“When I could taste you on my tongue,” he murmured, bowing his head to take my throbbing nipple into his mouth. He sucked hard and teased the sensitive bud with his teeth. I was a writhing mess beneath him, my hands touching everywhere, trying to get closer.

“Oh my God, Maxx!” I breathed in an agonized rush. He pushed aside the flimsy material of my panties and plunged his fingers deep inside my body. I stretched around the wanted intrusion.

“Of what it feels like to be so deep inside of you that I never want to leave,” he spoke into my skin, his tongue caressing the soft, vulnerable flesh between my breasts.

His words set me on fire. In an almost violent movement, Maxx ripped my jeans and panties down and threw them aside. I reciprocated by doing the same to the rest of his clothing.

Soon we were naked and panting and kissing and touching every inch of each other as though we’d never have the opportunity to do so again.

Maxx fit himself between my thighs, and I felt the tip of him against me as he pressed a soft kiss to my mouth. The hot pressure teased me as I moaned loudly.

I was so close to losing my head completely. All I could think about was experiencing that perfect moment that I had only ever experienced with him. Being so close to someone that you didn’t know where you ended and the other began.

Maxx slowly started to push himself inside of me. Tentative, almost, but with careful precision.

And then, suddenly, some of the fog lifted from my lust-addled brain and I pulled my hips back slightly, stopping him.

Maxx lifted his lips from mine and looked down at me. Sweat dripped from his forehead, and his hair matted at the sides from the effort it took for him to stop.

“What is wrong?” he asked, his voice rough.

Something hit me with the force of a freight train. A realization that I had never, ever thought about until just now.

“You’re not wearing a condom,” I told him, hardly able to believe that I had never, in all the times we had been together, thought to ask him to protect us. How could I have been so stupid? I knew Maxx’s history, so how had I never stopped to ensure something so vital? I had let my desire and my intense feelings for him overshadow absolutely everything.

Maxx pulled out of me and reached for his pants that hung halfway off the side of the bed. “You’re right, I’m not. I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he said, sounding contrite and almost embarrassed. His fingers were shaking as he found his wallet and produced a foil packet from the folds inside.

He sat there, staring down at the tiny square in his palm, looking strangely lost. I sat up and pulled a blanket over my chest. “I’ve never worn one with you before,” he whispered, and I could tell he was hurt and confused by my insistence that he wear one now.

I slid over until I was pressed up against him and placed my hand over the one that was holding the condom. “No, you haven’t. I never asked you to. But you and I have never even talked about past partners and whether we were clean and safe. That’s a little scary, don’t you think?” I asked.

Maxx looked up at me, his face flushed, the sweat drying on his skin. “I’m clean. I’ve never been with someone without one. I get tested regularly. I had to,” he said quietly, empathetically.

“I’m clean, too,” I said, just as quietly. “And I’m on the pill.”

Maxx nodded, chewing absently on his bottom lip. “I can’t believe we’ve never talked about this. Seems pretty fucked up, right,” he stated rather than asked.

I didn’t say anything.

Because it was fucked up. We had been so willing to get lost in each other, even at the cost of common sense and reason.

It was a scary sort of crazy.

“I just think if we want stuff to be different this time, then we have to be different. And that includes things like this,” I said, lifting the wrapped condom from his palm.

“Are we trying to do it differently, then? Are you saying you’ll give me another chance to make things right with you?” Maxx asked in the barest of breaths.

I thought about what he was asking me. Whether I was willing—whether I was able—to throw myself back into his world. Back into the messy chaos that had dominated our relationship in the past.

I knew I couldn’t.

I couldn’t be the girl living in denial. Or even worse, the girl living in a constant state of anxiousness waiting for him to fall off the cliff.

But I also knew that I didn’t have the strength to pretend that he could exist on the periphery of my life. That he wasn’t the center of it. That he wasn’t the steady, thumping pulse at the heart of who I was.

I ran trembling fingers through his hair, feeling the soft texture of his curls as they tickled my skin. “We can’t go back to who we were. To what we were. But maybe . . . we could try to be something better,” I offered hesitantly, hardly able to believe that I was doing this.

That I was back here again. Loving him beyond sanity.

Maxx leaned into my touch, his lips curving upward into a smile that was blinding in its brilliance. “Something better,” he murmured before leaning in and kissing me softly but with more passion than any kiss I had ever experienced before.

Maxx pulled the blanket away from my chest and pulled me flush against him. Skin to skin.

Heart to heart.

He carefully laid me back down onto the bed, never breaking the contact of our mouths. We weren’t rushed as we had been before. Something had changed.

And I knew instinctively that we had changed.

That I wanted to trust him. With all of me.

Eventually our slow, languid touches became more heated, and soon I was burning alive in Maxx’s unquenchable flame. I heard the rip of the foil packet and then the slight pressure as he pressed himself against me once more.

This time I didn’t stop him. I spread my legs to accommodate him. My fingers dug into his back as he pushed deep inside me. We both gasped as he buried himself to the hilt.

Maxx looked down at me, his eyes surprisingly bright. Were those tears?

I reached up and brushed away the stray wetness on his cheek. He didn’t move as we lay there, as close as two people could possibly be, our noses touching, our lips brushing against one another.

“I love you, Aubrey. I love you so much,” he said in a tormented sigh, as though the words were somehow painful.

I curled my hand around the back of his neck and brought my legs up to wrap around his hips. Maxx groaned as I moved just a fraction of an inch.

“I love you, too, Maxx. More than anything,” I said, giving him the words he had always needed to hear.

chapter

twenty-four

aubrey

afterward, we lay in bed, trying to catch our breath, silent and heavy from the moment we had just experienced together. We were both exhausted, tangled together in my sheets. Maxx traced lazy circles on my back, making me giggle. The air was warm with renewed promises and tangible hope.

“To love or have loved, that is enough,” he whispered into my hair.

“Where’s that from? I like it,” I asked, smiling into his skin.

“Les Misérables. It’s a personal favorite.”

I smiled, my eyes drifting closed. This moment was as close to perfect as I could imagine.

Then my bedroom door flew open, and we were scrambling to cover ourselves.

“Aubrey, do you have a moment, I need to talk—” Renee’s words drifted off as Maxx quickly pulled the blanket over his body.

“Uh, can you give us a minute, Renee?” I said, my voice sounding strangled as I saw the look of total shock on my best friend’s face at the sight of Maxx . . . naked. And me . . . naked.

“Yeah, okay. Sorry,” she mumbled, and closed the door with a decisive slam.