Page 115 of The Ruthless and the Strong

I shook my head. “No. I remember Olivia saying something to me about it then. She said you were going on a fishing trip.”

“You really believe that now?”

I didn’t know what came over me then, but I snapped. I grabbed the closest thing to me, which luckily turned out to be a throw pillow, and threw it at Max. It missed his head by an inch. He looked at me with wide eyes.

“Stop talking to me like that!” I yelled.

He stood up but made no move to walk toward me. “Like what?”

“Like—like that! With that stupid emotionless voice. I hate it, okay?”

For the first time since I walked inside his house, I found some emotions back in his eyes then. “Lizzie.”

I shook my head and held up one hand. “I need you to spell it out for me. I need to hear the truth from your own lips, okay?”

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, some unnamed emotion brewed in his blue eyes. “I killed Terrance Hughes and Lorenzo Vitelli.”

“O-okay.” I said, my voice shaking. I needed to sit or I’d collapse in front of him. I sat on the floor and Max watched me. “Do they have something on you? Those cops?”

He shook his head. “That’s why they’re following me. They’re hoping I’ll slip up and give them something to reopen the case.”

I nodded, feeling a small sense of relief.

“Do you regret it?” I asked. I found the answer in his eyes before he even said it.

He shook his head. “No.”

“Can you tell me?”

His brows pulled together in a small frown when he said, “Tell you what?”

I shrugged, not really knowing how I was supposed to feel about this. Fuck, how was I supposed to spend the rest of my life with this man now? He looked like a complete stranger to me, and I hated that.

“Tell me why. Or how. Just something, anything, to make me understand this.”

So he told me. I didn’t say anything. And I didn’t interrupt him. He didn’t go into full details on the how of it all, just enough to paint me a picture, and I didn’t think he left anything out. Not once did his voice waver. He didn’t hesitate in telling me such a huge secret, knowing I could use it to destroy him. He trusted me completely. I would have been ecstatic over that, if I wasn’t still reeling.

I tried to match the vision of this man before me to the one I had been with for the last month, and even to the man I had been crushing on since I was twelve, but I didn’t know how to do it.

He was a complete stranger to me.

And I hated that so much.

By the time he was done, all that was left in the house was deafening silence.

I stood.

Max watched me warily, and when I walked past him, he grabbed my arm, halting me. “Lizzie?”

I didn’t know what to say to him.

I moved my hand down to his, grabbing it. Without saying another word, I pushed him on the couch. He fell willingly. There was still confusion in his eyes, but he didn’t say anything when I climbed on top of him.

I closed my eyes and I kissed him.

But this kiss felt different. Perhaps he could sense it too, because he placed one hand at the back of my head, holding me still as he devoured me with his lips.

I moved my hand down to his jeans, unbuttoned them, and pulled down his zipper, pulling out his hard cock in my hand. He groaned in my mouth, but he didn’t say anything, and he didn’t pull away from the kiss either.

---