“Twelve dollars for a glass of wine!” she croaked, now like she’d discovered some treasonous national secret.
“Why not a bottle?”
She peered at the menu, flipping through the leather-bound pages. “Or I could go buy three boxes!”
“Listen,” I told her. “No more boxed wine for you, only the best.”
“It’s very economical! A very good glass-to-dollar ratio!”
I glared at her and made a zipper across my mouth.
Before she could protest about anything else—eleven dollars for a Dark and Stormy!—the waitress came by and took our drinks order. While Rosie was ordering a glass of “house white, whatever’s cheapest, no, seriously, I mean that.” I took her menu off her plate, stacking it on top of mine.
“Your job tonight is to spoil her,” I told the waitress as I handed over our menus. “She’ll try to convince you otherwise. Don’t listen.”
“Max!” Rosie huffed, with such exasperation that it made the flame on the candle flicker along the wax. I shook my head at her nice and slow to say, No, kitten. No more. I’m running this fucking show, and you’re gonna have to deal with it.
Her big, brown eyes got wide with fury. But I didn’t budge. No way. I had her, and I was gonna keep her. Spoil her rotten—it was my only job.
“All right, sir,” said the waitress, beaming as she hid the menus behind her back. “I will. And for you?”
“Scotch, neat. And you just bring us whatever the chef would send out if he were on the most important date of his life.”
Rosie let out an adorable squeak, and I felt her leg press against mine underneath the crisp white tablecloth. It was the first sign of surrender, and I reached under the table to put my hand to her thigh.
When the waitress had walked away, Rosie pressed her eyebrows together and looked at me like I was a stranger, the same way she’d looked at the substitute postman. Her hand slipped under the tablecloth to join mine. “I didn’t know you liked scotch.”
“There’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about me,” I told her.
She tsk’d. “Baloney.”
But I held her gaze. “I’m not kidding you, beautiful. Especially one big thing that nobody else on the planet knows.”
“Whaaaaat?” She shook her head, like I had to be making stuff up. “Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure you’ve told me,” she said. “I know you’ve got an irrational phobia of jellyfish. I know how you feel about grapefruit. If it’s got to do with Max Doyle, I know it.”
I shifted my hand away from her inner thigh to knit her fingers in mine on top of her leg. “You don’t know this.”
33
Rosie
My jaw dropped open. It was like I was stuck, one of those people in a viral video mannequin challenge—frozen absolutely solid, with a little crab-stuffed pastry halfway to my mouth. What he’d said made no sense to me at all. It was like word salad. Though I had heard the words, “I have an inheritance from my uncle,” it made about as much sense as if he had said Radiator peanut butter frosting jack-o-lantern purée. “Wait. What?”
“A million, give or take,” he said.
Dishwasher manila folder chocolate macaroon. The what? The what?
A flake of pastry landed on my plate. Still, I just gaped at him. I think I’d forgotten to blink for a while because my eyes suddenly felt dry and huge. How could that be? How could Max have a secret inheritance? Impossible! I’d watched him haggle with a guy at the lumberyard over the price of pressure-treated posts like he was a Bahamian fishmonger trying to get the wholesale rate on monkfish. Ridiculous. Max might’ve not been as broke as I was, but he didn’t have money-money. By any stretch of the imagination, we were no longer talking about three hundred bucks in his wallet at all times. We were definitely talking money-money. “Your uncle was totally bananas.” I tucked the pastry into my mouth before I said something I might regret. Because his uncle really was absolutely flipping bananas. Eight eggs short of a dozen, minimum. No hope of a soufflé. None.
Max nodded. “Totally, but he’d only ever made two investments in his life. Costco and Apple.”
My mouth dropped open again. “Is this real? Am I dreaming?”
He smoothed his napkin, but he absolutely was not laughing. He was smiling though, really smiling. And it was that smile, that sincere happiness, that made me finally understand this wasn’t some huge joke. I’d gotten to know him better and better over the past two weeks. That happiness was him. He was being honest.
It was true.
“I can’t believe you never told me!” I gripped the side of the table. “You little stinker! And why in God’s name have you been living on that houseboat all these years when you could’ve—I don’t know—bought a mansion and been driving a Range Rover while you collected huge chrome-faced watches and wintered in Turks and Caicos?”
“Because I’m not that guy. Why would I want anything more than what I have right here, right now?”
“Can’t imagine!” I chewed furiously. “Because Turks and Caicos sounds awesome! You’d look so sexy in a Range Rover!” I could see it now. Totally some sort of cologne ad.
“I’m serious, Rosie. Until last week, I thought I had everything I needed. Now I know it for sure.”
“Stop,” I said as a blush crept up from my chest, to my throat, to my cheeks.
“Never.” Max winked and took a sip of his scotch. “I’m not kidding. I mean that. It’s you, or it’s nobody.”
I tried to find the words, but they were just…gone. I had nothing, absolutely zippo. I mindlessly put another crab puff into my mouth and let myself get lost in those eyes and the way he held his hand in mine. That secret proved that Max was just as I’d imagined him. Never over the top, never bragging. Just Max. Million in the bank or no, he was the man he was. He was the man, I knew then, that I was falling for. Fast.
His fingers pressed into the back of my calf as his thumb ran over the very top of my shin. A light touch that just about made me dissolve in quivers. “Your turn for a secret.”
He began to spread a slightly too-cold curl of butter onto his piece of focaccia.
“I don’t think I have any secrets from you.” I watched the muscles of his forearm flex while he spread the butter. Goodness.
He pressed the knife into his bread and met my stare with his dreamy eyes. “None?”
I tried to think about it as I took a sip of my wine. He knew about Peter Rabbit. He knew I was utterly broke. He now probably also knew I snored a little. “I don’t think so.”
“Then tell me something I don’t know. Like…” He handed the buttered bread over to me. “Kids. What about kids?”
I shoved my own piece of focaccia in my mouth as fast as I could, far more out of surprise than anything else. Had he really just asked that? I could not possibly be sitting across from my Max, at a fancy-schmancy place in Portland, talking about kids.
“Too much?” He looked like he realized he might’ve unknowingly pushed a button.
I understood why he might have thought that—I flashed back to Loafers looking at my general reproductive organs area, the bastard—but this? This was completely different. Yes, it was from left field, it was a curveball, it was the pop fly into the stands. But it was also one of those very important things that we’d never talked about.
And that now we could.
Because we were there, we were at that point. We were staring into each other’s eyes on the edge of a huge, terrifying, wonderful abyss. There was nobody on the planet I’d rather have looked into the depths with than Max Doyle.
I swallowed my bread. I wiped my mouth with my napkin. “I want them more than anything in the world.”
It hung out there between us, the thing I never knew I wanted to know, but now wanted to know so, so much. There was a question unasked, and I knew I didn’t need to ask it. He felt it, without my saying a word. What about you?
“Yeah,” he said, moving his eyes up and down my body and squeezing
my calf a little tighter. “Me too.”
Dinner was amazing. We talked and talked and laughed so hard my cheeks hurt. We remembered a million old moments. We talked first kisses and first times. And I talked about old crushes…
But Max didn’t. He leaned back in his chair as the waitress brought out another few tiny plates, one of them a very small cast-iron pan of baby shrimp and clams in a miniature paella that smelled so good I started to salivate as soon as she set it down.
“You know, I never really had crushes.” He straightened out his dessert spoon and lifted his eyes to meet mine. “Because I think it was always you.”
The paella platter sizzled between us. My heart felt like it was melting, like it was drizzling right down through me like raspberry sauce on a chocolate cake. “Really?”
He nodded. “I thought I was always just picky, but honestly, I think the one I wanted was right in front of me all those years. I had no idea at all.”
Max turned his attention away from me to the mini paella, putting some delicate scallops on my plate, next to some equally petite shrimp.
“Crazy, right?” he asked, mostly talking to the itty-bitty mussels and saffron rice.
“Not to me,” I said, taking my plate from him. “Not to me at all.”
For a long while, we stayed just like that, him gracefully eating his mussels with a tiny fork, while I chased a clam no bigger than a quarter around my plate. When I did manage to get the meat from the shell, it was worth it. Worth waiting for, worth working for, like all the surprising treats in life, maybe. I watched Max pick up a small cube of beef from a bright green and yummy-looking sauce.
“You’re still going to be hungry after this, aren’t you?” I asked, taking a piece of the beef, too.
He looked like he was going to play it cool, but then I gave him an eyebrow. A big arch of my left eyebrow to tell him, Things might’ve changed, but don’t you go changing, too.
“Fucking starving,” he grumbled softly. “I could eat a whole ham, right here. Like Julia.”
I couldn’t keep the snort down, so I didn’t even try. It was so loud that a prim-looking lady with chic white hair and a big turquoise necklace glanced at me, shocked. Her astonishment just made it so much funnier, but I pulled myself together, forced myself not to giggle and answered, “I’ve got an idea for after. Okay?”
Max nodded and looked me right in the eye. “I’ll never say no to you. Never.”
34
Max
She was driving my truck in that sexy-ass dress, and every single time she pressed the accelerator, her skirt rode up more. Fuck. Fuck.
“We better be going somewhere close because I’m like six seconds from turning on the hazard lights, yanking the emergency brake, and taking you outside to bend you over the fender.”
“Oooh! Sex in public! There’s another secret. I had no idea that was your jam.”
“Anything you want can be my jam,” I said, and I ran my finger up the edge of her panties, right on the soft edge of her pussy lips.
But she swatted my hand away. “Max! Be good. For two seconds. You can have your way with me however you want, but first…” She took a crazy sharp left, making the tires peal on the asphalt, and then a quick right. Then she skidded to a stop and threw the Chevy into park. She looked like heaven and always drove like she was driving getaway after a bank robbery. Goddamn it, how I love her.
Rosie held out her hands. “So?” I looked around. On the right side was a burger joint, on the left a liquor store. “I’ll get the burgers,” she said, taking the keys from the ignition. “You get the beer.”
This woman. Seriously. But it got even more ballbusting, more crazy-making, more dream-come-true. As she slid out of my truck, she showed me so much thigh that I felt myself starting to get hard. She gave me a coy look over the shoulder and pointed at the liquor store. “Don’t dawdle!”
“Just dealing with the aftermath of that dress,” I told her.
Which she answered with a shake of her hair, a pouting blown kiss, and a huge smile, before disappearing into the burger joint.
And after a few minutes, I was able to get out of the truck and hold up my end of the bargain, too.
Half an hour later, we were sitting on the hood of my truck, under the stars, drinking IPA, and finishing our cheeseburgers. She’d kicked off her heels, and they lay together on the sand below. Out in front of us was Smuggler’s Cove, a small, clear lagoon cut off from the world.
“This is heaven.” She lay back on the hood of the cab and ate some fries. She was even cute when she did that—not graceful, just adorable. Jammed them in there like it was going to be her very last meal.
I put the bag of fries and our beers between us. Better than heaven, really. Heaven on earth. I sat up and swallowed half my beer. I looked her up and down, and as my eyes slid up her thighs, I let my finger draw her skirt up, up, up until I could see the tattoo, which tonight had a lace strip from a bright pink thong over it. I hooked my finger over the lace and snapped it. And then started to unbutton my shirt.
She froze with her hand halfway to the fries. “Are you going to take me on the hood of your truck? Because that sounds amazing.”
“Not yet,” I said. My voice was deeper than usual, all that fucking desire making me sound like I’d just woken up. I tipped my head toward the still, quiet, pristine cove.
Rosie’s lips parted. “Please tell me you’re thinking what I’m thinking.” She pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Pleeeeeeease.”
I unbuttoned another button, and then another. She took hold of the tiny zipper on the side of her dress and revealed the fucking perfect curve of her hips and the side of her bra underneath.
“Starts with skinny and ends with dip?” she asked.
“Bingo.”
But before I could get one more button undone, before I could pin her down on the hood and kiss her like I wanted to, she’d slid off my truck. She shimmied out of that dress and sprinted for the lagoon in her lingerie, with sand spraying behind her.
I took off after her. I pulled my half-unbuttoned shirt over my head and stripped off everything else. She cannonballed off the edge of the lagoon, and I did the same right beside her. The bubbles off her skin shimmered in the moonlight. I had my eyes wide open, and the salt water stung, but I never took my eyes off of her, not once.
She played hard to get for a while, because she was a more graceful and faster swimmer than I’d ever be, but I caught her eventually. I laid her back in the water, supporting her ass with my hand so she was floating, like she was about to do the backstroke. Her left arm, she let drift out to her side. Her right, she used to hold on to my shoulders. I went for her left nipple first. The fucking salt water kicked the whole thing into overdrive—the sweetness of Rosie, the salt of the ocean. Totally one of those salted caramels she loved so much. Her fingers moved through my wet hair, and I watched her extend her toes in pleasure, right below the waterline.
“Please get inside me,” she said. “Please.”
I was deep into the nipple play, but I’d seen it coming. I shook my head into her left breast and pinched the right nipple between thumb and forefinger.
She gasped like she was outraged. “Max. Please.”
“Fuck, I love to hear you beg.” I put my hand gently to her sternum and pushed her down so the water lapped at the edges of her nipples. I watched the waterline creep up her cheeks, past her ears, and I knew the feeling of that—that sensory deprivation. When suddenly everything goes quiet and everything starts to make sense.
“Why not?” she said. She turned her head slightly so she could hear me.
“Because there is no way in hell I am going to do anything to hurt that pussy of yours, beautiful,” I told her. I held my breath and slipped underneath her, emerging on the other side, careful to be silent, not to make a single sound or splash. She was still facing away from me when I reemerged, and for a second, I got to take her in without her knowing I could see her. It was li
ke what I’d done in Marshalls—and that fateful day on the roof.
I gave her a flat-handed splash, and she turned to face me, splashing me back. I scooped her up into my arms, newlywed-style at first, but then her legs wrapped around me automatically.
“But it would be so easy.” She slid her tongue up the curve of my ear, and she was damned dirty about it. “Just one little move of my hips.”
Tempting. So fucking tempting. But what I said, I meant. “I’m all for nature, but that pussy is sacred.” I gave her a thrust, but I didn’t enter her. “Got it?”
She snagged her top lip with her bottom teeth. “I love when you talk like that. All possessive.” She slipped her arms off of me and lay back into the water without unwrapping her legs from my hips. When she came back up, her hair was away from her face, and she had her bra in her hand.
In that moment, every fucking thing on earth was perfect. It was her, and it was me, and nothing else mattered. Nothing else would ever matter. So I took my chance, and I bit the bullet, and I said the words I never thought I’d say to anybody. It was heavy, and it was what I needed her to know. “I think you know this already, but I love you. So fucking much.”
She ran the backs of her fingertips down my cheek and brought her forehead to mine. She didn’t giggle, she didn’t smile. She didn’t tease. She kissed me, slow and sweet, and then whispered, “I love you, too.”
If my words had weight, hers had the power to fill a hole inside me that I never fucking knew was there.
I wasn’t sure how long we stayed tangled together like that. Whatever it was, it wasn’t long enough. But I needed her. I needed to be inside her, I needed her to feel just how much I meant what I’d said, and so slowly, I brought her back to the shore and carried her like a brand-new bride up the sand.
So Good (An Alpha Dogs Novel) Page 18