An American Werewolf in Hoboken (9 page)

Her brow furrowed while her breathing grew choppier. “What do you want?”

“I want things that have nothing to do with the bedroom.”

JC deflated from her head to her toes.
Ah.
Okay.
Now she understood. He liked the danger of getting caught—the risk they’d be seen. Thanks, but no thanks.

“So you’re into public sex. Like, in an airplane, a movie theater. A fetish of sorts? Maybe—”

Max cut her off by hoisting her up and against him, hard, their bodies meeting with a collision of muscle and the sound of chairs crashing to the floor. Splaying his hand across the small of her back, he shook his head. “No fetishes. No one-night stands. No public places. I want to get to know you
after
I make love to you, JC. It’s important you understand that.”

With her spine arched and her breasts crushed against Max’s rippled body, her emotions rose to the surface again. The heat, the fire in her veins, the longing. So much need it stole her breath.

But wait.
After
he made love to her? She planted her hands on his chest. “Is a round of meds part of your everyday life?”

Max’s head fell back on his shoulders when he barked a laugh. “No. No meds.”

What kind of pick-up line was this? What kind of man not only offered to help you find your lost dog, made up flyers to post,
and
fed you just to get you between the sheets, then told you he wanted to get to know you?

“Is this some kind of weird reverse psychology?”

“Nope. It’s just important you know this isn’t a one-night thing,” he murmured against her ear.

Her nipples tightened again, scraping against his muscled chest. The closer he pulled her in, the harder it was for her to think straight. His smell was intoxicating, and his muscled arms around her made her knees feel like softened butter. “Why is it so important?” she whispered.

He cupped her jaw. “Because I want you to remember that what I do next doesn’t define our relationship.”

She cleared her throat, fighting the excitement settling in her belly. “We don’t have a relationship.”

“We will when I’m done,” Max growled before he took her lips.

When their tongues met, her world exploded. The silken rasp, the luscious way he drove into her mouth, had her clinging to his shoulders, digging her fingers into the caps of them.

It was magic. Pure, deep, slow, long. A kiss worthy of all kisses, driving this mad lust, this sweetly painful hunger coursing through her veins to a new, almost desperate level.

JC’s arms went around Max’s neck, her fingers driving into his soft hair, her breaths coming in choppy pants.

Tearing his lips from hers, Max sat her on the table, blew out the candle and shoved the pizza to the floor. Bottles of beer fell, the glass shattering on the tile. It was a vague, distant sound in her ears, dominated by the pounding of her heart and the demanding throb between her legs.

Max’s eyes never left her face as he spread her thighs, sliding her ass to the edge of the table with rough hands and positioning himself between her legs. He kicked off his boots before dropping to his haunches to remove her sneakers.

When he rose again, he unzipped his jeans with slow ease, pushing them over his lean hips. JC held her breath.

Max wasn’t about dashed expectations—he was as beautiful half-naked as he was fully dressed. The skin he revealed just beneath his T-shirt was smooth and bronzed, as though he spent a lot of time outdoors, and topped off with a line of crisp hair ending at the crest of his boxer briefs. The very red briefs she’d wondered about earlier today.

Her fingers twitched, aching to trace the sharp outline of his hipbones, but she almost couldn’t move.

When Max dragged his jeans and briefs down to his feet, his cock, hard and thick, sprang forward, making her hands clench into tight fists, so strong was the desire to reach between them and clasp it.

Her brain tried to register everything that was happening, but her body was screaming at her to just let go.

She’d never wanted to let go quite the way she wanted to now.

Now.

Max hiked her legs over his hips, placing his hands on either side of her body. His eyes devoured her as he leaned down, trailing his silken tongue over the outline of her mouth.

She whimpered when another wave of wild lust raced through her, landing squarely between her thighs—he left her achy and urgent and he hadn’t taken a stitch of her clothing off yet. The raging burn he created in her made JC forget everything else but him.

Yet, there was something they needed. She just couldn’t remember what. And whatever it was, it was important—

“Condoms,” she managed against his mouth, never wanting his lips to leave hers again.

Max hauled her up without a word and carried her to a stack of boxes in the corner labeled “bathroom,” his eyes scanning each until he located the one he wanted.

Using one hand, he tore at the cardboard with such force, JC flinched in response as the contents spilled on the floor.

His eyes shot her a look of apology before he captured her lips in another kiss while he rooted around, making her forget everything but the roar of her pulse in her ears.

When he pulled his mouth from hers this time, it was an agony, a deep pain from a lost place within, and she found herself fighting another whimper. Max held up a foil packet, his eyes gleaming in triumph while he walked them back to the table and set her on it.

JC was nearly frantic to feel her skin against his, but Max didn’t remove her jeans. Instead, he pressed his wide hand to her chest and pushed her to the surface of the table until she lie flat on her back.

Hovering over her, he cupped her breasts—breasts that arched upward for his touch. When he shoved her shirt and bra out of the way to stroke them, thumb her nipples, she gasped. Still Max watched her, intense and penetrating, just before he pressed his scorching mouth to her breast and enveloped a nipple, tugging at it, bringing it to a sharp peak.

JC’s body reacted violently, her back bowing as she gripped the sides of the table, molten fire raging between her thighs. Max nipped at the tight bud, pulling it away from her body as he rolled his tongue over it.

She clenched her eyes and fought a scream, half-filled with frustration, half with indefinable pleasure.

A breath escaped her lips when Max reached between them and cupped her, dragging his thumb over her cleft. She wanted him to take her clothes off, drive into her hard and fast. Her heart raced as she squirmed beneath him, straining to the touch of his lips and hands.

On the move, he let his tongue find her exposed belly, kissing it before he worked his mouth over her lower abdomen and down between her legs. Max nipped at her through her jeans while every nerve in her body exploded, on fire with a relentless, driving heat.

“
Now
,” he demanded, gruff and low, before he skimmed his way back up along her body, fixing his eyes on hers.

JC didn’t have to ask what Max meant. She knew. And at this very moment, nothing else mattered but him inside her.

Nothing.

Gripping his T-shirt, she pulled it over his head and tossed it to the floor. Placing her hands on his chest, she kneaded the muscled surface before pulling his mouth back to hers for another deep kiss.

Max groaned into her mouth when their flesh met for the first time, tearing at her jeans and yanking them off in one swift motion. When his fingers slipped inside the leg of her panties and he stroked her clit, JC saw stars—white-hot flashes of light tinged with brilliant colors.

The brush of his naked thighs between hers, the slide of his hands as he lifted her hips, made her breathing choppy. Her impatience grew as Max ripped open the foil package and slipped the condom over his hard length. He hooked his thumbs into her panties and dragged them down her thighs then parted her, caressing her clit, moving in the wet recesses, leaving her thrashing against his fingers.

Max must have sensed how close she was to release, because it was just at that moment his fingers left her anxious flesh and his hands reached under her to cup her ass.

JC gripped his wrists when he kneaded the flesh while slipping his hard shaft into her cleft. She clenched her teeth to keep from crying out.

Max lie there for a moment, one agonizingly long moment, letting her adjust, letting the feel of their bodies pressed together become familiar.

It was exquisite—sweet yet stinging with desperation. Her hands roamed over his wide back, reveled in the endless planes of muscle and skin. She buried her nose in his neck and inhaled his scent.

But the wish for Max to drive into her became too much—too intense. So she wrapped her legs around him, silently pleading with him to enter her. She gyrated her hips, begging to be impaled, thinking of nothing but his stiff length driving her out of her mind.

“Are you sure you’re ready?” he asked, husky and low against her ear.

“
Yes
.”

Max plunged into her hard, making her back arch in response—and then everything became nothing but the sound of their bodies joining and the world tipping upside down.

He filled her with searing heat, stretching her until she thought she might explode from so much bliss. Each thrust was slow to begin, picking up speed as he ground against her.

Her muscles clenched his length and her legs tightened around his waist in reply to this wild abandon, this bone-deep craving to find release.

Max pulled her roughly toward him with each thrust as their hips crashed together, his jaw clenched tightly and his throat arched, tensing.

There was nothing gentle about this—nothing soft or subtle. The edges were raw and rough, an ecstasy she didn’t know existed until this very moment.

With that thought, her nipples turned to tight beads as her climax tore at her, screaming for release.

Max hissed sharply when he slid nimble fingers between her legs, spreading her flesh. He mumbled something incoherent as he found her clit, swollen and throbbing, caressing it until JC couldn’t prolong her orgasm.

From somewhere deep within her, a howl raced to the surface, erupting and shattering the silence, tearing from her throat, devastating the thin hold she had on control.

Her legs clamped his waist as she pushed upward, meeting the slick slide of his cock one last time before Max yelled into the room along with her, long and loud.

They lay like that while their chests smashed against one another and the sounds on the street below his apartment permeated the web of lovemaking they’d created.

Everything began to come into focus in slow increments of color and dim light. And then the battle within her started to wage its war.

She’d just had incredible, heart-stopping sex with a man she’d known for about as much time as she’d known one of the checkers at the grocery store.

Max Adams was her first one-night stand.

Chapter Eight

Viv would call her fifty shades of whore if she found out about this—because this was so unlike her. She was careful when she chose to sleep with someone. She took her time; she considered who she shared her body with.

But not tonight. Tonight she’d given it up as if Max were lobbing Benjamins at her and daring her to do him.

It was as if something had taken over her—some demon succubus had crept inside her body and demanded its due. As though if she
didn’t
order this man to make love to her, if she didn’t comply with what her body was screaming for, she’d die of it.

Which was utter bullshit. This couldn’t be blamed on the Linda Blair/possession theory her girlfriends always made jokes about when they hooked up with a man simply for the pleasure of it.

A slow descent from the madness she’d just experienced began as her body calmed, and she tried to rationalize what had just happened.

But there was one thing she couldn’t deny. Not in all her experiences had she
ever
had an orgasm like that, so rich in texture, so well defined and so sharply sweet, it had turned her inside out.

And now, there he was above her, his eyes staring down at her, as though he knew she was going to question her motives—her sanity. She slammed her eyes shut. She could do without the Vulcan eye-meld right now.

Max’s hands soothed her skin, sliding over it with gentle fingers. “Look at me.”

Never. Not if he pried her eyes open with toothpicks.

How could she look at him after that wanton display of lust? How could she look at him after being swept up in his I-want-to-get-to-know-you-after-I-make-love-to-you line?

Jesus, all he’d done was help look for her dog and order a pizza and suddenly she was buck-naked on his table, slapping her legs around his waist, and riding him for all she was worth.

JC shook her head. Eye contact was absolutely out of the question.

Max’s hand was gentle when he cupped her chin, tilting her jaw upward. “Look at me
now
, JC.”

“Mm-mm.” She shook her head again.

His sigh was long, his breath fanning her flushed cheeks. “JC, look at me, please.”

“No.”

“Isn’t that going to make it hard to find your clothes?”

Her lips twitched. “I’ll feel my way around.”

“We just made some pretty amazing love right here on my kitchen table—are you just going to ignore the ramifications of that?” he asked, caressing her lower lip with his thumb.

On the kitchen table, JC. Pass the salt
. “I’m working that out right now.”

“You’re embarrassed.”

“I’m appalled.”

“There was nothing appalling about that.”

“We’re on a kitchen table.”
Oh God.

“In fairness to your virtue, my bed wasn’t set up.”

“Obviously virtue is something I don’t have to worry about.”

He chuckled. “Open your eyes.”

“Not on your life. Now be chivalrous and go to another room so I can get dressed and slink out of here with minimal dignity.”

Dropping a kiss on her jaw, he said, “Not gonna happen.”