Gus’s grunt of pain was all the satisfaction Max got before Cole’s hands clamped around his shoulders, pulling him away.
“Close the door!” he heard Cole tell Pru as he wrapped a restraining arm around his neck.
Max tried to wrench free, feeling an almost murderous need to wail on this guy.
“Max, calm down,” he heard Pru say somewhere in the background.
“Yeah, Max, calm down, boy,” Gus said with a half laugh, half cough of recovery from taking Max’s gut punch. “Not my fault Pru likes me better than you. You can’t buy everything.”
“I don’t like him better than you,” Pru insisted. She then appeared in front of him, her eyes pleading with him to believe her.
But he couldn’t. Couldn’t calm down. Couldn’t stop hearing what she’d said to Gus. Couldn’t stop seeing her in the doorway with her clothes all ruffled. How far had they gone?
He must have made an unconscious move to go after Gus again, because Cole’s arm tightened around his neck, working even harder to keep him away from Gus.
“You’re fired!” Max snarled at him.
“You can’t fire me,” Gus shot back.
“No, but I can,” Cole said, his voice grim. “So how about if we call it even? I won’t fire you for consorting with my brother’s wife. And you won’t sue us because he punched you.”
Gus considered his offer and caved with a short nod. “Fine,” he said to Cole. But then his eyes found Max’s. “But you should know, man, she came to me. Not the other way around.”
This time Cole wrestled Max out the door before he could respond.
The details got a little fuzzy after that. But less than a few minutes later, he was back upstairs in the room he’d shared with Pru. After she shut the door, she said, “You know that was just for the case. You know there’s no reason for you to...”
But he could barely hear her over the sound of his own harsh breathing. Nor over the words, pounding red inside his chest: Not enough...not enough...
“You. Don’t. Lie,” he reminded her.
A troubled look came over Pru’s face. “No, I don’t,” she admitted. “But—”
He didn’t let her finish. He’d heard all he needed to hear.
“What are you doing?” she asked behind him.
“Setting a timer,” he answered between clenched teeth. Then he locked in eighteen hours and pushed a few keys so that the countdown clock filled up her laptop’s entire screen. “I want my eighteen hours. Right now.”
* * *
I want my eighteen hours. Right now.
That was all the warning she got before Max was all over her. Ripping off her Henley, stripping off her bra. He pushed her back onto the bed and shoved down her hot pants over her legs. Disposed of without a care.
And then there was Max between her thighs, forcing her legs over his shoulders. His tongue hit her sex with such precision that she could feel the vibrations from its hard strokes all the way up to her womb.
Pru wanted to hold on. Wanted to stop this train and explain to Max exactly what had happened with Gus. Even though she shouldn’t have to, because they were only fake married and she was only doing her job.
But his mouth was relentless on her sex. So deft in its actions that she could barely talk, much less tell him her side of the story.
“Max...” she groaned, trying to rally.
But then the first orgasm hit her like a train, starring out her mind and making her completely forget what she was about to say.
When her senses came back, Max was above her, flipping her over and pulling hard on the front of her thighs so that her butt was in the air, on full display.
There was a moment of savage silence, in which she could feel his burning gaze on her exposed behind. Then he leaned over her, his chest blanketing her back, his large hand cupping her sex from behind.
“Do you think you’d get this wet for Gus?” he asked her, his voice low and cruel in her ear.
He pushed three long digits into her tunnel. “Do you think he’d ever be able to make you come as fast as I just did?”
Pru bit her lip and shook her head, trying to fight a nearly overpowering urge to ride his hand.
“Hmm,” he said above her. “You’re fighting yourself again. Tell me, Pru, what makes you do that? Fight what you are deep down inside, what I bring out in you? Why can’t you let yourself just ride my hand? You obviously want to. That orgasm I gave you couldn’t have been enough.”
It hadn’t been enough, but she kept herself still, refusing to obey her body’s instinct to push against his hand.
“All right, I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way,” he said above her.
His fingers started moving, pumping into her in a knowing way, as if Max was reminding her he knew how to please a woman. Knew, and was perfectly willing to use it against her.
“Tell me what happened with him. Exactly what happened.”
“Nothing!” she gasped. “It’s none of your business. But nothing happened.”
“Nothing,” he repeated. “Did he kiss you?”
She didn’t answer. And he switched the position of his hand, so that his palm was on her clit as he pumped into her. Combined with the pressure of his heavy erection against her backside, the new angle nearly made her come again.
But she didn’t. She just kept her body still as his hand expertly manipulated her core for what felt like hours.
Eventually Max growled. “Why are you still fighting me?”
She shook her head.
“Are you forgetting I know who you really are?” he asked her, his voice low and mean. “Did you let Gus meet Wedding Night Pru?”
The answer was no. She never let her out. Ever. Only with Max. But she remained silent. It wasn’t as if Max Benton needed yet another woman proclaiming that he brought out things in her that no man ever had.
“Let her out now,” he demanded above her.
“You want to hear the truth? Fine, here’s the truth,” she said, her voice ugly and raw. “Gus is boring, and stable, and all the things I’ve come to respect in a man since I became all those things myself. You, on the other hand, are spoiled, and rich, and truly messed up. So yes, if it had been up to me to choose before New Orleans, I would have chosen Gus. Because he’s a halfway-decent guy, and you’re a rich kid who thinks he deserves everything, including me.”
His hand stopped, her assessment of his character effectively ending the conversation.
The next thing she knew, his fingers were out of her—now clutching her waist as he pushed himself inside her.
It was over quickly after that. After what he’d done to her with his fingers, Pru couldn’t have stopped the orgasm if she wanted to. It ripped through her with the uncontrollable ferocity of a tornado, taking out everything in its path, including her dignity.
He pulled out, removing himself from her in one irate movement.
“That’s one wallet,” he said.
Chapter 21
Twelve wallets later, Pru came awake to a washcloth between her legs. Warm and wet, the feel of it both soothing and arousing her overworked core.
She didn’t have to open her eyes to know what was happening. It was Max. Max sitting on the bed beside her. Max stroking her toward another orgasm while he cleaned her up from the last one. The one he’d prolonged until she was soaking wet in her own essences, begging him to stop, because she couldn’t take anymore.
It wasn’t the first time that night that she’d begged him. To stop pleasuring her, to keep on pleasuring her—all sorts of shameful things had fallen out of her mouth over the course of the past twelve hours.
At one point, he’d put her in a bath, she recalled now with no small amount of mortification. Watched her scrub herself clean
with cool green eyes, then calmly reached under the water and put his fingers back inside her. Making her come yet again with a few calculations of his thrusting digits.
Then he’d let her sleep some more, waking her up sporadically throughout the day to make her come with his mouth or hand. Unable to resist, she had become more pliant as the hours wore on. She wondered if the hour would arrive when his touch didn’t immediately set her on fire, eventually making her so wet that she climaxed again, even though she kept thinking she couldn’t possibly have another one left in her.
But apparently she’d been wrong about that. Even now she found herself responding to his ministrations with the washcloth. Whimpering as he rubbed her clean, stopping only to occasionally rewet the cloth in a bowl of hot water, until she came again with a full-body shudder.
“Thirteen wallets,” he said, his voice monotone.
Pru opened her eyes then. She watched him put the cloth back in the bowl of water, get up and disappear into the bathroom. When he came back, he had two items she recognized in his hands. A tube of lip balm and her favorite body lotion.
It occurred to her to ask him what he was planning to do to her next, but the words stuck in her throat when she saw the size of his erection. Straining and hard as a battering ram. She stared at it, trying to figure out why he was doing this, why he’d decided to cash in all the wallets at once. He had yet to allow himself to come, even though he was obviously heavily aroused.
If he noticed her openly staring at his manhood, he didn’t comment on it. Just sat back down on the bed beside her. She involuntarily clenched below, her body bracing itself for his intimate touch. But to her surprise, instead of traveling to below her waist, his thumb dipped into her tub of lip balm and applied it to her lips. When he was done, she instinctively rubbed her lips together as she watched him do another unexpected thing with his hands. He put a few pumps of lotion into them, rubbing them together, before he began massaging the extra moisture into her skin. First her legs, then her arms, then her torso.
His hands eventually made their way to her breasts, and she shivered. They ached now. From either what he’d done to them the night before or with anticipation for what he might do to them next, she couldn’t say. Max had her mind and body turned inside out, so that she could barely tell which way was up or down anymore.
But his hands didn’t linger on her breasts long. Instead, he pulled her forward, collapsing her against his shoulders as he massaged the lotion into her aching back. Despite the awkward position, it felt heavenly, like the best massage she’d ever received. And by the time he laid her back down against the pillow, her body felt supple and relaxed. Once again completely pliant and ready to receive his touch.
Max, however, inspected her naked body with the clinical distance of a scientist.
“You need to eat,” he said, his tone grim. “It’s late, but I can call the manager, have him bring up something.”
He began to get up, but she caught him by the wrist. “No. No food.”
He gave her an annoyed look. “I know you like to fight me on everything, but you’re not going to make it through five more wallets without something to eat.”
She sat up in bed, wincing at the many aches and pains the movement set off. “I’m not going to make it through five more wallets, period. The deal is off, Max.”
He inclined his head, the angle making his jagged nose look that much more crooked. “So, good little Detective Pru has finally decided not to keep her promise?”
Pru was too tired to rally up much of a response to his dig. “Yeah, you wore me down. Congratulations, Max.”
Instead of giving her one of his smug smiles, though, his face became hard. “The deal is off when I say it’s off.”
He leaned forward, and Pru shook her head, raising both hands to stave him off. “You’re not getting it, Max. This is me, giving you what you really want. I’m saying you win. You’ve ruined me. The truth is you won Wednesday night, when we did it in your tent—that night you completely ruined me for any other man. You don’t have to keep punishing me.”
Max went still at her confession. But only for a moment. Then his jaw set and he said, “Five more wallets.”
Had he not heard her? Pru began to snap at him, but then she realized... That’s what he wanted her to do. He wanted her to be mad at him. He didn’t want her to give in. He wanted a fight.
But Pru had no idea why. Though she did know what she needed to do next.
Knew and winced again as she moved over, making room for him on the bed.
“Max,” she said. “We need to talk.”
* * *
We need to talk.
Max went completely still. He’d had women say many things to him after he’d rocked their world. “We need to talk” had never been one of them.
“Five more wallets,” he insisted through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re saying five more wallets and I’m saying we need to talk first.” Pru patted the space she’d just created next to her. “C’mon,” she said.
Max didn’t move. He didn’t trust himself to sit next to her without losing his mind and burying himself in her to the hilt. Didn’t trust himself not to reveal how much power she had over him in that moment.
As if reading his mind, she asked, “Or are you afraid?”
Yes. Yes, he was afraid. Afraid of her. Afraid of what she brought out in him. Afraid of the obsessive words still ringing inside his head. Not enough...not enough.
But he moved to sit beside her anyway, wondering what she possibly thought she could say that would make him back down from collecting the rest of the wallets. He’d already skipped out on a whole day of meetings, texting his brother that both he and Pru wouldn’t be available until Friday when it was time to sign the trust paperwork. Then he had turned the phone off.
“Let’s talk about what happened with Gus,” she said when he was settled in beside her.
“Nothing to talk about. I think you’ve proved who really turns you on over the past thirteen wallets.”
It was a baiting tactic on his part. One she didn’t fall for this time.
“Max, please, just...” she said with another wince as she gingerly scooted over and put more space between them, so that she could partially face him. “Just stop it with the lothario act. Let me talk for a little, please. I’m tired, and I doubt I’m going to ever be able to bring myself to do this again.”
Max did as she asked, again wondering what she thought would convince him to give up on collecting the last wallets.
“What I said to Gus—you were right. It wasn’t a lie. I would have chosen him a few weeks ago, because back then, I was lying to myself about who I really was. Telling myself that the woman you know as Wedding Night Pru was dead and buried. A few weeks ago, I would have dated someone like Gus just to prove she no longer held any sway over me.”
Max shook his head. “That’s what I don’t understand. What’s so bad about the person you used to be? Why do you act like she’s some kind of monster who needs to be locked up? Like you don’t deserve a little fun every once in a while?”
“Because...” She visibly swallowed. “Because she wasn’t fun. She just seemed like a lot of fun. In actuality she was stupid, and petty, and a liar. My parents...they were really worried about her—me—I guess I should start saying me. My parents were really worried about me back then. I’d do things that I’d think of as living it up, and they’d end up having to come pick me up from some bar. Or spend their hard-earned money having to bail me out of some stupid situation.”
Max blinked at her, stunned, and she nodded. “Yeah, surprise, I was kind of like you back in the day, Max. Wild, out of control, loved to party. I barely made it out of UNLV with my dance degree. The only reason I got hired for the line was because my mom worked in the costume de
partment. But even after I got a real job, I was only interested in having as much fun as I possibly could. I worried my parents sick, and I didn’t care.”
“In fact, I once skipped a whole week of work in order to fly off to a tropical island with some trust-fund baby I’d just started dating. Eventually I came to my senses when he wanted to pass me around to a few of his friends—apparently that’s what he meant when he called it an ‘exotic vacation.’ But I’d maxed out all of my credit cards, and I didn’t have enough money in my bank account to pay for a last-minute ticket. So I ended up calling the parents in tears. Told them I’d gone on vacation and miscalculated the return date and missed my plane. And them being good people—of course they bailed me out yet again. Used their savings to buy me a last-minute ticket home. They even asked a next-door neighbor to look after Jakey, so that they could come to pick me up from the airport at four a.m. in the morning—which is how they both ended up getting T-boned by some guy who was driving and texting.”
Of course Max had known about the car accident, but his detective’s report hadn’t mentioned Pru’s part in it. It also hadn’t prepared him for the guilty tears now pooling in her eyes.
“If it wasn’t for me, my parents would still be alive. That’s why I don’t give myself much credit for taking over Jakey’s care. And that’s why you don’t have to bother with proving that I’ve still got the old Pru inside me.” Pru gave him a rueful smile as she wiped away the tears. “Believe me, I know she’s still there.”
When he’d started this journey with Pru, there had been no doubt in Max’s mind about how it would end. With Pru’s complete and total submission. Him the triumphant victor, her the woman who would know now and forever that she would never win in a fight with Max Benton—not even an emotional one.
Technically her confession was the ultimate concession in their battle. She’d finally told him the truth about Wedding Night Pru.
But Max stared at her, feeling as if his heart was about to fall out of his chest, wondering if Pru knew that she’d just dealt him a fatal blow.
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