“I’m going to…yes! Yes! Just like that. It’s so good…”
He let go of my hands and wrapped his arms around my waist, hoisting me even closer to his gyrating hips so the friction between us was even hotter. They were moving with such force that the bed started to really shake. I coiled and tightened my legs around him, moving my body in time with his.
“Jesus fuck, baby. Your pussy’s like a vise. Squeeze my dick, yeah…just like that. Oh yeah, that’s it.”
Soon enough, a warm, electric wave of pleasure was gaining momentum within, delicious euphoria radiating in every cell of my body, until I couldn’t take it anymore. I closed my eyes, my mouth gaping open without sound as my orgasm ripped through me, with my man growling his shortly afterwards.
It took quite a while, but eventually, I opened my eyes. Max was still on top of me, breathing heavily, holding my body and head close against him. He buried his face in my neck, rubbing his soft lips against my nape, and I could hear him inhaling deeply.
“You keep sniffing me like a puppy!” I giggled.
He cackled into my skin, then lifted his head and howled like wild dog. I covered my face, my whole body shaking as I dissolved into a fit of laughter. He planted a kiss on the small exposed spot on my forehead, in between my hands.
“Be right back,” he said, rolling off and trotting to his bathroom. Meanwhile, I propped myself up on my elbows and took in my surroundings, realizing I had never been in Max’s bedroom before. One glance and then I remembered: this wasn’t really his house. He was renting it from my friend, Lauren, who was now married to Max’s friend, Jackson Sullivan. The Sullivans lived in the house Jackson built himself, with their latest addition, their son, Wyatt. Most of the room was still all Lauren, with its creamy yellow walls, shabby chic painted furniture, and gingham throw pillows in the corner. But Max must have switched out the matching bedding because he had an oversized, navy-blue comforter with high-thread-count butter-soft ivory sheets.
I flipped over onto my stomach as he sauntered out of the bathroom, all chiseled muscles, smooth, tanned skin, and black ink. I probably would’ve stayed awestruck by the sight of him, but I felt his semen dripping out of me and that’s when it hit me.
“We didn’t use a condom.”
“Nope,” he said, not seeming at all concerned.
I lifted my head, studying his expression. Placid. Serene. He looked like a man who had just come, so of course he was relaxed.
“I can’t believe…” I dropped my face into my hands, trying to remember my yoga breathing: in through the nose, out through the mouth. Slow, deliberate breaths.
“We’re fine,” he said. “I’m clean.”
I guffawed into my palms this time. “Oh really? How can you be so sure? You’ve been with a lot of women, Max.”
“Yeah, but you’re the only one I’ve fucked bare in over ten years.”
I cocked my head to the side. “C’mon, now.”
“I’m dead serious, Jess.”
I did the math quickly in my mind, realizing his last time going without protection was right around the time Piper was conceived, a child he supposedly didn’t know existed until a year ago. My heart started thundering, so much so, I felt like the breath was knocked right out of me. Did he start using protection because he actually knew he had gotten her mom pregnant? I grabbed the comforter and wrapped it around, like a shield.
He noticed. Of course he noticed, and he didn’t like it one bit. He came closer, resting his thighs against the bed frame, arms folded across his muscled bare chest. He had thrown a pair of jeans on and nothing else.
“Loni, Piper’s mother, was a gal I used to hook up with. After back-to-back tours, I was on a path of self-destruction and being with her was a prime example of that. But it seems she painted a picture to Piper of us being more than what we were and I don’t bother to alter that perception. It’s certainly better for her to hold on to the idea of us as a couple than one of her mother riding me in the back of my truck, every chance she got, without so much as a dinner or phone call in between.
“Back then, I got into a lot of fights, drank ’til I blacked out and, if a woman let me fuck her bare, that’s how it went down. I had a death wish, mostly because I couldn’t stomach how I’d survived and some of my men didn’t. But I hooked up with the Order ten years ago and they straightened my ass right out – went gloved from then on – not because I knew I was having a kid, but because I no longer had that death wish – and certainly didn’t need it delivered through my dick.
“I’ve been tested and I’m clean, baby. You’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m not wearing anything with you because it’s just goin’ to be you and me in this bed from now on.”
I nodded, certainly relieved he hadn’t known he had gotten Piper’s mother pregnant. I still brought up my legs up to my chest, hugging them to myself and resting my chin on my knees. “But don’t you think…I mean, you didn’t know if I was clean or if I’m on birth control. You’ve taken a risk here with me.”
He didn’t answer, the muscles in his jaw ticking away. The tension rolled off of him in waves—and that’s when it hit me.
“There was no need for you to ask me about how many men I’ve slept with, the scant few there’ve been, or if I was clean and on birth control because you already had the answers. You’ve looked into every aspect of my life already, haven’t you?”
“Are you going to lose it on me? Give me a whole speech about how I invaded your privacy, how I should’ve asked you all this shit first?”
“Would it make you apologize or lead you to believe you had done something that crossed the line?”
“Uh…that would be a ‘no’.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said with a sigh. “I get the kind of man you are and I understand you looking into me to ensure I was safe to be around Piper. I even get you looking into me out of curiosity. But from now on? You want to know something about me? You ask me. You don’t go sniffing around behind my back. Can you do that?”
Without a second of hesitation, he said, “Yeah, baby, I can do that.”
My shoulders dropped, letting go of tension I didn’t even realize I was holding. “Good. Now, I need to clean up. Lucky for you, I am on birth control.” I started crawling off the bed.
He grimaced.
“What?”
His eyes darkened as he grabbed me by the waist, pulling me to him. His skin was so warm against mine. I automatically rubbed my breasts against his chest hair, loving the friction on my nipples. I could feel wet gathering between my legs again.
“I know we’re new, but the idea of knocking you up, planting my kid in your belly,” he uttered with reverence as his hand stroked down my middle, “fuck I like that.”
The idea thrilled me too, more than it should. We were going from zero to warp five thousand and my head and heart had been tilted on their axes. I was high. I was floating and I never wanted to come down.
Chapter Seven
After cleaning up, I found Max had left some clean clothes on the bed. I couldn’t help but wonder if these were clothes left from hookups-of-Christmas-past, but since they fit perfectly and none of those women had come around in a while, I pushed the thought aside. I gathered my stuff from the night before, opened the bedroom door as quietly as possible, and peeked around to ensure the coast was clear.
“She’s still at my folks’ place,” he called out from the kitchen.
From where I was standing, there was no way he could see me. How did he know I was there?
“I heard the door opening and you not barreling out of it. It made me think you were worried Piper was around this morning.”
“Okay, you can exit my brain anytime now!” I remarked, only to hear him chuckle while maneuvering around in the kitchen.
Meanwhile, I searched through the house for a spare shopping bag
. I found one in the space Lauren used as her office, now Piper’s room. The room was already a beautifully serene shade of lilac, but Max had done an exceptional job turning it into a tween oasis. He had strung pink-and-white twinkle lights along the upper border. There wasn’t a traditional bed, which I would figure, but a rainbow tent set up in the middle of the room wasn’t what I expected either. She didn’t have a dresser, just a couple of clothing racks decorated in varying shades of colored duct tape with all her clothes on hangers, even her underwear, which she had on clothespins, about five per hanger.
Her dad had taped and tacked reams of rolled paper on the walls so she could draw and paint and color as she pleased, without destroying the walls. I thought it was quite clever and totally Piper. I liked even more that Max was the kind of man, even with his camouflage pants and tats, who knew exactly how to indulge his little girl.
I closed her door and walked into the main section of the house. The last time I was here, they had just moved in and were still living out of boxes. Even though all of Lauren’s furniture had stayed, there was absolutely no doubt a man now lived in this space. Not just any man, but one with a penchant for books and Native American décor. Across the back of the sofa and draped on top of a couple of the chairs, he had these intricately woven blankets, all in varying colors and an array of symmetrical patterns. With them grouped together, it was obvious they were from the same tribe. I placed the bag down and traced the lines of one of the patterns with my fingers, feeling the texture of the fabric.
“Those are Navajo,” he said while making breakfast. It was an open floor plan so I had a clear view of him in the kitchen. He had thrown on his jeans and a well-worn and obviously loved Johnny Cash T-shirt.
“The summer before I went off for SEAL training, I drove cross-country. When I reached the northwest corner of New Mexico, the transmission ended up shot to hell and I didn’t have enough money to replace it. So I wandered onto the Navajo reservation and convinced one of the garage owners to give me a temp job as a mechanic and, let me tell ya, Thom wasn’t too eager to give some white, teenage, drifter,” he said, throwing a bunch of what looked like chopped onions into a pan. Then, with one hand, he tapped an egg on the edge of his countertop and cracked it open in a large glass bowl and kept repeating it with more of them. Each of his movements, I noticed, was economical, precise.
“How did you finally convince him to give you a chance?”
“Ah.” He looked up, arching his eyebrow while whisking the eggs. “I appealed to his entrepreneurial spirit. At that time, there wasn’t anyone in a, I don’t know, three- to five-hundred-mile radius building bikes, much less who knew what they were doing well enough that some motorhead would trust to repair their hog, if they got stuck on a run. So I promised to stay on long enough to teach his boy, River, everything I knew. I lived on the res for six months, the first month in a hogan.”
“A hogan?”
“Yeah, their version of a tent. I slept on a dirt floor. There’s no air or heat, no running water, no indoor plumbing. You get the idea.”
“So, after a month, you earned enough of Thom’s trust for him to offer you a place to stay in his home?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “That’s a negative. Thom was a mean and crusty son of a bitch, but River was cool, around my age. We’re still friends. No, I left the hogan behind when I met River’s aunt. She took one look at me, said I could use a shower, and offered hers. I wasn’t in there five minutes before she hopped in to join me. Stayed with her the rest of my time on the res. She’s the one who wove these rugs.” He gestured to them with the tip of the knife he was using to slice some avocado. “She came from a family that had kept the tradition alive for generations. She was thirty-two. I was nineteen.” He offered a crooked smile. “It was a good time.”
I nodded, trying to imagine a younger, teenage version of Mad Max, realizing he was the same age now that his weaver lover was when she took him in. I eyed the rest of the room. Except for the books, he obviously didn’t have much, and the space that had housed Lauren’s wall-mounted television now had another built-in bookshelf.
“You don’t have any TVs in your home,” I observed out loud.
“Rots the brain,” he said. “It took Piper some time getting used to it. I think Loni used television as a makeshift babysitter, especially on days when the chemo really kicked her ass. Can’t say I blame her. Plus, I didn’t know this at the time, but she lived in a real shit neighborhood, not the kind of place a kid could run outside and play, like they do here.” He grimaced, pausing from his kitchen prep work. “I still can’t believe Pipe lived like that. And she’s old enough to remember all that shit. I can’t take it back.”
“How could you possibly know? She hadn’t even told you about Piper at that time. Don’t blame yourself for something not in your control.”
He frowned, keeping his eyes down on what he was doing. “Yeah.”
“Do you need any help over there?” I asked, sincere in the offer but being pulled to his vast array of books on the shelves.
“No, darlin’,” he answered with amusement returning to his voice. “I wouldn’t dream of pulling you away from your first love.”
I offered him a playful wink. “At least you know where you stand right from the beginning.” I went back to perusing his collection, and dear Lord, the man had two full walls, floor to ceiling, filled with books. Each shelf was labeled by subject matter too, but while most would have alphabetized by author, Max had arranged by when the author or the concept was introduced to the field, at least according to the publishing dates I spotted while thumbing through some. I couldn’t get over the range of topics. The books on mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineering didn’t surprise me. However, he also had shelves devoted to modern architecture and art, quantum physics, anthropology, a full range of books on psychology, even some studies on education for gifted children. They weren’t introductory books either. I recognized many of the names as experts I’d studied while in grad school.
“Food’s ready,” he called out.
He carried both plates on one arm and two mugs of coffee through his fingers in his other hand and moved toward the couch where I’d just sat down. He’d made huevos rancheros that, one bite in, made my eyes roll to the back of my head.
“Geez Max, is there anything you can’t do? This is delicious.”
He gave a silent chuckle with a closed smile. “Glad you think so. I always liked watching you eat.”
I had a mouthful of food, so I covered it with my hand when asking, “Why?”
“Because you savor what you eat. You appreciate it. When you were staying with us, I have to admit, I took one look at that tiny frame of yours and thought, ‘Shit, this little girl’s going to play hockey with my food on her plate, with none of it making it into that pretty mouth.’ Then I was checking the toilets because I couldn’t believe you could pack it away like you do and not be making yourself sick or something.”
My eyes went wide and then I play-slapped him on his thigh. “Max! That’s awful!”
“Yeah it is.” I enjoyed watching his eyes crinkle in the corners over the rim of his mug.
Just then, I heard someone fiddling with Max’s front door. Startled, I jumped out of my seat, but Max motioned to sit back down.
“Relax, it’s Piper and my folks.”
“What do you mean, ‘relax’? Shouldn’t I get out of here?”
But there was no time because the door opened and Piper skipped right in.
“Hi Dad!”
Then she noticed me. She stopped, narrowed her eyes while placing her hands on her hips. Her grandparents came in right behind her, closing the door. Meanwhile, I was motionless, coffee cup midair, because I didn’t know what to do.
“Am I seeing what I’m seeing?” Piper asked Max, her tone on the border between “I’m serious” and “don’t me
ss with me”.
“What on Earth?” Piper’s stepgrandma said, practically bumping into the back of her granddaughter, followed by her husband, definitely an older version of Max.
“Vicky! Damn it, why did you stop?”
“Jack, I stopped because Piper stopped. Honey, what are you doing?” Then she peered over Piper and noticed me with Max on the sofa.
“Oh, I see. Hi, we didn’t know Max was having a visitor.”
“Hi, I’m Jessica.” I offered a half wave.
“Jess is the woman who was staying with us while you two were away for part of the summer,” Max said.
“Ohhh, you’re Jess! Glad we’re finally getting to meet ya,” Vicky said, her face all soft from her warm smile.
“Likewise.” Then I turned to Max while placing my mug on the coffee table. “Maybe I should go.”
He shot a look that communicated he would be incredibly displeased if I moved, so I mouthed “okay” with saucer eyes and both palms out in surrender.
“Well, Dad?”
He eyeballed his daughter. “Now I know for a fact Ms. Jessica taught you better than that. Am I right?”
Her shoulders slumped and she made a pouty face. “Daaaad…” she whined. “You’re killing me here!” She pounded her chest for extra dramatic emphasis.
That mischievous twinkle returned to his eye, a happy vibe radiating from him. It was so obvious - he loved his girl beyond measure. And I loved that for her, more than anything..
He glanced over at me then back over at Piper and said, “Yeah Pipe, she’s mine now, which means she’s ours. It’s all good.”
“Really?” Her face lit up.
And before I had a chance to fully digest her reaction, Piper ran across the room and jumped into my arms, giving a bear hug that almost knocked the wind out of me.
Girl Breaker Page 10
