You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sarra Manning

I hope you don’t.

  Lots of love

  Mandy (McIntyre – but not for much longer!)

  Max was looking boot-faced so rather than cooing over her new Clarins skincare products and his new watch, Neve told him to pick a DVD, while she ferried the plates over to the coffee table along with a bottle of champagne that she absolutely was not going to be drinking.

  After demolishing her steak and salad and making major inroads into the chips, until Max was forced to slap her hand away so he could have some too, Neve reasoned that one glass of champagne wouldn’t kill her. People were always extolling the benefits of having some hair of the dog that had bit you the night before.

  Besides, it was easier to talk to Max with a drink inside her, especially when there was still unfinished business between them and she had to tell him something that he didn’t want to hear.

  ‘Drink up,’ she ordered, as she filled Max’s glass, then took a cautious sip of her own champagne in case the taste triggered an horrific sense memory and she had to hotfoot it to the bathroom. It didn’t. It actually tasted rather nice.

  ‘So, was that note from Mandy hand-written?’ she asked casually. ‘It looked as if it was.’

  ‘Well, the little hearts over the i’s were a dead giveaway,’ Max said, as he got up and began to load their empty plates on to the trolley. ‘I’ll just put this outside the door.’

  His response wasn’t exactly encouraging, but when he came back and sat down close enough so his thigh was pressed against hers, Neve persisted. ‘I understand why you’re angry with her, but I think it was really sweet that she took time out on her wedding day to get us presents.’

  Max held up his hands in protest. ‘It’s not like she nipped down to Selfridges in between having her hair done and practising her vows.’

  ‘Well, no, but she obviously spent enough time thinking about how upset you would be that she got someone else to organise the gifts and she wrote a note in between having her hair done and practising her vows.’

  ‘Where exactly are you going with this, Neve?’ Max asked, his voice cold and forbidding, but if he’d been that annoyed he wouldn’t have tucked a lock of damp hair behind her ear.

  ‘Just that she obviously feels genuinely upset about uninviting you and you’re much more than a little cog in the McIntyre branding machine.’ Neve fixed him with her most flinty-eyed look, the one that could even get Celia to do the washing up. ‘You should call and thank her and let her know that you’re still friends. It will make you feel a whole lot better too.’

  ‘I think she might be a little busy cutting the cake and listening to Darren grunt his way through his speech,’ Max said sullenly and he was pouting too. It was adorable.

  ‘Well, leave a message then.’ Neve stared at him without blinking, until Max gave in with a sigh and pulled out his phone.

  ‘Waste of bloody time,’ he muttered under his breath, but he rang the number and looked completely flummoxed when someone answered.

  ‘Mandy? Why the hell are you answering your phone? Yeah? Well, wedding speeches are meant to be boring, so everyone has a chance to sneak out for a cigarette.’

  Neve decided to sneak out herself and give Max some privacy. She sat on the bathroom floor and had read a chapter of Lavender Laughs in the Chalet School, when Max stuck his head round the door.

  ‘It’s OK, you can come out now,’ he said, and the pout had been replaced with a smile, which was a welcome relief, even if the pout had been prettier. ‘Mandy and I are friends again.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Neve said, and when she tried to sidle past him, he pressed her up against the wall and pinned her wrists above her head for good measure.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and sealed it with a long, slow kiss that made Neve glad they’d decided to stay in. ‘I won’t forget this, Neve. Not any of it.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she said, and kissed him back with so much ardour that it took a while for her to realise that Max was trying to disentangle himself.

  ‘It’s far too early for that,’ he said prissily, putting some distance between them. ‘There are several items on tonight’s schedule that we have to get through before I can let you ravish my innocent body.’

  ‘I thought there’d be mutual ravishing.’ Neve folded her arms and tried hard not to pout; there was no possible way she could look as pretty as Max with her lower lip jutting out. ‘Did you want to watch another DVD?’

  Max was on his knees in front of the wardrobe and rooting through his weekend bag. ‘No, you owe me a rematch,’ he said, and pulled out a little green box that looked very familiar.

  ‘Um, if you look in my holdall, you might be in for a surprise,’ Neve told him, and waited until he pulled out her little green box. ‘Snap!’

  ‘I can’t believe you brought Travel Scrabble!’

  ‘Well, you did too!’

  ‘Yeah, but I didn’t bring the Oxford English Dictionary as well. I wondered why your bag was so heavy.’

  Neve flung herself down on the sofa. ‘We’ll use my set,’ she decided. ‘I wouldn’t put it past you to sneak in some extra blank tiles to try and get one over on me and my awesome vocabulary skills.’

  ‘Of course, I am still in a delicate emotional state,’ Max said, as he sat cross-legged on the floor on the other side of the coffee table. ‘Can I trust you not to take advantage of that?’

  ‘My hangover isn’t completely gone,’ Neve said, rustling the bag of tiles. ‘So I’d say it’s a pretty even playing-field.’

  Max waited until they’d picked out a letter each to see who’d go first, and when he drew an A and Neve an R, he got a look on his face that was half leer, half glee.

  ‘Oh, Neevy,’ he said in a sing-song voice. ‘Shall we make this a little more interesting?’

  ‘Define interesting.’

  ‘Best of three. If you win a game, then the loser has to pay a forfeit.’ The look was definitely more leer than glee now.

  ‘Define forfeit.’

  Max gave a shudder of pure delight at his own cunning. ‘The loser has to do one thing that the winner asks them to do. No questions. No arguments. No faffing.’

  Neve’s eyes narrowed. ‘OK, define thing.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ Max stuck his hand in the bag of tiles. ‘A sex thing. Something that will get the other one off.’

  If Neve had the ability to arch one eyebrow, she’d have been doing it about then. ‘Alfred Mosher Butts is turning in his grave,’ she bit out and she didn’t know why she was so embarrassed because she couldn’t wait to get the Scrabble over and done with so they could get on with the sex things, but Max was still in a very unpredictable mood and she didn’t think that was going to lead to anything good.

  ‘Who’s Alfred Mosher Butts? I swear you just make this stuff up to distract me because you know I’m the better player.’ Max arranged his tiles with a beatific smile that made Neve clench her fists.

  ‘He invented Scrabble!’ Neve groped for her own tiles. ‘Let me remind you that I won last time and I’m probably going to win all three games now and you’ll be begging for mercy, so just think about that.’

  Max could arch one eyebrow. ‘At your mercy? If that’s meant to be a threat then it’s not working. In fact, I’m tempted to throw all three games.’ He gave Neve a mischievous look. ‘We’d better shake on it, Pancake Girl, just to make it official.’

  Neve shook Max’s hand with every last ounce of strength she possessed, which was a lot, but he just smirked. ‘Now, now. It’s against the rules to nobble your opponent.’

  Max didn’t throw the first game. Instead, he left Neve floundering in his wake with a rack full of vowels, while he got the q, z, j and x and used two of them on a triple word score.

  His success and her low score, the lowest she’d ever got in a game of Scrabble, was all the motivation Neve needed to get her head in the game. Especially as Max had done a victory lap around the room, even though she’d told him that it was extremely u
ndignified.

  She won the second game by a decent margin, and halfway through the third game, when Max realised he was trailing by nearly fifty points, it suddenly became a battle to the death. They were both going to get off at least once so really it was a win/win situation, but that third unclaimed orgasm was a point of principle and they stopped teasing each other, stopped talking and instituted a three-minute time limit on each round.

  Even though Max got up to all his usual tricks of using two tiles to make six different words and block off the board, Neve knew she was going to win. Failure was not an option.

  She liked to think she was graceful in her victory, unlike certain other people. ‘Honestly, Max, it could have gone either way,’ she murmured demurely when she beat him by one hundred and twenty-seven points. ‘It was just luck.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone get two triple word scores with one word.’ Max sounded close to tears. He sighed. ‘OK, how do you want me?’

  Neve sat back and stretched luxuriously. ‘Well, you won the first game. You can go first,’ she said magnanimously. He’d spent most of the first two games talking about blow jobs, mainly to distract her, but she wasn’t averse to the idea. ‘So, what’s it to be?’

  It was odd how Max could alter the mood between them with just a quirk of his lips. What had been playful suddenly became heavy with tension as his eyes darkened and he caught his lower lip between his teeth.

  ‘Stand up,’ he said, no trace of teasing in his voice now. Instead it had a commanding edge that made the breath catch in Neve’s throat as she did as she was told.

  She stood there, arms swinging nervously as Max walked over to the bed and sat down. ‘Now what?’ she asked hoarsely.

  ‘I want to see you naked,’ and he said it uncertainly, as if he knew he was treading on dangerous ground. ‘Please, Neevy.’

  Neve shut her eyes. ‘I can’t,’ she said imploringly. ‘Pick something else because I won’t be comfortable like that and neither of us will have much fun.’

  ‘But I want you to …’ Max shook his head. ‘Come here, come to me.’ He spread his hands. ‘Just come here.’

  Neve stood between Max’s legs, even let his hands rest on her hips, but her expression was resolute. ‘I don’t feel comfortable or relaxed when I’m naked,’ she repeated, her voice so low that Max had to lean closer to hear her.

  ‘I want you to be comfortable with me,’ he said softly. ‘I want you to trust me like I’ve trusted you with stuff I haven’t told a living soul, and anyway I’ve pretty much seen every bit of you now. Maybe not all at once, but I’ve seen your body.’

  ‘But it’s different when it’s dark and we’re in bed and, Max, it’s not just a bit of cellulite.’ She turned her head so she wouldn’t have to look at him. ‘You can’t lose a hundred and seventy-five pounds without it leaving its trace. I have stretchmarks and loose skin, and my stomach looks like corrugated cardboard. Feels like it too.’ She felt brave enough to cup his face in her hands because he was still looking at her so sweetly that she thought she might cry. ‘I know you don’t like me to mention it, but you’ve been with other women and I can guarantee that out of all of them, I have the worst body, the ugliest and—’

  ‘Shhh, shhh.’ Max kissed her hands and he didn’t try to shower her with empty compliments that she hadn’t been fishing for and wouldn’t have believed anyway. ‘It’s been three months now, Neevy, and you always smell nice and you’re funny and you try and take care of me, and do you really think I’m going to get up and go and not come back because you’ve got bingo wings? Please credit me with some integrity.’

  He’d only said ‘bingo wings’ because he knew it would make her smile, and Neve was. She was even letting him undo the buttons of her blouse, because his speech had touched her and she wanted to believe him. But when his fingers delicately traced the puckered, silvery grooves that were etched into her sagging skin, Neve flinched, and if Max hadn’t had one arm around her hips, anchoring her to the spot, she’d have wrenched herself away from him.

  ‘They’re disgusting,’ she choked out.

  ‘They’re your battle scars,’ Max said, and he wasn’t even looking at her disfigured, mottled belly but up at her face, at the eyes she’d widened so she wouldn’t start crying. ‘You’ve been through something hard and painful, and it’s made you the girl who’s standing in front of me right now.’

  ‘Less fat …’

  ‘Well, there’s that but you’re also a fighter and you never forget what it feels like to be on the outside and yeah, you are a bit fucked up, Neevy, but so am I.’ He stopped and let his hands drop, so she was standing there of her own accord. ‘Why can’t you have a little faith in me?’

  And when he put it like that, there didn’t seem to be any good reason to keep hiding herself. Neve’s fingers had never felt so ungainly as she undid the last two buttons on her blouse and then shrugged her arms free and let it fall to the floor. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from Max and he was looking her right in the eye, not challenging or daring her, but with a kind of desperation as if he was worried that he’d pushed her too far, too fast.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m not going anywhere either,’ as she reached behind to unfasten her bra and then took that off too. She didn’t think her breasts were so bad now that they’d shrunk and she’d worked enough on her pecs that they didn’t droop down towards her belly. But when they weren’t encased in underwire and elastane they could hardly be described as perky or buoyant, and they swung merrily, happy to be free as Neve reached down to unbutton and unzip her jeans.

  She worked her jeans down her legs, then kicked them off so she was just standing there in her knickers. Yesterday, she told herself sternly, you almost got naked in front of six complete strangers and Max isn’t a stranger. He’d got inside her head and his hands and mouth had touched the place that she was still shielding from him. And really now that he’d seen breasts, belly and thighs, she really wasn’t that concerned about him seeing her pussy, especially as she’d suffered great agonies having a bikini wax the day before.

  ‘Look at me,’ Max said softly, and Neve realised that her eyes had drifted down to stare blindly at the red polish on her toenails. ‘You’re almost there, Neve. Come on, get your knickers off, sweetheart.’

  She’d been expecting another heartfelt speech, not ‘get your knickers off’, and she never thought that she’d be laughing as she skinned out of her black lace panties.

  And then Neve was naked, in front of a member of the opposite sex. In front of Max. She held her arms out wide so he could see everything and he wasn’t looking at her face any more; his eyes were travelling down the body that she’d tried so hard to conceal from him.

  ‘So this is me,’ Neve said when she couldn’t bear the silence any more. ‘I did warn you, and we can pretend that you didn’t just say all those things if you want to head for the door or ask me to put my clothes back on.’

  Max rolled his eyes so hard that Neve could have sworn his pupils completely disappeared. ‘Sometimes I really want to smack you,’ he snapped, and before she could point out that there was absolutely nothing funny about domestic violence, Max’s hands settled on her hips again. ‘Rather kiss you though,’ he said, and he was falling backwards on to the bed, and tugging Neve so she landed on top of him with a startled shriek.

  He kissed the scream right out of her month, as Neve was struggling to lever herself off him, because she was too heavy and she was naked and he wasn’t and the whole thing felt utterly ridiculous.

  Neve wasn’t sure when her struggling turned into squirming and writhing. It might have been at the moment that she started to kiss Max back and he rolled them over. That was better. Much, much better because she could fist her hands into his hair and grind her clit against his thigh, the rough denim of his jeans a source of irritation and delight.

  ‘Take your clothes off,’ she demanded, when they came up for air. She hardly recognised her own voice; it w
as so breathy and bordering on manic. ‘How do you want me to get you off?’

  Max sat back to pull off his T-shirt and Neve wanted to cry when he moved off her altogether so he could wriggle out of his jeans. But then he was coming down on top of her and they were skin to skin for the first time; all that hot flesh sliding against each other.

  ‘This feels so good,’ she gasped, as her breasts shimmied against his chest and she parted her legs so Max could settle between them, gritting his teeth as he realised how ready she was. ‘Max? What do you want?’

  ‘I had my turn,’ he said, and he hadn’t, not really. Because he’d said that the forfeit was to get the other one off and the sight of her naked body certainly hadn’t done that. ‘What do you want? Fingers or tongue or both?’

  Neve wasn’t in a position to argue any further because he already had two fingers inside her and was rubbing against that spot that made her clench around him and feel as if all good reason was dribbling out of her ears. ‘Make me come,’ she barked, when he eased off a little and she was capable of rational thought again. ‘I don’t care how, just do it.’

  He made her come with his fingers and his tongue, and she was still coming when his hands were biting into her hips to try and keep her still as she arched against his mouth, until in the end Neve was kicking him away, almost off the bed, because she’d never come as hard as that before.

  It was as if the orgasm had made something short-circuit in the over-developed part of her brain that dealt with inhibition, because Neve didn’t care that she was naked. She coaxed Max into her arms so she could kiss his jaw, which had felt the full brunt of her flailing legs – his cock wouldn’t be hard and wet against her inner thigh if he found her that repulsive.

  Neve could taste herself on Max’s lips as she kissed him; sleepy slow kisses that felt as if she was moving underwater. But then Max cupped her breast and pinched her nipple between thumb and forefinger, which made his cock twitch and a fresh wave of arousal pierce her languor.

  ‘I think I should put you out of your agony,’ she murmured, wrapping her hand around his cock. ‘What was it you said? Fingers or mouth, or both?’