Heir's Affair

FIVE

FIVE

Adventure didn’t even begin to describe the night she’d shared with Max and his buddies. In a dark, crowded nightclub, there was barely space to move. The music was loud and intense, the flashing lights disorientating, and the liquor free flowing. Max barely took his hands off her for five seconds. When he wasn’t fondling or fingering her at the table, he was kissing her mouth, her face, her neck, anywhere he could reach. And after a few shots of tequila, Tally was as free with her hands as he was.

They had s*x in the men’s room. He got oral in the ladies’ room. They screwed in the alley behind the club, and she had three orgasms at the table by his hand, spread throughout the night of course, not all at once, and another on the dancefloor where he loved to dance dirty with her.

It wasn’t just the s****l contact that opened her eyes to her need for him. It was the casual way he looked after her that really made her yearn to captivate him. He kept their fingers laced together or his arm around her at all times. When space got tight at the table, he put her on his lap, and still managed to converse with his friends, and take part in the evening, without making it seem like she was in the way.

Tally became an extension of him, she wasn’t an obstruction, or a barrier to him connecting with the social occasion. And she was included, which was maybe the most eye-opening part of the night. People wanted to talk to her, they wanted to get to know her and include her. Max put her front and center whenever he thought a random woman was getting too close to him and stuck his tongue in her mouth more than once when guys took too much of an interest in her.

His attentiveness was a surprise.

She expected him to be caught up with the guys or like Stretton society, to have more important things to worry about than entertaining the woman he’d brought. But he didn’t mind sharing quiet moments with her at the table or at the bar. He’d cornered her after dancing with her just to check she was okay, and she had a drink in her hand all night. If she put it down or either of them took their eyes from her drink, he removed it, and wouldn’t let her touch it again.

Even when she got to a point where she felt she’d had too much alcohol, he didn’t push her to drink more liquor, he was happy to switch her to soft drinks. Tally didn’t spend a cent and whenever she tried to, he referred to looking after his woman.

She’d never been on a date like it. But then, Max wasn’t like any man she’d ever dated.

“Do I gotta tie you down?”

Max’s hand was still scooped around the back of Tally’s head, where he’d left it after the blinding kiss he’d laid on her just a second ago.

They were on their backs, side-by-side in his bed, the buzz of the night still pulsing through their skins that had just been joined in the most intimate way. One thing Max was good at, sober or drunk, was screwing her to within an inch of her life.

“Tie me down?” Tally asked, panting, but managing to twist her head to look at him. “Why would you—”

“We just f****d, this is usually when you split.”

Right. Except she’d broken that habit during their trysts at the club. “We’ve done it a bunch of times tonight and I’m still here… Do you want me to split?”

Bending his fingers, he scrunched her hair with his trapped hand. “Nah, I’d say you’ve got a few miles left in you.”

Gasping, she rolled over, throwing herself on top of him to curve her fingers around his throat. “Miles in me?” she said, laughing.

Tally growled at him and bit his lip.

But he opened his mouth wide and captured her in a kiss as his arms closed around her, holding her body on his. Kissing and kissing, she loved how his mouth varied its demand. Sometimes it just wanted hers to respond in a calm kind of reassuring and intimate way; other times it wanted to drive her wild and pump up her desire.

Just when she was ready to beg for his body again, he slowed it down and let his hands trail over her back. “Oh, hey, what were you and Rob talking about during the game?”

“Why?” she asked, running her tongue across his lip to request access again.

But when he opened for her, she ducked back, teasing the kiss. She should’ve known better. Max got what he wanted. He rolled her onto her back, keeping her in his arms and forcing his mouth over hers, not that she was particularly reluctant to give it to him.

“I wanna know if I’ve got anything to worry about,” he said.

Oh, oops. On a wave of panic, she forgot about teasing and opened her hands against his shoulders. “I didn’t tell anyone who I was, or… who you are.”

His jaw clenched, and he huffed. “Worry about like him moving in on you, I don’t give a f**k about your boss.” Her boss, not his father. “I figure my buddy shouldn’t know more about my girl than I do.”

Exhaling, she looked up at this guy who’d turned out to be far more than she’d initially thought. He wasn’t anything like Teddy. But he wasn’t the brute she’d assumed he was after meeting him either. Max was keen and attentive, the kind of decent guy wrapped in a rough exterior that any woman would be lucky to claim.

Pointing her forefingers, she grazed them along his collarbone. “Lover,” she hummed, drawing out the word.

Max winced. “Rough start.”

“I can’t be your girl,” she said. “With you, I’ve… I’ve done everything I shouldn’t. It’s my fault we’ve ended up here. I should’ve been smarter about this.” As he considered her, saying nothing, Tally got self-conscious. “What? What are you thinking?”

“That I’m f*****g lucky I’m on top right now,” he said. “You’re thinking about bailing.”

She shook her head but couldn’t maintain her innocence and stopped to lick her lips. “It would be easier if I left… Coming back here with you was selfish, of me, not of you. You’ve done nothing wrong, I… I’m the one who should know better.”

His smirk eased some of the tension. “Think you’ve got more experience than me?”

In s*x and relationships? No. But in the politics of elite families and their machinations? Yes. “I think that in a couple of weeks, you’ll be avoiding me in the hallways. I’ll be embarrassed. I’ll blush and stumble over my words and—”

“Blush?” he asked and hummed before kissing her. “You don’t gotta blush around me, Boss. But I’ll be straight with you, any time you’re not n***d around me, I’m picturing it.”

Groaning, Tally tried to wriggle out from under him, but he shifted to pin her deeper into the mattress. “Max, you’re not taking me seriously.”

“I get that you have responsibilities,” he said. “I know why you came here.” Good, that was encouraging, and Tally hoped it meant he was about to let her go. “But can we forget that s**t for tonight?” Sighing, she felt so useless, he just didn’t get it. But he brought her attention back to his when it drifted by following her mouth with a kiss. “Please, baby, didn’t you have fun tonight?”

“I did,” she said. Her hands slid around his neck. “You’re the best date I ever had.”

“Then forget what you think you know and just spend the night with me,” he said, beseeching her with his gaze. “Just be a babe spending the night with a guy she’s into… can you do that?”

The damage had already been done. Tally should never have slept with him, but she had. Throwing herself into the fantasy for a night wasn’t going to make the situation any worse, not when they were the only ones who’d ever know what happened.

“Okay,” she said. “Rob was asking about my family and how I grew up.”

“So he does know you better than I do.”

Turning her smile upward, she coiled her legs around his hips. “Well, I guess that’s a matter of perspective.”

But he wasn’t biting and instead moved off her to lie on his side. “Rob’s always asking questions, he’s a nosey fuck.”

Shifting onto her side, Tally folded her pillow under her head. “I didn’t mind. I don’t really have secrets.”

At least, she hadn’t had secrets until she’d slept with her boss’s son.

Lying there, facing each other, they finally took the time to really look at each other, and at what was beyond their physical connection. “Tell me, how did you grow up?”

Rob’s questions were more specific, but she’d guess all Max wanted to know was what she’d shared with his friend. “It was tough. My dad was an artist; he never worked a steady job. He’d take off for months at a time. One time he left for a pack of smokes and didn’t come back for three years. But I guess my mom loved him because she always took him back. She worked all kinds of jobs, long hours, you know?”

“You were alone a lot,” he said, reading between the lines.

She nodded. “But it was okay. I was always a bit of a weird kid, a loner. I stayed out of the cliques. I wasn’t a cheerleader or voted most likely to succeed… I just… got by, like my mom.”

“Boyfriends?”

Max had a preoccupation with her love life. “Not really,” she said. “My mom always said I was too smart for the losers in our neighborhood. Truth was, I wouldn’t know what to do with a guy if he stripped n***d and promised to have amnesia the next day.”

Laughing, he swayed in to kiss her shoulder before swaying back. “When did that change?”

“I don’t think it ever did,” she said.

Beneath the covers, he took her hand and guided it to his d**k that was thick and proud when he coiled her fingers around it. “Yeah, baby, it did.”

She was no expert, but if he was happy with her performances, so was she. “Like a lot of people, I lost it in college,” she said, turning on to her back as she thought about her first boyfriend. “Dunc was a senior, he worked in the library.” Smiling, she curled her tongue in her mouth. “Boy, did he give me an education.”

“Okay,” Max said. Taking her hand off his d**k, he yanked her across the bed, sweeping her arm up over his shoulder around his neck. “We’re done with that conversation… What did you never learn?”

Another thing Rob had asked her. Max took in details even when he wasn’t outwardly paying attention, she’d have to remember that.

“To drive,” she said. “I never learned to drive. We never had the money and I never cared. I could walk to school and to the library, those were the only places I needed to go, and I wasn’t afraid of the bus.”

“The library? Again? You liked the library.”

“One of my mom’s earliest jobs was in a library. I was about six or seven maybe, I had to hide under the desk while she worked because I wasn’t supposed to be there. But she’d sneak me in after school and hide me under there with a juice box and a pile of books… I guess it’s no surprise I grew up socially awkward. I got used to my mom taking me to her different jobs and hiding me in closets or in dark corners when I was tiny because she couldn’t afford childcare and my dad was useless.”

“Or not around.”

“Yeah,” she said. “After that library job, I didn’t want to do anything else but read. I didn’t want coloring books or games. I wanted books, non-fiction mostly. At first it was the pictures that really fascinated me. My dad taught me how to draw; I was never as good as he was, but it was the one thing he gave me. Anyway, I read about art, and classical musicians… I always tried to talk to my dad about it. Maybe I was trying to get him to notice me… who knows. I was never good at being creative, but I could learn about those who were.” His expression didn’t change. He was listening, but she began to shrink. “Sorry, you don’t want to—”

“If I don’t want to, I’ll tell you I don’t,” he said, anticipating what she was going to say. “And books are cool… we never had none in my house… but I guess they’re better than drugs or getting yourself f****d up like other losers.”

Drugs and teenage pregnancies were rife in her neighborhood, but she’d stayed indoors or kept her nose in books. Her mother struggled to make ends meet and her father usually spent whatever spare cash they had on his art supplies or on w**d.

Seeing the stress her mother lived under was enough to make Tally wary of getting herself involved in any kind of relationship. Her parents fought all the time, or drifted around each other, living separate lives like they were ghosts who couldn’t see each other. When things were especially tough, Tally often felt like a ghost herself because her mother was just too busy to interact with her.

“What about you?” she asked. “What was it like for you growing up?”

“You don’t know already?” he asked, peering down his nose at her.

Tally couldn’t tell if he was pissed or teasing her.

So much for them not talking about his father. “Teddy did hire a PI to find you, that’s how I ended up here… but he was more interested in locating you than learning what you were like. Getting to you was important; you’re sort of his last hope. He would never let a woman take over the business, it just wouldn’t happen. When Laura, his wife, was killed, he was really messed up. He tried to hold it together, but I’ve never seen him like that.”

“Sounds like you care about him.”

Did she? Maybe. “Your father’s given me a lot,” she said. “But he’s a tough guy to warm to, he’s quite… severe.”

“Yeah, I had a bunch of stepdads like that,” he said, skimming a hand down over her hip. “I guess my mom has a type… Sick f***s who treat her like crap. They beat the s**t out of her, take her for everything she’s got, which is never much, and then they toss her a*s on the street.”

There was so much anger in his words that Tally reached up to stroke his face. Her heart broke for him. Seeing his mother be hurt by every man she ever had in her life must have been tough.

“Baby,” she murmured and pushed up to kiss him. “I’m so sorry.”

“No problem,” he said, pulling away from her hand and her kiss, though he didn’t leave her embrace. “Her choice, not mine… I got tired of fighting the fuckers when I was fourteen and bailed. Didn’t matter how many I kicked out, she always found a new dirt bag… not my problem.”

“But you still see her? Your mom, is she still in your life?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “I didn’t see her for like five years. She moved into the neighborhood for a while then took off with a new deadbeat. If she asks me for something, she’ll get it, she’s my mom, you know? I’ll always do whatever I can to keep her on her feet.”

It was nice that he still cared about his mother. Though he must have seen some horrific things as a child if the men she’d brought into his life were all violent. Maybe that was why Max wasn’t like that; he didn’t throw his weight around, not with her, even though he had the physical strength to take most people apart.

He’d probably figured out the value of his fists when he was young. If his mom’s boyfriends were violent with her, some were probably violent with him. Learning to take care of himself involved staying in peak fitness, and the kit in his room was a testament to how hard he worked on his ripped form.

But she could understand how frustrated he had to be as a youngster, standing in front of his mom, taking the hits, or beating the guys who hurt his mom, only to have her take them back or bring new guys in who were just as bad or worse.

“Is she still choosing the wrong men?”

Max shrugged, putting an arm around her, he moved onto his back. “She wouldn’t say that, she says they’re passionate.” He scoffed the word like it was ridiculous and it was.

Kissing his shoulder, she couldn’t stop stroking his body, or pressing herself into him. “You’re passionate,” she murmured, and his eyes dropped to watch her tasting his torso. “But you’d never hit a woman.”

“How do you know? Maybe I just never got caught.”

She had seen his rap sheet, mostly it contained petty theft charges from when he was younger. There was one incident involving a bar fight, but the details on that were sketchy. But he was right, a person’s criminal record just showed what they’d been caught for, not what they’d actually done. She’d already found out from his friend that he had stolen cars and sold them for parts, that wasn’t on his record.

“If I thought you were capable of hurting me, I wouldn’t be here,” she said. “And after spending tonight with you… You’re a decent guy, Max… You’re more than decent. You care about people.”

His snigger was meant to be dismissive, but she’d guess that he wasn’t used to taking a compliment. “I care about what I care about,” he muttered.

“Like your business,” she said. “That’s something to be proud of.”

“It’s all homers, word of mouth, for buddies. We do maintenance jobs, whatever needs done. We don’t take it too serious.”

Still, he and his friends had accomplished something. “It pays the bills.”

The slow close of his eyes as he averted them in a kind of shrug told her he didn’t want to talk about it. “How’d your mom hook up with the wine guy?”

The wine guy. She smiled. Okay, so he only half listened. “He’s an art professor, or he was, he’s older than her, retired now. After college I took her to a charity auction thing, it was one of the first Stretton events I attended. They met there and, I guess, hit it off. She went to France with him a couple of months after they met.”

“Spontaneous woman.”

Yeah, it had surprised her too. “She deserved it. Yeah, it was a risk, but I was educated, starting my life, she did her bit with me. It was her time.”

Bobbing his head, he nuzzled her face. “So your dad dying worked out for you, huh?”

“The life insurance, sure,” she said. “We didn’t even know he had it until after he was gone. Turned out he did care about us after all. But, yeah, my mom told me to get a trade. I just needed a vocation… I wasn’t good at the creative stuff, so it was teaching or accountancy, and I figured I’d be better in a job I could do myself instead of standing in front of a group. I’d hate that.”

“Numbers, huh?” he asked. “I thought you were an assistant.”

Taking a deep breath, she laid her face against him to breathe in that scent she loved. “There was a recruitment thing at college, senior year, and I met your father by accident, he was there looking for talent for the company. I guess he liked me because he offered me a position… the rest is history.”

Her life hadn’t turned out the way she’d thought it would. But she’d never really been good at knowing what she wanted; only what she didn’t want. Max had made it clear he didn’t want to share much more about himself and she wanted to take advantage of being close to this man, and his scent, while she still had him.

Biting into his chest, she startled him enough to make him look at her again and she grinned. “Oh, it’s like that?” he asked. Grabbing her, he flipped her onto her back, locking his fingers between hers to pin them above her head. “You like it rough, Boss?”

It was a sign of trust.

Yes, Max’s possession made her aware of every hair on her body, every cell of her being, but it was the intangible that heightened her connection to this man; the feeling that he’d defend her with everything he was. Just like he had tonight on a superficial level when men tried to move in on her.

But he had honor too, he’d taken her to that club, and even when other, much more beautiful women were throwing themselves at him, he hadn’t wavered, not for a single heartbeat. That was integrity, proving what she said about him caring for people.

“I’d never had s*x in public,” she said. Her heart lost its steady rhythm. She wrapped both arms around the back of his head, stroking her fingers through his hair and letting it tickle her forearms as she rubbed them through his locks. “I’d never dragged a guy into an alley and demanded that he have s*x with me… I’d never had an o****m on a dancefloor or given head in a bathroom… until you.”

He kissed her. “Next time you’ll receive.”

Smiling, she tried to remember their agreement while simultaneously knowing that there would never be a next time. “What is it about you, Max Flynn, that makes me crazy?” She exhaled, her eyes rolling back in her head when his lips slid down to her neck. “Are you some smooth operator taking me for a ride and I’m just too dumb to see it? Is this what you do with all the girls? Drive them crazy with your intense “challenge me” glare and the ownership of your hands?”

His hands curled around her waist, gripping her tight and shifting her body under his, proving her point. “Oh, I own you, baby… you want me to own you?”

He breathed in her n****e, suckling her hard and rubbing his fingertips through her cleavage. “Yes,” she whispered, gripping his shoulders and whimpering. “Oh, God, Max, I do.”

“Open those legs for me, Boss, I’m hungry for your p***y. The sweet girl needs worshiped, and I’ve got the tongue to do it.”

Where was her confidence? Where was her sense? Tally couldn’t let her soon-to-be-boss worship any part of her. But as he descended further down her body, she parted her legs, freeing him and opening herself for his mouth.

Yes, this was crazy. But tonight, he’d asked her to be nothing more than a girl enjoying her guy. It wouldn’t last, but while it did, she was going to enjoy it.