Page 24 of Angel of Light (Lords of The Commission: New York #5)

ALISON

When I said I wanted his secrets, I never thought they came with a murdered mother and a lifetime of abuse.

Why did I have the feeling this was the first time Max was telling this story? The way he bared his teeth in disgust as he spoke about his father. The way his fingers tightened around mine when he spoke about his mother.

Was that the grave he spoke about when we were in California that night he slept buried inside me like I was his safe place? No, it couldn’t be. What were the chances that Max was from the West Coast?

Right now, none of it mattered. We only had a couple more hours until we were expected to be back in New York.

The afternoon was everything we had until the walls needed to come back up, and we were back to wearing our masks.

How much longer did we have until those were permanently part of our features?

Max kissed me like my lips were his healing miracle. Consuming, yet loving. Starving, but caring. Present, but craving a future we didn’t have.

My chest was practically caving with the pain in his voice. It had tied a lasso around my heart and squeezed so tight that it couldn’t pump.

“You are not a monster,” I said between kisses. “You’re an angel of darkness. My angel of darkness.” There was no denying his true colors. A lifetime of mafia dealings was sure to leave its mark on a soul, tainting it in shadows that no light could scatter.

“And you are my Angel of Light, Alison.” He kissed me again, more urgently this time, like he wouldn’t be able to ever do it again.

When he released my lips, he kissed a path down my neck before kneeling in front of me, hugging my middle with a grasp so tight it fused us together.

“Don’t marry him, Alison. Please don’t marry him.

” Max looked up then, his eyes filled with an emotion I can only think to remember from when he pulled me from that crumbling building, “I’m begging you. ”

“How?” I was begging, too. Begging for a way out of my own mess. One that didn’t end with the ones I loved hurt for my sake.

I slid to the floor, kneeling in front of him, taking his face in my hands.

His blue eyes were bloodshot, bulging with the need to explode, and my heart rose to my throat. Max swiped his thumb across my cheek, wiping the tears I hadn’t felt falling before pulling me back up to my feet along with him.

“Queens don’t kneel to peasants.”

Slowly, Max picked me up and took me towards the bed, planting chaste kisses all over my tear-stained cheek. Why was I even crying?

Was it hopelessness?

The feeling of loving and losing before I even truly had him?

He laid me down like I was something fragile. Something breakable. But the only thing I feared would break was this bubble of ours that had a timer on it.

I closed my eyes, pretending this didn’t have to end. That this was real life and not just a fairy tale gateway to pain.

Max hovered over me, eyes locked on mine like he was waiting for me to disappear, like he still couldn’t believe I could have listened to his darkest secrets and not run. I could understand how foreign it could feel to be loved when no one ever had. How had he lived without a caring touch?

His fingers brushed along my cheek, slowly tracing a line down my jaw and then across my collarbone before his whole hand covered my throat. He didn’t squeeze, he just held me there, feeling my pulse roar under his touch.

“You’re so goddamn beautiful,” he murmured, like it hurt to say. Like he didn’t deserve beautiful things, yet here I was, at his mercy.

“Then kiss me. Make me yours.”

With a calmness I never saw in him, Max lowered his lips to mine and kissed me. There was reverence and tenderness in that kiss, and still, it felt like it consumed the most fragile part of me.

There was no rush.

No frenzied need to conquer or claim, just the slow unraveling of everything I thought I knew. If I had any doubt about who my heart belonged to, the way a simple kiss had my chest caving into itself was enough to clear it.

Max was much more than the broken soldier. Much more than a bastard like he’d called himself. He was my everything.

“Ask me again,” He whispered against my lips, repeating himself when I didn’t react, “Ask me to make love to you again.”

“Make love to me, Max.” I called to the side of him he thought was nothing but darkness. The side he thought he’d sold to the devil in exchange for survival.

“Ask me to put a baby inside of you. A baby made out of love.”

“Max…”

“Jesus, I’ve dreamt of it every damn night since I laid eyes on you. How beautiful you’d look with my baby growing inside of you.”

That would be one hell of a way to break off the engagement. Crazy, too.

“You know that’s–”

“I know it’s not real. I know it won’t ever happen, but I need this fantasy right now. I need to think that in a perfect world, I’d have a baby with the love of my life and be happy. That I’d be capable of loving a child and having a family.”

My heart broke at his words, the silence between us deafening. He didn’t think he was capable of loving a child?

Because he wasn’t loved as one. Because he didn’t know what it felt like to be held and cared for when he needed it most.

Max didn’t speak after that admission, but his eyes bore into mine like a plea, delivering all the pain those words carried. The weight of his stare was crushing. It was like I’d ripped his ribs open and crawled inside the hollow of his chest.

“I love you,” He whispered. Not like he was afraid of the meaning in his words, but more like they were so sacred that they needed caution to be delivered.

The words sat there, hot and jagged between us, and something inside me cracked.

Not just a soft little ache. This was pure rupture .

Because this man, this wounded, beautiful, violent man, was handing me a heart no one else had ever touched. And I didn’t know how to hold it without breaking everything else.

“Say it again,” I pleaded, my eyes shut, holding back the tears of relief. I had wanted to hear him say that so many times before that by now I had lost count.

Max leaned in, kissed my lips, then my jaw, then the wet trail of tears down my cheek.

“I love you,” he said again, more rugged and raw this time. “I love you so much it hurts.”

And God, it did hurt. It hurt because our time was running out. Like this was the last hour of peace before the storm swallowed us whole, only to spit us into a lifetime apart.

As if on queue, lightning lit up the gray sky, like a camera flash capturing this perfect moment.

He kissed me again, but there was nothing soft about it this time. It was brutal. Starving. The kiss of a man burning alive.

I didn’t even notice him pulling his slacks down, but as a seal of his devotion, Max buried himself inside of me in a slow motion that had my body adjusting to his intrusion inch by inch in a deliciously steady pace.

Max’s blue eyes hadn’t left mine for a single second, the ice behind them burning with a reverence that melted my resolve.

We could live in this fantasy for a few more hours, right? It was worth the pain I knew would certainly come.

“I love you,” I confessed against his lips once I was full of him.

Max shut his eyes as tight as they would go, and I knew that besides the palpable love in this moment, he was fighting against a wave of rage, envy, yearning, and a need to change a future without a means to do so.

Grabbing the sides of his face, I kissed him, trying to bring his mind off that ledge. I knew he was plotting a way to free us from this fate, but what I needed right now was to have all of him to myself.

“We need this, Max. And I need you here for it. All of you.”

Max nodded in understanding, pushing out and then into me again, harder than before, and I gasped into his mouth. His cock was so thick and hot inside me, and the sweet ache from stretching me had only just faded.

He pulled my hands up and above my head while he kissed me, consuming all my focus while pinning my wrists together. At first, his thrusts were long and assertive. Next, they came faster and harsher.

For others, lovemaking might be slow and sweet, but all I wanted was real. And this was us. Frantic. Eager. Raw.

His thrusts weren’t controlled anymore. They were desperate.

Max wasn’t trying to fuck me.

He was trying to brand me. Ruin me for all others.

To carve the shape of my body into every inch of his skin so that no matter what happened after this, whether I walked down that aisle, whether he disappeared behind a veil of blood and loyalty, he would still have this.

We kissed like we couldn’t breathe without it. Fucked like our lives depended on it.

Max’s hands tangled in my hair, gripping hard as he fucked me, the base of his cock grinding against my clit with every thrust.

And I… God, I felt everything .

Every inch of him. Every emotion he wasn’t saying. Every ounce of fear that lived beneath the lust.

“Tell me it’s me,” he gasped into my mouth. “Tell me I’m the one.”

“You are,” I moaned. “You’ve always been.”

“I want to ruin you, Alison,” he rasped, his voice breaking as he thrust again. “I want you to remember me every time you fucking breathe. I want you to feel me long after I’m gone.”

“Don’t say that,” I begged. My hands gripped his back, my nails digging into his skin. “Don’t talk like you're leaving.”

He slowed for a moment before he stopped completely, buried inside me, forehead resting against mine. Our sweat mixed. Our breaths tangled.

“You’re going back to remembering.”

“No–”

“You’re going to wear that damn ring.”

“I–”

“You’re going to look at him like you love him. Be the perfect wife,” He interrupted me again, his voice cracking. “And it’s going to kill me, or I’m going to kill him.”

His hips rolled again, a deep, slow stroke that dragged against every nerve inside me.

I sobbed beneath him.