The Rampage MC #4: Max and Briony

Chapter 32 (Briony): Slow Motion

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

At one point if we'd ended up in a hotel room together, Max and I would have known exactly what to do and we would have. We'd have jumped straight into bed and spent the night enjoying several rounds of sex. Now, I walked into the room and wasn't quite sure what to do with myself.

"Want to watch TV?" Max asked, sounding equally awkward. "It's been a long day so feel free to relax on the bed. This one's mine." He pointed to the one closest to the door. "I'll take the chair."

"You don't have to," I said, hating that we were like this sometimes. "There's room for both of us to relax."

I sat on the bed and propped two of the pillows against the headboard, trying not to drag the one that smelled like Max against my chest. No, Briony.  Sitting up, my legs stretched out in front of me, I patted the space next to me. "See? Plenty of room."

Max walked over to my side of the bed and stood above me, his eyes so soft and full of regret that it was hard to hold his gaze.

"Still pissed about Chain. He shouldn't have talked to you, Briony."

I hadn't been expecting that. I thought we'd already pretty much covered the subject.

"Because I'm not an ol' lady?" 

I was curious to hear his reasoning. Max had always been reluctant to share club business...until he hadn't been after he'd killed Corner and trusted me with that.

"No. Because you didn't need him spewing all that shit at you. I feel like I gotta beat this point into the ground with you: he had no right to tell you to make a decision. I'm happy letting you set the pace, Bri. We're building something I've never had before, and I let that fucker know he had no business pushing you to decide."

"I'm a big girl, Max. I can make my own decisions."

"OK, I'll let it go after I tell you one last time that I don't think you're stringing me along. That's his bullshit coming through, not mine."

"I know, Max," I said. "I don't feel any pressure from you. We're good."

But that made me think of something else -- the entire reason I'd wanted to talk with Chain in the first place. I popped off the bed and stood in front of Max.

"Max, will you let me see your scars?"

He looked away from me, his hands flexing at his sides, then, without a word, he reached a hand to the back of his neck and pulled his T-shirt off in one move and tossed it on his bed. Still without saying anything, he stood in the center of the room, arms hanging loosely by his side. A two-inch high, ragged pink and white scar ran across his pecs.

I love your chest, Max.

Another one ran across his abs.

Max, how in the hell do you have such perfect abs?

I walked around to his back and saw three more similar scars, then I circled around to his front. His chin was lifted, and he wasn't looking at me. In fact, he was obviously avoiding my eyes. Max was staring straight ahead like a soldier at attention, his body stiff and tense.

"Can I touch your scar?" Sometimes words tumble out of your mouth before you have a chance to think them through. I couldn't believe I'd asked him that; I had no right, none whatsoever, but I knew that just looking wasn't enough. For some reason, I needed to feel one of his scars, needed that connection to his pain.

That did draw his eyes to me. "You never have to ask if you can touch me, Briony."

My fingers trailed along the scar on his chest. It was jagged, it was rough and bumpy and it was ugly. And like Chain had said, they looked like they'd hurt because they had. It was a truth you couldn't avoid. The scars we acquired throughout our lives, whether they were on the outside or the inside, hurt no matter how we got them. They were testaments to what we'd gone through, badges that indicated we'd survived whatever we'd faced. And that turned them from ugly to beautiful because strength was glorious in its ability to endure and overcome.

I pressed the palms of both hands side-by-side over his pecs, feeling the new landscape of his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin. Then I spread my hands apart, enough for my lips to press a kiss against his scar.

"Oh, Max," I breathed against his skin. I wasn't sure what I was doing. I wasn't sure about anything. The only thing I was sure about was that I was tired of being unsure. Max may not want me to feel pressured to make a decision, but I was feeling pressure from myself.

Max's hand came up and smoothed the hair on the back of my head, then tangled in my hair while his head dipped to drop a kiss on my head. 

"You OK, Briony?"

I nodded against his chest. "It's just complicated, Max."

"What can I do to uncomplicate it for you, Bri? You tell me. I'll do whatever you need."

"It's nothing you can do. This is something I'm trying to work out inside. Every time I'm with you, I feel happy, Max. This friendship we've built is everything to me."

"It's something new for both of us, I think," he said. "But whichever way it goes, we needed this. We needed to be friends outside of the circumstances we were in before."

He was right about that. It had been so incredibly artificial before. I was confined to the compound, I was with Max most of the time because he was assigned to protect me and we'd become friends then lovers inside of that bubble. But we'd never labeled what we were; we'd never set parameters around what we were to each other. We'd never discussed feelings. I'd let sex cover a multitude of relationship sins.

Now we'd been building something almost entirely new. We'd taken the last stick from our old fire that was glowing orange, and we'd fanned the flames of that to start a new fire. A friendship fire but one with the potential to burn much hotter than it had before.

If I could forgive him. It seemed within my grasp as our friendship continued to grow and deepen. We were learning things about each other that we hadn't known before; and Max was doing everything he could to show me I could trust him. We'd both changed since the night of my attack.

"My whole life was based on not being alone and needing to be needed, Briony. Ran from one girl to the next to meet that need because I couldn't stand being alone and not being needed. Well, I've been alone for a year and a half now and I've survived. But what I learned in all those months was what I really wanted was you. Want, not need, and it's taken me until this point in my life to figure it out, but I finally figured it the fuck out."

My head had been tilted back as I listened to Max, my hands still on his chest, and his hands loosely around the sides of my neck while he spoke right to me. Right to my heart from his.

His head came down in slow motion, his lips moving closer to mine. Giving me time to back away, but I was going to let him kiss me. To see how it felt after so long, to see how it felt with the foundation of friendship as its basis.

The door opened.

Darren walked in.

And Max and I jumped apart. 

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA