Crazy for Love Read online

  Chloe squirmed as she pleasured him, wiggling against the building need between her legs. She wanted to have sex with him right now, but that need was overridden by the desire to make him come like this. To hear his shout of need and feel his whole body spasm as he came.

  When his hand touched her, it was trembling. “Wait, Chloe. Jesus.” He urged her up.

  Chloe licked her lips and tried to bend back to her task.

  Though he groaned with the struggle, Max shook his head and pulled her up to straddle him. Instead of taking her, though, he tugged her down so that her stomach pressed into his wet shaft. “God, I missed you.”

  He kissed her then, and slid both his hands beneath her underwear to pull her tighter against his body. A moment later, the room shifted, and she was on her back on the mattress, and Max had her panties halfway down her legs. “My turn.”

  She wasn’t in the mood to demur. In fact, Chloe helpfully kicked off her underwear and waited impatiently as he knelt between her legs with an evil smile. “How much have you missed me?”

  “Well… It’s only been a few days.”

  “Oh, sure,” he agreed, dragging one finger down her belly with deliberate slowness. He traced the very edge of her hair, then followed the line down to the sensitive skin just above the hollow of her thigh. She jumped.

  “Ticklish?” he murmured.

  “Horny!”

  “But it’s only been a few days.” His fingers traced the plump lips of her sex, offering nothing more.

  “Okay, I take that back! I missed you like crazy. Come on now, you said it was your turn!”

  “So I did.” But instead of giving her what she needed, Max propped himself up on his elbows and feathered both thumbs over her, teasing her into a frustrated groan.

  “I’m still not convinced you really missed me,” he said, his mouth drawing closer, the words touching her with torturous faintness. “Maybe you’d better show me.”

  His tongue touched her with almost the same ghostlike whisper as his words. She whimpered, any attitude lost now in the darkness of her closed eyes. The world shrank down to that place between her legs where Max’s mouth hovered.

  His tongue ran lightly down her sex, then slowly up. Chloe held her breath and silently prayed for mercy. Max finally granted it, flicking his tongue over the spot where she most needed it.

  “Oh, God,” she moaned, hips twitching at the electric shock of pleasure.

  “You did miss me.”

  “I did, I did.” She let her knees fall farther open, trying to offer encouragement. It worked. Max finally put some effort into his work, and Chloe’s thighs were trembling in an embarrassingly short amount of time. She already felt that rise of tension, heavy enough to feel that she was sinking into the bed, but strangely buoyant, too, raising her up, up.

  And then he stopped.

  “What are you—?”

  “Shh. Slow down.”

  “No!”

  “Yes.” He nibbled at the top of her thigh, but before she could complain, Max slid two fingers inside her and sent her arching off the bed. In response, he wrapped his other arm around her thigh and held her still.

  Chloe felt primal, fighting against his hold, trying to get closer to his hand. She needed him deeper, harder, needed him to push every anxious second she’d suffered out of her body.

  “Please,” she breathed. “Oh, please.”

  He made a thoughtful little purr in his throat, then pushed up on his knees while Chloe gasped at his abrupt withdrawal. He tugged a condom from his pocket, and his hands shook as he unwrapped it and slid it on. Not as much as Chloe’s hands were shaking, though. She was right on the edge, in pain and empty.

  This time he didn’t make her wait. Max entered her in one hard, ruthless thrust. Her muscles froze with the shock of it, but her heart tripped over itself with greedy joy.

  “Chloe,” Max murmured as he began to thrust. Oh, God, it felt so good. So good.

  She dug her nails into his ass to pull him tighter. Max kissed her hard, devouring her mouth as he shifted higher on her body. And, sweet Lord, that was just what she needed.

  Chloe dug her nails in harder and he growled in response. Good. She felt like an animal and she wanted him to be a beast, too. He braced his hands against the bed and raised his chest, giving him more leverage. Arching her neck hard to the side, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the feel of him fucking her. Hard. And suddenly she was caught up in a wave of brutal pleasure. She cried out, screaming as her body jerked against his, squeezing his cock even tighter.

  By the time Max came, she was almost done shaking, but she couldn’t stop whispering, “Oh, God,” under her breath. Max was still above her, weight resting on his hands, head hanging down as he panted. She slid a hand into his messy hair and pulled him down to lie on her.

  “Good Lord, Max.”

  He made a sound like a mix between a groan and a purr. Chloe’s heartbeat slowed, but she felt a little twitch of pain at the end of every beat. She was so happy in that moment that it hurt. If she could stay just like this forever, body melting, sex still stretched tight by his body, she would.

  “I think you’ve ruined me for other men,” she whispered.

  “I was going to say the same thing about you.”

  She opened her eyes and smiled at the ceiling.

  “But with women, I mean.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He grinned, and she could feel the curve of it against her neck. The pain in her heart burned brighter. It was too soon for this. Too soon because she barely knew him, and too soon because she was surely on the rebound. Max was nothing like Thomas, so she found herself falling for him. Simple as that.

  Except that it wasn’t that simple. Max was nothing like anyone she’d ever known. Charming and grumpy at the same time. Laid-back and constantly worried. He was complicated, and the layers fascinated her.

  “You smell so good,” Max whispered against her neck.

  “I could put on some sunscreen for old times’ sake.”

  He shook his head, edging off her to get rid of the condom. “Why don’t girls wear that nice coconut oil anymore?”

  “Because it was meant to increase UV exposure? Those girls who used to smell like coconut? They look like coconuts now.”

  When he lay back down and tucked her into his shoulder, Chloe snuggled in with a happy sigh.

  “So how did you find this place if that crazy woman doesn’t like people?”

  “My dad was her mailman for twenty years. He said that every single day he’d find her standing next to her mailbox, waiting for the mail. Not anything specific, just waiting for the chance to glare at him if he was late. Then one day she wasn’t there. He thought it was a little odd, but the next day she wasn’t there, either, and she hadn’t picked up the mail from the day before. He got worried. He braved the forest in the front yard and knocked on her door and heard the dog barking, so he called the police. She’d had a stroke and hit her head on a table, and she would’ve died if he hadn’t noticed.”

  “Wow.”

  “Now that he’s retired, he stops by once a week to see her. She’s still ornery, but now she serves him cookies in her kitchen and complains bitterly about the new mail carrier. When my dad mentioned my search for an apartment, she offered me this.”

  “I like it.”

  “Liar.”

  He let that go, and so did Chloe. It wasn’t important. This place was only temporary and it reflected nothing about her but her misery.

  She decided to change the subject. “How long before you have to go back to your job?”

  Max sighed so hard that her head sank two inches before he inhaled. “Three weeks.”

  “I’ll bet you can’t wait. Especially after a vacation like this.”

  “Mmm.”

  She could picture him out there on the open ocean, sun-bleached hair whipping in the wind, smile on his face as he took control of every situation. “God, you must love it out there.
No stray people wandering in with their strange problems.”

  He took another deep breath, the air in his lungs whooshing under her ear.

  “It’s just you and your friends. How many people are on the ship?”

  “Between eighteen and twenty. Most are divers.”

  “Wow.”

  “And I’m responsible for every single one.”

  Chloe’s eyes popped open and she frowned at the little bookshelf against the far wall. Her gaze caught on Moby-Dick. Uh-oh. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m the dive supervisor. I’m responsible for every person who touches the water.”

  “That sounds perfect for you.”

  “Sure.” Such a simple word, but Chloe heard years of stress inside that one, small syllable.

  She pushed up on her hands so that she could see his face. “Max?”

  “Yeah?” He didn’t open his eyes.

  “Do you like your job?”

  He shrugged as if the answer were inconsequential, but he still wouldn’t open his eyes.

  “Max?”

  “I hate it,” he said flatly. He finally looked at her and his eyes were dark with misery. “It’s ridiculous. Who wouldn’t want to live on a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and hunt for treasure? It’s a dream job. That’s what got me interested. I had an ulcer my sophomore year of college—”

  “Max!”

  “It was a stressful year. I was trying to help Elliott decide on a school. I didn’t want him to make any mistakes—”

  “Everybody makes mistakes.”

  “Okay, I didn’t want him to make any really bad mistakes. And I had a girlfriend who…” He waved a dismissive hand. “Anyway, with school on top of everything else, I was a little stressed out. I saw a diving show on TV, and it looked so…quiet. And the first time I tried diving, I fell in love. The technical aspects of it were a little scary, but once I was in the water, it was just me. I’d never felt peaceful before. Ever. And in that moment, on my first dive, I was at peace.”

  She thought of the dive on the wreck and nodded. “I can see that.”

  “I thought I’d found the solution to my insane life. Living out on a boat, isolated, a limited number of people to think about.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It was a mistake.”

  “Do you hate it that much?”

  “Yes. At first, when I was just a diver, it was okay. But on my second ship, I didn’t trust the supervisor. He was lax. So I started rechecking everything and…it became my job, and I hate it.”

  “So quit! There must be something else you can do.”

  His muscles had slowly hardened to steel beneath her. “I can’t quit.”

  “You’re under contract or something?”

  “No. But I can’t leave. What if I leave and something happens to one of the divers?”

  “Wouldn’t they have a new dive supervisor?”

  “No one’s as good as I am.” The words didn’t sound boastful or arrogant. They sounded resigned.

  Poor Max. She could argue with him, try to convince him that he was being ridiculous. But she must have spent too much time pressed against him, absorbing his thoughts, because she could see the logic of his argument.

  But how long did his responsibility extend? How many years did the obligation remain? Five years after he left? Ten? He wouldn’t be able to tell her, so she didn’t ask. She laid her head back down.

  “Okay, so what would you do if you could do anything? If there were no repercussions to leaving the ship, what would you do?”

  He was quiet for a long moment, and Chloe used the time to spread her fingers wide over his heart. His skin looked so brown against her pale hand.

  “It’s boring,” he finally said.

  “That sounds perfect for you. What is it?”

  “I want to be a carpenter. Maybe a cabinet-maker.”

  “Really?”

  “Then I’d never have to see the ocean again. Or a boat. Or divers.”

  “Are you good at that kind of stuff?”

  “I worked for a carpenter in high school and college. I liked the precision of it. You were careful and you measured and, in the end, everything fit together perfectly. I was good at it. Before I gave it up for diving, I worked for a guy who designed custom furniture. The last time I was on leave I made a whole wall of built-in bookshelves for Elliott. It was so relaxing.”

  “Could you make a living doing that?”

  “It might take a while to be profitable, but I’m lucky enough not to have to worry about that.”

  “Are you saying you’ve been hoarding treasure for all these years?”

  His chuckle rumbled through her. “Exactly.”

  “Wow. A carpenter.”

  “Yeah, what do you think of the smell of sawdust?”

  “Hot. Much hotter than old seaweed. You should… You really feel that you can’t leave the ship?”

  He put his hand over hers and dragged his fingertips lightly over her knuckles. “No one in the industry has a better record than I do. How do I get past that? My shipmates are like family. How can I turn them over to someone I know isn’t as careful as I am?”

  She didn’t know the answer to that. It wasn’t his responsibility to take care of these people for the rest of his life, except that for him, it was. The weight of it pulled his voice down when he spoke about the ship. It pulled him down.

  She didn’t have an answer, so she just wrapped her arms around him and held him until they both fell asleep.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MAX WAS IN HEAVEN. He woke slowly, aware that he was in a dark, unfamiliar room. No water sounds drifted to his ears. No crashing waves or lapping ocean. In fact, the only thing he could hear was an air conditioner whirring away somewhere to his left, keeping the room cold while a pile of covers kept his body warm. The round ass pressed against his dick was helping keep his body temperature up, too. Chloe.

  He stretched slowly, careful not to wake her. She stirred enough to make him gasp, then settled back into sleep. This was what he’d been missing in his life. A sweet, soft woman and not one other person to think about.

  Hard as he was, he didn’t do anything more than sneak an arm around her waist. She murmured something too soft to hear and curled her fingers over his to hold him tightly. Max closed his eyes and wondered what it would be like to live like this. On land, in a tiny apartment, with Chloe.

  He had no right to think such things, of course. His job would take him away soon, and Chloe wasn’t in a place that invited long-term commitment, but inside his own head, Max could think whatever he wanted to. Then again, he couldn’t think of much of anything when Chloe nudged her ass even tighter against him with a sleepy little sigh. Nice.

  Fingers still covered by hers, he slid his hand up to cup her breast. Her hand tightened against his, pressing him into her. She was awake, and she wanted him.

  Max made love to her more slowly than he’d ever made love to anyone. It seemed as if a whole hour had passed before he collapsed on his back, as exhausted as if he’d never even slept. But Chloe was wide-awake. She bounced up to her knees, making for a very nice, if sadly unlit view.

  “It’s only six-thirty,” she said.

  “Mmm. More sleep.”

  “Okay, but…the paparazzi will be here in an hour, and unless you want to have Ramen noodles for breakfast, we should sneak out now.”

  The bed was so soft. He curled a hand around the silk skin of her thigh and closed his eyes. “Ramen is great.”

  When she slapped his arm, Max’s eyes popped wide-open. “Get up. I used up a lot of calories last night. And this morning. I want blueberry pancakes.”

  His stomach growled in response, and Max aimed a glare at his traitorous belly.

  “Come on. Shower with me?”

  Well, then. “Is your shower big enough for two?”

  “Nah. I was just trying to trick you into getting up.”

  “Heartless witch.” But heartless or not, M
ax decided he’d do anything to make her happy, even stumble out of bed before dawn. They showered and dressed, then Max stopped to lecture her about not having a smoke detector in her bedroom before they tiptoed down the stairs and opened the ancient wooden garage door. It was Sunday morning, and not another soul seemed to be awake. Relieved, Max started to open the passenger-side door, but Chloe shook her head.

  “Wrong side. You sit over here.”

  He walked around the white SUV. “You want me to drive?”

  “Nope,” she said as she slid into her seat and slammed the door.

  Max opened his door with a frown. “If you…What the hell?” There was no steering wheel, no gas pedal.

  “My dad got it at auction from the post office for a steal.”

  “A steal? The steering wheel’s on the wrong side!”

  “It’s a mail carrier truck. On rural routes, the driver can stick mail in the boxes without having to get out of the truck.”

  “But…” Max registered some vague memory of seeing an arm reach out of a truck to stick a stack of envelopes in a mailbox. “But it’s on the wrong side.”

  “Come on. I’m hungry.”

  Frowning, he sat down and buckled his seat belt, his head buzzing with the wrongness of the layout. He kept frowning even when Chloe leaned in to kiss him on the cheek.

  She backed out of the garage, then hopped out to lower the door, the rising sun sneaking through the houses to light her face in a rosy glow. But Max barely noticed this; he was too busy feeling nervous.

  He was okay when she eased the truck down the narrow alley and onto the tree-shaded side street, but before he could prepare himself, Chloe turned onto the wider street that fronted the house, and soon they were driving way too fast for Max’s taste. He clutched the handle of the door, totally disoriented by the vehicle’s mixed-up layout. His foot pressed against a phantom brake pedal, toes straining so hard that they hurt. He was in the position of responsibility, the driver’s seat, and there was nothing he could do to control the truck.