggie clung tothe shovel as her head continued to float in the clouds while she imagined all the ways that kiss could have kept going between them. She couldn’t remember a time when something had been so hot and intense with anyone. Flux’s lips had set her on fire and made her forget what was right or wrong or smart … or foolish. All it had taken was his demanding kiss and the feel of him pressing hard against the crease of her skirt.
He made her body come alive.
The truth of that pushed its way through her fuzzy mind as she threw a large bundle of hay on the ground and began to spread it around the stall. Maggie resisted the urge to take a quick peek over her shoulder. From the grunting behind her, she knew he was working hard, but she could also feel his intense gaze on her.I won’t turn around. I won’t.Flux would never know how shaken she was by his kiss and the feel of his arms; she didn’t like it at all, not one damn bit.
“You doin’ okay over there, Duchess?” His deep voice rattled her, making her body rev up a few notches.
“Yep,” she replied as nonchalantly as she could muster.
“Just checking.”
Maggie heard the shovel scraping on the dirt again, and she forced herself to stay focused on the task. Ever since she could remember, her life had consisted of practicing and competing, and it’d suited her just fine. When all of her friends had been primping and giggling about prom and homecoming games, she’d been working hard for an upcoming competition. Sure, Maggie had boyfriends, and she’d had lost her virginity at twenty years old to a sweet cowboy whom she thought she loved, but hadn’t. After three months the infatuation had waned, and they’d gone their separate ways. But the intimate contact of being wrapped in Flux’s arms while he rubbed against her made Maggie ache for more. She wanted Flux like she’d never wanted any man before. No other had ever made her abandon her senses like that.I was even humping him! Ugh … whyhim? A more complicated man couldn’t have dropped into her lap if she’d planned it. A groan escaped from her lips.
“What’s that, Duchess?”
Maggie cleared her throat. “It’s just the dust.”
The answer seemed to have satisfied Flux because he returned to laying straw around several stalls.I can’t believe I was all over him.As the blush in Maggie’s flamed cheeks continued to climb, she groaned inwardly and dropped the shovel to fan her face with her hands.It’d be nice to get out of an embarrassing situation once in a while without being so damn transparent. Shit … everything’s a mess. But you didn’t try very hard to keep away from him, did you?She should’ve cut things off when she was at the bar before giving Flux any chance of hopping into the cab of her truck and landing them in a bale of hay.
Maggie thought she had everything in hand when she picked the least sexy thing they could do to get to know each other without all the sexual tension getting in the mix. But the way he looked at her had eaten away at her common sense instead. There was no doubt about it—she really had no one to blame but herself. She’d egged him on, practically dared him verbally, and a man like Flux? He wasn’t going to take a challenge lying down.
He had all but told her that before he took her lips.
Now, Maggie was left with the consequences of her actions. Damn adulthood. Since she’d begun competing, her sights had been set on the pro rodeo trail, and she didn’t need anything veering her off course. The ruggedly handsome, muscular, and oh-so sexy Flux was a huge distraction.And I work with him. What the hell was I thinking?This was why she’d stuck to the hard-and-fast rule of not seeing anyone from work, so things like that didn’t happen on the regular. The last thing she needed was a rumor going around the yard. Maggie knew well enough how quicklytalkspread on the circuit—and about whom. She wasn’t willing to tarnish her glowing reputation in the ring for one night of hot, crazy loving in the sack with a biker who had intimacy issues. She’d heard the buzz about how Flux was a “love ’em and leave ’em” one-nighter. After she’d seen him at the arena, several of the women in the office had told her about his sexual prowess and his asshole ways.Yeah … complicated all the way around. I just need to nip whatever is going on between us in the bud. Like—now.
But for Christ’s sake, they were two adults. There wasn’t any reason they couldn’t talk this thing through and come to some sort of agreement on the matter. There was no reason for her to play coy with her feelings now. Who the hell would that help in the long run?
Maggie straightened her spine and took a deep breath.
“You about done over there, Duchess?” Flux’s hoarse voice made her blink a few times, but she managed to get her bearings.
She wasn’t falling against his dick again. Not until they’d answered some all-important questions and everything was on the table between them.
“I’m spread out on this side. We should probably move to the next stall, don’t you think?” he said.
Neither of them spoke again while Flux handed her his shovel and took the wheelbarrow into the next empty stall as she followed behind him. They had a good system worked out by this point. Good enough, that when he went to take back the shovel, she held it fast until he was forced to look down into her eyes with a confused expression. Then his attention shot elsewhere entirely, and he dropped his grip on the tool as if it had burned him.
“So, now you can’t even look at me?” Maggie accused him, only slightly teasing. “This doesn’t change anything between us, right?”
Flux’s brows creased before his face shuttered into a perfectly stoic mask. It was a nice trick. Maggie had her own version, but she didn’t plan on employing it tonight. Not with him. He had issues, and she knew that from the start. So, she would do her best to work with those issues rather than against them. She couldn’t ask him to kiss her and then walk out on the situation as if she hadn’t done a damn thing.
A duchess has better manners than that, dammit.
She put her hand on her hip and caught his gaze. “Do you agree with me or not that the kiss doesn’t change anything between us?”
No answer.
“Well … do you?” She was almost frantic for an answer now, even though on the outside she managed to keep her cool. The longer the gap of silence between them, the more she could think of all the different things this meant between them. They hardly knew each other, had barely even begun to talk about their lives, yet their connection was more genuine than that of any man she’d ever let touch her in the past.
It was unnervingly inconvenient.
“It doesn’t change things,” Flux parroted back as he rested his palms above his head against the horse paddock wall and stretched—probably so he didn’t have to look at her while they had this conversation.
Meanwhile, Maggie was stuck staring at the ink move on his delicious biceps and triceps as he became a walking poster boy for sex on a stick. And the way his shirt rode up a little bit to reveal his flat stomach and happy trail made her mouth water and her skin tingle. She quickly turned around just so she could keep her dignity. One of them had to keep talking, so she picked up the mantel again.
