Page 43 of Tempting Max

I couldn’t stop myself now, even if I wanted to. Like a flash of lightning, I burst into a thousand bright lights, my screams echoing off the walls around me as pleasure washes every feeling away but pleasure.

I hear Max grunting, feel his fingers digging into my sides, feel his cock jerk and when he explodes inside me, I collapse on his chest, out of breath.

His hands stroke up and down my back as we shiver and shake together, and I know now that I never loved Ethan. Because whatever it is that I’m feeling now is ten times what I felt for him and I’m too afraid to name it.

Even if my heart already knows.

26

MAX

“Tell me about your family,” I say to Gus as we cuddle, physically exhausted and fully dressed in one of the leather booths at the back of the bar. Gus’ head is in my lap, and I can’t stop dragging my fingers through her gorgeous hair or sliding my fingers against her satin skin. And if I don’t look around, I can imagine that we’re home together. The image is more appealing than I can process at the moment.

“It’s just my mom and dad. I’m an only child, thankfully, I don’t think they could have handled multiples of me.”

I chuckle as I imagine little Gus raising hell from toddlerhood. “I bet you were adorable.”

“Oh, I was,” she answers, “Just, I think one of my babysitters said, ‘intolerable’. I like the word ‘spicy’ better myself.”

“It suits you,” I tell her. “Do you miss them?”

“Sometimes,” she answers. “But we weren’t close, not like in a Hallmark movie way or anything. I love them, it’s just more…I don’t know, transactional. Does that make sense?”

My heart clenches at the thought that she didn’t have the loving family that I had. I think everyone deserves what I had, even if it disintegrated quickly. “I think so.”

“I’m much closer to my great aunt. She’s easy to talk to, understanding, and wants to know what’s going on in my life. My parents just kind of check in once a month to make sure I’m still alive.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell her, running my thumb down her cheek.

She shrugs. “Don’t be. I didn’t have a bad childhood and there are kids who have it much worse than I did, but it is nice to live somewhere where I’m more than just a child they spawned because they felt they had to. It doesn’t hurt my feelings. It just is.” She smiles at me as if to reassure me that she’s telling the truth and I believe her, even if it sounds weird. “What about you?”

“Oh man, the opposite. My parents were incredible. My mom was imaginative, creative, and took joy in spending her days with us.” I smile to myself when I think of the time dad came home from work to find us covered in head to toe in finger paint. Mom’s reasoning was ‘why stop at the fingers?’

“She sounds amazing.”

I frown as I feel the same kick I always do when I think of her last few years, as breast cancer stole her vibrancy, her smile, and then her life. “She was. She died of breast cancer about fifteen years ago.”

Gus sits up and faces me in the booth. “Oh Max,” she takes my face in her hands. “I’m so, so sorry.”

I close my eyes and soak in the feeling of her touch. Losing my mother was hard, but it’s been enough time that the stabbing pain is gone when I think about her. I know I was lucky to have her as long as I did. “Thank you, I wish you could have met her.”

Gus smiles and her eyes water slightly. “I wish I could have too.”

“Elliot is a lot like her, when he’s not boning every woman with nice tits.”

Gus laughs, “I can see that. He’s funny, so easy-going.”

The tiniest touch of jealousy flares in my stomach at her appraisal of my brother, who is much closer to her age. Who makes way more sense as her partner. But I would burn the world down before I let him have her. “I think he’s irritating.”

“That’s because he’s the youngest and what? Fifteen years younger?”

I flinch at the math. Gus makes me feel so good, I forget that I’m twenty years older. “Yeah. Mom called him ‘the best surprise’. Liam and I didn’t necessarily agree.”

Gus laughs and cozies up to me again. “You guys are all so different. Who are you most like?”

I swallow as the conversation turns to harder topics. “My dad. He’s where I get my size. I get my eyes from mom.”

“Ah, so he also had bear genes.”

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