by Amy Andrews
Ali smiled. She knew what he’d meant and she grabbed hold of the conversation redirect gladly.
‘I wish.’ Ali doubted sleep would be easy to achieve tonight. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep very much. I’ve barely managed two or three hours a night since the case went to court.’
Max nodded. He’d known insomnia had plagued her throughout the court case. It had plagued him since Tori had left, hence his marathon training. He’d basically run until he was exhausted.
The only time he’d slept soundly in the last eighteen months that hadn’t been fatigue induced had been the night they’d spent together.
The thoughts he’d had last night while talking to her on the phone returned. There was nothing quite like a good orgasm to induce a deep, satisfying slumber.
He shut his mind against the illicit suggestion that was forming. Tried anyway. And failed.
Damn it, he’d managed to shut the door on it last night, he could do it tonight.
But she hadn’t been shirtless last night …
And while his mind was struggling with the door his mouth had other ideas.
‘I know a good way to get you to sleep … ‘
CHAPTER NINE
ALI’s heart tripped in her chest at Max’s low husky words. The possibilities quickened her breath.
‘Is it … appropriate?’
‘No.’ It was very, very inappropriate. But … it wasn’t as if he were sleeping with her. He was just … bending the rules a little.
Walking that fuzzy grey line.
Ali swallowed. ‘What did you … have in mind?’
‘Are you wearing underwear?’
Ali’s heart pounded so loudly through her ears it sounded as if a brass band were playing at the end of her bed. Surely he could hear it?
‘Yes.’
Max felt the soft graze of terry towelling taunt his hardness as her husky response stroked fingers of desire up the backs of his thighs and deep into his buttocks.
‘Take them off.’
Ali’s breath stuttered out at his shocking suggestion. ‘I don’t think … I mean I’m not sure … ‘
Her almost maidenly hesitation inflamed his desire further. ‘I want to stroke you all over. I need you naked.’
‘But …’ Ali groped for a modicum of sense in a brain quickly liquefying into a puddle of lust. Was he suggesting what she thought he was? ‘You’re not here.’
Max chuckled at her confusion, at her determination to hold onto sense despite the breathy quality to her voice that told him she was as titillated as he was.
‘You’re going to do it for me.’
Ali sucked in a breath. Oh, God. He was! He was suggesting it. The thought of phone sex with Max invaded and conquered every cell.
Dared she?
It was one thing to be topless and talking to him—it was naughty and he didn’t have to know. It was another entirely to be naked, talking to him and … touching herself.
And him knowing.
Max could hear nothing but the tortured husky timbre of her breath. ‘Take them off, Aleisha,’ he murmured again.
Ali, her last skerrick of resistance obliterated by his illicit demand, whispered, ‘Okay.’
She stood, holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder again as her shaking hands slipped her knickers down her thighs and past her knees. She stepped out of them and kicked them free.
Max, his own pulse loud in his ears, could just make out the rustling as Ali removed her underwear.
She’d done it. She’d actually done it.
He felt her low hoarse, ‘What next?’ right down to his toes.
‘Lay on the bed.’
Ali, her legs suddenly as useless as boiled spaghetti, sank onto her pillow-topped mattress. The white cotton sheet felt as decadent as black satin. Her bed suddenly seemed to hover like a magic carpet.
The bedside lamp, which had always needed a brighter bulb, now bathed her body in a soft sexy light and Ali almost gasped as she watched her breasts swing and bounce seductively with every movement.
She put the phone on speaker and set it near her head. ‘Okay.’
Max heard excitement and anticipation in the breathy roughness of her voice. His body ached but he ignored his own discomfort.
He shut his eyes and imagined he was lying in bed with her. ‘You have the most amazing breasts,’ he murmured. ‘Soft but still firm. And big. I like how big your breasts are. I’m touching them, Aleisha. Can you feel it? They fill my palms. I like how my hands look on your breasts. They feel big and rough against all that softness.’
Ali felt her stomach twist deep inside at his words. Her eyes fluttered closed as his voice evoked the images he described. His hands on her breasts—caressing, stroking, kneading.
‘Are you touching them? Touch them, Aleisha.’
Ali’s hands seemed to move of their own volition in response to his rough command. ‘Oh,’ she cried out, biting down on her lip as her nipples tightened the second her fingers tentatively touched the swell of one breast.
‘What?’ he murmured.
Ali shivered. ‘My hands are cold but my skin … my skin is hot. I have … goose bumps.’
Max almost groaned as he saw the aroused peaks of her breasts in his mind’s eye. ‘Your nipples are hard, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Like berries.’
‘Yes.’
‘Touch them,’ he demanded in an urgent whisper.
Ali ran her finger lightly over a taut brown peak. She bit down on her lip as a streak of molten lust arrowed its way to her middle and oozed rivulets of sensation from her belly to her thighs.
‘They feel good, don’t they, Aleisha? I wish you could taste them. They taste like you, all sweetness and spice and they feel ruched against my tongue. I’m swiping my tongue across one of those hard little buds right now. I like how you do that funny noise at the back of your throat when I suck one deep inside my mouth.’
Ali heard the moan escape from her lips and drift into the air somewhere above her head. She flattened the pad of her thumb against each nipple and pushed hard to ease the tingling his words had evoked.
Max gripped the phone. ‘I love making you moan. I like watching your nipple when I let it go and watch how it gets all hard as the air hits it. Put your fingers in your mouth, Aleisha, make your nipples wet for me.’
Powerless to resist the low sexy commands coming from the phone, Ali did as she was bid, smearing warm saliva on her nipples. It cooled rapidly against the heated flesh and she gasped as her nipples tightened to an almost unbearable intensity.
‘You like that, don’t you, Aleisha?’
Ali shifted restlessly against the bed, eyes still closed, head tossed to the side. ‘Yes,’ she breathed heavily as she channelled Max’s hands cupping and squeezing her breasts.
Max’s breath hitched at the note of sexual abandonment in her voice. ‘What else do you want, Aleisha? Tell me.’
Ali tossed her head to the side. She wanted to feel his mouth on hers, to feel him deep inside her. ‘I want to … touch you …’ she murmured.
Max’s erection kicked hard against the confines of the towel. It would be so easy to loosen it, slip his hand down, touch himself as she was doing.
His body was all but demanding it.
But that he couldn’t justify. In this strange new world of ethical ambiguity he seemed to be co-existing in with Ali, that would be taking it too, too far. That would be well and truly stepping over the line.
And this wasn’t about him.
‘No,’ he murmured. ‘This is for you. Only you.’
Ali opened her eyes, opened her mouth to protest. If he could play, why couldn’t she? But then he said, ‘Spread your legs, Aleisha,’ and she lost her mind.
‘Call me Ali,’ she begged as the sheets rasped against the backs of her thighs adding to the sensual overload.
‘No.’ Too, too far.
‘Please, Max,’ she implored as her fingertips trailed
lightly over her belly.
He ignored her. ‘Are you ready for me down there? I can still remember how you taste. I dream about it.’
Ali felt her body flush with heat as she breathed heavily into the phone. There was an unbearable tingling between her legs and she pressed her bottom into the mattress to ease the deep-seated ache.
‘Touch yourself,’ he urged, remembering vividly how sweet she was. He gripped the sheet beside him to stop himself from ripping off the towel. ‘Are you wet?’ he asked, his voice so deep and rough he barely recognised it. ‘Are you ready for me?’
Ali mindlessly followed his command. She quivered as her first tentative touch caused a pulse to throb to life deep inside.
‘N-no,’ she murmured as her light touch found her wanting.
‘I don’t believe you,’ he murmured. ‘I can hear it in your voice, Aleisha. You. Are. Ready.’
Ali hesitated. It had been many years since she’d done any kind of self-exploration and even with the devil himself whispering illicit instructions, urging her on, it felt … juvenile.
‘Do it, Aleisha,’ he growled, already picturing her pleasuring herself in his mind’s eye. Already hearing her throaty cries as she orgasmed in his ear. ‘You know you want to,’ he added, dropping his voice another octave. ‘You know you want to come. You know you want me to make you.’
Ali shivered. She did. God, help her, she did. She was going to hell, no doubt about it, but right now the dictates of her libido were drowning out all sense.
She slid her finger inside. Internal muscles contracted around her and an involuntary moan slipped from her mouth.
Ali shivered as her finger met the warm slick lubrication that Max craved. That she craved. ‘Oh yes,’ she half sighed, half moaned.
‘I told you,’ he whispered. ‘I told you, you were ready for me. Now, touch your breasts again,’ he ordered.
Ali mindlessly did his bidding, her still erect nipples flowering beneath her dewy touch.
‘I want to taste them,’ he half crooned, half groaned.
His admission, low and sweet, caused another deep contraction and Ali felt a surge of moisture at the apex of her thighs.
‘I want you to taste them too,’ she whispered. ‘I want you to taste between my legs too.’
Max groaned into the phone as an image of him kneeling between her thighs paralysed him.
‘Stroke yourself.’ His husky command was urgent. ‘I want to hear you come. I want to hear you call my name as you come.’
Ali slid her hands back down. She was ready. Eager for her touch. Throbbing for release.
‘Ah-h-h,’ she cried as her sensitised flesh leapt to life at her first exploratory stroke.
‘Yes,’ Max whispered as her whimper got him harder still. ‘Close your eyes. Pretend it’s me. Me touching you, tasting you.’
Driven by his sexual rhetoric, Ali found the hard little nub she sought easily. She stroked it at his urging and it reared against her touch, painful in its sensitivity.
She almost orgasmed instantly. ‘Ah-h-h,’ she murmured.
‘You like that? Can you feel me? I love how you taste.’
Ali cried out as the line between pleasure and pain blurred and the sensations overpowered her.
‘Easy, Aleisha,’ Max murmured, his voice low and steady. ‘Take it easy. Don’t rush. I like to go slow. I like to savour every little whimper, every little squirm.’
Ali instantly slowed the pace, eased back on the pressure. She sucked in a breath as the sensations dropped to a slow hum, a languorous buzz. A small whimper escaped as the maelstrom subsided and she could breathe.
Max heard the frantic edge to her indecipherable utterings lessen and the ratcheting tension in his neck and shoulders eased.
‘That’s good,’ he crooned, desperately fighting to control the freight-train pace of his own breath. ‘We have time, we have all night.’
Ali relaxed as he murmured sweet nothings in her ear. He told her how he wanted to kiss her all over. How he dreamt about her. How her vanilla scent drove him crazy and he’d fantasised about doing her on his desk in her skirt.
And soon the storm was on her again. But she was prepared for it now, had kept pace with its build and she welcomed the maelstrom with all its thunder and lightning.
‘Oh, God, Max,’ she moaned as she pushed away the first ripple.
‘It’s okay, Aleisha, you can let it go now.’
Ali shook her head, her eyes squeezed shut. No, she needed him to say her name. Her real name. ‘Ali,’ she snapped as she pushed away another ripple. ‘It’s Ali.’
Max shook his head. Was she trying to kill him? ‘Damn it, Max,’ Ali panted. ‘Say it.’
‘No,’ he insisted.
Ali refused to come without hearing it. ‘I’m not …’ She slowed the pace. ‘I won’t … ‘
Max set his jaw. ‘Yes, you are. Yes, you will.’
Slowing the pace didn’t work. Her body was already spiralling. ‘Max!’
Max heard the growing desperation and knew she was close. ‘It’s too late, Aleisha, you’re there,’ he goaded, hanging onto his last skerrick of restraint.
‘No … I won’t,’ she insisted as a pulse started to spread from her fingers out. She shook her head, ignoring the dark warning in his voice, fighting the pull.
‘Come, Aleisha,’
‘No.’ Damn it, no.
Max could feel his chest pounding, his breath bursting in his lungs. She was fighting it. Fighting her own orgasm. Fighting the one thing he could give her—the only thing.
‘Let go, Aleisha, let go.’
‘Damn it, Max,’ she cried out because she was almost there and she couldn’t hold it back any longer, she wanted it too much and she simply wasn’t strong enough to hold out against him.
Another thing she couldn’t control.
Max recognised surrender when he heard it. ‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘Yes, Ali, yes.’
His rough, almost pained words reached her through the haze delivering what she’d craved on a broken whisper. ‘Max,’ she panted as she broke into a thousand pieces.
Max gripped the phone as Ali’s cries reached an ear-shattering crescendo. They vibrated down the line directly into his brain, twisting like a tornado through every cell in his body.
Torturing, tormenting, teasing.
Even as they eased, dropping to low throaty whimpers, they taunted him with their passionate intensity. Right in his ear she seemed so close.
Touchable. Real. Concrete.
As if she were in bed beside him.
Ali slowly spun back to earth, sucking in frantic breaths, grappling to understand what she’d just allowed to happen as her hands fell uselessly on the bed beside her and her bones turned to liquid. ‘Max … I …’ she panted. ‘That was … ‘
Max heard the confusion in her breathy voice. ‘It’s okay,’ he murmured. ‘I know.’
He knew? Did he do this often? ‘But, I … ‘
She what? She couldn’t think. Hell, she could barely breathe! ‘You called me Ali,’ she murmured, because it had whispered into her ear at just the right moment and ricocheted around her head echoing to the time of her orgasm.
He grimaced at his slip, annoyed at himself for succumbing. But her cries had pushed him to the edge and it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do.
‘It’s okay, Max,’ she yawned as his silence stretched. ‘It was just what I needed.’
Max should have been pleased that he’d given her what she needed but his body was aching, his honour was dented and her voice in his ear was just too damn much. ‘Go to sleep, Aleisha. Sweet dreams.’
It took Ali a moment to realise the phone had gone dead and she stared at it for a while before she hit the end button.
She was asleep in under a minute.
Max, still awake at four a.m., finally admitted defeat and hit the pavements again.
Ali met up with Reginald Aimes the next morning on her way into court and
they were chatting in the foyer waiting for the rest of the team when Max approached from behind. Ali blushed as he greeted her, their telephonic tryst from last night still making her hot all over.
She was nervous too in her deliberately provocative clothes. Last night she’d selfishly taken what was on offer from him. This morning she wanted to show him what was on offer from her.
Max studiously avoided looking at anything other than her eyes. The back view of that banned sexy skirt combined with sheer black stockings, stilettos and white clingy blouse he could definitely make out her bra strap through had been enough of a jolt.
His air-hostess fantasy given form and shape.
He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of checking out the front view in front of Reg. ‘You look … well rested,’ he commented politely as a cloud of vanilla enveloped him and his libido growled.
Ali kept her face neutral. ‘Thanks, I had some … help.’
Max quirked an eyebrow. ‘You took my advice about a sleeping pill?’
She shook her head. ‘Apparently there are other more … alternative ways, to get off to sleep.’
Max’s lips twitched. ‘Massage, deep breathing … something like that?’
Ali pressed her lips together as his husky commanding whisper from last night revisited. Her skin goosed. She was acutely aware of Reg beside her ignorant to the subtext.
She nodded. ‘Something like that.’
Reg’s phone rang and he excused himself. Max glanced over his shoulder then back to her, allowing his gaze free rein. He shook his head. ‘Seriously, Aleisha? That skirt? The vanilla.’ He kept his voice low. ‘Are you trying to drive me insane?’
‘I think that’s only fair after last night,’ she murmured.
Max felt his resolve to make a clean break weaken. ‘It’s working.’
Aleisha smiled. ‘I’m also not wearing any underwear.’
It had seemed a rather daring thing to do this morning as she was dressing but it had been sufficiently titillating to distract her from the day ahead and anything that could do that was a good thing as far as she was concerned.
Max narrowed his gaze as his resolve disappeared into the fires of damnation right along with his soul.
To hell with ending it—he could do that tomorrow.
