Chapter Eleven #2
“If that’s what lights your fire, sweetheart, then go for it,” Max replied easily, leaning towards her.
He reached out with one hand, hooking a finger under the strap of her chemise and pulling her closer to him.
His skin on hers was like a fresh heap of coals being thrown on a long-simmering fire, and Bo inhaled sharply.
“I don’t like the shorts either,” she whispered, and something passed in the air between them, hot and electric. Releasing her chemise, Max stepped past the door, closing it behind him and locking it. There was a familiar look in his eyes; one Bo was beginning to know all too well.
“Really? You better take them off then.”
Bo’s heart began to race a little and her skin prickled with sudden awareness at how close Max was standing to her.
“Do your own dirty work,” she retorted, but there was no real bite to her words. It was all play-acting; the best acting she’d ever done, anyway. Not that it was the time to reflect once again on her failed career. Not when Max was looking at her like that and she was feeling like this.
“You’re the one who doesn’t like them,” Max reminded her, leaning against her wall now. “So, this is your dirty work.”
“Max—” she began, fully intending to continue the charade of their bickering for a few moments longer, but Max stopped her unexpectedly. Without warning, he lifted her up around his waist, kissing her hard on the mouth, his tongue against hers swallowing any arguments she might have had left.
Two things occurred to Bo in that moment.
The first was that Max was far stronger than he looked, which was odd because he wasn’t the jacked, gym-addict type she normally went for.
She’d dated Oliver for nearly eight months, and in that time, he’d spent more time going down on a squat rack than he ever had on her.
Max’s body was entirely different to his, with less-defined muscles and a softness to his physique that Bo appreciated.
He was still strong though. Max lifted her with practiced ease, one hand on her waist and the other cupping her cheek, kissing her in a way that was both messy and gracelessly perfect.
Bo’s second thought, one which soon eclipsed the first as Max’s kiss deepened, was that both she and he were far too dressed for what was about to go down. He was hard, a promising bulge prodding her thigh, and she ground against it impatiently, eliciting the most delicious sounds from Max’s mouth.
“Take them off,” she urged again, wriggling against Max, but he caught her mouth once more, shaking his head even as he kissed her.
“No.”
His hand moved from her cheek to her hair, and he tugged lightly on the ponytail she’d tied hours earlier. The pull on her scalp went directly to her core, and she felt a flair of lust.
Hair-pulling. Huh. Bo realized with a start that she was kind of into it.
It shouldn’t have felt good, shouldn’t have felt so intensely personal, but it did, and she added it to her list of things to research on Reddit later.
Maybe it was primal, some kind of evolutionary throwback to when humans had more fur to run hands through.
Maybe it was just her, and something she got a kick out of.
Or maybe, thought Bo without any real surprise, it was because it was Max’s hands on her head and Max’s fingers in her hair and that was what she really enjoyed: Max.
“Do that again,” she whispered into Max’s ear, and he didn’t need asking twice. He moved his hand over her ponytail again, giving it a small tug, and Bo made a noise of pleasure which was half-moan, half-purr.
All right, Bo thought, as Max pulled on her hair again. He wins. As if he was ever not going to.
Impatiently, she wriggled out of his arms, landing on the ground with a soft thump.
Max didn’t even have time to protest when she kept going, lowering herself until she was kneeling before him.
She looked up at him through her eyelashes and was rewarded by the mesmerizing sight of his eyes darkening with new desire.
It was hot, so incredibly hot, and Bo felt a new flood of arousal herself.
She wanted Max to lose the control he so effortlessly maintained; wanted him to fall apart in her hands and mouth.
Still, she paused, continuing to look up at him.
“Is this okay?” she asked quietly.
Max nodded. “You have no idea how okay this is.”
“Let’s hope I find out,” she replied, leaning forward to kiss the skin of Max’s waist. Above her, she both felt and heard Max sigh, and inexplicably, suddenly, she had the urge to be gentle.
With delicate fingers, she pulled at the button and then the zip of his shorts, tugging them down.
The fabric didn’t feel as terrible as it looked and in fact was almost soft against her fingers.
Briefly, ridiculously, Bo wondered what these God-awful shorts were made of and if she should invest in a pair of her own.
Another gentle sigh from Max brought her back to the task at hand. She was fairly decent at this, or at least, she’d never had any complaints. She mouthed at Max through his underwear, and the gentle moans he’d just made became a growl of frustrated impatience.
“Don’t tease,” he muttered, reaching down to lay a hand on her head.
“You tease me all the time,” she returned easily, before wrapping her mouth around the hardness in front of her and sucking gently through the cotton fabric.
Max groaned again. “You like it when I tease you.”
Bo sucked once more before pulling back slightly. “Apparently, so do you.” She nodded towards his very obvious erection, grinning at him.
“Don’t look so satisfied,” Max returned with a slight grimace, and Bo could feel how much it bothered him to lose control, even to her.
“I look satisfied?” Bo grinned again. There was something innately powerful about having a man like Max in her power. “Well, maybe you can join me in looking that way too soon enough.” She punctuated her words with another suck, before pulling his underwear down.
A slight gasp from Max went straight to her bloodstream like a neat shot of vodka.
She felt almost dizzy with it, drunk on the sounds from Max’s mouth and the sight of him before her.
She didn’t wait another moment, wrapping her mouth around him and licking the underside of his shaft.
Max made another noise, half-choked, half-amazed, and Bo began to move on him in earnest, each noise of appreciation and pleasure spurring her on.
“Fuck, you’re amazing,” Max murmured. “You take me so well.”
There it was again, praise. A surge of lust went through her, and Bo intensified her actions, determined to take as much of Max into her mouth and throat as she could, wishing all the while she could take more.
She was a responsible, future-thinking woman: she knew to do her Kegels and practiced them regularly.
Was there such a thing as Kegels for the throat, however?
Bo wasn’t sure, but the reactions she’d elicited from Max’s body made her determined to find out.
It was obscene, the noises Max was making, and the feel of his hand on her head and in her hair added to the intensity of the moment.
She moved her hands to his waist, and beneath the warm skin she felt muscles that were taut, tightly coiled with unspent pleasure.
She desperately wanted him to come, to lose himself in her in the way he so needed to.
A sudden, rasped word from Max, however, made her stop. “Stop,” he gasped, tugging on her ponytail so that she was forced to pull away from him. “I’m not going to last if you keep doing that.”
“Good,” she replied, wiping her mouth. “I want you to come.”
“Not yet,” Max told her. “Now, take off your clothes and get on your bed.”
She was only too happy to comply, not even trying to be sexy as she stripped. She’d teased him enough already that night, and knew, from the wonderfully aroused look in his eye, that she could be wearing a plastic bag and he’d still want to fuck her.
A plastic bag. There was a point.
“I don’t have a condom,” Bo blurted out, even as she lay back on the supportive foam of her new mattress, and Max moved on all fours over her. “I meant to get some but never got around to it.”
He blinked in surprise. “That’s okay. I have some. I always do.”
Bo nodded gratefully, and Max kissed her.
His mouth was intense and searching, and Bo relaxed onto her pillow, letting Max’s mouth help sweep her into that blissful, nonsensical place of wonder that he’d taken her now twice before.
She was impatient as he opened and slid the condom on and whined slightly when he pushed only the tip of himself in, as though testing the responses of her body.
“Please,” Bo begged, in a tone of voice even she didn’t recognize.
“Patience,” Max replied, holding himself still, and if Bo thought his muscles were taut before, they were positively solid now. He was regaining the control he’d given to her earlier, she realized. Taking a moment to recalibrate their situation to factory settings.
“Max,” she pleaded again. “Come on.”
“Just one moment,” he replied, and his eyes swept over her body before him. “God, you’re beautiful. How are you so beautiful?”
Now was not the time, Bo thought, to discuss the complexities of her parents and their relationship.
Now was not the time to mention her mother and the cold heart that lay behind her beautiful face, or the father who’d married her mother for all the wrong reasons.
So, she made no reply — not that Max probably even expected one — and instead simply looked up at him as he looked down at her, unreadable and bewildering.