Dirty Boy (34 page)

After removing the rest of her clothes, he widened her thighs and thrust into her. She wasn’t sure why she was expecting more foreplay. On set, he eased her into their sex.

He grunted and rested his chin on her head, moving inside of her with aching slowness. His gentleness lowered her resistance and she planted kisses along his neck and jaw, filled with him, her heart overflowing with emotion.

Suddenly, his tempo changed as he powered into her.

“Max!” Story cried, overwhelmed by the intensity, feeling her orgasm building up and exploding around her.

Max slammed into her one last time, before pouring into her.

As Max caught his breath, the sound of the doorbell ringing broke the silence.

“Pizza’s here,” he guessed, getting to his feet and finding his billfold before heading down the hall.

“Max!” Story called. “You’re naked.”

“Nothing they haven’t seen before. All their employees are over eighteen, so we’re fine.” He opened the door, amused at the wide eyes of the young man. He held out the money. “Pizza?”

“You’re insane,” she complained, once the door was closed. She stood as naked as he was.

He brought the box to the table. “Story, stay with me because you want to be here for the last six weeks. I won’t work until you leave.” Maybe, by then, he’d change her mind about accepting his occupation. If things worked out between them, he’d make plans to retire in four years, on his thirty-fifth birthday.

First, however, he’d secure her agreement.

“I don’t know, Max. Whenever I go back, I can get a job.”

He frowned, confused. “What does that have to do with anything?”

She sighed. “A lot. For my entire time here, you’ve kept me a virtual prisoner because I don’t have any money. Everything, food, toiletries, whatever, is delivered. I don’t have a hand in choosing the items. I haven’t had minutes on my phone. Nothing. It would be good to have money in my purse. Even five dollars.”

Fuck.

“If you stay, I’ll give you money for yourself. Tell me how much you want every week.”

“Fifty bucks a week would be fine,
if
I stay, since you do buy everything else.”

“I’ve bought toilet paper more expensive than fifty dollars, Story. You insult me.”

“Does everything have to be an argument with you? You’re so fricking contentious. What’s the going rate for mistresses? I wouldn’t know since I’ve never been one.”

“And you wouldn’t be one now.”

Story rolled her eyes. “You know I’m beginning to see your problem. You’re a
guy
. So I’ll help you along. I
would
be your mistress. Unless you’d upgrade me to girlfriend?”

“Why do we have to have any titles?”

“Oh my God! You’re intending to pay me to stay and sleep with you.”

“It won’t be much different from what you’ve been doing, except you’ll be getting cash.”

“It will be different because it won’t be “work”. This will be us spending time together for six weeks. Making love. Going places.”

“You’re making this unnecessarily complicated. And come up with more money than fifty fucking dollars a week.”

“A hundred dollars.”

He glared at her. She smirked at him and opened the pizza box, grabbing a slice.

“A thousand dollars a week,” he said instead.

“I don’t need that kind of money, Max. I have nothing I want that’ll take that much money.”

“Then save it. Pay off the bills you said you owe. But that’s what you’re getting.”

“Just because I get it doesn’t mean I have to spend it,” she retorted.

“Why are you so fucking difficult? I want to give you goddamn money and you’re taking the high road. What the fuck is wrong with you? You should take the money and run. Tell yourself if an asshole is stupid enough to pay me to spend time with him, then I can take it. It’s called survival.”

“No, it’s called greed,” she shot back. “As much as I need the money, and I do. My credit is shot to hell. You’re going to pay my tuition, so whatever I work for can go to paying off my debts.”

“Story, I won’t accept the money back.”

“You’ll have no choice, Max. Taking that much money from you will be one more reason…” She shook her head and glanced away. “It’ll make it that much harder to keep my distance from you. I’ll start to see you as the man I want you to be, not the man you are. You aren’t a bad man. You’re just not a man I can be with long term, so I’m not going to pretend you’re my knight in shining armor for six weeks. You’re doing you, and I have to do me. I think more of myself than to risk completely falling in love with you.”

Completely?
Max latched onto the word, but didn’t point it out, unsure she realized what she said. “Are you staying or not, Story?” Possibilities whirled through his mind.

He’d make the next six weeks so good for Story that she couldn’t leave him. She’d understand that his work had nothing to do with how he felt about her.

How he felt about her? He did feel something for her. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be going to these lengths.

“Well?”

“Yes, Max,” she whispered. “I’ll stay with you.”

Story followed Max to his stretch of beach, marveling at the late afternoon glow reflected on the water as the sun set. Yesterday, when she’d decided to stay, she hadn’t thought how hard it would be to have him leave for work this morning. But she’d kissed him without complaint, when he’d awakened her to tell her he was leaving for the day. When he’d walked in, an hour ago, he’d sent her upstairs to change into something more comfortable than the fitted maxi dress she’d been wearing. She’d changed into a cute romper, not bothering with shoes.

“I think this is fine,” he said now, setting a picnic basket in the sand and arranging a blanket. “Sit,” he said, once he finished as began to pull out apples, grapes, cheese, and crackers, along with a bottle of wine, two cups, two plates, napkins and a knife.

“Why are we here?” Story asked with a huge grin, accepting the cup of wine he handed to her. “I thought we were going out for dinner.”

“If that’s what you prefer,” he told her, tasting his wine and snatching a grape to pop into his mouth. “I prefer staying in tonight and having a picnic to watch the sun set.”

“Are you trying to seduce me, Mr. Sherwood?” she teased.

“
Trying
? You mean I’m not succeeding?”

“Maybe,” she said coyly, drinking from her cup. “Maybe not.”

He shook his head. “My intention isn’t sex. If it was, you’d know.”

Oh-oh. She went on high alert, suspecting he was buttering her up because of something to do with the studio. “Max, whatever you want to do, do it. I don’t want to know about your day or your intentions.”

“I understand when I come home you won’t ask me how my day went, but when I have something to discuss with you, you can at least listen to me.”

He was right. She couldn’t shut him out because of how upset she was. She gripped her cup tighter. “Fine. I’m listening.”

“I want to know if you’d like to accompany us to a trade show in Vegas. We go every year and I wanted to invite you.”

“When is it?”

“In a couple of months.”

“I’ll be gone by then.”

Max nodded. “That doesn’t mean we can’t see each other from time-to-time.”

That’s exactly what it meant. If she couldn’t be
here
with full disclosure, she certainly couldn’t live hundreds of miles away and see him at his convenience. Instead of saying that, she asked, “who’s going?”

“Me, Eric, Addie, Stella, and a few others.”

“Addie?” she echoed, then drank more wine to temper her jealousy. “You’ve shot more scenes with her.”

“Yes,” he said on a sigh. “Two.”

“All in a day’s work,” she said, unable to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

“How many times have you fucked her away from the set?”

“Do you really want to know?” he asked with a scowl.

“I asked, didn’t I?”

“Not once.”

“How awesome. That…man…” His answer penetrated her brain and she stared at him, her mouth hanging open.

“I didn’t sleep with her the night of her party and I haven’t slept with her if it didn’t have to do with work, since the day you met her. Whether you believe me or not, I don’t care. It’s the truth.”

Story drained her cup and set it aside, before crawling to Max and laying her hand on his jaw. “I believe you. I’ve lived with you long enough to know you’re brutally honest. If you’d slept with her, you would’ve told me.”

Something flickered across his face, but she couldn’t define it. Silent, he opened one of the cheeses and sliced a few pieces.

“Addie once asked me why I got into the business,” he said quietly, laying the knife aside and forgetting about the food.

“What did you tell her?”

“The truth,” he said simply. “I enjoy sex. I don’t need money. Without lifting a finger, I’m in a unique one percent. I wanted to earn my own money. What better way to do it than to marry my love of fucking with an industry that’s all about fucking? Anything else and I would’ve been miserably bored. Eventually, I’d like to move behind the scenes. When the time’s right.”

“When might that be?” she asked as casually as possible, not wanting him to hear her eagerness.

“When I’m thirty-five. I’d do it on my terms. Not out of grief or guilt.”

Without asking, Story knew Kayleigh once again guided Max’s hand. She’d never, ever win with Max. He was making her compete with a ghost, and she’d always come up short as long as he was so eaten up with his need for vengeance.

“May I ask you something?” she said, not commenting on his intentions to retire. She’d wanted him to say
now
. Tomorrow. Next week. But that wouldn’t happen. “I warn you before you answer it’ll be something you don’t like.”

He poured more wine for both of them, his lips thinning. “Kayleigh I take it.”

“Yes.”

“Ask me, then let’s never talk about her again.”

She wouldn’t risk annoying him and then he’d never answer some of the things she really wanted to know. “How’d you two meet?”

“In high school.”

She hadn’t realized he’d known her so long. Somewhere along the way that part of the story had gotten buried. Or, maybe, she’d simply missed it.

“Did you love her?”

“Yes, but I wasn’t in love with her. I didn’t believe there was such a thing as being in love. I watched my father marry younger women so he could show them off. Or so he wouldn’t be alone. I watched these younger women use him for his money.”

He allowed them to do it. Pointing that out wouldn’t win her any points, so she didn’t comment, although she further understood Max’s extreme distrust of the female population. “Was Kayleigh pretty?”

“Kayleigh was gorgeous,” he said without hesitation. “When she walked into a room, every head turned.”

“If you didn’t love her, why’d you propose?”

He shrugged and sighed. “I don’t know. It seemed…Maybe, I did love her more than I want to admit,” he said in a low voice. “Maybe, I don’t want to admit it because she broke my fucking heart. She lied to me and pretended she’d accept what I did. That was the biggest disappointment of my life when I realized she hadn’t told me the truth. My marriage became a battleground. I was miserable. She was miserable. Then, she decided to get pregnant. Her announcement shocked me. My intentions to leave turned into a determination to stay. It wasn’t enough.
Nothing
I did was enough.”

“Can you ever forgive her for hurting you?”

He shook his head. “No. Forgiving her would betray my son.”

“She killed herself, too, Max.”

He glared at her. “Why are we discussing this again?”

“Because I’d prefer you to have a living wife that you were using me to cheat on. As fucked up as that sounds, at least I’d have a fighting chance for you. But a ghost? She’ll always be frozen in time. She’ll always rule your emotions and there’s no way to change her past actions because she isn’t alive to do so.”

“I brought you out here to listen to music and to enjoy your company. If I wanted a therapist, I’d hire one.”

“Why don’t you?”

“It’s not fucking happening.”

Of course it wouldn’t. Max was too stubborn for his own good.

Story hugged him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to ruin what can be a good evening.”

“I was trying to be romantic. Attempting to be a man you’d enjoy.”

“I know and I appreciate the gesture. It’s beautiful out here.” She’d barely paid attention to the scenery. As usual, Max captivated her. “But…”

He stood. “But it isn’t enough. It never is. What the fuck do you want from me?”

“You,” she said softly.

“No, you want the illusion of me. You don’t want the real me. That Max is human and has demons.”

“I don’t want you with Kayleigh. I don’t want Richard Head.”

The sun cast a golden aura around his fine physique, tanned skin, and blue eyes, making his glare all the more ominous. “That’s the me you get.”

Standing, Story folded her arms and lifted her chin. “I can’t do anything about Richard Head, but I’m not staying with you for six more weeks and living in Kayleigh’s shadow. If you can’t let her go until it’s time for me to leave, I’m leaving tonight.”

His eyes narrowed. “You brought her up.”

“I was curious about her. But I also wanted to see your reactions. She’ll always stand between us.”

“Yes!” he yelled. “If you won’t shut the fuck up about her, she will. I don’t ever have to talk about her again. If you weren’t so goddamn nosy, you wouldn’t have to suffer my answers. Drop the fucking subject, Story. If you want to leave, get the fuck out.” With that, he stormed off.

Max stood on his private balcony, watching as the sun disappeared beyond the horizon. When he’d invited Story out for the beach picnic, he hadn’t only wanted to invite her to the convention, he wanted to tell her he’d pay for her to design two outfits. He’d buy the supplies she needed to sketch, find a fabric supplier, commission the model, and give her work space to bring her creations to life.

But she insisted on bringing up his wife. She wouldn’t drop the fucking subject, wanting him to admit…what? The more he talked about her, the less he slept. The less he slept, the more irritable he became.

At work, he’d been anticipating arriving home and seeing Story. Nothing else had mattered. He couldn’t even remember the scenes he’d shot today. For the entire day, he’d thought of what he could do to give her a nice evening and surprise her with the clothes design job.

“Max?”

He leaned on the balcony at Story’s soft call, not responding when she laid her hand on his back.

“I’m sorry.”

He’d thought a beach picnic would show her how he felt about her.

“I won’t ever bring her up again.”

Maybe, he should just tell her how he felt about her.

“I don’t want anger to mar our time together. I want to leave you with happy memories. I want to take them with me, too.”

How could he make her stay? Asking her wouldn’t be enough.

Her hand fell away. “Well, I just wanted to apologize.”

She waited another moment, but he refused to say anything and allowed her to walk away. His answer would’ve been making love to her. That was his response to everything.

Now, however, that just wasn’t good enough.