10. Heidi
HEIDI
I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself. I made it back to my room before Max could follow, locked the door, and shoved the dresser in front of it. It’s a fire hazard, but a necessary boundary. I can’t let Max talk his way in and ruin my career.
It’s dramatic, sure. But I clearly can’t trust myself around him. I’ve spent years rolling my eyes at women who fold the second a man like him looks their way. Pathetic, I thought. Turns out I’m that woman. It was only a kiss yet I can’t stop thinking about it.
Fresh from the shower and still damp, I collapse onto the bed. I’m exhausted, but my brain loops Max’s voice and the fear that I’m one mistake away from losing everything.
A sharp tap against the window breaks the silence. My heart hammers. I’m on the second floor.
I scramble to the window, my breath catching in my throat. Max is there, precariously balanced on the ledge and looking entirely too smug for a man clinging to a frame in nothing but trunks. The moonlight catches the damp line of his chest. I don’t think; I just throw the latch.
“You’re like the Terminator,” I breathe. “You just don’t quit.”
Max doesn’t even look winded. He tilts his head toward the room. “You going to let me in? I’m scared of heights, you know.”
I step back to let him in. If only so he doesn’t fall to his death and ruin the shoot.
“If you’re scared of heights, why the hell are you climbing my window?”
He steps over the threshold.
“Welfare check,” he says, shrugging as if he hadn’t just scaled a wall. “Your door was stuck.”
He gestures to the dresser I’ve shoved against it.
“I think I see the problem,” he adds.
I cross my arms, trying not to think about the fact that I’m in a thin sleep shirt while he’s standing there in his underwear.
“Where are your clothes?” I ask, my gaze dipping before I can stop it.
“Didn’t seem necessary, given how things were going earlier.”
My stomach drops. He’s right. I let him put his hand down my pants in a shed, and I didn’t even try to stop him. I didn’t want to.
“Fuck,” I whisper. I drop onto the edge of the bed, pressing the heel of my hand to my forehead, trying to force my brain back into something resembling professional.
Max moves closer. I don’t have to look up to know he’s there, I can feel the heat coming off him.
“I’m used to a slightly more enthusiastic response. What’s wrong?”
I shake my head.
He sits beside me. “I know you’re hot for me, Freckles. What’s the problem?”
I stare at the floor. Maybe I can reason with him.
“I can’t mess this job up. If I do, my career’s over.” I stop, pulling in a sharp breath. “I made a mistake, and—”
“That scam documentary?”
My head snaps up. “How do you know about that?”
“I have my ways,” he says, his voice quiet, stripped of its usual cockiness. “It’s not a big deal. Everyone fucks up.”
“It is a big deal. It was a public disaster, and I don’t get a second chance. That’s why you can’t be here.”
Max slides his palm over mine, his grip firm enough to stop the tremor in my fingers.
“You’re doing great,” he says. “And you don’t need to worry. I’m going to pull this off for you. I promise.”
He lingers, his thumb tracing a circle over my knuckles.
“I’ve got you,” he says. “We’re a team, remember?”
I don’t remember agreeing to that, but the words land anyway. For a second, I let myself believe him.
It’s not trust. It’s relief. The kind that creeps in when you’re too tired to keep holding everything up on your own.
I’ve always been the one people lean on. The one who fixes things. The one who doesn’t get to drop the ball. And now he’s sitting there, looking at me like I don’t have to.
Like he’s got it.
Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe it’s a line.
But right now, I don’t care.
I lean in and press my mouth to his.
Max takes over instantly. His hand slides into my hair, holding me there as his mouth moves against mine, sure and unhurried, like he already knows exactly how this goes.
I lose track of everything else—the room, the noise, the reasons I should stop. There’s only him. The heat of him, the way he draws me in until I don’t remember how to pull back.
He groans low in his throat, and before I can catch my breath, he’s shifting his weight, pulling me on top of him. Then, he rolls us. His weight is a solid pressure that pins me in place. I’m breathless, my hair splayed against the pillow, looking up at him as he looms over me in the dim light.
His hands move with an urgency that leaves no room for second-guessing.
He pulls my underwear down, and before I can even think to be self-conscious, he spreads me open, pressing a slow, lingering kiss to my inner thigh.
Then he does it to the other side, trailing higher, his mouth agonizingly close but never quite there.
I’m vibrating with a mix of need and pure irritation.
He’s playing with me, dragging it out until I’m on the verge of snapping, and then, finally, he gives me what I want.
He kisses me the way he kissed my mouth minutes ago. Hard and hungry. Like he’s been thinking about this all night. But the moan he lets out against me? That’s pure selfish pleasure. I think he loves it more than I do.
His fingers slide inside me and the contact is electric. He watches my composure crumble, his eyes locked on mine as he finds a rhythm—slow, deep, relentless. It’s too much. Months of pent-up frustration and the physical reality of him finally collide. I don’t have the stamina left to fight.
My head falls back, a moan escaping as he drives into me—wet sounds filling the room with every thrust. My hips grind against his hand, desperate for the pace he’s set, needing him deeper, harder. He shifts, his fingers curl against the spot that makes my vision blur.
My breath comes in gasps that match the wet snap of his fingers burying inside me over and over. Just as I think I’ll shatter, he hitches the pace one last time—hammering into me until I finally fall apart.
I come quietly, teeth buried in my lip to swallow the sound.
My body convulses around his fingers, gripping them as wave after wave tears through me.
He doesn’t stop. He works me through it, relentless through the aftershocks, until the silence breaks and I’m whimpering. Trembling. Completely wrecked.
He stays there for a heartbeat, his forehead resting against my stomach while I try to remember how to breathe.
Then he shifts, pushing back to sit on his heels.
As the fog begins to clear, the silence of the room feels dangerous.
My gaze follows the line of his body, dropping from the ridge of his abs to the waistband of his trunks.
In the dim light, there’s no hiding the heavy, thick length straining against the fabric. It’s impossible to ignore.
He catches me looking.
“You’re welcome,” he says. “I knew I’d have you. I just didn’t know you’d give in so fast.”
His words are a physical jolt. My heart, which had been slowing, kicks into a frantic, angry gallop. I scramble backward, the sheets tangling around my legs as I put as much distance between us as the mattress allows.
“Fast?” I snap.
Max just shrugs, looking entirely too comfortable on my bed. “It’s a good thing. It means you’re human. And it means I’m exactly as good as I thought I was.”
He reaches for my legs, but I kick his hand away. “You can go now.”
“Come on, I just meant—”
“I don’t care what you meant. Get out.”
“Don’t be like—”
“Out.”
“Come on, baby—”
“I’m not your baby,” I say, my voice hard and final.
“Alright.” He holds up his hands in a mock surrender and gets off the bed, backing toward the window. He flips the latch and turns back, one leg already over the sill.
“You aren’t,” he concedes, his eyes dark with that same devastating confidence. “But you were two minutes ago.”
Before I can throw something at his head, he’s gone.
I rush to the ledge just in time to see him hit the grass and vanish into the shadows. He’s gone. But the room still smells like him, and the heat between my thighs hasn’t forgotten a single thing he did.
God, I’m stupid. Never again.