“Thanks, Laura,” Maxim says. “Can you wait to clear this when we land? We aren’t to be disturbed again.”
She nods, and I take a gulp from my glass of water, hoping to cool the heat rising from the center of my body and fanning out over every part of me.
“I hope it’s okay she brought everything out at once instead of in courses,” he continues. “My mother would die a thousand deaths. She thinks it’s vulgar to eat food all slammed together.”
“You want it all and at once. A man of big appetites.”
“So you do remember,” he teases. “You’re right, but I also didn’t want her coming in and out. I want to be alone with you.”
As quickly as we shove the delicious food in, we can’t seem to get the words out fast enough. I’d forgotten how each conversation with Maxim opens up something I’d never considered. His mind reaches for things most people would never imagine. Even while he’s plotting how we could save this planet, he’s wondering how we could survive on Mars if necessary.
I pierce the last bite of chicken and release a satisfied sigh. He nods to the empty plate I’ve practically licked clean. “I really wish you had enjoyed your meal more.”
I toss a dinner roll at him, which bounces off his forehead. His flinches, fork pausing halfway to his mouth. “It’s all coming back to me, why I never bring girls on my plane.”
I toss my head back and laugh, and can’t remember the last time I enjoyed anyone’s company this much. Once we finish our meal, he pulls my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles. “I hope there won’t be ten years between this date and our next one.”
“Well at the rate we’re going, with me being on the campaign trail and you being all over the world,” I say ruefully, “it may be.”
“Nah. I won’t let that happen again.”
There’s a serious note in his voice that makes me look up. His expression is completely void of humor.
“I deserved your distrust, Nix,” he says softly. “I know how I handled things hit a particular nerve for you, and I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s okay. And I told you, thanks to my therapist, I now recognize there was more to it than what was on the surface.”
“I understand your fear about me . . .” He shakes his head. “Over the years, I always needed to make sure you were okay, so I get you being concerned about my . . . how did you put it? Love for danger?”
I manage a smile because it still scares me on some level that his pursuit of the next thing, the thing that doesn’t even exist yet, might one day put him in danger he can’t get out of. I’ve picked up those pieces before, and I’m not sure I can do it again.
“I wanted to give you something.” He lifts the lid from a small dome by his plate to reveal a small flat box.
“What is it?” It doesn’t even matter. It’s for me from him. It’s him thinking about me when we were apart.
“Open it.”
He offers me the jewelry box and my hands tremble the slightest bit when I take it from him. Our fingers brush, and that same charge zips over my nerve endings in a way I’ve never experienced with anyone else. My body finds a thousand ways to tell me Maxim is distinct. It has refused to offer this response to any other man, and I’m finally accepting his place in my life. It’s hard to imagine where I fit in his if I think about it too hard, so I’ve determined to just feel how good it is to be with him again.
“Doc, it’s absolutely beautiful.” Tears prick my eyes and I touch the compass charm dangling from a platinum bracelet. “You didn’t . . . you don’t have to do this.”
“I wanted to.”
He takes it from me, wraps the delicate rope around my wrist and does the clasp. I trace the points—north, south, east and west—and remember running in the four directions during my Sunrise Dance, gathering the elements to myself. This gift feels perfect and meaningful.
“It’s because we found our way back to each other,” he says, a self-deprecating twist to his mouth. “Or rather I got tired of waiting and demanded you back in my life. Maybe I’m more like my father than I want to admit.”
He says it lightly, but I know he means it and on some level, questions it, maybe even worries about it.
I stand and walk around the table. For once I’m taller, his face level with my chest.
“You and your father are a lot alike, but you’re different in all the right ways. I sometimes wonder how did Warren Cade make a man like you?”
He nods and lets out a harsh laugh. “I wonder that, too.”
“But he didn’t make you. The ruthlessness, the ambition, the determination and sense of adventure—all those things come from your father, but you studied beyond what he taught you. You went out into the world to see what else there was to it. You chose those experiences, and they shaped you into the man you are. Into the man I . . .”
I can’t say that word yet. Our reunion is too new. We’re too new, this version of us.
I dip my head and hold his stare. “You’re exactly the man I want.”
48
Maxim
She can’t possibly know what it means to hear her say that.
I’m exactly the man she wants.
The way she looks down at me now is the same way she did when she thought I was a struggling student abroad. Before she knew my name or who my family was, she looked at me just like this, a double helix of curiosity and hunger. I thought I wanted her then, but it was just a struck match. What burns inside me now is rampant, a wildfire I’m tired of trying to contain.
She straddles me. Her skirt rides up, exposing the length of firm thighs and a tantalizing glimpse of pink panties. I slide my palms over her legs and under her skirt, cupping her ass and urging her closer. Her breath hitches when her pussy, covered only by a strip of silk, hits my cock. There’s so little separating me from what I’ve wanted since that night in the garden. She closes her eyes and moves her hips, the muscles of her butt flexing in my hands.
“So no mile-high club for you yet?” she asks.
“Are you going to pop my mile-high cherry?” I laugh.
“I’ll pop it if I can find it.” She grins and slips her hand between us, gripping and squeezing my cock. “Oh, look. Here it is.”
“Jesus, Nix.” I drop my head back and groan at her touch. I reach for the buttons of her blouse, my fingers clumsy but I’m determined to see her. Her bra is pink too, and the brown discs of her nipples show through the windows of lace. I tug the straps from her shoulders, jerking the bra down to expose the plump nipples tipping her breasts. I can’t tear my eyes away, and reach out to thumb one. She inhales sharply, her eyes dazed, her mouth open and panting. I take one breast into my mouth and pinch the other.
She starts riding me, rhythmic and writhing. She presses me to her. “Suck harder.”
God, she’s a dream. I comply, sucking harder. “What else?” I ask against her breast. “Tell me what you want, Nix.”
“I want . . .” She closes her eyes and licks her lips. “Finger me.”
Hell, yes.
Still sucking her breast, I slip my hand into her panties, stroking her clit with my thumb and pushing three fingers inside of her.
Wet. Hot. Slick.
“Holy shit.” She clutches the back of my neck, rides my fingers and lifts the fall of hair off her neck. “Don’t stop.”
I’m mesmerized by the undulating line of her body, by the long, trembling sweep of her throat, by the bob of her breasts. Her dark brows pinch and her moans fill the cabin.
“What else can I do for you?” I ask, my voice husky, my dick so very hard. Pleasing her turns me on almost as much as her hands on me.
She eyes me through an arc of dense lashes when she says what I hoped against hope she would. “Eat my pussy.”
Fuck, that’s hot. I’m gonna come in my pants if I don’t get inside her soon.
I pick her up, and she loops her arms around my neck and locks her ankles at the base of my spine. With quick strides I take
us to the back of the plane and into the bedroom outfitted with everything I need to be comfortable even thirty thousand feet in the air.
I lay her down gently on the bed, push her skirt up and pull her panties down past her ankles. Dragging her to the edge, I press my face between her legs, lick the inside of her thigh. It’s damp, and I get drunk on the smell, the taste of her passion.
“Like this?” I pant into the plump, wet rise between her thighs.
“Oh, God, Maxim. Yes. Come on.”
I lick her pussy, spreading the lips, tonguing her, sucking her clit. I don’t know how long I’m down there, but it’s like a fever dream. I lose myself. I’ve wanted this, her, for so long I’m afraid to stop. She spills on my tongue, the flavor so rich and even better than I remember. I groan, not wanting to stop despite the demanding throb of my cock.
She’s limp, her eyes closed, her fingers twitching, her kiss-swollen bottom lip caught between her teeth, and her cheeks streaked with tears. I lift myself to hover over her and bury my head in the dusky cloud of hair spread behind her.
“What else?” I whisper in her ear. “I want to make you feel good. What else can I do?”
Her lashes lift slowly, her pupils blown wide with lust and emotion that swallow the foggy gray of her eyes. “Fuck me.”
A shudder rips through my entire body. I don’t know if she’s begging for it or commanding it, but I want to give it to her right now. I impatiently shed my pants and briefs and jerk the sweater over my head. I settle between her legs, but she stops me.
“Wait,” she says, the one word hanging between us. “I want to see you.”
“To see me?” I can’t even compute it for a moment, but then she starts touching me, tracing the muscles in my belly and at my hips. She caresses the tattoo inked over my left pectoral.
“Endurance,” she reads. “I don’t remember that being there before.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Is that for Shackleton’s ship? Or the quality in your character?”
I smile and dot kisses over her breasts, pleased she remembered the things I told her about my expedition hero. “Both.”
She shivers under my lips and fingers, running her hand over my ass. I clench under her sensual exploration. She caresses the flanks of my thighs and urges me forward.
“You’re a beautiful man, Maxim Kingsman Cade.” A wicked grin lights her eyes and curves her lips. She opens her legs like they’re the gates to paradise.
It’s her willingness that is my undoing. She wants it as badly as I do. I prop myself on one elbow beside her head. I push in excruciatingly slowly, inch by torturous inch. My body begs to slam into her, but I want to relish these first few seconds when she’s mine again. The way her body clamps around me is literally the best thing I’ve ever felt in my life.
“Oh, my God,” she gasps, closing her eyes.
“Look at me when I’m fucking you, Lennix.”
Her eyes open, flaring at the commanding, possessive tone I can’t suppress any longer. She was right about me. I am a wolf in wolf’s clothing, and I’ll consume her if she’ll let me. I won’t leave even a crumb for another man. She is mine.
“I gave you what you wanted,” I say. “Now you give me what I want.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Cade?” she asks, her voice teasing, husky.
I brush a few flyaway strands from her face. “Don’t shut me out ever again.”
Surprise flits across her expression. I move inside her, pushing deeper until we both groan and grip each other like this could end at any moment.
“Okay.” Her breathing is labored and thin. “I won’t shut you out.”
That’s all I want from her.
Oh, and this pussy.
“I want this.” I hook my elbow under her knee and press our foreheads together as I burrow deeper inside, as deep as possible. “Just this.”
I plow into her, and my cock is relentless in its pursuit of satisfaction. I lose my train of thought in the bliss of her body. Her legs tangle with mine. I kiss her, and it’s so tender, the way she opens for me, the emotion in something as simple as the glide of our tongues together, it makes my chest ache. I slip one hand between us, stroking her, clasping her neck as the rhythm of our bodies turns frenetic, a churning chaos of arms and legs and pussy and cock. The rich intercourse of our scents and the sounds we make enshroud us in a world that blocks out everything but this. We make a universe of our own. It’s just us, and this is where I want to be.
She is where I want to be.
I’ve spent my entire life chasing answers, solutions, truth, money, success—you name it, I’ve been driven to gain it. That drive is as much a part of my DNA as my father’s green eyes. But right now, buried inside the woman who feels like a part of me, contracting around me, our heartbeats pounding in synch, my body spilling all its secrets to hers, I gain the one thing that has eluded me all these years. A perfect stillness. An end to the searching. A found-ness, a seen-ness I didn’t even know to look for.
So this is contentment.
49
Lennix
I’ve had sex, but it’s been years since I woke with a man in my bed.
Much less a wolf.
A wall of muscle warms my back and hard arms hold me tightly, possessively and with the utmost care. I trace the bulge of Maxim’s bicep, the golden skin and fine hairs dusting his forearms. When I find the tiny scar that introduced us, I smile. That seventeen-year-old-girl who gaped at this gorgeous man through clouds of tear gas and a rain of rubber bullets had no idea she would end up here with him. Naked between love-mussed sheets.
“You up?” Maxim asks, leaving tender kisses on my back, neck and shoulders, his hand roaming my stomach and sliding between my breasts. His cock digs into the curve of my butt.
“I see you are up.” I laugh.
His chuckle rumbles through my bones like a car, revved, idling. “Don’t mind him,” Maxim says. “He has a one-track mind.”
I turn over in the decadence of million-thread-count silk sheets, in the biggest bed I’ve ever slept in. Maxim doesn’t do anything on a small scale, and the plane last night and this hotel are no exception.
“Which track is that?” I smile into eyes that mirror my own satisfaction.
“The you track.” His smile dims a little, but the contentment doesn’t. “Pretty much just you, Nix.”
“The me track has to get out of this bed if I plan to make my meeting. I’m in Ohio to work for your brother, buddy. Sorry we don’t get more time together.”
“I have an idea.” He dips his head and nibbles my ear, sending a ripple of lust I don’t have time for through my body. “You could skip the service trip to Costa Rica, and come with me to Paris for this climate change summit instead.”
“You do realize you just suggested I renege on my commitment to building schools in an impoverished village to run off to Paris with you?”
“And that’s bad?” he asks with a straight face and sly humor in his eyes.
I slap his shoulder. “You know I can’t. I committed to this trip before I took on Owen’s campaign, so it’s not the best timing, but I have to honor my word. If for no other reason than I can’t let the San Carols students I’m taking with me down.”
“And Wallace?” Maxim runs a finger along my collarbone, not looking up when he asks the question.
“What about him?”
“Ten whole days in a hot jungle with your ex-boyfriend sounds sexy.” A humorless smile pulls his mouth into a stiff curve. “Maybe old feelings stir. Things happen.”
“Hey.” I pass my thumb over that unnatural smile he’s wearing. “Foster step-cousin, remember?”
His smile is genuine for the first time since we started discussing the trip.
“It’s not like that with Wall and me,” I tell him. “It never really was. We just . . . tried.”
“Well, there’s no trying with me.” Maxim gently pushes me back into the pillows. “There’s no stopping th
is.”
His kisses descend from the curve of my neck to the tilt of my breast, melting my core, and my hips start circling, subtly finding an ancient rhythm of want. His fingers wander from my knee to inside my thigh and higher. My breath hitches when he strokes between my legs.
“Doc,” I groan, giving the watch on my wrist a half-hearted glance. “My meeting. I have to get up. I have to go.”
“Not yet,” he whispers and kisses my neck, sucks my nipple, squeezes my ass. “Give me a little more. Two more minutes.”
Two turns to ten. His tender, nibbling kisses devour me. Light touches ignite our bodies to burn. Our hearts pound and our passion overwhelms us. A little more becomes everything, and before I know it, we’re lost in a tangle of I am his and he is mine, insatiable, inseparable.
Perfect together.
50
Lennix
“So do you hate me yet?” Wallace asks.
`The look I shoot him is part affection, part exasperation, and no hatred whatsoever.
“Of course not.” I scoop a spoonful of rice and beans into my mouth, a staple here on the Bribri reserve, and chew before continuing. “It’s been a great trip.”
“Not too rough?” He takes a bite of potato wrapped in banana leaf and waits for my reply.
“The hardest part was getting here.”
After we landed in San Jose with our group of twenty—a few doctors and scientists like Wallace, some adult volunteers like me, and ten students from the San Carlos reservation—we took a bumpy five-hour bus ride on rugged terrain into the mountains, swerving to avoid the occasional bull or chicken in the middle of the road. Then a raft carried us deeper into parts of the village only accessible by water.
“Paco said we’re lucky it’s not the rainy season,” one of the students, Anna, says, her wide smile gleaming from the metal of her braces. “We might not have been able to cross the river.”
I smile at the young women from the San Carlos reservation who have conducted themselves with such dignity since we arrived. A few of them speak Spanish, which is what the people here speak primarily. I listen with fascination and some wistfulness when I hear the people of Bribri speaking their native language, too. I know some Apache, and am constantly learning more, but I, like many of my generation, am not fluent. The devastating legacy of colonialism in America is so vast, but one of the worst parts is the gradual disappearance of our languages. We were forbidden for many years to even speak our tribal tongues, and many of our languages could be extinct within the next decade. The people of Bribri may not have much materially, but I love seeing they still have their culture, their ancient ways, and their language, even as they attempt to embrace modern necessities.
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