Page 39 of Take

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU doing?”

She pulled off her shirt and tossed it on the floor. All the blood rushed from my head right down to my cock. Her pearl white skin against the black lace bra covering her breasts left me speechless. Fuck. Everything about her threw my usual steady composure into unchartered territory.

I wanted to fuck her. Hear her scream and beg, and I wanted it over and over again.

The sound of the zipper on her jeans had my heart slamming like a freight train into my ribs. I swallowed. Why was I just standing here? Why couldn’t I react? I should grab her and fuck her to get it out of my system. I’d never expected it would be her doing the instigating and me the hesitating.

I grabbed her arms. “No.” What the hell was I doing? I hadn’t been laid in months. I’d stalked her; watched her for months and now . . . now I was pushing her away.

But I was selfish and harsh and she’d said it herself . . . I was an asshole and suddenly I didn’t want her to see me that way.

“Why not? You want me and I want you. It’s sex. I’m not stupid enough to think it’s anything more, Jasper.”

I jerked at her words. For some reason, Max’s words bothered me—big time. That should be even more of a reason I should fuck her and prove to myself this was just that—sex. “How long since you fucked a guy?”

“What?” Her arms moved as if she was about to cross them over her breasts and then decided against it and put them back at her sides. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Because when I fuck you, it will be hard. I need to know if you can take it.” I’d expected her to grab her shirt and put it back on. That was what I had intended. To scare her. Instead, she stared at me as she undid her bra and let it fall to the floor.

Fuck.

I was a guy. A guy that didn’t give a shit if a woman hated me in the morning, but they never did. I may be a selfish bastard but I never left a woman unsatisfied. And it was more a self-serving reason as I could always get seconds when I wanted. But this was different. Everything about it was different. Max was different.

And that should’ve scared me enough to walk away.

But Max . . . staring at her milky white, naked skin . . . her handful of breasts with nipples erect and waiting for my mouth to suck on them. I should’ve walked back into the bathroom, shut the door and jerked myself off in the shower.

I didn’t.

She wiggled her hips, slid off her jeans and stepped out of them.

Jesus. It was that word for two reasons. She was fuckin’ gorgeous even with scars all over her legs and a few on her stomach. Some of them were faint lines like what would come from a knife, but others looked raw and raised, maybe burns from something.

And that fucked me right up imagining her being held down and burned and cut, her screaming with pain, thrashing against the very bastard I was protecting her from. I could picture it, hear it and it was fucking with my head because I’d lived it. Watched as a child had been thrown carelessly into a grave after hearing the screams.

Shit, Max deserved more than me. I couldn’t do it. I wanted to prove to myself that I could and still walk away from her, but I knew I was already feeling more for her than I should. For months I tried to convince myself it was nothing, but it was something. It was a fuck of a lot of something. “Put your clothes on.” I turned away from her, walked around the other side of the bed and lay down. I put my hands beneath my head and closed my eyes. Unfortunately, all I saw was Max standing naked and willing in front of me.

“Is it because of my scars?”

Now, that pissed me the fuck off. “Jesus, Max. No. That’s not fuckin’ it.” And it wasn’t. Her scars made her more beautiful because they made her real. Not some fake piece of ass I didn’t give a shit about.

Fuck.

Fuck.

I didn’t give a shit about Max. This was a job. She was a fuckin’ job. But she wasn’t. She had never been a job. She was Max. The girl I watched for months because I couldn’t stay away.

The mattress sagged and creaked and then—

My eyes flashed open when her hand brushed across my thigh. She had one knee on the bed and the other leg lifted and went over top to straddle me. My hands flattened against her naked thighs and I groaned. I didn’t have to ask what she was doing. I knew damn well what the hell she was doing. And I’d given her an out . . . that out expired the moment she straddled me.

I couldn’t resist. Not anymore. “Fuck, sunshine.”

My palms slid up her thighs, curved around to her hips and then over the bare flesh of her ass. A finger slipped into the string of her thong and I pulled upward—hard.

Her breath hitched and her body tensed with her head slightly titled back. I fisted the strap in my hand and pulled up again so the thong was tight in her ass and panties putting pressure on her pussy. I tugged upward again. She pushed back against the pressure. There was defiance in her eyes mixed with the smoldering desire I had craved since the day I met her. It was for me. She wanted me just as much as I wanted her.

“I’m not nice, Max.”