The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [61]
“Okay. I can do that.”
He nodded. “Good.”
Max stood and she asked, “What happens after four o’clock?”
He turned to fix her with a disapproving glare. “You are clouding up my mind,” he said, hands gesturing to illustrate their exasperation.
“We haven’t even started drinking our coffees yet.”
He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “You are right, that’s true.” He pulled her to her feet and turned her by the shoulders, pushing her back against the front door. A strong hand locked her thigh against his hip and he pressed tight against her, already hard. He caught her bottom lip between his and suckled it for a few moments. “We will do lots of things at four o’clock,” he said finally.
“Like what?”
He glanced away for a few seconds, thinking. “We will sit face to face on my bed with our legs wrapped around each other, and I will rock you in my lap until you come on my cock,” he said casually. He released her thigh and stepped away from her.
Fallon swallowed as she watched him walk back to the stove. Four o’clock couldn’t come fast enough.
Chapter Ten
Sex. Sex sex sex.
That was all Fallon could focus on or remember in the following two weeks. Somewhere in her periphery a statue was taking shape, meals were being cooked and eaten, a yellow and black scarf was growing longer and longer between her fingers. Sun was shining or wind was howling or the moon was rising or falling. Beach grass and birch trees were changing color, she suspected, but the only thing she was aware of was Max: sitting beside her, standing across the studio from her, lying beneath her back in a bathtub by the fire, buried deep inside her body in his bed once the sun went down.
Addict, she thought to herself accusingly, watching him from across a display of pumpkins in the co-op market one afternoon, three days before Halloween. She ran her hand over a particularly perfect one and caught his eye.
“Yes?” he asked.
“I bet you’re very good at carving jack-o-lanterns.” She held it up to show him.
He raised his eyebrows. “It’s not my usual medium. But I can give it a try.”
Fallon smiled and hugged it to her chest.
How many nights since she’d slept in her own cottage? Twenty, perhaps. She was basically paying thirty bucks a day for a very big closet and washer-dryer access. Somewhere in her little rented fridge a carton of cream had probably long since curdled.
“I’m almost done,” Max said, tossing a net bag of garlic into his basket.
How dangerously easy it had become to pretend all this house they were playing was real. Fallon paid for her pumpkin and preceded Max out the door of the market, welcomed by the cool autumn air.
“What’s for dinner?” she asked as the door jingled shut behind her. When Max didn’t reply, she turned to find him standing stock-still, a paper bag in each hand, eyes glued across the street on a curvy woman leaning into her car, rummaging for something.
“Max?” Fallon felt a fluttering of familiar, hateful emotion. “Max.”
His eyes broke away. “Sorry.”
Fallon frowned against her better judgment and hugged the pumpkin against her middle. “See something you like?”
“Hmm?” Max looked at her, then back to the curvy woman and her car. The woman finished her arrangements and slammed the door. She turned to cross the road and she was easily eight months pregnant. She smiled politely as she passed Max and Fallon and disappeared into the co-op.
“Oh,” Fallon said stupidly.
Max smiled, understanding. “Did you just think what I think you did?”
“I didn’t think anything.”
“You thought I was panting over some other woman, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t realize you were only ogling her insides,” she admitted. “Do you have some kind of pregnancy obsession too?”
“Obsession? No.” He smiled sideways at her, still looking triumphant. He set the bags of groceries on the grass and stepped behind her to wrap his arms around her waist. He fanned his fingers and placed his hands over