by Brandi Evans
“Your only?” The very thought excited me more than anything I could think of. Hell, it almost made me forget about that other thing. Almost. “Trust goes both ways, Max. If you want my unconditional surrender, you have to show me you’re willing to offer me the same.”
“What did you have in mind?” That damn hand of his kept creeping up my thigh…
“For starters, you can keep your hands to yourself while I’m talking. Your touch is too damn distracting.
A grin played at the corners of his lips. “Good.”
“Max, I’m serious.”
He seemed to understand I was indeed serious and stepped back just enough to put me at arm’s length.
“Okay, Bree. Speak your mind.”
“Earlier you said you’d been attracted to me.”
“What’s not to be attracted to?”
Plenty. But I kept that to myself. “That wasn’t an answer, Max.”
He sighed. “Yes, Bree, after I hired you to be Red Light’s manager, as we began spending more and more time together after hours, I found myself drawn to you.
And I had more than one fantasy where I tossed you over my desk and fucked your brains out. Satisfied?”
Hardly. But it was nice to know I wasn’t the only one dreaming about Max bending me over his desk. “Was this before or after you found out Gina was cheating?”
His forehead wrinkled and he took a deep breath.
“Both.”
“Then why haven’t you acted on your attraction, ya know… since she died? Did you not want to or… I don’t know, did you feel guilty or something?”
He looked away—but not before his eyes went dark.
I’d struck a nerve. He was guilty about something. But why exactly? Because he’d had inappropriate feelings for me while married? Or did his shame go deeper?
“Max… ” I pressed.
“I think you’ve asked enough questions for the moment.” He knelt onto the bed and pressed his palm against my mouth. “It’s my turn again. There will be time for more questions later.”
“But—”
“Do I need to gag you?” Although his tone was serious, his grin betrayed the erotic playfulness behind the words. “I’d prefer your mouth to be accessible.”
A jolt of electricity shot straight to my core. I wanted that too, so I shook my head. He was right. There’d be time for more questions later.
“Good girl.” He kissed my forehead then pushed from the bed. “I’ll be right back, sweetheart. I brought a little treat home from the store, but I left it in the car.”
He had? I hadn’t noticed.
He disappeared out the door and I relaxed into the lush mattress. Tonight had certainly taken an unexpected detour. Unexpected but not unwanted. The idea of submitting myself to Max turned me on in ways I didn’t understand. Scary and exciting at the same time. He hadn’t answered all my questions, no, but he had answered some. I took that as a good sign. I’d get the rest out of him. Eventually.
Down the hall, a door opened. Footsteps sounded against the carpet. Max? I hadn’t noticed anyone else in the house when we’d come in. Then again, Max had been very distracting with his great lips and all.
I yanked against my restraints. I felt as if I would explode. Who was it! But then Max walked through the threshold holding his briefcase.
Naked.
I swallowed hard. Even considering everything we’d done tonight, seeing him in the buff still took my breath away.
“I grabbed these goodies on our way out,” he said,
“and the entire drive home, I’ve been imagining all the ways I could make you come.”
There went my heart rate rising into the stratosphere again.
I bit my bottom lip to keep from asking what he’d taken. He set the case on the dresser—where I couldn’t fucking see it of course. Figured. The sounds of tearing plastic and crinkling paper got me even more agitated. I tugged at my restraints to get a better look.
“Be patient, love,” he called over his shoulder.
Patient. No fucking way. I yanked hard against my bonds, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I decided there was nothing left but to take a deep breath and close my eyes.
If I blocked out the visual of Max’s ass, maybe the anxiety would lessen.
Epic fail. Nothing except Max’s expertise could calm me now.
Something dropped onto the bed beside me and my eyes snapped open. My gaze landed on the plethora of erotic toys now littering the bed, but from my restrained position, I couldn’t quite make everything out. I did see a couple dildos, a vibrator and maybe a bullet or two.
Also a few oblong objects as well—eggs maybe.
“Lie back and close your eyes,” Max instructed. “Oh, and no talking.”
I rolled my eyes but reluctantly obeyed. Not much I could do.
The soft hum of some vibrating toy tickled my ear—
then my pussy. My entire body tensed.
“It’s a wireless egg,” he said, as if the explanation would calm me. “I’m going to put it inside you, and under no circumstances do I want you to let it fall out. Is that understood?”
I nodded.
“Under no circumstances,” he repeated, slipping the device into my pussy, not too deep—but deep enough.
In the perfect place to torment my G-spot.
I bit my bottom lip to keep from moaning and wrapped my inner muscles around the egg as ordered.
My back arched off the bed.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, this felt good.
Something else hummed to life, and a few seconds later, the smooth plastic of a vibrator rubbed over my nipple. Max drew soft circles over the peak until it turned rigid.
“Mmmm… ” The moan leaked from my lips before the action registered in my brain, but he didn’t seem to mind. On the contrary, he moved the vibrator to my other nipple and repeated what he’d just done.
“Don’t let the egg fall out,” he reminded.
Shit, I’d already forgotten.
I refocused my thoughts, but so many sensations assaulted me simultaneously. The vibrating cock set out on an expedition, sliding along my torso, but staying carefully away from the spot where the egg was lodged.
It was too fucking much—but somehow not quite enough to push me over.
My pussy flooded with need and the egg slipped.
No! I clenched my inner muscles on instinct, but my actions only pushed the ball out like a projectile.
Max laughed. “With the way you gush, I might need to find something with a little more friction.”
You think?
He pressed the egg back in. “Now this time, don’t let it out. I’ll let your failure slide because this is your first time and because you’re so goddamn wet. But if you fail again, you will be punished. Nod if you understand.”
I nodded, unsure if I wanted to experience his punishment or not. My inner devil kept spinning scenario after scenario of possible punishments.
Spanking? Swatting? Filling my mouth with his dick…
Max kneeled on the bed and rubbed the tip of the plastic cock along my lower belly, close enough the vibrations tickled my overexcited sex. Or maybe it was my imagination. Either way…
My eyes rolled back. My heels dug into the mattress.
“Max… ”
“I thought I told you not to talk.”
Laughter bubbled past the arousal in my throat.
“Fuck you, Maxwell Penn. I’m dying here!”
“We’ll get to the fucking, sweetheart. Don’t worry.”
He kissed me, his tongue demanding, and pressed the vibrator lower. He worked the artificial erection between my folds—back and forth, back and forth—and aroused my clit into a frenzy with the slow vibrations.
I tore away from Max’s kiss, slamming my head against the softness of the pillows. “So close… ”
“Don’t come yet, Bree.” He upped the vibrations, both on the dildo and on the egg. “Not yet.”
I shoo
k my head back and forth, big sloppy moves with no control. So close to going over I couldn’t think straight.
“Don’t come until I give you permission, Bree.”
“Can’t. Fuck. Max!”
“Fight it.” He increased the devices again. “It’ll be that much more when I finally let you go.”
But this tidal wave couldn’t be stopped. Even by the hand of God.
I screamed with the intensity of my climax, pleasure swirling so fast and furious I feared I’d drown. My muscles tensed tight and hard, the restraints cutting into my skin, and by the time I came off my high, I could barely breathe.
Soft fingertips traced along my jaw and the buzzing vibrator moved away. “We will have to work on your control.”
“Sorry,” I breathed—then laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“I just apologized for having an orgasm. I can safely say that’s a first for me.”
“Hopefully not the last.” He cupped my pussy with one of his hands. “Push out the egg.”
I obeyed. “Hopefully?”
“Yes, my dear.” He put the egg and the vibrator on the nightstand then maneuvered between my splayed legs. “I plan on pushing your sexual boundaries until you know your own pleasure centers inside and out.
Until you learn how to control your orgasm.”
“So you’ll be my sexual drill sergeant?”
“Something like that.” He unhooked the metal clasps holding the Velcro fasteners around my ankles to the ropes attached to the foot of the bed and then rehooked them to some restraints at the head of the bed. The new position forced my feet back near my shoulders and my legs so wide my clit felt the pull. But my ass stayed—
mostly—grounded to the mattress.
“Perfect.” He pressed my folds open. “More like, irresistible.”
“Yes, you are.”
His gaze jumped to my face. In an instant his expression morphed from confident and controlled to passionate and possessed. Unrestrained—it was the only word I could think of to describe the look seizing him.
He leaned forward and mounted me. “I think I’ll fuck you extra hard for that.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Oh most definitely.” His lips plowed into mine, one of his hands immediately reaching for, for… something.
A moment later, the tearing of a condom wrapper fanned my arousal. I didn’t know how Max managed to keep from breaking our kiss as he fitted the rubber over the very rigid erection bumping against my sex.
His covered cock pressed against my entrance—but didn’t enter. For a brief, torturous moment, I thought he would “punish me” by withholding himself until I begged, but thank the Lord, I was wrong.
In one sharp motion he jabbed his sex into my core.
He pounded into me with absolutely no self-control, at least that was the way it felt. As if I made him lose complete control. It was the ultimate turn-on.
I ripped my mouth from his. “Untie me, Max. I want to hold you,” I said, the words broken by the force of his pistoning hips. “Please. I need to hold you.”
“Fuck, yes.” His breath slammed against my face, and in two quick moves, he released my hands—just my hands.
I crushed my arms round his neck, pulling him as close as I could. But it would never be close enough.
“Max,” I moaned into his mouth as the first eddies of climax flickered to life. “I—”
I bit my bottom lip. I love you. But did I really? True, he brought out so many different emotions in me but was love one of them?
In the end, I didn’t have time to ponder the answers
—another orgasm broke through me.
Max’s name tore from my throat, the exact moment my name tore from his throat. Our climaxes fed off each other as we rode pleasure’s rushing rapids. When his body finally went limp on top of me, he groaned my name. We clung to each other. I’d never felt so close to anyone. Body and soul. I knew in this moment my heart wouldn’t ever be complete if the attraction between us wasn’t allowed to grow.
“Tell me you’re mine.” His voice sounded gruff, his breath hot against my skin. “Say it.”
I didn’t hesitate. “I’m yours, Max. Yours. Always… ”
Love aside, I knew that much was true.
* * * * *
Max’s arms circled me, held me to him as I lay on my side, snuggled against him as I drifted toward sleep. I smiled against his chest. I couldn’t remember ever being so happy. Not only had I received my sex fix, I’d received it with a man I’d always thought was so out of my league it wasn’t funny.
“I don’t think I ever really loved Gina,” Max said quietly, “only the idea of her. Of being able to spend my life with someone who accepted me. All of me. And when I first met her, I thought she fit the bill. Beautiful and an absolute maniac in bed.”
I cringed at his words. I’d known, obviously, he and Gina had sex, but to hear it so bluntly only served to remind me how bland I was compared to her.
“At least she’d been a real sex kitten at first.” He sighed. “Looking back now, I see I rushed into marrying her, but damn it, Bree, I was smitten. And let’s face it, I’m not getting any younger.”
I kissed his chest. “You make it sound like you’re pushing ninety.”
“I have a good ten years on you, darling,” he said, then went right back to his story. “But everything changed after we married. It wasn’t immediate, maybe around our third month of marriage. I started noticing strange things about her mood, how it would shift so dramatically from one week to another. She’d go from being my energetic sex kitten to hardly having the energy to get out of bed. But when I confronted her about it, she said I was overreacting. I tried to ignore it. Until I couldn’t anymore… ”
And she started cheating on me.
He didn’t say the words, but I heard them plain as day. Couldn’t be easy for a proud, dominant man like Max to admit his wife had stepped out on him.
Repeatedly.
“Her mood swings remind me a lot of my best friend’s mom,” I said. “She was diagnosed as being bipolar when I was in high school. Was that what was wrong with Gina?”
He let out a long shaky breath. “Yes. I just found out too late to help her—”
His voice cut out, the sound reaching right into my chest and wrapping around my heart. I pushed onto my elbows and looked at him. His eyes swarmed with so many emotions I couldn’t distinguish one from the other.
The only thing I knew for sure… Maxwell Penn was in deep emotional pain.
And he hadn’t told me the half of it.
I cradled his cheek. “Why do I have the sneaking suspicion you’re keeping something from me?”
“Because I am.”
His honesty shocked me. “You know you can trust me, right?”
“I know,” he whispered. “Maybe it’s me you shouldn’t trust.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
He pulled me to him and pressed the softest kiss against my lips. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.
I just want to make love to you until the world slips away.”
Tears pushed against the back of my eyes. “I think that could be arranged.”
We exchanged no words as I grabbed another condom from his bedside table and smoothed it onto his erection. Still no words as I pushed onto my knees then lowered myself on him. Nothing as we rocked together, our movements slow, unrushed. Like we had all the time in the world.
He cradled me against his chest, made me feel cherished, and I did my damndest to make him feel the same. Because I did cherish him. There was so much more to my boss than my fantasies had ever allowed me to see. He wasn’t just the sex idol I’d made him out to be.
He was a flesh-and-blood man who hurt, who grieved.
Who made me feel more than I ever thought I could.
I love you, Max.
It took everything inside to keep the words from spilling out, so I l
owered my mouth to his, just to make sure they didn’t. I kissed him deeply, slowly. As leisurely and thoroughly as our lovemaking.
I didn’t know how long we swayed together before fulfillment coiled anew in my body. “Come with me, Max.”
He didn’t answer in words. His body went rigid beneath me and I let myself go. But even my climax seemed to take its time, pleasure creeping and lingering a tad bit longer than normal, invading every cell in my body.
“Max,” I moaned, collapsing on top of him, content to stay in his arms for the rest of my life.
His hands buried in my hair as he whispered something I knew I’d never forget. “I wish I’d have waited just a little longer. Waited for you… ”
Chapter Five
I welcomed the new day as I always did, with a full-body stretch and yawn. Toes pointed, arms pressed overhead, every muscle in my body went rigid—then relaxed. The lip-stretching smile on my face, however, was new.
Max…
I rolled onto my back, reached for him and found myself looking up at the blue Texas sky. Whoa. Hadn’t those been mirrors on the ceiling last night, not windows? Huh, must be “smart” windows, glass that can change from clear to dark with the touch of a button.
Neat. I turned to ask Max—
But I was alone.
“Max?” I called into the seemingly empty bedroom.
“Max?” I tucked the sheet around me and took in the room.
That was when I saw it.
On the side table, a folded piece of paper leaned against a lamp, my name scrawled across it in Max’s familiar handwriting. Next to the sheet lay a set of car keys.
My heart stammered into action. This couldn’t be a good sign. I scooted to the edge of the bed, plucked the letter from its resting place and, taking a deep breath, flipped it open…
Bree, Max had written. I’m sorry, but I need to get away for a while. It’s not you, not entirely anyway. The keys next to this note are for the Jaguar in the garage. Use it to get home. I’ll be in contact. ~Max.
I read the note over and over. Confusion swirled in my brain, blocking out reasonable thought. Max was gone. Why? His note said he needed to get away. But from me? Memories of his dead wife? What!