Page 23 of Maximum Risk (The Andrades 3)
For the first five or so minutes Tara told herself the silence between them was exciting, it made him mysterious. Then she told herself he needed time to decompress after what was obviously an emotional evening for him, even if he tried to deny it.
Eventually Tara couldn’t handle the prolonged silence. She said, “I watched a history show once on how one major difference between the first Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals was the complexity of the language they used. It seems the ability to articulate thoughts into words is what gave us an advantage and might have played a large role in our survival as a species.”
Max glanced at her, his expression still unreadable. “Really?”
“Yes. To this day, people use words and phrases to express everything from how they feel to . . . oh, I don’t know . . . give others an idea of where they may be flying off to.”
“I like that you agreed to go with me without knowing,” he said.
Tara laced her fingers on her lap. “I thought you were all about the chase.”
A hint of a smile curled his lips. “I like that, too. I haven’t found anything about you, Tara, I don’t like. That’s never happened to me before.”
Is this where I should tell him I’ve been lying to everyone in his family, but it’s for a good reason? He knows Maddy. Maybe he’ll understand how persuasive she can be when she wants something. How she can talk everybody into doing things they normally wouldn’t do.
“Max, there is something I need to tell you.”
Max shifted his car roughly again. “I don’t want to talk tonight, Tara. I want to take you somewhere far away from here. I want to spend the whole night losing myself in that delicious body of yours. I want to hear you cry out my name as you come again and again. I don’t want to think about anything else but you and the pleasure we can bring each other. Can we do that?” He reached out, took her hand and laid it on his thigh, leaving his hand on hers for a moment. “Tara?”
I’ll probably regret this tomorrow, but . . . “Yes.” Tara moved her hand up and down his thigh, loving how the front of his trousers instantly began to strain against his response to her touch. She would have said more, but she’d temporarily lost her ability to speak. In that moment, there was nothing she wanted to tell him, nothing she wanted to hear him say. She wanted to feel his lips on hers again, feel his hands impatiently removing her clothing to expose more skin for his hot mouth to explore.
They didn’t speak as they drove, but they did communicate. She moved her hands over him, growing bolder with each caress. He shifted in his seat to allow her better access. She began to stroke him through the material of his trousers, enjoying the length and width of him, and remembering how good he’d felt inside her. She’d never felt sexier, and his face was flushed with excitement.
Tara released her seatbelt and turned in her seat. She kissed his neck and unbuttoned the front of his shirt, running her hands feverishly over his muscular chest and abs. She couldn’t get enough of him. The feel of him, taste of him. His masculine scent sent shivers down her back as she remembered how he’d felt as he’d pounded into her, filling her more completely than she’d ever experienced. She wanted that again, but also whatever she could have as he drove.
She unzipped his pants and pushed the top of his boxer briefs down, freeing his rock-hard shaft. There had been no time the first time they’d made love to fully appreciate it. If dicks had beauty pageants, his would have won a crown for its circumcised perfection. Long and thick. Straight and proud. It begged to be worshipped, and Tara was more than willing to accept the challenge.
She caressed his balls with one hand while supporting herself with her other. She ran her tongue from base to tip and back again. She circled him with her tongue then took an inch of him in her mouth, withdrew, and licked the sides of him again. He sucked in a breath and dug his hand into her hair.
Tara had never considered herself particularly good at giving a man oral sex, nor had she ever thought it was that wonderful. It was something she did because men liked it, not because she did. She normally thought about her technique while she did it, wondered how long the man would last. Sometimes she made a mental to-do list for the next day. It wasn’t like that with Max. There was no thinking. No second-guessing if she was doing it well. She and Max connected naturally, each out of their mind with desire for the other.
“I have to shift,” Max said in a strangled voice as he slowed for a stoplight. He put his hand in the space beneath Tara and changed gears.
As the car came to a stop, momentum threw Tara off balance. She pulled back, then half fell forward onto him, taking him more deeply down her throat than she meant to. She gagged once, then gagged again.
He pulled her off his lap by the back of her shirt.
Shocked from how close she’d come to emptying her stomach on him, she blurted, “Oh, my God, I almost . . . I almost—”
Humor and desire battled in those heavenly dark eyes. “I know.”
Embarrassed, Tara sat back in her seat, redid her seatbelt and closed her eyes. The sound of Max zipping up did nothing to make Tara feel better. The car jumped forward. Tara kept her eyes firmly shut. She was hoping if she did it long enough she could somehow teleport herself somewhere less mortifying.
“Tara,” Max said softly, “we’re at the airport.”
Tara opened her eyes slowly. They had stopped near a private plane with a pilot standing beside it, ready to greet them. Max was in the process of rebuttoning his shirt and tucking it back into his trousers.
Tara was trying, unsuccessfully, to erase the last five minutes from her memory.
He turned toward her and put a hand beneath her chin, bringing her face around so she had no choice but to meet his eyes.
Tara’s eyes teared up. “I’m sure the women you normally sleep with don’t almost throw up down your pants.”
He looked like he wanted to, but had wisely decided not to, smile. “That’s true.” Tara tried to look away, but his hold on her chin tightened. “But none of them matter. I don’t want them, Tara. I want you. And I accept the risks involved in that.”
Tara shook her head slightly at his joke. “It’s not funny.”
“Not yet,” he said softly and kissed her lips. “Trust me, I’m literally aching to finish what you started, but don’t be embarrassed with me, Tara. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted another woman. Think about that instead of what almost happened.”
Desire began to curl through Tara again. She smiled. “Okay. But maybe we should wait until we’re not in a moving vehicle before I try that again.”
Max kissed her again, chuckling as he did. “I’m in full agreement on that one.”
***
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The flight to Slater Island was much more enjoyable than Max imagined it would be. The pleasure of being taken deeply into Tara’s mouth, along with the near mishap that had followed, had been enough to shake Max out of the mood he’d fallen into after receiving news of his mother’s collapse.
Tara was unlike any woman he’d ever dated. She was naturally as funny as she was beautiful. She seemed equally amused by his sense of humor. They held hands and chatted easily for most of the near hour they were in the air.
“Do you have any phobias?” she asked.
“No,” he replied.
“You have to have one or two. I don’t like anything suspended in another substance. Like fruit in Jell-O. It doesn’t belong in there. It’s the horror film of food. That fruit is just trapped in there, for eternity, suspended in a thick, wiggling substance until someone devours it.” She cocked her head as she considered something. “I don’t know if that’s actually a phobia, but I don’t like it. I always think of a phobia as something that stops you from being able to function when you’re near it. I can sit across from a bowl of fruit and Jell-O and deal with it, I just don’t like it.”
Max chuckled at the image. “I don’t like frogs. My brothers used to think hiding them in my stuff was funny when we were kids. It never got old to them. I still always put my shoes on slowly because of what they used to hide there.”
“Frogs, huh? That’s weird.”
“Frogs are weird, but a fear of Jell-O is normal?” he asked with a smile, raising her hand to his mouth to playfully kiss it.
“Frogs are natural.”
“Jell-O is a child’s food. Not much could be further from scary.”
“Keep laughing and I’ll put Jell-O in your shoes, now that I know that’s how you develop a fear of things.”
Max threw back his head and laughed out loud, feeling the stress of the day fall away. “Try it and see what happens.” An image of her tied to his bed begging him to take her as he teased her mercilessly gave him an instant hard-on. He leaned down and growled in her ear. “Maybe you should.”
