Chapter 16
MAX
Ihad to head straight to the showers. I couldn’t see straight. I was so pissed off that I couldn’t keep myself together around her. I had almost gone down on her in the nurse’s cabin for fuck’s sake.
I couldn’t shake the heat of her thighs under my hands, the way her breath stuttered, the way she looked at me like she’d let me take her right then and there. She had trusted me naturally, instinctively, like her body was already mine to take.
And that was why I was so fucking attracted to her.
She was eating me alive. She had her hand wrapped around my heart, and would probably take a bite out of it if she could.
This wasn’t just a crush anymore. I had moved beyond attraction. I needed her like air. She was my oxygen. Every single rational thought I had went out the window as soon as I was around her.
Under the water, I tried to wash her off of me and ended up with my fist wrapped around my dick. I thought of her, only her, and I didn’t care what line I was crossing. I came so hard I nearly fell to my knees.
Once I got to our station, I watched her walk towards me, almost in slow motion, as if she wasn’t detonating me. Her yellow camp shirt was knotted above her waist, black shorts that should’ve been criminal, braids bouncing as if they were designed to murder me one swing at a time.
She smirked, and my chest tightened. She knew. She fucking knew I couldn’t keep my shit together.
“You feeling okay?” I asked, though my voice came out strangled.
“Never better,” she said sweetly, but her eyes were different. She was holding back from me. Something was up.
She leaned close, brushing her fingers over my chest as she adjusted her name tag. She smelled like coconut sunscreen.
Fucking delicious.
“You’re staring.” She glanced at me through her lashes, then averted her eyes.
“Just waiting for the campers.” My jaw clenched. If I admitted the truth, that I was imagining dragging her into the trees and pressing her against the bark until she begged me to stop, I’d never come back from it.
I was losing my damn mind thinking about her. But why was she acting so weird?
Her chest grazed my arm when she reached past me for the clipboard, her fingers skimming the bare skin at my waist as they briefly crept under the hem of my shirt. She’d done it on purpose. She was testing me.
I caught her wrist.
“Seriously?”
“What?” She was innocently mocking me.
“I told you I don’t like being messed with.”
Her smile curved slowly. “I’m just playing the role, Dangerous. Isn’t that what we agreed on? The game, right?”
The game? What the fuck was she talking about?
“This is not what we agreed on. But I’m game if you’re ready to take this up a notch. I think the rules are null and void now.”
“Maybe, I mean, I’ve had your tongue in my mouth, your fingers inside me,” she whispered, lip caught between her teeth. “What’s a little PDA?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
She didn’t even flinch. She matched my energy.
“I bet the other counselors have bets on when we hook up.”
“Bets?”
She shrugged, casual. “Maybe next Saturday. Maybe tomorrow.”
Fuck Saturday. Fuck tomorrow. If she kept looking at me like that, I wasn’t making it through the night.
“We already hooked up, baby.” But my voice came out shaky, trembling, just thinking about her.
She leaned in; her breath warm against my ear. “You okay, Max? You look… flustered.”
I took a half step back, every muscle straining. She was fucking with me, and I was over it. The caged animal I had been holding in was about to claw himself out.
“I’m just thinking about all the ways I’m going to fuck you when you finally give me the green light. I’m not just your bestie anymore, sweetheart.”
She smiled, no longer shy, and followed me. She dragged her hand down my back.
“Yeah? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Wanna do it right now?”
She wanted me rabid for her. When the chorus of campers’ voices carried across the hill, it was the only thing that saved her from me snapping right then and there.
“Trouble,” I muttered under my breath. “Keep this up, and I swear to God—”
“You’ll what?” she asked, smiling like the devil. “Turn me into the game masters?”
I looked at her, confused as hell, but grinned back. “I’m not going to be fucking gentle with you.”
Her lips curved, soft and lethal.
“Maybe I don’t want you to. I mean, what are the game rules?”
“Rules?” What was she talking about? Our rules?
“Yeah, I mean, you said they were null and void now, so tell me the line.”
The rules had shifted. No, the rules had been obliterated. And I was fucking here for it. But what game was she talking about?
“No rules. No boundaries,” I said, tugging her over to me by the hem of her shirt. She looked up at me as I moved her hair back from her forehead, and then leaned down so my lips were hovering right next to hers. “You think you can handle that?”
“Try me,” she whispered.
Oh, I definitely fucking would. Max the bestie was officially gone.
MACKENZIE
It was 3 p.m. The last of the kids were gone, and the campgrounds were quiet. Nurse Campbell’s voice was still ringing in my ears, but Max hadn’t done anything to make me feel like I couldn’t trust him. I had been dropping hints all day to see if he flinched at me referencing the game.
But he was just Max. I’ll admit, we had been flirting with each other all day, and honestly, it just felt right.
The sexual tension between us was so high, but neither one of us was brave enough to pull the trigger. Honestly, maybe Nurse Campbell was just an old bat, and I was thinking too much into it.
Max leaned against the fence, the sun in his hair, his shirt clinging to his chest, and radiating an illicit level of charm.
“You missed a spot,” I said, pointing at the smear of red popsicle on his arm.
He raised an eyebrow. “Wanna lick it off?”
“Please, I have standards.”
“Sure, you do.” He pushed off the fence, closing the gap between us. “That’s why you’re dating me.”
“Exactly. Low risk, high reward. Cute face, good ass, built-in snack provider.” I flicked a blade of grass off his shirt.
“Wow. You’ve been checking out my ass?”
“I love how that was the only part you picked up on.” I rolled my eyes.
I hadn’t told him about Jackson cornering me outside of the nurses’ station.
I’d been toying with it, wrestling with it all day because I wasn’t sure if Max could be trusted.
However, I chose to ignore what Nurse Campbell said.
I trusted Max. He would never do anything to hurt me; he was my best friend.
Max didn’t know that Jackson had been texting me. Every day. All day. They were short, hungry lines at first, then rants, then promises.
The messages had shifted from possessive to pure threat. But they were getting worse. My phone had been blowing up with texts from him all day.
JACKSON KENSWICK
I miss you
Then an hour later,
I’m going to fucking kill you both.
He had even sent me a picture from the archery range with one word:
Mine.
But that wasn’t all. This morning, I had seen footprints in the muddy path behind the cabin, prints that ended beneath my window. A latched screen that had been nudged open an inch.
I thought I had escaped the terror in my life, but with Jackson, it still lived under my skin. And now, I was unsure about everyone around me. Terrified that I was living inside a fishbowl, in a game where I was being targeted.
West was stuck in real FBI work, so I couldn’t call him.
The thought of waiting for a grown-up rescue made bile rise sharply in my throat.
Max was the only person who made me feel safe.
He was reckless, sure, dangerous, and maybe a little too territorial, but he was the protector I needed.
I needed someone who would stand between me and the thing that kept showing up in my life.
Fear.
I needed to be honest. And maybe if I did, Max would give me some hint if he couldn’t be trusted.
I dropped my voice. “Listen. I need to tell you something.”
The smile faded from his mouth as soon as he heard my tone. His body went still.
“What?”
“After you left the nurse’s station this morning, Jackson cornered me.”
Max dropped the cones he was carrying. His whole frame tensed.
“Why would that fucker corner you?”
“He’s obsessed with whether or not… we’ve done anything.”
Max’s voice sharpened. “Why does it matter? I think we made it clear you’re mine.”
I exhaled.
“He saw me with something. It set him off.”
“What was it?”
“The hickey on my neck.”
The silence that followed was louder than shouting.
“So?”
“Max. You marked me. He’s pissed. He said some things that were not normal.”
He stepped close to me, grabbing my chin and lifting my face so my eyes were looking directly into his.
“I don’t care what he said. You’re mine, and I’m glad he finally knows it.”
My mouth parted, stunned into silence.
This was an entirely different side of Max. I had never seen him like this before. He had been joking about being more than friends, but this? There was a darkness inside him that was about to come out.
“I’m not really yours, though.” My voice was quiet because I knew it was a lie, and by his reaction, he certainly knew it was a lie.
His hands clenched at his side, as if he was barely holding himself back. “Don’t say that. I told you I don’t share. You’re mine, I’m yours. End of story.”
I let out a small squeak, and he smiled so broadly it almost blinded me. The heat in my chest tangled with nerves. He was serious.
His smile dropped, and he tensed again, seeing my facial expression.
“What is it?”
I opened my mouth, but suddenly froze. He looked at me, like he already knew.
“Say it,” Max demanded.
Every word spilled out of me. The threats, the way Jackson looked at me. Max didn’t interrupt. He didn’t blink. He just absorbed. His fists curled so hard his veins stood out, but his face was a mask. I watched it hit him like a wave, but he refused to be swept away by it.