“I did,” she said. Her hands slid around his neck. “You’re the best date I ever had.”
“Then forget what you think you know and just spend the night with me,” he said, beseeching her with his gaze. “Just be a babe spending the night with a guy she’s into… can you do that?”
The damage had already been done. Tally should never have slept with him, but she had. Throwing herself into the fantasy for a night wasn’t going to make the situation any worse, not when they were the only ones who’d ever know what happened.
“Ok,” she said. “Rob was asking about my family and how I grew up.”
“So, he does know you better than I do.”
Turning her smile upward, she coiled her legs around his hips. “Well, I guess that’s a matter of perspective.”
But he wasn’t biting and instead moved off her to lie on his side. “Rob’s always asking questions, he’s a nosey fuck.”
Shifting onto her side, Tally folded her pillow under her head. “I didn’t mind. I don’t really have secrets.”
At least, she hadn’t had secrets until she’d slept with her boss’s son.
Lying there, facing each other, they finally took the time to really look at each other, and at what was beyond their physical connection. “Tell me, how did you grow up?”
Rob’s questions were more specific, but she’d guess all Max wanted to know was what she’d shared with his friend. “It was tough. My dad was an artist; he never worked a steady job. He’d take off for months at a time. One time he left for a pack of smokes and didn’t come back for three years. But, I guess my mom loved him because she always took him back. She worked all kinds of jobs, long hours, you know?”
“You were alone a lot,” he said, reading between the lines.
She nodded. “But it was ok. I was always a bit of a weird kid, a loner. I stayed out of the cliques. I wasn’t a cheerleader or voted most likely to succeed… I just… got by, like my mom.”
“Boyfriends?”
Max had a preoccupation with her love life. “Not really,” she said. “My mom always said I was too smart for the losers in our neighborhood. Truth was, I wouldn’t know what to do with a guy if he stripped naked and promised to have amnesia the next day.”
Laughing, he swayed in to kiss her shoulder before swaying back. “When did that change?”
“I don’t think it ever did,” she said.
Beneath the covers, he took her hand and guided it to his dick that was thick and proud when he coiled her fingers around it. “Yeah, baby, it did.”
She was no expert, but if he was happy with her performances, so was she. “Like a lot of people, I lost it in college,” she said, turning on to her back as she thought about her first boyfriend. “Dunc was a senior, he worked in the library.” Smiling, she curled her tongue in her mouth. “Boy, did he give me an education.”
“Ok,” Max said. Taking her hand off his dick, he yanked her across the bed, sweeping her arm up over his shoulder around his neck. “We’re done with that conversation… What did you never learn?”
Another thing Rob had asked her. Max took in details even when he wasn’t outwardly paying attention, she’d have to remember that.
“To drive,” she said. “I never learned to drive. We never had the money and I never cared. I could walk to school and to the library, those were the only places I needed to go, and I wasn’t afraid of the bus.”
“The library? Again? You liked the library.”
“One of my mom’s earliest jobs was in a library. I was about six or seven maybe, I had to hide under the desk while she worked because I wasn’t supposed to be there. But she’d sneak me in after school and hide me under there with a juice box and a pile of books… I guess it’s no surprise I grew up socially awkward. I got used to my mom taking me to her different jobs and hiding me in closets or in dark corners when I was tiny because she couldn’t afford childcare and my dad was useless.”
“Or not around.”
“Yeah,” she said. “After that library job, I didn’t want to do anything else but read. I didn’t want coloring books or games. I wanted books, non-fiction mostly. At first it was the pictures that really fascinated me. My dad taught me how to draw; I was never as good as he was, but it was the one thing he gave me. Anyway, I read about art, and classical musicians… I always tried to talk to my dad about it. Maybe I was trying to get him to notice me… who knows. I was never good at being creative, but I could learn about those who were.” His expression didn’t change. He was listening, but she began to shrink. “Sorry, you don’t want to—”
“If I don’t want to, I’ll tell you I don’t,” he said, anticipating what she was going to say. “And books are cool… we never had none in my house… but I guess they’re better than drugs or getting yourself fucked up like other losers.”
Drugs and teenage pregnancies were rife in her neighborhood, but she’d stayed indoors or kept her nose in books. Her mother struggled to make ends meet and her father usually spent whatever spare cash they had on his art supplies or on weed.
Seeing the stress her mother lived under was enough to make Tally wary of getting herself involved in any kind of relationship. Her parents fought all the time, or drifted around each other, living separate lives like they were ghosts who couldn’t see each other. When things were especially tough, Tally often felt like a ghost herself because her mother was just too busy to interact with her.
“What about you?” she asked. “What was it like for you growing up?”
“You don’t know already?” he asked, peering down his nose at her.
Tally couldn’t tell if he was pissed or teasing her.
So much for them not talking about his father. “Teddy did hire a PI to find you, that’s how I ended up here… but he was more interested in locating you than learning what you were like. Getting to you was important; you’re sort of his last hope. He would never let a woman take over the business, it just wouldn’t happen. When Laura, his wife, was killed, he was really messed up. He tried to hold it together, but I’ve never seen him like that.”
“Sounds like you care about him.”
Did she? Maybe. “Your father’s given me a lot,” she said. “But he’s a tough guy to warm to, he’s quite… severe.”
“Yeah, I had a bunch of stepdads like that,” he said, skimming a hand down over her hip. “I guess my mom has a type… Sick fucks who treat her like crap. They beat the shit out of her, take her for everything she’s got, which is never much, and then they toss her ass on the street.”
There was so much anger in his words that Tally reached up to stroke his face. Her heart broke for him. Seeing his mother be hurt by every man she ever had in her life must have been tough.
“Baby,” she murmured and pushed up to kiss him. “I’m so sorry.”
“No problem,” he said, pulling away from her hand and her kiss, though he didn’t leave her embrace. “Her choice, not mine… I got tired of fighting the fuckers when I was fourteen and bailed. Didn’t matter how many I kicked out, she always found a new dirt bag… not my problem.”
“But you still see her? Your mom, is she still in your life?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “I didn’t see her for like five years. She moved into the neighborhood for a while then took off with a new deadbeat. If she asks me for something, she’ll get it, she’s my mom, you know? I’ll always do whatever I can to keep her on her feet.”
It was nice that he still cared about his mother. Though he must have seen some horrific things as a child if the men she’d brought into his life were all violent. Maybe that was why Max wasn’t like that; he didn’t throw his weight around, not with her, even though he had the physical strength to take most people apart.
He’d probably figured out the value of his fists when he was young. If his mom’s boyfriends were violent with her, some were probably violent with him. Learning to take care of himself involved staying in peak fitness, and the kit in his room w
as a testament to how hard he worked on his ripped form.
But she could understand how frustrated he had to be as a youngster, standing in front of his mom, taking the hits, or beating the guys who hurt his mom, only to have her take them back or bring new guys in who were just as bad or worse.
“Is she still choosing the wrong men?”
Max shrugged, putting an arm around her, he moved onto his back. “She wouldn’t say that, she says they’re passionate.” He scoffed the word like it was ridiculous and it was.
Kissing his shoulder, she couldn’t stop stroking his body, or pressing herself into him. “You’re passionate,” she murmured, and his eyes dropped to watch her tasting his torso. “But you’d never hit a woman.”
“How do you know? Maybe I just never got caught.”
She had seen his rap sheet, mostly it contained petty theft charges from when he was younger. There was one incident involving a bar fight, but the details on that were sketchy. But he was right, a person’s criminal record just showed what they’d been caught for, not what they’d actually done. She’d already found out from his friend that he had stolen cars and sold them for parts, that wasn’t on his record.
“If I thought you were capable of hurting me, I wouldn’t be here,” she said. “And after spending tonight with you… You’re a decent guy, Max… You’re more than decent. You care about people.”
His snigger was meant to be dismissive, but she’d guess that he wasn’t used to taking a compliment. “I care about what I care about,” he muttered.
“Like your business,” she said. “That’s something to be proud of.”
“It’s all homers, word of mouth, for buddies. We do maintenance jobs, whatever needs done. We don’t take it too serious.”
Still, he and his friends had accomplished something. “It pays the bills.”
The slow close of his eyes as he averted them in a kind of shrug told her he didn’t want to talk about it. “How’d your mom hook up with the wine guy?”
The wine guy. She smiled. Ok, so he only half listened. “He’s an art professor, or he was, he’s older than her, retired now. After college I took her to a charity auction thing, it was one of the first Stretton events I attended. They met there and, I guess, hit it off. She went to France with him a couple of months after they met.”
“Spontaneous woman.”
Yeah, it had surprised her too. “She deserved it. Yeah, it was a risk, but I was educated, starting my life, she did her bit with me. It was her time.”
Bobbing his head, he nuzzled her face. “So, your dad dying worked out for you, huh?”
“The life insurance, sure,” she said. “We didn’t even know he had it until after he was gone. Turned out he did care about us after all. But, yeah, my mom told me to get a trade. I just needed a vocation… I wasn’t good at the creative stuff, so it was teaching or accountancy, and I figured I’d be better in a job I could do myself instead of standing in front of a group. I’d hate that.”
“Numbers, huh?” he asked. “I thought you were an assistant.”
Taking a deep breath, she laid her face against him to breathe in that scent she loved. “There was a recruitment thing at college, senior year, and I met your father by accident, he was there looking for talent for the company. I guess he liked me because he offered me a position… the rest is history.”
Her life hadn’t turned out the way she’d thought it would. But, she’d never really been good at knowing what she wanted; only what she didn’t want. Max had made it clear he didn’t want to share much more about himself and she wanted to take advantage of being close to this man, and his scent, while she still had him.
Biting into his chest, she startled him enough to make him look at her again and she grinned. “Oh, it’s like that?” he asked. Grabbing her, he flipped her onto her back, locking his fingers between hers to pin them above her head. “You like it rough, Boss?”
It was a sign of trust.
Yes, Max’s possession made her aware of every hair on her body, every cell of her being, but it was the intangible that heightened her connection to this man; the feeling that he’d defend her with everything he was. Just like he had tonight on a superficial level when men tried to move in on her.
But he had honor too, he’d taken her to that club, and even when other, much more beautiful women were throwing themselves at him, he hadn’t wavered, not for a single heartbeat. That was integrity, proving what she said about him caring for people.
“I’d never had sex in public,” she said. Her heart lost its steady rhythm. She wrapped both arms around the back of his head, stroking her fingers through his hair and letting it tickle her forearms as she rubbed them through his locks. “I’d never dragged a guy into an alley and demanded that he have sex with me… I’d never had an orgasm on a dancefloor or given head in a bathroom… until you.”
He kissed her. “Next time you’ll receive.”
Smiling, she tried to remember their agreement while simultaneously knowing that there would never be a next time. “What is it about you, Max Flynn, that makes me crazy?” She exhaled, her eyes rolling back in her head when his lips slid down to her neck. “Are you some smooth operator taking me for a ride and I’m just too dumb to see it? Is this what you do with all the girls? Drive them crazy with your intense “challenge me” glare and the ownership of your hands?”
His hands curled around her waist, gripping her tight and shifting her body under his, proving her point. “Oh, I own you, baby… you want me to own you?”
He breathed in her nipple, suckling her hard and rubbing his fingertips through her cleavage. “Yes,” she whispered, gripping his shoulders and whimpering. “Oh, God, Max, I do.”
“Open those legs for me, Boss, I’m hungry for your pussy. The sweet girl needs worshiped, and I’ve got the tongue to do it.”
Where was her confidence? Where was her sense? Tally couldn’t let her soon-to-be-boss worship any part of her. But as he descended further down her body, she parted her legs, freeing him and opening herself for his mouth.
Yes, this was crazy. But tonight, he’d asked her to be nothing more than a girl enjoying her guy. It wouldn’t last, but while it did, she was going to enjoy it.
SIX
Lying in his bed, the morning after, Tally could feel him stroking her face with the back of his fingers. She didn’t want to open her eyes, so smiled instead.
“I’m going out for coffee, ok, baby?” Max murmured. “How do you like it?”
Her smile got wider. “Fast, hard, and dirty,” she whispered, taking her hands out of the blankets to slide them down his body, but instead of grabbing his dick, she got a handful of denim that made her huff.
Max laughed and touched his lips to hers. “When I get back, ok? I gotta see a guy real quick. Just stay right here.”
It seemed she’d have no choice except to wake up, but Tally resisted and kept her eyes closed. “What time is it?” she murmured.
“Nearly noon.”
It had been a long night, but a fun one, and she wasn’t ready to wake up from the dream yet. “Hmm,” she responded and tried to curl into his body, then she realized what he’d said. Oh no! She sat bolt upright. “What? Oh my God!”
“Got somewhere to be, Boss?”
Tally scrambled off the bed to try to locate her clothes. “Damnit,” she whispered. “I am so fired.”
“Cool,” he said, and she stopped panicking to notice him stretching, fully-clothed, on top of the sheets they’d slept in. She didn’t appreciate him being happy that she might have lost her job, but he shrugged. “If he fires you, I don’t have to go to this dinner.”
“You do remember that I said I live in his house, right? Jobless, homeless…”
But Max wasn’t stressed. “Come crash here,” he said. “ ‘Til you get on your feet.”
He didn’t even get it. “You do know Mr. Stretton’s going to ask you to move into the mansion. You won’t have an apartment anymore, y
ou’ll be living there.”
Max sat up; his nonchalance became a frown. “What else will he be asking me?”
“To work at the company,” she said. “You’ll have an office on the top floor, an assistant, a lawyer—”
“Whoa, wait, what? I don’t want to work at his damn company.”
She rolled her eyes. So much for him paying attention, he hadn’t heard anything she’d tried to explain about his father or what was expected of him.
“You don’t have to do anything there; you’ll be a figurehead. Maybe sit in on some meetings and walk away with a few million in the first year.” His brows rose. “I know it will be a culture shock and you’ll want to push back. He’s a confident guy who will expect your respect, he won’t try to earn it.”
“This gets better and better,” he muttered.
It might not be the best of news, but she had to be honest. Giving Max the hard sell was more difficult now that they’d been intimate. Knowing him like she did, it felt right to be honest and that meant not circumventing any inconvenient truths.
“On the plus side, I don’t think there will be any big emotional father-son reunion. So don’t worry about tears or heartfelt conversations.”
His attention dropped to the bed. “Goodie,” he grumbled.
Maybe she’d said the wrong thing. Going to him, she crawled onto the bed to kneel in front of him. “Unless that’s what you want. Do you want an explanation?”
He shook his head. “I don’t want fuck all from him.”
That didn’t make sense. “Then why are you going to the dinner?”
Max leaned in to kiss her. “Because you’re the boss, baby,” he said and vaulted off the bed. “The shower has attitude, you need to give it a minute to warm up.”
After he disappeared into the bathroom, Tally heard the shower going on. A second later, Max returned to the bedroom and went to a corner closet to retrieve a towel. She waited until he had it in hand before she spoke again.
“Lover,” she said, picking at the sheet.
In her peripheral vision, Tally saw him spin toward her. “Uh-oh,” he said. “I can tell that tone isn’t good.”
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