DEREK

Denial was a game I played well.

The field was familiar, I had all the strategies memorized, and the uniform fit like a glove. I’d worn it practically my entire life. Don’t want to feel something? Refuse to feel it. Don’t like the thoughts in your head? Reject them. Don’t like the person you really are? Pretend he doesn’t exist. You’re only lying to yourself—and what does that matter? Thanks to years of practice, I was an expert at keeping the outside neat and tidy, even if the inside was a fucking wreck. Especially if the inside was a fucking wreck.

And it was.

I kept waiting to be sated, to feel as if I’d had my fill of him, so I could walk away from this experiment and get on with my real life. But it didn’t happen.

Every day my feelings for Maxim grew stronger. Every night we spent together brought us closer. Every moment we were apart was spent thinking about the next time we could be together. What was supposed to be a quick, indulgent fuck fling was trying to be something else entirely.

I refused to let it. My limit had been reached. After that night in the shower, I’d folded up my feelings like a sweater and packed them away. Told myself it wasn’t love; it was infatuation. Novelty. The kick of eating forbidden fruit. The rush of being bad. It was just his presence in my house that was making it seem so intense. Once he was gone, I’d be fine.

I’d be fine.

But for our last weekend together, I would be greedy. I wanted him all to myself, no distractions. I wanted more than just a few stolen hours in the dark—I wanted his days and his nights, his full attention, a taste of what it would be like to belong to him, to call him mine. I would gorge on him and on us until I was fully and utterly gratified.

Then I’d be able to let him go.

* * *

Like all my plans where Maxim was concerned, the get-my-fill vacation was not working.

“I never want to leave this place.” He looked out at the ocean from where we sat on the restaurant patio Saturday night. “The water, the warmth, the palm trees. It’s paradise.”

Maybe it was, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His skin burnished from the sun, his hair neatly styled but tousled by the breeze, the white dress shirt cuffed to show off strong wrists and beautiful hands. God, those hands and what they did to me. The way they moved over my body like molten gold, slow and sensuous and fiery hot. They could be gentle or rough, kind or cruel, tender or savage. They could tease and torture, stroke and sheath, bring me to my knees or send me soaring above clouds. I loved and hated their power over me. Last night I’d bound them with a belt, as if rendering them useless would lessen their effect, but somehow the sight of them restrained by the leather strap had only heightened it. Tonight he wore a watch with a leather band, and every time I looked at it, my pulse quickened. But I tried not to look because I hated thinking about time—it was moving too quickly. Every hour that elapsed brought us closer to Monday. Every minute that passed made it more difficult to keep my feelings buried. They were rising toward the surface like tar seeps from the ocean floor, thick and dark and threatening.

“Derek?”

I raised my eyes to his and realized he’d asked me a question I’d been too distracted to answer. “What?”

He smiled, and my pulse quickened. “Don’t you think it’s paradise?”

“Yes.” I picked up my wine glass and took a big drink.

“What was your favorite part?”

“Hmmm.” Walking into this room with you, because you were brave and reached for my hand and didn’t let go until we reached our table. It was the way I should have felt walking in somewhere with Carolyn…proud, grateful, happy. It was also the most openly affectionate we’d been all weekend, and I’d loved it—but this was a room full of strangers. Would I have felt the same in a room full of friends?

The answer was no, and I hated myself for it.

“I can’t choose,” I said.

The last twenty-four hours had been perfect. We hadn’t left each other’s sides once. We’d lain on the beach sharing stories about our childhoods. We’d gotten tipsy on overpriced drinks at the pool, laughing at my attempts to say things in Russian and his insane superstitions. We’d come back to the room, sunburned and sandy and half-drunk on mojitos and each other, falling into bed almost immediately. His skin had tasted like sun and ocean and salt and rum and everything warm and youthful and carefree. Afterward, we’d fallen asleep, wrapped in each other’s arms, and I’d prayed for time to stop and let us be like that forever—lost in our own little beach-flavored world where we belonged only to one another. Answered only to one another. Loved one another without shame.

“How’s your steak?” he asked.

“Good.” I put another bite in my mouth, barely tasting it.

“Mine, too. Although my favorite steak will always be the one you cooked for me the night we met.”

I returned his smile without feeling it.

“I remember sitting across from you and feeling like I wanted to stay up all night talking.”

I picked up my wine again.

“Derek.” Maxim’s tone was hesitant. “Is something wrong?”

Yes. I think I’m in love with you. “No.”

“You seem…a little quiet.”

Because I’m afraid if I start talking, I won’t stop. “Oh.”

He took a breath, moved some potatoes around on his plate. “I was wondering…”

Oh fuck.

“What Ellen said when you told her we were taking a trip together.”

My thighs unclenched. “Nothing much. She was envious but glad.”

“Oh.” He poked at his green beans. “She didn’t think it was odd, the two of us going away for the weekend?”

“Not that I noticed. I…I told her I had to look at some property over here and figured I’d take you along since you really wanted to see the ocean.”

“Ah. I see.” He looked a little downhearted about the lie. “Well, that’s good.”

Don’t do that, Maxim. Don’t be sad that we can’t be together. Don’t show me or tell me you care. I can’t handle it.

We finished dinner and dessert in relative silence, and went back to our room. As always, Maxim went right onto the balcony, as if the ocean drew him by some physical force. I followed, and we stood at the railing next to each other in the dark, listening to the crash of the waves and breathing the balmy night air.

“You let me hold your hand.” His words startled me.

“What?” I looked at him, but he kept his eyes on the water.

“Tonight. Walking through the restaurant. You let me hold your hand.”

I swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because…” I looked out over the ocean again, boundless and deep, and felt myself drowning. “Because I wanted to know what it would be like to be yours. To belong to you.”

It took him a moment to respond. “And what was it like?”

I closed my eyes, sinking fast. “Heaven. It was like heaven.”

“Derek, I—”

But I didn’t let him finish. I couldn’t. Instead I pulled him to me and crushed my mouth to his, clinging to him as if he could save me from the bottomless depths of my feelings. Somehow we made it into the room, where we pulled and shoved at clothing with fumbling hands, reluctant to break the kiss.

We fell upon the bed, twisted up in each other that way I loved, that made me feel so close to him, so completely understood. I wanted every part of him, wanted to climb inside his mind, get lost beneath his skin, reside in the hidden spaces between muscle and bone. And I wanted him inside me, wanted him to fill my body with his own, wanted to surrender to him in a way I’d never done before.

I groped blindly for the lube on the nightstand behind me, and he leaned over me to grab it. “Here,” he said, breathing hard as he handed it to me.

I gave it back. “No—you this time.”

He paused. “You want that?”

“Yes,” I said, reaching between us to take his cock in my hand. Fuck. He was big and thick and hard, and it was going to hurt. But I wanted it to. I wanted to suffer for him. My pain would be an unspoken gift, something honest I could offer up to him in place of the truths I couldn’t utter, the promises I couldn’t bring myself to make. “Please.”

He kissed me hard, turning me onto my back, pinning me beneath him. His voice was low in my ear. “I want to make this so good for you.”

Fear and excitement rattled my spine.

He snaked down my body so he knelt between my thighs, pushing them apart. Bending my knees, feet flat on the bed, I closed my eyes and braced for an unfamiliar intrusion, but he took my cock into his mouth instead. I groaned as his tongue swept over my crown, my body eager and trembling. His mouth was hot and wet and tight and fuck, he took me so deep. At the same time, he slipped his lube-slick fingers between my legs, massaging and circling and teasing and oh fuck—

“Maxim.” A warning.

He released my cock from his lips and licked a line up my abdomen. “Shhh. Trust me.”

I did trust him. But a few minutes later, as he eased one warm, slick finger—and then another—inside me, I wondered if I’d overestimated both my tolerance for discomfort and my ability to handle the psychological difficulty of letting another man breach my body this way. My mind kept trying to run away from it, telling me I wasn’t like that.

I was. I was like that. And I wanted it, but Christ. Christ.

The feeling was strange to me. Foreign. Tight. I willed my body to yield, but my brain was getting mixed signals. One moment, my ass was involuntarily contracting around his fingers, pulling them in like I wanted more, and the next I was terrified I was going to embarrass myself because I felt like I had to pee.

Alarms began to sound.

I don’t have control of my body.

I started to panic, my hands fisting in the sheets, my legs shaking.

“Breathe,” he whispered, his lips hovering over mine. “Slow and deep.”

I inhaled and exhaled, consciously trying to relax all of my muscles. Eventually, I felt the tension start to give. The burn start to fade. Pleasure start to murmur deep within.

My hips began to move.

“That’s it, baby.”

Fuck. I love when he says that to me.

He kissed his way down my chest, and it was while his tongue was stroking my nipple that something he was doing with his fingers made my entire body start to tingle. A moan escaped me as the sensation slowly but surely intensified. I wanted more, but I couldn’t speak.

He added a third finger.

Something is happening to me.

It felt like an orgasm building, but its point of origin wasn’t my cock. He wasn’t even touching me there. It was deeper, slower, a gradual tightening inside me that sent electric pulses shooting through my entire body, as if my circuitry was being rewired, my body transformed for him.

He took his fingers from me, and immediately I wanted them back. I watched as he put on a condom and covered himself in lube. He’d never looked so beautiful or so fearsome to me. I’d never felt so powerless and vulnerable. My insides quaked as he hooked his arms beneath my thighs and pulled me closer. Pushed my legs farther apart. Positioned the head of his cock.

His eyes closed as he slid inside me in a long, slow, exquisite plunge. I breathed through the stretch and burn of it, glad for the way it hurt, for the way his body would change mine.

When he was buried deep inside me, he tipped forward, bracing his elbows above my shoulders, forcing my knees closer to my chest. He opened his eyes, and I put my hands at the back of his neck.

For a moment, we were still. Our eyes locked. I couldn’t breathe. He was everywhere inside me—everywhere. My mind, my heart, my body, my soul. I gave everything over to him. I was his, exactly the way I’d wanted to be, and it was perfect.

He put his lips on mine as he began to move, his body undulating over mine in sinuous waves. I loved the solidity of his body, his weight, the press of his chest. I loved the stroke of his cock against that place inside me, the one that made my entire body come alive. I loved the abandonment of everything but him—of right and wrong, of good and evil, of rules and religion.

Nothing mattered but us. No one existed but us. Time itself was irrelevant.

Maxim’s breathing grew labored, and he buried his face in my neck as he drove into me, as if he had to get closer to me any way he could. It felt so good, to be wanted that way, without pretense or inhibition or shame, and I slipped my arms around his back, holding him tight. All I could think was stay with me, stay with me, stay with me.

A moment later he sat up and leaned back on his heels, grabbing my thighs to pull me onto his legs. Fuck yes—the angle was unbelievable, and I felt that intense internal pull almost immediately. With my feet flat on the bed, I lifted my hips, and he slid his hands beneath my ass, grabbed on, and fucked me hard and fast and deep. My dick was thrusting through my own fist before I even realized I’d wrapped my fingers around it. I was so close to orgasm, so close, so close, so close, the pressure inside me building and building, intense heat radiating throughout my entire lower body, my ass my thighs my back my stomach, everything tighter hotter yes more oh my God until I exploded all over my chest and heard Maxim yell fuck! and he was throbbing inside me, my ass clenching hard around his cock in what was the longest, most intense orgasm I’d ever experienced. I couldn’t stop coming. My hair stood on end. My skin was on fire. My body convulsed. If it hadn’t felt so good, I might have thought I was in some sort of physical distress. Cardiac arrest. A stroke. Electrocution.

When I came out of it, I looked up at Maxim in disbelief. He was sweaty and disheveled and so fucking beautiful, it hurt. For one insane second, I was actually afraid I might cry.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Would I ever be okay again? “No.”

Confusion and concern rippled across his face. “No?”

“Is there a hole in the ceiling? Because I think I’ve been struck by lightning.”

He laughed. “I know the feeling.”

“My legs. I can’t feel them.”

“Wait till you try to walk.”

I groaned. “I have to get up?”

“No. Just a minute.” He carefully disengaged his body from mine and went into the bathroom. A moment later he was back with a wet washcloth. I went to take it from him, but he shook his head. “Let me.”

I watched his face as he cleaned up my chest, and the tender look on his face nearly broke me. This. This is what I want. I can’t lose him.

But what could I do? There were no good options, and time was running out. This trip hadn’t done what I was hoping it would—in fact, I wanted him more now than ever before. How was that even possible?

He went back into the bathroom, and I closed my eyes.

Punishment. This is punishment for what you’ve done, and the only thing to do is suffer through it.