“Yes. I didn’t know it could be like that.”
“Was it your first orgasm?” he asked, surprise lacing his voice.
She hadn’t planned on telling him, but after that she knew there was no place for lying or even sidestepping the truth. “Yes. My first everything.”
Max was stunned by that admission. She’d been tight, so tight it had been a battle not to come the moment he’d thrust into her, but he’d been too lost in his own pleasure to question it.
“And why is that, Alison? You’re a beautiful woman. A sensual woman. There wouldn’t have been anything wrong with you exploring that.”
“Control,” she said softly. “I never wanted to give anyone the power to hurt me. So I avoided relationships. Avoided sex.”
“What made you change your mind?”
She shifted in his arms and turned to face him, her copper eyes still cloudy with the aftereffects of her orgasm. Something that felt a lot like pride swelled in his chest. “You’re the first man that I wanted to be with. Before I … It scared me to think of being with someone like this. Being naked, not just physically, but in every way. But I trust you. I trust that you won’t hurt me,” she said simply.
He felt as if a steel band was clamping down hard on his heart. She’d been a virgin. She’d trusted him where she hadn’t trusted any man before. And what could he offer her but a cold, clinical relationship, void of any kind of sentimental emotion. She deserved more than that. But he just didn’t have it in him.
“I can’t give you love. I can’t give you the promises a woman should expect after her first time.”
“I don’t need any more promises. And we’re already engaged,” she said pointedly. “And what we have is better than love. We have honesty. We have a common bond.”
She was right. Love was no guarantee of anything, and they’d both seen that firsthand in life. He only hoped she wouldn’t have a change of heart. Virgins tended to take sex very seriously, which was why he’d always avoided them.
She slid her silky smooth thigh over his and her damp core brushed against his penis. He felt himself getting hard all over again. He wanted her. Already. Wanted her so badly his muscles were knotting with tension as he tried to hold himself back. But she’d been a virgin less than a half hour ago and he wasn’t going to hurt her by trying to find his own satisfaction again so soon.
She moaned and moved against him, her lips curved into a dreamy smile.
“Alison,” he bit out. “Be careful.”
“Why?” she asked, a full-blown smile spreading over her face. He found himself smiling back.
“Because you’re new at this and I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me at all the first time.”
“But I can’t promise I’ll behave myself this time. It’s been a very long time for me.”
Her eyes widened. “It has?”
“I haven’t been with a woman since before Selena died.”
The stricken look on her face made his gut tighten. “Was this …? I mean … you don’t feel guilty, you don’t feel like …?”
“Do I feel like I betrayed my wife?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“No. It wasn’t about that. There was no woman that I wanted to be with. I’d dated casually and I had put that behind me. I was married for seven years and I still wanted the stability it offered. Yet I didn’t want to get married again, either. That didn’t leave me with a lot of options.”
“And then you got stuck with me,” she said, her smile sad now.
He shifted to his side and propped himself up on his elbow. “I didn’t want to get married again because my marriage was such a disaster in the end,” he said, finally saying what he’d never before voiced out loud. “Selena and I no longer shared a bed, or much of anything else. There was no way for me to reach her anymore, and I stopped trying. Then she was killed in the car accident while I was away on business. I wasn’t even there to hold her hand while she died. It was my job to protect her, and I didn’t.”
“Oh, Max.” She buried her face in his chest as he cupped the back of her head, stroking her hair. “You couldn’t have protected her from that.”
“I should have been there for her. At the very least I could have done that. I could have tried harder to make her happy.”
“If she wouldn’t talk to you there was nothing you could do to make her. She chose not to share with you.”
“One person cannot bear all the blame when a marriage dissolves. She was fragile, and life forced her to endure things that would have wounded a much stronger person. I had a duty to my wife that I didn’t fulfill.”
Her expression turned fierce, a golden spark lighting her eyes. She put her hand on his cheek. “We have a duty to each other, Max. To make this work. I promise I’ll never close up like that on you. I won’t freeze you out. We’ll always talk.”
He kissed her softly on the corner of her lips, then more firmly as he rolled her underneath him. The feeling that swelled in his chest when she made that promise was far too much, far too intense. It shouldn’t matter. His relationship with Alison was about passion, and their baby. Nothing more. Emotions simply didn’t enter the equation.
But that simple vow kept pounding through him as he made love to her, fueled his desire for her. And when she cried out his name during her orgasm it pulled feelings from his hardened heart that he’d no longer imagined himself capable of.
“YOUR belly is starting to show.” Maximo put his arms around Alison from behind and caressed her bare midsection. She had been examining herself in the mirror in the master suite, sucking in her expanding stomach.
She swatted at his hand. “Just what every woman wants to hear!”
“It’s sexy.” He nuzzled her neck and kissed the hollow just beneath her ear. “You must know how sexy I think you are.”
She knew. Maximo had spent all night showing her just how sexy he thought she was. It had been a revelation. She’d discovered a whole, huge part of herself she hadn’t even known existed. A part of herself she’d spent far too long suppressing. She’d given her control over to Maximo for a while, and it had been freeing in a way she’d never imagined it could be. And now that they were out of bed she had her control back, and her heart was still intact. She could do this. She could maintain her independence and have a relationship with him. She wasn’t going to love him, or need him in any way beyond the physical.
“The feeling is definitely mutual.” She turned and wound her arms around his neck and traced his squared jaw with her fingertip. A tidal wave of possessiveness crashed over her. He was so very handsome. And he was hers. “I’m going to hold you to that forsaking all others bit in the marriage vows.”
“I will keep my vows, Alison. Why take them otherwise?”
“Millions of people make the same vows all the time. It doesn’t guarantee the promise will be kept.”
“It may surprise you to know that I’m familiar with the issues people face in marriage.”
She winced. “Sorry, but I told you I’d talk to you if I had issues. I just wanted to let you know I was feeling possessive.”
He offered her a tight smile. “I appreciate that. Maybe if Selena had talked to me we wouldn’t have grown so far apart.”