Then, without warning, he slips his arms around me and lifts me from the table. I barely have time to gasp before he carries me across the greenhouse, his grip careful.
He lowers me onto a padded bench tucked along the wall and lays me down there. Instead of stepping away, he moves in close, his body blocking the draft, trapping heat between us.
He takes a moment to shrug off the last layers of clothing in his way before settling back between my knees with deliberatefocus, his hands sliding to my hips again as the charged tension between us rebuilds, slow and inevitable.
He’s hovering, his presence wrapping around me instead of pressing down.
“Okay,” he whispers again.
“Okay…what?” I ask.
His hand drifts to my stomach, tracing slow, absent circles around my belly button. “You can be here for me. I’ll take care of you,” he says softly. “In all the ways we both need.”
I’m noticeably startled, but he continues. The casual way he talks about it, reminding me this kind of arrangement is nothing new to him.
“I won’t rush you. I won’t push you past where you can go,” he continues. “But you can fall apart with me, Max and I’ll hold it. I’ll hold you.”
The words undo something deep in my soul.
“But,” he adds gently, his eyes searching mine, “you can’t fall in love with me.”
There it is. The line in the sand.
And while I’ve spent the last ten years preparing myself for arrangements like this—indulging in dynamics exactly like this—something about the way he says it makes me pause. Makes me wonder why this is the one rule he’s laying down so firmly. This law.
I raise a brow. “Okay. And how do you know you won’t fall in love with me?”
He exhales, an almost smile tugging at his mouth. “Oh, Maxine Palmer. Don’t you see it? I am absolutely going to fall in love with you. I’m just not the kind of man who holds on to the women he loves. So let’s do each other this kindness while you’re here. One week.”
Those two words again. One week.
“So what—you’re some kind of hippie lumberjack who makes love to whoever wanders through town?”
That earns a real laugh. “Not at all,” he says. “I’m much more selective than that.”
And still… I don’t get it.
I shake my head slowly. “I don’t understand you, Bear,” I say.
He grins, easy and maddening. “That makes two of us, Mama.”
And when he kisses me again, it’s breath-taking. Reminding me what it feels like to be safe enough to let go.
This time, when he enters me, it isn’t about consuming or being consumed.
It’s about staying.
One week.
Boris-Kodjoe-Chestnutian
Max
I’m still suspended in disbelief. Every inch of my body is lit up from this man’s touch, and yet my first instinct is to send a five-alarm group text to Eslin, Timantha, and the Cockpit Chix. I need to tell them I’ve somehow stumbled into the kind of love story I never thought possible for myself. And this one feels like it was written for me. And no one else.
And with a man who can only be described as Boris-Kodjoe-Chestnutian. A whole species that exists solely in the deepest, filthiest corners of my nerdy mind.
I still can’t quite believe what just happened.
