Chapter 23 Aubrey #2
But this time it wasn’t because of the drugs.
I had put that look on his face. The desolation in his heart.
I had worked so hard to figure out what I needed to do if I was ever faced with this moment again.
I needed to tell him to leave. To turn my back and walk away. Again.
I was strong. I was in control.
But I loved him.
And watching him leave was tearing me apart.
When it came down to it, I was tired of hurting. Tired of fighting. Tired of everything.
Holding on to him had always been hard. But losing him was worse.
“Wait,” I called out, feeling a definitive snap in the air between us. Maxx looked confused. Wary. But hopeful.
“I want you to leave. I do. I know it’s what I should say. But it’s a lie.” Maxx took one small, tentative step toward me. Our eyes met and I saw my past. My present. My future.
“I want you to leave, Maxx, but I need you to stay. Please.” My lips trembled.
“I’m such an idiot. I want the one thing that can hurt me the most. But I can’t help it.
You’re in my blood, Maxx. You’re everywhere.
In everything. I can’t escape you. I don’t want to escape you.
You’ve destroyed me. But I want you to put me back together.
Can you do that? Can you make everything right again?
” I asked, and I knew I was asking too much.
That I shouldn’t put the pressure of this on his unstable shoulders.
But I was also tired of carrying the weight alone.
It was time that he started sharing the burden of our twisted love.
Maxx collapsed beside me on the bed, his hands coming up to frame my face. “I will if you let me,” he promised, running his thumbs along the curve of my lips.
“I will do everything I can to make it up to you. I swear it, Aubrey,” he whispered, and then his mouth was on mine and there was no holding back anymore. My hands came around to grip the back of his shirt as we devoured each other in a frenzy of pent-up emotion and desire.
I parted my lips beneath his and moaned deep and low in the back of my throat. Maxx pushed me backward and he lay over me, his hands coming to the front of my shirt and pulling anxiously at the buttons.
He was wild. I was ravenous. We were desperate and lost and could only be found in each other.
I pulled his shirt up and over his head and threw it onto the floor, then fumbled at his belt buckle. We were clumsy, our fingers shaky, our kisses intense.
Maxx pulled back, bracing himself on his arms above me as he looked down at my fevered face.
His eyes burned into mine, and I felt myself shudder at the heat I saw there.
“I’ve dreamed every day of this moment. When I could touch you like this.
” He hastily unzipped my jeans and then dipped his hand inside, his fingers teasing my wet opening. I groaned and arched my back.
“When I could taste you on my tongue,” he murmured, bowing his head to take my throbbing nipple into his mouth. He sucked hard and teased the sensitive bud with his teeth. I was a writhing mess beneath him, my hands touching everywhere, trying to get closer.
“Oh my God, Maxx!” I breathed in an agonized rush. He pushed aside the flimsy material of my panties and plunged his fingers deep inside my body. I stretched around the wanted intrusion.
“Of what it feels like to be so deep inside of you that I never want to leave,” he spoke into my skin, his tongue caressing the soft, vulnerable flesh between my breasts.
His words set me on fire. In an almost violent movement, Maxx ripped my jeans and panties down and threw them aside. I reciprocated by doing the same to the rest of his clothing.
Soon we were naked and panting and kissing and touching every inch of each other as though we’d never have the opportunity to do so again.
Maxx fit himself between my thighs, and I felt the tip of him against me as he pressed a soft kiss to my mouth. The hot pressure teased me as I moaned loudly.
I was so close to losing my head completely. All I could think about was experiencing that perfect moment that I had only ever experienced with him. Being so close to someone that you didn’t know where you ended and the other began.
Maxx slowly started to push himself inside of me. Tentative, almost, but with careful precision.
And then, suddenly, some of the fog lifted from my lust-addled brain and I pulled my hips back slightly, stopping him.
Maxx lifted his lips from mine and looked down at me. Sweat dripped from his forehead, and his hair matted at the sides from the effort it took for him to stop.
“What is wrong?” he asked, his voice rough.
Something hit me with the force of a freight train. A realization that I had never, ever thought about until just now.
“You’re not wearing a condom,” I told him, hardly able to believe that I had never, in all the times we had been together, thought to ask him to protect us.
How could I have been so stupid? I knew Maxx’s history, so how had I never stopped to ensure something so vital?
I had let my desire and my intense feelings for him overshadow absolutely everything.
Maxx pulled out of me and reached for his pants that hung halfway off the side of the bed. “You’re right, I’m not. I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he said, sounding contrite and almost embarrassed. His fingers were shaking as he found his wallet and produced a foil packet from the folds inside.
He sat there, staring down at the tiny square in his palm, looking strangely lost. I sat up and pulled a blanket over my chest. “I’ve never worn one with you before,” he whispered, and I could tell he was hurt and confused by my insistence that he wear one now.
I slid over until I was pressed up against him and placed my hand over the one that was holding the condom. “No, you haven’t. I never asked you to. But you and I have never even talked about past partners and whether we were clean and safe. That’s a little scary, don’t you think?” I asked.
Maxx looked up at me, his face flushed, the sweat drying on his skin. “I’m clean. I’ve never been with someone without one. I get tested regularly. I had to,” he said quietly, empathetically.
“I’m clean, too,” I said, just as quietly. “And I’m on the pill.”
Maxx nodded, chewing absently on his bottom lip. “I can’t believe we’ve never talked about this. Seems pretty fucked up, right,” he stated rather than asked.
I didn’t say anything.
Because it was fucked up. We had been so willing to get lost in each other, even at the cost of common sense and reason.
It was a scary sort of crazy.
“I just think if we want stuff to be different this time, then we have to be different. And that includes things like this,” I said, lifting the wrapped condom from his palm.
“Are we trying to do it differently, then? Are you saying you’ll give me another chance to make things right with you?” Maxx asked in the barest of breaths.
I thought about what he was asking me. Whether I was willing—whether I was able—to throw myself back into his world. Back into the messy chaos that had dominated our relationship in the past.
I knew I couldn’t.
I couldn’t be the girl living in denial. Or even worse, the girl living in a constant state of anxiousness waiting for him to fall off the cliff.
But I also knew that I didn’t have the strength to pretend that he could exist on the periphery of my life. That he wasn’t the center of it. That he wasn’t the steady, thumping pulse at the heart of who I was.
I ran trembling fingers through his hair, feeling the soft texture of his curls as they tickled my skin. “We can’t go back to who we were. To what we were. But maybe . . . we could try to be something better,” I offered hesitantly, hardly able to believe that I was doing this.
That I was back here again. Loving him beyond sanity.
Maxx leaned into my touch, his lips curving upward into a smile that was blinding in its brilliance. “Something better,” he murmured before leaning in and kissing me softly but with more passion than any kiss I had ever experienced before.
Maxx pulled the blanket away from my chest and pulled me flush against him. Skin to skin.
Heart to heart.
He carefully laid me back down onto the bed, never breaking the contact of our mouths. We weren’t rushed as we had been before. Something had changed.
And I knew instinctively that we had changed.
That I wanted to trust him. With all of me.
Eventually our slow, languid touches became more heated, and soon I was burning alive in Maxx’s unquenchable flame. I heard the rip of the foil packet and then the slight pressure as he pressed himself against me once more.
This time I didn’t stop him. I spread my legs to accommodate him. My fingers dug into his back as he pushed deep inside me. We both gasped as he buried himself to the hilt.
Maxx looked down at me, his eyes surprisingly bright. Were those tears?
I reached up and brushed away the stray wetness on his cheek. He didn’t move as we lay there, as close as two people could possibly be, our noses touching, our lips brushing against one another.
“I love you, Aubrey. I love you so much,” he said in a tormented sigh, as though the words were somehow painful.
I curled my hand around the back of his neck and brought my legs up to wrap around his hips. Maxx groaned as I moved just a fraction of an inch.
“I love you, too, Maxx. More than anything,” I said, giving him the words he had always needed to hear.