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CHAPTER NINETEEN

Max

Waking up with Miko beside me had warmth spreading through me, a gooey sensation in my chest that slowly spread outward until it overtook me completely.

Something about it just felt… right.

Him, me, together.

The way sleep was still clinging to me made it impossible for any of the doubts and insecurities to slip in, ruining a soft, sweet moment.

A soft, sweet moment that was quickly becoming more as Miko’s hand slid down my shoulder, then over my breast, teasing around my nipple.

The warmth became a fire that burned through me in seconds, making a heaviness press down on my lower stomach.

Then Miko was shifting, leaning down, and sealing his lips over mine.

There was no stopping the way my hands reached for him, pulling him until his body shifted over mine. My legs spread, and he slipped between, the hard length of his cock against the aching need between my thighs.

I moaned against his lips as my hands slid down his back, sinking into his firm ass and pulling him more firmly against me.

His lips grew harder, hungrier.

And I responded in turn as my legs hooked around his hips, my heels digging into his ass, pressing him more firmly against me.

His hips rocked, making my head fall back on a moan at the feel of him pressing where I needed him most.

Miko pressed up, looking down at me as he rocked his hips again.

At my whimper, he suddenly rolled me under him. Reaching down, he grabbed me behind the knees, pulling until I sat up to straddle him.

He folded up with me, reaching to snag the hem of my shirt and starting to draw it upward. I lifted my arms, allowing him to remove it completely.

The chill in the air and the heat within had my nipples twisting into tighter buds as Miko’s hungry gaze moved downward, taking me in.

The rumble that moved through him teased across my nerve endings, making me rock against him.

Miko’s hands slid up my sides, then moved inward to cover my breasts, squeezing, then releasing to roll my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. A moan escaped me as I leaned back, inviting more, pressing myself further into the touch.

He leaned inward, pressing his face to the center of my chest, breathing me in, as his soft hair teased over my skin.

When his head shifted and his lips sucked one of my nipples in, a shudder moved through me.

My hand raised, sliding into his hair at the back of his head as he sucked, licked, and grazed until the heat inside me threatened to consume me completely.

“Miko, please,” I whimpered as he moved across my chest, continuing to tease, to torment me with more need.

“Love the sound of you begging,” he murmured as his lips moved between my breasts then moved upward, whispering across my collarbone, the column of my neck, and the shell of my ear. “Almost as much as I love the sound of you calling my name when you come.”

There was no stopping the pathetic little whimper that escaped me as my hips rocked down on him, desperate for the friction.

“Then make me come,” I demanded, bold with my desire.

That rumble moved through him again, more of a growl this time, as he grabbed and rolled me onto my back.

Moving to his knees, he reached for my legs, pulling them up to press my feet to his chest. Reaching around, he grabbed the waistbands of my pants and panties and started to pull them down.

The second he removed the material from my feet, his hands were at my knees, spreading me wide. Then he was down between, his tongue sliding up my cleft.

There was no slow build this time, though.

He found my clit and worked it relentlessly as my hips rocked, as my thighs tightened around his head, as my back arched and my throaty moans filled the room.

His hand slid between us, his fingers slipping inside me, thrusting lazily at first, then harder and faster as he pushed me closer and closer to the edge.

“Miko, I…” I started, but broke off on a cry as the orgasm crashed through me, stealing my breath, leaving me helpless but to let it keep overtaking me until I fell back, gasping, thighs shaking.

“Mmm,” Miko groaned as he pressed a kiss to my inner thigh.

His fingers were still inside of me, thrusting lazily again before turning to stroke against my top wall as his lips continued up my thigh, across my stomach, then down the other thigh.

The need came rushing back at an impossible speed, leaving me writhing and whimpering as Miko’s fingers worked my G-spot with expert precision.

“Miko, please,” I begged again, but this time my own hands were moving out, touching, exploring.

My hand slid across his lap to find his cock straining against the material of his sleep pants. At the brush of my fingers, Miko’s breath caught as his head tipped back and his eyes closed.

Drunk on my ability to affect him so easily, I let my palm slide across the head of his cock, moving side to side, then in slow circles that had his abdominal muscles tensing and his breath going fast and shallow.

As my hand slid up to slip under the waistband of his pants, his fingers stopped stroking inside of me and started to tap instead, the new sensation dragging a long, loud moan out of me.

My hand closed around him again, stroking him down to the base. Once, twice. Then harder and faster as the little hitches in Miko’s breath spurred me on.

But just when I thought another orgasm might slam through me, his fingers were out of me.

Then he was grabbing my legs, pressing them together, then rolling me over onto my belly. His hands went to my hips, sinking into them to pull me back onto all fours, then up against his chest.

His hand anchored around my stomach as his lips met my neck, and he shifted so his cock could tease between my thighs.

“The next time you come, it’s going to be around my cock,” he murmured in my ear, his voice rough. His teeth nipped my earlobe as a moan escaped me. “See how wet you are for me?” he asked as his cock slid against said wetness, coating it in my desire as I started to rock against him. “Just aching for my cock, aren’t you?”

The whimpering sound that escaped me clearly wasn’t good enough for him, though.

“Tell me you need my cock,” he demanded, his hand sliding up to close lightly around my throat.

There was no denying it.

I’d been wanting him too long already.

“I need your cock,” I said, my head falling back on his shoulder as my hips wiggled a bit side to side, needing more friction than he was giving me.

A rumble moved through him at that.

“How?” he asked. “Like this?” His hips rocked a little faster.

“Yes,” I whimpered. I didn’t care how; I just needed him inside me.

“Or this?” he asked, moving me with him as he sat off the edge of the bed, putting me in his lap but facing away from him.

“Yes,” I moaned, rolling my hips in a circle as his hand moved out toward the nightstand, pulling open the drawer to find a condom before turning me and pressing me back onto the bed again.

“Or like this?” he asked, kneeling at the side of the bed after sliding on the protection, his cock gliding against my pussy again.

“Please,” I cried.

“Please, what, sugar?” he asked, lips twitching, knowing just how desperate I was.

“Please fuck me,” I demanded.

He didn’t need more than that.

His hips shifted.

Then he was surging inside of me, taking every inch of me with one long thrust.

I’d never heard the sound I made just then, something caught between a cry and a moan, as my walls tightened around him.

Miko sucked in a deep breath, his eyes closed for a second, looking for some self-control.

But I didn’t have time to wait for him to find it.

The ache inside only seemed to grow with the fullness of him inside me.

So my hips started to rock, trying to ease the pressure in my core.

Miko’s eyes slid open as he reached down to drag my legs up to his shoulders.

Then he was doing as I asked.

Fucking me.

There was no more teasing, no dragging things out.

He fucked me hard and fast, his forearm anchoring my legs to his chest as he moved, making it too hard for me to move, to meet him thrust for thrust, leaving me completely at his mercy as he drove me up.

“Fuck,” Miko groaned as my walls tightened around his cock. “That’s it, squeeze my cock. Let me feel you come.”

And just like that, I did.

My whole body shuddered as the orgasm crashed through me. Miko fucked me through it, making the climax pull me under over and over each time I thought it might relent.

“Not done with you,” he said after.

He reached for my legs, pulling them down from his shoulders, pressing them together, then cocking them up at a ninety-degree angle on the mattress, making my pussy squeeze tighter around his cock as he started to move again.

This time, not as hard or fast. Just slow, deep thrusts, giving my body a chance to come back down before driving me back up.

Only when I was moaning again did he grab my hips, flipping me onto my belly, then all fours, before slamming back into me.

The new position and the borderline savage way he was fucking me had my fingers fisting the bedsheets, had me leaning down to press my face into them to muffle my cries.

“No,” he growled, reaching out to grab a handful of my hair and yanking me back by it, the sting across my scalp creating a pain/pleasure sensation that had an embarrassing groan escaping me. “I want to hear you,” he said, keeping a tight hold on my hair as he kept fucking me. “That’s it,” he murmured as my cries filled the room, as my walls clenched tight around his cock. “Be a good girl and come for me.”

I hated how much I loved him calling me that, but as the orgasm screamed through my system, all that mattered was how good it felt that he knew just what I needed to hear, that he understood just how I liked to be fucked.

“One more,” he said when I came back down, gasping, trembling.

“I can’t,” I whimpered, my legs feeling like jelly, my whole body tender and shaky.

“Yes, you can,” he said, but there was something softer in his voice as he released my hair, letting me fall forward into the mattress before reaching for me, turning me onto my back, then coming over me.

His lips were on mine again.

But not so hungry.

Just hard and seeking, kissing me with an intensity that made it feel like he’d cracked open my chest, like he’d slipped inside.

Tears sprang up behind my closed lids as Miko started to move inside of me again.

They were long, unhurried thrusts as he kept kissing me, as the intimacy grew, becoming something beautiful—and terrifying.

It wasn’t long, though, before he had me so close again. My arms slid around him, holding on tight as my body moved with his.

His head shifted, breaking the kiss.

The disappointment was short-lived, though, as his lips went to my ear, his voice soft as his words only managed to drive me up as well.

“You feel so good taking me like this,” he murmured, his lips teasing the shell of my ear. “ Fuck ,” he groaned, voice getting strained. “That’s it,” he added as my whole body started to tremble as the orgasm started to crest. “Fuck, that’s a good girl.”

“Miko,” I gasped, clutching him, holding on tightly as the orgasm started, a deep, hard pulsation that spread outward to take over me completely.

Miko rocked with me then surged deep and came with me.

His weight pressed down on me after, something oddly comforting to my overwrought system, to my fragile emotions.

The aftershocks rolled through me as I held onto him. Partly to hold on to the intimacy. But also partly so he didn’t see the tear that slid down my cheek.

Because nothing had ever felt quite like that before.

Sex had only ever been, well, sex.

Just easy, mutual satisfaction.

Nothing more or less.

This was… something else entirely.

Even then, body spent, no more need to be found, that sensation of him in my chest persisted. And I wondered if he would always be there, if he maybe felt the same way.

It was my stupid stomach’s decision to growl right then that finally broke the spell between us.

Miko’s head turned, pressing a soft kiss to my jaw before pushing up and looking down at me, a sweet smile toying with his lips.

“Let’s get some food,” he said, even though I wasn’t sure I could force my body to move right then.

“Okay,” I agreed because, well, what else could I say?

That I wanted to stay like this with him for a few more minutes, hours, days?

No.

That was never going to work.

So when Miko went into the bathroom, I forced some life into my limbs, folded up, and slid off the bed.

By the time Miko came back, I’d managed to get back into my pants, but couldn’t find my shirt. He stooped down, fetching it from where it had managed to slip under the bed, then came back to me, helping me into it before finding his own pants again.

Afterward, we moved silently toward the door.

I’d never wanted so badly for someone to speak, to tell me what they were thinking.

But Miko said nothing as I followed him down the hall toward the common area.

The air was filled with the rich scent of tomato sauce, making my belly rumble again.

“What took you guys so long?” Chuck asked from his cross-legged position on the couch, balancing a massive bowl on a throw pillow. There were only a few noodles left on the bottom.

“I heard you cooked,” I said, sidestepping the question.

“Yep,” Chuck said, puffing up a bit.

“I don’t know how to cook,” I admitted.

“Miko helped,” Chuck admitted. “But I did all the work.”

“Smells good,” I told him as Miko fetched bowls and started to fill them.

“Next time, I’m gonna make garlic bread too. I found a recipe.”

I sincerely hoped there wouldn’t be a ‘next time,’ since that meant someone was still out there with Miko’s diamonds and wanting to clear house so no one could talk.

And since I was the one who’d seen him the best, I had a feeling if we didn’t find this asshole, I would never be able to stop looking over my shoulder.

“Oh, the trip,” I said as I took the bowl from Miko.

“I already got it all set up,” he said. At my pinched brows, he shrugged. “I got up before you,” he explained. “They have a room at a nice inn, passes to a ski resort, and reservations at a few local restaurants.”

Wow.

That was impressive.

There was something undeniably hot about a man who not only talked about shit, but carried through with it. All without needing to be nagged about it.

Competence was the sexiest thing to find in the opposite sex.

“I will text Megs about it while we eat,” I said, glad for a distraction.

Not that I needed one when we had Chuck sitting between us, talking about all the local attractions, about new recipes he wanted to try to make, about how he was thinking about a career change now that he was ‘rolling in it.’

Neither Miko nor I had the heart to inform him that ‘rolling in it’ in some small upstate town was likely ‘just scraping by’ in Manhattan.

“What did Megs say?” Miko asked when my phone chimed.

“A mix of suspicion and excitement,” I admitted.

“Why suspicion?”

“Because I’ve never sent them on a trip before. And she’s not an idiot, so the timing has to be setting off alarms.”

But Megs had a hard time holding onto her suspicions when I said that I’d talked to Tyler and he’d told me they’d been sad, and that I wanted to cheer them up with their anniversary coming up.

And once they got the name of the inn, it was all gushing about how gorgeous it—and the town around it—was.

“That sounds like excited texting,” Miko observed.

“It is. They’re stoked now,” I admitted. “But we did forget about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Neither of them has a car.”

“Oh, shit, yeah. Well, that’s easy enough,” he said, reaching for his phone.

“Are you ordering a car service?”

“More or less,” he said with a devilish little smirk.

“What’s that smile about?” I asked.

“Sometimes there’s a perk to having so many siblings,” he said.

“No, don’t make one of them drive them. I’ll hire a car service.”

“Nero is the Family’s car service,” Miko said. Then, sensing I was about to put my foot down, “I’d feel better if they were with someone I know. At least until they are in Vermont. If you want to hire a service for their way home, I’m cool with that. But I want to know they’re safe. They will be with my brother.”

“Oh. Okay,” I agreed. “But can he maybe… act like a car service? Megs will be suspicious if he doesn’t.”

“Yeah, he’ll do that.”

“Wait. Does he look like you?”

To that, Miko shrugged as he did something on his phone. A second later, a man’s voice came from it.

“Why are you video calling me?” Nero, I assumed, asked.

“Say hi to Max,” Miko said, turning the screen to face me.

My immediate instinct was to look away, to hide my face, suddenly insecure about the bruises, even if I’d just spent the past few days not giving a shit who saw me.

“Camera’s off on our end,” he said, seeming to read my mind. Which was both endearing and worrisome.

I wasn’t easy to read.

That was my thing.

Being a closed book.

How was he able to read me so easily?

“Um… hi, Max,” Nero said, looking at the screen as he walked around his apartment. “Wish I could say it was nice to see you, but, well…”

If you really looked, yeah, you could definitely see the family resemblance. Maybe it was just my feelings for him that made me feel that way, but I thought Miko was hotter. Though, to be fair, Nero was younger. And everyone knew that guys just managed to get hotter year by year.

“I have to know, is your brother’s stubbornness a family trait?” I asked.

“Miko? Stubborn? Think you’re talking about one of the other brothers.”

“Um, hi, I’m here too,” Chuck said, clearly wanting to be included.

“Who is that?”

“No one you need to know about. Alright. I’m hanging up. Clear your schedule for tomorrow. Then swing by here to get the car ready.”

“I might have had plans tomorrow, y’know,” Nero said.

“And now you have different plans. Get some sleep. Gonna be a long day of driving.”

With that, Miko hung up.

“What?” he asked, catching me shooting small eyes at him.

“I refuse to believe that your family doesn’t consider you stubborn.”

“I’m pretty go-with-the-flow, actually. You wanna meet stubborn, I can introduce you to some guys. Or, you know, show you a mirror,” he teased, shooting me a knowing smile.

“How come I couldn’t say hi to your brother?” Chuck asked.

“Because no one is supposed to know you are here,” Miko told him.

“Oh, right,” Chuck said, shoulders slumping.

“Listen, when this shit is done, I will go with you to the fucking wax museum, okay?” Miko said, looking pained at the very idea, but willing to do it for Chuck.

He probably really was a good brother.

Which meant he would almost certainly make a great father.

Wait, what?

Why the hell was I thinking shit like that?

“What’s got that look on your face?” Miko asked, frowning at me as he reached to take my empty bowl away.

“What? Oh, nothing,” I lied. One look at Miko’s face said he didn’t believe me.

But he was right about one thing.

I was stubborn as fuck.

And there was no way in hell I was going to let him know that I was suddenly imagining him holding a baby. Maybe even… our baby.