“She blocked your number?” I barely whispered the words.
“This is the point where I’m supposed to be heartbroken, right? Where I’m supposed to need some time to process, but Joey knew. She always does.” Max drew me close again, and this time, I went willingly into his arms, needing the weight of them, the warmth. “She knew what Crystal was, and she knows what you are to me.”
This last part was said in a low, deep voice, right against my ear, sending full body shivers through me, something that drew a dark chuckle from him.
“We were just wasting our time with each other, waiting around for the real thing to walk in that door. You’re the main event, Sage, the one I’d stopped hoping was coming, but now you’re here?”
I jumped when I felt a pair of very sharp fangs close carefully over the shell of my ear, then drag over the suddenly sensitive skin.
“You’re everything I ever dreamed of and more.”
30
As my eyes went wide, trying to process what he’d just said, he stepped backwards, dragging me into the swankiest damn bathroom I’d ever seen on a plane. No cramped little cubicle with disturbing wet spots here. The room was all gleaming stainless steel and white surfaces, but I didn’t get to see much of that, because there was him.
“Something happened today—something big.” His mouth pressed down on mine in a lingering kiss, but he forced himself to pull back. “No one’s told me a fucking thing, as per usual” —his hand went to the zip of my skirt, sliding it down slowly— “but I can smell the evidence of some of it.” He nuzzled his nose into my neck, sucking in big lungfuls of my scent. “Someone made you feel good today, but that’s not it.” His hand pushed down into the gap he’d created in my skirt, grabbing my arse, his fingers sinking in, then stroking the curve of it. “You smell needy.”
I wasn’t a moment ago, but now? His hands on my skin, his body pressed against mine, it seemed to wake something in me—something that wouldn’t be denied.
“But there’s more.” I was panting when we pulled away, just staring up at him as his eyes bled back to blue, a slow smile forming. “You’ve stopped fighting this.”
“White flag,” I said with a sheepish smile. “There doesn’t seem to be much point—”
“No.” He shook his head, herding me back until the sink hit my butt. “Don’t make it like that—like you had no choice.” He reached up and stroked a thumb across my jaw, then my lips, smiling when I sucked at the tip. “You’re choosing us.”
“I-It’s a work in progress,” I stammered out. “I’m still fighting to understand the process, but…”
He spun me around, putting my hands on the sink and forcing me to stare into the mirror, and that was when I saw her. My eyes were silver, just like theirs, and I looked like I stared into those of a stranger.
Only not enough of one. I could still see my puffy cheeks, my soft jawline, the way my—
“No.” He shook his head and then loomed behind me, pressing his hardness into my softness, then pushing a finger between my lips, making my teeth automatically clamp down on it. “See her.”
I thought he wanted me to see the differences they were making, the silver eyes, the fact my canine teeth seemed longer and sharper, but he pulled his finger free and then slid his hand around my throat, holding me where I was.
“See her, Sage. See the woman that will become our mate. See the only woman we’ll ever love.”
His eyes stared into mine in the reflection, burning with a strange kind of intensity as his other hand slid upwards, over my ribs, and then covered my breast.
“Max, I can’t—”
Any kind of heat or desire was rapidly evaporating. While I didn’t think this was typical of plus-sized women, for me to survive, to go out into the world, I needed to avoid the mirror—not look in it in the bathroom when I got out of the shower, glance away when I saw myself reflected in plate glass windows.Don’t look, don’t look, and then that way, I could pretend.
That I couldn’t hear my mother’s frowns, her censorious looks every time she saw me, a steady stream of her opinions about what I was wearing, eating, doing rising and rising like a poisonous tide, ready to drown me in its depths. They were all I could hear, see, think about when I faced down the mirror, and Max was unwittingly forcing me to confront that.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said.
No, I wasn’t.
“I fucking need you so much.”
That was only because some weird instinct was pushing the two of us together.
“I want… Fuck, I want you naked, standing here, legs spread, with my mouth between your legs.”
He’d think that until he saw it. Naked and standing there in these harsh fluorescent lights? It’d illuminate every lump and bump, the cellulite on my arse and my thighs, and then there was…
Max pulled away, his eyes finding mine, staring with all of the intensity of a predator with his prey. Except I was not fit meat for his teeth, and standing here, gazing at myself, that fact was ground into my face as surely as if he’d shoved me into the glass.