The Boyfriend Sessions (30 page)

He was going to kill me.

“Max!”

“Don’t fight it,” he ordered. “You always fight it.”

Fight it? My body was possessed. I was possessed with a fire and burning I was powerless to control and it had me arching up and squirming under him in an attempt to be free of his merciless tongue. The handcuffs pulled against my wrists until they left impressions on my skin.

But I didn’t care.

My body ached and convulsed and ached for more. His hands journeyed under my top and found the straining peaks of my breasts and squeezed hard, until he had me crying out.

And still he kept going. I was a volcano and the molten lava bubbled and seared under the surface of my skin, trying desperately to find a way out.

“Max!” I cried again, my eyes unseeing and my world crashing in.

The lava escaped and spilled over so I was a mass of fire under his touch, erupting over and over, reduced to a bundle of nerve endings and a pulsing heartbeat.

As I collapsed with a whimper, I felt him ease up and come to rest between my legs. Death by Mighty Max. He was wrong, this
was
punishment. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to walk again.

He entered me slowly and lit the fire inside me again, my body responding traitorously against my better judgement. With impressive restraint, he set a steady rhythm until the slow burn inside me rose up again into a fiery dragon, intent on reducing me to ashes. Obliterating me.

His hands reached out to grip my shoulders and I instinctively pitched my hips up to meet his, responding to his rhythm, coaxing a long groan from his throat.

My body was slick with sweat and frenzied, but I knew what I was doing. I might damn well be handcuffed, but I wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine.

I grinned wickedly as a careful twitch of my hips visibly eroded his restraint. His eyes snapped open and found mine, their endless depths mirroring the intoxication I felt.

“Christa,” he warned in a desperate whisper.

“Hold on, Max.” He was going to wish he was handcuffed to the bed when I finished with him.

I flexed myself up so he plunged deeper and it was delicious to see the pain as he tried to hold on, tried to remain in control.

I pitched my hips again and his loud groan was all the reply I needed. The restraint gone, his fingers dug deep into my shoulders until I could feel his nails pressing into my skin. We moved together, needy and desperate, edging closer, closer, to the peak.

My insides seemed to rupture at the same time he cried out, and with one last final plunge he collapsed in agony on top of me, shudders rippling over the two of us.

We stayed that way for a long time, his head resting on my chest and my arms going numb from the handcuffs I couldn’t be bothered to ask him to remove.

Eventually, Max tilted his head to meet my eyes. “I’ll need to tie your feet to the bed next time too.”

I stifled a giggle. “Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that?”

“Oh, I enjoyed it alright. I just don’t think I’ll be able to leave the bedroom for a few days.”

“Fine by me.”

He released a deep sigh, then reached up to undo the handcuffs. “Far out. Even when I try to be in control, you still somehow manage to turn it around on me.”

“You started it.” I smiled and rubbed my tender wrists.

He eased away gently and rolled over to lie on his back. “Actually, you did. This is what happens when you insist on spending time with your ex-boyfriend.”

“Then I might have to arrange it more often.” Or possibly not. I wasn’t sure if I had the strength for this every night.

We lay in silence for a minute longer. In my post-coital relaxed state, I finally found the courage to voice something that had been on my mind ever since I’d first brought the subject of Ben up. “A few weeks ago you said you weren’t bothered by my ex-boyfriends.”

Max looked over at me, then away again. “That was before your most recent ex turned up to follow up on his proposal.”

Fair point. “But you said yourself my actions kind of said it all. I left the country, remember?”

“Perhaps I didn’t fully realize the lengths you go to deny your feelings,” he replied quietly.

I didn’t have a response to that. We were silent again, for a long while this time. His breathing was steady and mine uneven, but it wasn’t from our earlier antics.

“So what was this then? Not that I’m complaining, by the way,” I added quickly, “but were you trying to make some sort of point?”

Max shifted uncomfortably, his eyes on the ceiling. “I’m not sure I’d call it that.”

“But me spending time with Ben sparked this?” I pressed.

“I guess.”

“Do you feel better?” I couldn’t help it. I wanted to lighten the mood and I was smirking.

“Damn right.”

I laughed and it felt good despite my aching muscles.

He rolled onto his side and studied me. The room was dark, a halo of light from around the edge of the closed blinds our only illumination. His eyes were serious. “I don’t care if he still loves you. It’s how you feel that’s important.”

“I know.” My heart ached as I sought the words, but I couldn’t say them. What the hell was wrong with me?

Max stared at me a moment longer then pushed up from the bed and went into the bathroom silently. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

I’d always liked the sense of eerie fluorescent peace that hung like a shadow over an office in the early hours of the evening. I’d experienced the manufactured quiet more times than I could count staying late to meet last minute deadlines.

It wasn’t deadlines that had me lingering in Grounded Marketing’s offices tonight though. It was another rendezvous with Ben. I was due to meet him and Cate down at Circular Quay for a dinner cruise in half an hour and had seen little point in going home first.

Fortunately Maddy was keeping me busy. I was so absorbed in some new concepts for an IT company that it took me a moment to register a presence beside my desk.

I popped my earphones out and stared up at Maddy. “Hey.”

“Those aren’t due until next week,” she said, nodding in the direction of my computer screen.

“Yeah, I know. I’ve got dinner in the city in about an hour so I thought I’d take the opportunity to work on them while I waited around.”

“My brother or the Frenchman?”

I stifled a smile. Generally speaking, Maddy and I were back on reasonable terms, but she always swiftly diverted the conversation when the topic of Max and I came up. It was as if she was still in denial that we were seeing each other, which was quite frankly fine by me—it was preferable from her previous stony silence.

As for the topic of Ben, she also chose not to bring that up. She had perfected a range of unimpressed expressions relating to my Parisian ex-boyfriend. The word
Frenchman
was accompanied by a look that suggested she had just been offered frogs legs or snails—a delicacy that was clearly not to her liking.

“Benjamin,” I told her, then quickly added, “Cate and I are meeting him for dinner.”

Maddy grimaced. “Seen Max lately?”

“Over the weekend. And at boot camp. Why?” She had me feeling as though I was in trouble and I didn’t appreciate it.

Maddy continued to stand stiffly at the edge of my desk. Eventually, she let out a sharp huff and then pulled a chair over so she could sit and face me. “He’s told you he’s in love with you, hasn’t he?” she stated, dully.

“Max?”

Maddy rolled her eyes at me. “Yes! Of course. Although why should it not surprise me that you have to ask?”

I swallowed awkwardly. “Did he tell you?”

“Not in so many words, but he talked around it. His frustration gave him away.”

“Oh,” I replied quietly. This was so ridiculous. Maddy and I were used to sharing everything about our lives, lovers included, but me seeing Max added a whole new dimension of difficult.

“So he’s told you how he feels?” she asked.

“Yes.”

I watched as Maddy’s lips pursed into a tight line. “And what did you say?”

Um, thank you?
“That I needed time.”

Maddy exhaled a long breath. “I don’t know whether to be worried or happy about that,” she admitted. “Ben being here complicates things, doesn’t it?”

“Max is pretty pissy about it.”

“I’m pretty pissy about it, Christa, so I can only imagine how Max feels.”

I leaned back in my chair, my exasperation getting the better of me. “He doesn’t need to be pissy about it. Ben is here for a couple of weeks and then he’ll be gone, end of story.”

“Really? So you don’t still have feelings for Ben?”

I wondered if Maddy would give Ben a run for his money if she decided to change careers and become an investigative journalist. “He proposed to me, Maddy. What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to actually articulate your feelings for a change. You keep telling me about Max or Ben, but never what you’re feeling.”

I frowned, or more likely scowled. “What if I don’t know? What is so horribly wrong with that?”

“For you? Nothing, I suppose. But for the men currently in love with you, it’s not exactly ideal.”

Damn her and her honest observations. “I don’t want to hurt either of them,” I hedged.

“Admirable, but still not an answer.”

“Obviously, I’m attracted to both of them, but I did leave the country when Ben proposed to me,” I refuted weakly.

“If you were a normal woman, I’d suggest that was because you didn’t want to marry him. Fact is, knowing you it was probably because you were running from any sort of commitment or from having deeper feelings for him.”

“Thanks,” I replied stiffly.

She arched her perfect eyebrows at me. “Am I right?”

I closed my eyes, hating myself for the words I was about to say. It felt like I was betraying Max. “OK, so you’re right. Where does that leave Max?” I shot back.

“It would also be easy to assume that Max is a rebound or a casual thing—”

I opened my mouth to protest and she quickly held up a hand. “Except,” she added, “you didn’t run for the hills when he told you he loved you.”

God, she was good. I gave her a deadpan look. “How about you decide for me then? You seem to have it nailed.”

She grinned, a wide, spectacular grin and I realized how I missed the two of us just hanging around together. “This is your mess, Bubbles, not mine.” Her look softened. “Don’t you have any clue about your feelings?”

“I don’t know! When I’m with Max, well, it’s like nothing I’ve ever had before. He’s a friend mixed with this whole gorgeous sexy factor—”

“La la la!” Maddy’s eyes widened and she clamped her hands over her ears.

“Oh, grow up! So in short, things with Max are pretty awesome. With Ben, of course there is an attraction, I wouldn’t have lasted six weeks in Paris if there wasn’t. Possibly longer if he hadn’t damn well proposed to me. But what about the cultural factor? The fact we live in different countries? How on earth would it ever work?”

Maddy shrugged. “You could make it work if you really wanted to.”

“Yes, but you want to know what I feel? I feel like there’s these two great guys, each with amazing potential, but it’s just too early to tell which one is right for me. And while Ben is here, I keep thinking I was stupid not to give him a proper chance, but now there’s Max … ” I gave her a devastated look. “Seriously, why does this shit always happen to me?”

Maddy had the good sense to ignore my whining. “Alright. So you have feelings for both of them and they have feelings for you. Hard luck. But you can’t just leave it open ended. You need to choose.”

“Do I? Do I really?”

Maddy shot me one of her sternest looks. “Yes.”

“But what if I choose wrong? What if I give up the only chance I have of happiness and hurt them horribly in the process?”

“Well, what’s the alternative?”

“Giving them both up,” I muttered then looked up startled. Maybe I was on to something. “Let’s face it, I’m not exactly long-term material am I? It’s going to take huge sacrifice to make things work with Ben because of our location differences. And with Max, he doesn’t deserve to be hurt any more than he has already. Maybe it would be better if I just called it off now.”

“That’s the coward’s solution! How about you finally try and let yourself care for a change? Then figure out how you feel before making a decision?”

I didn’t realize my eyes were stinging with tears until met Maddy’s gaze. “What if I don’t know how?”

“You’ve got to try.” Maddy reached over and grasped my hand tightly. “For all of us lonely single women out there, promise me you’ll try. You’ve got a chance at something. Don’t give it away because you’re scared.”

“You’re right, I know you’re right,” I said with a sniff and swiped at my eyes.

Maddy squeezed my hand again then released it. “Who can you imagine your life without?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Bubbles, I’m hardly the one to come to for relationship advice, but do you know what I realized when Chris and I broke up? We’d been together for years, but I could live without him.”

I gave her a quizzical look. “That’s a harsh assessment.”

Maddy shook her head fervently. “Don’t get me wrong. I cared for him. I was definitely attracted to him, but if I’d been told I’d have to go on living without him, I’d have been alright with that.”

“Hang on a minute. That doesn’t make sense! You had your lives mapped out together. You were going to get engaged.”

Maddy grimaced. “We got ahead of ourselves.”

“But you wouldn’t have made those plans if you didn’t see it,” I protested. Honestly, she wasn’t make much sense. Or giving me much hope for sorting out my own love life.

“Oh come on, Christa, I’m always organizing everyone, including myself. When it came down to it, we wanted very different things. It was actually something one of his executive chefs said to me one day that made me realize it.”

“How come I don’t know about any of this?” I interjected.

“It was post-Nick, remember?”

Alright then. The rest of the world outside Sydney could have been invaded and I would have had no idea at that point in my life.

“So anyway,” Maddy continued, “this head chef, Sandra, her partner had been posted in London. She was gutted. She wanted to stay in Sydney and work alongside Chris, because he is such a fabulous chef, but was in tears about it. I think I told her to get a grip and not to be silly,” Maddy admitted, cringing.

My eyes must have widened because she paled slightly. “I know,” she said, “high and mighty Maddy strikes again. I told her I didn’t know what the problem was. If they were in love with each other, surely their love could stand the test of distance and time and they could do their own thing for a while? They didn’t need to spend every waking minute together.”

Maddy winced again, remembering. “She just gave me this long look. You know what she said to me? She said, ‘I don’t
need
to spend every minute with my partner, I want to.’ She said she didn’t see it as spending every waking minute together—that would drive anyone insane—it was more about their desire to share each other’s lives. And she wanted to share his overseas experience with him.”

Suddenly all I could see was the vision of Max, highlighted in the late afternoon sun during our walk at Balmoral, telling me he wanted to join me in Norway. I swallowed painfully.

Maddy mistook my discomfort for judgement. “I know. That was when I finally got it. If I could see myself living without him, I shouldn’t have been in a relationship with him.”

It was a lot to take in and I wasn’t quite sure how it applied to me right at this very moment. My feelings were still so confused. I was also in a completely different stage with my relationships than she’d been, but the sentiment made sense. I glanced at my watch and swore.

Maddy stood. “Sorry, you need to go and meet Frenchy.”

I joined her then reached over to give her a tight squeeze. “Thanks.”

“Not sure if it helps, but those are my ex lessons,” she said with another shrug. “Good luck.”

I grabbed my bag and quickly shut down my computer. “Me, lucky in love?” I replied dryly. “I guess there’s always a first for everything.”