Chapter 21 #3
been using a shared chore chart. I don’t think we can say we’ve only just met.’
And then I sink down inch by inch until I’m almost unbearably full, and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes from rolling back
while I get used to the feel of him.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks, a vein taut in his neck, fire blazing in his eyes.
I shift, lifting up a little. ‘Yeah. Are you?’
He presses his forehead against my shoulder and his body jolts with the laugh he lets out. ‘Not really. Give me a second.’
I hold the back of his head, and when my fingers weave into his hair and tug, his hooded gaze lifts to mine and he murmurs,
‘That’s not helping.’
‘Max,’ I breathe.
‘Don’t say my name,’ his hips push upwards, which forces out a whimper I don’t have time to hold back, ‘or this is gonna be
over very quickly.’
‘What makes you think I want this to last any longer than it needs to?’
‘Romance isn’t dead,’ he mutters, groaning when I force myself down to meet his next thrust.
He holds my hips to guide me on to him, over and over until we fall into a rhythm.
It’s a muddled blend of sensation; rain crashing on to our roof, the appreciative sounds he unabashedly lets out, the slide of our bodies against each other, my fingers scraping against his back, his wicked mouth savouring everywhere from my breasts up to my earlobes.
‘Look at you.’ His voice is a caress, soft and warm and almost as good as the hands moving all over me. With his mouth against
my neck, I feel more than hear him murmur, ‘Too good.’
Dimly, I register the sound of a phone ringing, and it takes a few hazy moments to realise it’s coming from the bedroom. Our
movements slow and we both look towards the door. But the ringing stops, so we pick up the pace again.
When Max’s phone vibrates on the side table, I pull my lips from his. ‘What if it’s important?’
‘This is important,’ he says, chasing my mouth with his and driving into me at a steady pace. I eye his phone and he detects the
change in my stance. ‘I swear to fucking god, Dylan. Don’t answer it.’
‘It could be an emergency.’ I stretch over the arm of the sofa and pick up his phone, seeing Jude’s name on the screen.
Before he can stop me, I swipe to answer. Max glares at me while he grabs it, then speaks into the receiver with unadulterated
frustration. ‘What?’
Jude’s tinny voice sounds from the speaker, and I go to get off his lap but he frowns and holds me in place at the hip, his
thumb swirling like it did in bed earlier, and I watch his expression to figure out what’s happening.
He looks at me the whole time, replying to Jude’s questions with clipped answers, and I realise that whatever she’s saying,
it’s not important after all. ‘Yeah.’ Lightning illuminates the room for a split second, and just as quickly, his expression
changes. He puts a finger to his lips in a shushing motion, and a smirk I don’t trust pulls at his mouth. ‘No, Dylan’s in
the shower so she isn’t near her phone.’ He runs his hand down the front of my body, heat unfurling everywhere he touches.
‘I’ll tell her when she gets out.’ His fingers slip between my legs and I catch my gasp just in time, bucking against him
instinctively. ‘Trust me,’ his eyes flare, ‘I’ll make sure she comes.’
But this wasn’t how this was supposed to go. I was meant to make this giant man collapse under the weight of his own want, not let him leisurely wreak havoc on me with one hand while he chats about the weather.
So I tug at his wrist and set his hand at my waist instead, and when I bring my own index finger to my mouth, warning him
to be quiet like he did to me, the rapid rise and fall of his chest gives his anticipation away.
I grip his thighs behind me and start to move over him, and there’s nothing arrogant left in his face now, just an eagerness
in his eyes urging me to keep going and a tenseness in his jaw telling me it’s taking every ounce of his restraint not to
react.
He likes me, I think, with a quiet thrill.
His Adam’s apple bobs with every hard swallow, and Jude’s still talking to him but his responses are nothing more than one-syllable
grunts now.
He wants me like this.
I lean forward to deepen the angle, and when I clench my muscles around him, his eyes roll and his fingers dig into my waist
so hard it’s almost painful.
‘I have to go,’ he says distantly.
I’m enough to make him lose control.
His phone is out of his hands and bouncing across the rug before I’ve finished my last grind.
He pulls my face towards his with such force that we end up against the back of the sofa, chests pressed together, my nails
pressing half-moons into his back and shoulders, his fingers kneading my ass and gripping my waist. Our mouths are frenzied,
urgent; nothing like the slow and deliberate way we were kissing earlier.
‘Please tell me you’re close,’ he says desperately, hoarsely.
I don’t have it in me to explain that there’s not enough friction, that there’s no way I’ll finish like this, that I never
do, but it’s fine because this feels good enough anyway, so instead I tighten my hold and say, ‘Like that.’
His eyes are wild, but he somehow knows, somehow sees, because he tries to bring his hand between us, between my thighs.
But I don’t want him to hold back. I want him to shatter, and I want to know I did that to him, so I press closer still and
whisper, ‘Please, Max.’
I move against him and breathe his name, again and again, until he locks his arms around my back with a grunt and pumps relentlessly
into me from below, the pressure achingly good and deep and insistent, but still just on the wrong side of what I need. He sends ragged praise into my ear about how good I feel, how much he loves this, how beautiful
I look, and for a moment, I wonder if I could get off on words alone.
His rhythm falters as he gets closer to the edge, so I pull his hair and suck on his neck and whisper his name again, and
I think that might be what does it in the end, because as soon as the word leaves my lips, he lets out one last groan and
jerks into me in that messy, unbridled way I’ve been waiting for; hot, wet mouth meeting mine as he does.
He presses his forehead into the nook between my shoulder and neck, and while our breathing slows, my blood continues to thrum
like it doesn’t know the action’s over. Because I might not have reached the finish line, but letting go, and having him on
me like this, relaxed and satisfied, our heartbeats meeting through warm skin? That’s its own type of satisfaction, at least.
I break the quiet to ask, ‘What did Jude want?’
He laughs against my chest, and the sound is a crackle of electricity on my alert nerve endings. ‘Fiona and Greg are running
a games tournament since rock climbing was postponed. It starts in, like, ten minutes. Fifteen? I can’t remember. I was busy.’
‘Oh. Sounds good.’ A sigh escapes me before I press against his sweat-slicked shoulders and sit up straight, my insides still
quietly humming with anticipation. ‘Do I look like I just had sex?’
He loosens the arms still locked around my back. ‘Well, my dick’s still inside you,’ he says with a grimace. ‘So yeah. A bit.’
I huff and get off his lap, and he lets out another laugh before dragging his mouth back to mine, kissing me lazily, all soft tongues and delicate presses and gentle fingertips at my cheekbones and chin; everything that keeps that inconvenient ache burning low in my belly instead of extinguishing it.
He kisses under my jaw and says, ‘Let me take care of this. Stay there.’
The sofa sighs when he gets up. I hear the bin open while I grab my discarded towel. When Max sees me wrapping it around me
again, he stops in his tracks.
‘Oh.’ His brow knits. ‘Are we done?’
I pull the towel tighter. ‘Are we . . . not?’
‘I didn’t think so.’
‘Why wouldn’t we be?’
He’s looking at me so shamelessly, as if he’s not standing there completely naked, with scratches along his shoulders and
parts of his hair defying gravity. ‘Because you didn’t come.’
I press a hand to my chest in the hope of covering some of the flush I feel blooming. I glance out the window, surprised to
find the storm’s over, the steady dripping of water falling from a drainpipe breaking the silence. ‘Yes I did.’
‘No you didn’t. You moved my hand away when I tried to get you there. And then I was . . . distracted.’ He crosses the room
to stand directly in front of me, and that coil in my stomach winds tighter and tighter the longer I look at him.
My cheeks warm. ‘It’s fine, Max.’
‘If you want this to be over, then consider it over.’ He plays with my hair, tucking a half-dry chunk behind my ear. ‘But
do you actually want that?’
The way his eyes burn into me forces the truth out in a quiet, ‘No.’
His mouth tugs up on one side and he lifts my chin. ‘Then we’re not done.’
My pulse quickens as his lips find my jaw, then my shoulder. I’ve never had this before. Never had a man go back in for more, after he’d got his fill.
‘You really don’t have to if you don’t want to.’
His low chuckle vibrates through me. ‘When have I ever given off the impression that I do things I don’t want to do?
’ His fingers play with the slit in my towel, and it sends goosebumps radiating across the entirety of my body.
‘So would you prefer my hands?’ His palm cups my ass, but his tongue runs up my neck, breath hot against my ear. ‘Or my mouth?’
I’m not even sure I can speak. The chirping of birds and singing wind chimes outside our door feel far too wholesome for the
thoughts racing through my mind.
‘Mouth,’ I reply on an exhale.
The word has barely left my lips when he pulls me on to the sofa with him, his legs bent at the knee so he can fit along the
length of it with me straddling his stomach. He looks up at me, a hand on my towel, asking for permission again. I nod and
he pulls it from my body, but he doesn’t let it drop. Instead, he balls it up and sets it beneath his head like a pillow,
shifting to get comfortable, an outrageous glint in his eye.
‘Since you look so pretty on top.’ His mouth pulls into a smirk and he points to his face. ‘Take a seat.’
I set my hands on his chest, eyes wide. ‘I’ll suffocate you.’
‘There are worse ways to go.’ He props himself up on his elbows and whispers conspiratorially, ‘Speaking from experience.’
He flops back, chuckling to himself, and I murmur, ‘That was a terrible joke.’
‘I thought it was pretty good, actually.’
‘Max.’ I mean it as a reprimand, but it coincides with him rolling my nipple between his thumb and forefinger, so it ends
up a lot breathier than I’d intended.
‘Come here,’ he says, hooking his arms around my thighs in preparation. ‘Or I might die for real this time.’
‘Of what?’ I lift on to my knees and shift forward.
He shoots me a look that sends heat racing down my spine. ‘Starvation.’
When I lower myself on to him and his tongue makes contact, I could believe it.
He makes an appreciation grunt, and then all I know is the feeling of his mouth on me; short, teasing licks and gentle sucking
that make me writhe against him and release noises that might embarrass me later, when I lie in bed remembering them. But
I think he’s enjoying this, groaning in satisfaction any time a gasp or a moan escapes my lips. When I look down, his eyes are closed, like I’m
a dream and he’s trying to savour every moment before he wakes up.
I brace myself on the arm of the sofa behind his head to keep my body elevated, but it doesn’t take long until I collapse
completely. With my full weight on him, Max’s fingers grip my thighs even tighter, his tongue making languid strokes exactly
where I need it, stubble scratching me in just the right way.
The closer I get to release, the more I realise that this thing between us has been simmering for longer than I thought. Not
since this morning, or since we kissed, or the first time I woke up with him pressed against me. No, it’s been brewing since
he strode across the concourse at Paddington Station, looking me up and down like he knew we’d end up here; me crying out
with his face between my thighs.
I want to thank him, but instead I say, ‘Please.’
I want to apologise for dropping on to him, but what comes out is, ‘Don’t stop.’
And then every other thought loses all coherence, because he sucks and laps and swipes and I become nothing but sensation,
lightning shooting through my veins and setting every cell alight until I’m shuddering against him.
When my hips slow, he dips down to plant gentle kisses up the insides of my thighs. Even that makes me jerk involuntarily,
and he laughs softly before releasing me from his iron grip and setting me on his stomach. Then he folds his arms behind his
head and looks up at me; hair tousled, the tops of his ridiculous cheekbones pink, the filthiest heat in his eyes.
His lips glisten as they part, and his voice is hoarse when he says, ‘Now we’re done.’