Power to the Max (33 page)

He backed off enough to reach between them, turning his hand against her. The snaps of her body blouse tore free. He entered her with two rough fingers. She almost creamed all over him.

“It’s payback time, Max. How badly do you want what I’m offering?”

She rode his fingers, wriggling so that he slid across her clitoris. “I can take it or leave it.”

He looked down at her, his harsh breath caressing her cheek, his eyes suddenly a deep blue she could see even in the gloom. “Then tell me to stop, Max, and I will.”

He used her own words in the car against her.

“It’s up to you. If you want to stop, stop.”

He stroked her. She bit her lip to keep from crying out with the sweet ruggedness of his finger. Then he slipped his forearm beneath her butt and raised her higher. The delicate material of her blouse tore against the jagged brickwork. He didn’t fuck her, not with his cock and not with his fingers. Instead he fondled her tenderly, driving her closer to orgasm as if she were a well-used, but well-loved tool in his expert hands.

“Does it feel good?” His murmur fluttered against her hair.

It felt so damn good. His body perfumed the air now, aftershave and cum. That, combined with her own arousal, drowned out the stench of the alley. She hugged her arms tighter around his neck and moaned. “It feels okay.”

He slid back and pierced her with two fingers, rubbing her clitoris with his thumb. “Just okay? Then I guess it would be okay if I stopped.” He stilled inside her, held her flush against the wall, the pulse of his thumb the only movement against her.

“Please don’t stop,” she whispered.

“Do you want me inside you?”

She’d never wanted anything so much. “Yes, please.”

He shifted. “You want me to fuck you?”

“No.”

He pulled his fingers from her body, held her aloft with his hot hands. “Look at me and tell me what you want.”

She wanted so many things. She wanted to learn how to say the right thing for him, how to make love to him, how to tell him he was special, as special as Cameron.

She met his gaze. His eyes were blue and hot and filled with need. Max prayed she could give him back something that wasn’t a lie or words he forced from her. “I want to make that little
ooh
noise you like.”

He blinked. Slowly. Intentionally. Then he took a deep breath of her. “And how do you want me to help you make it?”

“Come inside me, Witt. I need to have you inside me.”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “We’re in an alley that stinks like rotten garbage. You want me to make love to you here?”

She tightened her legs at his waist and brought her lips close to his. She hadn’t used those words, but he’d said them for her. “I can’t wait. Please, Witt, please.”

“I left the condoms in my truck.”

She was pretty damn sure he had one in his back pocket. And she had one in her purse. “I don’t care. It’ll be okay just this once.”

She pushed up against the wall and slipped her hand between them. They’d ruin another suit doing this, but he was hard and ready, and she did want to make that
ooh
noise for him. She tugged on his belt, then his zipper, then slid her hand into his briefs, pushing away the material to reveal him.

“Please,” she begged. “Do it to me, Witt. I think I’ll die if you don’t.”

“Why?”

She closed her hand around him. He looked at her. She didn’t know what else he wanted or needed. “Because I want you. Nobody’s watching, and I want you. Just you.”

He moved then, pulling her hand away and pushing her up hard against the wall. She knew she’d said the right thing as he drove inside her.

She flexed and squeezed around him, wrapping her arms tight at his neck and her thighs at his waist. His rough pubic hair caressed her clitoris as he moved. Oh God, the feel of hot, hard, naked flesh. His flesh to her flesh. With nothing in between. “Ooh.”

“You make me crazy. So fucking crazy that I actually believe you right now.”

She
oohed
in his ear as he shifted back from the wall. Instead of using the leverage, he lifted her in his powerful hands and forced her to ride him. She clung to him, letting him control, letting him take, every movement sending shards of sensation from her clitoris out to her limbs and to the tips of her breasts. He groaned, every muscle tensed. She licked at a trickle of sweat at his temple, then bit his earlobe.

Then she chanted, “Please don’t stop, please don’t stop.”

When he came, he filled her, his semen hot, burning, and beautiful. She exploded around him, her juices mingling with his, becoming one.

* * * * *

“Why?” he said, buckling his belt and righting himself.

Witt had let her drift to her own feet on the hard concrete. The stench of the alley had wafted around her, his cum had soaked her fingers as she’d snapped the bodysuit, the blousy back of it ripped to shreds.

Max didn’t care. She wouldn’t wash him away. She wouldn’t fix herself up.

“Why what?” She tried to smooth the ruined skirt for appearance’s sake.

“Why did you let me do that? Why did you beg?”

She spread her hands. “Uhh, because I wanted to?”

“What’s the motive?” He scraped a hand through his short hair.

That’s what happened when you constantly fought a man. When you were finally telling the truth, he didn’t believe you. “I meant it.”

“You were afraid I was going to walk away for good after you blew me in the car.”

He was right. She’d power-tripped him, then felt guilty and tried to make up for it by giving him the on-top power position, metaphorically speaking. But there’d been more to it. More than she wanted to try to define or even think about. “I begged. What more do you want?”

He cocked his head. “Don’t you know?”

Well, shit. She’d tried, she really had. She’d told him she wanted him, she’d begged, she’d said she’d die if he didn’t do it. What more did he want? Her breath hitched with the fear of what he wanted. Words.
Those
words. Love words. She couldn’t. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t even sure she felt them. Boy, the man knew how to douse the sweet little flame he’d left burning in her. “You’re really hard to satisfy, you know.”

He cupped her cheek. “That’s what I’m afraid of, Max. That I want more than you’ve got it in you to give.”

She swallowed, but the lump in her throat pained her. She could not address the unspoken question in his words. She could not give him that
love
word she knew he wanted. She could only fall back on her age-old snarky banter. “Tit for tat, Long. I made you beg, and you made me beg. We’re even now.”

“Even?” He shook his head. “I wasn’t playing a game, Max, I was making love. What were you doing?”

Making love? In a filthy back alley? “I ... I,” she stammered.

“Tell me, did you ever make love with your husband? Or did you just fuck him?”

The question slapped her hard across the face. Cameron said she didn’t know how to make love, that she’d never known. The first time she’d taken Witt into her body, he’d told her to use those words. Making love. She had used them. But they both knew she’d only said them because he wanted her to.

“Do you know the difference?”

No. She didn’t. That was the problem. Cameron and Witt thought there was a difference, and she just couldn’t say what it was. Because she never had made love. Ever. Because sex was always about something needed or something to be gained. Witt was right. She’d wanted to ensure he didn’t walk away yet. If she admitted that, he’d walk away now. “Why are you pushing at me? You liked what we did.”

She expected him to counter that with something. Instead he dropped his hand from her cheek, stepped back, and said, “Do me a favor and don’t go alone to the Embassy tomorrow. Because I won’t be there to protect you.”

* * * * *

What was that supposed to mean? It sounded frighteningly like he was washing his hands of her, that he was done with helping her investigate. Done with
her
. Max handed her car keys to the attendant, then turned her head to the left looking for Witt’s truck. There it was. Her heart surged with relief. He’d walked away from her in that alley with that enigmatic phrase, but he’d follow her home. A knight in shining armor. At least for the rest of the night.

She’d disappointed him again. Maybe she was fated to disappoint him.

A woman dressed in black crossed her field of vision. It was a full ten seconds later and long after the lady disappeared into the hotel that Max identified her.

Julia La Russa.

Max should have jumped from the car and followed Julia like James Bond, or Mel Gibson in
Lethal Weapon
. She hadn’t. She should have stayed to ask Angela all those important questions. She hadn’t done that either. She’d simply driven home, Witt’s truck beams behind her the whole way.

Once she’d arrived at her apartment, she hadn’t considered approaching Witt, hadn’t wished that he would approach her. They had said and done enough to each other. She didn’t need anymore. Not tonight. She climbed the multitude of steps to her one room, then collapsed on the bed, kicking her shoes off five minutes later.

She thought about brushing her teeth and taking a shower, but the taste, scent, and feel of Witt was penance for not doing or saying the right thing. Again. Or maybe she couldn’t let him go, as if the physical senses would bind him mentally and emotionally as well. She lay in her bed staring at the miniature truck he’d given her for her birthday sitting on her bedside table atop the box it had come in.

What does he want from me?

She might be skewed on the making-love issue, but she had loved Cameron with everything in her. She was capable of love. But she didn’t want to love another man. Love meant inevitable loss.

So why couldn’t she bear to take a shower and wash Witt off her body?

“You should have told him you were sorry.”

“I did.” In the only way she could.

“You gave him your body. That said nothing. An apology’s got to come from the heart and the gut, Max. That was you doing the least you had to do to get by.”

She’d given Witt an apology last week, for what she’d done—or hadn’t done—when he’d told her about that young girl. She’d meant every word, but she’d left so much unsaid. While he’d shared a vitally important piece of himself, Max had done the least she could get by with.

“You should have at least told him you were making love to him in the alley.”

She laughed, a certain edge of hysteria to it. She’d known Cameron would bring that up. “You said I don’t know how to make love. He would have seen through the lie.”

“Would it have been a lie?”

Her fingers suddenly felt numb with cold. She loved the feel of Witt inside her. And for a moment, she’d reveled in that sense of oneness she’d felt. Did she want more of it? More meant feelings, the emotions of wanting someone so badly you think about them every minute of every day, feeling like you’d die inside if they ever left you, like you’d lie on their grave and cry until there was nothing left but a dried-up husk.

She’d had that with Cameron. She couldn’t go through it all again.

“You never cried on my grave, Max. You had me cremated and scattered to the four winds.”

“That’s what you wanted.” For herself, she’d bought a plot and a headstone because she’d needed a physical place to go. At least she had until she really understood that Cameron hadn’t left her. She hadn’t visited the cemetery since.

“You never cried, even over that plot. Maybe if you had, you could let me go.”