He shrugged. “I don’t know. It just is. It’s like an inside joke on the Web.”
“But I barely know the guy who sent this e-mail. They just hired him. Why would he . . . What’s it called again?”
“Rickrolling.”
“Why would he Rickroll me?”
Max shrugged again. “If he’s new, maybe he just wants to do something that will bring him into the crowd at work. The ability to make people laugh is a great icebreaker.”
“It didn’t make me laugh,” Amanda pointed out.
“That’s because you didn’t get it.”
“Which is exactly my point. And even after you explained it, I still don’t get it.”
He shook his head, but smiled again. “And I’m still not surprised.”
For some reason, his comment bothered her. “Why not?”
This time he sighed. But the sound was good-natured, not exasperated, something that surprised her. Usually when Max sighed at her, it was because he was frustrated. Right now, he just seemed to be amused.
“Because, Amanda, you never do anything that would put you in a position to be Rickrolled.”
To punctuate the remark, he pushed the pink drink closer to her hand, leaving a wet trail behind it. By now, moisture was beading on the sides, trickling down to the base, making it look very appealing. She had to admit that she was kind of thirsty. And she had been working all day. By now, everyone at work would be home enjoying their lives. Even Mr. Hoberman. Amanda was the only one who ever worked this late. She deserved a break for a refreshment.
As if cued by the thought, her cell phone rang, and she automatically reached for it. But Max beat her to it and, in one deft maneuver, switched it off and stuffed it into the side pocket of his shorts, immediately Velcroing it shut.
“Hey!” Amanda cried. “That could be an important call!”
He gazed at her flatly. “Do you work for a medical research team that’s on the verge of finding a cure for cancer?” he asked.
“What? No. Of course not. You know I—”
“Are you the world leader of a country on the brink of thermonuclear war?”
She made a face at him. “No, Max. I—”
“That’s right,” he said, feigning a sudden memory. “What you do is make rich, powerful people richer and more powerful, am I right?”
“Well, there’s a little more to it than—”
“Am I right?” he asked again. In the tone of voice a preschool teacher would use with a headstrong toddler.
Amanda said nothing, figuring it was a rhetorical question anyway.
“So you don’t have to be on call twenty-four hours a day,” Max said. “And you sure as hell don’t have to be on call when you’ve been granted a perfectly legitimate and well-deserved vacation.”
She reached toward him, needing her phone. Badly. He might as well have taken away her right arm. “But—”
He took a step in retreat. “I’m not giving the phone back to you until tomorrow,” he told her. “You’re off for the rest of the evening.”
She took a step forward. “But, Max, you don’t understand how impo rt—”
He took another step backward. “What I understand is that you need a break. More important, you’ve
earned
it, Amanda.”
She took another step toward him. “I know that,” she said softly.
“Then why won’t you take one?” Another step back.
By now, he was at the bedroom door. This time, Amanda took two steps forward, bringing herself to where her body was nearly touching his. “I need my phone, Max.”
He shook his head. Then he moved the drink he still held in front of her mouth. “Try this instead. It’s way better.”
She took the glass from him, set it on a table by the door, and repeated, “I need my phone, Max.” She held out her hand. “Give it back to me. Now.”
He dipped his head very close to hers and said, very softly, “Make me.”
Without even thinking about what she was doing, Amanda leaned forward and reached for the pocket into which he had pushed the purloined phone, and managed to get it un-Velcroed before he realized how fast she could move. But her move wasn’t quite fast enough, because he grabbed her wrist with confident fingers and jerked it back up, pinning her hand between his chest and hers. So Amanda threaded her other arm across her midsection and tried to snag the phone with that one. But, just as before, Max capably caught it, too, and pulled it up to join the first. Amanda tried to tug both hands free, but he held them firm, his grasp too tight . . . but somehow, in some weird way, not tight enough.
Out of nowhere, heat blossomed in the pit of Amanda’s stomach, seeping upward to make her heart beat faster, and downward to warm parts of her that hadn’t felt warm for too long.
“Max,” she said softly when she realized what was happening, “let me go.”
But he seemed to be aware of the sudden change in their postures, too, because his voice was a little ragged when he replied, “Don’t you want your phone?”
Amanda shook her head, suddenly not caring. All she knew was that she needed to get away from Max before she did something really stupid. “No, that’s okay.” She tried to pull her hands free again, but again he refused to let go. “Max . . .” she said again. But this time his name came out sounding thready and hoarse and . . . aroused.
But then he sounded kind of aroused, too, when he said, “Amanda . . .”
Before she realized what was happening, he lowered his head to hers and covered her mouth with his, brushing his lips gently over hers once, twice, three times, four, before she even realized what was happening. She started to pull away, but he followed her, dropping her hands to curl his fingers over her shoulders as he kissed her again, more deeply this time. Instinctively, she lifted her own hands to cup them around his neck, framing his jaw with one of them. His skin was warm beneath her fingertips, rough from a day’s growth of beard. He smelled of sunshine and ocean and something citrusy and sweet. He tasted sweet, too, and she realized he must have sampled the concoction he’d blended before bringing the glasses into the room.
Her last coherent thought was that this was something that had probably been coming for a long time, something the two of them had been fighting for years. Pure animal magnetism. They didn’t have to like each other to be turned on by each other. In many ways, a physical response to another person was even stronger and more irresistible than an emotional one. And that was all this was—all it would be. A physical response. But there was no reason why Amanda couldn’t lose herself to it completely.
She was, after all, on vacation.
Soon enough, she would have to return to the real world. But not tonight. Tonight she would do as Max had instructed, and take a break. A much-deserved, well-earned break. From her job. From her life. From her reality. From herself. Tomorrow . . .
Well, she’d just do like Scarlett O’Hara and think about that tomorrow.
Her decision made, she tangled her fingers in his silky hair and kissed him back, with all the heat, hunger, and desire that had been building forever, demanding satisfaction for them all.
She pulled her mouth away from his long enough to murmur, “It’s too bright in here,” then reached past him to brush her hand over the switch on the wall.
Thrown into darkness, they both seemed to lose whatever hesitation might be left. Max lowered his hand to the hem of her brief pajama top and tucked his fingers beneath it, skimming them along her lower ribs, dragging both heat and shivers in their wake. Then he hooked the waistband of her shorts and pushed them down over her hips, pulled her shirt over her head, and covered her naked breasts with both hands. Amanda fumbled with the buttons of his shirt as he gently kneaded her tender flesh, her breath catching in her throat with each new touch. He released her long enough for her to shove his shirt over his shoulders and arms, then captured her again when she moved her hands to the fly of his shorts.
Without thinking about what she was doing, she dropped to her knees before him, cupping one hand over the taut, hot flesh of his buttocks, the other curling around his hard cock. She thumbed the head gently, then dragged her fingertips down his shaft, closing her entire hand around its base. Then she moved her hand back up again, and pushed it slowly downward once more. Bathed in the pale lamplight from the living room behind him, his cock was long and shadowed, and for long moments, she only stroked him, palm ing the full head and dampening the rest of him with its product. When he growled his satisfaction with her touches, she moved her hand to the base again, guided him to her mouth, and pulled him deep inside.
“Oh, Amanda . . .” he murmured thickly. “Oh, baby. Oh, man . . .”
He tangled his fingers in her hair as she went down on him, circling him with her tongue, sucking him with her lips, quickening her pace a little with every long pull. She could feel him watching her as she moved her head backward and forward, felt him grow even harder whenever she took his cock deeper into her mouth. When she felt him begin to tremble, she released him, but before she could push herself to standing, Max was pulling her up and wrapping her in his arms, kissing her with a hunger unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.
For a long time, he only kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. Then he took her hand in his and led her across the room to the unmade bed, sitting on its edge and pulling her into his lap astride him, her legs spread over his. This time Amanda was the one to kiss him, looping her arm around his neck and opening her mouth over his. As she did, he moved his hand to the scrap of fabric she’d tied at the end of her braid and freed it, then used both hands to free the thick mass from its confinement. For long moments, he grasped great fistfuls of it, moving it over her shoulders, atop her head, against her back. Then, still combing the fingers of one hand through it, he lowered the other hand between her legs and furrowed his fingers gently through the damp folds of flesh there, finding the soft, sensitive bud of her clitoris and thumbing it slowly.
When she murmured her satisfaction from somewhere deep inside, he moved over her again, this time dipping a finger inside her as he stroked her. She rose up on her hips when he did, but he followed her as he had before, his mouth still clinging to hers. When she lowered herself, he drove his finger in deeper, hastening his caresses until she felt ready to come apart. Just as she felt her climax beginning to coil inside her, he turned their bodies so that she was flat on her back and he was perched between her legs. Grasping a thigh in each hand, he opened her wider, then lowered his head to taste the part of her his fingers had brought to near madness.
Over and over he licked and laved her, drawing circles with the tip of his tongue on her the same way she had with him, thrusting his tongue deep inside her the way she had taken him. She clung to the pillow beneath her head and lifted her hips higher, closer to his mouth and the havoc it wreaked, crying out his name again and again and again. He must have sensed she was near her breaking point, because after tasting her deeply one final time, he turned their bodies again.
Amanda found herself with her face turned to the pillow, her shoulders on the mattress and her ass in the air. She felt his fingers splay open over her back, then one trace down the long line of her spine, pausing just below her waist. Then he moved both hands forward, capturing her breasts in each one, rubbing the pads of his thumbs over her stiff nipples, and eased himself—all of himself—into her slick canal.
He took his time to fill her, leaning his entire body over hers to whisper hot, profane promises into her ear. His words inflamed her even more, and she heard herself speaking a few explicit, steamy promises of her own. Never had she spoken to a man so frankly during sex. Never had a man spoken so erotically to her. There was such a profound lack of inhibition between them after years of staving off too many emotions to name. She could scarcely believe she was doing this with Max—
Max!
Never in her life had Amanda felt more comfortable with another human being. Nor had she ever felt so aroused.
And that arousal grew with each new movement, each new touch, each new word spoken. They opened to each other in ways they never had before. Amanda rode astride Max, lay beneath him, took him kneeling and sitting and standing. But they had collapsed back onto the bed by the time they finally surrendered to the climax they had barely been able to keep at bay. She felt the cool kiss of the sheet under her back and wrapped her legs around his waist as he pressed into her one last time. They came together, crying out as one, their bodies going rigid as they rode out the waves of their orgasms. Then they both went limp and eased back onto the mattress. All Amanda could do then was wonder what the hell had just happened.
Well, that, and what the hell was going to happen next.
Seven
What happened was that Max kissed her forehead, murmured something about how incredible she was, pulled her close, nuzzled her hair and . . .
. . . and fell asleep.
Her heart still pounding, her brain still frazzled, Amanda lay beside him, not sure whether to feel stunned, spurned, or satisfied. What she finally settled on was confused. But, strangely, her confusion wasn’t about what the two of them had just done. In fact, the more she thought about that, the less surprised she was by the development. It explained a lot, actually. She and Max probably should have realized a long time ago that they weren’t battling each other so much as they were battling an attraction to each other. Even though they hadn’t liked each other, they’d wanted each other. But neither had been willing—or maybe not even able—to admit that. Not until they were here, a thousand miles away from home, out of their usual comfort zones with their defenses down.