Chapter 11 #4
Maxim slid his hand from the back of her neck to the loose collar of her shirt and tugged it over her shoulder with the low pop of a breaking seam.
He’d apologize for that later. He bit down on the soft slope between her neck and shoulder, feeling her skin give, tasting sweat and her summer-bright skin.
With his teeth fastened on her body and his fingers still pumping into her tight, perfect pussy, it seemed as if he was keeping her pinned against him, holding her still and doing as he wished.
It was animalistic. Brutal. He would have felt guilty but for her throaty moan and the iron grip on his shoulders.
As Maxim bit down harder and gave an involuntary growl into her neck, Pippa came with a scream. She bucked against him even as he thrust into her. He wanted to feel her convulsions against his tongue. Against his cock. Oh, and how she would feel: hot and snug and silken.
Arousal fogged his vision and tightened his throat. Pippa’s grip on his shoulders pulsed in time with the contractions squeezing his fingers.
Pippa’s scream faded and soon she was just letting out broken whimpers. Her thighs twitched against his, the exhausted thrash of someone pushed past their limit.
He opened his mouth and released her, and before pulling back, he gave the spot he’d bitten a tender, soothing kiss as if to make up for the indentations he’d left.
The apartment’s light played softly over the mark he’d left on her skin. Twin pink half-circles, the flat edges of his teeth obvious. Exactly the opposite of what she must be used to.
It took a second for the sight to settle, and when it did, it settled hard and sharp in the pit of his stomach.
Normally, he would have been relieved at the fact that he hadn’t bitten her so she’d bled, but the visual display of his utter inadequacy struck him hard.
Did Pippa’s life, filled with demons and chaos and lovers with sharp teeth, have room for him?
How the fuck did he expect to involve himself with her when he was so blatantly, utterly human?
As she said, “one-hundred-percent normal.”
He didn’t belong in her world.
He didn’t belong with her.
That single thought hit him with the force of a truck. A tingle began in his stomach, trickling slowly up to his chest.
He wanted her. In every single way. He wanted to see places with her, and explore weird monuments with her, and know how she looked when she woke up on a weekend.
He wanted to date her. He wanted to go to dinner together where they’d pore over a menu and she would have to pick for him since he would get stuck on the number of options.
He wanted a shared dessert, and an evening walk back to his place, a movie that would start out with some hand-holding on the couch and end with their clothes scattered on the carpet and her legs slung over his shoulders.
He wanted to hear about her day and get her advice on his office concerns and gently massage the tension from her temples after she told him about whatever demon was giving her trouble at the moment.
It was all a fantasy though, wasn’t it? To believe that he could shove his way into her thrilling life and think she’d be content with his boring date ideas and idle conversation and utter, pitiful, normalcy?
Pippa’s attention darted down to his mouth a heartbeat before she threw herself at him, claiming his mouth in the way he’d only attempted to do earlier. Her tongue flicked his, then swept along his lower lip before sucking on it and nipping it hard, making heat flare in his groin.
It wasn’t enough to distract from that damned tingle in his stomach, though. Now his hands were sparking too, as if he’d held them too close to a power grid.
Pippa fumbled with the button on his jeans and he wanted her to, he needed her to, but the tingle in his stomach was becoming a clench, and he couldn’t . . .
He couldn’t.
Maxim gently covered her hand with his own and halted the attack on his pants.
“Wait.” He couldn’t go further like this, with insecurities and grief and inadequacy buzzing around in his chest like a swarm of barbed insects.
Pippa pulled away as her fingers stilled, a questioning look on her face.
“I have condoms,” she said. “In my room.” At his silence, a rosy flush bloomed on her cheeks. She swallowed. “Which wasn’t why you wanted to stop. Shit.” She closed her eyes and gave a short groan.
Seeing her embarrassment, the twinge in his stomach eased somewhat. Sometimes he wondered if anxiety was a tangible, living thing, and when it recognized itself in someone else, it withdrew its claws in a display of camaraderie.
“Pippa.” Maxim gave her a crooked smile intending to reassure her, and when that didn’t ease the crease between her brows, he said, “I just think we’re going fast.” A funny thing to say with his fingers still inside her and her arousal soaking the fabric of his jeans.
“Ah. It’s, uh . . . Yep. Fast.” When she nodded, it was the sort of nod someone would give when they were agreeing for the sake of agreement.
“Definitely,” she continued. “I mean” —she cleared her throat and fuck, he was able to feel it inside her—“a few days ago, I was sure you hated me, so it’s definitely an abrupt change. A total one-eighty.”
As she chattered and Maxim heard the forced lightness in her voice, it slowly dawned on him that she might not think he wanted more from her.
That he’d prefer to keep their interactions limited to some one-sided oral and hand things.
It wasn’t the most logical thought on either of their parts (even if hers was purely imagined by himself), and he was probably projecting his own insecurities on her (like he’d learned from another therapist after college), but he’d be damned if he left Pippa’s apartment with her assuming he wanted nothing more from her other than what they’d just done.
He eased his fingers from her heat. Pippa shuddered, then cleared her throat and made as if to compose herself.
Maxim didn’t want her to.
“Open your mouth,” he said.
Pippa blinked at him at first, though she did as instructed.
He brought his hand up slowly, fingers shining and slick, and trailed them over her parted lips.
Her eyes darkened and her breathing quickened and she sucked her lower lip into her mouth before parting her lips even wider.
“I want to make something absolutely clear,” Maxim said as he slid two fingers into Pippa’s mouth, pushing them gently back and forth across her tongue.
She let out a soft, muffled moan.
He continued. “I want you. I can’t stop thinking about you. Your body. Every single soft place I want to kiss.”
Another moan, higher but just as muffled.
She’d put one hand on his forearm, but it didn’t seem to be out of a desire to pull him away.
Her touch was gentle, almost seeming to keep him close.
He slid his third finger into her mouth, mimicking the motions he’d done earlier to her pussy, watching as her lips glided over his knuckles as she sucked her own arousal from his skin.
His erection had flagged with the sudden burst of anxiety, but now as the anxiety retreated, his boner returned, hot and pounding, like the opportunistic monster it was. He’d address that situation at home.
“I lied,” Maxim said. At Pippa’s confused “Mmf?” he went on, “About going too fast. I don’t think we are.
There isn’t anything I’d love more right now than to throw you onto your back and fuck you until neither of us could walk.
But”—he spoke over her groan of approval—“that isn’t what we’re going to do.
I want you to think about this all night, and in the office tomorrow, you’ll stare at my fingers and you’ll know how they feel and how deep they’ve been inside you.
How they’ve filled both your mouth and your cunt. ”
Pippa’s eyes fluttered shut and she melted onto him, the heat between her legs nearly searing him through his jeans. She gave his fingers one last suck that sent a tight ache all the way through his body, then he pulled out of her mouth.
She let out a humming chuckle, then swiped the corner of her lips with her thumb. “I’d wondered if you’d be just as bossy out of the office.”
“I’m consistent.”
“You’re fucking hot, is what you goddamn are.”
Maxim leaned back, searching for a smirk or any of that dry humor she often used, but he could only see genuine honesty.
She had the soft, mussed look of someone who’d just been thoroughly fucked: a rosy, shining flush to her skin; her brown eyes darkened with arousal; her chest heaving (which shit, he hadn’t actually caught a glimpse of yet).
He wanted to preen beneath her words and give himself up to the rosy wash of adoration. Yet with Pippa Beverly, that was far too dangerous. If he fell for her, it would only be a matter of time before she realized she really wanted someone who was just . . . more. Someone special. Powerful.
So instead of kissing her deeply and pulling her down to the carpet and saying and doing everything he longed to do, he slipped her shirt’s collar back into place and helped her to her feet.
This was good, he thought as they dressed and she reassured him that she’d be safe in her apartment.
This was fine, he thought as he kissed her goodbye.
This was all under control, he thought as he looked back at her doorway to see her biting her lip to keep from grinning, her shoulder pressed into the door frame.
Yet as he drove away, he tried to fight the feeling that he was leaving part of himself behind.