13. Max #2
But once upon a time, this man had been a child, and he’d suffered abuse at the hand of someone who should have loved him.
“Didn’t your mom do anything about it? How did she tolerate that?”
“Too checked out to care,” Draven said, swirling the liquid in his glass and looking down at it.
“Sometimes, when I was older—teenage years—she’d just transfer another few thousand dollars into my spending account whenever Dad fucked with me.
Dad did it sometimes, too. Money was their answer to everything. ”
“That’s sickening.”
His expression went dark.
“I told you, Max. You don’t want to know about my life.”
I went over to sit down at the edge of the mattress. My head was spinning hearing Draven’s story, and it filled my chest with a bitter feeling.
I kept quiet, and he took the lead.
“The moment I got my own house and full access to my share of the family money, I lived my life mostly as if the rest of them didn’t exist.”
He pushed at the handles on the back doors, throwing them open. Wind blew in from the night air outside, and the sound of birds chatter came in. Outside, the night was humid, right on the edge of a far-off storm.
Draven had been making changes in the backyard, too. Little solar lights dotted the edge of the cobbled patio outside the doors. They glowed in the night air out there along with some dangling lights coming down from the canopy of a tall tree, gently swaying every time the wind blew.
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
The words seemed to bounce right off of him.
“And what was your childhood like, Max?” he said. “Happy family? Supportive parents? Small town charm?”
“Kind of. Yeah.”
I couldn’t even feel guilty about it. It was just true.
“Figured,” he said, not unkindly.
“I always loved my parents, and they always loved me. Lily and I fought a little as kids but pretty soon we were just glad to have each other. I played both football and hockey, depending on the year, and even though we were never rich, I never felt deprived of much.”
Draven was watching me, his eyes half-lidded, like he was envisioning my childhood as if it were some impossible dream.
He walked over a moment later and stood next to me at the edge of the mattress. He brought his fingers to my throat, just gently stroking them along my Adam’s apple, applying no pressure.
His eyes looked so beautiful.
So much hurt behind them, but so much… care , when he looked at me.
Was that even possible? I knew he didn’t see me as more than a piece of ass who needed protection.
“I’m so sorry for what happened to you,” I said. “I’m sorry I pushed. About the secrets.”
“There are more,” he said. “Ones that I’m not ready to tell tonight, and that I may not ever be.”
My chest felt heavy. But I nodded, understanding.
It still scared me, wondering what else had happened to him, or what else he’d done.
But for the first time, I felt a crest of a new wave rising inside me.
I trusted him.
I shouldn’t have. But I did.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked gently.
“That I trust you.”
“Max…”
“I know what you’re going to say. That’s a bad idea, Max. Don’t trust someone like me . I don’t care. I trust you, anyway. It might mean I’m naive, but you’re just going to have to live with it.”
He stroked the side of my jaw.
“And that’s why you’re beautiful,” he said. “Inside and out.”
My heart sped up like a goddamn hummingbird. I felt a heat creep up to my cheeks. He was making my brain feel all cross-wired, just like he always did, and I couldn’t even deny how good it felt now.
First I’d been mad at him for not sharing shit with me, but when he’d opened up, I realized that there was an iceberg of trauma inside of him.
But now, up close next to me, it was like all of that silently evaporated into the air.
A stillness had come over the room. Every cell inside me was a little sensor tuned toward his body.
How fucking good his chest looked, this close to me.
The intricate lines of a tattoo I’d never focused on before—a tiny wordless scroll, on one side of his ribcage.
The sound of the crickets was the only thing I could focus on as Draven’s hand moved over my throat.
Gently.
Maddeningly slow.
Then his hand laced around to the back of my neck, his fingers moving through my hair, like I was an animal he was taming, moment by moment.
And it was working. I was so fucked around him.
I loved the way he was towering above me. I responded to his touch, going docile the moment his skin was on mine.
And he knows it , I thought idly.
My pulse ticked up as he gazed down at my lips.
He leaned down.
Just kiss me so I can figure out why the hell I want it so badly.
Without thought, I went in, trying to close the distance between us.
But his resistance was immediate. Just before our lips could connect, his hands came down on my shoulders and he pushed me back onto the bed instead, straddling me, his gaze suddenly fierce.
I let out a breath. His face was still so close to mine. Just above me on the bed, hanging over me like he was trying to intimidate me or turn me on.
Congratulations, Draven, you have succeeded in both. As usual.
“Are you hooking up with anyone other than me?” he asked.
I furrowed my brow. “What?”
His question caught me completely off guard.
Yet again he’d changed the dynamic in an instant, regaining control of the evening. Control of me.
“Are you hooking up with anyone else? What’s not to understand? Do you want me to ask it in French instead?”
“I’m not hooking up with anyone at all,” I said.
Whatever Draven and I did together… it didn’t feel like that .
Hooking up was what I’d done in college, after stupid long nights at parties where cute girls would sometimes want to come up to my bedroom with me.
Hooking up was simple. Easy. Not…
Not something that felt like it completely dismantled my life.
“Good,” he said. “I like it when you’re hard around me.”
The green of his eyes was so luminous and bright, and again I was struck by how a person like him could go through life having eyes that beautiful.
Whenever we were together, I truly felt like all of Draven’s attention was on me—as if the moment he decided you were worth his time, everything changed, and you became the star. In the spotlight.
“How do you know I’m hard?” I tossed back.
I’d barely finished asking before his body weight suddenly shifted a little, the mattress moving under us. His palm came down onto my cock, gripping my bulge through the slinky fabric of my shorts. “Was I wrong?”
I let out a quick sigh. “No.”
I wasn’t entirely pinned down on the bed, but I may as well have been with him straddling me like this. A lock of his hair had come down as he moved, and it fell across the side of his face now, framing his eyes.
He kept stroking my cock through the fabric, moving his warm hand along my shaft.
Then he suddenly latched his fingertips under my waistband and tugged down my shorts, along with the boxer briefs below them.
I groaned.
Spotlight, right back on me , I thought as he pulled them both off in one quick motion, my cock bouncing free.
“Draven,” I protested, my voice coming out a lot breathier than I would have wanted.
He cocked his head to one side, raising an eyebrow. “Pretty sure you want to come. I’m going to make that happen for you. Got a problem?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a problem,” I said.
I propped myself up on my arms on the mattress, shimmying backwards a bit so that I could get a little more space.
“Why don’t you want me hooking up with anyone else?”
His gaze raked over my body. He reached down and fondled my balls as his gaze scanned across my face.
I felt my cock jump a little in response.
“Never said that. You can do whatever you want, but I’m still allowed to enjoy the fact that right now, you’re all mine.”
A deep warmth flooded my body when I heard him say that.
All at once, it felt so true and so unreal.
All mine?
I felt like it was some gold star or badge of honor. And then I hated myself for feeling that way at all.
“Is that why you’ve been so concerned with my e-stalkers since the moment you met me?” I asked. “You want me to be your little pet? Your plaything?”
He hummed. “Well, when you say it like that , Max, you make it sound hot.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I meant.”
“I’m concerned with your stalkers because I know how desperate people can get when they’re lonely,” he said.
“I know how depraved some people’s minds actually are.
I know what they’ll do, when they’re seeking attention.
And I don’t want you to get hurt just because you’re too empathetic to realize when a person is dangerous?—”
“You think I’m too empathetic? Just call me a naive, small-town dummy already, because I know that’s what you’re really thinking.”
He came forward again a little, straddling me just below my groin. When he moved forward, my cock landed up against the front of his sweatpants, and now it was lying there, gently resting at the top of his thigh.
“I think a lot of things about you, but I promise, I’ve never thought you were dumb.”
I pressed the matter. “Why do you give a shit, then? Am I a project, to you? A way to make up for shitty things you did in your past? Am I just repentance?”
His gaze went cold. “Stop.”
“Go find your ex-girlfriend’s brother and make sure he’s safe, so that you stop feeling like a criminal? A villain?”
“You sure you want to be saying these things?”
“Pretty damn sure,” I said.
The look he was giving me could have cut through stone. “I was stuck in a small town. I was single again. You were there, and you were hot. So hot it kind of pissed me off. Pretty simple math, Max.”
“Trying to butter me up?”
He clicked his tongue. “Nope. It just would have been a lot easier for me to be alone rather than doing this.”
“Great. Now you’re just insulting me.”
“I said it would be easier , not better .”