Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Toni Amato
My keys are in my hand.
That’s important. I want to establish that my keys are in my hand, I have my bag, I have my phone, I completed my supervisor call, and I am twenty-three steps from my car. This is a woman with a destination. A woman with a plan.
I left Max Stevens leaning against the concrete pillar.
Dark hair. Blue eyes catching the dim garage light.
His jacket on and his hands in his pockets, the other look on his face.
The one that costs me more. I ignore it and think he’s letting me leave when he jogs up, catching me right at my car door.
“Toni.”
“I’m heading home,” I say.
“No, you’re not.”
“Excuse me?”
He has a specific way of moving in spaces that belong to other people. Unhurried, certain, as if the floor rerouted itself. “You’ve been on calls for two hours. You haven’t eaten since the protein bar at noon, which I know because you left the wrapper in the training room.”
“I was going to throw it away.”
“You forgot. Because Price called mid-session and you’ve been in your head since.
” He stops three feet away, leaning against a car as if it belongs to him.
Nice try at incognito. Thankfully, the garage is empty around us, ventilation humming, one fluorescent light stuttering at the far end. “Come with me.”
“Where.”
“Somewhere with a view.”
I grip my keys. “That is not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got right now.” His blue eyes hold mine. “I know a place. Rooftop. Nobody we know. City below us and cold air, and I’ll feed you a meal that isn’t a protein bar.” A pause. “Come with me.”
“We said no public.”
“This isn’t public. It’s private with a view.”
“Max.”
“Toni.” He says my name the way he says it when he’s done performing. Flat. Real. The way it sounds in a text at eleven forty-seven that doesn't need to say anything else. “One hour. Come with me.”
I drop my keys in my bag.
He drives. I sit in the passenger seat of his car and watch Chicago move past the window and construct and dismantle the professional argument three times in twelve minutes.
The radio is low. He doesn’t fill the silence, and I have stopped being surprised by that.
Max Stevens in public is noise and grin and performance.
Max Stevens in a car at seven p.m. on a Tuesday is just a man driving, one hand on the wheel, the city lights moving across the dark planes of his face.
He pulls into a parking structure in River North that I don’t recognize.
Takes a ticket. Finds a level. Cuts the engine.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“Friend of mine owns the building. Bar on thirty-two, rooftop on thirty-three. Private elevator.” He glances at me. “Nobody from the league drinks here.”
“You checked.”
“I checked.” He gets out. I get out. The elevator is where he said it would be, tucked behind a door that requires a key card he produces without ceremony, and we ride up in silence, thirty-two floors of it, and I watch the numbers and do not look at him because looking at him in an enclosed space has a documented effect on my decision-making.
The doors open. Cold air hits my face before I see anything else. Then the skyline.
The nighttime spectacle of Chicago, viewed from thirty-three stories up, defies any category I have for it.
Lake Michigan to the east, black and enormous, city lights fracturing across its surface.
The Loop below us blazing gold and white.
The wind off the lake is direct and clean and cuts straight through my blazer and I do not care at all because the view from up here makes the city look the way it feels at three a.m. when you can’t sleep and you stand at your window and remember that you chose this place on purpose.
“Max.” My voice comes out in awe.
“Yeah.” He’s beside me at the railing. Not touching. The city hums thirty-three floors below us. “Good?”
“Very good,” I say, and mean it in more directions than one.
A server appears from somewhere behind us, takes a brief order, and disappears.
There are two other people on the far end of the rooftop, close together, facing the lake, paying us no attention.
The heaters mounted along the pergola push warmth into the cold air, and the entire space glows amber and private, and nothing like anywhere I have ever stood with a player I am professionally responsible for.
Was professionally responsible for. The assignment ended six days ago. I hold onto that.
The food arrives. We eat at the high-top near the railing, and he was right; I was hungry.
The Chicago wind catches my skirt and keeps stealing my napkin, and the third time it happens, he puts his hand flat on the table to stop it, and his hand stays there afterward, close to mine, and neither of us addresses it.
“Your supervisor,” he says. “The review. Is it a problem?”
“It’s routine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I set down my fork. The skyline blazes behind him. “It’s manageable,” I say. “The Boston data helps. The documented improvement helps.” I pause. “It helps that the formal assignment ended before anything…” I stop.
“Before anything happened,” he finishes. His voice is even. His blue eyes are direct.
“Yes.”
“Is that true? Technically.”
I hold his gaze. “The dock was after the assignment review period closed.” A beat. “Technically.”
He grins. The real one. “Technically.”
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were on the verge of uttering unbearable words.”
“I was going to say,” he says, “that I’m glad it’s manageable.” He turns his hand over on the table. Palm up. An offer, nothing more. I look at it. “Antonia.”
I put my hand in his.
His fingers close around mine, and the warmth of it travels straight up my arm and I face forward, toward the lake, and breathe the cold air in.
We sit like that for a long time. That other pair, on the distant edge, exits. The server refills our glasses and retreats. Chicago goes on below us, vast and indifferent, and up here it is just the amber heaters and his hand and a Tuesday night that belongs only to us. “Cold?” he asks.
“Yes.” He stands. Moves behind me. His jacket settles over my shoulders, heavy and warm, carrying the scent of his soap and the particular heat of him, and his hands rest briefly on my shoulders before he steps back. I pull the jacket tighter. “You’ll freeze.”
“I run hot.”
I turn on the stool to face him. He’s close.
The cold has put color in his face, and the wind wrecked his dark hair.
He is twenty-two years old, and he is staring at me like I’m the skyline.
His eyes say he’s been wanting this view for a long time and plans to keep looking.
It burrows into me and chisels at my heart. “Max.”
“Still here.”
“Take me somewhere warmer,” I say.
His breath changes. One shift, barely visible. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
The room is his friend’s. He doesn’t explain further and I don’t ask because the city is still blazing through the floor-to-ceiling window and his hands are at the lapels of his own jacket, still around my shoulders, and he slides it off with patience that dismantles me one inch at a time.
“You sure?” he asks. His voice is low. The question is genuine.
“I stopped being unsure in the parking garage,” I say.
His mouth finds mine. Deliberate this time.
Two people who are finally being themselves and moving at their own pace.
His hands move to my face, and I grip the front of his shirt.
The city blazes on outside the glass. I allow him to be thorough, letting him take the time he took before.
He has the unhurried certainty of a man who has decided and finished negotiating with himself.
He walks me back toward the window, and the city is thirty-two floors below us, and the cold bleeds through the glass at my back, and his warmth is everywhere else.
As his lips travel down my throat, I tilt my head back, the immense, upside-down cityscape Chicago blazing beyond the glass. I’ve never felt so reckless.
Good, some part of me registers. Good.
My blazer goes. His shirt follows. His hands learn me, finding the differences from before, cataloguing them.
I do the same. He’s defined, warm, and certain.
When I press my palm flat against his chest, his heart beats as hard as mine.
I file that away in the part of me that keeps things it shouldn’t and has stopped apologizing for it.
He moves like he has all the time in the world and intends to use it.
He always takes his time with me, as if speed would waste something, as if he has decided that every version of this deserves his full attention.
I stop tracking what I’m doing with my hands and start tracking what he does with his and the distinction stops mattering anyway because the city is outside and we are in here and the only thing that exists in this room is the specific geography of him and the thirty-three floors of cold air between us and everything we have spent weeks pretending.
Max’s mouth travels down my throat slowly, heat following every kiss until my skin feels branded by him.
His hands move over me as if he’s trying to memorize every inch at once, rough palms against bare skin, and I can’t tell where my pulse ends and his begins anymore.
The window at my back is cold enough to shock a breath out of me, Chicago glittering beneath us in fractured gold and white, but the chill only sharpens the heat pouring off him.
Every place our bodies touch burns. He pulls back just enough to look at me.
God, that look. Raw. Hungry. Too honest for a man like Max Stevens.
I forget how to breathe. Then he lifts me effortlessly, my legs locking around his waist as he pins me gently against the glass.
So erotic, my body heats to a higher level than ever before.
None of it matters now anyway. The rules, the outside world or tomorrow.
Only him.
His mouth crashes into mine again, completely this time, and I fist my hands into his hair as the kiss deepens.
He kisses with the same reckless precision he brings to the ice.
Every movement deliberate. Every touch designed to ruin me slowly.
A sound slips out of me when his hips roll against mine, and his grip tightens instantly, as if he feels that sound somewhere deep in his own body.
“Jesus Antonia,” he murmurs against my mouth, voice wrecked.
The ache building inside me turns unbearable.
My entire body feels tight with it, trembling with it.
He feels it too. I know he does from the way his breathing roughens, from the way his forehead drops briefly to mine like he’s fighting for control he doesn’t actually want.
The city hums beneath us. Traffic far below.
Sirens somewhere distant. But inside this room there’s only heat and skin and the way he says my name like it means everything.
I drag my mouth across his jaw, and he moans low and deep in his throat, fingers flexing against my thighs.
Everything about this feels out of control.
Primal. Necessary. Two years of trying not to collide.
We finally ran out of road. My heartbeat stumbles when he kisses me again, slower now somehow, deeper, and the tenderness hidden underneath all that chaos nearly undoes me more than the desire does.
I rest my forehead against his, both of us breathing hard.
“I haven’t felt anything like this in a long time,” he whispers, voice rough around the edges.
Neither have I. That’s the terrifying part. My fingers slide through the ends of his hair as the lights of Chicago blaze across his face, as if the entire city is on fire for us.
And maybe it is.
That fire spurs him on as he grinds his hips into my core.
His fingers move up my thigh, pushing my thong aside, and plunge inside me.
My head snaps back at the sensation, the window my brace as I wiggle my hips, searching for deeper penetration.
My fingers grip his shoulders, leaving nail marks as the cusp of my orgasm rises, both of us breathing heavily, my release is intense. I cry out.
“That's my An-ton-i-a, let it all go baby," he whispers. “So fucking hot.”
When the shivers subside, Max gently lets my feet hit the floor. I open my eyes to his amazed expression when he lifts his hand and licks his fingers with a big grin.
“That was naughty, Max.”
“That was perfection and truly reflected An-ton-i-a.” He makes my name sound indecent in the most loving way.
“I meant licking your fingers.” I shake my head, grinning up at him.
“Just the beginning,” he says, grabbing my hand and leading me to the bedroom. “I intend to lick every inch of you tonight.”
Max swirls me around, and I land sitting on the bed.
Still in my camisole and skirt, he’s in just his pants.
I nod him over to the bedside and unbuckle him, letting everything fall to the floor.
His magnificent cock is at attention, and my gaze locks on his thick girth and the wetness shimmering on the tip.
I take him in my hand, and he sighs. Then I part my lips and slide the slick head into my mouth.
While using my tongue to explore and caress his rock-hard length, a subtle tremor runs through him.
“This will be over quicker than we want if you don’t stop,” he says.
I release him with a pop of suction, and he reaches down and pulls off my camisole.
I unhook my strapless bra, which is already at my waist from before, at the window.
Then I rise and turn around, bending over the bed and sticking my ass out at him so he can unzip my skirt.
When my panties drop to the floor, he growls with satisfaction, so I spread my legs and give him a complete view from behind.
“Fuck, you’re killing me, baby!” He grabs handfuls of my ass, kneading the flesh.
And then he glides his fingers through my drenched slit from front to back.
One of his palms smoothes over my stomach as he positions me just right to wedge his cock between my legs and rub it through my pussy, hitting my clit each time he thrusts.
Again and again, he rubs it while he fingers my nipples, ramping me up for another explosion.
Then he whispers in my ear, “Remember when you threatened the edge drills? What I said, I wanted to do to you?” All I can do is nod.
“You’re not allowed to cum until I say.”
I’m too stimulated to comprehend what he’s proposing to do, so I just go on enjoying the impending orgasm. My breathing is heavy and my body is seeking more friction as I move it to make him hit my clit just right. Then it hits me. “What did you just say? You’re not allowing me to orgasm?”
“Play along, Antonia, and I promise the release will be even sweeter than the last one.”