Three. The Perfect Number - Book cover

Three. The Perfect Number

SeaLand Aria

2: Way Home

Madison turned to leave.

“Madison, let me explain…”

“There’s nothing to explain.” She didn’t stop, although she heard him scrambling behind her.

“Wait!” He grabbed Madison’s wrist.

Madison turned, trying to yank herself away from him. He was half-naked, with a blanket around his waist. His hands were sweaty. Probably Joanna’s sweat.

“Let go of me!” Madison snapped. She saw Joanna sitting in the bed, covering herself with a pillow. She didn’t even look guilty.

“If you’ll just talk to me—”

“I never want to talk to you again,” Madison cut him off. “Now let go of me!”

Daniel’s grip tightened, and Madison winced in pain. Daniel had a manic expression on his face, and Madison couldn’t get away.

Suddenly Daniel’s grip loosened, and his jaw dropped as he looked behind her.

Madison turned to see Ethan a few steps away. His arms were crossed, and he wore a dark expression on his face. He could be quite intimidating.

“All good, Flake?” he asked, looking evenly at Madison.

Ethan’s voice was so warm it gave Madison chills down her spine. She forgot about Daniel as she returned Ethan’s gaze and realized that, weirdly enough, she’d missed his firm, protective stare.

“All good.” She stepped a little closer to him.

To Daniel, she said, “I don’t think there is much to explain here. You are a cheater.”

Her eyes moved from him to Joanna in slow motion as she spoke, still stone-cold.

“And you know…I get that. Why would you try hard to get something, if you can win the game in an easy way?”

Madison’s eyes returned to Daniel, who seemed to have lost any willpower to react.

“Plus, since we are telling truths…

“If you’re no better in bed than you are at foreplay, and you last as long…

“I don’t think I’ve missed much.”

Turning back to Joanna, she smiled. “And if you are happy with him, I’m happy for you to keep him. I’m looking for something…bigger and better.”

She stared at them for a moment before she turned and walked away.

Her deadbeat boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—couldn’t seem to find any words, but Joanna had no such trouble. “You bitch! How dare you talk to us like that? You are the one who—”

Ethan stepped forward, practically filling the entire doorway.

“Watch your mouth, lady. We have better things to do… And they don’t involve either of you.”

With a wink, Ethan put a hand on the small of her back to urge her back to the stairs.

She gave one more death stare to the couple, and when neither of them dared to say anything else, she and Ethan left.

He turned to her with a questioning expression on his face.

“Oh, Ethan. Please, don’t even start.”

“What now? I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Mm. Sure you weren’t.”

“Well, one thing, actually…” He stepped closer to her. She could feel the warmth of his body.

“You two never had sex?” He was so close that his minty breath brushed her face.

“Oh, please.” Madison rolled her eyes and hurried down the stairs.

Back in the SUV, Ethan waited until she was buckled in to ask, “Ready to head home, Flake?”

Madison sighed happily. It felt like a huge weight had slipped off her shoulders. “You have no idea.”

They drove in companionable silence for a while before she thought to ask, “How come you had to come and pick me up, anyway?”

Seemingly startled out of his thoughts, he glanced at her. “Well, Liam and Ezra both got caught up at work.

“The new gym was supposed to be ready to open tomorrow, but something came up with the swimming pool, so they all had to go to the site to solve the problem.

“And since there is money involved, they took Levi for some legal advice. One lawyer was enough, so here I am.”

The mention of Levi’s name brought a new smile to Madison’s face.

“Are you that upset that I came instead?” Ethan asked.

“I mean, it could have been worse than this, I guess.” She stuck out her tongue at him.

“Yeah? How so?”

“I don’t know. Like, the evil twins together?”

“I think that you would have liked that,” he teased her.

The way her heart sped up as she thought about the idea of being alone with the twins was surprisingly destabilizing. She felt her cheeks flush, although she couldn’t have said why exactly.

“I have spent way too much time alone with you to think of it as something that I could like,” she fired back.

Lying had never been one of her strongest skills.

Ethan looked at her appraisingly. “Oh, we weren’t so bad. Besides, your brothers trusted us more than nannies.”

It was true that her brothers had trusted the twins the most. The four boys had been as close as brothers since before Madison was born.

She remembered a few useful things the twins had taught her while her brothers were away when she was a teen.

“I guess if my brothers knew exactly how you guys were ‘taking care of me’ back in the day, they probably wouldn’t have let you near me anymore.”

“Oh, come on. We had so much fun! You can’t deny that.”

“Fun? I call you the evil twin for a reason. Beyond the fact that you two made all the boys that I liked run away from me.”

“Hey, now. We did that for you! Those boys weren’t good for you.”

“And you knew this how?”

“We just knew it.”

“Well, thanks to you, look where I am now.”

He shot her another sideways glance. “And where are you now?” he murmured.

That question gave Madison shivers.

What does he know?

***

Ethan snuck a look at Madison. Her lips were curved into a relaxed smile that showed off her dimples.

He stuck his index finger into a dimple, making her jump and mutter, “Really, Ethan?” But even the annoyance in her tone was something he’d missed.

“You know I can’t resist. Besides, you are funny when you are annoyed. That doesn’t seem to have changed.”

She sure looked different. Grown. The beauty beside him now was not the same shy, often annoying little girl who’d left for college four years ago.

She had the same huge, ice-blue eyes and the shocking cascade of pearl-white curls, but she had grown into a young woman with legs for days and a body to make any supermodel jealous.

And why is that surprising me now?

He wasn’t sure, but the confusion on his face must have shown.

“How is he? Levi?” she asked, changing the subject completely. “You two stopped visiting me after my second year.”

“But we called every day! Besides, boys would have run even further if we had kept visiting you.”

A sigh escaped his mouth as his mind hit a dark spot. But he forced a smile before his eyes could give him away.

“Levi is just as fine as he could be,” he answered. “And a dick. But he is definitely happy that you are coming back.”

“Yeah, true. Better than nothing, right?” Her sweetness, at least, hadn’t changed. “Is he still with the blondie?”

“Nah, thank God. You know us. Long-term isn’t our thing.”

A yawn escaped her lips, and covering her mouth, she rested her head against the window.

“Or relationships, for that matter.”

“Correct,” he answered.

As he drove, he glanced at her. She seemed to be quite tired.

It didn’t take a lot, in fact, for her to drift off to sleep after a few minutes of silence.

As the miles slipped by, he let his mind drift to the moment he’d entered her room earlier that day, when he’d been hit in the face with the realization that she wasn’t seventeen anymore.

That short dress that showed off her tanned skin, round ass, and toned, slender legs for days, and the deep neckline that showed how full her breasts had become.

That she was a natural beauty, they all knew, but he hadn’t been ready for this.

“Jesus…,” he growled in a low whisper.

Surely his sex wasn’t supposed to react to her like this.

A cold sip of water sounded very good right now, to get rid of those thoughts. He adjusted himself in his trousers and slowly stretched out to reach the glove box, where he kept his water bottle.

As he straightened up, he brushed the bottle against Madison’s legs.

She shivered for a second while still sleeping. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat, and her lips were slightly parted.

She opened her eyes, confused for a moment. But then she locked eyes with him, and her eyes grew brighter.

“Mm…sorry…I fell asleep,” she whispered in a hoarse voice.

“Don’t worry. Sleep, Flake. You looked quite tired.”

“Mm…I was. May I?” she mumbled, pointing at the water.

He handed the bottle to her and dried his mouth with the back of his hand. “We’re almost home anyway.”

“Already? How long have I been out for?”

“Almost four hours.”

“Shit. I didn’t realize I was that tired.”

“It’s okay. I guess you had a lot of things to do. Apart from having sex, of course.”

Madison punched his arm before showing him her middle finger.

“You know, not everybody likes to fuck like rabbits.”

“I’m sure that is just because you didn’t find any good…tools yet.”

She didn’t bother to answer that as she leaned forward to grab her bags from the floor.

When she did, the strap of her dress slipped off her shoulder, giving him a clear view of her full left breast, covered only by her lace bra.

His eyes widened, but he only hooked his index finger under the strap and pulled it back over her shoulder.

Her skin was warm against his cold finger, and she gasped.

“Uh, thanks.”

He pulled away and adjusted himself, but from the corner of his eye he could see her staring at his bulge.

He turned toward her, and she quickly looked back at her bags, blushing. He decided to let her off the hook and changed the subject.

“Happy to be home?”

“You have no idea.”

“Let’s get you in then.”

After they unloaded everything, she wrapped her arms around his hard waist and rested her head on his chest for a minute.

“Thanks, Ethan, for your help.”

“Yeah, no problem, Flake. I’ve got to go and meet the boys, but we will all be back for dinner.”

“I’ll make dinner then…as a thank you.”

“Sounds good to me. Your hands have always been magic.”

Pulling away, she tilted her head just enough to look at the house. “It’s so good to be home. I’ve missed it.”

“And did you miss us?”

She rolled her eyes and stepped back to reach for the door. She didn’t say anything, but the smile she sent his way before she went inside looked like an answer.

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