38

Cadence

Max’s mouth… his tongue, fingers… They’re everywhere. Stroking, slipping inside me… his tongue.
His tongue.
The first time a man went down on me, I was sixteen in the back seat of a car. He had been my boyfriend for all of six weeks; both too scared of pregnancy, we hadn’t had sex, but he liked it when I gave him a blow job, which I’d done several times. One night while we were kissing goodnight and felt his hand probing under my skirt, I suggested there might be other ways for him to give me pleasure.
When I came—so very quickly even with his clumsy attentions—he told me I was too loud. “Did you fake?” he demands. “You must have faked because you sound like you’re in a porn movie.”
The second time was when I was nineteen, and one of my clients at the club asked for a private dance in the back room. Halfway through, he demanded more, and when I refused and tried to leave, he pushed me down, threw me across the back of the chair, and stuck his tongue in my pussy.
The third time, it was a woman because a man wanted to see us together.
These aren’t going through my head as Max slides through my wetness, but I’d be lying if my knees weren’t shaking. Oral sex has never been my thing.
But it’s never felt like this.
My hand fists in the fabric of my dress bunched at my waist. Max’s mouth, his fingers… he wants this. He wants to touch me. To taste me.
I know, because he’s telling me.
“You taste so good,” he mutters, his tongue dipping in leisurely strokes along my cleft.
I stare up at the stars twinkling over the water. This is for me. Max is here for me.
“I couldn’t wait to touch you,” he whispers, his warm hand splayed along my hip, trying to cover more skin as his mouth—
His mouth…
My hips roll up, into, and my hands find strong shoulders, his head with the shaggy curls bent into me. The softness of his beard against my inner thighs.
“I want to hear you,” he demands as his mouth urges, demands, takes.
He steals my breath.
My hand search for contact, to hang on as the sensations rising, flooding every inch of me. Fingers sink into his curls, my pants turning to whimpers. I bite my lips to keep from moaning aloud because…
“I want to hear you come, Cadence.”

The use of my name almost pushes me over the edge, but I fight to hold on to some vestige of control…
It’s too much; it’s all too much, my body tightening, tight, my chest arching. “Maximilian,” I gasp, wanting, needing… I lean into the release that beckons, so close now.
“Come for me, Cadence,” Max demands in a voice husky with want.
“Maximilian… please…Max!”

And then the only voice is mine, my cries breaking into the darkness as he urges me on, taking me higher, ever higher; not knowing he’s breaking through the walls as I shatter around him.
He brings me down gently with soft kisses, hands stroking my hips and leans his chin on my stomach as he looks at me. Curls falling over his forehead, and the smile…
There’s nothing predatory, nothing possessive about his expression. He’s happy… for himself. For me.
My heart cracks as he slips into it. “Maximilian,” I murmur, my hands on his shoulders, urging him up to me.
And then he kisses me—soft and sweet, but it quickly becomes more, with heat and need and want, and I pull him to me, my arms open for him.
And then we lay on the lounge chair and watched the stars, my head on his chest, my heart racing as fast as his.
It’s like the wave knocked me down all over again.

Maximilian
We walk back to the condo hand in hand.
The boys are still awake, which surprises me because it feels like so much time has passed since we left the dinner. In reality, it was less than an hour.
An hour that left my head spinning with thoughts of Cadence.
She… we… it was what physically happened between us that has me grinning like a loon, but I felt the acceptance. Somehow, I was able to push through those walls that spanned her heart. I busted right through them. She didn’t hold back—I took her all.
She gave it to me. That matters.
“Thought you might have gotten swept out to sea,” Nick calls, raising a bottle of beer as a greeting.
“Felt like a walk,” I tell him.
Nick looks over at Cadence, so immaculate when we left for dinner, and now mused and rumpled. “Sure.” He grins, like my world hadn’t been rocked to the core.
And I think it might have been just by Cadence saying my name when she came.
Maximilian…
“Dude.” Dexter, sitting in the chair with his back to us, raises my phone over his head. “Your phone was going off. I checked—it was your dad.” His apologetic tone was like a punch in the gut. He’s not apologizing for checking my phone, but— “He seems upset.”
My grin fades like it’s been slapped off my face. To walk in with Cadence, happy and together, only to have to face my father’s wrath, is more than a punch in the gut. It’s a gut punch, a right hook, and then a kick to the balls, all at once. I stare at the phone with rising dread, along with a good sense of pissed off-ness that my father is about to ruin something else.
“Fuck.” I drop Cadence’s hand with the insane thought that I can protect her if I’m not touching her. Dexter hands me my phone with an apologetic expression.
“Is everything okay?” Cadence asks warily.
A quick glance at the screen tells me, no, it’s not. “Fine,” I say curtly.
She steps away. The mask is back, as well as those goddamn walls I busted through. I don’t even have to look at her face; her body language, the way she holds her shoulders so stiffly tells me everything I need to know. “No, it’s not.”
“Cadence…”

“I’ll go to bed, give you some privacy.”
I want to throw my phone across the room. Straight out the balcony door—let Nick, with his throwing arm that picks off runners trying to steal second base, toss it into the water far below. “I wanted to…” I try.
She shakes her head. “Deal with your father. Good night.”
And then she’s gone.

I stare after her, hearing the click as she shuts the bedroom door.
I want to follow her. I want to lay with her on the bed that I get to share with her and make her come again.
But I’ve got to deal with my father first. The thought twists knots into my stomach and being with Cadence is not going to be able to smooth them out.
“Before we get into the dirty daddy stuff,” Nick offers, handing me a beer. “How was the walk?”
I flip him the finger as I slump into a chair.
“Does that mean you’re not going to give up the details about your moonlight stroll?”
“It does mean exactly that,” I tell him. I take a deep mouthful of beer before I turn my attention to my phone.
Two missed calls. Six texts, each growing more impatient. In the last one, he uses all caps, like he’s shouting at me. He even sent an email.
“What’s going on with your father this time?” Dexter asks, his voice tight with anger. Dex is one of the most loyal people I know, and he hates how my father has made me so dependent.
I’ve never told either him or Nick that I keep working for my father as part of my agreement when he paid our debts. They would hate that, and most likely ruin their own lives to make it up to me.
I won’t let that happen.
I glance at the bedroom door to make sure it’s closed and set my phone on the arm of the chair. “He found out I brought someone down here. He’s not thrilled that it’s Cadence,” I admit.
I block out the words he used. They’ll be time enough to be angry when he’s before me, when I can tell him exactly what I think—
But can I do that?
“How does he even know?” Dexter demands.
I shrug. “He has his sources.” Especially since this is a Moon Resort. Who knows how many of the staff are spying for him?
“Why does he care who you’re dating?”
“I’m not dating. I’m not sure what’s going on.” I glance at the closed bedroom door again. “I want something to be going on, but Cadence…”
I can still taste her.
I’m ready to dive right into this. I want more than a weekend with her, more than a favour between friends, or business associates. I want her open and honest and vulnerable.
Losing control under the stars is a start, but I want more. And I don’t know if she’ll give it to me. If she does; if for some reason she wants to be with me as much as I want to be with her…
“I’m not even reading his texts,” I decide. “It’s none of his business who I bring down here. And why should he care about who I’m dating? Or not dating?”
I know the answer to that: my father has destroyed every good relationship I’ve ever had. And if he tries that with Cadence, I get the sense he’ll have quite a bit of ammunition.
I don’t want her to go through that. Would I even be able to protect her?
I stare out the window at the darkness of the beach and think of Cadence.