Safe and Sound (The Safe House Series Book 3) (8 page)

Max took her slippery hand in his once more. They circled the boathouse perimeter, careful to hug close to the tin roof overhang that seemed to block some of the torrent. He tried two other doors before one slipped loose in his hand.

They entered a secondary addition to the boathouse, one used to store kayaks and canoes and all manner of sports water equipment. Across the longest wall hung life jackets organized by size on hooks. At the shortest side of the space, no larger than the room Max and Lola shared, sat a rental desk. A wet pine smell clung to the salty air.

A fierce shiver crashed over Lola, toes to shoulders. She wrung the water from her hair and blew hot exhales into her steepled hands. Though it was late into a coastal spring, humidity did not hold warmth over the rain-soaked air.

Max pulled her into his embrace. Despite his saturated shirt, she folded against his chest, greedily soaking up his body heat from all sides.

“We have to get you dry and warm.”

He led her to a rough-hewn bench crafted of logs beneath an activity sign-up board and replaced his warmth with a few life vests strewn haphazardly around the room. They were stiff and block-like and
not
Max. Lola decided she much preferred moving around the space and helping him in his search.

The rental office shared a roof with the boathouse. Frog-strangling rain pounded the tin planks overhead. The noise was, quite possibly, the only racket to rival a classroom of first graders during a field day relay race.

Lola checked the rental desk. On shelves beneath the graffiti-carved wooden counter, she found a balled-up beach towel, a wrapped cricket-infused protein bar—
Ew
—a turquoise Blue Moon staff shirt too small for her to sausage her boobs into, and a mismatched pair of old sneakers.

Max fared better with the unit of rental lockers. A pair of men’s cargo shorts and a ladies swimsuit cover up, more sheer and netting than any real cover, but it was dry and inviting.

She laid the ground rules. “No peeking.”

“Really? After last night?”

“No peeking,” she reiterated.

“Fine.” His tone was placating, just this side of amused.

They turned their backs to each other. She stripped out of her wet dress and donned the swimsuit cover like the tinder around them had reached an inferno and the only solution was to wring her dress over the flames. He moved more slowly, casually removing every last stitch of clothing before stepping into the dry shorts.

She knew because she peeked.

Sweet McGinger hottie
did she ever.

Lola told herself she stole a glance because trust had been a thing for them. A non-thing, actually. How could she be sure he kept his word unless she supervised him? Not once did he turn around. The perfect gentleman. Guilt weighed on her shoulders like a soaked lifejacket, soon replaced by a force as powerful as the first wave in a tsunami: Max Sterling’s buff backside—glorious red hair to heels. Nothing but skin and ass dimples that chiseled glutes and muscles for days. Weeks. Years.

“Like the view?”

Her gaze shifted, albeit reluctantly, first to his gleaming white grin then to his pointer finger. A full-length mirror hung from the side wall at a perfect angle to catch her betrayal red-handed. He took his sweet, leisurely time yanking the khaki fabric over his butt, commando-style. And laughing.

Wait…

Mirrors reflected both ways.

She turned to him, fully sheathed but feeling completely exposed. “You saw—”

“No more than you willingly showed me yesterday.”

“Truth?”

“No. I saw everything.”

Blood rushed to her face. Had she not dried her face against the material before slipping it over her head, the droplets would have steamed off her cheeks like a teakettle on full scream. She wanted to crawl inside the nearest kayak, face down.

“Hey,” he said, loud enough to overcome the rain. He took her hands in his and tugged her closer. “I’m sorry. But I’m not sorry.”

Lola stared at his chest, lost in the contour of a particularly impressive pectoral muscle. Her breasts would have hung heavy, and she might have pulled in her stomach had she known. His body was so perfect in every conceivable way. She was still that fifteen-year-old girl who saw only imperfections.

“Look at me.”

She couldn’t. So he raised his wide, firm hand beneath her chin and tipped her gaze higher, higher, until she had no choice but to meet his warm gaze.

“The only thing stopping me from doing more than just peeking—
way
more—is my word last night. I am nothing without my word.”

His thumb grazed her chin, a small hot sun against her already-scorching face. He pulled her into his arms. She couldn’t decide if he meant his embrace to soften the blow of not making love to her or because he wasn’t yet ready to let her go. When he released her and announced he was going to look for something to warm them, she knew his hug had been all about raising her body temperature. Nothing more.

He disappeared into the equipment room. She crawled inside a canoe that had been left on the cement floor and pulled her knees to her chest. For the first time in hours, it occurred to her she could have run away. A hundred times she had viable opportunity to escape. But he had asked her what she would do, without any responsibilities, and her mind had reached a resounding conclusion, over and over again. She would spend more time in his company, in whatever form that took. He made her feel independent, free, protected.

Desired.

Despite her flaws, his hot gaze had returned to her time and time again. Was it possible that Nona had been right? That some men desire more than skin wrapped around bone? Lola had always thought Nona’s idea of beauty had been antiquated—fashioned in a decade of fuller-figured pinups and a healthier body image. Was it possible Max honestly found her beautiful?

The heady thought warmed her far more than anything Max could scavenge in the storage room. She lifted her face to the exposed metal roof, let the rain’s steady cadence wash over her senses, and inhaled the earthy, fragrant air.

“I found a blanket between the...” Max reentered the space. His ambitious pace stalled in a devastatingly handsome grin. “Your next adventure? First skydiving, now boating?”

She answered his smile with one of her own. “The cement was cold and wet.”

“May I join you?”

“That depends. Do you have any nautical training?”

“Just basic training, slogging through mud. Oh, and a jet ski on leave in Florida once.”

“Hmm…” She pretended to consider, squeezing him in her sight before her body staged a mutiny at the possibility of her turning Max and his body heat away. “I’ll allow it. But just this once.”

Lola thought he might claim one of the two higher bench seats. Instead, Max climbed behind her and settled low in the boat’s hull, her back to his front. He stretched his long legs on either side of hers. His blanket-draped arms looped around her raised knees, completely enveloping her in his warmth.

“Better?”

She didn’t trust herself to speak so she nodded. By inches, he shifted forward, presumably to settle his back against the boat’s seat—an almost imperceptible recline had his groin not pressed firm against the thin fabric tucked beneath her bare buttocks. She needed a topic to distract her from the gathering wetness in the dry dock between her legs.

“You never told me what you would do.” Lola rested her head against his shoulder to relieve the pressure in her neck of imposing space between them. “One day, anything you want.”

“What I want is impossible.”

“
Nothing
is impossible.”

“I want the people back I’ve lost. My parents, my sister, my brothers in combat who never made it home. One day, all together.”

She wanted to bite back the
impossible
comment. Sometimes her optimism sounded juvenile, even to her ears.

“I’m sorry, Max. I didn’t realize. Do you have any family?”

“Some extended in Seattle. I haven’t seen them since I was a kid.”

“Your fellow soldiers must be very important to you, then.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The photos in your bedroom.”

“Too many years ago to count.”

“What about childhood friends?”

“We didn’t exactly take the same path. My parents threw me in basic. My friends ended up in jail or dead.”

The landscape of Max’s life came into sharper relief. With no family or friends, with colleagues spread all over the country on individual security detail, men like Baudin became his only companionship. Inside her chest, a storm of sadness drizzled gray, heavy. Still, a part of the picture remained fuzzy.

“What about girlfriends? Lovers?”

“A few here and there. None for a long time. My duty doesn’t mix well with a social life. It’s dangerous, and I don’t want anyone to hurt for me the way I feel loss.”

Max’s full picture emerged with startling clarity. He hid behind his duty, kept his emotional distance, cleared himself from every responsibility but the one person under his watch in his pursuit of justice. But where was the justice in being alone?

She turned her head toward the hollow space between his jaw and collarbone. He hadn’t shaved since their escape from the safe house. The onset of his auburn beard begged for her touch. She resisted. He believed he was nothing without his word. She wouldn’t be the one to breech that barrier again.

“Everybody needs someone, Max.” She lifted her chin to meet his eyes. “Even if it’s just one day.”

His lids closed slowly as if a great battle brewed inside and he wanted her to see no part of it through the window of his eyes. She marveled at his lashes—blondish-red, as thick as his hair, almost delicate when juxtaposed against the hulking strength surrounding her.

Lola knew what she was offering, what she was giving. One day, no more. When this adventure was over, she would return to her life of runny noses and tattletales and crossword puzzles with her eighty-year old landlady, and Max would sequester himself away from the world again with the next Baudin, her life to never again cross Max’s life. She supposed there was enough freedom in that for them both.

The rain eased.

He swallowed thickly. His steel-cut stare at the distant wall appeared his final stronghold. “I don’t know who I am without duty.”

“Maybe it’s time to find out.”

Still, he hesitated.

“It’s okay, Max,” she whispered, her lips close enough to his earlobe to kiss. This time she didn’t resist the temptation. “I release you from your promise.”

Tension from his body released on a gusty exhale. His arms squeezed her in a hold charged with gratitude, relief. And at the tail end of it all, the vibration of a chuckle at her back.

She twisted slightly. “What?”

“Baudin knew.”

“Knew what?”

“He gave me a condom this morning.”

“I guess that
does
make me the lucky prisoner.” She meant it as a joke, but the casual lines around Max’s mouth fell.

“You’re not a prisoner, Lola. If you want to step out of this boat and walk out that door, I won’t stop you.”

Freedom. Precisely what she had wanted since she crashed into Max’s treacherous world. She unraveled herself from his embrace and climbed out of the boat. Without words, without explanation, she moved toward the door. One backward glance at Max, his eyes mournful, his lips a hard, downward line, nearly shattered her heart. Freedom was precisely what she had wanted since she met Max, but it was the absolute last thing she wanted now.

Lola reached for an oar tipped on its end beside the door and threaded its length through the double doors’ battered iron handles, effectively locking out duty, responsibilities, the world, every last barrier between them. She bit her bottom lip, her stomach alight like fireflies swarming in a jar, and turned around in time to see a sexy smile completely transform Max Sterling’s face.

Max reached his hand out for Lola but made no move to leave the boat. Since the moment he had contoured her body against his beneath the blanket, he had pushed aside precise, erotic images of how he wanted to discover her body. Every damned one of them began from the moment she released her hold over his word.

She padded back on soundless feet and stopped short of climbing in. Her posture ramrod straight, her eyes glazed on some nameless spot in the distance, she affected her best military pose.

“Permission to come aboard, Captain.”

Max laughed. “Permission granted.”

Lola climbed back into the boat, her posture affording him two of the most delectable sights he could have imagined: a spray of dark hair at the zenith of her legs and the wide-necked gape of her covering that presented full view of two ripe, round, hanging fruits within reach, begging for him to pluck and devour.

The sight sent a boatload of blood straight to his cock. For as long as the rain endured, longer, he intended to drink his fill of Lola.

“I do my best work under orders, sweetheart. Tell me what you want.”

“I won’t curse.”

A ripple of laugher bubbled inside him, aching for release as much as the pressure mounting in his groin. He liberated it with a kiss against her neck. “Good luck with that.”

Max wrapped her again in his embrace. This time, the blanket was more afterthought than necessity. He hauled her against his hardness, leveraging his angle beneath her to maximize contact with far more than the cleft of her perfectly-rounded ass. She arched her back in one magnificent lengthening of her spine, jutting the fleshy mound of her sex against the cotton fabric straining under the pressure of his erection. He nearly unzipped and plunged into her right there, but denying himself the pleasure of her scents and taste and soft flesh, denying his discovery of how Lola Reyes rode the wave of anticipation, would have been the greater crime.

His hands entered her shirt from below, riding the crests of her hips, up, up, until the backs of his hands nudged the heavy, velvety orbs of her breasts. He lifted them in his palms, marveling at how they spilled beyond the reach of his hands.
God
, he had never held breasts this large before. He wanted to explore every downy inch of them, bury his face between them until he suffocated in their warmth, gorge himself on their bright pink crests, wrap them around his length and move until his head dripped with expectancy.

Forced to make a choice between supporting them in their entirety and moving his grasp forward to give special attention to her already-hard nipples, he opted for an exhilarating combination of strokes. A sweet ghost of a sigh slipped free from Lola’s bee-stung lips that sent tight pulses of lust coursing the length of his shaft.

He ran his palms down her hourglass curves, past her navel, and stopped at the first tangle of hair.

“If you don’t give me an order, right now, I’ll linger here forever. You’ll never know my fingers inside you.”

She drew in a ragged breath. Still, she wouldn’t speak. He vowed, at that moment, he would do everything in his power to extract words from Lola’s cherry lips that she would never permit herself to utter away from his touch. The thought of what those words may be when he succeeded gave his cock an impatient lurch.

Her neck smelled like shampoo, released by the rainwater, and the first hint of confectionary ripeness from her arousal. His mouth watered, eager to sample her glossy wetness. His hands circumnavigated her pussy, opting instead to charter a course down her thighs. One at a time, he propped her calves over the side of the boat, angling her body firmer against his hard-on and spreading her knees wide enough for him to examine each and every silken fold where they joined.

“Your orders, ma’am?”

“Touch me.” Her words emerged, strangled with need. “There.”

Still a first-grade teacher.

“We’re in a boat,” he teased, smiling against the fragrant column of her neck. “I’m going to need precise nautical directions.”

“North.”

He inched his palms up her thigh then stopped.

“North.”

His fingers ran aground in moisture; his smile widened. He traced circles in her hot dampness, meandering a greater distance away from her slick opening each time she captured a breath and held it hostage. If she wanted mind-numbing sex, he intended to stretch her patience taut until her desires overpowered her lady-like tongue.

When she wiggled her ass against him to capture his movements, he eased his digits into the contours of her sodden mound and began a slow, rhythmic stroke that provoked a firebrand moan from deep within her.

“Inside.” More breath than order. More teacher than vixen.

Still, progress.

He rimmed her channel’s opening, once, twice, her flesh as soaked as the day, before plunging his first two fingers inside her. She rewarded him with simpering groans that sent his balls clamoring to join the bulk of his span, to be part of the action. Her arms lifted to vine around his neck. He cursed the fabric robbing him of the eye feast of her clustered tits.

When her exhales lengthened and her quivering pulp pulsed her dangerously close to the edge, he rededicated his fingertips to divesting her of her coverlet. She squirmed out of it and tossed it overboard with an impatience that rocked him to his core.

Her arms bumped the canoe’s fiberglass rim. The seat nipped at his shoulder blades. They had journeyed as far as the dingy would take them. It was past time to move ashore.

“Be right back,” he whispered against her ear.

He slipped free of the boat and hauled lifejackets to the floor, back side up so no Velcro or clips would nip at her skin. Atop enough preservers to float an entire platoon, he shook out the blanket and shifted the pile until it resembled something close to the comfort of a bed.

Lola remained in the boat. Her gaze slipped from his chest to his torso to his demanding erection maximizing the stretch of his shorts. A devilish grin nipped at the corners of her luscious mouth.

“What?”

“I want to see you.”

A smile played at his lips. “Is that an order?”

Lola nodded. She bit her lower lip again, and he thought he’d fucking lose his mind if he didn’t feel her lust-inspired mouth on him soon.

He unzipped his fly and allowed the borrowed shorts to drop to the floor. Stepping free of the material, he assumed a wide-legged stance, like a sailor attempting to revive his land legs. His dick couldn’t have stood at attention any more had it been forged of steel and soldered into place.

Without her to fill his hands, they interlocked behind his back. Force of habit.

Lola studied him like a commanding officer, a most thorough inspection of his privates, before she rose, stepped from the boat, and leveled a scorching gaze to connect with his. Instead of meeting him full-frontal, she detoured to his side and puckered a kiss on his shoulder.

Slivers of pleasure burned up his thighs like artillery fire, every single one hitting the target between his legs.

She crossed behind him, skimming his right ass cheek with one delicate finger, before laying a string of landmine kisses, top to bottom, down the center of his back. The suction of her lips, barely audible above the quieter hush of rain from above, left a trail of moisture that raced his mind forward to the moment he buried the engorged head of his cock between her parted thighs.

He reached for a nip here, a stroke there, as she moved her body around his orbit. Each time, he was met with a gentle swat that shouldn’t have reminded him of a ruler across his hand in primary school, but it did. Max had asked for orders. Lola was now in control.
His
orders would come when her self-control went AWOL.

If
he made it that long.

Fuck if she didn’t finish her tour with a sin-filled gaze and a slow visual crawl down his body. She dropped to her knees against the soft supports of synthetic orange jackets and wool blanket. He waited for her to take him in hand, but the only sensation he felt against his swollen member was a fiery exhale.

So very like her. So Lola, to put others first. He almost put a stop to it—this was about her, finding her voice, her independence, her freedom from responsibility—but soon her sharp-witted tongue would be swiping his sensitive base and plying his swollen head against the roof of her mouth on its way to her throat, and he was completely powerless to call a cease fire. When she finished going down on him, Lola would know what it was like to take, as well. Even if they had to stay here all day and all night for him to pleasure her.

His dick bobbed like a cork on high seas, the first moisture already seeping free of its head. She captured its base with a firm yet gentle touch, scooping some of his testicles right along in her grasp. She kissed away the droplet and licked her sensual lips as if she had reached the bottom of a delicacy and she intended to relish all of it, no waste.

“Hmm.”

Her approval vibrated through her lips, through his head, and coiled deep in his scrotum.

Max knew that craving. He understood it as surely as he intended to lay her out on the rental desk and feast upon her juices.

She was close, so close. Edging in, her voluptuous lips parted to take him inside her.

At first feverish contact, his knees nearly gave out. He braced himself against the wall that once housed the life jackets and sucked in a breath, convinced he may drown in his own mindless pool of unrelenting lust before he could reciprocate such a selfless act.

“
Shit
, Lola.” He wanted to tell her that he had pictured this—looking down and seeing her lips on his cock since the moment they captured his attention across the kitchen table, the moment he tended her wound. But his brain short-circuited, and all that emerged was his go-to word, an all-encompassing expletive. “
Fuuuuuck
!”

Immediately, Lola went deep, eyes closed, long lashes dark against her pale, angelic skin, no playful exploring of his ridges, no encouragement from his hand at the base of her neck to push deeper. She took him fully inside her tight mouth, massaging every stiff contour with her hot, silken tongue. The inferno depths of her mouth played him in a tandem of sucking force and spiraling tongue that took him straight to the precipice in a desperate rush. He wanted to fuck her mouth into release. Instead, he cursed, hauled her to her feet, and probed the tongue that had just pleasured him with a passionate kiss.

She tasted like frosting-drizzled lemon and him, salty and musky and the combination drove him to the brink of sanity. He lifted her by the ass, much as he had in the room, when he had been tethered to reason instead of roaming wild through the playground of her full curves. Storming her mouth with a restless dance of lips and tongue and softly-nipping teeth, he set her on the reservation counter, the perfect spot to open her wide and lick her to oblivion.

“Lay back, Lola.”

She accepted his orders with a crooked smile, but only lowered herself to her elbows so she could watch. He retrieved the condom packet from his damp jeans and placed it on the counter beside her. Her long, dark hair rode the crests of her heaving breasts, rising and crashing with labored exhales; her naturally-pouty lips parted slightly at the center to allow her spent lungs to take in replenishing oxygen. Oxygen she would soon need.

He leaned forward and flicked one swipe of his tongue along her clit.

A whimper lodged in her throat. Her body lifted then relaxed, squirming against the graffiti-carved wood, a colorful kaleidoscope of swear words and carvings of
was here-
s and summer love declarations wrapped in hearts. She tasted like sweet cream and honey, washed clean from the storm. His thirst for her flavor knew no boundaries. The more he massaged and probed her channel with his tongue, the more she seeped anew. He applied a steadily building pressure until he sucked her folds completely into his mouth.

Lola nearly vaulted off the counter. She rammed her fingers through his hair, gripped his scalp, and cried out, “Max!”

“Max, what? Say it, sweetheart. Tell me what you want.”

“Fuck me.”

His jaw dropped. As much as she needed to savor the moment, he, too had something to savor. He stopped consuming her heavenly perfection long enough to speak against her shiny folds.

“I’m sorry…what was that?”

“Max!” she pleaded.

“Not until I hear you clearly.”

“Fuck. me!” she cried. “That’s an order!”

Totally immersed in her outcries of pleasure, he allowed one hiccup of laughter before he flipped her gently. One leg she lowered to the floor, the other he pinned to the counter, his hand wedged behind her knee. She leaned forward, her breasts pressed flat against the surface, so goddamned much they spilled out from her figure in tantalizing, creamy-white orbs.

He ripped open the condom and unrolled it down his vein-mapped, turgid length. At the precise spot his tongue had occupied not a moment earlier, he aimed the head of his cock and thrust home. Her walls parted to accept him halfway, sheathing him vice-grip tight, so tight he was sure she would never let him go. Two pumps and he was balls-deep inside her.