Page 31 of The Vagabond

MAXINE

H e’s already backing away.

I see it in the way his shoulders tense, the way his jaw clenches like he’s trying to bite the words back before they break loose. Like if he steps too close, he’ll cross a line we both know doesn’t really exist anymore.

Too late. There’s no line between Saxon and me. There never was. Just a battlefield with no ceasefire. A mess of memory and trauma and things we never said out loud because if we had—we might’ve broken.

He looks at me like he wants to say something, but instead he gives me his silence. So I move first. I grab his shirt. Just a fistful of fabric, but it’s enough. It stops him. He freezes, that steel-posture slipping just enough for me to pull him closer. Not much. An inch. But it’s everything.

“The only thing I remember of that time is your hands,” I whisper.

His breath hitches.

“In that place… all those hands on me. Most of them blurred. Most of them—I trained myself to forget.” I swallow hard. My grip tightens. “But yours? I couldn’t. I still can’t. ”

His eyes go sharp. Haunted. “Maxine?—”

“I know it wasn’t real,” I say quickly. “I know you had a job to do. I know what undercover means. But I still remember. ” My voice cracks. “Because it wasn’t your hands that haunted me, Saxon. It was what I saw in your eyes when you touched me.”

He exhales like the air’s been punched out of him. Something raw and ancient flickers between us. It’s not love or lust. It’s recognition.

Without another word, he steps in and kisses me. And it’s not gentle or careful; it’s years of ghosts slamming into the present like a freight train.

His hands find my hips and I gasp into his mouth. It’s not like before. It’s not cold or clinical. It’s not a role. This is real. It’s him.

“Saxon,” I breathe, forehead pressed to his. “Do you want me, or do you want redemption?”

His hands still. I feel his lips brush mine again.

“You,” he rasps. “Always you. Redemption’s never wanted me back.”

He slams me against the wall like he’s been waiting his whole goddamn life to do it. Like he’s starved. Like I’m the only thing that’s ever tasted right and he’s finally lost control of his appetite.

His mouth crashes into mine—rough, demanding, all tongue and teeth and punishment. His hands are everywhere. Tangling in my hair. Clawing at my hips. Yanking my shirt up like it personally offends him.

I moan into him, dragging his jacket off with shaking hands, nails biting into his shoulders. It hits the floor with a heavy thud, and then he’s pressing harder into me, like we could fuse at the spine if he just pushes hard enough.

“You’ve been driving me fucking insane,” he growls against my mouth, voice hoarse. “You don’t know what you did to me. ”

“I remember everything,” I gasp. “I remember you. ”

That breaks something in him. He spins me, slams me down onto the sofa, and follows like a storm, pinning me beneath the weight of unfinished business.

His hands trail up my thighs, greedy and unforgiving. He doesn’t undress me gently—he strips me like he’s peeling away the time we’ve lost, the lies we told ourselves, the versions of us that were too scared to want this.

My bra hits the floor. He exhales like he’s been sucker punched.

“Max…” His voice is gravel. “You sure?”

I drag him down by the collar. “Don’t you dare stop.”

And then he’s on me again. Devouring me. Hands everywhere. Mouth trailing down my neck, over my collarbone, between my breasts. He bites—not enough to break skin, but enough to stake a claim.

My fingers fumble with his belt, desperate. Shaking. He helps me, growling when I finally shove his pants down, freeing him.

There’s nothing slow about it. Nothing patient. He shoves my thighs apart, lines himself up, and sinks into me with a snarl that sounds like he’s dying. And maybe he is. Because I sure as hell am.

I arch beneath him, clawing at his back as he drives into me like he’s trying to bury himself deep enough to forget we were ever anything but this—heat and hunger and pain and I don’t want him to stop.

Every thrust is a desperate confession. Every gasp a sin.

I bite his shoulder. He groans like it’s the only language he speaks.

“You feel like fucking heaven,” he pants. “And I don’t deserve an ounce of it.”

“Then ruin me,” I whisper .

He does.

He fucks like a man possessed. Like he wants to tear me apart and put me back together. Like I’m the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground and he’s terrified I’ll disappear.

And when I fall apart—shaking, breathless, wrecked beneath him—he follows with a brutal groan, burying his face in my neck as he loses himself inside me.

For a moment, everything is still. Just sweat, breath, skin, and the truth we’ve been too afraid to say. Then his body softens over mine. His hand finds my hair again. Gentle this time. Reverent. Like I’m precious and he can’t bear the thought of breaking me.

And somehow, that’s the part that makes me want to cry.

The ceiling is cracked and crooked. I trace it with my eyes while his fingers play with strands of my hair, slow and absent, like he’s not even aware he’s doing it.

I’m sprawled across his chest, skin slick and heartbeat still racing too fast. His is steady, though. Infuriatingly steady.

“How long did you know?” I ask.

His hand pauses. “That it was you?” he murmurs.

“Yeah.”

“A minute after I walked into that room. The way you looked at me… your eyes. I’d seen pictures and knew the Gattis had been looking for you.”

Silence folds between us. Not awkward. Just heavy.

“I thought I hated you,” I admit.

“You should,” he says softly. “I did things I can’t take back.”

“But you saved me too,” I whisper. “Just not the way I needed back then.”

He exhales. “I wanted to. I wanted to burn that place to the ground. But I couldn’t do that without compromising all the other lost girls. My cover. Your safety.”

I lift my head to look at him. His eyes are soft now. Bare. Nothing undercover left in them. Just Saxon. Just the man I don’t know what to do with.

“I don’t want to be your regret,” I say.

“You’re not.”

“Then what am I?”

He reaches up. Brushes a knuckle along my cheek.

“The reason I still have a soul.”

I snort, half-laugh, half-sob. “Bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

“Max,” he says, dead serious, “I’ve killed men for less than what was done to you. You think this is drama? This is restraint.”

My heart trips over itself.

“You scare me,” I whisper.

“Good,” he murmurs, pulling me closer. “Because sometimes I scare myself too.”

I hate how safe I feel with him. I hate how much I don’t want him to leave.

“You know this can’t happen again,” I murmur.

His fingers pause. “Too late.”

“I’m the wrong kind of girl for you, Saxon.”

He exhales. “And maybe I’m tired of being the right kind of guy.”

My throat tightens.

“This doesn’t change anything,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “But it sure as hell means something.”

His voice is low, almost hoarse, as he gets up and starts to move around my room in the half-light of morning.

I watch from the bed, sheets tangled around my legs, as he dresses with practiced efficiency—pulling his shirt over tired muscles, the fabric stretching across broad shoulders still damp from sleep.

“They’re going to try to get to you,” Saxon says. “I don’t want you anywhere near this investigation, Maxine,” he continues. “These are dangerous people we’re dealing with.”

His words strike like a slap, but my spine straightens beneath the weight of them.

“They need to be stopped,” I whisper, a defiant thread laced through my voice like steel beneath silk.

“They will be,” he replies without missing a beat. “But not with your involvement.”

He runs a hand through his hair—tousled, still golden from the bedside lamp—and for a moment, he looks like he wants to say more. Instead, he tosses his words at me like a grenade.

“I sort of wish you’d move back in with Brando and Mia.”

I gawk at him, the sheer audacity of it knotting in my throat.

“Are you insane?” I breathe.

He sighs, long and slow, and begins doing up the buttons on his shirt, one by one with military precision. But his eyes? They haven’t left me once. Not even as his hands work through the motion.

“You were safer when you were there,” he says. “The real world isn’t actually such a pretty place for someone like you, Max.”

The words sting more than I want to admit.

“I can take care of myself,” I bite back.

His jaw tightens.

“Like you did in that alley?”

Silence. The moment shatters. He realizes it instantly—can see the hurt bloom across my face like blood under skin.

The regret hits him hard and fast, flashing across his features before he even has time to school it.

He swears under his breath and drops one knee on the bed, looming over me like the weight of what he’s said is crushing him from the inside.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he murmurs, voice low and wrecked. “Max?— ”

“Then how did you mean it?”

He doesn’t answer. Just stares at me, expression raw, eyes pleading. The same eyes that undressed me hours ago. That held me through the night. That promised more than either of us could ever say aloud.

“Do you have any idea what would happen to me if anything ever happened to you, Maxine?”

He swallows hard. His voice cracks.

“I’d keep breathing, but I wouldn’t be alive. I’d go back to that version of me I thought I buried in the field outside that castle—the one who doesn’t feel, who doesn’t care. The one who pulls the trigger and doesn’t blink afterward.”

His hand reaches out, fingers lacing with mine like a lifeline he’s terrified to let go of.

“I’d burn everything,” he whispers. “Every man. Every building. Every oath I ever took. I’d reduce the world to ash if it meant keeping you from turning into a headline.”

His eyes lock on mine—devastated, dark, real.

“I’d stop being someone you could love… and start being someone the world should be very afraid of.”