Page 72 of Misadventures with a Time Traveler

And then I’m gasping without restraint and hissing without shame as he grabs one of my thighs. With a chest-deep rumble, he hitches it over his shoulder. Staccato moans bubble up my throat as his primal groan echoes through my sex, heating me until I rock into him, needing more of his mouth on my tightest, neediest knot.

“I hunger for you,” he whispers against my soaked mons. “I will hunger for you for the rest of my days, Alessandra. For the rest of time.”

“Then make it stop.” I don’t hide the prayer in my voice or the ferocity in my touch, snaking my hands into the thick heaven of his hair. “Tell time to stop, Max. Tell it to stop. Now!”

As soon as the words leave me, he halts for a long moment. Jacks his head back, staring up the length of my body until our gazes devour each other.

But only for a moment.

Because after that, he yanks me down to his level.

He keeps my leg pinned to his shoulder, so there’s nothing about my body he misses with those blazing sunrise eyes, that ruthless blade of his focus. The same energy defines how he shoves down his sweats and then thrusts up inside me.

“Holy…fuck.” The words shout up from the most wicked, wanton parts of me. I’m sure they fill the room, but I don’t care if they bleed beyond that. I don’t care if everyone in Paris hears me.

Max pours his stare over me and surges his dick into me. Both are thick and heavy with masculine pride. Every arrogant, decadent lunge is a new testament to how he has captivated me…conquered me.

“Now,” he growls at last, “time can stop.”

Together, we fight for exactly that.

As I fracture beneath him.

As he explodes inside me.

Tears burst from me, unhindered and uncontrollable, as the last of my walls crumble beneath his daunting beauty, his desire. He smashes his mouth back to mine, though he doesn’t miss a single, perfect pump into me. His thrusts get deeper, stretching me tighter. His lunges spread the heat of his come through my entire womb—and finally out to the quivering pearl at my center. With just those drops, my clit is set off again. Every version of the F-word flies from my lips as my body becomes a puddle of pure ecstasy—and my spirit surrenders for this man, complete and consumed.

Even close to an hour later, after Max pulls out and cleans us both up, I can barely lift my head as he slides the pillow between my hair and his arm. I do, however, screw up the strength to mumble, “No. Want to feel you.”

He trails a velvety kiss across my forehead. “Ssshhh, mon cœur. The pillow is more comfortable than my arm.”

He’s got a point. Nestling on his arm reminds me of sleeping on boulders at camp. Raegan was the only one who ever thought that was cool. I, on the other hand, never really liked camp.

Max’s soft chuckle makes me realize I muttered the last of that aloud. “Errrrm, Sorry,” I add. Brain. Mush. “But there it is, dude. You’ve been bonking a freak who hated summer camp.”

He leans on an elbow and angles an adorable smirk. “I am hardly the one to be calling anyone a freak, ma belle.”

Snorting laugh. “I wanted to like it; honestly. But I could never get over why I was being shipped off to some glam camp in the Catskills or the Adirondacks.” I trace tiny circles into the center of his chest. As if those are going to erase the pain beneath my next words. “Mom always thought I was oblivious, that I didn’t realize exactly why her man flavor of the month was paying for it.”

The corners of Max’s eyes tighten. He feathers his fingers over the damp tendrils along my forehead. “But you did realize.” Then curls his hand in to cup my cheek. “Because a doll in a satin carriage is still a doll discarded.”

Well, that does it. For as much as I hate camping, he’s set himself up in a big one, right in the center of my chest. Of my heart. I try telling myself it won’t always be this way. Eventually he’ll move off to some obscure valley…

But right now, everything inside me is just the glow of his campfire.

And the ache of knowing how dark I’ll be without it.

I reach up and form my hand against his face, as well. “I don’t want to leave you.”

A hard gulp undulates in his throat. He pushes his face into my palm. “My sweet little freak. Do you not know yet?” He meshes his fingers with mine and then guides our clasp down to the center of his chest—where his heart beats with the power and passion he’s brought to my world in the space of a couple of days. “You will never leave me. You have been right inside here…all along.”

When I wake up the next morning, I’m in bed alone.

I don’t shy away from the urge to tangle back into the empty sheets, drenching my senses in the pine-and-wind scent of him. Nor do I stop myself from wrapping my arms around the pillow, where some strands of his chestnut waves have stayed behind. And yeah, I even close my eyes, stupidly pretending that the pillow is him and he’s about to drown me in a breath-altering kiss.

But when the morning sun angles through the window and stabs reality back in, I start drawing boundaries again.

Hard ones.