Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Istayed outside with the gun for a long time.
I didn’t mean to, not really. But I couldn’t figure out how to pop Max’s trunk, and the gun looked so dangerous, sitting in his car all in the open.
So I sat and waited until the bedroom lights went off, one by one, and a sweep of porch lights replaced them, soft and hazy in the warm summer’s night.
Max came out another ten minutes after that. He didn’t come all the way to the car at first, but sat on the steps, watching me watch him. It took me a minute to figure out that he didn’t know what I was going to do with the gun. I put the keys in the ignition long enough to roll down the windows.
“I’m not going to shoot you,” I called out across the yard.
“Glad to hear it.” Pause. “You okay?”
“That sort of thing happen a lot?”
He rubbed a hand through his jet-black mop of curls. “Time to time.”
“You don’t think I’m, I don’t know, triggering it?”
That made him straighten a little. To his credit, he didn’t answer right away. When he did, though, it was to ask another question. “Is that why you’re out here?”
“Could be. Or maybe I’m just scared.”
His teeth flashed in the light. “You really think I believe that?”
“I’d believe it.” But I was already opening the door to the car. Still, it took a lot more effort than it should have, and when I stood, I wobbled. “I couldn’t open the trunk.”
“Sorry. The button sticks sometimes.” Then Max was at my side, and he pulled the gun from my hands along with the keys.
A soft thunk of the trunk opening sounded behind us, and Max walked behind the car and put the gun away.
When he returned to me, he reached out for my hand, which was a little surprising.
What was even more surprising was that I let him take it.
He turned me toward him then, and we studied each other in the sweep of porch lights.
He smelled of expensive soap and leather, of quiet rooms with gleaming furniture where men and women talked to words in books the same way I spoke to the creature inside me.
His eyes were dark and earnest in that glow, so achingly sincere, and I knew what he wanted from me.
He wanted to feel safe and whole again, normal.
He wanted to stop seeing things he couldn’t unsee.
Things I was destined to see for the rest of my short and doubtlessly crummy life.
I squeezed his hand. “It’s going to be okay, Max,” I murmured. “I know what to do. I’m just working my way up to doing it.”
“I know,” he said simply. He gave me a little half-smile. “I kind of want to kiss you now, but I don’t want you to think—I mean, with the way Emily acted—”
I didn’t let him finish. I stood up on my toes and tilted my head just enough that I could press my lips to his surprisingly full, soft mouth.
For the barest moment, I allowed myself to taste the traces of panic, despair, and wine that lingered after the chaos of the evening.
I started to shift back, only to feel Max’s strong, steady hand snake up behind my head, firmer than I would have suspected, surer.
He held me long enough to deepen the kiss, and something raw and wild cracked open inside me, lighting my insides on fire.
He stepped back and gave me a crooked smile in the porchlight. “Hey there, Delia Thompson,” he murmured. “I’m Max Graham, and I have a demon problem.”
For a moment—just a moment—something hot and violent cracked open inside me. Not desire, or not only desire. Something rawer. Hungrier. The urge to bite down, to break skin, to mark him in ways that would never heal.
I pulled back sharply, my breath coming fast.
Inside me, the demon was growling.
“Hey, Max Graham.” I grinned back, punching down the violence, the chaos, the hot, aching need deep within me. “There’s a lot of that going around.”