Chapter 13: Chapter Thirteen

I was shaking as we left Fizz. Max’s large, warm hand was on my back, propelling me forward until we were outside. A light rain had just started, but we were lucky and caught a taxi right away. “Damon and Grace,” he said to the driver before I could give my address.

What? That was nowhere near the house where I’d ambushed him a few weeks back. I gave him a puzzled look. “That’s where I live,” he said in response.

“I thought you lived with your parents,” I spouted before I could remind myself that not every dumb preconception I had about him needed to be spoken aloud in his presence.

Instead of getting offended, he chuckled, that low, rich, toasty vibration that made my thighs reflexively tense. “I need to talk to Abigail about the way she describes me,” he said.

The intersection of Damon and Grace was a quick six-minute cab ride from Fizz. Actually, his apartment wasn’t even a mile from my own. At some point I wanted to pepper him with questions about his living situation. How long had he lived here? Did he, like me, enjoy the neighborhood-in-the-city feel? Which were his favorite restaurants in the area?

But right now, I was strangely anxious and tongue-tied. My body was already warm, wet, open, and so ready for what we both knew was coming next…but my brain was more unsure. While I’d had my share of casual boyfriends and one-night stands, it’d been a long time since I’d slept with someone who zinged for me like Max did.

“Second thoughts?” Max asked, watching my face as we climbed out of the cab.

I shook my head and pressed my lips together before something weird popped out of my mouth.

He took my hand and guided me to the front door of his building, a four-story walk-up. When we were under the awning and safe from the rain, he gave me another out. “Seriously, Tess. In the entire time I’ve known you, you haven’t been quiet for more than thirty seconds. If you’ve changed your mind about this, I’ll just grab you an Uber.”

“I want you.” Yikes. My husky words came out sort of forceful and caveman-ish, but at least it was true and simple and there was no way he could misunderstand.

He shuddered and pulled me to him. In my spiked boots, I was almost his height, and our hips pressed together. “Thank God,” he whispered. Something hot and bright bloomed in my chest. I’d never made a man shudder before. It seemed a strange little miracle, that he could want me as much as I wanted him.

His apartment was on the second floor. We held hands, climbing the stairs in charged silence. He pulled a set of keys from his coat pocket and then we were inside. His apartment was dark and cool. The only light was from the streetlamps outside. A steady thrumming of rain beat against the windows. Max must have been feeling nervous too. Once the door shut behind us, he took a deep, quivering breath and just looked down at me, his eyes unusually large behind his glasses. There were a few drops of rain on the lenses.

Swallowing, I unzipped my jacket, shrugged it off, and tossed it on the floor. As I knew they would, his eyes went straight to my breasts, which were lifted high and pushed together by my best bra and displayed thoroughly by my favorite plum-colored halter top.

As nervous as I was, I still couldn’t help making a joke. “So you’re a boob guy?”

Max laughed, one of those unexpected firecracker bursts. “Honestly, I never have been before.” He walked straight into me until my back was pressed against the wall of the hallway. “But then you sit down next to me in a bar, I look over, and now these…” He ran his fingertip lightly over the swell of skin. “These take up an inordinate amount of space in my head.”

His fingertip trailed gently in the other direction, and I licked my lips. “You’re always completely covered in the office,” he mused. “But I know what’s under all those sweaters and button-downs and long-sleeved dresses, and it makes me crazy.”

His words were making me crazy. Light-headed. I took a deep breath before I passed out. It had the additional benefit of lifting my breasts even higher. Max groaned—and then he lowered his mouth to them.

“Oh. Ohhhh.” My exhalations were loud in the silent apartment but quiet compared to the kind of noises I really wanted to make. My breasts were sensitive, and his lips were warm and firm and left no inch unexplored. After he kissed all the available skin, his shaking hands gently pulled the shirt over my head.

I laughed aloud at the way he stared at my almost-naked breasts, bolstered high. His intense focus and delight made me wonder if Aria was extremely flat-chested—but I immediately pushed her right out my mind, right out of this apartment. I wasn’t a girl who liked to share. Tonight, Max was all mine. The way he kept staring told me he felt the same way about me.

I was wet just from the way his eyes were worshipping me, but it was time for…

“More,” I said firmly. “Touch, lick, suck, bite.”

A satisfied grin transformed his face. “I should have known you’d be bossy.”

I grabbed both of his hands and put them on my damn boobs myself. “Yep.” His thumbs rolled over my nipples and pinched gently. “Harder,” I breathed.

“Say please,” he said with that sexy chuckle. I whimpered; the man just undid me.

“Please.” He pinched again, absolutely perfectly this time. I bit my lip because it felt so good.

“You’re so ridiculously sexy,” he whispered. With his hands still on my breasts, he kissed me. It was everything I remembered from the Gage. The perfect smell and taste of him, the way his lips moved furiously over mine, the way our tongues slid together until we moaned in unison.

Everything dissolved into madness. His teeth pulled at my earlobe and scraped my neck. I shoved his jacket off his shoulders. Our hands collided as I tried to unbutton his shirt and he tried to unfasten my bra. When we were both completely naked from the waist up, he pressed himself against me and I wrapped my arms around him.

My God. Maybe it was the sensation of warm skin pressed together or that amazing kiss, but I was on the verge of coming and all we’d done was get to second base. Not that either of us was going to settle for that. “More,” I said again.

“Bedroom,” he answered. He half pulled, half shoved me into a room a few feet away. His bedroom was brighter than the hallway because it was on the corner of the building and windows were on two walls. The rain was pelting hard against the glass.

I was too self-conscious to let Max tug off my boots and skin-tight jeans, so I perched on the end of the bed and did it myself, as quickly as I could and with as few wiggles and wriggles as possible. Not that he seemed to notice any awkwardness. Standing a few feet back, he just watched me take them off. When I was finally free and only in my panties, I stood again, planning to pull him closer.

Instead, he took a step back and looked up and down, a small smile on his lips. “You’re always wearing boots. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen your calves before.” He unbuckled his belt. “They’re beautiful, just like the rest of you.”

Sheesh, a woman could get used to this kind of bedroom talk. Lots of guys said stuff during sex, but it was usually just bursts of enthusiasm (“Yes!”) or cheesy general stuff (“You’re so hot, baby!”). Max, though, was looking at me, seeing me, and telling me that he liked what he saw—specifically. Just one more thing about him that could quickly become addictive.

He fumbled with his pants, and I finally got an opportunity to look at him. I’d thought of him as skinny, but that actually wasn’t the case. He wasn’t skinny; he was wiry. Thin but strong and taut. His muscles were lightly defined, and he had a smattering of light brown hair on his chest. I’d loved the way it had felt against my breasts in the hallway.

His jeans finally fell to the floor, revealing plain blue boxers—and a very nicely muscled set of thighs. Soccer player thighs. “Wow,” I said, pointing. “You have great legs.”

He snort-laughed. “That’s a strange compliment to give a man.”

I shrugged and kept looking. “I like.”

Still laughing, he walked toward me until we were an inch apart. “I like you.”

And my heart went BOOM.

I was saved from having to respond because the instant my lips parted, his pressed against them. Oh, the kissing. I didn’t remember other kissing like this.

Maybe because I’d developed a bit of a pattern with the guys I’d recently hooked up with: 1. a few drinks, a few laughs, 2. cab to whoever’s apartment was closer, 3. kissing, sometimes good, sometimes sloppy, 4. clumsy removal of clothing, 5. the good ones attempted oral on their own, the others were given firm instruction, 6. intercourse, some who took about three pumps and some who took so long, I constructed work emails in my head.

In most of the couplings, even the subpar ones, I enjoyed myself. I reveled in the anonymous physicality of it all and the way the encounters allowed me to escape my own head for a precious period of time.

But this…this was different. It was an escape, but it wasn’t anonymous. This was Max kissing me. And no one had ever kissed me like him. Like the kissing was the end goal instead of a maneuver to get elsewhere. He pushed me back until we were both lying on the bed, entwined in each other’s arms. Then we kissed more. I lost track of the minutes in his sighs, in the warmth of his lips, in the dance of his tongue. I wanted to kiss him for days.

Perhaps it was because the man could multitask. His mouth was busy with mine, but his hands cupped my breasts, slid down my arms, gripped my hips, paid a visit to the inside of my thighs. I had to touch too. I squeezed his broad shoulders, ran my palms along his sides, dug my nails into his ass. So hard he yelped—and then bit my bottom lip.

“Tess,” he whispered, coming up for air.

“What?” I continued to nibble at the soft skin on his neck.

“Nothing. I just like saying your name.” Now I shuddered. He was Trouble. I was going to be a complete Max junkie by the time this was over.

He chuckled. “I have to take off my glasses. They’re completely steamed up.” He propped himself on an elbow and took off the black frames.

As soon as he put them safely on the bedside table, I grabbed his face with both hands and stared. “I’ve never seen you without them.” I looked hard, wanting to memorize his face. The strong jaw, dark eyebrows, high-angled cheekbones. I wanted to trace the shape of his nose with my fingers, but that might be a bit odd.

“And?” His voice sounded strangled. I supposed my review had been rather thorough.

I rolled my eyes and made a disgusted sound in the back of my throat. “Uck. You’re even better looking without them.”

We dove at one another again, our teeth clicking together in our urge to rejoin our lips and tongues. He rolled on top of me, then pulled me to his other side.

His hand, finally, slid inside my panties. Yes! I wanted to cry. Oh please, God, yes. Instead, I pushed his hand deeper and lower with my own so that there’d be no confusion over where I wanted it.

“You’re so wet.” His voice was shocked.

“I’ve been wet since you walked through the door at Fizz,” I admitted.

With a groan, he kissed me harder and stroked me gently until, to my utter surprise, I came on his hand.

I cried out, clenching around his fingers while the world fluttered and disappeared except for the sweet waves I rode to mini-oblivion.

When I opened my eyes, he was grinning down at me, looking very smug. “Don’t be so proud of yourself,” I said airily. “That always happens.”

“Shut up,” he said, the smirk not disappearing at all. He kissed my cheek and carefully removed his hand from my underwear. “You were beautiful to watch.”

He started to pull away, presumably to give me some recovery time. Which I did not need. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I climbed to my knees and pushed him on his back. He looked up at me with a corner of his mouth quirked and his eyes crinkled. I held up three fingers. “How bad is your vision? How many fingers am I holding up?”

He snickered. “Three. You’re a foot and a half in front of my face, goofball. I’m not legally blind.”

I took the superior look right off his face by slowly pulling off his boxers and taking the length of him in my hand. Oh. My. Just like the rest of Max, this part was perfect for me. I stroked him until he was trembling.

“Three,” I informed him. “Three is the number of orgasms I plan to have tonight.” Even though his face was contorted with lust, he did his firecracker laugh, and I felt a burst of pleasure in my chest.

“You got the first one out of the way. Well done. Now, if you have a condom, I’d like to move on to my second,” I said primly. Max scooted backward and twisted until he could access the drawer on his nightstand table. He had that condom unwrapped and on in no time flat.

We looked at one another, wondering. I hesitated. Would he like it better if I took charge and climbed on top? Or would he prefer me on my back? Or on my stomach?

In the end, he just said, “Come here,” and we lay on our sides, facing one another and kissing feverishly until we couldn’t take it anymore. I lifted my top leg over his hip and guided him inside me. The moment he slid in deep we both gasped.

“Wow,” he said, reminding me of our first kiss. I nodded and flexed my core, bringing him as deep as I could.

We went wild—rocking, rolling, slamming our hips into one another. I scratched his shoulder blades with my fingernails, trying to get even closer. His fingers dug into my ass so hard I knew I’d have Max-fingertip bruises there tomorrow. I tasted sweat on his lips during frantic kisses.

I didn’t last long. I started to quake, to break down around him again, to flood in joy and bliss. “I’m coming.” I screamed it this time. Hello, neighbors.

“Mmmm.” Max made the best sound I’d ever heard. A sort of growl and purr and sob. “Tess. Fuck. Yes.” His hips jerked, and I clung to him for dear life before practically blacking out in the throes of yes, yes, YES.