She leans across the console and brushes her lips against my cheek. “The same,” she whispers. “It’s the same for me. I think about you all the time.”
All that crazy stuff that was happening in my chest? Those funny feelings like pancakes flipping and the world spinning in circles? I get it now. I understand it fully. Because my heart soars as if it’s rising in a hot air balloon. As she pulls back from my cheek, I want to tell her everything I feel for her. “Everything that drives me crazy is just because I’m crazy for you.”
Her voice is rich with happiness. “I’m so crazy for you I want to tattoo my name on your arm so everyone knows you’re taken.”
I laugh then reach for the Sharpie she left in the console. “Do it.”
“For real?”
“Why the hell not?”
She uncaps her black pen. I’ve got one hand on the wheel, one on the shift stick. She writes on my forearm. Ten seconds later, she declares, “Done!”
I glance down, and her tattoo couldn’t be more perfect. It says Tiger.
I’m about to tell her more, to say how we’ll find a way to manage work and us, and that there’s nothing we can’t figure out, when the robotic voice of the GPS interrupts us.
“You are nearing your destination. Turn right in two hundred feet.”
I flip on my turn signal as a pair of big brown eyes shine from twenty feet away. My heart gallops. A deer stands before me in the middle of the road; it must have just run onto the street and stopped.
“Shit,” I mutter, as I lay my hand on the horn, but he doesn’t move, and there are no more choices to be made.
My pulse jackhammers as my choices crystallize to only one. I jerk the wheel to the right, slamming on the brake as I skid into the shoulder, out of the way of the animal.
An ear-shattering, bone-crunching din rips through the air. My head snaps back as the white airbag inflates instantaneously, jamming into my chest. The sound of crunching metal fills my ears and Henley’s head slams back against the headrest.
Roger yelps, Henley moans, and the engine sputters to a stop.
The deer scampers across the street and into the woods. He’s gone.
“Henley!” I shout her name as cold, black fear floods my veins.
Roger shrieks from the backseat.
I ignore him as the world narrows to this second. To this single solitary moment as Henley’s head lolls against the headrest, her eyes closed, the airbag wedged against her chest.
I shake her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Terror races through me, as if I’ve been pumped full of it. I’ve gone from fine to horrified in less than three seconds, faster than a sports car can hit sixty. My heart pounds in my ears, and blood roars in my skull. I fumble around her, reaching for her seat belt and unsnapping it.
“Are you okay?”
No response. But she’s breathing. And I can’t fucking believe that’s the hope I’m holding on to—that she’s breathing. I need more than breathing. I need everything.
“Henley, open your eyes,” I say, desperation and fear ripping through me as I try to shove the airbag out of the way.
A hard, black thing swipes across her shoulder then her face, and I startle. Henley’s lips part. A small chuckle escapes. Her eyes flutter open. Roger is swiping his tail across her cheek. Roger is petting her face with the tip of his tail.
Roger. Good old Roger.
No wonder Cynthia needed him. Henley turns her face to me and smiles. “I’m okay.”
I press my forehead to hers and breathe again. It’s not even a sigh of relief. It’s absolute gratitude.
The front end of Blue Betty is wrapped around a tree.
“Guess that’s what we call a tree hugger,” I say as I inspect my prized possession, now crumpled into the trunk of an oak. Thank Christ I took the time and spent the money to install these airbags. Complete pain in the ass and completely worth it.
“I’m so sorry this happened to your baby,” Henley says, running her hand down my arm. The car’s the only one damaged. I’m fine, Henley’s fine, and so is the monkey. Come to think of it, the deer is probably enjoying a nice serving of grass somewhere not far from here. We stand in the bank on the side of the road, while Roger clings to Henley’s side again.
I pat the battered hood. “It’s okay. She took one for the team.”
“But Max,” Henley says, sadness coloring her tone. “This is Blue Betty. She’s a—”
“She’s a wreck.”
But I’m not. And as I assess the devastation to the car I’ve wanted since I was a kid, the one I painstakingly restored with my own hands, I don’t feel that crushing fear, that rush of nerves.
Blue Betty is just a car, and I’ve got Triple A, as well as the wherewithal to fix it. “Let me call a tow. Why don’t you take your new boyfriend to Cynthia and Creswell,” I say, nodding at the monkey. Cynthia’s house is a few hundred feet away.
Henley gives me a knowing look, her brown eyes clear as day as she gazes straight at me. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“I know someone else then who’ll apply for the job.”
“Tell him he already has it,” she says, stroking the primate’s head.
I grin like a man who just bought a beautiful vintage Triumph, not a man who’s standing by the wreckage of one. I retrieve the emblem, the champagne, and the wine from the floor of the car as Henley walks along the driveway in her purple dress, with Roger in her arms. My prized car has been butchered, and all I can think is how outrageously happy I am.
I guess this is what it feels like to fall in love.
42
Henley’s To-Do List
* * *
—Max.
43
Despite her bandaged finger, Cynthia insists we stay and eat. The Vicodin the ER doc gave her may have something to do with her mood. Or maybe the monkey does. Over the next three hours, I learn that Cynthia runs a network of wild animal rescues around the northeast. She and Creswell met at a charity function and immediately bonded over their shared passion for saving wild creatures.
“I fell in love with him when he told me how he adopted Roger,” Cynthia says over the wine, while we dine on a gourmet pizza they ordered from a nearby brick-oven pizzeria.
Turns out the little dude was injured in the wilds of Bolivia. While he was en route to a zoo in the U.S. to make a new home in captivity, the rescue group escorting him noticed he was quite sociable with people, and recommended he live with humans rather than in a zoo.
Creswell also cares for an injured fox named Susanne, who uses the dog door to let herself in and out of the house, as well as a hawk named Fred whose damaged wing prevents him from flying well. I yank up my sleeve and show them my hawk tattoo.
“Very cool,” Cynthia says. “Any special meaning to it?”
“Besides hawks being badass, powerful, and wildly intelligent?”
Henley laughs, along with our hosts. “And that right there is your meaning,” she says.
When dinner is over, the couple walks us to the door. Creswell pulls me aside for a moment. “We’ll connect this week. Call me and we’ll set up a time,” he says.
“Absolutely.”
As we head down the steps to our waiting Uber, Henley asks me what the conversation was about. “He was just—” I stop. We’re about to get in a car with a stranger. Now’s not the time to dive into a conversation about business deals and why I’m getting more from a client and she’s not. “He was thanking us for getting Roger,” I say, and then I do my best to forget I just lied to her.
I’ll have time to sort out how to manage business and her. We splintered in the past because I failed badly at managing business and emotions. I need time to figure out how to do it right. This is a whole new road to travel down, and I don’t want to crash and burn again. Tonight, though, I want to focus on whatever is happening between Henley and me, and nothing more.
Preferably, I want to focus on what’ll happen at the B&B a few
miles away, where we’re spending the night. Creswell booked us a room after Triple A towed my car. I guess the cat’s out of the bag about the two of us, but judging from the way Henley held my hand at Cynthia’s house, she doesn’t care, and neither do I.
When we reach the quiet inn, a kindly woman with gray streaks in her blond hair hands us an old-fashioned room key and tells us room eight is at the top of the stairs and down the hall.
The second the door to our room creaks closed, I push Henley against the wall. My hands are on her face, in her hair, yanking down the straps of her dress. My mouth seals to hers, and I kiss her like it’s the only thing I’ve been thinking about for the last three hours.
Because it is.
The kiss is as rough and hungry as our kisses have ever been, but it’s different, too. It’s layered with a new urgency. Wet and deep, it’s punctuated by moans and groans. Our kiss sparks with hot, fevered tension.
I don’t think either one of us has held back physically since we hurtled down this path, yet it’s as if a dam has burst tonight. Whatever need we had for each other has ratcheted up a hundredfold. Her hands tug at my shirt, grab at my jeans, push at my clothes.
Soon, her fast and eager fingers have stripped me to nothing, and I’ve got her down to my favorite clothing style. Bare.
I stop for a second to stare at her. “Look at you,” I say, as I run my hands down her sides, clasping her trim waist in my grip. “You’re so fucking stunning. And you’re mine.”
She grabs at my hair and yanks me closer. It’s a reminder of how hard she pulled my hair the first night I fucked her. It’s a reminder of how we fit together. “And you’re mine,” she says, dragging her nails down my chest, over the planes of my abs, and straight to my cock.
Dear Lord. This woman is my perfect match. She’s fire. She’s heat. She’s rough and tumble. She takes my dick in her hand and strokes, but I’m not letting her pleasure me first.
I swat her hand away. “Get on the bed. Now. Spread your legs for me.”
She heads over to the quaint four-poster canopy. I wrap a hand around the post and give it a shake. The bed squeaks. “Good thing I’m prepared to pay whatever it costs to replace this if we break it,” I say, as she lies back on the mattress.
A groan rips from my throat as I stare at her, spread out on the inn’s Holly Hobbie quilt. Her brown hair is like a fan around her face.
“Goddess. Yes. I was right. That’s exactly how you look,” I say roughly, as I get on the bed, set my hands on her legs, and spread them apart.
She lets out a needy gasp.
But before I can spend some much-needed time worshipping her pussy, she sits up, clasps my face, and looks me in the eyes. “Say it again. How much you want me.”
My lips quirk in a grin as she reminds me of me. Of how I talk to her in these moments. Without letting go of my grip on her, I push her knees up to her chest, as I bring my face closer to hers. “You want to know how much I want you? You sure?” I ask in a taunting tone, since I’ve got her pinned. Literally.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Fine. Don’t tell me. Lick me instead.”
“Oh, I intend to. But first,” I drop my face to her neck, lick a path to her ear, and whisper, “so much more than I’ve ever wanted anyone.” Then I meet her eyes and I go serious for a moment. No teasing. No playing. “It’s more than just physical. You know that. I want you because I’m so fucking crazy for you.”
“I could listen to you say that all night. Preferably after I think about how often you used to say I drove you crazy with my attitude.”
“And for that, I’m going to take my sweet time.”
“No.” Her voice turns desperate. “Please, Max. Don’t tease me. Please just make me come.”
I let go of her knees, drop a kiss to her nose, and return to the sweet paradise between her thighs.
I moan as I taste her. She moans, too. And I do as she asked. I don’t tease her. I kiss her pussy the way I kiss her lips. With hunger. With need. With a bone-deep desire to consume this woman.
She writhes and moves beneath my mouth as I open her legs wider. She wraps them around my head, rocking into my face, grabbing at my hair. “God, it’s so good. So much better than last night,” she cries out as she bucks up into me.
The image of her getting off alone in her bed twenty-four hours ago flashes before my eyes. I picture her fucking herself with her fingers to thoughts of me. That image makes me harder, makes me go faster, makes me even greedier to bring her all the pleasure in the world.
And I’m pretty sure I do, because she curls her fingers around my head and cries out in ecstasy. She pants and moans and jams her hands in my hair as she comes so damn hard on my lips.
Then I crawl up her body and lower myself to her. Fuck. This feels so fucking good.
She wraps her arms around me as she breathes hard, coming down from her orgasm. “I’m on the pill. Are you safe?”
I nod. “Completely.”
“Then get your gigantic dick inside me. I want to know what it feels like when you f—” But she stops herself. She’s not a girl who swears. The monkey curse was borne of that moment. Her expression turns softer. Her eyes more vulnerable. “Make love to me, Max.”
My heart squeezes. It feels like it can barely fit inside my chest. This woman who once seemed to hate me is now letting me in. She’s letting me have her—heart, mind, and body. I want to take care of her, and treat her like the gift that she is.
“I will, baby,” I say, as I nudge her legs wider and wedge myself between them. I rub the head of my dick against her, and she stretches her neck, moaning my name. Her back bows, and I’m not even inside her.
I burn with lust.
I push forward, sinking into her. When I’m all the way in, a shudder wracks my body. Our eyes meet. It’s intense and almost too much—this connection I feel with her. The way she gazes at me. How her eyes blaze with more than heat, more than desire. It’s like looking into a mirror because everything I see in her eyes, I feel as well. This woman I’ve wanted for years and fought with for weeks is finally beneath me in bed, her arms wrapped around my neck, her legs hooked around my waist. And she’s fucking crazy for me, too.
“I must have been really good in a past life to have you now,” I say as I start to move inside her.
“Maybe you were a monkey,” she says in a purr that’s somehow still sexy despite what she’s saying. But maybe that’s part of why I’m crazy for her. Because she says things like that in the heat of the moment, because she calls me an idiot before I screw her on a car, because she sings to me when I tell her I’m into her.
“Lucky monkey. Lucky guy,” I say, as I swivel my hips and thrust. Her lips fall open. Her back arches.
And I fuck her. And I make love to her. And I have her.
For the first time, it doesn’t feel like we’re hiding truths from each other. For the first time, I know we’re both all in, and that it won’t stop at tonight. I hope it won’t stop for a long, long time.
“Feels so fucking good,” I rasp out as I reach a hand to her hip, hiking one leg up higher.
“So good,” she moans, pressing her hands against my back, bringing me closer, even closer, so the full weight of my body settles onto her. I move to my elbows, but then she takes my right hand and slides her fingers through mine. And hell, if I wasn’t already falling in deep, that does it for me.
I’m barely aware of where we are, except that we’re all tangled together—arms, legs, limbs, sweat, and heat. And like that, I fuck her while holding her hand, our fingers tightening together as she nears the edge. She flies first, crying out my name as she comes. I follow her there with a long, low groan that doesn’t seem to stop.
At last, I move off her, but I don’t let go. I pull her close to me, spooning her the way she likes it. “For the record, that wasn’t monkey sex. Next time it will be, though.”
“Funny thing, Max. I like all kinds with you. Non-monkey sex and monkey sex.”
<
br /> “Good. Because you’re going to get a lot of both.”
Tomorrow we can figure out the details. Tomorrow we can hash out how this whole thing works with business and secrets and deals.
Tonight, I just want to be at peace with the woman who tattooed her name on my arm, and deep in my heart.
44
On the train back to Manhattan, Henley invites me over for dinner.
At last, I’ll get to see her place.
“I make the most incredible mac and cheese from scratch. You’ll pretty much never want another woman ever again once you have my mac and cheese,” she says, tapping her fingers against my chest.
“So mac and cheese is your closing sales pitch, basically?”
“Absolutely,” she says with a confident nod. “I told you—I’m an excellent girlfriend. Mac and cheese is one part of an awesome whole.” She gestures to her purple dress and red scarf, same outfit as yesterday. “But obviously, I’m going to change before you come over tonight.”
We both showered this morning at the B&B, and by shower, I mean a spectacular blow job that stopped short of the finish line so it could turn into a screw against the tiled wall as water streamed down her sexy back. And then, there was soap and shampoo and all that jazz.
But neither one of us was prepared for last night’s sleepover, so we’re both in the same clothes as yesterday, though Henley told me she brought along a change of panties, figuring she would need it. Obviously, she needed it. As the train chugs into New York, heading for Grand Central, I check the time. We’ll arrive in twenty-five minutes, and that makes me even more aware of another countdown clock.
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