Chapter Nine #2
“I’m so sorry, I should’ve just kept my mouth shut.
I should’ve waited for Willa to call me back.
I told her to call me back or I’d fuck you again — well, not fuck you again, not now that I know you have a girlfriend or boyfriend — and she would’ve kept me right.
She’s my voice of reason and she knows what I’m like.
I’m too impetuous, that’s what my sister always says, and I never know when to keep my mouth shut and—”
And Max kissed her.
He stepped towards her like a man on a mission, pulling her roughly into his arms, one hand around her waist and the other pulling on the towel that was still firmly wrapped around her hair.
He tilted her head back, his lips meeting hers forcefully, the pressure of his kiss so strong and welcome that Bo instantly kissed him back, wrapping her own arms around his neck and clinging to him.
Her mind, already running at a million miles an hour, was now in an utter jumble.
All rational thought disappeared as Max deepened his kiss, his tongue running over her bottom lip, her mouth opening to welcome him.
All her nerves were on fire, her skin tingling and nipples now aching beneath her terry-cloth robe.
Max, feeling her responses, pushed her against the kitchen table, dropping his head to kiss and suck at the delicate skin where her neck and shoulder met.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he whispered between kisses into her skin. “I did have one, but I ended it last summer.”
Even with Max’s mouth still moving over her skin, Bo felt a sharp and probably unreasonable spark of jealousy.
She moved her hands into his hair, gripping it between her fingers, trying to direct his mouth back to hers.
He resisted the movement however, lifting her upwards and settling her on the table.
Her thighs spread and Max moved between them, pulling the towel from her head and throwing it to the ground next to them.
He stopped for a moment, winding one of his hands into her damp hair, the other leaning on the table, supporting his weight and hers.
“You want me?” His words were hot against her cheek, and Bo blinked, her body shaky with desire, uncertain for a moment as to whether they were a statement or a question.
He was looking down at her intently though, his lips slightly parted while his eyes were searching and intense. A question then. Bo licked her lips.
“Well, do you want me?” she asked him back, and he shook his head in amazement, pushing her back so that she lay flat on the table.
Without waiting a moment, he pulled at the tie on her robe, the knot sliding open and the fabric parting easily.
Cool air plucked at Bo’s naked skin, and she panted slightly when Max ran his hand — his warm and unbearably sexy hand — down the length of her body.
Her back arched into his touch and a whimper escaped her lips.
“Fuck.” Max exhaled, admiration in his eyes. “You’re beautiful. Of course I want you.”
“You kissed me,” she whispered, without knowing why, but wanting to say the words, as though saying them would make it all feel more real.
“You wanted me to,” Max replied knowingly, running his hand over her body again and eliciting another sigh of pleasure from her lips. She turned her head to the side, arching once more.
“I guess it was a good way of getting me to shut up,” she remarked, and Max shook his head, one hand hovering tantalizing over her breast.
“That wasn’t my intention,” he told her, and he leaned over to press his mouth briefly against hers. “My mind went a little blank after you asked me to have sex with you again.”
“I didn’t ask,” Bo reminded him, and he chuckled.
“No. Not out loud.”
She took a deep breath. “Do you . . . do you want me to ask?”
He paused at that, his hands falling still and his mouth only slightly parted as he stared at her. Something hot and heavy fell between them, and Bo felt her body flood with a new and strange kind of desire.
You have got to look up kink, she reminded herself. Like, put down your vibrator for five minutes and get onto the internet, Bo.
Max shifted, leaning over now so that her body was pinned beneath his own.
A thrill of excitement ran through Bo, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, around those chino shorts that were driving her wild.
“What if I want you to beg?” he asked her, and he nuzzled into her shoulder.
He lifted one of his hands, running it down her body until it reached the apex of her thighs.
He pushed two fingers inside of her, and Bo’s mouth fell open in a noiseless gasp.
“What if I want you to tell me how much you want me; how much you need me right now?”
“Make me,” Bo begged in return, and Max shook his head. He kissed a trail down her chest, sucking one nipple into his mouth before moving to the other, briefly warming it with his lips before returning to her mouth.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he replied, kissing her hard. “That’s not our game, is it?”
Oh fuck, he called you sweetheart, Bo’s head warned her, even as her body sang out its approval. And we have a game now? What the fuck? What is this man doing to me?
Pushing all rational thought and sense from her mind however, Bo leaned up, kissing Max on those gorgeously full lips of his. “I want you,” she told him. “I need you. Please, Max. Please.”
“Please what?”
“Please fuck me,” she replied obediently. “Please.”
Max’s hands left her body, and he straightened. Bo made a noise of protest, but he leaned over her, kissing the noise away. “Stay here,” he ordered. “Don’t move.”
With that, he left the room.
What the actual fuck, Bo fumed. He’s going to turn you on like this, get you worked up like this, and then just . . . just leave? And you’re going to lie here and not move, just because he told you to?
Without Max there in the room with her, Bo felt faintly ridiculous.
She was lying naked on the kitchen table — Geoffrey’s expensive, bespoke kitchen table — with her hair drying in errant curls around her and her towel in a crumpled heap somewhere on the floor.
There was an ache between her legs which had gone unanswered and the desire which warmed her skin had diminished somewhat, so that the cold evening air nipped at her body.
Part of her wanted to get up, tie her robe and slink back to her summer house.
Part of her wanted to put this whole thing behind her before she made a mistake, one she knew she couldn’t undo.
But then, Max had told her not to move. He’d told her to stay.
When Max reappeared, it was on the tip of her tongue to suggest that maybe this was a bad idea. That while professional boundaries were good and happy complications fine, fucking one another on Geoffrey’s solid oak kitchen table — sturdy though it appeared — was not.
“Look at you,” Max breathed out, returning to his earlier position between her legs. He stroked a hand along her inner thigh, and she squirmed breathlessly on the table. “So good. So sweet.”
Any protests Bo had disappeared at that, Max’s seductively spoken words sending an instant throb of need through her body. “Hurry up,” she urged him, but he tsked at her.
“Hurry up and what?”
“You know damn well what,” she spat back, the venom of her words at odds with the moan of pleasure that followed when Max bent down, sucking one of her nipples into his mouth while pinching at the other with his fingers.
He tsked again. “What happened to ‘please’?”
“I already asked. Nicely.”
“Maybe I want to hear it again,” Max returned. “It sounded so pretty the first time.”
Bo sat up on her elbows at that, giving Max a withering look. “Don’t push your luck,” she warned him. “I’ll get up and leave. Don’t think I won’t.”
“You won’t,” Max replied smugly.
“No? You’re so certain of that? Let me tell you, I’m at the stage of not liking you very much again, and this . . . this game you want us to play is driving me crazy, and—”
Max leaned over her again, catching her mouth with his and kissing her deeply.
The kiss was soft and sweet, surprisingly gentle, and he nuzzled her nose with his.
“It would seem,” he said, in a tone so reasonable Bo wondered if he was about to fuck her or debate politics, “that kissing you really is the only way to shut you up.”
Bo lay back on the table, wrapping her arms around Max’s neck. “So, just keep kissing me then.”
“No. If it’s okay by you, I’d like to do much more than kiss you now.”
Finally, Bo’s heart sang. Not that she would give Max the pleasure of knowing how much she’d been wanting this.
She nodded mutely, her head rolling back as Max’s questing fingers moved once more between her legs, rubbing at her slick flesh until she was a whimpering mess on the table.
When Max pushed two fingers deep inside her, curling them so that they hit that wonderful spot that made her pulse around him, she cried out, clinging to him.
He kissed her once more, before easing his fingers away and pulling at his shorts.
Bo heard a zip release, and then she heard Max opening a condom.
It occurred to her fevered mind that the condom was probably why he’d disappeared earlier.
It hadn’t been some odd power play dynamics at work; it had simply been a matter of practicalities.
Vaguely, she recalled the last time they’d slept together, how Max had been careful about protection then too.
She felt a surprising surge of affection for him, affection which multiplied as he slid slowly inside her, his movement agonizingly drawn-out as he buried himself to the hilt inside her.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered as the unspeakable feeling of fullness, the joy of an ache satisfied, began to throb from her core.
She looked up at Max, but his eyes were closed, his hands clutching her hips. “You,” he said, thrusting once on the word so that she chewed down on her lip to stop herself from crying out his name. “Are just,” two more thrusts, and she bit down again. “So, so fucking perfect.”
The last time they’d slept together, it had been frantic and fast-paced, with Max wringing out of her all kinds of pleasure in a hard and almost unrelenting kind of way.
They’d been short of time then; both knowing they had just a few hours in which to enjoy the other’s body.
It was meant to be a one-time thing, after all, a pleasant way to pass the time between 3 a.m. and the first train of the day.
Now though, with time a less pressing issue, Max seemed determined to take things at a more leisurely pace.
His movements were precise and torturously slow, and Bo made a noise of frustrated impatience.
“Faster,” she begged, but Max shook his head.
“No,” he said bluntly. “If I go faster, I’ll come. I want to make this last.”
Bo’s nerves were sparking and her body felt tight as aches of want and desire built within her. Max had brought her to the edge already, and she wanted nothing more now than to tumble into the waves of pleasure below.
What if I want you to beg? Max had asked her earlier, and Bo grasped at those words.
She wanted him and needed him and so she wrapped her legs around his waist, drawing him closer to her and reaching a hand to his face.
She cupped his cheek gently, catching his eye.
Max seemed surprised by the sudden, soft touch, staring at her intently.
“Max, please,” she whispered, “I need this. Need you. Please.”
It was the right thing to say. She felt Max pulse within her, and he leaned into her touch. “Fuck,” he exhaled, kissing her hard. He shifted his weight and hers, and suddenly, magically and wonderfully, they began to move together in a hurried and eager rhythm.
How have I gone without this for months and months?
Bo thought in amazement. How have I gone without him in all this time?
There was no time for further reflection though, no time for anything other than the pleasure building deep within her, hot and wet and wonderful, a pleasure that was mirrored in Max’s face.
He pressed his forehead to hers, kissing the desperate pants from her mouth, and when she came, it was with his lips against her own.
He gave a muffled cry, his body growing tense under her fingers, muscles tightly coiled and hot to the touch. She held him tight, luxuriating in the noises he made, wallowing in the feel of him so close to her.
Afterwards, they were quiet. Max peeled himself away from her, and she lay there, somewhat dazed, while he took off the condom and disposed of it.
When he returned, his shorts had been pulled back up, and he wordlessly offered her his hand, pulling her up from the table and helping her tie her robe.
His face was serious, his countenance thoughtful.
“Bo,” he said. “I think we need to renegotiate the terms of our arrangement.”