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Chapter 22

Level grinding

“Get over yourself. There’s no way I’m going to beg for the privilege of blowing you.”

“Then we’ll be here a long time.”

Naked and wanting, we stared each other down as the cool air whispered over my hot skin. The sound of our short breath was the only noise in the cabin.

I wanted him enough to beg. But begging wasn’t who we were. My hands might be out of commission, but it didn’t mean I was powerless.

“You like games, Max?” I used my sultriest voice and was rewarded with a blank expression.

“Uh. Yeah, I think we’ve established that.” If I wasn’t so impatient, his confusion would’ve been cute.

“You think they’re sexy?”

Max’s chocolate gaze flicked to my hands, then darkened more. “This one is.” He was right, and I fought against the growing urge to reach a hand down to stroke myself where I ached.

“When you lent me those video games, what you didn’t realize was that I learned a whole bunch of sexy words.”

“Oh really?”

“Mhmm. Like…escort missions.”

I didn’t have time to feel embarrassed because the expression on Max’s face shifted from playful to intent. His nostrils flared. “Yeah?”

“Spawn points,” I murmured, and he shuddered.

I lifted my chin, indicating he should come closer. He did, cautiously, his face a few inches from mine as his body lowered over top of me.

“Level grinding,” I panted in his ear as I rubbed my core against his cock.

Max was close enough his breath mingled with mine. He brushed his lips across mine once, twice.

“Fuck. If I told you how hot this was getting me, you’d laugh,” he grunted.

My lips curved. “You’re such a nerd, Max,” I whispered against his mouth.

“Suck my cock, Payton,” he whispered back.

Desire slammed into me, a wave crashing through me and dragging me along in its wake.

I let go of the mattress to push myself up and Max moved up my body to straddle me, kneeling, his cock inches from my lips. I was aching between my thighs, desperate to feel him in me.

But there was something I needed first.

“I’m going to need my hands,” I said, already reaching for him.

“No way, smartass.”

I froze. “But that’s impossible. It’d be the worst blowjob on record!”

“I’ll try to endure it.” Max’s expression dared me to refuse him.

Max was the same guy in bed that he was out of it. He might not have had twenty different sides, like his Magic 8 ball, but there were a lot. He could be thoughtful. Dorky. Insecure. And he could be cool. Arrogant. Unyielding.

You are so in over your head.

I’d never been as aware of my hands until I reached them behind me to grip the top edge of the mattress. In this position my back arched and my breasts pushed out.

My palms were sweaty as I gripped the sheets, my heart hammering with excitement and trepidation.

“Satisfied?” I asked tightly.

Max’s eyes were slits as he looked down at me. “Not even close.”

He wasn’t teasing anymore. My attention dropped to the moisture beading on the tip of his cock and I drew a shaky breath. His gaze flicked between mine and his swollen length. He circled his cock with his fingers, stroking down once, twice, before positioning his cock between my waiting lips.

Suddenly I didn’t care what my arms were doing, or weren’t. I wanted to make Max Donovan come apart like he’d never come apart for any girl.

He was heavy in my mouth, his skin slick and smooth. Despite my nerves, my eyes closed at the salty and sweet taste of him. When my tongue darted out to lick him, he shuddered.

“Shit, Payton, your mouth,” he rasped.

My groan betrayed my pleasure and Max used it as an opportunity to press further inside, his hips moving against my face. Electricity shot through me as my nipples grazed his thighs. My fingers bit into the mattress but I didn’t move them.

During my wilder days, I’d indulged in quick hook-ups. A few moments of distraction. This? The games of temptation and delayed gratification?

Entirely new to me.

I’d never felt as naked as I did sitting there with my arms stretched so tight they were coming out of their sockets. Never felt as vulnerable as I did with his cock down my throat.

But with the vulnerability came strength. Riding the fine edge between the two was something I’d never known I wanted.

The messiest blowjob ever quickly became the sexiest. I closed my lips around his head and sucked, experimenting with the way I vibrated around him. His fingers threaded in my hair, pulling in time with my movements. When I slid my tongue down the sensitive underside of his cock, he shuddered in response.

I wanted to take him all the way down my throat. I wanted to tease him until he cursed me. I wanted to suck him until he couldn’t hold back, and when he came, I wanted to swallow every last drop.

Max’s muscles tightened, his hips thrusting in short, barely controlled strokes until he hit the back of my throat. Before long I could feel the effort coming off his body and hear him grunt with each breath.

He was losing control. His eyes were squeezed shut, sweat beading at his brow.

“Payton, stop,” he muttered.

He started to pull out and I made a sound of protest. It was too soon.

“Stop—”

Max put a hand on my shoulder and shoved back. I blinked up at him as startled as he was. He recovered quickly. “Not like this,” he panted. “I need to be inside you when I come.”

“You were,” I pointed out, breathless, when he moved down my body.

“I want to be inside you here.” Without warning, his fingers were in me, spreading me. Stroking me. I bowed back off the bed. “I want to render you speechless the old-fashioned way.”

“Missionary?” I panted.

He chuckled softly, biting my earlobe and making me jump. “If the only way I can make you lose your words is by sticking my cock in your mouth, I’m doing it wrong.”

Despite the joke, I could see he was shaken.

“Hey.” My voice stopped him. “You OK?”

He stilled over me, pulling back long enough to take in my face. “Yeah. I’ve just never felt anything like that.”

I frowned. “You guys didn’t…”
Why the hell am I talking about his ex?

“Not like that.” His shaky breath made me feel like a goddess. I only had a moment to enjoy the feeling of triumph and something deeper, because he pulled back and reached for a condom and ripped into the packet.

Max’s gaze moved down my body. My breasts, my stomach, my legs, before coming back to my hips. I spread my legs a few inches in invitation and he shook his head.

“Turn over, Coyote. On your knees.”

The request surprised me but I complied, pulling my stiff arms to my side and flexing them as I flipped. I braced my elbows on the pillow.

I’d always been a fan of face-to-face positions, probably because I liked to know what my partner was up to. But Max’s hands found my fingers and he stroked them reassuringly before pressing them to the top edge of the mattress again.

The movement pulled my weight forward, forcing my hips high in the air.

I swallowed. Max’s hand settling lightly on my ass made me jump. Without my eyes or my hands, I felt helpless.

“You’re good. I’m right here,” Max murmured, like he knew I needed the reassurance.

I felt myself relax a few degrees, the nerves giving way to pleasure as his palms stroked my ass. I gasped as he spread my cheeks, squeezing them in his hands. Cool air skimmed over my body, tickling my nerve endings the in the most sensitive places.

When Max pressed two fingers inside me and I cried out. “Shit, Payton, you’re soaked.” His voice was strained, like he hadn’t expected to be tested this much. But he moved his fingers in my body, stroking me until I was squeezing around him.

Soon even that wasn’t enough. I needed more. The sweet burn of him burying himself in me.

“Max, please.” I couldn’t stand the teasing and neither could he. His fingers left and I shook in anticipation as his hands steadied my hips.

I felt the press of his cock at my entrance. I let out a low whimper as he worked inside me. Just the head, my body stretching to take him.

Then more.

“How does it feel?” he murmured.

I couldn’t answer. Could only gasp as he pressed deeper, overwhelmed by sensation.

A sharp stinging made me cry out as my muscles clamped around him.

“Come on, Payton, I need to hear you say it.” Max’s voice was low in my ear as his hand stroked my ass, gently this time, and the pain faded into pleasure.

I swallowed, tasting salt from having him in my mouth. “It feels like I don’t know I’m empty until you’re inside me. And when you are, I can’t even feel me anymore. All I need is you.”

“Fuck, I need you too.” On a groan, Max pulled my hips back onto his cock.

My fingers gripped at the mattress, nails digging into the fabric at the sudden invasion. I cried out, the backs of my eyes stinging, but Max brushed my hair behind my ear with surprising gentleness.

“Sorry, Coyote. I lose my head when you say things like that.” I twisted around to look at him. The beams of sunlight streaming in the window overhead danced on his skin, his hair. His eyes, full of heat and need.

My breath stuck in my chest. I don’t know how I’d ever questioned whether he was hot. The Max Donovan I knew was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen, real and intense and oh-so-determined as he drew back and pressed into me, keeping his hips close so he ground against my clit.

My loud moan echoed in the cabin.

“Shhh,” he murmured. “There are people outside.”

“Don’t care,” I muttered.

And I didn’t. He built me up, my muscles starting to ache but it didn’t matter. All I needed was the storm building in me, between us.

Max had already pushed me outside of my comfort zone. Even before he’d pressed inside me in a way that felt deeper than anyone had ever been.

The climax built from the inside, starting deep in me and radiating out.

“Oh, shit. Max. I can’t…I—” His finger found my clit as he fucked me, pressing down as I shattered. The explosion carried waves outward from my core and I clenched around him.

Max groaned, raw and low. His teeth buried in my shoulder, the pain amplifying my pleasure even as he lost control. His body stilled while he jerked inside me over and over, his hips flexing one last time as I felt him unload into me.

I collapsed on my stomach, my arms and legs shaking as Max pulled out.

“That was…holy shit.” Satisfaction blurred with awe in his voice as he rolled off me.

I turned onto my back to find him lying on his side, his body sheltering mine from the light coming in the window. I pulled him down so I could press a reassuring kiss to his mouth, letting everything I was feeling shine in my eyes.

Surprise crossed his face and I could almost feel the moment he started to retreat.

My fingers reached up to brush the barbell in his eyebrow. “Does it hurt when I touch it?”

“Nope.”

“When did you get it?” I took the round ball carefully between my fingertips and turned it once. Twice.

He let me play with it, not even blinking. “I was trying to finish this game senior year for a competition. Riley was supposed to be helping—he figured he was the ideas man back then—but we ran out of ideas. He decided alcohol would help our creativity, so we split the biggest bottle of tequila we could get our teenage hands on. Once that was gone, and we were no closer to solving our problems, we decided we needed to take more drastic measures. Tattoos,” he went on at my blank expression. “Riley pointed out that piercings were better because they were reversible. So we did.”

I grinned. “Did it inspire you?”

“Strange enough, I ended up figuring out the game while I was lying in bed that night. I can’t credit the booze or the piercing, but I guess the thing kind of grew on me because I never took it out.”

“I like it.” My smile fell away as I shifted onto my elbow to face Max. “Wait – so Riley has a piercing?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere his parents wouldn’t see it.” I waited him out, a pointed expression on my face. Max finally relented. “Let’s put it this way. If you’re ever in a position find out, I might have to hurt him.”

I grinned, shaking my head in disbelief. “Huh. I didn’t expect that. Sounds like you guys were good friends. Did you have a lot in common?”

“Just the feeling we didn’t fit in anywhere else. That was enough to stick us together. Riley seemed like a slacker, until you saw his grades. He was so fucking smart he just didn’t have to try, so he didn’t put any effort in.”

“Huh.” I slotted that into the picture I had of Max’s lawyer, and friend. “So what about you, Max Donovan? Did you spend more time in high school writing games or chasing girls?”