Chapter 24 Later
Later
Eli
Iconsider myself a principled man—even if my principles don’t always look the way people expect them to. Max has brushed up against a few already, but not this one. Not like this.
This is the principle in how I give myself over to her pleasure. Fully. Like it’s not indulgence at all, but air.
I don’t know when it started or how, but there’s something about the sound of a woman coming undone—those broken moans, the loss of control—that has always stripped me bare. It drives me. Turns something feral loose in my chest.
And after the day I’ve had, after the promise she made to let me burden her—I need to hear Max.
I remember the sounds she made simply from tasting her food and it drives me insane. I need more of it.
Need to hear her breath hitch.
Need to hear her voice fracture.
Preferably around my name.
So I do what I always do.
I start with touch.
And there’s something settling about using oils made from what my land has given me. From soil I’ve worked with my own hands. Ground I’ve tended, waited on. Patiently.
Her body reacts the moment my hands are on her. Just a faint tremor. It’s easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention. I start at her feet, pressure firm, and watch her watch me.
She’s on her back, propped on her elbows, almond-shaped eyes alert, searching. She studies my hands like there’s something to solve there. Like care is a system she needs to map instead of surrender to.
Always the techie.
Always trying to understand the architecture, even when the point is simply to feel.
To consume, not calculate.
“When you said later,” she says lightly, a grin tugging at her mouth, “I assumed it would involve whips. Chains. Ropes.” She arches a brow. “At least I was hoping it would?”
I smirk, glancing up at her. “Another move straight out of the book-boyfriend playbook, eh?”
She laughs softly. “No, baby. That’s pure Maxine Palmer.” A beat. “Your girl’s got a few kinks up her sleeve.”
My girl.
“I don’t doubt that for a second,” I say, and keep going. Slow, easy, letting my hands do most of the talking in this moment.
And then I hear it.
“Mmmm.”
It slips out of her like she didn’t mean to let it escape, and it hits me harder than anything else could. That sound alone could be enough. But I keep going.
My hands travel higher, thumbs pressing into the tension along her arches, my palms warming her skin as I work my way up her calves.
I take my time with her thighs, kneading gently, then deeper, learning her reactions instead of rushing past them. Every small shiver. Every hitch of her breath. I am observing everything as if I am preparing new ground to work.
I keep my eyes on hers the entire time and don’t let her look away. There’s something obscene about the intimacy of it. About making her feel this much while she watches me do it. No rush. No looking away. Just her body responding and me listening.
Another sound slips from her lips, and it lands lower this time.
Not just because of the sound itself, but because of what it means.
The way she’s letting herself stay right here.
Open. Present. Allowing touch without flinching, without preparing for the moment it might ask something from her in return.
That’s what shifts something inside me.
When Max first arrived, she never stopped moving. Phone to laptop. Laptop to phone. Fixing something. Solving something. Her mind never rested, never powered down. And I hated watching it. Hated how she couldn’t seem to give herself permission to stop.
So when I see her spiraling, when the tension creeps back into her shoulders and her thoughts start racing ahead of her body, I turn off the wifi and blame it on the mountains. The remoteness.
The truth is simpler: I like my women rested when they’re with me. I like their minds quiet and attentive. Tuned into me the way I’m tuned into them.
For Max, I needed her to remember what it feels like to be held in the moment instead of managing it. To let someone else take the weight, even if only for a while.
“You scare me, Bear,” she says softly.
“Why?” I ask.
“You make me want to…” Her words trail off, unfinished, hanging between us.
Stay, I think.
Say you want to stay.
“You make me want to experience things I haven’t wanted in a long time,” she finishes quietly. “Not in ten years.”
“Roll over for me, Mama,” I say, calm but still assertive.
She does it without hesitation.
I lean in, press a kiss to the nape of her neck, slowly, then bite her shoulder just enough to make her gasp. I remember what she likes. She likes her touch with a little teeth.
“Good girl.”
Another moan.
“You’re so pretty,” I whisper.
I usually keep some distance between us when I’m giving a massage. Fabric. Barriers. Something to ease the closeness.
Not with her.
With Max, I wanted access. All of it.
Her skin is dark and warm beneath my hands, silk over muscle, and I have to fight the urge to lose myself in it. To lick her all the way to the center.
But not yet.
I pour more oil into my palms, spread it along her back, working it in like I’m imprinting myself there.
“Why ten years?” I ask, my hands never stopping.
And I know I’ve earned her trust by the way she answers. No pause, no filtering. Just truth.
“He broke my heart,” she says easily, “and stole work I spent years building. He made a fortune off it.”
“Wow,” I mutter, because it’s the only thing that fits.
“Exactly,” she whispers.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” I say, and there’s no condescension in my tone. “You deserved better.”
“I know,” she says, voice edged with sass, a little arrogance, a little pride.
She’s so damn cute.
“I have this quirk,” I start, just as my hands slide lower, palms warm as I work into her skin.
“You say that like you haven’t already introduced me to several of your quirks,” she counters, and I can hear the smile in her voice even before I see it.
“Hush, woman,” I say, but there’s no bite in it. None at all. “Maybe it’s from my former days as a DJ, but I have this thing where I like to give people a theme song. Folks I notice. Observe. Whether I’m watching them pass on the street or—”
“Bathing them in your beautiful outdoor shower?” she finishes.
“Yes,” I concede. “That too. But I pick a song based on what I see. Who they are when they don’t realize they’re being watched.”
She stills under my hands. I feel the shift, the tension threading back into her body.
“And what about me?” she asks quietly. “What song describes what you’ve observed about me?”
“Eager, much?”
She takes her foot and kicks me, lightly, on my leg. “Stop teasing me.”
“Someone to Love You,” I say. “Ruff Endz.”
I let the song hang there for a beat.
“I hate you,” she whispers.
I bend down and bite her behind on the right cheek, just enough to make her hiss.
“Lies,” I whisper.
“Why that song?”
I lean in, mouth close to her ear. “First, tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you don’t hear yourself in it. Tell me you don’t feel seen by the way I chose it for you, Mama.”
She exhales, the tension easing just enough to give her away. “I actually love it.”
So I don’t say anything else. I let the massage speak for itself. But this part? I use my tongue.
I trace the line of her spine, unhurried, letting my mouth follow the path like punctuation instead of explanation. My voice drops, quiet and intimate, as I recall the lyrics and why she makes me want to give her everything.
My tongue trails down, further, as I whisper the lyrics, each word meant to be felt as much as heard.
“Girl, I think you’ve gone for far too long without a good man to make you smile…”
“Bear,” she breathes, and there’s emotion wrapped around the sound. Something tender. Exposed.
I don’t stop. I continue on to my favorite part next.
“How can I appeal to you and make you understand that I’m here when you’re ready for someone to love you?”
I stay right there, close enough that she can feel the truth of it—every word pressed into her skin as presence. And maybe, just a little, asking for permission, too.
I press a kiss to the base of her spine, just where that inviting dip begins—the very threshold of everything I'm desperate to taste.
“I’m gonna need you to spread your legs for me, Mama. There’s somewhere else I’d like to massage.”
Max
This man carries a kind of sensuality that feels reverent.
It’s a quiet, sacred sort of love you’d expect to find pulled straight from the movie, Jason’s Lyric.
Only instead of a bayou soaked in heat and heartbreak, it lives in a sprawling home that disguises its luxury behind timber and stone.
A home by appearance. A sanctuary in truth.
We’re in his study. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with books that look handled, reread, and lived with.
Knowledge gathered with intention. And instead of the stiff leather chairs you’d expect in a room like this, there are deep sofas, layered throws, pillows placed where bodies are meant to linger.
Corners designed for thinking. For reading. For being still.
But tonight, the room has shifted into a sensual sex den.
Candles burn low, their light catching on the wood and fabric, turning the space intimate and warm. The air feels charged, almost ceremonial—as if he designed this space, this night, for a sacrifice. And with the gentle way he touches me, I don’t question a thing.
I step into the moment willingly, offering myself to him. Because whatever this is, it feels less like surrender and more like being chosen.
And that song. That fucking song I used to play on repeat in college. Over and over, like if I listened hard enough it might finally explain me back to myself.
Because no matter how smart I was, how busy I stayed, how much I achieved, there was always a quiet ache underneath it all.
The sense that I was too much to be fully seen.
Too layered to be understood. Too intense to be loved without conditions.
And when I lost the one person I believed was built to meet me there, I made a decision.
That I wouldn’t let anyone get that close again.
But now, here in this moment, I’m almost grateful that I didn’t. Grateful for the way I held myself back. For the way I protected what was still tender.
Grateful that I was preserved for him.
I spread my legs wide for him, an open invitation I know he is eager to accept.
With a low, guttural sound of pleasure, he moves between them, his large body a warm, heavy shadow over mine.
He doesn’t pause, his head dipping low, his tongue an eager, insistent instrument.
He gently, yet firmly, spreads my lips with the tip of his tongue, seeking immediate access.
An instinctive, primal arch courses through me, a reflexive response to the exquisite sensation. I lift my hips, offering myself up to him, a silent plea for more, for everything.
He is positioned perfectly, tasting me from behind, a novel and utterly intoxicating angle. I’ve never been adored quite like this, but fuck if I don’t love it. The filth of it.
The way he licks, the way he sucks, the way he buries his face in me with an almost desperate hunger is overwhelming.
A moan rips from my throat, a sound I barely recognize as my own. I can’t help but move, my hips rocking back and forth, riding his face with an urgency that matches his devotion.
I am riding the wave of pure, unfiltered pleasure that began so innocently with his sensual massage minutes ago.
Now, it is cresting, threatening to break over me, leaving my body trembling and my soul snatched clean away.
Each draw of his breath, each powerful stroke of his tongue, is a step closer to a complete and utter sensory surrender.
The air thickens with our mutual desire, and I know this is more than just sensation—it is a profound connection forged in the fires of lust and adoration.
And fuck I want it. Need it.
Til death.