Page 108 of Except You

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Max says as he pushes himself off the bed with a groan. “We’re going to take a bath in that humongous tub.”

“Ugh,” is all I can grumble. I want to go to sleep, but then again, sitting on Max’s lap in warm water sounds amazing. He always takes care of me after. He’s not even gay and he does it better than all of the guys before him.

Ten minutes later, I’m on his lap, the steaming, bubbly water lapping at my chest. Max’s hands knead my shoulders, his fingers finding all the right spots and making me slump against him.

“You are too good to me,” I say, and Max presses kisses to the side of my neck.

“I just treat you like you deserve.”

“If you keep this up,” I mumble, my brain not quite coherent. “I’m going to fall in love with you.”

“Good,” he says and then nips at my ear. “All the more easy to keep you.”

“Jesus,” I moan. He really needs to stop saying that stuff to me. It’s making me all mushy and eager. Like when I closed my eyes earlier and napped, I dreamed I was walking down an aisle littered with pink rose petals and Max was waiting for me—in a suit and tie.

We were getting married.

Fuck. Me.

This is getting out of hand. And yet, I’m not putting a stop to it.

“I’m thinking we could get a bigger bed when you move in. Maybe we could go shopping for a mattress when we get back. Find one we both like.”

“Do not get a new mattress. Yours is fine.”

“Yeah? Okay, well, then the spare room? Want to make it your office?”

I sigh and let his hands slide across my chest, massaging my pecs and making my eyelids droop.

“Yeah, Max, we could do that.”

He kisses my cheek and then pulls me even closer to him, wrapping both arms around my chest and squeezing me to him.

“When we get back, I’ll hire some movers for you. Get the process going.”

Anticipation and a bit of anxiety streaks through me, but I just nod. “Sounds good.”

Because it does. It all sounds like a dream.

One I have to wake up from eventually.

Chapter Nineteen

Max

“I’m impressed you can even walk,” I tell Beau when we make our way back home to Orange County. We spent the weekend completely naked, wrapped up inside our hotel room. Fucking. Kissing.

Talking.

The things I’ve learned about him, the things I still want to know… I want to spend a lifetime asking him questions and hearing his answers.

“I have mad skills, Max,” Beau says with a wink. He shifts in his seat and winces slightly. A two-hour drive back home after what I did to his ass can’t be comfortable, but then again, he’s a trooper.

A fucking sex scout.

When we finally make it home and he bends down to pat Doggo, I bite my bottom lip as he whines. I’m trying to play it cool, to give him some space to recover, but honestly, I don’t really want to do that. Each time we fucked these past few days, I always made sure to check his hole afterward, to make sure there were no tears, no damage.

Other than being a little puffy and pink, it was fine, I think.