by J. S. Scott
“Why was she there? Did she know we’d be there?” Max asked quietly, wondering why Mia had come directly to the park that day.
“I’m not sure. My guess is she saw the invitation from Sam on Travis’ cupboard. He said it was in the kitchen on the table when he got home.” Kade frowned as he finished, “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Her shorter hair and the hair color were probably things she did before she left Montana. She didn’t know Danny was dead and probably wanted to keep a low profile.”
“She came for me,” Max said huskily, the thought slamming him in the gut, hope starting to bloom. “She knew I would probably be there since Sam was hosting the picnic.”
“Nah…I think she was looking for me,” Kade replied with a laugh, chuckling even louder as Max shot him a hostile look. “Or maybe not, since she was staring at you with a nauseatingly lovesick look.”
“She seemed…different after the accident. Still Mia, but more…” Max wasn’t quite sure how to explain it so he finished, “whole.” He was still kicking himself in the ass for never noticing that she had needed him earlier. He’d been too busy running away to realize that she was twisting herself in knots and needed reassurance as much as he did.
“I don’t think it was the accident that changed her. She went through counseling while she was here in Montana. It was her deal with Travis. He made her promise she’d find someone to talk to, try to heal,” Kade told Max quietly. “I think maybe it helped. I didn’t get to see her often because I was on the road so much after I started college, but she seemed different to how she had been when she was younger. Like she was more comfortable in her own skin.”
Travis strode out of the kitchen, pocketing his cell phone as he said, “She’s at the airport. She bought herself a one-way ticket to Los Angeles.”
“What the hell for?” Max asked belligerently.
“She’s on the run. It’s a big city,” Travis surmised. “She’s going to try to get lost in a crowd.”
“When? Do you have the info?” There was no way Mia was flying away from him. “What time is it?”
Kade wasn’t wearing a watch and he looked at Travis. “I didn’t bring my cell.”
Travis pulled up the long sleeve of his casual shirt and glanced at his Rolex. “It’s nine. Her flight leaves at eleven thirty.”
Max was already on his feet. “I’ve got this. You two can go home. It’s time for my wife and me to come to an understanding,” he said menacingly. “No more interference,” he warned Travis, spearing him with a warning glance.
Travis walked to Max, holding out his hand. “Agreed. Don’t ever hurt her, and I won’t have to kill you. She’s been through enough, Max. Make her happy.”
Max looked from Travis to Kade, suddenly realizing that all three siblings had been through hell. Maybe Mia would tell him more than the bare minimum about her life growing up if he gave her the chance. Her past had influenced her when she was younger, but it hadn’t broken her. Max gripped Travis’ hand and shook it. “Thanks for messing up my face.”
Travis smirked. “Likewise.”
At that moment, he and Travis had reached an understanding, a man-to-man agreement that neither one would ever break.
“I’ll change clothes in the car.” Max snatched his keys from his front pocket and raced toward the door. He needed to at least throw on a clean shirt. He’d showered, but he must have spilled some drops of whiskey on the front of the shirt he had on. He could still smell it.
“Need a clean shirt?” Kade asked cheerfully. “I have extras.”
Max rolled his eyes as he opened the door, looking at Kade’s blinding orange florescent shirt. He wasn’t quite sure what the blobs of gray and black were dotting the surface, but he thought they were fish…or sharks.
“Hell no. I do want her to actually come back to me,” he told his brother-in-law bluntly, closing the door behind him.
“Hey…Mia loves my shirts,” Max heard Kade yell through the door as he raced for his vehicle.
The smell of alcohol assailed him as he closed the door of his rented vehicle, and it wasn’t coming from just the garment he was wearing. Grabbing the bottle, he lowered the window and tossed it onto the dirt driveway. He’d throw it away when he got back. Mia was coming home with him, and she was intoxicating enough to keep him drunk on her forever. The liquor had been a poor substitute, and it had fogged part of his memory. From this day forward, he wanted to remember everything, experience every part of the woman he loved.
Starting the car, he jammed it roughly into gear and turned the small sports car around, heading down the driveway much faster than he should be going down a road full of potholes. But Max ignored them, his mind already focused on only one goal.
No more bullshit.
No more games.
Mia belonged to him, and it was beyond time he claimed her completely, knew her totally, loved her unconditionally. And once he found her, he was never letting go.
Mia fastened her seatbelt woodenly, her entire body exhausted, her heart and soul empty. She might be here on this plane bound for Los Angeles, but she was only a shell, a body going to another place. Her heart had stayed with Max back at the ranch.
She stowed her purse and carry-on beneath the seat of the aircraft and leaned her head back against the headrest, closing her eyes against the pain of knowing that she was leaving Max. Again. Maybe taking those few hours in the shelter of his arms had been a mistake, making it even more painful to be without him. Somehow, she needed to rebuild her life away from everyone she cared about. She was toxic to them, and if Danny did locate her, she didn’t want anyone she loved to be anywhere nearby.
“You have to the count of ten to get that beautiful ass up and out of this plane.”
Mia’s eyes popped open in shock, the sound of Max’s deep, masculine voice vibrating right next to her ear, so close she could feel his warm breath caress her temple.
“Max?” She stared right into his eyes, stormy, turbulent, and so close she had to tilt her head back to see them. “You have to get off this plane. We’re going to be taking off soon.”
“One.” Both his expression and voice were uncompromising.
“Max. Stop this. You need to go.” Mia was panicked. Max didn’t look like he was about to back down, and she couldn’t get off this plane. But she wanted to. God, how she wanted to leave right now, throw herself into Max’s safe embrace and let him take her wherever he wanted to go.
“Two.” He bent down and snagged her carry-on from under the seat and dropped her purse in her lap.
He brushed his upper body against her, and Mia tried not to inhale the masculine fragrance that assaulted her as he straightened.
Mentally slapping herself, she remembered that she couldn’t be weak. “I’m leaving you, Max. I don’t want to be with you anymore. I don’t love you.” Liar. She was such a liar. But she couldn’t think of any other way to make him back off. And she really, really needed him to go. She couldn’t look him in the eye and say that she didn’t love him, so she stared straight ahead, waiting for him to exit the plane.
“Three.”
Mia’s eyes snapped back to his face. He’d slung her small bag over his shoulder and his arms were folded in front of him. He looked obstinate, and determined to get her off the plane. And at the moment, Max Hamilton looked anything but tame. In fact, he looked pretty damn certain he was going to bend her to his will.
Okay…well…she could be just as pigheaded as he was being at the moment. “I’m not going, Max.” She crossed her arms, frowning.
“Four.” He reached down and flipped the latch on her seatbelt, opening it with a simple flick of his wrist.
“Don’t make this harder than it already is. Please.” Mia had lost all desire for pretense, her look beseeching him to cease. Blinking hard, trying to keep her tears of frustration from falling, she saw a
dangerous glint in his eyes, a dogged stubbornness that warned her that he wasn’t going to relent.
“Ten.” The word had barely left Max’s lips before he snatched her bodily out of her seat and slung her over his shoulder.
Mia scrambled to hang onto her purse, her fists beating on Max’s back. “Let go. Dammit. What are you doing?” It was actually pretty obvious that he was bodily carrying her off the plane, his stride steady and even, as though he were trying not to jostle her around too much.
Mia decided at that moment that there was nothing more mortifying than being bodily removed from a full aircraft. Luckily, she was near the front of the plane, but Max never stopped to let her down, even after they’d exited and were heading down the ramp and into the main airport.
Exasperated, she said to his back, “What happened to counting to ten?”
“Took too long. You talked too much,” he answered abruptly, moving toward the airport exit, drawing looks from the people they were passing that ranged from amusement to alarm.
Max had parked in the loading zone, a completely illegal place to leave his car. “I bet I would have gotten a ticket,” she mumbled, irritated.
By the time he deposited her in the bucket seat of the sporty vehicle, she was shaking with frustration. He didn’t say a word as he calmly snapped her seatbelt, closed the passenger door and then jogged around to the driver’s side. He had the car in motion before she could get out, which she realized had been his intention.
“You do understand that you just kidnapped me. Last I knew, it’s illegal to take a woman without her permission,” she told him in a sharp tone. “How did you get through security, anyway?”
Max shrugged. “I bought a ticket on the flight.”
For a man who’d been completely drunk the night before, he looked pretty unaffected by the amount of alcohol he’d consumed. He handled the little sports car with confidence, steadily making his way to the freeway. “I do not want to go back to the ranch. I need to be on that plane.”
“No you don’t,” Max answered with irritating certainty. “Danny’s dead. And you’re never running away from me again. I’ll make sure to give you every reason to stay.”
Danny’s dead? Max knows about Danny? He knows—he has to—and he still came for me. Why?
Mia’s entire body suddenly relaxed, her panic completely deflated. “How do you know about him?”
“Travis,” Max answered with more than a little irritation in his voice. “Why didn’t you ever tell me, Mia?”
“I thought it was all over, and I wanted to leave it in the past. I didn’t think you’d understand a woman being that stupid. What did Travis tell you?” she asked quietly. It’s over. It’s really over. The reality that a man she had feared for so long was finally gone forever hadn’t quite sunk in for her.
“He told me everything. Your relationship in college and the abuse, Danny nearly killing me, you saving my life. And you are not stupid. Did Travis miss anything?” Max turned onto the freeway, glancing at her briefly with a frown.
“It’s over,” Mia whispered, wrapping her arms around herself, afraid to believe it was really true. She looked over at Max, studying his profile as she tried to make herself accept that she didn’t have to run anymore. Would Max ever forgive her now that he knew the whole truth? Or would he be repulsed?
I’ve dealt with those emotions. I’m not the woman I was two years ago. Maybe not, but she had to fight her insecurities where Max was concerned. There were some things she hadn’t told him, things he had a right to know.
“Your running days are over, sweetheart, but you and me…we’ll never be over,” Max told her dangerously. “Not unless you’ve really stopped loving me, and you really want it to be over.”
“But the woman you fell in love with doesn’t exist. She never really did,” Mia told him honestly.
“For me she did and she still does.” Max glanced over at her with a look of fierce possessiveness that made Mia practically melt into a puddle on the seat of the car. “I didn’t care about the superficial things. It didn’t matter what you wore, what you said to other people, or what was in your past. I fell in love with you, the you who was always there and still is, no matter how much you twisted yourself to fit an image I never really cared about.” Max turned off the exit for the ranch before adding, “I want to know everything about you now. Maybe it was my fault because I put you on a pedestal instead of treating you like my woman. I thought you were perfect, but I would have felt that way regardless. Even if I’d known about your past, your insecurities, your personal preferences, I still would have fucking worshipped the ground you walked on.”
“Why?” she asked curiously. “I was a screwed-up woman who put up with a highly abusive relationship for over a year. My self-confidence was nil, and I never felt like I was good enough for you, or enough of a woman to keep you.”
Max pulled into the driveway of the ranch as he answered, “I can’t be the same man I was before either, Mia. The love was real, but we were both pretending, hiding.”
“What now?” she whispered softly.
Reaching the end of the long driveway, Max stopped the car in front of the ranch house and turned to her. “Now I plan to show my wife exactly how I feel about her, love her the way I’ve always loved her but was too afraid to show it. We trust each other instead of running away. We strip each other bare in more ways than one.” His voice was bold, but still held a touch of vulnerability.
“I trust you. I always have. It was myself who I didn’t trust,” she answered, mesmerized by the covetous look in his eyes and the fierceness of his expression.
Time seemed to stop, both of them staring at each other with unrestrained passion, and there wasn’t a sound except for their harsh breathing to break the silence.
“Fuck. I need you,” Max finally said harshly. He opened the door of the car and grabbed her bag. He was on the other side of the vehicle before Mia could even unbuckle her seatbelt, her fingers trembling as she fumbled with the restraint.
Max flipped it open and she stumbled out of the car, landing in his arms. He picked her up and strode to the house. “Key,” he requested impatiently.
“In the plant. I can see it. Were Kade and Travis here?” she asked breathlessly.
“Yeah.”
“They didn’t even bother to hide it.”
Max fished the key from the plant beside the door and unlocked the door, pushing it open with his foot. Dropping the key on the table next to the door, he released his hold on her bag and set her on her feet. “I want you naked right now. I need you wanting me and moaning my name. I want to feel every emotion you have while I fuck you until you’re satisfied.”
“B-Bedroom,” she stammered, her body yearning to be joined with his, the desire so raw and carnal that her entire being was trembling and the moist heat between her thighs felt almost unbearable.
“I’m not going to make it that far.” Max growled, the feral, reverberating sound vibrating low and dangerously in the air as he grabbed the edges of her shirt and popped every button off the Western button-down she was wearing. “Mine. Every damn inch of you is mine.”
Mia drew in a sharp breath as Max lowered his head and fused his mouth to hers. His kiss was possessive and punishing, but Mia welcomed it. She wanted to be completely branded and taken, declared his in the most primitive way possible.
Crazy love.
The way she felt about Max was insane and volatile, and she couldn’t care less if he could feel every wild emotion that coursed through her body, because she was simply answering his call. He felt the same way. They shared the same lush primitive fury that was ready to combust at any moment.
She opened to him, surrendered to him, entwining her tongue with his as she pushed her hands beneath his t-shirt and inwardly sighed as she touched warm skin over steely muscle. Trying to touch him everywhere
at once, her hands roamed over his chest and around his back, her fingers touching every hot inch she could get to, and finding nothing except unyielding strength.
The button on her jeans popped and the zipper came down. Max tore his mouth from hers, his breathing ragged as he tugged the shirt off her arms and tore open the clasp of her bra, the undergarment hitting the floor seconds later, joining her discarded top. Mia clawed at Max’s shirt, desperate to get him just as naked, but he ignored her, his complete focus on tugging the jeans down her legs, taking her panties with them.
Grabbing her hand, he led her to the couch and bent her over the elevated arm. She braced her hands on the cushion to steady herself, her breathing so hot and heavy that she was gasping, her red-hot need for Max making her come undone.
His palms gripped the cheeks of her ass, alternately cupping and caressing each one reverently. “Never run from me again,” he demanded harshly, his breathing ragged. “We belong together.”
Feeling his need to assert his claim and have her under his control, she murmured quietly, “Do it. I know you want to.” Everything feminine inside her responded to his dominance, moisture rushing heatedly between her thighs. “Do it.”
Max was right. She did belong with him, and to him, and she wanted him to claim her. She knew exactly what he needed right now, and she was squirming to feel the sting of his palm on her ass, an erotic pleasure that, coming from Max, would drive her completely mad.
