*This part comes with a warning. As a request, this part was written as a bonus scene and I thought some of My Lovely Followers would like it, but it is for mature audiences ONLY!*
To feel is a risk of falling, but to love is a risk of soaring.
The following day, no one was surprised to see Ava and Max come strolling hand-in-hand up to Jessica's new house to help upload. They were surprised, however, by the ease with which they found them in. It is as though they have been together for months, and not hours. Neither wore their headphones because together they are each other's anchor. Before long, Jessica and Ryan were barking orders about what goes where, and everyone ate, drank, and laughed. Ava managed to escape with baby Aiden but only for a few minutes before Hazel appeared and stole him. Ava tried to voice her disapproval, but it was hard to do so when Max came up behind her and stole her attention. She melted into him and he nuzzled into her, and it was as if they had not been apart for a few hours.
By that night, everyone was used to seeing them together, as if they always had been. Yet, they were still the same people, and no one said a word when they disappeared from the party. Back in Ava's apartment, the pair end up falling asleep during a movie. It is not because the movie is not engaging, but rather because they were at ease in each other's arms, it is not a surprise when Ava awakens when he gets up. It takes her a few minutes he is not in the living room, but rather sitting at the end of her bed removing his prosthetic. He had done the same thing the night before and fell asleep on her bed before she realized he had moved from the couch. She knows it has been bugging him, but he refuses to admit it. He does not want her to see it either, always keeping it covered with or without the prosthetic.
Max hears her coming and props the prosthetic against the wall and moves to grab a blanket off her bed. She knows it is not to cover up his boxers. "Don't..." She starts while moving quickly into the room. He falters and looks up at her, afraid of what she will see, of what she will say. Ava walks over to him and kneels in front of him. "I don't want you to ever think you have to hide from me." She gazes up at him in a way that she hopes conveys how much she means those words. "Because this..." She takes her index finger on her left hand and runs it down his bare right thigh. It sends a jolt through him and she hears his breath catch. "Makes no difference to me." His gaze fixates on her, piercing her into the floor she kneels on. She knows that look. She saw it the night before, but he did not make the move.
Ava stands up, forcing her shaking knees t still long enough to make a move herself. He will not act unless she gives him a sign. He did not see it yesterday, but he will now. Ava had changed into shorts when they got back from Jessica's, and she lets her bare legs brush against his, just enough to get his attention. Slowly, his eyes drag up her body in that intense way until he locks onto her gaze. She holds out her hands, offering him to take them. There were a couple of times where she helped him up and did the same thing, but this is different, and both of them know it. She keeps her breath deep and skillfully times, but her heart beats loudly. After a second, she has him to a standing position, but only long enough to take two steps to the side of her bed. She puts a finger to his chest, and tugs slightly on the buttoned shirt he is still wearing. He has worn that shirt before, and it is her favorite because it is the same blue as his eyes, but right now, no shirt in the world is her favorite.
Max picks up on that signal, at least, and pulls the shirt off, tossing it onto the chair he just moved from. With the same finger, she fixes it on the center of his chest and nudges ever so slightly, telling him to sit. He thumps onto the bed as though she shoved him, all the while he never looks away from her. He is giving her the chance to stop, the chance to run away. She steps up to him again, like she had when he was sitting in the chair. Raising her arms above her head, it takes a second for him to take the next hint. She continues to lock his gaze, but she feels his knuckles brush up her thighs until they reach the bottom of her tank top. She is not wearing a bra, and he knows it. With her hands in the air, she undoes her bun holding her hair and it tumbles down, as her shirt pulls up. His fingers leave a trail of tingles. When it reaches her elbows, she yanks it off and throws it. She stands there for a minute while fixing him with a gaze that is a dare.
He smirks up at her with a barely visible tug of the corner of his mouth. "Can I take over yet?" He questions with sarcasm, with his hands coming to rest just above the back of her knees.
She does not know what is killing her more, his hands burning her thighs or that smirk. Either way, she is not back down just yet. "I don't know...can you?" Her inner voice drops out and it is everything Ava can do not to slap herself for such a dumb teacher line.
That thin line of a smile appears on his face, and she knows he is trying not to laugh at her. Feeling the need to want to punish him for wanting to laugh, she entangles her fingers in his hair, which is something she realized yesterday makes him melt. His eyes soften, and he looks up at her like a puppy. "May I take over?" His voice is deep, despite just an innocent look.
She is quickly losing control of the situation, and she is not complaining. His hands have now burned their way up to her waist. There is a growing need within her that has been simmering since the day she met him. It is boiling now. "Max..." That is all the answer he is going to get from her because she cannot even form a sentence anymore. He tugs at her and she willingly sits straddling him only a second before his mouth claims hers. He wants her, she can feel it without question, and it grounds her to him like an anchor of a ship hitting a reef. His hands are everywhere, and hers are not any more still. She had seen him without his shirt on last night and slept next to him. She had even run her hand over his chest to wake him up this morning. She had reveled in the shiver it sent through his whole body but being able to touch anywhere causes her to shiver at the sensation of it.
One of his hands clenches into her hair which pulls her head to the side just as his mouth runs down her jaw to her neck and keeps going. Ava's breath catches as his hand gently grabs ahold of her breast, but his mouth that follows is anything but. She arches into his touch, but her fingernails, which are not dangerously long, rake across his back. Her lower half though grinds into him, in a way she is sure, will drive him to the edge. She is not sure who makes a noise first, but it is all the encouragement the other one needs.
"Are you trying to kill me, Ava?" How he can for a sentence right now is a skill she will not be able to master.
She meets his gaze and feels a smirk form as her dark hair tumbles around her. His gaze darkens, and she realizes that that one look hits him harder than any warm-up. Ava runs a hand down his chest to the start of his boxes, and in a move that surprises even her, she slips under the fabric. She grabs ahold and watches him lose his mind. "Maybe." She breathes, with the same raw tone coming from the deep. A throaty moan, that sounds almost demonic, escapes him and his face nuzzles into her neck. "What...are you...going to do...about it?" She feels a bit triumphant at getting a sentence to form, no matter how broken up to sounded.
"This," Max answers while flipping her onto the mattress in a move that seemed effortless. He has her pinned now, and his dark gaze is telling her everything she needs to know. She becomes highly aware that her shorts, which was all she was wearing down there, are off and she did not even feel it. She glances around, expecting in a move like that to see them hanging from the ceiling fan, but she gives up after seeing that he has already worked his last clothing down to his ankle hanging off the bed. His food is moving, clearly struggling to get it off, and the slew of curse words cause of giggle to bubble through her. Eventually, he gets it and then fixes her with such a glare that causes her to clamp her mouth shut by pressing her lips together and biting them shut.
Ava thinks about saying something sarcastic or torturing, but she knows that giggle was torture enough. She is no innocent and has slept with men before, but they do not even compare to this and Max has not even started yet. Is he just that gifted, or is knowing that she loves him more than anything fueling a hunger she has not felt to this magnitude? His lips land on hers again, eager to make her pay for laughing. A hand trails down the center of her chest, past her navel, and she realizes a second late that he truly is going to make her pay. Ava breaks the kiss gasping for breath with her head shoved back when she feels his fingers working their way inside.
Each second feels agonizingly slow and she feels like her whole body is going to shatter into dust any second. She does the only thing she can think of. "I am sorry...for laughing..." She tries to force herself to breathe, to think, anything. One of her hands has a tight grip on a blanket, but the other has found its way under his arm and looped back around to his shoulder with her fingers digging in. She feels anchored, alright. "Max, I can't..." She whimpers with her teeth clenched hard enough she thinks they might break. His fingers withdraw, and then both hands are in her hair. His mouth covers hers as his whole weight pins her down now. If she was not his before, he is making sure she knows it now. She can feel him between her, and any second he is going to claim her as truly his.
Max pulls back suddenly, and Ava blinks up at him with surprise. If this is a new torture method, she is going to get payback. "What?" She inquires with a glare.
"I'm not prepared..." Max gets a sheepish look on his face and he starts to pull away.
"Your point being?" Now she can think and form sentences. All the desire she felt seconds ago, is still there, but it is fueled by anger now. How dare he stop now?
"Ava..." He shakes his head as if she is not understanding.
"I don't care what happens from here on out." She places a hand on his face, feeling his stubbled chin prickling against her palm. "You are all I want, anything from here is a bonus, but I understand. If you are not ready for that, then we can stop right here and pick up when the birth-control kicks in." She narrows her gaze. "However, I have heard it can take around two awfully long weeks to kick in." He deadpans a look at her, though she can see straight through it. "If you are really worried about it then we can finish here and then go get that next-day pill thing Hazel keeps mentioning." That is true. Hazel has brought it up an awful lot the past few weeks. Ava thought it was about Hazel and her brother, which was gross to think about, but now she might have the suspicion that Hazel saw this happening. Her next thought is that Jessica and Hazel are going to know, should this continue. They always know, and that was before this torture demon in human form got her in his clutches.
"Fair enough," Max announces, as though he just agreed to a business deal. She is about to call him out on it, but he stops her with a kiss.
She thinks for a second that she needs to tell him that he does not need to build it back up, but he seems to think the same. The only warning she gets is the fraction of a second it takes his hand to detangle from her hair and guide himself in. Ava tightens her grip on his body, holding her even closer, if that is even possible, and a sound escapes her mouth that she has never heard before. It takes her a second longer to realize he has frozen in place, though his body is trembling. "Max, look at me."
He pulls away just a little, and his gaze seems to put her into a trace when he collides with her again. He does not stop this time and the only thing she becomes aware of is that they are moving together. She is his, in every possible way now, and there is no going back. She feels awakened like she was not even living before now. How had she survived twenty-eight years and not felt this alive? She knows that he is reaching his breaking point, driving her into climax when he says her name. A minute later he collapses with a shiver that she feels in her core, mumbling something about him being hers for the rest of his life.
Ava can feel it. She can feel how much he loves her. Finally, something good came from her heightened empathy. Like cracking a safe, waiting for that last tumbler to click, her life feels like it has clicked into place. She has never felt more loved and safe than right now. Whatever comes now, she knows it will not be easy for either of them, but they have each other, and that is enough. Her whole world does not feel like it is crashing in on her and she has not heard the deafening screams since the day before, but that does not mean it will not be back. When they do return, Max will hold her, like he always does, and she will not be alone. When Max feels the weight of the guilt pulling him apart, she will always be there to hold him together. Their lives will never be the same.
Max makes it his mission to show Ava how much he loves her, every second he can get, and Ava loves every cheesy bit of it. It is a surprise, to absolutely no one including Ava, that a ring appears in front of her on Valentine's Day a few months later. He does not even get the question out before she screams her answer and tackles him to the ground. It takes much convincing for their families to sign on to the non-traditional wedding of just the few of them in the park four agonizing months later. It was special and intimate. No one even cared that Aiden cried through half of it, because so did Ava and, though he would not admit it, Max. Though they both feel their lives complete, they cannot help but want something else. Two years go by without so much as a suspected positive on a stick, and after a few tests, they discover that they have a very slim chance of having a baby, due to the injury that Max sustained. However, on their eighth anniversary, that slim chance gets a green-light, or rather a pink plus sign, and eventually they are gifted with the long-awaited arrival of baby Hope Huxley. Now, their lives are complete.