“Look at me,” he rumbles.
I look at him as he puts himself at my entrance, sliding his condom-clad cock around, picking up juice. “Your enemy of yore is gonna fuck you now and it’s gonna be unbelievable.”
“Please,” I beg.
He pushes a little ways in, stretching me. “God, it already is unbelievable.”
I grab handfuls of his shirt, holding him, rocking with him.
His gaze falls to my lips. He leans in, nips my lower lip, just softly.
I suck in a shaky little breath, trying to be quiet about it. I don’t want him to know how he shatters me. How much power he has over me. How much I want this.
“I love when you do that,” he says.
“What, when I breathe?” I joke. “You need to get out more.”
“I love when I touch you, and you try to act like it’s nothing.”
“Are you calling me a bad actress?”
“You’re a great actress—you know you are.” He pushes in deeper, rocking gently, in and out. “But when you secretly melt like that, you have no idea how sexy it is. It’s a gift,” he whispers. “Something only for me.”
My eyes drift closed as he moves deeper, filling me fully. The shock of him so thick inside me makes me shudder with pleasure.
He rocks into me again, breath erratic. He’s fucking me. Owning me. It’s beyond anything.
My hands are all over his chest, hungrily smoothing over hot skin and cool shirt. I push his shirt off him. I kiss his sweaty chest, learning the shape of his shoulders with my palms.
I’m the queen of the cats, plundering the catnip storeroom.
“Max—”
“What, baby? Anything.” He does me slowly, grinding against my pussy. “Anything.” He says the word in time with the roll of his hips. “Anything. Anything.”
“Like that,” I say.
He replies with nonsense into my ear. The music of his voice is familiar, but this is a new key.
I can feel him quickening, lost in a primal rhythm, old as the hills. “Anything.”
I grab his thumb and press it to my clit. “Right here,” I say.
“God that is so hot.” He does my clit while he fucks me. “Like that?”
“Faster,” I gasp. He’s grinding me and rubbing me. I’m lost in us.
An orgasm explodes over me, white-hot behind my eyes. I grip his arms as he cries out, a pleasure-pain sound that feels so Max-ish, I want to die.
He stays in me a long time, forehead to mine.
I bring my palm to his cheek. “Max,” I say.
“Oh my god, Mia,” he finally says.
Neither of us say anything. There’s just the sound of our breath and the press of our sweaty foreheads together.
And then I just laugh.
“What’s so funny?” he ask.
“Us,” I say.
“Right?” He pulls out. “We deserve an award for…I don’t know what.”
“My mind is too offline to think of what.”
“Here.” He whips a monogrammed hanky from his pocket and shoves it into my hand.
“I could just use…a paper napkin.”
“I insist.”
“It’s monogrammed.”
He rips it from my hand and swipes it between my legs. “And now it’s the most fucking perfect hanky in the world.” He tosses it in a nearby garbage can.
“Is it too perfect for the world, and that’s why it must die?”
He rolls off his condom and gets rid of that, too. “Yes.”
I pull myself together…as much as I can with ripped undergarments. “What is this place?” I ask.
“It’s my favorite place in the world. It’s where we create and design.” He sits on a couch and pulls me down onto his lap.
“Tell me,” I say.
He tips his head sideways. “That whole side is the design area. And photography studios take up the whole floor up there. Behind us are illustrators.” He explains his concept of this place. How he fought to make it happen.
I slide my hand over his whiskers. I love the force of him. The confidence of him.
He brushes back my hair. “I'm going to make Parker apologize. Delivering sandwiches to me? That was so out of line. You must’ve hated it.”
“At first.”
“But you launched right in, taking no shit.”
I should talk about the book here, but I don’t know how to start it. “You don’t have to make Parker apologize,” I say.
“He thought I’d get a kick out of you turning up with sandwiches. That’s not okay. You’re not entertainment.”
“Dude, it’s my whole goal in life. To be entertainment.”
“You know what I mean. And while we’re at it, Mia. The way things happened after the summer of Oklahoma!?”
“Please. Can’t we leave what happened in high school back in high school?” I press my fingers to his lips. I don’t want to think about the worst day of my life.
He pulls down my hand. “When you did that whole spaghettion-your-shirt pratfall? I just want you to know how excruciatingly aware I was that I screwed up. Freezing like I did.”
“That’s what happened? You froze? I never imagined…”
“I froze, Mia.”
“I thought you were amused.”
He shakes his head. “I was consumed with the fear that I might do the wrong thing. Was I supposed to help you? Would that bring unwanted attention? Would you be embarrassed for me to get in your face? Don’t forget, until the Shiz I was homeschooled. I had no friends until the Shiz. And zero exposure to girls. Until you. Though that’s no excuse. And then your friends rushed to your side, and god, I felt like I was watching myself make it worse and worse. Every passing moment, it became a bigger screw-up, more impossible to undo, to explain. And then you looked over at me, crushed and angry. And I knew it was too late.”
Something melts inside me. I was so mortified, I’d barely seen him. “You tried to apologize later.”
“And you told me to fuck off in front of everyone.”
“I felt so humiliated, I couldn’t think straight. All I could hear was that laughing. Running out of there with spaghetti all over the shirt that I’d worn to impress you. I was just so embarrassed.”
He takes a curl in his fingers, knuckle brushing my cheek. “You hate that.”
“You tried to apologize twice. Why didn’t I believe you? Don’t answer that. I thought you thought you were too good for me.”