The Darkest Embrace Read online

  It wasn’t enough and it was too much all at the same time. He sent her up and over into orgasm without ever moving faster or changing the pace. Climax rocked her, and Jessie shuddered. His name eased out of her on a long series of sighs she couldn’t muffle and didn’t want to. The world tipped and went unfocused. When she came back to it, she found him still looking at her, though the grin had faded and become a different sort of look, one she wasn’t sure she could identify.

  Before she could think to ask him what was wrong, Max had pulled her mouth to his. Their bodies moved naturally, his cock sliding inside her as easily as if he’d guided it with a hand, though all she’d done was lean forward for his kiss. She shuddered again at the way he filled her. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. The kiss deepened. Max gripped the back of her neck, holding her to him while he moved inside her hard enough to move her entire body.

  The bed shook. Everything shook. Jessie came again when he muttered her name. A moment after that, Max cried out, low. Jessie forced her eyes to open, to focus, to pay attention. She wanted to watch his face when he spent himself inside her, and it was worth every effort, because Max was looking into her eyes until the very last second when pleasure overtook him. When he gave up to it, and her, at last.

  Chapter 3

  If heaven had a smell, Max thought, it was bacon and fresh coffee; if it had a feeling, it was the weight of warm, naked female flesh against his bare back. Turning, he arranged himself against Jessie, who snuggled sleepily against him with a sigh. Burying his face in her hair, he ran his hands down her back to cup her ass and pull her closer against him.

  She murmured something that sounded like his name and wriggled. When she moved against him like that, he was rock-hard in half a second. Max couldn’t stop himself from kissing her when Jessie blinked up at him with one of those sexy smiles that so slayed him.

  She wriggled again, sort of like a protest. “Toothbrush!”

  “Forget it.” He slid a hand between them to stroke a finger through her curls and find her clit. Slow, steady circles, his gaze on hers to watch her pupils dilate. He dipped a finger lower to find her wetness, and when she shivered, decided to keep going. Max pushed a finger inside her. When she moaned, he went a little deeper.

  Smiling, Jessie rolled onto her back with one arm flung over her eyes and lifted her hips to encourage him. Her mouth opened, tongue sliding along her lower lip. When Max bent to take one of her nipples between his lips, she threaded her fingers through his hair, tugging. God, he loved the way she responded to him, like everything he did was...

  Perfect.

  That’s what she’d said last night.

  Sometimes, Max was admittedly an idiot, but not about this. He knew perfection was a lie that twisted itself around people in the beginning and bit them in the ass when they got to know each other. It wasn’t real or meant to last, and anyone who expected it to was more than dumb—they were crazy. But he didn’t want to go there, so he pushed away thoughts of the past and crazy Patty, who’d tried her best to make his life hell, and he concentrated on the woman now shifting restlessly beneath his mouth and hands.

  He’d thought about this since the first time he saw her, that strawberry blond hair pulled high on top of her head, her purple Converse sneakers paired with a long black skirt and a Metallica concert shirt he’d seen right away was genuine and not something she’d picked up at Hot Topic for kicks. Jessie’s blue eyes, her smile and laugh, the way she shook his hand when she introduced herself, had heated him up from the start, but he’d been trying so hard to be careful that he’d sort of made an ass of himself. He knew it. Too much waiting. He was lucky she hadn’t given up on him.

  He’d make it up to her now, he thought, and ran his tongue around her sensitive areola until her nipples puckered even tighter. She was so wet for him he could easily slip a second finger inside her, his thumb still pressing her clit as he moved his hand. Her pussy clutched at his fingers, and she gasped, her hand gripping his wrist to slow him.

  “Wait,” she said with a laugh, not opening her eyes, her voice thick with arousal.

  His own command, thrown back at him. Max waited. Her body pulsed around him. He wanted to be inside her so much that it took everything he had not to dive in. When she tipped her hips the tiniest bit, encouraging him, he moved his fingers again. She went tight around him, her pussy gripping, her clit jumping. Fuck, it made his cock jump, too. Her hoarse cry echoed around the loft. She covered her mouth as though she meant to hold it back.

  “I want to hear you,” Max said, surprised he could find his own voice.

  “Oh, God. Max.” She moaned. Then, louder. “Oh, yes.”

  He couldn’t hold off any longer—he had to taste her. Max slid down the bed to center his mouth on her clit. He lapped at her sweetness, suckling gently while still moving in and out of her with his fingers. Shit, he wanted his cock inside her, but he had to make her come first. Had to make her lose her mind for him.

  When she came, her taste flooded him. Her pussy clamped against him in slow rolling flutters that sent echoing shocks all through his dick. Pain in his scalp flared, just a little, and he realized she was pulling his hair to get him to move upward. He wasn’t going to resist, not any longer. Max moved up Jessie’s body to capture her mouth. She opened for him. Her fingers dug into his ass as he moved between her legs, guiding himself into her slick heat.

  He wanted to make love to her for hours, but there was no way he was going to last that long. He was already shaking from how good it felt to be inside her, balls deep. At the scratch of her nails down his back, Max let out a low yell. Pleasure swept him. He was the one losing himself. He lost himself in her and didn’t even care.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Jessie kissed his shoulder, prompting him to roll to the side. “How’s your hand, honey?”

  Truthfully, he’d forgotten all about it. It stung a little when he poked at the bandages, but it wasn’t bad at all. “You fixed it right up. It’s okay.”

  She took a peek under the bandages, then kissed him again. “You must heal fast. God, breakfast smells amazing. I didn’t even hear you get up.”

  “I didn’t get up.” Max looked at her. “I thought you made breakfast....”

  Both of them were up and out of the bed, snatching up clothes, shoving legs into jeans and arms into shirts, in thirty seconds. At the top of the stairs, Max motioned for her to stand behind him. He listened, craning his neck to hear any movement from downstairs. At the clink of silverware on porcelain, he took one step down the stairs with Jessie close on his heels.

  “You stay here.”

  Both her brows went up. “And let the serial killer get you? Um, no.”

  “I doubt a serial killer would be making us breakfast.” Something like that would be reserved for crazy ex-girlfriends, he thought grimly, remembering the time Patty had let herself into his apartment and cooked him dinner, then thrown a pan of hot pasta at his face when he told her she needed to leave.

  But downstairs, all they found was a breakfast table set with two plates, a pot of coffee perking merrily on the counter and eggs and bacon in a covered pan on the stove. Jessie looked at it, then him.

  “Is this a bed and breakfast maybe?”

  “It’s not supposed to be.” If anything, he’d picked this place because it was out of the way and they’d have plenty of time to be totally alone. “But it smells good.”

  Jessie went to the window to look out. She twitched the red checker curtain to one side and smiled bemusedly. “Someone’s in the backyard. A woman.”

  Swiftly, Max crossed to the window and yanked at the curtain, a sour taste in his mouth, all ready to see Patty’s signature cloud of pale hair. The woman by the shed was blonde, all right, but golden. She looked too much like Freddy Romero to be anything but a relative, from the plaid shir