Night and Day

by ANDIE J. CHRISTOPHER

  She froze.

  “I want to do it myself.”

  “Can we pretend something, Max?”

  His mouth gave her another smile, bolstering her confidence for what she was about to ask. “You want to play games?”

  She shook her head, and pressed her palm to his chest, feeling his heart beat against her skin, the cadence making its way through to her own heart, until they beat in unison. Her and Max was different than any other thing that had ever happened. He would give her anything she wanted. All she had to do was ask. That power made her feel giddy and brave and turned on all at the same time.

  “Can you tell me what to do?”

  “I thought I was doing that already.” He touched her over the filmy skirt she’d worn at dinner, groaning at how very little of her that her panties covered. “Do you mean, you want to not choose?”

  “I want to choose. I’ve already chosen. I just don’t want to think.” She looked up and met his gaze. It was important to be very clear about these things. “Take it all away.”

  “You’ll tell me to stop if you don’t want anything that we do together.” That was his first command. “Just say ‘stop,’ and everything does.”

  “Yes, Max.”

  “I like the way those words sound, precious girl.” He ran the tips of his fingers over the skin under the waistband of her skirt, she shivered with the sheer pleasure of it, leaning into him, wanting more. “Now stand here, while I touch you.”

  In other words, pure torture. For Letty, she always wanted to cater to the people around her. But Max knew that, and he wasn’t letting her do it here. Very clearly and deliberately, he was taking care of her.

  Taking his time, he pulled her skirt down over her ass, massaging each inch of flesh as he rediscovered it with his hands. She felt as though he was drawing her body with his mind, cataloguing each dimple and curve. With anyone else, she would feel like it was a horrible invasion, but, with Max, it was something else. His hands on her were almost reverent, and she couldn’t think of anything that could make her feel sexier.

  She may have given her power over to him for the next few hours, but he was the one making her feel powerful.

  But he was so quiet about it. Before, in his studio, he had talked to her. “Talk to me, Max.”

  “Who’s giving the orders?” He winked at her, less rusty this time. She’d given him something, too. Even in their short time together, she’d oiled up his rusted happy parts.

  “You are, Max.”

  “But if you need me to talk to you, I’ll do it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s just that I’m kind of speechless.” He pulled her top over her head, and she panicked for a split second. As long as she could see Max’s face, see how happy he was to have her in his sights and under his hands, she didn’t have to worry about how she looked to him. When she couldn’t see him, for even a moment, every barb Simon had made about her love handles, every time her mother had given her dinner plate a pointed look, came back and threatened to shatter this moment with him.

  For the first time, she was angry about it. She was starting to believe that she was beautiful, and she wanted nothing more—other than for Max to finish undressing her and get to the seriously delicious sex things he was about to do—than to go back and tell herself that everyone who thought she wasn’t good enough was wrong.

  “I feel like a teenaged boy every time I see these tetas.” He ran a finger over the top of her bra, over each mound. “Then, I get pissed at myself for being such a dude about it.”

  “I like that you like them.” Her skin flushed, but gooseflesh rose from every millimeter of skin he touched. It didn’t matter that they were the only part of her body that Simon had actually liked. Max worshipped them, and that was so much better than mere acceptance.

  He unclipped her bra, and her breasts felt so heavy until Max lifted them to his mouth. He licked and nipped at the skin around her nipples, and she couldn’t help wrapping her hands around his shoulders.

  As soon as she touched him, Max growled. She was going to move her hands away until he said, “Love when you touch me, Letty.” His mouth left her breasts, and he put his hands in the back of her panties, dragging them down her legs. On the way down, he laid kisses all over her bare flesh, over her mound.

  All the while, he maneuvered her back until her knees hit the edge of the bed. He didn’t lose eye contact the whole time, not until he tipped her back until she was lying down. The fluffy, white comforter, with the cool cotton cover met her back, soothing her burning skin.

  “I find you so lovely, Letty.” His words brought tears to her eyes. She couldn’t quite believe them, so they hurt. “I wish you could see what I do when I look at you.”

  “I just can’t.” Not yet.

  “How could I make it so?”

  He probably couldn’t, so she shook her head. “Need your hands on me.”

  Immediately, he touched her thighs, spreading her open before him. With him grounding her, giving her his touch, she lost herself. His ravenous gaze didn’t have the same impact when he soothed it away with her touch.

  “Someday, I want you to ride my cock.” As though he sensed her hesitation, he continued, “But I want you to realize how fucking hot you are before you do that.”

  He came over her with his body and nodded down to the bottom of his T-shirt. His T-shirts ought to be classified as lethal weapons in several states, but she wanted it off of him.

  “I want to tear that Simon guy apart.” The mention of Simon should have thrown water on her libido, but the tearing him apart bit made her middle feel hot and tight. She knew that Max thought his anger made him like his father, but when it was about something that had hurt her, she couldn’t see it that way. “He’s keeping you from me, even right now.”

  He knelt up briefly to pull his T-shirt off, and her fingers found his chest hair to pull him back down. She needed Max’s kiss right now. “He’s not worth it.”

  “No, the motherfucker is not.” He met her mouth again, and she expected him to get all aggressive in the way she really liked when he kissed her, but he seemed intent on taking his time.

  She rubbed against the fly of his jeans intentionally, needing friction. Although she was starting to realize that Max knew what she looked like and liked her the way she was—that she didn’t have to hide—and he’d want her anyway, she felt as though she needed to rush to a finish. Always afraid of not getting what she needed before the door closed.

  She was starving in a way that embarrassed her, and she didn’t know if drinking from the well of Max’s desire for her would ever be enough. She didn’t know if she could ever have enough of him. Losing him would ache forever.

  Max must have sensed that she wasn’t completely there with him anymore, because he stopped. “Where’d you go, precious girl?”

  She shook her head again.

  “I’m not going to fuck you if you don’t tell me.”

  “You’d do that to me?” She lifted her hips again and rubbed against his jean-covered erection. “You’d do that to both of us?”

  “I’m in charge, and I’m not going to do anything to make this less than perfect for you.”

  She cupped his face with her hands, and it struck her how freaking intimate this all was. A man who wanted to talk to her, to make sure she was on board with everything that happened before it happened. Where had he even come from?

  “I was thinking about when you’re done with me, when you decide that you can’t have any more of this—” Her voice broke, and she realized that tears were closer to the surface than she’d thought. “Just be gentle when that happens.”

  His gaze filled with worry, and she immediately regretted saying the words out loud. She should have just come up with some excuse for why she’d temporarily zoned out—the temperature, the lights, somethin
g.

  He sat up on his haunches. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “I’m glad you did.” She covered her breasts with her hands.

  “I don’t know if I can be done with you.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “That’s why getting involved with you scares me.”

  He lowered himself back to her body. “What is it about me?”

  “If you need to hear it every day, I’ll tell you.” His finger trailed over the terrain of her face, doing that memorizing thing he did. “When you walked in the door, I asked you to strip not just because I had a model coming in that day. I just wanted to see you naked. You look in the mirror and see a girl that no one wants, because of what that fucker said. I want to rip him to pieces not because I think he’s an idiot—I’m thankful for that. I want to undo the damage he did to you.”

  His words soothed her and excited her, and she didn’t want to wait anymore for the goodness that he was offering her. Unable to shake all of her shyness, even though all of her was right there for him, she felt her skin flush all over when she said, “You could start by kissing it and making it better.”

  Max bit his lower lip and looked away from her face. And then he looked at her and it was reverent. God, he made her feel so many things all at once, that she could barely take it. “I’m going to tell you one more thing, precious girl.”

  “What’s that?” she asked the top of his dark hair as he licked her and sent sparks flying in her brain and body.

  “When you scream my name, make it loud.” So the neighbors could hear. His whole thing with almost being caught wasn’t about exposing her and making her feel bad. It was about everyone knowing that he was a sex god. And that she could work with.

  Especially when he worked her over with his tongue. The man truly had a gift, and it wasn’t just making art. He was a wizard with his tongue.

  When he focused on her clit, she couldn’t help raking her fingers through his thick hair, maybe pulling a little bit. He grunted against her pussy in approval, and she felt it to her bones. Although she wanted to throw her head back and let comets burst against the ceiling as he ate her, she couldn’t take her eyes off of his powerful back as he threw his whole body, his whole being into giving her pleasure.

  The day they’d met, she’d pegged him as cold, dispassionate. She’d been totally wrong. There wasn’t anything cold about the man worshipping her with his mouth. There was nothing that wasn’t scorching hot about the way he’d pushed her thighs up and out so he could get closer and take more from her. At that moment, she would have given him everything. Everything in her body that was racing toward an orgasm that would break her.

  He gave her no quarter and didn’t ramp her up slowly. When she broke, she thought she screamed his name, but she couldn’t know for sure. She was outside of her body and out of her mind with searing pleasure.

  * * * *

  Max might have lost his battle right then. Right when he heard Letty’s wrecked sobs and tasted her coming all over his face. She overwhelmed his senses and assaulted his heart with her goodness. Something about her called out to him, and it was almost hidden by the way she’d sealed up her sexuality, but the fact that she’d blessed him with it made him so grateful that he was willing to fall on his knees and thank her every day for the rest of his days.

  And that thought should have terrified him, but it didn’t. That it didn’t scared him twice as much. If he wasn’t going to die if he didn’t get inside her, maybe he would have wanted to run. But at this point she was the only thing that could soothe him. The only place he could find peace was the heaven between her legs.

  Treat her kindly. Of course, that was the one thing he couldn’t promise her, the one thing he wasn’t built to promise her. Little did she know that aloof wasn’t the worst thing he could be. When Letty looked at him, when she trusted him with her body and told him a little bit of what she was thinking, she didn’t know the darkness that lived inside him. He swore to himself, right then, that he would end things before they ever got that far.

  Looking down at her as he shucked his pants and boxer briefs in one fell swoop, her lazy, sated gaze moving all over his body, not bothering to try to cover herself, he almost believed that he could be good to her. She looked at him like he already was.

  “Max.” Nothing unsure about her voice now. Just for that, he wanted to beat his chest and dance around on the bed. Something primal about being the only man who could provide that for this woman—who he was starting to think of as his woman—was deeply satisfying. He couldn’t let himself get used to it, but in this moment, out of time, he let himself revel in it.

  “What, precious girl?”

  “Did I scream?” She giggled as he crawled over her body and put on a condom. “I don’t even know.”

  He notched her entrance with his cock, feeling the heat soak through the condom. “Not as much as you’re about to scream right now.” He pushed inside her and they both groaned. He would never get used to her being so soft and tight all at once. Heaven. She was like heaven to him.

  Pumping inside her, he lost himself. When she wrapped her thighs around his hips, pulling him deeper into her with every stroke, he felt like he was flying. Light for the first time in years. His balls tightened, and his orgasm sped toward him, but he needed her to come again—needed her to break apart for him one more time.

  He jackknifed his torso up, so he could see where he was moving inside her, and he nearly came just from the visual. Never wanted to see anything else. Nothing more beautiful and raw in all of his memory. Loved every moment of being wrapped up in this woman, having her own him. “Need you to touch yourself, precious girl.”

  Her glassy gaze met his, and he knew she was right there with him, but so lost in the moment, that his words weren’t registering. “You’ve got me so hot to come, Letty. Need you to get yourself there again.”

  She shook her head slightly.

  “You don’t want to come again?”

  In response, she moaned.

  “Need you to answer me, precious girl.”

  “Yes.” She breathed the word more than said it.

  “Then touch yourself.” When she didn’t move, he clamped down on her wrist and moved her hand to her clit. Finally, he felt her fingers moving at her center, soaking him more with all her generous heat. Maybe someday she would understand that whatever he gave her, she gave him more. That day, she wouldn’t look at him like he was her hero anymore.

  Not today. He crushed her mouth with his, and he lost himself inside her a few seconds after her second orgasm milked him dry. She didn’t scream, but she gave it up for him so perfectly, so beautifully, that he was even less sure he could let go of her now.

  He wasn’t sure he was even capable of losing her.

  Chapter 13

  Before getting fired and dumped, Letty had woken up with a smile on her face most mornings. She’d always realized that, despite the crap ton of body baggage laid on her from her family, she was blessed beyond measure. After Simon had dismissed her, she’d experimented with dropping that idea.

  And all that time she’d spent counting her ephemeral blessings had faded away into a big cloud of gray that she hadn’t realized was casting a shadow over her whole life.

  Waking up in a wrecked hotel room with Max, smelling like sex and sweat, with her body plastered against him, she smiled for the first time upon waking in months. His arm pillowed her head, and her leg draped over his thigh. Every centimeter of skin between her toes and the top of her head was touching him. The messy sheets felt like a cocoon, and she never wanted to leave.

  They’d spent the whole night submerged in the kind of pulsing, living hedonism she’d only read about.

  It was weird to even think about, but she’d felt like she was connected to her body—to the whole universe—in a way she’d never felt. Something about
how Max made her feel beautiful and safe let her get out of her head and into the moment. He was like a sex god with the body of Apollo, and the sexual appetite of Zeus.

  His breath was even and slow, and his heart beat against her ear. She couldn’t help herself and smiled wider against his skin. Her face was going to stick this way, but she could hardly bring herself to care. Every time she looked in the mirror from now on, she’d have the stuck smile as a token from the best night of her life.

  Part of her knew, was fully expecting, that Max would pull away from her this morning as soon as he woke up. He’d warned her that he was temporary, and she needed to take him at his word. So, instead of waking him and riding his cock like she wanted to, she soaked in the heat of his skin and the smell of him in the morning against the sex that lingered in the room. She looked at every inch of him in her sightline, memorizing the muscle and sinew of his body in repose.

  She realized then that maybe she’d never seen him relaxed, because he never allowed himself to just be. The fact that he was relaxed next to her made something inside her chest shift and shake. She got wet between her legs, and barely kept from rubbing her—sore, used—pussy against his leg.

  Maybe if she woke him up with sex, he wouldn’t close up right away. The night before, she’d seen a side of him that she suspected he hid from most people. Even at dinner, there’d been something different about him, lighter. Later, his muscles had coiled and his intensity about fucking her until she couldn’t walk, and her throat felt as though she’d swallowed thorns. Both sides of Max that she wanted more of.

  When her gaze made its way back to his face, she found him staring at her. Apprehension mixed with renewed lust mixed in her body, and it felt like the ultimate head trip.

  Until he smiled. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing.”

  He licked his bottom lip, and her heart nearly stopped. “You know I was thinking about that flyer for a painting class that we saw last night.”