I’d never get tired of the feel of his cock in my mouth. Sliding my tongue along the underside of his girth, I hollowed out my cheeks. I looked up to make eye contact with Maximus, smiling as he groaned. His chest was bare for me as his fingers tangled in my hair. My eyes ran over the rippling of his chest and the thick rings of his abs while his hips thrusted into my face. I swallowed him down. Took him to the back of my throat, just like he’d taught me over the past year. I felt his hips bucking off his office chair, his growls shivering me to my core. Even in his office, he couldn’t show restraint. Even as I knelt between his legs behind his desk and sucked his girth, he couldn’t stifle himself enough to conceal what we were doing.

“Fucking hell, Christie. That mouth of yours. Trained just for my liking.”

I hummed around his cock, relishing the way his voice raked against my ears. And it earned me yet another groan.

Beautiful.

I wrapped my tongue around the head of his cock, sucking on it before going down again. He looked so wrecked when I sucked his cock. His eyes grew heavy with lust while his thighs contracted underneath my hands. I always saw thing rushing behind his eyes. All the nasty, salacious, compromising things he wanted to do me at work.

I’d let him do all of them to me if he wanted.

I bobbed my head as his hand guided my movements, and his growls turned to choked syllables. Incomplete sentences and pieces of my name as he lost control of his body. His hips rose off the chair and his cock slid down my throat, curving and throbbing until he spilled himself into my body. I swallowed every thread. I didn’t waste a single drop as his legs jolted against my hands. And when his ass crashed back into the leather seat of his office chair, I licked him clean and zipped his pants back up.

“I won’t be late again, I promise,” I said with a grin.

A sloppy smile graced his cheeks before he reached down for me. He pulled me off my knees and into his lap, my body falling into his bare chest. My hand slid up his pebbled muscles, taking in his strength as his eyes studied my face. I straddled him and sat up, my skirt rolling up my thighs as he moved his hands toward the source of my body’s heat.

“I’m sure you’ll be late again, and you know the punishment once you are,” Maximus said.

“If that’s a punishment, then you might have to come up with something else,” I said.

“Don’t test me, sweet girl. I just might.”

His hand rose to cup my cheek. A stark contrast to the lust still rolling around behind his steely gaze. I leaned in and kissed him softly, reveling in the way he moaned. I knew he loved tasting himself on my lips. He’d never admit it, but it always riled him up. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pushing my tongue between his lips and giving him a small taste of what would be waiting for him in his bed that night.

“I love you,” I said with a whisper.

“I love you, too,” he said into my lips.

I stood from his lap and rolled my skirt down. I figured the least I could do was get back to work. But the second I turned to walk towards my desk, his hands were on my hips. Spinning me back around and clutching my waist before he lifted me onto his desk.

“Max!”

He clamped his hand down around my mouth, pushing my back to his desk. His free hand ripped my panties down to my ankles before rolling my pencil skirt up my thighs. He pulled up his chair and perched between my legs, his long arm still reaching to cover my mouth. He tossed my leg over his shoulder and opened my pussy up to feast upon.

A breakfast fit for a king.

I felt his tongue lap up my dripping slit and I gasped into his palm. He’d never taken me so openly on his desk, and the thought of getting caught by someone that worked for him stiffened my nipples against my bra. His lips puckered around my clit while his tongue stroked its tip. My legs jolted and I whimpered against his skin, my hips grinding into his face. He kissed his way down to my entrance and circled it with his tongue. Outlining it as my toes curled in my heels. Then, his tongue slid into me and my walls clenched around him.

His hand slid from my face and my sounds drowned the silence from his office. His thumb found my clit, circling it as his tongue explored my wet cavern. I squirmed against his desk. I dripped down my ass crack and left a pool of myself on top of his work station. My hands reached down for his hair and tangled as my knees came to my chest.

My body instinctively opened up for him now. Ready to receive whatever he was willing to give me.

And he was always willing to give it to me.

I propped my feet up onto his shoulders as I rolled my hips into him. Burying his tongue into my pussy time and time again as his fingers circled quicker. I couldn’t contain myself. I couldn’t keep a lid on it any longer. His name sat on the tip of my tongue and white-hot pleasure shot through my veins at lightning speed. But when he groaned into me, I felt myself pop.

“Maximus! Oh my gosh. Shit. Don’t stop.”

My back arched as I came against his lips, my body buzzing with electricity. His mouth encompassed the whole of my slit, opening his throat up as my juices sprayed to the back of his throat. My heels slipped from his shoulders and my back went crashing to his desk. His office was filled with nothing but the scent of our love for one another as my heart fluttered rapidly in my chest.

Holy hell, I really needed to show up to work late more often.

“I’ve never loved someone as much as I love you,” Maximus said.

His words spun around me as a loving heat permeated my skin. He slid my panties back up my body before his arms wrapped around me and helped me sit up. The room spun around my head. My heart thundered in my chest as his words. I struggled to bring him back into focus, my eyes betraying the hazy fuzz of my desperate want for him. I blinked slowly, my hands curling around the edge of the desk as he dipped from my view. But when he did come into focus, I saw him sitting in his chair with a ring box opened in the palm of his hand.

“Maximus?” I asked.

“This past year has been extravagant in all the best ways,” he said. “You walked into my life on a whim and turned my entire world upside down. And so long as I live, I’ll never understand what drew a woman filled with such light to a man steeped in darkness. I thought the best day of my life was the day you decided to stay, but if you say ‘yes’, I will have outdone myself once again.”

“Nice ego,” I said with a grin.

“Christie Evans, will you marry me?”

I reached down to the collar of his suit coat and pulled him out of the chair. He stood up, towering over me as his gaze held mine. I tilted my head back to keep him in view as I pulled him between my legs. I straddled his chiseled body as my hands slid up and down his torso. I took in every second. Memorized every moment. Committed the smells and the words and the looks to memory.

“Yes,” I said as tears flooded my eyes, “I will marry you, Maximus Abbott.”

The phone on his desk started to ring, and I wanted so badly for him to ignore it. But I knew our business wasn’t the kind where we could leave someone waiting. He reached over and plucked the phone from its cradle, holding it against his ear as his shoulder propped it up. He gripped the ring and took my left hand delicately within his, then slid it against my skin until it glistened on top of my finger.

“This better be good,” Maximus said into the phone. “You know how I feel about being interrupted.”

My hand fell to his chest, falling over his beating heart. The canary diamond sparkled in the morning sunlight streaming in through the windows. I felt Maximus’ body tense and I knew something was wrong. I furrowed my brow in worry as he made a few gruff ‘uh huh’’s, then he set the phone down and cupped his hands around mine.

“Duty calls,” he said.

He brought my lips to kiss as my eyes settled on his face again.

“I expect you home tonight,” I said. “We have a wedding to plan.”

He captured my lips in a tender kiss before pulling back and looking deep into my eyes.

“I’ll always come home to you, Christie. You need not worry about that.”

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you too, Christie.”

And the best part about it was that I believed every word. I believed everything that fell from his lips. From the arguments we had to the love we made to the shop we talked, there wasn’t ever a time where I felt he wasn’t telling me the truth. There wasn’t a second where I thought Maximus was lying to me.

A man didn’t have to be good, but he did have to be honest. And Maximus’ honesty outweighed his shadows.