Free Desperate to the Max by Jasmine Haynes Page B

yeah.” She could have sworn she heard him moan softly. “I think that candle would fit right up your sweet, pink cu—”
    “You want to go straight there?” she cut him off, her cheeks flaming in the dark. Inside, Bethany preened and laughed, loving the game. Oh God, Max knew she was in way over her head. “What about a little foreplay?”
    “Foreplay?” He sounded confused, the breathlessness gone.
    “Yeah, a little kissing, a little touching.” This was mortifying.
    He groaned again. “Oh yeah, Miss Scarlett. Tongue me. Put your mouth all the way down on my co—”
    “I was thinking more in lines of starting with your mouth.”
    “ My mouth?”
    “Yeah. You don’t want to rush a girl, you know.”
    Silence for a full five seconds. “You trying to stretch out my time?”
    She twirled the phone cord around her finger. “No, just your pleasure.”
    “Lady, you’re weird. I want my money back. Who do I call?”
    “Well.” She made a little displeased noise. “I don’t know.”
    He slammed his receiver down in her ear. “So much for his sense of humor.”
    Cameron chuckled in the corner. “I don’t think that’s the way to draw them out, Max.”
    “It wasn’t him. I knew three seconds into it.” She jumped to her feet, snapped open the kitchen door, hung up the phone.
    “I can’t believe you’re embarrassed. You, of all people.”
    She rounded on his slight ethereal glow in the dark. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
    “I’m talking about your parade of one-night stands. How can you be shy after those?”
    She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t do that anymore. I only did because—” She stopped.
    “Go on, Max. Tell me. You only slept with those strangers to fill the void in your life after I died.”
    She swallowed. He’d pricked her conscience and stabbed straight into the microcosm of grief that still festered inside her.
    “So you wouldn’t feel alone and powerless,” he went on.
    “So I wouldn’t have to subsist on fantasies the way these pathetic men on the other end of that line do.”
    “You were never alone,” he whispered as if she’d hadn’t spoken.
    He was a ghost. He could be a figment of her imagination. He could be a manifestation of her psychosis. And he could only love her in her fantasies, no matter how real they seemed.
    She squeezed down on the pain, ignored it, and attacked him instead. “You forgot to mention that I was only reverting to type.”
    “Why does the truth hurt you so, Max? You had no friends—”
    “What about Sutter?”
    “You didn’t let me finish. Before you met me, you had no friends except Sutter. You were a loner, with a concrete wall around you a mile thick. You pretended you were powerful with a handful of men you didn’t even reveal your real name to.”
    Stoic. That’s what she was. Pretending she was stoic kept her from grabbing her stomach and crying out with the torment he caused.
    The phone rang again, right next to her, and she jumped.
    “Play the sex game, Max,” Cameron whispered insidiously. “You remember how. Use sex for something good this time. And please, try to sound a little bit more like Bethany. You’re not going to fool anyone as it is.”
    Ring. She disregarded it. “Why are you riding me?”
    “Answer the phone.”
    She did. It was part of the plan. This could be Helen’s Achilles. Cameron was right. She had to at least try to sound like Bethany. She closed her eyes. “Hello, this is Helen. What can I do for you tonight?”
    “What are you wearing, Helen?”
    Sloppy sweatshirt and jeans. She plopped down on the floor with her back to the wall. “Black lace bra. Garter belt. Stockings. High heels.”
    “What color are your panties?”
    She bit her lip before answering. The pages of the script were supple in her fingers, but Bethany had long since stopped needing them. They fluttered to the floor. “I’m not wearing any.”
    “Christ. Are you wet?”
    “I don’t know. Do you want me to