Luckily, I didn’t need to articulate my desires. He knew. Reaching behind my neck, he untied the bow and peeled away the halter top of my dress, exposing my breasts. My nipples immediately tightened in the cool air.
“Phenomenal,” he said, lowering his head.
His heated breath bathed my skin, right before his tongue did. He licked a wet path across my breasts from one aching nipple to the other. An arrow of heat as sure as the trajectory of his mouth shot straight to my core. Tingling with need already, I began to shake. It was too much pleasure, too fast, after all the denial.
“Max.” I moaned his name.
His expression stark with desire of his own, he grabbed me by the waist, lifted me, and laid me out on the bed. I came up on my elbows as he gathered the hem of my sundress and yanked it up. Air rushed over me. His gaze hot, his hands hotter, he skimmed them up my legs. Grasping the top of my nude panties, his palm brushed my pussy.
I hissed from the sensation, and his eyes darkened as he ripped the satin off. I throbbed while he stared at me.
“Beautiful. So beautiful, baby.” Tossing my panties aside, he unbuttoned his fly and removed his jeans and then his boxer briefs as I watched. Condom in hand, he tore the packet open and rolled it on his impressive length.
He was so big. My desire cooling, a sudden frisson of fear trickled down my spine as he put a knee to the bed, gripped my thighs, and separated them.
“Max.” My hands lifted to his shoulders, not to draw him closer but to hold him at bay.
I licked my dry lips, trying to figure out how to tell him to slow down, not to stop, but his head had already lowered. His lips crushed mine. He fed me his need and swallowed my protest.
My dress bunched at my waist, his body covered me. Pleasure resurfaced with each swipe of his plunging tongue. His hard cock nudged at my entrance, then he surged his significant length inside. I felt an immediate burning, ripping pain, and bucked and cried out. He misinterpreted my movements and the rake of my nails as urgency.
“Baby. Oh, baby. Yes. You’re so good. So tight.”
He thrust deeper. Withdrew, thrust inside, and repeated the action again and again, then groaned and stiffened. My eyes glassy from the discomfort, I watched Max find his release. All that compelling male hunger unleashed because of me was an incredible sight. He buried his face in my neck afterward, his breath hot on my skin.
When he lifted his head a few moments later, it was to apologize. “You didn’t come, did you? I’m sorry.” He slid out. “You’re so sexy. I went too fast . . .” He trailed off as I closed my legs and scooted away from him.
It hurt.
“You’re a virgin.” His expression incredulous, he glanced back at forth between my red-stained thighs and the blood on his cock.
Chapter Thirty-Five
* * *
“I’m so sorry.” Max returned from the bathroom with a towel around his trim waist and a wet washcloth in his hands. Regret was splashed all over his handsome face.
“I should have told you up front.” Nude since I’d tossed the ruined sundress aside, I dropped my chin to my knees, letting my limbs shield my nakedness and my hair curtain my hurt.
The physical pain had already faded. It was the embarrassment that would linger, and his expression after discovering my innocence. Disappointment wasn’t the emotion I wanted Max or any man to wear after having sex with me.
“Maybe you should have mentioned it,” he said softly. Coming closer, he sank down on the bed beside me. Strands of gold shimmered across his brow as he glanced down at me. “Will you let me clean you up?”
“All right,” I said. What else could I do? Heat warmed my cheeks as he carefully spread my legs apart.
“You’re perfection, so delicately formed and insanely hot with all your amazing curves. You’re even sexier that I imagined,” he said as he worked. “And I imagined you naked a lot.” He lifted his gaze, and his eyes were that dark sapphire they’d been before he’d closed them and slid inside me.
“Thank you,” I whispered, his compliment helping a lot.
He dabbed gently at the splotches of red on my pale skin.
Something stirred within me as he tenderly cared for me. It started as a tingling at my scalp. But while he worked on my legs, it transformed into an insistent throbbing that increased as he smoothed the cloth over my waxed pussy.
“Being inside you was amazing.” He gently swiped the rough cloth across my sensitive lower lips, his warm fingers grazing my clit.
A swift bolt of heat swept through me, and I sucked in a sharp breath.
His eyes lifted. “Knowing I’m the only man who’s ever had that privilege makes me feel like a god.”
Hope burst free from the ball of hurt I’d compressed it into.
“A lesser one, barely worthy.”
With Max’s gaze on mine, I opened to him like a flower to the warmth of the sun. His praise, his worshipful adoration, it was exactly what I wanted. What I needed.
I shivered as he slowly circled my clit with his purposeful thumb.
“Lean back.” His low voice stirred my desire. “That’s it. Open your legs wider.” He trailed the fingers of his other hand along the smooth creamy skin of my inner thigh. “You’re so beautiful. So sweet, shug. So wet.”
His eyes blazing with heat, he shifted closer. I felt his possessive glance like a caress as he raked it over me.
“I want to taste you. But first, I want to see my sexy siren come.” He grazed the pad of his thumb over the slippery surface of me.
My entire body vibrated, but it was my swollen clit that was the focus of a rising tide of need. Gripping the sheets in my hands, I lifted my hips, straining for more of his touch. More of his praise. More of everything he could give me.
“Let it go, baby.” He stared deep into my eyes. “While I watch you. While I touch you.” He swiped across the surface of me oh-so-lightly, but that perfect touch made my entire body shimmer.
“Max, I can’t.” It was too much. Too intimate. Shaking with need, I gripped the sheet tighter.
“You can. Give it to me.” Holding me captive with his gaze, he provided just the right amount of pressure on my clit with his thumb as I lifted my hips.
A bolt of hot pleasure shot straight through me, and I shattered, chanting his name.
Chapter Thirty-Six
* * *
“You’re crying. Don’t cry.” Max gathered me close, and I folded myself into him, reveling in his strength and basking in the warm afterglow of his affection.
“Thank you.” I tucked my head into his chest and pressed a kiss to his skin. He smelled like my strawberry bath gel and his own unique scent.
“Don’t thank me for giving you an orgasm. The pleasure was all mine, shug.”
“But you didn’t . . . I mean, before you did, but not this time.” I dropped my chin to my chest.
“Hey.” Sliding his fingers under my chin, he gently lifted my head and scanned my gaze. “You truly are an innocent.”
“Define innocence.” I felt my cheeks flame.
“Have you fooled around with anyone? Unclothed?” Max arched both his golden brows.
“Sure, I have. I just never went all the way.” Never wanted to until I met him.
“Unbelievable.”
“Just because I never actually did the deed doesn’t mean I’m totally inexperienced. I know stuff.” I lifted my chin, freeing myself from his careful grip.
“I’m sure you do.” Those vertical grooves on either side of his sexy lips appeared.
“Why is that amusing?”
“You live in Hollywood. The movies you do. The onscreen chemistry you’ve had with your male costars. The photos of you with them on the internet. It really is all just one big glitzy made-up fantasy.”
“Yes, you’ve seen me in the morning with no makeup. I’m just a simple girl without my entourage to glam me up and a camera to catch my most seductive angles.” My heart sank. He wanted the myth. He was dis
appointed in the reality.
In me.
“You looking all rosy, rested, and rumpled when you roll out of bed wearing those ridiculously sexy pajamas?” The grooves in his lean cheeks smoothed. “That girl is way better than any fantasy. You’re mine like that. Mine naked. Mine right now in this bed.”
My inner self preened. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Pictures might tell a story without any words being spoken, but only if the person viewing them looks beyond what the captions tell them to believe.”
“It’s pretend outside of the two of us.” It was a statement, but the way he said it made it almost seem like a question.
“You and me inside the frame.” I made brackets with my first fingers and thumbs and pretended to snap a selfie with the two of us within it.
“God, I wish that could be true.” His arms suddenly tightened around me.
In New York, Max had reassured me. Now I felt like I needed to reassure him. What had changed?
“Why can’t it be?”
“A lot of reasons.” His eyes squeezed shut.
My stomach swirled with unease. When he reopened his eyes, they weren’t clear skies. They were northern blizzard blue.
“Reasons that change the way you feel about me?” I whispered unsteadily with chill bumps rising on my skin. I no longer felt warm, even though he still held me.
“Nothing will ever change the way I feel about you.” His eyes flared, and the heat of the sureness of his words blanketed the chill.
“Then those reasons don’t matter.” I injected my tone with certainty.
“I wish it could be that simple.”
“Love shouldn’t be complex,” I said, yet felt him become very still around me.
Stupid, innocent girl. It’s too soon to make a declaration about love after having sex for the first time. Are you trying to keep him or scare him away?
“Let me up.” I pressed my hands into Max’s chest, ignoring the pleasurable sensations that pricked my nerve endings from touching him. His skin was smooth and warm, the planes of muscle hard. It was like touching body armor that had been heated by the sun.
“No.” His arms coming up around me again, he held me tight.
“Please.” I dipped my chin, grateful that my hair slid forward to cover my expression.
“Why would I let you go, when you’re everything I want. Everything I need.”
“Because I’m an idiot blathering about sentimental stuff after we’ve just had sex for the first time.” I wiggled in his hold.
The cotton towel was rough beneath me, but he was thick and hard. Shivery warmth flowed through me.
“I told you I was falling for you.”
“Falling,” I muttered. “Not fallen.”
“Falling. Freefall. A rapid and continuing state of decline.”
“Oh.” My lips lifted.
“There she is. The beautiful, sensitive, caring, confident woman. The sugar that makes all the bitter that came before I met her sweet.” Holding me with one arm, he lifted his other hand, swiping his thumb softly across my cheek. “Eyes sparkling like shattered diamonds on platinum, just from a compliment.”
The look of adoration in Max’s expression made my spirit soar. He didn’t know how few genuine compliments I’d received. The affirmation acting provided satisfied a need for approval nothing else had filled.
His hand drifted lower. “Your curves make my cock hard.”
My nipples drew to points as he trailed his fingers lightly across one breast and then the other.
Since his hands were drifting, I let my hands do some exploring too. Well, more like a rocket on a mission straight to that twist in his towel.
“Shug, wait. Slow down.”
I sucked in a sharp breath as I separated the two ends and his cock sprang free.
“Baby.” He lifted my chin with a curled finger. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like how?” I licked my lips to moisten them. There had been an interesting pearl of moisture on the slit of his cock.
“Like you want to put your mouth on me.”
“I do.” I searched his eyes, and my lips curved. “You’d like that.”
It wasn’t a question. I’d already seen the heat in his eyes.
I slid off the bed, knelt on the carpet with my hands on his thighs, and gazed up at him for a beat. His cock bobbed in front of my mouth. I dipped my gaze to it and exhaled a warm breath, just to see what would happen. I wasn’t disappointed. Another pearly drop emerged, seeping into the other.
“Where did you learn to do that?” His voice was gruff, as thick as his milky secretion.
“I hear guys talk.” Grasping him low at the root, I lowered my head and licked him.
Max groaned. The sound of his desire echoed deep inside me.
“Salty,” I said wondrously, shifting my weight back onto my feet and swiping my thumb through the excess viscosity on my lips.
He watched me with a hungry expression, the desire in his gaze plying more of my own. Leaning forward again, I grasped the velvety width of him and wrapped my lips around the bulbous head.
He groaned. The vibrations traveled down my throat and pulsed as I slid my mouth down his length. I nearly gagged going halfway down, he was so incredibly formed. Withdrawing until only the head remained, I allowed his hand on my nape to guide me. I glided my mouth down another time, only faster.
“Hollie. Fuck.” He grabbed a fistful of hair, taking control over the rhythm, over me.
I liked that, liked that his grip tightened as I sucked harder. I started to throb. I liked him being in control, and loved the deepness of his voice as he spoke my name. Gripping him tighter at the base, I sucked harder. Saliva leaked from my mouth, and a glossy wetness slicked my inner thighs.
“Baby, that feels so good.” He pulled my hair, so far gone in the pleasure I gave him that I didn’t even think he noticed what he was doing. “Enough.”
He suddenly pulled me back, the release of my mouth from him making a popping sound.
I lifted my gaze, and the look on his face and the starkness of his desire made my core clench. A new rush of wetness coated my inner thighs as he plucked me up off the carpet, shifted, and tossed me backward onto the bed.
I loved that I could make Max wild like this.
Putting a knee to the mattress in front of me while I watched him with heated eyes, he grabbed and rolled on a condom, prying my knees apart as he joined me. He stared at me as if I were a prized possession, piercing me with longing. I wanted to be his in every single way I could, wanted so badly to please him.
“Prettiest pussy on the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen.” Covering my waxed mound with his palm, he swiped a deliberate thumb across my drenched folds that made me shudder. “You’re so wet, shug.”
I sucked in a sharp breath as he swirled a circle around my clit.
“You like that?” he asked, his gaze lifting, his eyes as dark as the deep ocean.
“Yes, only . . .” My words left me as he did it again, and my hips lifted off the mattress.
“Only it’s not enough. You want more. Yes?”
“Yes.” My reply was throaty, and I held my breath as he positioned himself between my legs, pausing with the head of his sheathed cock at my entrance.
“Good. That’s very good.” He pushed inside me, slowly this time. As he went deeper and deeper, he watched me, and a look of pure masculine satisfaction curled his lips when I smiled.
“That feels nice.” It seemed different than the time before. Now there was a stretching and a fullness, and beneath those sensations was a desire for more.
“Nice isn’t good enough for you. Let’s make it nicer.” Keeping us connected, he lowered his head and fastened his lips around one of my nipples.
Wet, pleasurable heat engulfed the aching tip as he swiped his tongue across it, then he moved his mouth to the other one, sucking on it so hard I gasped. More warmth rushed inside me to dampen my core.
; “Max.” I moaned as he grazed his teeth across one furled point and then the other.
“Yes, baby?”
“That’s nicer,” I whispered.
Grooves bracketed his mouth briefly before it crashed down on mine. He speared his wet tongue between my lips. Shallow and then deep, the rhythm of his tongue in my mouth matched the rhythm of the plunges of his cock, shallow and then deep inside me.
My desire rose higher and higher. I dug my nails into his ass, lifting my hips into each of his thrusts, trying to clamp him tighter to keep him deep when he withdrew to penetrate me shallow.
“Max!” I ripped my lips from his, my hands urgent, gliding up and down the tense perspiration-dampened planes of his back. “More. Faster. Deeper. Harder. I want . . .”
“I want to, baby.” He groaned against my mouth, trailing hot kisses along my jaw, and then hot breath streamed into my ear as he pumped into me faster, deeper, and harder.
“I’m close.” I panted. “So close.”
On his next penetration, he dug his hands under my ass, lifted it, and went deep. I lifted my hips to take him even deeper, and the pleasure reached the top.
The center of the universe became our hot connection.
I let go, surrendering to it, to him, to the warm, wet, unbelievable heat. Max stiffened inside me, becoming impossibly harder, groaning deep and long. Elated, I clamped my arms and legs and everything I had tighter around him as we tumbled over the fiery edge together.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
* * *
This time it was me who returned from the shower while Max waited. Seated on the side of the bed, he glanced up from the display on his phone. The flare of heat in his eyes as he looked at me chased away my postcoital shyness.
“Come here,” he said. Setting his cell on the nightstand, he threw back the coverlet, climbed in, and patted the vacant spot beside him. “And ditch the towel.”
(Complete Rock Stars, Surf and Second Chances #1-5) Page 106
