by Vi Keeland
Max was right behind me, saying, “You amaze me, you know that?”
Later, as I got into his bed, I began to worry about the incident with Chris.
Max and I were lying on our sides, facing each other.
“What if he sues you?” I asked.
“He won’t.”
“How do you know? You’re worth…what, millions? Why wouldn’t he?”
Max ran a finger along my cheek. “Everything would come out. He won’t take that risk.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Relax. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“If that’s true,” I said, “then why did you insist that I stay here with you?”
“It was spur of the moment, with everything that happened. But now it’s convenient because tomorrow we’re going to do something I know you’ve never done.”
“What’s that?”
The possibilities were endless with Max Dalton. It would have been a waste of time and energy to even begin to guess what he had in mind.
“I’m taking you somewhere for the weekend,” he said. “We’ll stop by your place in the morning and pick up whatever you need.”
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“I hate surprises,” I said. “I mean, I hate the suspense.”
“Remember the last time I told you I had a surprise?”
Remember? How could I forget? He’d whisked me away and I had the best sex of my life that night.
“Refresh my memory,” I said, faking a frown.
Max just smiled. “Very funny.”
He fell asleep before I did. I had my back to him and he held me tightly. I listened to his deep, even breathing. I was exhausted, but I wanted to stay awake and crystallize this feeling forever in my mind.
It felt good. It felt right.
Chapter Eleven
I’m not sure how to explain how weird it was the next morning to be cruising through Los Angeles in Max’s convertible Porche 911. It was strange because I felt so free and elated, but in the back of my mind there was still the chill of fear from the incident with Chris.
What had started off as a terrifying evening had turned into a night of mind-blowing sex with Max, and there I was the next morning being whisked off to the California wine country.
He didn’t tell me where we were going, at first. He just drove to the small Bob Hope Airport outside of Burbank, where many Hollywood stars kept private planes.
I was in awe when he told me the plane belonged to him. I halfway expected him to tell me he had chartered a flight for us or something. I’m not sure why. Max was loaded. He was a Hollywood bigshot. So why shouldn’t he have his own airplane?
“But I don’t fly it,” he said.
“Oh, well then I’m not as impressed.”
He caught my sarcasm and smiled. “Just get on the plane. My plane.”
And that’s what I did, gleefully bounding up the steps as Max followed me, patting me on the ass once.
When we got off the ground, we had a great view of the California coast. Being from the Midwest, I had never had much experience with beaches. I’d found the California coast, what little I’d seen of it, to be breathtaking. The aerial view was even more gorgeous.
Max had arranged for breakfast to be on the flight, and about thirty minutes into the trip, we were drinking orange juice and coffee, and sharing a truly sinfully large plate of French toast with berries and cream and syrup.
“Are you trying to make me fat so no one else will want me?”
Max eyed me up and down. “One plate of French toast isn’t going to make you fat.”
I threw my napkin at him. “Jerk. You know that wasn’t the point of the question.”
He swallowed the last of his bite of breakfast with a smile on his face, took a sip of OJ and said, “I don’t care if someone else wants you. They’re not going to take you away from me.”
“Welcome to Napa,” Max said as we landed.
Having heard of the place throughout my life, but having never been there, it existed only as a fantasy in my mind. Sort of the same way I felt about Max. But he was real. So was Napa. And we were here for what promised to be an amazing weekend.
Max had a car waiting for us at the airport—nothing fancy or flashy, just a good old fun Jeep, which Max drove like he’d just stolen the thing.
We zipped along roads that snaked through the wine vineyards. Max was like a tour guide, telling me all kinds of details about the various wineries we cruised past.
We finally ended up at a cottage on the side of a hill. It was private, nestled in a patch of trees. I got out of the car and looked around, breathing in the crisp, fresh air.
“Come on,” Max was saying as I gazed out at the countryside, taking in the view. “There’s plenty of time for sight-seeing. What I want now is you, inside.”
“Why, Mr. Dalton,” I said, affecting a fake patrician accent, “whatever do you have in mind?”
I was trying to be playful. We’d had our fun with banter and teasing during the trip up here. I expected him to continue with the light-heartedness. But he didn’t.
“What I have in mind, beautiful Olivia, is you…naked, on the bed, so I can have my way with you.”
He stepped toward me and before I knew it, his mouth was on mine. My lips parted, letting his tongue slide in.
Max lifted me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist, locking my ankles behind his back. He walked us over to the couch. Something about this man and couches…
He set me down gently, and I felt his erection pressing between my legs.
“Let’s get these off of you.” He unbuttoned my slacks, unzipped them, and started working them down my hips and my legs. When he kissed me again, he made a moaning sound deep in his chest, almost a growl, mixed with his warm breath against my lips.
Max ran his hands up the insides of my legs, and slipped a finger under the elastic of my panties. We held eye contact as I arched into his touch and felt his finger make contact with my clit.
“Already getting wet,” he said.
“You have that effect on me.”
He kissed me again, hard, passionately, taking my tongue into his mouth and sucking on it. His finger stayed right on my clit, working perfect little circles around in the slickness. Then he used his thumb to rub my clit, and I felt him slip a finger inside me, then a second one.
Our foreheads were touching and I looked deep into his eyes as he teased me so completely. Max licked at my lips, then said, “I’m going to get you to the point where you beg me to fuck you.”
“I’m already there,” I said, without hesitation.
He shook his head slightly. “No, not yet. I’ll be the judge.”
Max resumed kissing me as his fingers explored inside, finding the spot that made me squirm. He knew he had me. He kept rubbing right there as I writhed beneath him.
Fuck. This guy knew how to make me come so good, so easily. Usually, anyway….
He stopped and raised up, kneeling on the couch. He pulled his shirt over his head. I loved watching the way his muscles moved beneath his skin.
He stood, unbuckled his belt, unzipped his pants, and was quickly standing there totally naked. Each time I saw him I was more in awe of his beautiful body. And this seemed like he was enjoying the way I looked at him, as he just stood there—totally exposed to me, his hard cock raging with lust.
“Sit up,” he said.
The commanding tone in his voice sent a tingle through my body. Never before had I been with a man who could have spoken to me like that without igniting a little resentment in me, or even eliciting some laughter. But with Max…well, he was different in countless ways.
He stepped toward me and, wordlessly, guided his cock toward my mouth. I opened and felt the head slip just past my lips.
“Suck me there.”
Again, the blunt commanding nature of his words urged me to please him.
The head o
f his cock was nestled between my pursed lips. I sucked gently, then moved my tongue in a circular motion around it. A droplet of precome was my reward.
“You look so beautiful doing that. Take it all now.”
Max put his hand on the side of my head—his palm on my cheek, his fingers pointing downward and curling under my chin. He held my head in place as he moved back forth, slowly, fucking my mouth.
I felt his cock grow harder and bigger as it slid in and out of my mouth.
Max pulled it out after a minute or so. “Look what you do to me, Olivia.”
His erection was thick, full, appearing to be on the verge of erupting right there in front of my face. It was slick and glistening from my sucking. Pointing straight out and up a little. Eager. Ready.
Max moved toward me, bent down, and kissed me vigorously. “Lie back.”
I repositioned myself the way he wanted.
He lowered himself to his knees in front of me, and in less than two seconds his mouth was on me. His tongue parted me and slipped into my wet hole. Damnit, I could come just from being tongue-fucked by Max. But I didn’t want to yet. I wanted it to build up slowly before the release.
“Don’t come yet,” he said, as if he were able to read my mind. And, well hell, judging by everything else he was able to do to and with me, maybe he could read it.
Max’s lips encircled my clit. He sucked it into his mouth and my hips pushed upward to meet his face.
I looked down at him. His eyes were wide open, looking right back up at me. He’d been watching my reaction. Just then, he slipped a finger inside me again, curling it so it hit that spot he had found earlier. I clenched around his finger as he rubbed me.
He pulled his face away, but kept fucking me with his finger. Just the one at first, but then another joined it. My vision was going foggy from the pleasure, but I was able to look down my body and see him still looking at me. Watching me as I writhed on the couch and grabbed one of the throw pillows so tightly I probably could have torn it open.
I didn’t think my voice would work, but I found out it did when I involuntarily said, almost shouted, “Fuck me, Max. Fuck me!”
Just like he had said: he would get me to the point of begging him to fuck me.
And finally, mercifully, that’s what he did…
With the condom rolled on, he pushed into me slowly. Deep. Then hard, all the way to the hilt. There was a little stab of pain as he stretched me, but it quickly turned to pleasure.
Just like the last time we fucked, Max again gathered both of my wrists in his strong hand and pinned my arms up over my head on the back of the couch. I was rocking back and forth from his thrusts, which were picking up speed and intensity. I could see on his face how much he wanted me, needed me, had to have me lying there with my legs spread open for him to take me however he wanted…and it was the sexiest look I’d ever seen on a man’s face.
“Tell me how it feels.”
I was almost breathless but I managed: “Perfect.”
He rammed into me harder, then stopped, his face just a couple of inches from mine. “You are perfect.” Max dropped his head and took a nipple into his mouth, sucking it in hungrily, then running his tongue around the edge of it, flicking his tongue across it, drawing it to full hardness. Then he sealed his lips around my other nipple, and applied pressure as he held it between his tongue and upper teeth—soft on one side, rough edge on the other, pleasure and a little pain.
I had been holding my breath and finally had to let it out and take another one. I hadn’t even realized I’d been doing it. Damn, how far had I let myself go that I forgot to breathe when he was doing these things to me?
He let go of my wrists, then wrapped his hand around my ankle and lifted it up in front of him, then over, so I was lying on my side.
He was still buried deep in me.
“Say my name.”
I didn’t have the breath power to say anything—my lungs were working overtime, almost panting.
“Say my name, Olivia.”
“Ma-Max…”
“Olivia.”
“Max.”
His thrusting increased, harder and deeper. “Olivia.”
Under any other circumstances, being with someone and repeating each other’s names back and forth would have been silly. A child’s game. But this was well outside the realm of play. It was a verbal connection. Just the two of us, alone, fucking, calling out to each other.
Max was kneeling on the floor and with me lying on my side on the couch, he was lined up perfectly. He had one hand on my thigh, one on my ass, as he drove into me.
I clutched the pillow and brought it to my face. I wanted to scream from the unreal sensation and I wanted the sound muffled. But Max reached up and pulled the pillow away.
“I want to hear you.”
As I moaned and breathed heavily, Max leaned down over me. He turned me on my stomach and lowered me to my knees on the floor, my arms still on the couch.
From behind, he slid deeper into me as his hips bumped against my ass.
“Let it out, Olivia.”
I screamed and “Oh!” and then “Yes!” and then his name.
“That’s it.”
Max brushed my hair to one side, exposing my neck. I felt his lips on my neck, sucking on my skin, then the hard edge of his teeth grazed along me.
Fuck. It was like he was trying to devour me, consume all of me…
His mouth still on my neck, he reached around my hip. I felt one of his fingers zero in right on my clit, and he began making circles around it. I dropped my head to the couch and just let go—all control fully ceded to Max.
“Come for me,” he whispered. “Now.”
I couldn’t hold back. In a flash, the orgasm’s prelude flushed through my body, and my pussy was in spasms around his cock.
He slowed his thrusts, riding my orgasm slowly. And then I felt his cock throb and pulsate. Then his breath exhaling harder on my neck—hot and steamy.
“Fuck…” he groaned as he began to come.
Chapter Twelve
I would have been content to take a little nap after that round of incredible sex, but Max was eager to show me around the vineyards. He also said he was famished, which I began to suspect was the real reason he was in a hurry to go out somewhere. What is it with men who have to eat after sex? Something animalistic, perhaps. Judging by Max’s ferocity on the couch earlier, I guess that’s a good assumption.
We showered together. Max washed my hair—an extremely intimate and erotic thing, in my book. I loved the way my hands slipped and slid all over his naked, lathered-up body. Forget the nap idea; I could have stayed in that shower all day.
But there was so much to do, so much to see.
We had lunch at a California cuisine restaurant, out on the deck, overlooking fields of grapes that seemed to go on forever.
“How is it?”
We had moved on from the salad to sharing a flatbread with fresh local tomatoes, artichoke hearts, onions, mushrooms, topped off with herbs and a layer of fresh house-made mozzarella.
“Amazing,” I said. “I almost wouldn’t even call it pizza.”
“Healthiest kind there is. More wine?”
I nodded but didn’t speak, having taken another bite already.
We enjoyed a few moments of silence and then I asked Max if he still wrote movies.
He looked at me and frowned. “All the time.”
“Are you going to make any of them?”
Max sipped his wine, set it on the table, and a heavy sigh left his mouth. “Probably not.”
“Why?”
“I just write for myself now. I think I’ve said all I wanted to say in my movies that got made.”
There was something on his face that told me he didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe a kind of regret, or remorse, or…maybe exhaustion.
“I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to do this,” he said. And quickly, he added, “But that’s between you
and me.”
I wondered if the movie he was making with our client, Jacqueline Marthers, would be his last. I had read the script and thought it would make an amazing movie. To think that I had played some small part in the creation of what may be Max Dalton’s last movie was thrilling and chilling at the same time.
More importantly, though, was the fact that he had apparently shared a secret with me. He trusted me enough to tell me he was thinking about getting out of the business. There was no way I’d breach his confidence.
“Okay,” I said, “so you write for yourself. Do you have all these scripts lying around somewhere?”
“Not lying around.” He smiled. “I keep them all in a desk drawer. Which,” he added, “is locked, so don’t think about stealing them and selling them on eBay.”
“What?!”
Max laughed heartily. “God, you’re fun to tease, you know that?”
“We have good banter.”
“Yes, we do.”
He lifted his wine, we clinked glasses, and drank.
We spent at least another lazy hour there, looking out over the vineyard, looking at each other, making mostly small talk. That is, until he brought up Chris.
“What’s he capable of?”
I shrugged. “What do you mean?”
“You told me what he did that night, but is there more?”
“No.”
His eyebrows rose. “Honest?”
“Honest. And I’d rather not talk about him right now.”
“Olivia, if I’m going to protect you, I need to know—”
“I don’t need you to protect me,” I said, a bit more acidly than I had intended. “If he comes back, I’ll call the cops.”
Max shook his head. “They won’t do anything. At least not until he crosses a major line and tries to hurt you, or actually hurts you.”
I knew he was right. Plus, there was the whole aspect of keeping this from my family.
By this time, however, now that Chris had showed up in L.A., I began to think there probably was more depth to his obsessively controlling anger. But what was I going to do? Express that fear to Max? Then what? I didn’t exactly know what Max was capable of, either. I really just wanted Chris to go away, back to Ohio, and stay there.
