“Tell me,” I growl, my breath ragged against her lips, “does this fuckingfeellike I don’t want you here?”
She hiccups.
I kiss her again. “Good. I’m glad we have an understanding.”
What Are Fake Girlfriends For?
Max
Okay. When I was walking the trail to get here, I played this out a dozen different ways in my head. Did I hope he might want to finish what he started in the kitchen? Yes. But after the way he stormed off, a quiet hotel room away from him felt far more likely.
Not this.
Not the way he’s transformed right in front of me. The way he’s stopped asking. Stopped easing in. This isn’t the gentle giant or even the careful man I met before. This is someone done holding himself back. And even when I first laid eyes on him—his size, his strength, his restraint—I never imaginedthisversion.
This is the Bear. And he’s a savage.
Part of me regrets stubbornly storming out of the greenhouse because it’s freezing, but I’m so intoxicated by this man I can’t tell the difference anymore. I don’t know if the shiver racking my body is from the winter chill or the chilling, electric effect of his touch.
Is this how it starts? Is this how he takes women in? Slow at first, then all at once, giving them something they didn’t even realize they were craving? Is this how he makes them never want to leave his bed…or his side?
And because my brain can’t stand to let me be happy for too long, my mind chooses this random moment to drift to my ex, Alex.
Yes—thatAlex. Alex motherfucking VanNuys. Tech mogul. Soul thief.
We dated for four years, and even now, I still can’t pinpoint what kept me there for so long. What’s worse is realizing how the memory of him has lingered—quietly, stubbornly—keeping me from fully opening myself up to love again.
He never made me feel like this. Not even close. He never unraveled me with a look or made my body feel as though it were waking up for the first time.
And yet, I gave him everything. My trust, my work, my heart. He was brilliant and influential, and I believed in him so completely that it never once occurred to me I shouldn’t. He was going somewhere, and we had a plan to get there together.
That’s the part that stings the most. It isn't just the betrayal. It’s the realization that a man who never truly moved me still managed to take all of me.
And now here’s Eli, igniting something in me with barely a touch, barely a word, and suddenly the idea of opening myself again doesn’t feel impossible. It feels…reckless. Tempting. Like standing at the edge of something warm after years in the cold.
My chest rises hard against his. His eyes are dark, blown wide, fixed on me. He tilts my chin, forcing my gaze up, then his mouth follows the long, sensitive line of my throat.
His tongue traces a slow, tantalizing path to my pulse, and the sound that slips from me is helpless. A soft, broken whimper.
“The only reason I don’t want you here,” he rasps against my skin, “is because when you’re near, I don’t think about a fucking thing exceptyou.”
The words hit harder than his body does when he shoves me back against the thick tree trunk. The bark is rough and cool against my spine. He pins me there, all hard muscle and heat, and I’m already shaking under him.
Hiccup.
I whisper, my voice unsteady. “You always seem…so pissed off. Like I’m annoying you.”
His mouth curves, sharp and humorless.
“No, baby. I look like a man who’s been fighting to keep his hands off you.”
And then his hand is inside my leggings, no warning, no hesitation, going straight where I’m already dripping for him. I gasp as his fingers find heat and slickness and…
“Shhiiiit,” I cry, the sound ripped out of me.
His groan answers, low and wicked. “Jesus, Max. Still wet for me, baby?”
I smile as my head falls back against the tree, bark biting into my skin. “Finally waking up to the fact that you need to finish what you started, Bear?”
