Page 21 of Vine (Island Love #3)
CHAPTER 20
CASPIAN
Making Max horny might be only a short-lived distraction from my perpetual state of frozen panic, but, no lie, it was a bloody good one. I hadn’t thought about my razor, my arms, nor any of the other unhelpful gate crashers squatting rent free in my head since that gorgeous needy moan when my knee checked out his dick. As though Max was my anchor and, as long as I held onto the rope, I was safe.
And now in that intense, shy way of his, he confessed he’d never fucked anyone before. Which was preposterous; French twinks should have been queuing up outside his gatehouse in a hungry line stretching from Calais to Marseilles. The guy was built for topping. Not only in a stereotypical physical way, although he was all of that too. But in ways he hadn’t even fucking realised. Ripping off my undies, for a start, and that syrupy growl of a voice, rumbling through his entire body before ever escaping his lips. In the way he threw me around a little this morning. And, last but not least, his giant man wang.
My point being, Max La Forge was everything I ever craved, and he was all mine, if only I could keep my shit together.
Of course, Max being Max, we had to postpone giant-man-wang-related activities to brush our teeth. As foreplay it was novel, but, afterwards, he kissed me with an I’m going to rail you to Mars and back sort of kiss and I replied with a let’s get started then, shall we sort of kiss. Frankly, we could have stood side by side at the sink and shared the same fucking string of dental floss if that’s what got his juices flowing.
“I want you like this.” Like a caveman hauling home the kill of the day, he dragged me back to the bed. A rush of need spilled down my spine. Eviscerate me, daddy . “Facing me.”
Pillows plumped behind my head. A pristine bottle of lube appeared in my hand. At the end of the bed, in all his glorious nakedness, Max pointed to the lube. “You do it. I want to watch.”
His hand worked the end of his cock as I leisurely unscrewed the cap from the lube. I was in no hurry. If Max wanted me to put on a little show, a little show is what he’d get.
I drew one heel up to my arse, leaving my other leg loosely splayed. Lube dribbled from my fingers, and I circled my hole before glancing up at him, wide-eyed. “Like this, you mean?”
“Yeah,” he breathed. “Like that.”
As my fingertip breached, his own fingers tapped against each other. A heavy knee landed on the bed; he leaned forward to get a closer look. With my free hand, I pinched one of my nipples. As a rule, nipple play did zero, nada, zilch for me, though it startled a gasp from Max’s lips.
“You can take over, if you want.”
He shook his head. “No, I like watching you. I like watching your… fuck.”
Two fingers. He liked two fingers. For a man struggling with words, Max had a gift for articulating his desires. His eyes, stuck on my finger action, overflowed with filthy language. In up to the second knuckle, I nudged against my sweet spot, letting out an involuntary moan.
His other knee thumped onto the bed. A big warm hand soothed up the thigh of my outstretched leg, caressing my lean muscle. When his beard scratched along the same path, I arched up. Fleetingly, the heat of his breath scorched my skin before he pressed his mouth to my hard shaft.
“Christ, that’s so good, Max,” I praised, because, honestly, it really fucking was. If his big hand wasn’t clamped around my wrist, I’d have moved my own away to give him more room. Instead, he held it there, lapping at my shaft and controlling the speed at which I finger-fucked my own arse. If my meds weren’t putting the brakes on, I’d have come from the fucking glorious sucking, lapping, grunting noises alone. Max wanted me, I felt wanted, and it was the sexiest, most flattering thing out there.
Did condoms kill the mood? Not when Max slicked one on, sitting back on his haunches and easing it over his proud, swollen crown. Nor when he anointed it in lube, giving himself a couple of extra pulls. I drew my other leg back as he settled between them, wide open and ready for him. Very ready.
“Go easy on me, Max,” I whispered as the giant man wang edged closer. “It’s been a while.”
Oh god, he felt good. Nothing revealed a person’s true colours more transparently than allowing them to fuck you up the arse. Even more so when opening yourself wide to them during the worst storm of your life. From every angle and in every light, Max’s true colours were beautiful, entering me centimetre by centimetre, and so tenderly, even though each cell in his body must have been screaming to plough me into the middle of next week.
“Not enough,” he grunted, as all 15.9 centimetres, if my memory served correct, breached me. Like it weighed nothing, he hefted my leg up over his shoulder, bringing us impossibly closer still. A long, drawn-out, lustful moan escaped his lips. “Mm. Better . Now I’m where I want to be.”
Christ, I felt full. Like, I couldn’t move full. “Give me a second. It’s…”
“I’m bigger than average,” he reminded me.
“Christ, yes.” Shifting, I blew out a breath, and suddenly, everything felt more settled. “Better,” I gasped. “Fuck, so much better.”
Cradling me with his elbows, he swept back my hair and kissed my forehead. Not once, but over and over, like he was gathering up all the frayed edges of my soul and planting tender new seeds there. Or future promises.
“Tell me what to do, la mer Caspienne ,” he whispered. “What you want me to do now.”
I want you to love me. To make love to me. Care for me. Kiss me like this every morning. Keep me safe.
I said none of that, of course. Instead, I sank into his earnest brown gaze and let it wash me clean of everything. “This is the best part, Max,” I whispered back. “Just close your eyes and move your hips.”
My sexual appetite—a weird phrase I was convinced no one ever said aloud but was appropriate here—was unaffected by my meds. I could get hard sitting on the inseam of my jeans. Achieving orgasm, however, was hit and miss. Quickly bored, Leigh gave up trying. Once he’d reached a satisfactory conclusion, I had a window of about thirty seconds to do the same.
Max, however, gave it his best shot without even knowing. I think the kissing did it. Sure, down below was swell—he fucked me like he’d been honing his technique on that steady line of twinks all afternoon. But the care he laid down alongside it had me shuddering. The way he rested his weight on his sturdy elbows above me. How he brushed my hair back from my forehead. His hooded dark eyes searching my face, silently checking all was well. His mouth, tasting every crevice of mine, his tongue, running along my jaw.
I came quietly—we both did, his release tipping me into mine. And then I was swept up in his arms, still panting, still hot and sweaty, still with him inside me.
“I’m making you better,” said Max quietly after we’d peeled ourselves apart and he’d disposed of the condom.
Snuggled against him once more, I gave an abbreviated laugh. “It doesn’t work like that, unfortunately.”
“But you feel better,” he insisted.
Loose-limbed, I stretched. A tugging ache down below reminded me it had been a while. “Well, yes, but… “
“So maybe it does. Maybe I’m what you need. Your medicine.”
“What, two spoonsful of sex three times a day on an empty stomach?”
“No.” He raised himself on an elbow. “I don’t mean sex. I mean me. You’re calm here with me. You relax. You laugh. So you should stay. I’m going to make you stay.”
“You can’t imprison me and hold me to ransom, Max. People will come looking.” Perhaps. Although I doubted anyone would cough up the cash.
He pouted. “This isn’t a joke, la mer Caspienne !” Two brown eyes flashed with annoyance, and I smoothed a hand over his bicep.
“I know. And I’m not joking. Not really. I do feel better here. You do calm me.”
“So stay. Stay until the end of filming. Give me a chance to… to…” He flopped back down.
“To what?”
“To show you how good it can be. So that you don’t leave even when filming finishes,” he mumbled. “So you want to stay here and prune vines. So that every year you sit on my lap on the beach in the summer and wear my hat when it’s cold in winter. And drink my hot chocolate, then sleep for ten hours and six minutes in my bed.”
“That’s… um, that’s a lot to ask of me, Max.”
I had no idea of the time, except that the sun was poking through the cracks in the shutters, and a car or two had crunched up and down the gravel drive. Voices in the distance signalled the TV crew were doing their thing. Today, or tomorrow at the latest, I’d have to leave Max’s warm bed and his cosy home and join them. I’d have to apologise to Emma, then hold my head high against the curious gazes of the crew. I’d have to reach a level of détente with Leigh and Jonas.
Like a live, slippery thing, a familiar swell of nausea, absent for the last twelve hours, undulated through my gut and I rested my forehead against Max’s solid chest. So real and clean, in a way the rest of my life wasn’t. And he was here, offering me freedom, if only I had the nerve to seize it.
“I’ll come back later,” I promised. “And I’ll stay every night until the end of filming if you’ll have me.”
We showered separately. As Max explained (I managed to keep a straight face considering what we’d just done), the bathroom was a private place where a man did private things, and respecting that was important. So, using my privacy, I took my time, putting Max’s surprisingly fancy toiletries to good use, while Max took Noir out for his morning wee and then made us hot chocolate. One day, maybe, he’d trust me with a caffeinated drink. Hearing the rattle of crockery as I left the bathroom, and with nothing more than a towel around my waist, I wandered towards his tiny kitchen in search of my lover, his dog, and my usual dose of sugary sustenance.
And stopped dead in my tracks, my brain stuttering as I processed the domestic scene. A pan of something had been placed on the gas ring. While waiting for it to boil, a slim, dark-haired woman idly gazed out of the window, washing a couple of plates.
A very, very famous slim, dark-haired woman.
Diving back into the bedroom, I located my lover sprawled across the bed with a big, sappy grin on his face and a hand shoved down his underwear, fondling himself. He withdrew hastily, his cheeks flaming. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
My brain kickstarted back into action. “Max, you weren’t supposed to see me taking a razor to my left wrist; I think we’ve gone way beyond secrets. More importantly, there is a world-famous soccer player doing the washing up in your kitchen. And I think she’s stolen your dog.”
“Aah, for fuck's sake.” He gave a huge, annoyed puff, like he was blowing down a house made from straw. “éti,” he hollered, without moving from the bed. “This isn’t an emergency, either! Go away!”
I didn’t know what response I expected to elicit from him, but not that one. Fuck me. “That’s éti?” I thumbed in the direction of the kitchen. “The woman you keep banging on about? éti Salvador? The éti Salvador? And you didn’t think to mention that?”
“éti Salvador-La Forge,” he corrected, like it fucking mattered. “Brother’s wife. And it wasn’t important. She’s retired now, anyway.”
Not important? “But still as famous as Jesus.”
He actually considered for a second; I half expected him to trot out a statistic. “Probably. But she’s breaking the rules. Again .”
“Max, my darling.” The woman in question appeared in the bedroom doorway, unperturbed, a tea towel slung over her shoulder and a sweet smile on her all-too-familiar face. “Just so we’re clear: is that ‘go away’ before I finish the washing up or after I’ve dried and put it away too?”
“After drying. And put the mugs on the shelf in the right order this time. Caspian’s here.”
Superfluous information, seeing as I hovered half-naked not two feet from Max’s megastar kitchen skivvy. Candidly, she appraised my puny pale body, and the good humour infused into my bloodstream from my injection of vitamin Max leached away. All my cuts were on show. I saw the moment she registered them, and her amused expression switched to something else.
My chest tightened. I might as well have wielded a neon flashing sign above my head reading fucking hopeless lunatic here . This very famous person, whose opinions were valued very highly by Max, would point that out to him.
And, all at once, I knew above anything else I didn’t want that to happen, because I had become a lot fonder of Max than my hopeless lunatic mind was letting me believe. In a too late effort to conceal them, or perhaps an idiotic means of holding myself up, I hugged myself.
“Caspian. Good to meet you. I’m éti.” Her voice was a cool low breeze, sweeping through me and cataloguing all my flaws. Though her eyes were kind. “This slugabed is my favourite brother-in-law.”
“Only,” pointed out Max.
“Yes, my love. But I never claimed the competition was stiff.” While Max searched for a decent comeback, éti added, “I expect you’d like to get dressed, wouldn’t you, Caspian? I’ll make you a coffee.”