Chapter 23
Daisy
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t bear the concerned look on his face. After that orgasm, my whole body felt like nothing more than one giant heartbeat, an angry thump caged in nervous skin.
“I need…” Air pushed from my lips. “I need to get out.”
I stood, but too quickly. Blood rushed from my head, and I swayed right into Max’s waiting arms and his muttered curse.
For the second time tonight, my husband carried me into the bedroom and laid me on the bed.
“Wait, I’m wet—”
“That’s never a bad thing in this bed, Daze,” he growled and kneeled in front of me, between my legs. I shivered even though there was nothing sexual about his position now, not the way concern bled from his honeyed stare. “What’s wrong?”
“I have to tell you something,” I repeated, hating how it sounded like it was a bad thing. It wasn’t. Or was it?
I didn’t know up from down, right from left, real from fantasy anymore. All I knew was Max. All I knew was that nothing had ever felt more right.
“You can tell me anything, Daze.” He reached for my hands and curled them into his big ones.
How things would’ve been different if he’d just told me how he’d felt…and if I had done the same. But what kind of different would they have been?
Would I have been ready to face that I’d made the wrong choice?
Or would I have dug my heels in and stayed with Todd?
Would it have ruined Todd and Max’s friendship?
Maybe I never would’ve seen Max again. Maybe we would’ve had everything—each other—sooner.
Or maybe my stubbornness would’ve blown my chance to be with him, and instead of getting this dream, it all would’ve crumbled into disaster.
With each breath that shuttled in and out of my lungs, I accepted that disaster would’ve been the more likely scenario. Until that night at the McCormicks’, I wasn’t ready to admit Todd was the wrong choice. I wasn’t ready to accept that Max had always been the right one.
Until that night when I was forced to.
“That night of the party…after our conversation on the deck…” I gulped.
“I realized how you felt about me…what you were really trying to tell me. And I was afraid of how I wanted you too. I tried to tell myself I was wrong. That I’d imagined what you said…
how you said it. I convinced myself the man I’d been dating for four years was the one I wanted to be with… not his best friend.”
“Daisy…”
“When Todd found me, he was upset too. Something with his parents. I think…I think we both just reached for each other because it was safe.”
God, I sounded so pitiful. Who would stay with someone when they wanted to be with someone else?
Me. I did. Because I was so afraid of how Max made me feel, so afraid to be uncharacteristically vulnerable, and Todd…
I was comfortable with Todd’s flaws. I was safer with the devil I knew than the dashing gentleman who made my heart race.
“You thought of me the night you…got pregnant?” Max’s calm voice cracked through the room, but it was the only calm thing about him. Every other inch of him, from his pupils to his fingertips, vibrated with tension and possession.
“It’s not just that, Max.” My heart clanged around like a train off its tracks, barreling at an unsteady pace toward him.
Guilt gnawed at my throat, but something stronger clawed at my throat.
The truth. “I didn’t just think of you, Max.
I…it was an accident, but I…” I swallowed. “I said your name.”
My confession hung like a single strand of a spiderweb spun between us, so fragile but so full of possibility.
I blinked and let my focus settle on Max kneeling between my legs. He was so still. Not carved from stone, but sculpted from wax. Soft but immovable. Except his eyes. Pure fire churned in their depths, and I watched it melt him from the inside out.
“You said…my name,” he croaked as his throat softened.
My cheeks felt like fireballs. It was the most embarrassing moment of my life.
The kind of despicable act they give to playboys in movies to show how big of a dick they were.
And there I was, sleeping with my boyfriend of four years, just drunk enough—just shaken up enough—to let the wrong name slip.
“Screamed.” I paused, knowing the obvious question that came next, and vomited the answer before I lost my nerve.
“Todd heard me, but he was…wasted, and he passed out almost right away. I thought in the morning he’d say something, but he didn’t.
I planned on saying something—how could I not? —but then I found out about the baby…”
“Daisy,” he growled, his hands suddenly framing my face. The world narrowed to the radius of his eyes. Everything I wanted to know, to feel, contained in the bolts of his gaze. “You screamed my name.”
“Yes,” I answered before I realized it wasn’t a question.
His fingers peeled from my cheeks, his eyes following their path as his hands skated down my neck, my shoulders, and then rested on my stomach.
I felt so huge, and yet, when I looked at Max’s hands splayed over my bump, they made me feel small.
Not just me. Max made everything else feel small.
Every problem. Every worry. Every danger.
Everything he took from my plate that seemed insurmountable suddenly appeared like nothing more than a mote of dust in his hands, something he could easily brush away.
“You made this baby with my name on your lips,” he murmured, staring at me like it changed everything and nothing at the same time.
I drew a trembling breath, suddenly so overwhelmed with a million emotions I felt like I was going to burst. “Max—”
His mouth silenced mine, kissing me for the first time since…all of this.
It was sweet—bittersweet—for a moment. A blend of guilt and longing, regret and anger. For a moment, that kiss housed everything that four years of ignored and hidden feelings could provoke. And then it transformed, shaping into the giant, ravenous beast that grew in hibernation.
“You’re mine, Daze,” he growled against my lips, his voice like velvet-coated steel. “Finally mine.”
With one hand anchored to my stomach, he wrapped his other hand around my throat, pinning my head to the onslaught of his mouth.
His tongue lashed and stroked against mine in a fury I fought to keep up with.
My prickling skin now felt like every cell burned.
My lungs breathed, but only for more breaths soaked with his scent.
It didn’t take long for my mind to turn into a tangle of want, my body a knot of need, and Max was the only cure.
“Max,” I gasped, clinging to him because I could register nothing but his large, pulsing presence as it consumed me.
“Mine,” he repeated, and I couldn’t tell if it sounded more like an order or a plea.
My lashes fluttered. I felt myself giving over to his storm like a boat pulled out to sea. The posts of the bed swam into focus, and I realized he’d laid me on my back at some point during that kiss.
“And now I’m going to enjoy every inch of your perfect body,” he muttered, the soft press of his lips to mine reverberating like the strike of a hammer onto the head of a nail.
I sagged onto the soft mattress as his hand drifted from my throat down to my breast. A sigh seeped from my chest as he resumed the torture he’d started in the tub.
Stroking and plucking, kneading and weighing.
The whole time, I felt the footprints of his breath march down to my other breast. My heavy-lidded eyes forced open, focusing on his dark hair and the hard angles of his face as he stared at my nipple, watching it pebble tighter toward him. Begging.
And then I was begging too.
“Please,” I whimpered, my back bowing just as he leaned forward. A strangled cry washed away my plea when he wrapped his lips around my nipple. His mouth…that tongue…it had been devastating the way he’d kissed me, but now it felt dangerous.
He licked and lashed, swirled his tongue and sucked hard, until I was nothing but a puddle of moans and heartbeats and a baby under the onslaught of his tongue.
“Max,” I chanted his name, pleasure ebbing me in an unexpected way toward release.
Growling against my skin, his mouth moved to my other breast, stirring a fresh current of pleasure through me.
“You’re so perfect, Daze,” he murmured, teasing and coaxing my nipple against his tongue. “So perfect and sweet.”
I whimpered as he sucked hard again and sent a ray of bright, hot sparkles shooting through me.
I tried to rub my legs together, the ache between them suffocating, but Max’s leg remained wedged in my way.
Huffing in frustration, I tried to arch and rub my core against his jeans.
Needing pressure. Needing friction. Needing some kind of relief before I started to come apart at the seams.
“Don’t worry, baby. I’m going to give you what you want,” he promised in a low voice, the rough husk caressing my skin. “Now spread those pretty legs for me, wife, and show me how wet you are.”
I simultaneously wanted and didn’t want his brand of torture. The way he drew me taut to the point of bursting. The way he wrung everything from me. The way he pleasured me until he knew I could hold nothing back.
It wasn’t just about release. It was about surrender. It was about trust.
I felt my legs release their clamp on his, drifting wider and baring myself for him. My eyes worked open as Max moved down my body. His mouth stamped a hot path down my sternum and over my stomach, every kiss pumping more fire into my cells until I felt his big body kneel between my legs.
“That’s a wet pussy, wife.”
A quake of pleasure ripped through me at his praise. “Max…” My hands dug into the comforter as I tried to keep myself from combusting.
“Christ, you’re so wet for me.” The groan that followed signaled even more desire leaking from my core at his pleasure-wrought words.
“Max, I can’t,” I panted, straining toward him. “Please, I can’t…”