Becoming His

“Pie time!” Je

I leisurely swim my way to Max and wrap myself around his chest.

“I love you,” I say, kissing his soft lips before pulling back and looking him straight in the eye. “Don’t let Jameson drown. I kind of like having him around.” I vaguely hear Jameson brush off my comment as Max smiles and wraps one hand around my lower back and another between my shoulder blades, pressing me tightly to his chest as he kisses me as though the others aren’t feet from us.

I give him one last parting kiss before swimming to the edge of the pool and pulling myself out. I walk the few steps to my towel and wrap it around my bright coral printed bikini, and smile as I look back to see Max closely watching my every move.

That night Sharon and the boys join us as we order pizzas for di

“I’m beat,” Dad says, rolling his head back as they return inside. “You ready, mon moitié?” he asks, looking to my mom as she smiles at him.

Sharon stands and asks for Max to come help her with getting a few things prepared for tomorrow. She hugs each of us goodnight and then leaves for next door, followed by Max after he gives me a quick parting kiss.

“What did your dad say?” Wes asks quietly as my parents make their way up the stairs talking in hushed tones.

“Some term of endearment,” Kendall answers with a shrug.

“In what language?” he asks, furrowing his brows.

“French,” she answers, standing to help me clear the remaining plates and garbage from the table. “Our grandmother is Puerto Rican and our grandfather is French.”

“His English is perfect.”

“Yeah, he grew up here in the states. Our grandfather travelled a lot before ending up in Ontario where he worked as a translator. He had gone to Puerto Rico for business and met our grandma. They moved to the states, got married, and had our dad. They lived in Colorado for twenty years and then moved back to France when our great aunt got sick.”

“So he speaks French and English?”

“And Spanish,” I add, taking the empty boxes to the garage for recycling.

“That’s crazy.” Wes says, looking at us in disbelief. “Can you guys speak French and Spanish as well?”

“I know some of the basics of French, but no. Ace speaks French though,” she says, nodding her head to me as I open the fridge to get some fruit sliced up for the morning.

“You never told me that!” Wes accuses as he comes up beside me and grabs a large knife and a cutting board for himself.

I shake my head, slicing up some strawberries. “I’m not that great.”

“Say something in French.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know, anything.”

“Vous avez sérieusement besoin d’une coupe de cheveux,” I say with a grin. “Maintenant se remettre au travail.” I push him with my elbow as he stares at me for a moment with a look of awe.

“That’s seriously hot! What did you just say?”

Kendall begins giggling and grabs some shot glasses and a bottle of Patron. “She’s insulting you. I think she made fun of your lack of muscles,” she says, leaning against the bar.

“Douleur dans mon cul,” I say quietly to her, only making her laugh harder as I tell her to stop being a pain in the ass.

Wes looks between us curiously. “Which one’s giving me shit?” he asks, looking to Jameson.

“Beats the hell out of me. Probably both of them.”

“Ce pourrait être amusant,” Kendall says, making me return her grin. She’s right, this could be fun.

“Okay, no more French,” Jameson says, shaking his head.

“I’m just pretending that they’re telling us how badly they want us and how hot they think we are.”

“Have you met them?”

“They are kind of pains in the asses, huh?” Wes says with a smirk as he looks at me.

“Affirmative.” Jameson nods, drumming his knuckles against the granite countertop of the bar, making his way to Kendall as she fills shot glasses.

“It’s what you love about us,” she says, grabbing her shot glass. “Come on, cheers to loving us because we’re pains in the asses.”

“Santé!” I cheer, raising my shot glass as the boys smile and raise their glasses to ours.

Jameson and Kendall go down to the basement to start a movie, and Wes remains upstairs helping me get things ready as we exchange stories of our families and growing up. I learn that Wes’s family wasn’t very present, which makes my heart hurt for him. Never having experienced that myself I can’t relate very easily, but I feel incredibly empathetic to him as he tells me about how they’d never seen him play baseball and how he’d spent most of his time growing up with a woman named Marnie that was his na

“Did you get lost?” Jameson teases from the couch across the room where he, Wes, and Kendall are playing a card game as Max comes down to the basement a little after nine.

Max lifts his baseball hat and rubs it over his head, flipping it forward and then back around. “No, Billy’s just being a dickhead. I was trying to play interference.” I watch Jameson and Wes both turn to look at him with silent questions to ensure that Max is alright, making me smile in appreciation. Max gives a brief shake of his head, sitting at the foot of the couch that I’m sprawled out on, not wanting to move from anytime in the foreseeable future.

Jameson begins asking Max about the rules of a card game that he and Wes are arguing over, and Max turns his head to look in their direction as he lifts my feet into his lap and presses the pad of his thumb into the arch of my left foot. His deep voice explains the rules and reveals something’s bothering him. I can tell that he doesn’t want to discuss it, at least not right now, so I lean back and watch as he settles another disagreement of the game as his fingers continue to knead my foot.

As he gets to the pad of my foot, a soft groan leaves me and I close my eyes because this may be the best feeling I’ve ever felt. My foot slips from his hands that have gone still, and I lift my head from the couch to find him staring at me, the look of frustration that he’d had upon entering entirely gone. I know this look, the intensity in his eyes, and heavy breaths tell me of his yearning desire.

I smile sheepishly and pull my feet back and lean forward so I can whisper in his ear, “We’ll be home in two days. You have to be good right now.”

“You have to stop making sounds like that,” Max counters. His fingers run up and down my spine, leaving trails of tingles and fire, because even the most i

Sleeping alone should be comfortable and restful; Max is a bed hog, always wrapping his arms around my waist, braiding his legs with mine, and burying his face in the crook of my neck so I hear his deep breaths all night. Tonight I can move and pull the blankets on without Max complaining because he’s always too hot, but not having the heat and strength of his body beside me leaves me feeling bare and exposed. I roll to the edge of my bed in a tight fetal position, clutching a pillow trying to will sleep.