And still, it wasn't enough.

  "Downstairs," Max growled into my ear. "I want you downstairs now."

  He led the way, my hand enveloped in his as we made our way into his cellar sanctuary. I had about five seconds to catch my breath before he had me pinned to a wall.

  Max scraped his scruffy beard over the crook of my neck, his lips exploring my skin as his hand moved down until it squeezed my cock. There was no doubt he was in control here. His grip was firm and certain, like he knew what I needed better than I did.

  "This is mine," he said, a hot breath puffing out over my neck as he stroked me.

  "Oh my god, yes." It wasn't even a question—and he knew it.

  "I want you. I want you more than anything. It hurts, babe. It hurts so bad," he said, his words tumbling out in a gasp.

  "Then I'll make it better."

  Without further explanation, I backed him across the room until the backs of his legs hit the mattress. I dropped to my knees, edged my fingers under his belt, and pressed my mouth to his fly. I dragged my lips over the denim-covered ridge of him, thick and hard and hot through the fabric. I traced his length down and scraped my teeth over his flared head. His legs shook and he shoved his fingers through my hair as I reversed course and followed him to the root.

  "Do that one more time and I'm gonna come in my pants," Max warned. "One more time, Jory. Just you watch."

  "Would you like that?" I loosened his belt and unbuttoned his jeans while I asked. I was confident I knew the answer but it wasn't wrong to overcommunicate in these situations. "I want to give you what you want."

  Max flailed his arms out. "And I want to give you what you want."

  "Right. Of course. We're a pair of selfless lovers. That lines up with our track record." I chuckled to myself as I pushed his jeans down. "Let's do it this way. You get this round. I get the next one. Eventually, we'll figure out how to share a round. All good?" I didn't wait for him to agree. "Great. If you had to choose between a dry hump with you coming in your pants or a blow job with you coming in my mouth—"

  "That one," he interrupted, slapping an invisible buzzer like he was on a game show. "Second option. Yes, please."

  I yanked his boxer briefs down, and his heavy cock swung free. I studied him for a moment, taking in the veins along his shaft, his wide, ruddy head, and his earthy scent. "Good choice."

  "If you stare at me like that another minute, I'm gonna come all over your face, babe."

  I took pity on his poor, needy cock, curling my fingers around his shaft and brushing my lips over the crown. "Are you trying to tell me something about your endurance, Coach?"

  Max's hands shifted from my head to my shoulders. "More of that," he ordered. "More."

  I could've teased him. Could've drawn this out. Could've pushed him to the point of begging. But I didn't want any of that tonight. Begging and teasing had their place but I wanted to love him tonight. Even if I wasn't quite ready to say those words, I wanted him to feel it.

  "Again, again, again," he chanted. "Please."

  "Anything you want, it's yours," I whispered, laving my tongue over him. "Sit down. You're going to enjoy this."

  Max's backside hit the mattress with Pavlovian speed. "I'm already enjoying it."

  I pushed his clothes all the way down to his ankles and tugged them free. "Come on. Don't set a low bar for me."

  "I'm not," he said, his words soft as he watched me settling between his legs, sliding my palms over his bare thighs. "This is perfect, Jory. You're perfect."

  I took his cock in hand because I didn't want this to be about the things we said to each other anyway. I wanted him to feel the things I wasn't adept at putting into words and I wanted him to accept them as if I'd said them, shouted them, screamed them into cold, stone-carved truth.

  Max's hands moved over my shoulders, up my neck, and into my hair, his body vibrating as I worked him. I swallowed him down and groaned around his girth. The scents of body wash and musk mingled with the rich, salty taste of him on my tongue. I worked him hard and took him deep even as tears filled my eyes and spilled over.

  When I slipped a hand between his legs to cup his sac, he tightened his hold on my hair. He shifted a bit, scooting his backside right to the edge. Ahhhh. That was where he wanted my attention.

  "Jory, Jory, Jory, I'm, oh my god, yes," he stammered, his words running together as I swept a finger over his back channel. His spine arched as he growled low and loud at the ceiling. "I'm—ohmygod—yes."

  Since I wasn't letting this end after a few brief moments, I bobbed my head in agreement as I shifted from quick, intense strokes to a slower yet equally intense rhythm.

  "Ohhh."

  I glanced up through the gag-tears and watched Max drop his head back, his face angled toward the ceiling and his chest heaving. Even with lights on, it was shadowy down here, but I couldn't miss the flush coloring his cheeks and neck. He was so damn beautiful. I wanted to tell him that. I wanted him to know he was the best thing I'd ever had at my mercy, the best thing by far, and I'd do this forever if he let me. I'd fall to the ground and let this enormous bear of a man take everything he needed from me, let him use me in any way he wanted so long as it was my name that never left his lips.

  I wanted to tell him all of this but I couldn't. Even if those words glowed in my head like neon signs, I didn't know how to speak them. All I could do was go on teasing, sucking, stroking. Praying these emotions traveled through skin and muscle. Praying he knew.

  Though the angle wouldn't allow me to pull off this move for long, I pushed a finger inside him as I swallowed him to the root. A hoarse, wheezing sound rattled out of him and he tightened his grip on my hair like he was in terrible pain but that first, ripe taste of salt promised he wasn't in any form of pain.

  "I've heard about this," Max said through clenched teeth.

  Since I had a very large dick in my mouth, my response came in the form of raised eyebrows.

  "This is the marriage blow job," he continued, one hand on my head and the other braced behind him on the bed as his hips jerked up to fuck my face. "The blow job that's so good it ends in a proposal."

  There were gag-tears streaming down my face and I was going to have a cowlick tomorrow from all this hair pulling but I managed to smile as his cock shuttled in and out of my mouth.

  "That's okay, Jory. I know you. I know you didn't plan it this way," he drawled. "I'm not even sad you beat me to it."

  I managed a jerky nod as he surged forward, locking me in place with his hand on the back of my head. I didn't know what he meant about beating him to something but there wasn't time to examine all these stray comments as he cursed and exploded down my throat.

  It was a full minute of him filling my mouth, holding me steady, humming and gasping and vibrating as if unbound electricity was coursing through him. It was a lot. I was no blow job master. I knew what I was doing, but I didn't know how to be comfortable with my tear-stained cheeks or my swollen, reddened mouth or the painful erection trapped under cruelly slim trousers that I wouldn't be able to disguise when pushing to my feet.

  I didn't know how to embrace the ugly side of sex, the side that wasn't ugly or awkward or shameful at all. If it was anything, it was the human side and that was what I didn't know how to embrace.

  Not until Max Murphy cupped my cheeks in his hands, thumbed away my tears, and said, "I love you. No, I don't want you to say anything. I don't want you to say a single word because I know you're not ready for words but I love you. Someday, I'm gonna marry your ass off. You just tell me when you're ready for that."

  I bobbed my head. "Okay."

  He grinned, big and warm and dazed, and hauled me onto the bed. "Let's get you naked. I'm not finished with you yet."

  6

  Max

  The drive from Boston to Sugarloaf, way up in the Carrabassett Valley of Maine, was stupidly long. Really, truly, stupidly long. At several points during those four and a half hours, I suggested we pull off the highway and find somewhere else to hide away for the next seven days, somewhere we could be now.

  Jory thought I was joking. He laughed and smiled and nuzzled his head against my shoulder while I scowled at the road. He filled the time by thinking aloud about the seventh grade physics unit he planned to launch in January and the new coding initiative he was working on with Juliana. There was also an extensive recap of the holiday spent with his mom and sister, both of whom were epic pains in the ass while he was back home.

  "Keaton's biggest problem—well, no, she has a lot of problems. I can't narrow it down to one," he said with a sharp laugh. "Her problem at the moment is wanting to control everyone. Their thoughts and feelings too."

  "Good luck with that," I replied, doing my level best at listening and responding while every inch of my body was cranked all the way up.

  The only relief was Jory's body on mine, his mouth, his skin, his touch. I wanted everything and I wanted it now. It'd been like this since the holiday party. Every minute since, I'd wanted to go crazy on him. The night we'd spent together satisfied about one percent of my needs, leaving me to throb and ache like the thirsty horndog he'd turned me into.

  Part of the problem was sleeping with him—actually sleeping—was the best thing in the world. Just the best. And that was a problem because I didn't get to do it nearly enough.

  The other part was I loved this man and he didn't freak out when I told him. I'd expected some wide-eyed overwhelm and a frantic response (in Jory's careful, controlled way of being frantic) about our relationship moving too quickly, especially after I popped on that part about marrying his ass off. Instead, he'd lit up like the Vegas strip and nodded as if he loved me too. Like he wanted me to marry his ass off.

  Being married to him would be real nice. I could already see his crisp button-down shirts lined up in the closet beside my polo shirts. That was the one that always got me. Our shirts in the closet together. I didn't know why it mattered so much but something about sharing a closet and getting dressed together was too right. I could see myself making toast for him in the morning. I'd always make his toast just the way he liked it and I'd smile at the ring on my finger as I slathered that toast in peanut butter.

  "I know, right?" He shot me a glance and I nodded because it seemed like the right thing to do even though I wasn't sure where we were in this conversation. "Only Keaton can determine how someone should react to a situation, and god help you if you have an unapproved reaction. I mean, she wants everyone to be happy and joyful because it's Christmas, but she doesn't actually want to do anything to contribute to the happiness or joy. She just wants everyone to be together at the house—and that's it. She doesn't want to do any activities, doesn't want to go anywhere, doesn't want to have people over. And she gets upset when I leave to visit friends, as if that's some kind of knock on her. Basically, she wants everyone to sit around, doing nothing and going nowhere, and brand it a merry Christmas."

  "And why do you think that is?" I asked. I'd learned that one from Mal.

  "She doesn't know how to experience happiness or joy." He said it slowly, as if he'd realized this right now. "At the same time, she's less of a headache than my mother. Good grief. All she wanted to do was needle me about Bayside."

  I glanced over at him. "Why?"

  He unscrewed the cap of his glass water bottle and took a sip. "She thinks—and has thought since the start—teaching at Bayside is a huge mistake. She believes in traditional district schools and, in some cases, parochial schools. She doesn't believe in independent schools that aren't tied to a faith and she certainly doesn't believe in charter schools."

  Again, I had to ask, "Why?"

  Gesturing with his water bottle, he replied, "She's a diehard union gal and she came up in a time when unions made a significant difference in working conditions for teachers. Not that they don't now but it's different." He shrugged, downed another mouthful of water. "Times have changed but her mindset hasn't. She says working at schools like Bayside is asking for trouble." He ran a hand down his thigh, cocked his head to the side. "As if the school will shut down in the middle of the night and we'll come to work in the morning to find the doors barred. Or that we're choosing to get screwed in contract negotiations and pension programs."

  "Huh. None of that has ever occurred to me," I said. "Should it?"

  "Nah. Not worth stressing over. She's mostly bitter about me choosing something different. Kind of like Keaton, if I don't follow my mother's exact plan of going nowhere and doing nothing, I'm offending her. That's half the reason I wanted to move to Boston in the first place. I had to do something because it was right for me and not because anyone else approved."

  I reached over and took Jory's hand. "I'm sorry you had such a rough time at home, babe. I don't want you dealing with that."

  "Home is such a complex place for me. I want to go there, I want to visit, I want to spend time with my family. For the most part, those visits are positive. I love my family. My sister tells me horror stories about her clients and my mother fills me in on all the gossip. She's been teaching fourth grade long enough to have the children of her previous students in her classes now, so she knows everyone and everything they're doing. I love all of that. I love making lobster pie with Mom for Christmas Eve and doing Keat's giftwrapping for her because she cannot wrap to save her life. But I hate being made to feel guilty for wanting to spend time with friends or choosing a job that's a good fit for me."

  "If it makes you feel any better, holidays at Mallori's house are like being aboard a runaway train. You know it's gonna crash soon enough, but you just don't know when."

  Jory shifted in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest as he eyed me. "I need to know more about this. It will make me feel so much better about dropping my family dramas on you."

  I blew out a ragged breath and frowned at the road. Why weren't we there yet? Why couldn't we hash out our family dysfunctions later? Right around the time we were too loose and wrung out to do anything but melt into the mattress.

  "Mal and her husband do a really good job at making a nice holiday for the kids. They work hard at creating traditions and keeping the magic alive. But Mal needs a phone call from our mother on Christmas. She's not okay if she doesn't get that phone call. She watches the clock all day and if she hasn't heard from Mom by one or two o'clock, she starts coming apart. You can actually see it happening."

  "I take it your mom doesn't always call," Jory said.

  I shook my head. "Nope. After Mal and I were out of high school, she quit her job and sold her house. She always told us she'd do it, that she'd tear out on her own when we were grown. We never took her seriously. It sounded more like the bullshit you say to keep yourself going than an actual plan, but she did it. She said something about spending twenty years being a mom, eighteen of those years as a single mom, and it being her turn to take care of herself."

  "When you zoom all the way out, it makes complete sense. Being a single parent with two kids and working full-time leaves little, if any, room for someone to have a life outside those responsibilities."

  "I get that," I said, defensive for no good reason. "It's different when you live it."

  "Believe me, I know. The saving grace for my mom was being a teacher. We went to school with her in the morning and we did homework in her classroom in the afternoon. Our schedules were always in sync so Keat and I basically folded into her life rather than her life revolving around us. That setup saved her, but it slapped us on both sides." He drummed his fingertips on his knee. "Where did your mom go? What did she do when she decided she was done?"

  "She got rid of everything—Mal will never forgive her for that, by the way—and hit the road." I glanced over at Jory, found him sitting sideways in his seat, his legs folded under him and elbows propped on his knees. "She bounced around for some time but works on a cruise ship now. Dealing blackjack. Yeah, she fuckin' loves it too."

  "Though cruise ships don't have the best cell service when they're at sea," he said.

  "They don't, and Mom doesn't always remember to check in on birthdays or holidays," I added. "Mal takes it very personally."

  "And how do you take it?"

  I jerked a shoulder up. "It doesn't bother me, and yeah, I've wondered whether it's strange that it doesn't bother me, but I'm okay. My mom was rock solid when we were kids. She worked her ass off without letting on how tough it was for her. I'm cool with her doing her thing now."

  "See? That's the energy my mother needs in her life," Jory said. "Oh—look! That's our turn off."

  He pointed at the Sugarloaf sign up ahead and everything inside me grew hot and tight, as if my clothes and skin were about to melt away. I should've admired the scenery since we'd traveled all the way here for it, but this week away was the equivalent of my prom night. There were tons of important things—the location, the outfits, the music—but the only essential things were the after-party and the hurried, fumbling sex it promised.

  "Thank god," I muttered.

  The painful, depressing idea of this vacation resembling a moment of unsupervised teenage freedom wasn't lost on me. I loved my sister for taking me in and helping me get my life sorted out rent-free, but damn, I hated feeling like a kid with helicopter parents circling overhead. I knew Mallori's attentive gaze came from a place of concern—and I knew she simply did not know how to turn it off.

  It wasn't like Jory and I never had time to be alone together. On certain Saturdays, the kids had back-to-back soccer games which freed up a fine chunk of the day for depravity. Last month, Jory's roommate Claude went out of town for a night, and we had the greatest sleepover of all time because it featured sex, snuggles, and showers.

  There were select occasions when Jory spent the night with me too, but he didn't love that setup, which was totally fair. The last thing anyone needed to hear when they were getting dicked down was Mallori yelling for her kids to clean up the Lego disaster they'd left all over the kitchen floor or the resulting complaints from those kids.

 

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