Page 39 of Tempting Max

Yes,happily. Because even though it’s been twenty-four hours since we returned to Paintbrush—and we agreed to spend the night alone for appearances. Having claimed Gus so thoroughly, with the promise of more, is enough to make me feel like I could do anything in the world.

I pick up my phone and smile when I see Gus’ name. I think I’ve smiled more in the last two days than I have in my entire life, and I won’t lie, I don’t hate it.

Swiping my phone open, I nearly drop it when I read the text.

GUS: I need my daddy’s cock so bad.

Holy fucking shit. My cock rages to full hardness and I let out a pained groan that I just barely keep within the walls of my office. I want to drag her in here and make her sit on my cock, but the evening rush is in full swing and there’s no way she wouldn’t be missed on the floor. Especially when I’m going to need far more than a tryst to punish her for doing this to me.

Squeezing my dick through my jeans, I try to think of anything that might cool me off, but nothing works. All I can think about is pushing her under my desk and making her suck my cock for teasing me like this.

Shooting out of my chair, I swipe my hands down my face and try to shake it off by pacing back and forth. When that doesn’t work, I resort to push-ups. Dozens of them, until I collapse in a pile, finally nearly flaccid.

Scraping myself up off the floor, I collapse in my chair and devise a way to get her back. Two can play this game.

MAX:I’m going to have to punish you for making daddy’s dick so hard at work, baby girl. You can slide your pretty little pussy down my cock when I say so and not before.

Grinning, I hit send and though writing that text made me hard again, it was worth it.Fucking hell, I’m not sure how much longer I can stand this arrangement. I want everyone to know she’s mine. I want to mark my territory, so no other man even thinks about looking at her.

But neither of us are ready for that yet. I don’t know much about the breakup that brought her to Paintbrush, but it had to have been rough for her to pick up and move a thousand miles away from everything she knows.

If I ever meet that man, I don’t know if I’ll punch him in the face or shake his hand for bringing her to me, but I imagine it would be the former.

I’m just getting back to work, just getting my dick to half-staff, when there’s a knock at the door and Liam enters.

“Hey man, it’s insane out here, do you think you could lend a hand until it dies down a bit?”

“Sure.” It comes out naturally but, on the inside, I’m panicking. How am I going to be that close to Gus without touching her, kissing her, slipping my hands inside her jeans to see how wet I made her?

Shit.

“Give me a minute to finish this up and I’ll be out.”

“Perfect, thanks.” Liam disappears and I walk several quick circles around my office to ensure my dick doesn’t make itself known to the entire bar.

Taking three deep breaths, I open the door and stop in my tracks. Liam was not kidding. This place is wall to wall. The whole team is here, even Elliot, and we still can’t churn out enough to meet the four-deep crowd at the bar.

Any dirty thoughts I was entertaining fizzle as I enter the fray.

“What is going on?” I ask, jumping in next to Liam to take an order. Gus is on the other side of the bar, which is probably a good thing for now. “Is this an Elliot thing?”

“Wish I could take credit,” Elliot informs me from the other side of the bar. “Brew Craft ran a social media teaser on the article they’re going to do.” He motions toward the crowd, “hence beermageddon.”

I laugh and the sound makes both of my brothers freeze and stare at me. “What?”

“I thought you forgot how to laugh at a joke,” Elliot returns before he gets sucked into the fray again.

Liam just studies me silently for a moment before his customer reminds him that he wants an IPA today, if he could manage it.

Glad to be interrupted lest my brother’s giant computer of a brain calculates exactly what I’m trying to hide, I turn to the next in line and take their order.

None of us get another break for hours.

* * *

“Staying?”Liam asks me, hovering in my office door after we closed for the night. Almost everyone has limped home, but I’m hoping to get a taste of Gus before we have to go our separate ways.

“Just trying to get the order in from earlier,” I say, stretching my back. “What a night, right?”

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