Fade Into You (7 page)

His mouth went to my neck and I felt his lips suck on my skin, then his tongue lapping at me as he said my name again and pulled back—almost all the way out, then drove back inside me with a long stroke.

I’d never been controlled like this during sex before, never had a man hold my wrists and possess me like this. I’d never even thought about it. There might have been an uncomfortable, even scary, aspect to it, but Max did it with great skill. Totally in control, and totally focused on our pleasure.

His hips rocked back and forth, then in an almost circular motion, as his cock filled me and touched every part of my swollen core.

“You feel so fucking good,” he growled.

He lowered his head to my chest and took a nipple into his mouth. He sucked it in softly, but then pressed his lips together, teasing and pulling my nipple to its full hardness. Max looked at it, licked it, and then gave the same attention to the other one.

He let my hands go and he placed his hands on either side of me. I reached up and felt his upper arms flex. They held his weight as he fucked me harder. Max was almost fierce in his thrusts. His breathing was getting deeper and shorter.

He was stroking pleasure into me as he stroked himself to his own pleasure. I wanted him to get off on it and have the best orgasm he’d ever had.

He kissed me again, taking my tongue into his mouth and then sucking on it. The intensity of his fucking increased and I started making little noises into his mouth, which only made him move his hips with more force.

I felt his cock throbbing, pulsating, getting closer to coming. My hands were tightly clenching his upper arms and I felt his muscles grow tighter. I looked up and saw him tilt his head back. Then he faced me again, took my lips in a wild kiss and said, “I’m going to come inside you, Olivia.”

I’d never been fucked like this before. Never had a man so determined to fuck me like this. Never had a guy talk to me so sweetly and so dirty at the same time. I’d never been turned on this much and it made me want to give Max whatever he wanted.

“Do you want it?” he breathed.

“Yes, come. I want you to come so bad.”

It was hard to get the words out. He was taking my breath away, literally. I gasped and shook as I began to feel another orgasm rising within me from the point where Max’s thick cock was rubbing against me in perfect rhythm.

“Fuck…” His voice was low and breathy.

I felt him tense up. His thrusts slowed almost to a stop. Then he plunged back into me, deep, and moved his hips vigorously as he pumped into the condom.

“Jesus, Olivia,” he was saying as he came.

He lowered his body onto me and held me tight. I loved the weight of his body on mine, his exhaustion a result of his harsh lust for me.

We lay like that for a few moments, and then Max repositioned us both so that I was lying next to him on the big, wide couch, with my arms crossed on his chest and my head resting on them, looking at the face of this man who wanted me so badly.

EIGHT

We must have stayed there on the couch for about thirty minutes, basking the glow of what we’d just done.

“That was amazing,” Max said.

“The best.”

I wasn’t lying. It was indeed the best sex I’d ever had, no doubt due to him being the hottest guy I’d ever been with, and the way he did it—taking control, taking
me
.

I didn’t know what was going to come next. I really had no expectations, but what did end up happening was a shock.

“Are you ready?” he said.

I looked at him with a smile on my face. “That depends. I’m wiped out from what we just did.” I laughed, and in a few seconds, I would regret it.

“You can rest on the way. I’ll make sure you get inside okay.”

What?
He was taking me home. I didn’t want to ask why, and feeling more than overwhelmed by the development, I probably wasn’t in the right frame of mind to have the conversation. On top of that, what was I going to do? Beg him to let me stay there?

We barely spoke on the drive back to LA. The longer we were in the car, the more I felt hurt, used, and cheap. I wondered where my name would be on the roster of other women he’d brought home, fucked so passionately, and then dismissed.

When we got to my place he said, “I’ll walk you to the door.”

“No, you don’t have to. Really.” I gathered my purse and reached for the door handle.

“Olivia, hang on a second.” He grabbed my hand and brought it to his face. He kissed the back of it and said, “Thank you for an incredible evening.”

I produced the best fake smile I could and quickly got out of the car without saying anything. I made my way up the walkway, got to the door, put the key in the lock…all without turning around to look at him sitting there in his car. It took an amount of willpower I didn’t know I possessed to do that.

I stepped inside and immediately went to the bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror and the tears started flowing.

How could I have been so stupid? So gullible? Why had I let my guard down? Why had I let a man use and control me like that?Fuck! I knew better!

All the negative thoughts I used to have, after Chris, came thundering back into my mind. I blamed myself for everything that had happened that night, just as I’d blamed myself for letting myself become so vulnerable to Chris Cooper.

What Chris had done was a far cry from what Max had just done to me, but it was all about letting myself be vulnerable—something that’s always fraught with danger, which is what makes it such a powerful act, but something I just wasn’t ready to do again, and look what happened.

I got myself together emotionally and left the bathroom. Maybe Krystal was still up, and she’d let me vent my frustrations. There’d probably be a big “I told you so” to deal with, but at that moment I didn’t care. I just didn’t want to be alone.

When I got to her room, I found that she wasn’t there.

Great. I was alone.

I thought of calling Grace, but it was getting close to one o’clock in the morning here in LA, so it was really late in Ohio. There was no way I could call her. Maybe it was for the best that I couldn’t talk to my sister right now.

Physical and emotional exhaustion brought sleep. Quickly, thank God. I needed the rest.

What I didn’t need, though, was the dream:
I’m standing with my back to the wall, and he has me trapped. He’s backlit, and all I can see is his silhouette, standing about two feet in front of me. I have no escape. My body shakes with fear. Adrenaline is coursing through my veins. I could try to run, but I know he’d catch me. I see the silhouette’s right shoulder dip and pull back. Then the more frightening thing I’d ever seen: he has made a fist and he’s cocking his arm back for the punch, level with my face.

I woke up, thankful that it was only a dream, that I haven’t been hit, and the only damage done was to my sheets as I lay there soaking in a cold sweat.

Damn Max. No, damn
me
for letting my guard down and letting another into my safety zone.

People say I have put up a wall after the incident with Chris. But what they don’t know is that it’s more than a wall. It’s a fortress. There’s a moat around it, and the water below is filled with alligators. There’s a drawbridge with tripwires that will flare up with great bursts of fire if a man tries to cross it.

So how the hell had Max Dalton gotten inside the fortress?

I stripped the bed of the soaked sheets, and took off my clothes. I laid back down, naked, on the naked bed, and thankfully sleep came once again…this time without a dream.

When I woke in the morning, there was still no sign of Krystal, but my car was there. I’d been hoping she would let me unload on her.

I ended up not seeing her for the rest of the weekend. I texted her a few times, but got no response. I knew I couldn’t call Grace and tell her everything. And when Sunday rolled around—the day I always called my parents and checked in—I didn’t feel like talking to them. I sent an email instead, feigning a cold with a sore throat, and apologizing for not being able to talk. My dad wrote back within thirty minutes, relaying my mom’s best home remedy for a sore throat. I felt bad for lying to them, but I just couldn’t talk to them right then. I had no choice.

I spent the weekend alone, watching things I’d put in my Netflix queue.

In a way, I both dreaded and looked forward to Monday morning equally. I knew I couldn’t skip work, no matter how badly I wanted to avoid looking like something was wrong and having Kevin ask me about it. The flipside of the coin was that I’d have something aside from streaming movies to focus on, and not think about how stupid I’d been to go that far with Max.

Kevin called shortly after I opened the office and told me he’d be out all day. I breathed a sigh of relief. I could ease back into my work for a day.

I finally got in touch with Krystal when eating my lunch salad at my desk.

“How was your weekend?” she asked.

“Okay.”

“What happened with Max?”

The floodgates opened and I told her the whole story.

When I was finished she said, “What an ass! See, this is what I was telling you to be ready for.”

“I know, I know.” I didn’t want a lecture.

“And he didn’t call you all weekend?”

“Nope.”

“Ah, forget him,” she said. “I know you have a working relationship with him and all, but just keep it at that.”

I didn’t say anything.

Krystal said, “So…was it good?”

I sighed. “Best ever.”

She chuckled. “Okay, so you just chalk it up as the best sex ever and move on. Gotta keep moving in this town.”

“Speaking of which, what were
you
doing all weekend?”

“Oh, God. I met these two guys…” She went on to tell me the story of spending the weekend with two men, complete with the raunchy details of her first threesome.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I said.

“Nope.”

“Damn. And here I was thinking you were working and I just kept missing you or something.” It wasn’t really what I thought. How would I have missed her between shifts? I was starting to figure out that Krystal had some kind of wild and quite unique lifestyle. And I was starting to puzzle together that her lifestyle didn’t involve working in a restaurant and going to auditions. But I didn’t want to pry. Not yet, anyway.

We didn’t talk any more about it for the rest of the week. I only saw her on Wednesday night, anyway, and just for a few minutes as I was heading off to bed when she got home.

I called my parents for a few minutes on Tuesday to let them know I was doing better, working, and everything else was going fine. Grace happened to be there when I called and we talked for a few minutes.

She lowered her voice at one point and said, “I ran into Chris at the gas station.”

Hearing his name sent a shiver down my spine and brought back the imagery of the dream I’d had over the weekend.

“I don’t even want to know.”

“Well,” she said, “he wanted to know about you.”

“What did you tell him?”

There was a pause. Total silence.

“Grace? What did you tell him?” I asked, a stern tone in my words.

“I told him you moved to California.”

“Uh huh. And?”

I heard a door close, and then it sounded like wind wooshing across the phone. She’d gone outside to get out of earshot of our parents.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it was stupid. I just wanted him to know that you were doing fine, and even better, without him. I wanted to make him feel like crap.”

I gritted my teeth. “If he calls here—”

“He’s not going to find out where you work. LA is huge, right?”

I leaned back in my chair. I didn’t want to argue about this. “You still shouldn’t have told him anything.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“But,” I said, “I do want that asshole to know I’m not crushed without him. It’s kind of my only sense of…victory or something, you know?”

We got past that little issue and she caught me up on the baby and other things going on in our little hometown. For the first time, and rather strangely, I felt a little tug of nostalgia. Not quite homesickness. Not yet, anyway. I figured it was simply an easy fantasy escape coping mechanism to deal with the fact that I hadn’t really adjusted to the hustle and bustle of LA and Hollywood yet. Kind of a yearning for the slower, simpler times.

NINE

There was nothing slow or simple about the way the rest of the week played out.

When I got home Wednesday after work, I found two dozen red roses on my doorstep, along with a card that said:
Sorry I’ve been so busy. Thinking of you and want to see you again soon. I’ll call. – M

My initial thought was gratitude that he’d had the sense not to send it to my office.

My second thought was how to tell him I just wasn’t ready for something so intense, especially something fraught with so much possibility of letdowns.

I had come to the conclusion that I wasn’t ready to date. Nor was I ready for a fuck buddy. And I really wasn’t—and might never be—ready for a high-intensity relationship with someone like Max.

My self-esteem kept chiming in and telling me I wasn’t pretty enough, rich enough, or sophisticated enough for someone like Max. The really depressing thing was that I felt like I was only good enough for someone like Chris Cooper. He’d done a real number on me, and while I had been able to break away from it for a while and enjoy the powerful seduction of Max, I was still drawn back to that self-defeating belief.

It seemed like a nearly impossible thing to admit to him, but there was a part of me that figured once he heard even half the story he would probably be gone in the blink of an eye.

So be it.

He called around 8 p.m. that night. I was putting some clothes in the washer when my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and let it go to voicemail. I heard no voicemail alert, and then the phone rang again.