If Justin kills Parrish, will he stop there? What if he kidnaps Maxine next?
No, I have to find Parrish, and then I have to surrender to Justin completely.
My soul shatters to pieces and tears prick my eyes. I blink them away, hoping beyond all hope that Maxx doesn’t notice. He doesn’t need me weeping for his first time; that isn’t fair to either of us. Especially not when the touch of his hand makes my back arch and my eyes flutter closed.
He runs his palm down my waist, and my lower stomach muscles clench tight.
But still, knowing that I might have to give up my life to save everyone else’s is terrifying.
As long as there’s sunlight in the sky, I’ll plot against Justin, work secretly to find a way out, a solution to this monumental problem. Still, it feels like I’m running on borrowed time here.
And it hurts.
“Wet,” Maxx says, drawing his eyes down my body. I wish we had more time to examine each other, to get comfortable with one another’s bodies. But both of our moral posturing and hair pulling has taken all of that time away. We must be running short right now, pushing this moment down to the wire. “Means with fuel.”
“Right.” The word is short and sharp. Everything inside of me feels pulled taut—both physically and emotionally. I’m liable to break. This … this release should help, although it’ll come at a massive cost to both of us. “It also means … other things.”
X lets out a sharp breath, dropping his head down and closing his eyes again. I can see that he’s struggling, but I can’t let him do that, taint his first experience that way. My hands slide up, fingers curling over his shoulders. He’s so goddamn hard—his chest and arms and shoulders I mean.
Although …
I squeeze him a little more firmly around the waist, drawing our bodies together until I can feel other parts of him that are just as hard as his upper body.
He’s quivering now. All over. His body is hot and slicked with a thin sheen of sweat.
“Other things,” Maxx murmurs, and then he’s sliding the hand that’s on my waist underneath my shirt. His rough palm makes my body prickle in all the right ways, and I can’t hold back a gasp as he makes contact with my breast, squeezing hard.
My hips buck up against his of their own accord, and he clenches his jaw so tight that I can practically hear his teeth clacking together.
“Are you wet, Dakota?” he whispers, so quietly that I barely hear it. I can’t decide if he’s teasing me or if he’s … well, unsure? But no, that can’t be. Not Maxx Wright, Mr. Confident and Outgoing.
“Even though I shouldn’t be, I am,” I whisper right back.
He removes his hand and then carefully, slowly, helps me out of my shirt. It gets tossed over the lamp on my nightstand and then Maxx is covering me with his big body again, kissing the breath out of me with sure, confident strokes of his tongue. I knead his muscles with my fingers, delighting in the perfection of his body.
He asked me to feel him, didn’t he? So I do. I feel him all over, trailing my fingers down and then smoothing my palms across his taut belly. He makes a slight growling sound that has the fine hairs on my arms raising up in warning.
Is he about to do it, to show me what he was so afraid of unleashing before?
He pulls away from me, grabbing onto my sweatpants, and yanking them down my hips, my underwear going right along with them. These, too, join the shirt atop the lamp. I don’t even think he means to do it.
Maxx stands up suddenly, moving over to the phone on the dresser and checking the time.
He curses under his breath, turning around and, with a long exhale, shoves his sweatpants to the floor, kicking them off as he moves back toward the bed.
I’m gobsmacked. Absolutely gobsmacked.
He’s … very, very pretty. Also, muscular everywhere. His hips have that gorgeous ‘V’ that drives girls nuts. Also, um. He’s … big.
He notices me looking and pauses beside the bed.
“Everything okay?” he asks, but not like he thinks it won’t be. Just like he’d love to hear confirmation. I lift my gaze up to his face, but he isn’t smiling. Neither of us is smiling. This has become something so much more than a simple exchange between two people.
It’s changed from the impossible to the imperative.
“How much time do we have?” I ask instead, and he licks his lower lip again.
“Thirty minutes.”
Maxx climbs back on the bed and opens the condom. He doesn’t seem to have any trouble putting it on, but who would? It’s not exactly a difficult process.
He leans down and kisses me again with a deep, heavy sort of longing, one that makes me squirm beneath him.
