“It’s okay,” he said, kissing her gently. “We don’t have to go to bed. I just want to hold you.”
It wasn’t true. He wanted to bury himself inside her. To feel her pussy clamp down on him as he tunneled through her. To watch her writhe and hear her scream with pleasure.
But he’d waited this long. Would wait forever for her if he had to.
She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean,” she said. “I just don’t want…”
He touched his forehead to hers. “Tell me what you don’t want, Abby. Tell me everything.”
She hesitated. “There have been so many women, Max.” She hurried to continue. “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter anymore. But I don’t want to sleep with you for the first time in that bed.”
He smiled.
“Why are you smiling?” she asked.
“Because I’ve never taken a single woman to that bed.”
She pulled back a little. “But how…?”
“What do you think the guest room is for?”
Her brow furrowed. “So you always… in the guest room?”
He nodded. “Always.”
She shook her head. “But why?”
Because I was waiting for you. Because deep down I knew this moment would come.
“I never wanted anyone there until now,” he said.
“Then what are you waiting for?” She lay her head against his shoulder. “Take me to bed, Max.”
Thirteen
She closed her eyes as he carried her up the stairs. She was still reeling from his revelation that he’d never taken a woman to his bed. Still remembering all the nights she’d laid in bed, imagining Max with his women.
She’d always assumed they would be in his bedroom upstairs. That if this moment ever came, she would be one of many.
It wasn’t something she would have been able to bear. Not with Max.
Now she had the sense that something momentous was happening. That her life would forever be separated into the before and after of this moment.
She looked up when he stopped moving and discovered they were in a large room. Overhead, two long, rough-hewn beams crossed the steeply pitched ceiling. It was surprisingly spartan, furnished with only an enormous bed, an armoire, a simple dresser, and one nightstand.
He set her down. “Don’t move.”
He crossed the room and walked to the glass doors. When he pulled back the draperies, she saw the city — their city — shimmering in the distance. He opened the doors and a rush of sage and eucalyptus blew into the room on a soft gust of warm desert air.
Her body hummed as he made his way back to her, his gaze locked with hers.
He was close enough that she felt the brush of his bare skin against her body when he stopped in front of her, his shirt still hanging open from her work in the kitchen. He stood for a long moment looking down at her, his eyes unreadable in the darkened room.
“I’m going to learn every inch of you,” he said, dropping his mouth to her bare shoulder. “Every secret.”
Her head fell back as he kissed his way toward her collarbone and up her neck, his lips sending a delicious shiver down her spine and through her core.
Her nipples were painfully erect, her hands still at her side when he tugged on her earlobe with his teeth, and she had to close her mouth to keep from moaning aloud as the shiver threatened to overtake her body.
His arms came around her waist and she felt the release of her zipper, the loosening of her dress. A moment later he swept his hands across her shoulders. The dress gave way and fell to the floor.
She pushed his open shirt off his shoulders. His bare skin on hers poured kerosene on the brushfire of her body, and a flame jumped to life between her legs. She looked up at him, took in the broad span of his shoulders, the perfect cut of his arms, the corded muscles of his stomach.
“You’re so beautiful,” she said, letting her hands travel over the chiseled peaks and valleys.
He kissed her slowly as he unhooked her bra, his tongue sweeping her mouth as the fabric was removed from between their bodies. She wrapped her arms around his neck, exhaling a breath she felt like she’d been holding her whole life.
He sighed as he ran a hand over her bare skin. “Abby… Abby… You’re so lovely. So fucking lovely. I want to see all of you.”
He hooked a finger into the elastic of her underwear and started to tug. But she didn’t want it this way — the way it had been with the few men she’d slept with in her life. She didn’t want to rush it to avoid a firestorm of memory that would undo her.
This was different. This was Max.
“Not so fast, mister,” she murmured, reaching for the button on his pants.
She unfastened it and slid her hand inside, closed her palm around the massive girth of his shaft. He pulsed in her hand, and a groan escaped his lips as she squeezed, stroking him slowly as she touched her mouth to his chest.
“Fuck, Abby…”
She slid off his pants, not entirely surprised to find he’d gone commando.
Once a rogue, always a rogue.
She sat on the edge of the bed as she pushed his pants to the floor. Then he was right in front of her, his cock inches from her face. It was magnificent, long and thick and like satin when she wrapped her hand around it.
She flicked her tongue against the tip, barely registering the increased pace of his breathing as she wrapped her lips around the swollen head.
“That’s it,” he growled, pulling her mouth off him. He lifted her into his arms like she was made of air and used one hand to yank all the covers off the bed. Then he lay her head on the pillow so she was spread out for him to see. “We’re not rushing this.”
“Who said I was rushing?”
“I did,” he said. “Because if you’d kept that up for another ten seconds this would be over.” He looked down at her with naked appreciation. “And I don’t want it to be over yet. Not even close.”
She tried not to feel exposed as he knelt between her thighs, his shaft jutting between his legs, but it was impossible. She was exposed — in more ways than one.
She’d been able to hide from the men she’d slept with in the past. Had been able to keep the lights off, to keep some of her clothes on, to protect herself against the vulnerability that felt deadly. Those men hadn’t known her. They hadn’t known her history, her darkest fears.
But Max knew all the things that were important. He’d never tried to protect himself from the knowing, had always wanted to understand every part of her.
She saw in his eyes that it was still true. That he wanted to explore her body the way he’d spent the last twenty years exploring her soul.
The dampness between her thighs blossomed into a wet heat as he looked down at her. He lifted one of her legs and let his hands slide to her foot. It was strangely intimate, her body spread for him as he turned his head to lick her arch.
She closed her eyes as he kissed his way up her calf. Her body quivered as he slipped his tongue behind her knee, then continued up her inner thigh. He was so close to the cleft between her legs she could imagine his mouth on her, could imagine what it would feel like when his tongue slipped through the folds of her sex.
It was both erotic and terrifying.
He set down her leg and lifted the other one, and she balled up the fitted sheet in her hand, forcing herself not to make a sound as he repeated the movements with this leg, working his way to the same spot on her inner thigh before setting her foot down.
She opened her eyes and found him looking at her, his hands on her knees. She reached for him.
“I’ve wanted this for so long, Abby. Wanted you for so long. I just want to look at you for a minute.”
“I need you, Max. Please.”
He stretched the length of his body over hers and gazed down at her, one hand stroking the hair back from her face. His skin was feverish against her own, and she reached up to pull his head down, lifting her own to meet his lips halfway.
There was nothing between them.
No clothes. No fear. Nothing unspoken.
His cock brushed against the inside of her thighs as he kissed her, and her hips moved instinctively as she opened her mouth to him.
His hand traveled over her body, over her breasts and her erect nipples, down the flat of her belly and around the curve of her ass to pull her more fully against him.
His rod slid between her wet folds as his tongue worked its magic, and she locked a knee around his hips, her core throbbing for him. She was desperate for him to fill her, her body an explosion of sensation: his tongue in her mouth evoking his cock inside her, the heat of his body against hers, his hands, strong and sure as they traced every curve.
And her own body — on fire.
He kissed his way down her neck and she slid her fingers into his hair as he continued to her breasts, grabbing a fistful of his hair until he growled against her skin.
He circled one nipple with his tongue, steering clear of the hard nipple at its center until she arched her back for him. His tongue flicked out to graze it, a tease against the peak that was begging to be enveloped by the heat of his mouth.
He finally took the nipple between his lips, and she ran her fingers along his back as he drew the bud into his mouth, sucking until she moaned. She was barely aware of her hands, mapping his broad shoulders and the taper of his waist, grabbing his muscled ass.
She writhed under him as he flicked his tongue against the nipple in his mouth, his free hand thumbing the bud at the center of her other breast.
She was barely aware of the cool air on her wet breast when he finally released the nipple. She was too preoccupied with the direction of his mouth, the heat of his kisses along her rib cage, the solemn press of his lips against her stomach as he held her hips in his giant hands.
He continued his downward trajectory, marking her with his lips just above the fine hair covering her mound. Stopping him was instinctive.
He looked up. “Everything okay?”
She nodded. “Can we…?”
“We can do anything you want, sweetheart,” he said.
She knew from the tone in his voice that he meant it.
“I just want you inside me right now, Max. Please.”
She couldn’t tell him the rest. That this was as much real intimacy as she could handle in one night. That she’d exposed more of herself to him in the last hour than she’d shown to anyone in her entire life.
That she was scared. Of the past and the future and everything in between.
He left another kiss on her belly and slid up her body. He dropped a kiss on her lips, his hand stroking her cheek.
“You’re in charge,” he said. “You call the shots.”
“Then make love to me, Max,” she said. “That’s what I want. It’s all I want.”
He kissed her, then reached into his nightstand. She wanted to brand the moment in her mind when he leaned back on his heels to slide the condom onto his shaft.
He was so beautiful. The object of her every fantasy — the ones she’d known about and some she hadn’t realized she had.
He covered her body with his and nudged her legs open with one knee, then swept her mouth with his tongue as he positioned his tip against her opening. He stayed in that position a long time, kissing her slowly, as if they had all the time in the world, as if he was in no hurry to complete their union.
She didn’t know how much time passed before her hips started moving again, her hands exploring his body of their own accord, nothing left except his body against hers, the raw need opening up in her center, demanding to be filled.
“Please…”
“Please what, sweetheart?” he asked between kisses.
“I need you inside me.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure,” she gasped. “Please, Max…”
He trailed his lips over her face, touched them to each of her closed eyes and the bridge of her nose before returning to her mouth.
Then he closed his lips on hers, and this kiss wasn’t slow or soft. His lips commanded hers to open, his tongue insistent as he finally drove his cock inside her.
She cried out into his mouth as her body absorbed the shock of his size. He held still as he continued kissing her, letting her stretch to make room for him, but he was already there, already embedded deep inside her. The slightest move of his body as he kissed her caused sparks of friction between her clitoris and his stomach.
And she wanted more.
More friction, more penetration.
She locked her leg around his hips, opening her body to him further, gasping as he sank even deeper into her.
He lowered his head to her shoulder and drew slowly out of her. It was painful to feel him leaving her, and she lifted her hips to meet his next thrust, eager to be rejoined with him.
The rhythm was slow and impossibly sensual: the long stroke of his shaft sliding through her channel, the slow drag of it as he pulled out of her engorged pussy. She stroked his back, lifted her head to kiss his chest, grabbed his ass to push him farther inside her as desperation gathered at her center.
Her orgasm was gathering inside her, her need to reach it blocking out everything else until she moved faster under him, her body hyperfocused on the brush of her clit against him as he drove into her, determined to seek the sensation again by thrusting upward to meet his penetration.
“I’m think I’m going to come, Max,” she said.
She heard the surprise in her own voice, had only a fleeting thought of her other orgasms, all attained in bed alone with her fingers and vibrator.
He lowered his mouth to hers. “Then come for me, sweetheart. I’m ready.”
He reached for her extended leg and locked it around his other hip so that both her knees were drawn up as he drove hard into her.
The thrust broke through the last vestige of her restraint, cutting loose the final ropes tethering her to the past.
To her pain and fear.
Then she was stepping over the edge of the desert cliff, the hot wind meeting her face as her body free-fell into bliss. There was a burst of light behind her eyelids, her body not hitting the ground as she expected, but being lifted up on the wind, carried over through the empty sky as she convulsed.
She was only vaguely aware of his groan as he let go of his own restraint, his body shuddering against hers as he came. She clung to him as the tremors racked her body, the surprise of it both erotic and faintly terrifying.
She couldn’t have stopped it if she’d wanted to — and she definitely didn’t want to.
She rode the gust of wind instead, let it carry her over the sand until she was finally released, set down ever so gently, the bed soft under her back, Max kissing her shoulders.
“I love you, I love you, I love you…” He said the words against her skin. “I’ve always loved you, Abby.”
She reached up, forced him to look at her. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”
“I’ve never meant anything more,” he said.
She kissed him instead of answering. She was on overload, overwhelmed by the sensations in her body, by the magnitude of everything that had happened between them.
He rolled next to her and pulled her into his arms. “I’ll never let anything hurt you again, Abby. Never.”
She closed her eyes and breathed him in, fighting the feeling that her pain was far from over.
That maybe loving Max meant her real pain had just begun.
Fourteen
Max slowed down as he approached the gate, not because he was worried about overshooting, but because he needed time to brace himself for what he was about to do.
He pulled up to the keypad and pressed the call button. A moment later, a man’s voice, crisp and professional, came through the speaker.
“Yes?”
“Max Cartwright here to see Jason Draper.”
“One moment,” the voice said.
He look
ed up at the security camera mounted above the keypad. Both were de rigueur in this neighborhood, home to Vegas’s casino kings, marquee performers, and the high rollers who kept second houses in Sin City.
He pictured Abby’s face as he waited. Imagined her the way she’d looked in the moments before she’d woken up that morning, her expression serene. With her guard down, he had been able to see the child he remembered alongside the woman he loved.
He hadn’t wanted her to leave. Had tried to get her to stay while he went to Jason’s — not that he’d told her that’s where he was going.
The less she knew, the better.
But she’d insisted on going home, and he’d been able to see that she was shaken by what had happened between them the night before. He saw it in flashes of memory: Abby looking impossibly scared at the bottom of the stairs, the way she’d stopped him when he tried to taste her, the fact that she hadn’t answered when he’d told her he loved her.
It killed him to admit it, but she needed time away from him to process everything that had happened. He didn’t know the depth of the damage done to her by her father. He wasn’t sure anyone could know, even Abby.
He’d gone slow for that reason, giving her time to stop him, to change her mind. By the time he’d slid into her glorious heat, there had been no doubt that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
Still, he couldn’t help worrying that she would change her mind. That it might be too much for her. That she might not want to be with him the way he wanted to be with her.
I’ve always loved you, Abby.
Don’t say it if you don’t mean it…
But he did mean it, realized now that it had always been true, and not in the way he’d claimed in the past. Not as a best friend or a big brother but as a man who would protect her with his life.
A man who wanted to give her everything.
He regretted all the women he’d slept with since he’d come back from Afghanistan, wished he could take it all back, wondered if it would be easier for Abby to trust him if only he hadn’t been such a monumental asshole.
But he knew better than anyone that there was no going back. If there was, his first order of business would have been to steer clear of Jason Draper.
King of Sin: Las Vegas Syndicate Book One Page 9
