The Forgotten One (The Heirs #2)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Max drove the rental car down the hill and onto the highway in relative silence.

Sarah leaned her head against the back of her seat with a sigh. “Was the Wrigley Mansion what you thought it would be?” she asked.

“Better. Good company, good food.”

She smiled over at him, then continued to stare out the windshield. “Reconnecting with an old friend added to it, I’m sure.”

He agreed. “It’s nice to know that someone from that time in my life didn’t let all the crap consume them.”

“It didn’t seem to consume you.”

“You haven’t known me for very long.” The memory of his first reaction to Chase and Alex coming to his house with the hope of a family, and how he grabbed the baseball bat in a knee-jerk reaction ...

“True. But what I have seen hasn’t thrown out any red flags.”

“What would you consider a red flag?”

Sarah seemed to lean into a thought before answering. “Hate. Quick to unjustifiable anger. Bad habits. Drugs. Intolerance for anyone that isn’t like you.”

Max opened his lips to comment, but Sarah kept going.

“Clingy exes. Questionable friends. Afraid of hard work and think the world owes you. Though to be fair, the world does kind of owe you.”

He found her list entertaining. He’d given up on the world owing him anything a long-ass time ago. “Is there anything else?”

“Red flags?”

“Yeah.”

“Plenty. But those are the ones off the top of my head.”

He considered her assessment and came clean with where he knew he came up short. “Any woman I’ve dated for more than five minutes told me I was ‘emotionally unavailable.’”

“Really?” Sarah sounded surprised.

“You disagree?”

She laughed. “Yeah.”

This he needed to hear. “What makes you think I’m not?”

“Why are we here? I mean, why did we spend the day fixing twenty years of neglect at Miss Abigale’s today?”

“It feels like the right thing to do.”

“Why?”

He shrugged.

“Do you think you owe her that?”

“I suppose.”

Sarah twisted in her seat as if she were making herself comfortable for a long explanation. “Let’s say we finish with her yard, her house ... all the things. You go home, and a month from now, she calls you up and says she’s got a leak in her roof and would you help her. Do you?”

“I can’t imagine I’d say no. She’s not a young woman.”

“Is that the only reason?”

He paused, watched the headlights coming toward them on the highway. “No.”

“No,” Sarah repeated, her voice low. “You won’t say no because you’ve met a woman who once held you and tried to protect you as a child. And in less than two days, you care enough about that lady to do all that you’re doing. You did the same thing with Alex and Chase. You didn’t have to hold back and keep who you were a secret for a second, but you did. You attended the board meeting to ease the burden for your brother and sister even when those titles are as new to you as orphan would be to me.”

“I think those things prove I’m not an asshole.”

“It means you care, Max. You show you care.” Sarah sighed. “Maybe you were ‘emotionally unavailable’ to the exes in your life because you just weren’t that into them. That’s a hard pill to swallow when you’re the one that cares more.”

Max rolled Sarah’s words around in his head as he pulled off the highway and toward their hotel. “What about you? Why are you single?”

“Because I have a rule.”

“A rule?”

“If I sense I care more for the person I’m dating than they care about me ... or vice versa. I know I’m not as into him as he is showing he’s into me. I end it. No hard feelings or broken hearts.”

“How long does it take for you to end things?”

“As soon as I sense it. The longest time took almost a year once when I was in college. I thought he was just as into me as I was ... He wasn’t,” she said.

“He didn’t break your heart?”

Sarah shrugged. “A little, I guess. I was young. I bounced.”

There was a toughness in Sarah, a strong sense of self that Max didn’t often see in the women of his past.

Max self-parked the rental car and took Sarah’s hand in his as they walked into the hotel. He’d done that many times during their dinner out. Holding her hand, placing his palm on her back, squeezing her shoulders.

Sarah never pulled away or called attention to his gestures, just smiled and accepted the feel of her palm in his.

An after-dinner weekday in a Phoenix hotel kept the place quiet.

A few staff members were busy putting up a Christmas tree in the hotel lobby even though the Thanksgiving turkeys hadn’t yet been cooked.

Max let Sarah’s hand go as they approached the elevator and called it to the first floor.

She pushed her glasses up her nose and repositioned her purse hanging off her shoulder.

“What time do you want to get over to Miss Abigale’s tomorrow?” Sarah asked when the elevator doors opened.

“That depends on when we get to bed,” he told her.

The moment the doors closed, Max turned to Sarah and reached for her face. His lips were on hers before she had a chance to react.

He felt the moment she understood what was happening.

She sighed a little sigh, her purse slid down her arm, and she pressed her body into his. Complete passion ... complete surrender.

Max kissed her, pressed her against the back of an empty elevator for several seconds before his mind registered that the elevator wasn’t moving.

He tore his lips from hers long enough to focus and pressed for the twenty-sixth floor.

And reached for Sarah again.

She ran a soft hand down his hip and around to his back. Her lips parted and accepted the heat of his tongue on hers.

The woman was a balled-up fire of passion, and Max couldn’t wait to feel her under him, her nails digging into his back.

The elevator came to a rapid stop; the ding broke them apart like the bell at a boxing match.

Sarah’s lips were parted, her eyes half-open.

He grabbed her hand and half pulled her down the long corridor to their corner suite.

Max reached for his wallet in search of the keycard, and Sarah wedged herself between the door and him and lifted on her toes to kiss him.

All the blood in his body rushed to his cock, and he forgot for a moment that he was trying to get them inside their room.

He kissed her hard as if he was trying to sate her appetite long enough to get the key, only she didn’t let up.

Max chuckled under her lips and fiddled with his wallet until he pulled out the small card.

He slapped the card next to the electronic lock, and they both stumbled as the door at Sarah’s back opened.

Sarah’s purse crashed to the floor as the door slowly closed.

Max shrugged out of his dinner jacket.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and hopped.

Max caught her ass as her legs wrapped around him, and he led them both into the closest bedroom. Wild, hungry kisses fueled him as they tumbled onto the bed.

She bucked and writhed against the clothed length of his cock, just as she’d done before.

Only this time, he wouldn’t be denied. The need to be inside her burned with its own life.

Max released her lips long enough to remove her glasses from her face.

Sarah started working on the buttons of his shirt.

The feel of Sarah’s delicate hands on the bare skin of his chest gave him pause; his eyes closed. A man could get used to a woman like her running her nails along his skin as she was doing now.

Max placed his lips to her neck, felt her pulse against his tongue.

Air rushed over his back as Sarah managed to pull his shirt from his body.

He shifted his weight until she was straddling him, and he went to work on her clothing.

Under her blouse was a lacy ivory bra, delicate and sexy. He tested the weight of her breasts as Sarah tossed her shirt aside. He sat up and lowered his lips to her skin above the lace. He played with her nipple through the material.

“Do that again,” she said as her head rolled back.

Max smiled and obeyed.

He felt her hips shift, open wider.

“I want you,” Max said against her skin, pushing her bra down, capturing one nipple in his teeth.

“You have me,” she gasped in pleasure.

That was all the permission Max needed.

With a twist of his fingers, Sarah’s bra was off and on the floor. He rolled her around to her back and broke away long enough to strip her jeans from her frame.

Her skin was peaches and cream. The kind of soft that didn’t bake in the California sun but simmered in the perfect temperature.

And her panties matched.

Max liked that. He liked it a lot.

Sarah watched him and squirmed on the bed as he stepped out of his clothes and the evidence of his desire pointed toward her.

She slid her hand down her body and under her panties.

Max’s balls tightened. “Fuck, Sarah.”

She smiled, knowing exactly what she was doing to him.

Max looked around the bed, spotted his wallet he’d tossed to the side, and dove in for a condom.

He’d never covered himself so quickly in his life before he batted Sarah’s hand away from her body and damn near ripped the tiny scrap of material from her frame. “You’re perfect,” he told her, his eyes capturing hers.

Her legs parted; her sex glistened.

He needed a taste, just a small taste before ... Max leaned down and indulged.

Sarah cried out with the first pass of his tongue. He repeated his actions twice, three times. But this would wait. He had every intention of feasting on her whenever she’d gift him the chance, but this time, he wanted to feel her squeeze around him in her climax.

She whimpered as he pulled away and gasped as he crawled on top of her and plunged, headfirst, into perfection.

They rose and fell together, her fingers on his back, his mouth on hers.

Her hands guided his hips, her legs wrapped around his waist until her breath started to hitch and catch.

It took everything Max had in him to keep from exploding every time the inside of her body pulsed against him. But he gritted back his need and waited.

“Don’t stop,” she pleaded.

This was what she needed, this spot, this pace.

Max held on, kept exactly the same rhythm until Sarah held her breath moments before his name was ripped from her lips.

He released his control and let his need build and suspend until he couldn’t hold back a moment more. And it was his turn to say her name like a prayer.