The exhale that left Grace’s mouth was hungry and wanton and caused Max’s fingers to grip her a little harder.
“You’re so hot, Gracie,” he told her. “So fucking hot.” His tongue was out of his mouth and licking a path up her neck before he could comprehend the desire to do it.
“Oh, God,” she gasped, leaning her head to the side to give him more access.
Keeping his mouth at her jawline, Max risked moving his hands again, farther between her thighs. His fingers spread so that his thumbs disappeared under her skirt. “I can’t wait to feel you,” he said against her earlobe. “Here.” His hands moved again, teasing, mere inches from where he was desperate to touch. “I’ll make it so good, Grace. You have no fucking idea.”
Her fingers pushed into the gaps in between his. “I know you will.”
Just as Max started to ponder what she’d do if he touched her tits, Grace began to fidget. Max held back a grumble when she gradually moved his palms away. He couldn’t complain. She’d allowed him to do so much more than he imagined, and considering the things he knew about what she’d been through, he had to concede that they’d made massive progress. She sat forward and turned to him, her feet resting back on the ground.
Her gaze flitted to his crotch and the tent he was pitching in his cargo shorts. She hid her knowing but embarrassed smile with the back of her hand.
Max chuckled. “I’m not going to apologize about you making me hard,” he stated as he stood and stretched with a groan, needing to go for a run to burn off his horniness.
“I wouldn’t want you to. I like it.”
Max cocked an eyebrow. Her flirty tone was not conducive to getting rid of a righteous boner. “Yeah?”
She shrugged. “Of course. It makes me feel good that you find me attractive.”
Max snorted. “Duh.”
Grace didn’t laugh as Max expected. Instead, she wrapped her arms around herself, making her body smaller. Her eyes cast down.
Max frowned. Panic teased his neck. “I didn’t mean to freak you out. You should have told me if I did too much. Did I do too much?”
“No!” she all but shouted. “No. Max, it was . . . I—I liked it. Very much. You did nothing wrong.”
He approached slowly, sitting at her side. “Then what is it?” She bit her lip and sighed. Max moved her hair from her shoulder down her back. “Grace, tell me.”
“I want to give back,” she whispered, glancing at his lap. “I want to touch you, too.”
“You can,” he insisted. Was she crazy? “Look, like I said, I’m a guy, so you want to touch me? Touch me. Shit, girl, you wanna hump me in public? You hump me in public. You want to put your hands in my pants? Put your damned hands in my pants.”
She laughed then, making Max smile. “I’m not sure we’re at the humping-in-public stage quite yet.”
“Ha!” Max pointed a finger at her. “That wasn’t a no! Does that mean you would?”
She pushed him playfully. “Shut up! Perv.”
The warm breeze whipped around them, making the leaves of the trees rustle.
“Don’t be scared of using me,” Max added seriously. He continued before she could object to his word choice. “Use me to find out what you want, what your boundaries are, what makes you feel good. That’s what we’re doing here, right?”
She observed him for a moment, her stare intense. “Okay.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek quickly. “Thank you.”
Grace took photographs of Max almost every day.
When they were running, when they were hanging out, when he was working at the house. Okay, if Grace was truly honest, most of the photographs she took were done so covertly and were for her own private collection rather than for the show.
Max simply had the most exquisite and photogenic face. If she didn’t like him so much, she’d have hated him for it.
He was all hard edges, scars—he had two, one on his right eyebrow and one on his chin—and masculine lines. His hair was so dark it was almost black, as were his eyes, but when the sun caught the shadowy scruff on his face, it shone bright gold and auburn, while his eyes flickered with hazel and chocolate. He truly was beautiful.
And apparently had the patience of a saint.
The two of them hadn’t touched the way they had since their day by the cottage, a day that Grace had thought about constantly. There’d been hand brushes and shoulder nudges, but nothing that had set her alight as much as his hands on her thighs had done. Sweet Jesus, Grace was amazed that she hadn’t burst into actual flames. It’d been the first time in too long that she hadn’t shied away from a man’s touch.
And what a touch it was.