Power to the Max (43 page)

“You’re very beautiful,” she whispered.

“A man’s cock isn’t supposed to be beautiful.”

She looked up and smiled. “You are so wrong. This”—she took him in her hand—“is extraordinarily beautiful.”

“Hey, this the real Max here? Sounds like a Pod person to me.”

She fluttered her eyelashes. “I think you should just sit back and enjoy, Pod person or not.”

He stretched, arching, his enticing cock bobbing close to her lips. “Right. Do your worst.”

“You mean my best.”

“You ever heard the only bad blowjob is no blowjob?”

“You have very low expectations.”

“No, Max, they’re very high. Suck it, baby, please.”

“You don’t have to beg. I have every intention.” She caressed the slit at his tip with her thumb.

He sucked in a breath. “Too much talking going on here. How about action?”

She took him all, gliding her lips down his length and swirling her tongue. Drops of pre-cum trickled deliciously, and she slid all the way back up to enjoy the taste.

“Sweet Jesus, you’re killing me.”

She made a noise of assent but didn’t release him. Wrapping her fingers around his shaft, she squeezed his base as she took him all again. The pleasure was hers, her body moistening, heating, her clitoris throbbing without even a touch. She wanted to make him feel good because it made her hot, because his taste was like ambrosia, because taking him inside her mouth was as intimate as taking him inside her body.

She caressed his balls with her pinkie, the rough hair tickling. His scent was so damn good, salty and male. His body rocked to her rhythm.

“Jesus, Max, gonna lose it here. Wanna be inside you.”

No, no, she couldn’t stop yet. She’d tasted him in the car, but she hadn’t savored him. The whole experience had been over too quickly, then his irritation and her own guilty conscience at having power-tripped him stole the pleasure.

Sucking back to his tip, she let him fall from her mouth though she kept up the gentle pumping of his cock with her hand. “Please let me do this, Witt. I need it.”

“I’m no eighteen-year-old with an ever-present hard-on. Don’t think I can make love to you afterwards.” He winked, then groaned as she thumbed his crown. “At least not for fifteen minutes.”

Fifteen minutes, hah. The man seemed to have a perpetual hard-on. But one thing was more important. “This is making love. I want to swallow you. All of you. Please.” As much as she wanted him inside her, this was more significant. This was something she could give him. Sex could be about power. Or it could be about giving pleasure without requiring some sort of capitulation.

She tipped her head. “I’m begging.”

He let out a low laugh, then slumped against the stairs. “Even a saint couldn’t resist. Make me blow, baby.”

She relished every drop, every flex of his muscles, every pump and grind of his hips, every sigh and groan that fell from his lips. He throbbed in her mouth, and when he came, he cradled her head in his hands and called her name as if he worshipped her.

She caressed him with her tongue and lips until his shudders died away, and he pulled her up to look at him. His eyes were the hot blue of a flame’s center. “Was that your worst?”

She batted her eyelashes. “I’ll try to do better next time.”

“Come here.” He tugged on her arms until she straddled his lap above him. “Kiss me.”

“After I just did that?”

“Nothing more erotic than a woman’s kiss after she’s just taken you to heaven.”

“Was that heaven?” She had to know if she’d given even the tiniest bit of what he needed.

“Furthest from hell I’ve ever been.”

His kiss was delicious, the soft, gentle mingling of his mouth and his essence. It was so freaking sweet, she got a lump in her throat.

“Thank you,” he whispered against her lips.

She shrugged away from him, feeling inexplicably shy. Why, after all the things she’d done in the past, she should be shy now, Max couldn’t say. “Ah, gee, you don’t have to thank me.”

“Don’t—” His cell phone went off. He reached for his belt clip.

Damn, damn, don’t what? She wanted to know, was terrified of it at the same time. Would fear ever go away?

He glanced at the Caller ID. Max squelched her desire to lean over and look.

“Gotta go.”

She backed off, let him right himself and his clothing, contenting herself with the thought that if his job was in jeopardy, they wouldn’t be calling him on a Sunday night. A Sunday night call had to be a case, an emergency. Yeah.

He stepped down two stairs below her. Her heart beat furiously. She felt sick to her stomach.
When will I see you? Will you call me? Did I make everything better?

Pathetic. She hadn’t let questions like that trouble her in years. She hated doing it now. Yet she couldn’t help herself.

Witt took her hand and drew it to his lips, kissing her knuckles. “See ya.”

See ya? That’s all?

“Okay.” That was the trouble with a relationship. All of a sudden a girl was unsure of everything. She lost all her power. She became an emotional mess.

But Max wouldn’t give up the taste of him in her mouth for anything. She wouldn’t regret the words. She had made love to and with Witt. She knew she had.

Didn’t she?

* * * * *

Max’s cheeks burned all the way to Sutter Cahill’s house. She wasn’t sure she and Witt had returned to normal even as she stood on the doorstep and pressed Sutter’s doorbell. No, they hadn’t returned to normal; they’d moved into a whole new frightening realm. She’d taken them there.

“I love you, Max.”

“I love you, too, Cameron.”

“And I’m proud. Of what you did for Witt. And for facing Sutter again.”

Her whole body warmed with Cameron’s praise. “I’m trying to learn.”

“You’re even facing the fact that Sutter might see me.”

Everyone had a special gift, even if they never knew it. Sutter’s was seeing ghosts. Perhaps that had been one of the reasons Max had stayed away. Sutter might see Cameron. And if Cameron was real instead of a figment of her imagination, then there was always the possibility he’d leave someday. She’d have no control over that.

She rang the bell again. “Please be home, please be home,” she chanted as if that would make it true. She never even considered using a psychic nudge to find out. Turning to the street, she stamped her feet, more from nervousness than cold.

The night was quiet except for crickets and other nocturnal creatures. A car passed, slowing, the driver’s side window down.

He didn’t register at first, just a man giving a brief turn of his head to look at her. Then boom, she recognized Angela’s Greek God.

He’d been at the Embassy every night Max had been there. He’d sat across the room from her in Belladonna’s as she lunched with Bud Traynor. And here the guy was again.

Damn. The man was definitely following her, not Angela. Why? What the hell did he want? She’d have to tell—

The rest of Max’s thoughts died as Sutter opened her front door. And smiled.

Max’s phone rang in the middle of the night. Opening her eyes, she looked at the red numbers of the clock. Three. It was dark. Terror of a middle-of-the-night call set in. Witt. Bad news. She picked up before the answering machine could.

“Hello?”

No one answered. There was click and a mechanical whir, then a voice.

“Front or back?” Distant, echoing. Witt’s voice.

“Back.” Her voice. Tucked beneath the warm covers, Max’s body chilled.

Rustling, a human huff, the closing of a door, a car door, finally, Witt again. “I think that was a warning to you.”

“Warning?”

“Next time, they’ll be on it.” Ohmygod. Ohmygod. She was hearing Witt’s voice. In the back of Hammerhead’s car. “Whatcha gonna do now?”

“I’m going to move closer.” She remembered that she hadn’t, remembered the need, yet the trepidation.

“Better hurry,” Witt urged.
Hang up, hang up
. Her internal voice screamed. She couldn’t, listened instead to Witt’s husky caress. “Here are your friends. Better kiss me or they’ll know you’re a fraud.” He’d egged her on at first. He’d wanted it as badly as she had. Until she’d pushed too hard.

This time, the rustle of clothing, a soft sigh, hers, the sound of a wet kiss that seemed to go on forever, his breath, hers, then a groan, definitely male.

As horrible as it was to know they’d been taped, Max’s body heated. She pulled her knees to her chest, hugged the phone to her ear, wanting and hating in equal parts.

A muffled plunk, that had been when she’d lost her shoe. With her eyes closed, she could feel him under her hands, against her thigh, taste him in her mouth. And she died a tiny bit inside because she’d brought this on herself, brought it on Witt, however unknowingly.

“What are you doing?” She couldn’t exactly remember what she’d been doing at that moment.

“Your tie’s too tight.” Oh yes. The continued rustle. Oh God yes, she’d started to undress him.

“Taking this a little too far, aren’t you?” Shaky words, but he hadn’t stopped her.

“I thought you liked living on the edge.” She couldn’t remember if she’d stopped to look at him, judging, gauging, assessing. God, she probably had.

“I’m on the edge. So don’t do this now.”

“They’ve got to think we’re ... you know ... doing it. It’s just an act.” A pause, more rustling, her rustling.

“Hey. I said not now. Later.” His tone was urgent with a trace of disbelief.

Max wanted to cry. He had damn near begged her to stop, and she’d been too wrapped up in her own needs to listen. Hearing the desperation in his voice was worse than her memories of the whole incident. No matter what she did, this recollection was forever sullied.

“It’s just for show,” she said. In the background came the slow rasp of his zipper. Then she’d teased him a little more. “Unless you want it for real ... do you?” She’d touched him then, she remembered that. “Tell me to stop and I will. All you have to do is say the word.” A pause, then her voice whispering. “If you can.” To her eternal shame, she’d taunted him, goaded him.

“Damn you.” He cursed her with a low growl.

“Tell me how bad you want it.” She’d wanted him to beg. Then she’d, oh God, she’d put her mouth on him.

“Fuck, please, shit.” Strain stretched his voice thin and harsh.

Knowing they’d been watched was one thing. Knowing the watcher would listen to it over and over and over was, in a word, sickening. So were the sounds, a horrible slurp that should have remained between lovers in the privacy of a bedroom.

She would have to live with the shame of what she’d done to Witt forever. She’d allowed him to be taped, and who knew what the eventual consequences would be. There could be no denying the level to which she’d sunk that night, the trouble for which she’d set Witt up.

“Ah, Christ. Jesus H. Christ.” Witt cried out. Max jerked with remembered power and the very real taste of him in her mouth.

“I do so wish we’d had a camera in the car, Max my darling.”

Bud Traynor. She’d never thought it was anyone else.

“But your voice on this lovely little audio tape is enough to make me come, Max.”

She put her fist to her mouth to keep from screaming.

“You think I’m lying, don’t you, Max, that I’m watching a video as we speak.”

She didn’t answer, yet she couldn’t hang up.