I wait for Max to say something, anything, that will make me feel like we can still be together.
"We should have had this conversation earlier on," Max says, "but things have moved pretty quickly."
"I know." There's a lump in my throat now that won't go away. I want to be with him, but I'm not sure I can do it on his terms. Or maybe even at all.
"Hadley, not every man with money and a . . . certain kind of power treats women like possessions. That's not what this is about. And it's not about gender roles or misogyny, if that's what you're thinking. I run the kind of a business where people do what I say, and I expect that, and if they don't do what I say there are consequences."
I stiffen. I'm not willing to be in a relationship where a man thinks of himself as my boss. If Max isn't willing to treat me as an equal, then I just don't see any future for us and I'd be better off cutting my losses now, as painful as that will be.
His arms are still wrapped around me, holding me close. "But you're not my employee. You're the woman I'm . . . involved with, for want of a better term right now. If I want something from you, I'm going ask, not order."
I start to respond that that's not what I've observed so far, but he stops me.
"There are two exceptions to that. The first is when your safety is involved. If you were standing in the middle of the street and I saw a car speeding toward you, I'd tell you to move right now. You stay there in the street arguing and asking questions and you'd be dead. Sometimes the things that are coming at you because of your association with me are going to be like that speeding car. And when I tell you move, I expect you to do it. And you're just going to have to trust that I have a good reason for it."
"Okay. I get that." And I do. And I can maybe live with that. It depends on how much of his life he still plans to keep secret from me. But there's a big difference between withholding certain information for my own safety, and keeping me completely in the dark about what kind of man he actually is.
There are all kinds of warning bells going off in my head, telling me I need to back away now. But my heart is telling me to at least give this a chance.
"I'm not going to abuse that privilege, Hadley." He meets my gaze, eyes blazing. "I would never use it as a power dynamic in a romantic relationship, or make you feel like I'm trying to control your life. But there are times when drawing lines and having you respect them is the only way I can protect you."
My heart is pounding. I know this is the moment when I have to either step back or move forward.
I tell myself that money laundering is really a victimless crime, and certainly a bloodless one. It's not like he's confessed that he's having people killed or sending Gabe out to beat up shopkeepers for protection money. He already told me he's only involved with people like Gino and Joey D because of commitments his father made.
If Max refused to carry out the business deals his father made with the Mafia, would his father's life be at risk in prison? I've heard plenty of stories of people being killed in prison for things that happened on the outside.
Can I really judge Max if he's doing things that cross the line legally to protect his own father? I lean back and look up at him, see the faint lines of stress on his face.
This man who is usually confident to the point of arrogance looks suddenly vulnerable as he waits for my answer.
"I guess we'll just have to see how that goes," I say. "I can agree right now that when you tell me to do something and you don't explain why, I'll do it and I'll ask why later. But if I find I can't live like that, then, well, then it's going to be time to say goodbye."
Max nods, but I'm not buying that he'd let me just walk away that easily. Maybe we'll find some middle ground. I'm willing to at least try.
"And the second exception?" I ask him.
Now Max gives me a slow smile. "Why don't we go in the bedroom right now and I'll demonstrate."
Oh wow. I have no issue with him taking control where sex is concerned. I'd say so, but I'm pretty sure it's already obvious. I might have limited experience in that area, but I know what I like.
My mind goes immediately to Friday night, Max in that authoritative voice ordering me to bend over the conference table wearing nothing but my high heeled shoes, and how I was so aroused I almost came before he even touched me. I've already had better sex in one weekend with Max than I had in my whole life before him.
"I'm still a little sore from this morning," I tell him.
"Don't worry," Max says, "we can work around that. I have plenty of ideas."
"Yeah," I say as he scoops me up and carries me across the room. "I just bet you do."
***
The flight back to Miami is a lot more interesting than the flight to Vegas, because this time I'm traveling with Max. I'm wearing the other sundress I brought with me, and a check for $25,000 from the casino is tucked into my straw bag.
I tell Max he should at least let me pay him back the $5,000 he gave me in casino chips in the first place, but he refuses.
"It was for your entertainment," he tells me. "I expected you to lose it. I'm certainly not going to ask you to pay it back when you didn't."
So I drop the issue. I can use the money. I have an embarrassingly high salary at the law firm now, but no savings to speak of. Also no debt, thanks to the proceeds of a trust I inherited from my mother.
It's ironic that she and my father were virtually broke when she died, but there was a trust from her grandparents that would have gone to her when she reached age 30. Since she didn't live that long, it passed to me after her death, the proceeds controlled by some estate planning lawyer in Miami who served as Trustee. It paid all my college and law school expenses directly, as well as sending me a check every month to cover living expenses.
A month after I graduated, I received one last check along with a letter notifying me that the funds had now been exhausted. It was like a final gift from my mother. Not being burdened with a huge debt in student loans is why I could afford to take a low paying job with the Philadelphia Public Defender's office and pursue my dream in criminal law.
The dream has shifted slightly, but I still want to be able to do good in the world.
"What are you thinking about?"
We are about an hour into our flight, sitting next to each other in those luxury reclining chairs in the main cabin. Gabe is farther up, headphones on, listening to music and dozing off in one of the chairs. Earlier, I apologized to him for ditching him in the casino bar, and it managed not to be too awkward. He just nodded his head, said apology accepted, and dropped the matter.
I turn my head to look at Max. "Just that I hope I'll still have the time to take on pro bono cases once the criminal law section gets established."
"That's important to you."
"Of course. I didn't become a lawyer for the money."
"Why did you become a lawyer?" Max leans back in his chair, which is right next to mine, sharing the wide armrest. His hand idly traces patterns on my arm, and his fingers brush lightly over my skin, sending little tremors through my body. It's increasingly hard to concentrate.
"My father almost became a lawyer, did I ever tell you that?"
"No."
"He didn't finish," I say. "He dropped out in his last year. Last semester, actually."
"Because of your mother's illness?"
"No, this was before that."
"What happened?"
"I don't actually know. He won't talk about it."
I wonder how I ended up with so many men with secrets in my life. My father, who won't tell me why he dropped out of law school any more than he will discuss what caused the estrangement with my mother's parents. My grandfather, who refuses to tell me why the name Maxwell Bennett is so disturbing to him, or explain what happened between himself and Max's father.
And of course Max, who has nothing but secrets.
"So, was law school you fulfilling your father's dream?"
"Hardly. My father hates lawyers."
Max gives me a wry look. "Present company excepted, I assume."
"Present company definitely excepted," I tell him with a smile.
"So . . . why did you?"
Now his hand has moved up to my bare shoulder and is working its way toward that little spot on my neck that he knows makes me shiver.
"I . . . unlike my father . . . think the best way to change the system is from the inside."
"You're an idealist, Hadley."
I jut my chin out a little, because it doesn't feel like a compliment. "So what if I am?"
Max's cell phone rings before he can answer, and he frowns at the screen. He answers with a simple, "Yes, what is it?"
He listens for a moment then tells them to hold. Max mutes the phone and looks over at me.
"I have to take this. I'll go back to the bedroom," he starts, then pauses and gets a look in his eyes that I recognize.
"Or . . . " I say.
"You texted me a photo when you were on this plane before. In the middle of one of my meetings. It was . . . distracting."
"Well," I say with a slow smile, "I wouldn't want to distract you from your call."
I can feel him watching me as I walk toward the rear of the plane and go through the door to the private bedroom, where just a few days ago I took off my other sundress and enjoyed a decadent nap in the luxury bed. After sending him a photo that revealed my breasts just short of showing my nipples.
I take off my sundress and hang it in the closet, then slip out of my shoes and toss my panties on the chair. I get in bed, waiting under the thick comforter for Max to finish his call.
It doesn't take him long. The door slides open and Max steps into the room. He closes it behind him, and I hear the lock click.
He sees my panties on the chair, and raises an eyebrow.
"Well, well," he says, looking over at me. I'm in the same position as the photo, with the covers pushed down enough to reveal the upper part of my breasts. "It looks like we have a stowaway. And a naked one at that."
He walks closer to the bed and takes hold of the bottom of the comforter and then pulls it farther down to my waist. This little game he's playing already has me aroused, and as he looks at my breasts I can feel my nipples getting erect.
"Now whatever am I going to do with you?" he asks.
"Maybe there's something I can do to earn my flight," I suggest, smiling seductively. I push the covers down farther and lean forward onto hands and knees, moving down to the bottom of the bed where he's standing.
I sit on my heels and look up at him from under my lashes like Lauren Bacall looking at Bogey in the movies right before their first kiss.
But instead of rising up and kissing him, I undo his belt buckle and slide down the zipper on his pants, never breaking eye contact.
"Please don't report me to the pilot, sir," I say, then slip my hand in and wrap it around him, pleased to find that he is rock hard already.
I stroke him slowly, then lean closer and let my lips travel up his length and back down again, kissing and teasing. Then I circle my tongue around the tip very slowly. When he reaches down and grips my shoulder, I pull back a little, breaking contact just long enough to shove his pants and his boxers down and take him fully into my mouth.
"Hadley." His voice comes out husky, and I when I respond by pressing my tongue against him while I move my hand and my mouth up and down at the same time, he makes a low moan.
I release him from my lips so I can speak, but keep working him with my hand. "Who's Hadley?" I ask him. "I'm just a stowaway on this flight."
I move to take him back into my mouth again but he blocks me.
"Stop."
I pause and look up at him again the same way, and he steps back, starts unbuttoning his shirt, the deep blue of his eyes darkening like the depths of the ocean.
"You don't like that?" I ask him.
"I like that very much. In fact," he says, "if I like it any more I'm going to lose control."
"Would that be such a bad thing?"
"Yes," says the man who never loses control. "Because I'm planning to make love to you all the way from Las Vegas to Miami."
His shirt is gone now, and he's completely naked.
'Let's start with this," he says, and before I know what's happening, I'm flat on my back at the foot of the bed and Max is kneeling on the floor with my legs over his shoulders.
"What are you doing?" I gasp, and he gives a low laugh.
"Figure it out, Stowaway," he says, and then it's his lips, his mouth, teasing and tormenting me, his tongue flicking over my clit and shooting such a strong current of electricity though me that I'm arching up off the bed. Then he intensifies it by sliding both his hands up my body to settle on my breasts, coordinating every stroke of his tongue with a squeeze of my nipples between his fingers.
It takes him less than 20 seconds to make me come.
I'm just starting to come down from the peak when he stands up, slides my hips past the edge of the bed, sheaths himself with a condom that seems to come out of nowhere, and enters me, using deep slow strokes that have me building to a second orgasm.
"Max, wait, slow down," I cry out, "it's too much."
"Take more." He's got that authoritative tone in his voice again that telegraphs do what I tell you, and I let myself go.
He's thrusting harder now, and presses his thumb firmly on my clit. Another orgasm hits me hard and I'm gasping his name. Max pulls out while the tremors are still rocking through my body, and I stare at him. He didn't come yet. He's still hard.
"What are you, a machine?"
When we finally make it under the covers, Max positions himself over me, wearing a new condom now, and this time everything seems to move in slow motion.
"You know, you're a member of the mile high club now," Max tells me, while his lips nuzzle my neck and his strokes are long and deliberate, filling me completely and then pulling back, almost like a choreographed dance. His lips move to my collarbone, and I can feel his warm breath on my skin.
"That's not a thing," I say.
"Sure it is. I'll have a membership card printed for you."
I smile, even as I'm getting closer again to the edge. I put my arms around him and feel the hard muscles under the smooth skin of his back.
"You can stow away anytime on my plane or my boat or the back of my bike." His voice is a low seductive murmur.
"You have a motorcycle?"
"Several."
I wrap my arms around him tighter and wonder what it would be like to be pressed against him while we roar up some coastal road, Max wearing a black leather jacket, and me in my skinny leg jeans, boots, and a t-shirt, our bodies pressed tight together.
When I come this time it's like sliding over a wave. Less intense, but stretching out over time, or maybe making time stand still. And finally, Max comes with me.
Afterward we lie on the bed side by side, catching our breath and letting our heart rates slow down to a normal level. Max's arm is under my shoulders, and he pulls me closer to him until my head is resting on his chest.
I curl against him and he reaches his other arm over and starts to slowly rub my back.
For all our playing around about a stowaway, it felt different that last time, like maybe it was something more than just sex.
I want to make love to you. Those were his words. I know it's just an expression, but when he said it and looked at me with those deep blue eyes, my heart skipped a beat.
Slow down, Hadley, I tell myself, but it's hard when he's holding me next to him like this and I feel so valued and protected. Like he would never let harm come to me, in any form. The kind of man who keeps the spray out of my face and doesn't let me fall during shower sex.
The man I can trust not to ever let Gino kill me.
And that thought yanks me out of the dreamy feelings I'm having.
I need to face facts. I believe in due process and justice and my strong sense of ethics is an important part of who and what I am.
The man I've been sleeping with all weekend isn't interested in justice, or at least not the same kind of justice I believe in. He was in meetings with mobsters for the past week. And I was a witness—actually, more than just a witness—to a deal he was putting together specifically to break the law.
I don't know where this is going, or how it's going to work once we get back to Miami. Maybe I was being naive to think that this could ever be anything more than just sex.
I wish I knew what was going through Max's head right now.
He turns slightly so we are both on our sides, facing each other, and I think he's going to say something about this, about us. Then his hand moves down my back and settles on my bottom and I feel him stirring against me, getting hard again already. He kisses me, slow and deep and my arousal starts to build again. With Max, there seems to be no limit.
He grips my bottom and pulls me closer, enters me slowly until he fills me. I wrap my leg over his waist.
"I warned you, Hadley," he says as his lips move from mine to trace my jawline. "All the way to Miami."
And I push my worries about what all this means to the back of my mind and let myself just be in the moment.
Tomorrow is soon enough to think about the future.