breaths mingled. “Yeah?” A slow smile. “I guess that makes me a lucky man.” Moving to face her, he tugged at her arms until she lowered them from around her waist. Then he pulled off her jacket. “Baby, if I strip you, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to keep on being noble.”
Something snapped awake inside of her, electrified at the idea of Max seeing her naked. “I’ll be all right.”
Shifting back, Max took out something from the closet. “You can put this on after.”
It was, she saw, one of his shirts. She could’ve as easily asked him to go into her apartment and retrieve some of her own clothing, but she took the shirt . . . took the scent of Max into her hands. “Thank you.”
“There’s a spare towel on the rail. Leave the door open,” he said. “I’ll be in the living room—I want to be sure I hear you if you call out.”
She couldn’t find the words she wanted to say, so she forced her feet forward and into the bathroom. Leaving the door ajar, she listened to the sounds of Max moving about in the bedroom as he changed. By the time she peeled off her clothing and stepped into the shower, she no longer felt so close to breaking. Still, there was a new fragility inside of her, a new fracture in her innermost psychic shields.
Turning off the shower only after her skin was pink from the heat, she got out and used the spare towel to dry herself, then picked up Max’s shirt and brought it up to her nose. It had been laundered, but she could sense echoes of Max’s innate scent beneath the freshness of the detergent.
It slipped easily over her body, hanging to midthigh. The color was white, but the fabric was thick enough that she didn’t have to worry about her lack of underwear being embarrassingly obvious. Not that Max wouldn’t already be aware that she was naked beneath his shirt. Feeling her cheeks color, she put her dirty clothes—and gloves—in a neat pile to the side, then stepped out into the bedroom.
It was empty.
Glad for the reprieve, she found herself walking to the dresser. A plain black comb lay on the surface, along with a wallet and a keycard. The austere nature of it suited him, she thought, because for all his masculine beauty, Max was a cop through and through. Taking the comb, she lifted it up to her hair. It felt wonderfully intimate to run it through the damp strands, and she imagined what it would be like to have him stroke her scalp with those strong fingers of his instead.
“Sophie.”
Startled, she dropped the comb on the dresser, turning to find him leaning against the doorjamb. He’d changed into faded blue jeans and a plain black T-shirt that caressed his lithe frame with soft ease. “You look so young,” she said. With his hair sliding over his forehead and his expression outwardly relaxed, he could’ve been a college kid . . . but there was too much knowledge in those uptilted eyes.
“Look who’s talking.” With that, he pushed away from the doorjamb and closed the distance between them with that inherently masculine grace. “You look good in my shirt.”
She tugged at the cuffs she’d rolled up to her wrists, nervous in a way she couldn’t explain. “Max, I—” The words stuck in her throat, hard, jagged.
Eyes of near black met hers as he bent his knees to bring himself down to her height. “What do you need?”
The dam burst. “Will you hold me, Max?”
Max stepped closer. “Always. But are you sure? Your shie—”
“Please.”
His arms came around her, gently, so gently, as if he was afraid she’d shatter. But when she locked her own around his waist in an iron-tight embrace, his hold turned unbreakable. The electricity of their contact arced through her, but beneath it all was a tranquil, pure silence.
A sigh rippled out of her, as she found sweet relief from the unremitting pressure of the millions of minds in the vicinity, the billions of thoughts pressing down on her. When Max shifted his embrace to cup the back of her head, she shuddered.
He froze. “Sophie?”
“All I feel is you,” she whispered against his body, the warmth of him making her want to rub her face against him, rub her skin against him until he was a part of her. “Just you.”
“More?” A husky question.
“More.”
Bending his head, he touched his lips to her temple, one of his arms moving up to curve around her shoulders, his fingers tangling in her hair. She expected him to speak, but what he did instead was drop a line of kisses along her cheekbone and down over her jaw. Shivering from the sensation, from the near-painful pleasure of the contact, she stood on tiptoe, trying to get closer. A raw male chuckle.
And then Max kissed her.
This was no brush, no teasing taste. He took her mouth with the contained intensity she could feel thrumming beneath her fingers, his muscles taut, his entire body held barely in check. And she realized he was savagely angry, a tiger no longer on the leash.
His tongue swept against hers, buckling her knees. She gripped his shoulders, tried to hang on, drowning in the dark, masculine taste of him. Her heart was a rapid beat within her rib cage, her mind a place of splintering chaos. The only anchor, the only reality, was Max. His shoulder muscles shifting beneath her grasp, he moved one arm down to clamp over her lower back, his hand scrunching up the material of the shirt.
Air brushed the backs of her thighs, and she remembered she was standing in front of a mirror. But the thought was gone in the next instant as he tugged at her hair to angle her head for a deeper, hotly sexual kiss. Wet and open and demanding, it was the most intimate contact of her life. Her chest grew tight, so tight.
“Breathe.” A harsh order as Max broke the kiss.
Sucking in a gasping breath, she pressed her mouth back to his. Kissing was . . . wild and exhilarating and so shockingly intimate, she wasn’t sure she could handle what came afterward. But she would. “No.” The protest was rasped out as he broke the kiss a second time and gripped her arms, holding her hands from him.
A red flush rode his high cheekbones, and his voice, when he spoke, trembled with the force of emotion, “You’re not thinking straight.”
“I can’t be alone, Max.” She tried to close the gap between them, but he was too strong. “I want you.”
“You had one hell of a psychic shock today,” he said, refusing to budge. “I’m not about to let you cause further damage by overloading your—”
“Stop it,” she snapped out in spite of the fact that her skin was all but crawling with need, and had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes narrow. “I’m not a child you have to protect. I know what I want.”
Max hissed out a breath. “Your shields—”
“I don’t know what’s happening with my shields,” she said, blunt in her need, “but I know that right now, I’m an enigma to those in the PsyNet. This is my chance. If that shield fails tomorrow, if my mind is torn open, so be it—but don’t you dare deny us this because you think you’re protecting me. Don’t you
Max’s fingers flexed on her wrists, but he didn’t pull her forward. “What about me?” he asked, anger a vibrating thread in his voice.
She was taken aback by the question, by the glittering emotion in his eyes. “Max—”
“What the fuck do you think it’ll do to me to love you, then watch as your mind breaks?” Veins stood out along his arms, as if he was having to hold himself in vicious check to keep from shaking her.
CHAPTER 32
Sophia’s expression shifted from one emotion to the next with lightning speed, but Max had anticipated her, held her tight when she tried to tug herself out of his grasp.
“No,” he said, “you don’t get to be a coward and back away now.”
Her eyes blazed with fire. “I’m not being a coward. You’re right—it was selfish of me to ask this of you.”
