“So fucking sweet, Daze,” he rumbled, dark irises fringed with something painful. “You taste like blueberries to me.”
My heart stumbled over each one of its next several beats. Max didn’t mean literal blueberries. He meant a craving he couldn’t quench.A craving he’d been starved of until now.
I went to reach for him, too overwhelmed from…everything to be able to speak, but he stepped back. All the way back to theother side of the water spray, and my heart plummeted into my stomach.
“You should go to bed, Daze,” Max rasped, dragging his free hand roughly through his wet hair.
Was that regret in his voice?My throat tightened. “Max?—”
“It’s late. We’ll talk tomorrow,” he insisted, and I was too overwhelmed, too wrung out to press.
“Okay. Good night,” I murmured and walked out of the bathroom.
He’d just confessed to wanting me for years, and I…I had done the same. The admission started a war inside me. Longing fighting guilt. Desire fighting self-preservation. We were married. I wanted him. My husband.Desperately. I was also having another man’s baby.
The convoluted web of my life was hard enough to process on a good day, and utterly impossible to untangle when I could hardly even stand straight.
How long had he felt this way?The questions started to pump into my mind like the slow and steady pound of my pulse.How long had he wanted me?
How would all of this have been different had he just told me sooner?
Chapter 19
Max
What had I done?
I dragged in a deep breath and flipped the bacon in the pan, grateful for my dad for dropping off the breakfast essentials—eggs, bacon, toast—at the crack of dawn this morning without asking any questions. At least, no verbal ones. His curious stare was easier to answer with a short rundown of what happened with Mrs. McCormick at the store yesterday. If it had been Nox or Harper, they wouldn’t have left it at that—the simple facts, not the complicated feelings.
I’d spent half the night tossing and turning, feeling like an ass for the way I sent Daisy away, but I was so fucked in the head after what had happened in the bathroom, I didn’t trust myself to make any decisions, let alone the right ones.
Grease sizzled and sprayed from the pan, catching the back of my hand holding the tongs, but I didn’t even flinch. There was nothing that burned me nearly as much as the memory of Daisy’s legs spread on that counter, her bedroom eyes soaked with lust and moaning my name as she pleasured herself to my command—came to my command—with his damn ring buried in her perfect cunt.
I tapped an egg on the counter to crack the shell. Too hard, apparently, because it split before I could get it over the bowl.
“Shit.” I grabbed a paper towel and wiped up the soppy mess, tossing it in the trash.
A metaphor for what happened last night. I’d been weak, a fragile shell of frustration in that shower, and as soon as she’d walked through the door and saw me, I shattered. The way I wanted her, the way I’d always wanted her, spilling into messy, mind-numbing domination.
I groaned and rinsed my hands.
What had I done?Guilt whispered.
What she wanted, a whisper talked back.
My second attempt to shell the eggs went better, six of them sliding smoothly into the bowl. I turned on another burner, cut a slice of butter into a second pan, and fished out four slices of bread from the bag.
The sound of my—Daisy’s—bedroom door opening tumbled all the way down into the kitchen. I gritted my teeth and grabbed a fork from the drawer.
There was no going back after last night. I’d crossed a line, a double-yellow one, that I couldn’t come back from. All that was left was to see just how completely I’d mangled not only our friendship, but our fake marriage.
Her footsteps started to make their way downstairs. She didn’t try to quiet her approach, maybe a warning for the both of us to prepare for the conversation that was about to happen.
What if she wanted to leave?
What if she wanted to walk away from me? From my help? My protection?
I smashed the fork through the eggs so hard you’d think I was trying to hand-crank an engine to start, not scramble soft eggs.
