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I lean down, kissing her again. There’s nothing else I can do. I feel drawn to her so strongly I almost don’t understand it, but I do. I’m through questioning it. Fate and love and lust, all of it… I’m hungry.
We belong together—just me and her. I can barely think. All I want to do is melt into my Ellie.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Ellie
I push against him, feeling his heart almost thundering out of his chest. His hands get tighter on my hips, sending tingles all over my body. My sex aches as it does in class when I push my legs together and like when he licked and kissed my pussy in the tattoo studio.
I force myself to stop, grab his arms, and look up at him. I need to focus on something, and maybe that can be us. Me and him, what it means. Not Jane, her lies…
“Wait,” I say. “Wait… the bruise, Jane’s bruise. Does that mean she…”
“During our argument, when I was leaving, she punched herself in the face. She bragged that she’d tell everyone I hit her.”
I grab his chest, more tears springing to my eyes. I thought I would’ve cried myself out by now. “You have to be telling the truth. Don’t lie to me. Not after what you just said. You can’t mean it.”
“You’re the only person who’s ever made me feel a goddamn thing,” he says passionately, claiming my lips again.
I should demand that he tell me it’s true again. It’s not a trick or a game, but all I can think about is the warm pressure of his lips, the heat fusing us closer and closer together.
“What does that mean?” I gasp between kisses.
He breathes hot, shivering over my face. Much of my family life is dying right here from this exchange—from trusting him over my aunt. If I turn out to be wrong… But it all makes much more sense. I can’t imagine my man hurting somebody like that, but what if I am wrong? What if I turn up on some Netflix documentary as some unsuspecting victim of this master con man? That almost makes me laugh. I can’t believe it.
“It means exactly what I said.” He pushes against me, his manhood firm and long and hard against my hip. “I was cold. I lost myself in tattoos, then books. Then I saw you, and I stopped being cold. I’ve been reading the sonnets recently, and I finally understand them. It’s not about romance. It’s not even about choice. It’s about knowing that someone belongs to you the second you see them.”
“M-Max,” I whisper, trying to push the tears away.
“What does it mean?” he says passionately. “It means when I saw you, I saw a house filled with happy, laughing children. It means I immediately imagined us getting married. It means being with you is the only thing I want. It means knowing you’re mine, not just dirty talk, Ellie, but really mine.”
His words shower down on me, powerful and persuasive. I want so badly for them to be true. I want so badly to believe.
“What?” he says, tickling my face when he brushes my hair behind my ear. I love it when he does that.
“It’s a bit… unrealistic, isn’t it?” I say, ignoring his wounded expression. “I mean, you saw me, knew nothing about me, not even my name, and wanted a whole life together?”
“It’s unrealistic. It’s surreal, and it’s true.” He tightens his hands on my hips as though claiming me repeatedly. “I own you. It’s a primal impulse. I don’t understand it. It’s beyond reason. It’s poetry, Ellie. That’s what it is. I own you.”
“And I own you?” I whisper, touching his hand.
He nods. “Just us. Me and you. Together. Then, when you’re ready, we’ll bring children into this world. I know I sound like a caveman, but that’s what I felt the second I saw you. No, not felt, knew. I knew it.”
I touch his hand. “You know that sounds crazy, right? Or maybe…”
“Say it, Ellie, anything. I’ve put it all out there. I want the truth. That’s all.”
“Or maybe it’s a line a professor says to students. He thinks they’re gullible, naïve, and stupid. He tells them he wants them forever, but later, he ditches them. Does that seem like a crazy scenario to you?”
“I’ve seen scenarios like that,” Max says, “but that isn’t this. It’s not us. You’re my woman. I’m going to ma—”
I spring toward him and cut him off with a kiss. He growls in that unique way, like he’s struggling to hold back his lust, his hunger. He pushes against the small of my back, grinding our bodies closer together.
“You can’t say that,” I whisper between the kisses. “Not if you don’t mean it.”
“I do mean it,” he growls.
“We’ve hardly spent any time together.”
“It’s not about time. It’s an ‘ever-fixed mark.’” His voice gets huskier as he quotes the sonnet. “That’s what this is. It’s primal.”
