“I’m protected.” She’d never wanted to worry about pregnancy with someone she wasn’t planning on spending the rest of her life with. And since she never intended to have that kind of relationship, long-acting contraception seemed smart. Thinking about it now caused a sharp pain to lance through her chest.
“You’re on the pill?” he asked.
“I have an IUD.” She didn’t meet his gaze, instead concentrating on fixing herself up for the walk back through the club. She shimmied her skirt down the best she could, well aware she didn’t have any panties to put on underneath.
“Hey.” Max tipped her chin up, forcing her to meet his gaze. “If anything happened, you wouldn’t be in it alone. But since I know that’s the last thing you want to talk about, we can
move on. Pregnancy won’t be an issue.”
Exactly what she wanted to hear. So why did she feel suddenly sad? And blue? Bad enough her brothers and their marriages were stirring up uncomfortable feelings about their childhood and abandonment, but now Max was inadvertently tripping those emotions too.
She shivered, suddenly cold, and wished she had a sweater to put on over her shirt. As if sensing what she needed, Max pulled her into him, wrapping his arms around her tightly. “And you can trust me on everything else too. I haven’t used the club in a while, but they insist on physicals, and I just had mine recently.”
She swallowed hard. “Thank you. I was only with… Well, I made him use a condom.”
She hadn’t wanted that kind of connection with any man she slept with. In fact, Max had been the only man she’d ever slept with and forgotten to insist on that kind of protection.
“Ready?” he asked.
To go out and face the world after he’d carried her through the nightclub like a caveman? If not for the loud music outside these walls, she had no doubt everyone would have heard what they’d done in here… although once they got a look at her, they’d figure it out anyway.
“Might as well get it over with,” she muttered, pushing herself away from him.
“We’re not walking through the front entrance. We can go out the back. I have my driver waiting.”
“You’ll drop me off at my place?”
He studied her long and hard before answering. “No, Lucy. Either I’ll come up and stay at your place or you can pack and we’ll go back to mine.”
She blinked in shock. “Wait, what?”
“You agreed. Your body’s mine, your pussy is mine. And if I want access to what’s mine… we need to be together,” he said as if he made all the sense in the world.
“Are you insane? I didn’t agree to living with you!”
He folded his arms across his chest. “No, you didn’t. If I had to guess at what’s going on in that head of yours, it would go something like this. We can’t keep our hands off each other; you want me as much as I want you. Since we’re going to be working together, we might as well reap the benefits of sex too. Then when the restaurant is finished, we’ll go our separate ways. How am I doing so far?”
She opened her mouth, closed it again, then forced herself to speak. “How did you figure all that out?”
“I told you once before, I know you.”
“How?” She needed to know how he’d gotten into her head so easily.
“Because I was you once.” He hooked his arm in hers and led her toward the door.
“Wait. Explain what you mean.”
He paused, leaning one shoulder against the still-closed door. “I will. One day, when you’re ready to really hear me, I’ll explain everything.” And on that cryptic note, he unlocked the door, placed a hand on her back, and led her to the waiting car.
* * *
Lucy stood in her bathroom, dressing to head out for a dinner with Max and Sebastian. But as she put the finishing touches on her makeup, her focus wasn’t on their plans; it was on the sounds coming from the other side of the door. Max had installed a pull-up bar in the bedroom doorway for his workouts, and she heard him grunting on each exhale now.
The man was a sight to behold when he worked out, all tanned skin and muscles glistening with sweat, making her want to plaster herself to his sculpted body, inhale that masculine scent she associated with him, and never let go. She’d gotten used to him going through his daily routine. And wasn’t that the kicker?
Never in her wildest dreams had Lucy thought Max was serious when he’d insisted that, one way or another, they were moving in together. Apparently he hadn’t been kidding, because a month after that fateful night at Glam, they were sharing Gabe’s old apartment. Of course, she could have told him he was crazy, said no, or done any other number of rational things. Instead she’d looked him in the eye and called what she’d thought was his bluff.
“We can go back to my place,” she’d said, too stunned by the fact that he had her all figured out. She was planning on walking away when the restaurant and their time working together was over. He clearly intended to make that as emotionally difficult for her as possible.