CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
We were both silent as we entered my apartment. He put the groceries on the counter while I took off my coat. He shrugged his off as well and I hung both on a hook near the door. I reminded myself that we were going one step at a time. Even if Max had already tumbled down the stairs, we should take each step carefully.
No rushing.
And then I completely negated my own plan.
I walked over to him and put my hand against his chest, steadying myself. His heartbeat was strong and steady beneath my palm. Then I leaned forward slightly to kiss him. I had never kissed him on the lips before—he had always initiated. It felt brave and bold, but I was still a bit hesitant and unsure of myself.
And he didn’t respond the way I might have expected. He kissed me back, but it was gentle and soft and undemanding. Delicious and heady as always, but there was a definite restraint.
Old me might have assumed that he didn’t want to kiss me, that I had forced myself on him, but I knew it was something else.
I stepped back and he was watching me carefully. Maybe waiting for my next move?
He had wanted to talk. I should let him do that. But I needed something to do so that I didn’t try to maul the poor man, who seemed a bit dubious about what was happening.
Which wasn’t like Max.
To be fair to him, though, we were in an entirely different situation than we’d ever been in before. We were alone, we wouldn’t be interrupted, and we had admitted that we had feelings for each other and wanted to be in a relationship.
Everything had changed.
I left the kitchen and walked across the living room, over to my alcove. To my surprise he stayed right behind me, like he didn’t want to be parted from me.
The sight of Max Colby standing next to my bed was my undoing. I wondered what he would do if I pushed him down on it.
“This is basically my bedroom,” I announced, probably unnecessarily.
“Interesting,” he said.
“Yep! This is where I sleep.” Now I was saying stupid things. Oh no.
“Just sleep?” he said with a tone that let me know he was kidding, but also that he might be open to exploring other activities besides sleep, and my revolutionary ovaries tried declaring war again.
“I’m going to get changed,” I told him, desperately needing a diversion. “Go over there.”
I pointed in the direction of the living room and he took a few steps back. I grabbed the dressing screen that I occasionally used as a room divider and placed it between us. I could have just gone into the bathroom to get changed, but I realized that I didn’t want to be in a different room, separated from him.
I didn’t even want this screen between us.
Turning, I grabbed a tank top and soft pants to change into. I slid my dress off but all of my attention was focused on Max. There was only this flimsy thing between us and he could have pushed it aside.
Or I could have.
There was something charged and sexy about changing with him right there but not able to see anything other than a shadowed outline.
I pulled my clothes on, almost regretting doing it. If I walked out in my underwear, there was no way we would take things slowly. Or be able to have a conversation. I was pretty sure about that.
“I’m dressed,” I said when I finished. And I meant to move the screen myself, but Max lifted it and tossed it to the side, like he’d been waiting for an excuse to do just that.
He reached for me and I eagerly awaited his mouth on mine.
But he didn’t kiss me. Instead he placed his hand on the side of my throat. He moved his hand down, rubbing his thumb across my collarbone, and then he leaned forward to press a hot, delicate kiss to where he’d been touching me.
I grabbed on to his shirt, trying to stay upright. There was a pulling sensation just behind my belly button that grew and blossomed into white-hot heat. I was going to ask him to do it again because of how amazing it had felt, and he did it without me begging. He was excruciatingly tender with me, pressing warm kisses up and down the column of my neck, across my collarbone, on my shoulders. The whisper of his fingertips followed along behind his mouth, touching me everywhere his lips had.
He had turned my entire body into one desperate ache, wanting beating through my blood.
I ran my own fingertips along the planes and contours of his perfect face, then ran my fingers through his dark, silken hair. He was so unbelievably handsome. “I can’t believe you want to be with me.”
It had been meant to stay inside my brain, but the words somehow came out. And they had the negative effect of making him stop kissing me.
“Why?” He truly sounded dumbfounded.
“Look at you. You are annoyingly gorgeous.” As if he didn’t know.
He framed my face with his hands. “And you are so beautiful, so sexy, that I have a hard time keeping my hands to myself.”
“Really?”
“When I came upstairs today and found you, I wanted to talk. But that all went away the second I saw you.”
“Oh.” I breathed the word. “You would think someone else would have noticed by now if that was true.”
He kissed my forehead softly. “You’ve surrounded yourself with some very stupid people. I wish that you could see yourself the way that I do.”
“How do you see me?” I reached up to wrap my fingers around his wrists.
“Desirable, annoyingly attractive, with a smile that doesn’t just light up a room, it illuminates it.”
My heart fluttered up into my throat. “My mom spent a lot of money on braces,” I whispered, and he grinned at me.
“You are beautiful inside and out. And I would have told you that constantly since we first met but I—”
“Was trying not to scare me,” I finished for him. The magnetism of this moment and his otherworldly blue eyes drew me in so completely that I had started to become personally offended by every molecule of air that existed between us.
Max moved his hand so that he could trace the outline of my mouth, the calloused pad gliding along my more-than-ready lips, and my breathing turned shallow. I lifted my face up so that he could finally kiss me, but instead he pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth. He ghosted his lips along my skin, over my cheekbones, against one eyelid and then the other. My forehead, my temples. I could feel his warm breath in my hair.
It was almost like he was trying to prove something to himself. That he could be restrained, he could touch me carefully and gently without losing his head.
I didn’t know if this was for his benefit or for mine, but I felt so frantic for him that I wasn’t sure how much more of this particularly exquisite torture I could withstand.
“You said you wanted to talk,” I reminded him.
“Right.” He dropped his hands and moved a step back. “There’s something that I’ve been wanting to—”
I couldn’t have described what possessed me in that moment other than my protesting lady parts were distraught at the loss of his touch and the possibility that I wasn’t going to be properly kissed anytime soon.
I threw myself at him, knocking him back against a wall. He swore in three different languages.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him. Did I not know my own strength?
“I think I’ve cut myself.” He reached over to his side, just behind his shoulder blade.
“Oh no,” I said, suddenly remembering why I shouldn’t have pushed him into that wall. “For a few months Vella was going to be a painter and she had all these canvases hanging up and she never took the nails out. Let me see.”
He lifted his shirt, and for a good twenty seconds, I couldn’t focus on anything but the fact that his torso was the most perfect thing I had ever seen in my entire life. My throat closed and my heart jackhammered in my chest.
Wow.
My fingers actually ached to touch him and I had to ball my hands up so that I didn’t attack him.
“Is it bad?” he asked, causing me to remember what I was supposed to be doing.
There was a short scratch, but it wasn’t bleeding. He’d only grazed his skin. “You definitely nailed yourself. Sorry about the pun.”
“It’s okay. It was a good one.”
I shook my head. “So I nearly knocked you out and now I’ve scratched you up.”
“I don’t mind if you scratch me up,” he said in a voice full of promise and longing at the same time.
Without thinking I leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the scratch. Probably not very sanitary but I heard his sharp intake of breath, stronger than when he’d actually injured himself.
I tilted my head to the side to see his face better. The air was thick and heavy with unresolved tension and I could feel my rampaging heartbeat in my toes. A silent agreement passed between us, and the next thing I knew, his shirt was coming off. I honestly didn’t know if he had unbuttoned it or if I had done it. But it slid off his shoulders and he asked, “Is this okay?”
“Yes!” So much more than okay. I was going to have myself a field day. I meant to explore him, to kiss every inch of exposed, warm skin, to feel and taste all the ways he was different than me, but my exploration was cut short when his mouth descended quickly on mine and I had to settle for running my fingers along the muscles in his back as I was pressed against him.
We took a couple of stumbling steps, our lips still fused together as we moved. There were no thoughts happening. Just pure, blissful, unadulterated lust.
Not just that, though. There was something more. There was frantic need and desperation but feelings being conveyed, too. He cared about me—I felt it in the way he kissed me, the way he touched me. How he tried to continue to be gentle with me even if every movement was tinged with utter wildness. I reveled in the restraint I felt in every muscle in his body, as if it took everything inside him to hold himself back.
I wondered what an unleashed Max would be like.
My brain would probably overload and explode from it.
The backs of my legs hit my bed and I fell against it with a surprised Max following.
“I’m good,” I said before he could ask. It had been my idea, after all. He moved to lie alongside me and I immediately missed his weight pressing me down.
“Everly,” he said, and my name was a broken sound in his chest. He rasped my name against my lips a few more times, as if he meant to tell me something but couldn’t remember what it was.
I totally understood.
Now that I had Max Colby in my bed, I intended to finally explore him the way I’d wanted to since his shirt had come off. I started off with the area that was closest to me—his throat.
He tilted his head to the side for me, allowing me better access. I kissed and nipped my way down and absolutely loved the hisses and sighs he made. How his muscles would contract when my wandering fingers brushed against them. His every tiny reaction that I was responsible for—it was like finding out you had a superpower you never knew about.
A low, rough sound escaped his throat, something primal, and he pulled my face up to his so that he could kiss me.
Not just kiss me, but kiss me without holding back.
Liquid pleasure pooled immediately in my spine, spreading everywhere and making me feel too hot and my skin too tight. Like I was a star about to go supernova.
I couldn’t help but moan into his mouth and he pulled back slightly. He started speaking Italian in between his kisses and I didn’t even care what he was saying, only that it was so hot I wanted to spontaneously combust.
His breath was heavy and his hands wandered along the edge of my tank top, and then his fingers were under the hem, pressing into my back as it was his turn to explore. I was completely aflame everywhere he touched me—hot, crackling, burning.
And every kiss and every touch stoked that fire inside me, causing it to grow wilder and needier.
He dragged his lips away from mine and began pressing hungry kisses along my jaw, along the line of my throat. These were nothing like his soft, sweet kisses earlier. They were demanding and consuming and he was murmuring in Italian against my skin. I arched against the sensation, my heart turning volcanic and pumping molten blood through my body.
It was so much but I needed more. I tugged at his shoulders, wanting him to move.
He hesitated for only a moment and then shifted so that he was over me. He braced himself with his elbows, looking down at me with so much desire in his eyes, but with a softer emotion alongside it, one that made me melt inside. He brushed some of my hair away from my face. “Everly.”
I swallowed hard. Then I reached up to capture his mouth, urging him to kiss me again. Words turned into heavy breaths and thoughts turned into sensations. There was nothing but Max and his touch and kiss. Everything else ceased to exist.
I tugged at his shoulders again and this time he did what I wanted, his weight pressing down against me, our legs intertwined, my heart beating hard against his. This shifting seemed to be all that was needed to get him to forget all about holding back. He parted my mouth and kissed me deeply, tasting me. His blood-scorching, toe-curling kisses were overwhelming, his fingers perfectly kneading and grazing and pressing me into mindless ecstasy.
When I was nine years old, there had been a freak snowstorm near my house. We’d had to go to the store for supplies. On the way home the roads had looked clear, but they weren’t. Black ice everywhere. My mother slid and careened out of control for a few seconds when she hit a particularly bad patch, but it had felt like hours. I remembered the weightlessness in my stomach, the sensation of soaring through space, being out of control but somehow thrilled at the same time. The hollowed-out feeling like you were going way too fast but part of you didn’t want that sensation to stop.
It was how I felt now. Careening out of control, weightless, lightheaded, stomach floating—and I wanted more.
I reached down for the hem of my tank top, intending to take it off. I had to feel his skin against mine.
His hand went around my wrist, stilling my movement. “Wait, what are you doing?”
“What do you think?” I asked, reaching up to kiss him, but he turned his head slightly so that it landed on his jaw. I furrowed my eyebrows. What was he doing?
“I’m trying to be sensitive to your situation,” he said. “I know that you don’t have a lot of experience—”
“Barely any,” I supplied. If we were going to call my non-past out, we should at least do it accurately.
“Barely any experience, and I don’t want to put you in an uncomfortable situation or pressure you. Especially because you make me forget myself.”
“You make me forget myself, too.” I moved against him and he made a sound that was part pain and part pleasure. His hand stayed on my wrist, though, holding it in place.
A section of my brain that wasn’t hazy registered the fact that he was trying to be respectful to me and my situation. “You’re not taking advantage of me. I’m an adult and I can make my own choices. You don’t need to protect me from myself. Speeding cars, maybe. But not from myself.”
His chest was still moving back and forth rapidly, like he was having a hard time catching his breath. “I do want to protect you. Even if the person I have to protect you from is me.”
“You don’t have to do that, either.”
“I want to keep you safe and make it so that nothing bad ever happens to you.”
Which was very sweet and endearing and my heart turned into a gooey mess. I loved him so much that it felt impossible to keep it contained inside any longer. I tugged my hand out of his grasp and reached up to stroke the side of his face gently. “I know I’m supposed to feel nervous or anxious about escalating things, but when I’m with you, I don’t feel that way. I want to be as close to you as I can and everything that entails because I love you.”
“You what?”