She’d been so close that her body jumped to the precipice the moment he touched her clit. She jerked, opened her mouth wider, and sucked him in. This time she ate him, going at his lips and tongue as if he were candy she had to devour. She moaned and made little noises in her throat, and when she didn’t think she could get enough breath, he clamped a hand to the back of her head and held her tight while she fed off him. When she came in a blinding light show, he consumed her cries and kept his finger to her clit until she thought her body would break into a million pieces.
Then he released her lips. She gasped in sharp air and keened the last remaining vestiges of her orgasm. Her arms went limp around his neck, hands dangling down his back. Gathering her up, he put a hand beneath her butt and carried her out of the bathroom, her legs still hugging his hips.
“You didn’t watch me come,” she muttered against his throat.
“I tasted it. Just as good. Let’s go to bed and snuggle.”
Snuggle? That wasn’t a Witt word. But it burrowed beneath her ribs and into her heart. “I’m too tired to argue.” Too satisfied. Too in awe. Too warm. Too safe.
She wouldn’t give up one of those enormous feelings.
At least not for the rest of the night.
Chapter Ten
Witt tapped his thumb on the steering wheel. “Couldn’t wait till I got up, could ya?”
Witt’s comment sounded like a grouse, but his tone was mild, almost docile. Like the cat calmly licking his paw before he jumped on the unsuspecting mouse.
Max stared out her window at the snow-covered ground flashing by. “You were sleeping so peacefully. Like a little baby. I hated to wake you.”
“Liar.”
Well, she couldn’t deny that. She’d crawled out of his bed and used her own shower in her own room. They’d made love last night. Real flesh to real flesh, eyes wide open. And while he’d snuggled her close in his big arms on the warm mattress that sagged in his direction, she’d fallen asleep with happy thoughts. She never had happy thoughts. Happy thoughts weren’t in her nature. Upon waking, she could hardly recall what they felt like.
“Two steps forward and one step back,” he quipped, still with that bland tone.
That about summed it up. The steps forward were the things she’d felt last night when he made love to her in the mirror. When they made love in the mirror.
The one step back was Bud Traynor.
She didn’t tell Witt over breakfast. She wouldn’t tell him on the short drive to Evelyn Hastings’ house.
She could have used the excuse that it was because she didn’t want to worry him. Or that it wasn’t his business. Or that she knew he’d come back at her with the same old line; she was obsessed with Bud and had lost her judgment where the man was concerned.
Bud was her battle, her nemesis. She couldn’t make Witt understand the full power of Wendy’s possession of her, what that had done to her emotions and beliefs about Wendy’s father.
To be honest, maybe keeping this secret was also one step back from the enormity of what she’d shared with Witt last night. Just as climbing from the bed before he woke had been.
“This is the place,” she said, hoping to end the conversation.
Witt put his hand on her arm when she would have gotten out of the car. “I’m not going to let you step back, Max. Last night was too damn good for that. I want it again. And I’ll take it if I have to. I’ll make you beg if I have to.”
In the dim morning, his eyes were a dark, stormy blue that should have made a skinny thing like her quake.
“I’ll beg,” she said simply, “if that’s what you need.”
“It’s not. All I want is the middle ground.”
“And what’s that?” She didn’t mean to sound flippant, but middle ground had never been beneath her feet for long.
“Halfway. You give. I give. Like last night.”
She filled her lungs with air, then blinked to clear a sudden ache. “I do try. I’ll keep on trying.” She tugged on her lower lip with her teeth. If she really was trying, she’d tell him about Bud. She should tell Witt. She didn’t. Her feelings about Bud had never been middle ground. “Please don’t throw me away because I’m not moving fast enough.”
He skimmed her cheek with an index finger. Then climbed from the car without another word. She supposed that was him agreeing for the time being.