Make Me Beg (The Men of Gold Mountain)

by Rebecca Brooks

  “I mean it. I don’t even like you! Sorry,” she added. “But it’s true.”

  “You’re not exactly Miss Sunshine yourself.”

  Mack pinched her eyes shut. But that reminded her of the darkness behind the blindfold, so she opened them again. The lights were out in her bedroom, and the moon illuminated the shape of her dresser, the glint of the mirror behind the door. She wondered what Connor’s bedroom was like. Probably the same as the rest of his place, put together with the sense that the occupant was halfway there. Mismatched furniture, the handle on the toilet permanently loose. Not totally falling apart, but not a priority. Why worry about your rental when in a year or two, you’d be gone?

  Not that Mack’s place was perfect, but she’d put time into making it a home. The reminder of the disparity between them—him with the world open, her with her world right here—gave her the resolve she’d been looking for.

  “I’m being serious when I say this has to end.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “It’s ridiculous.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ll fuck anything that moves.”

  “I—what?” He sounded wide-awake now.

  “And I’m not trying to be a prude about it, but I…” She didn’t know how to finish. But I know you’re going to leave me sounded desperate and insane. “We need to not make this restaurant thing more complicated than it already is.”

  “I don’t. Fuck. Anything that moves.” He spat out the words and Mack realized he was angry. Like, actually angry. On a different register than even when they were fighting about the restaurant.

  She’d said something that hurt. Some part of her was surprised he could be hurt. Silly as that was.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t know that was a sensitive topic.”

  “You act as though you know all about me, Mack, when it’s not like you’ve ever taken the time in three years to, I don’t know, ask how I’m doing? Find out what’s going on with me?”

  Was he serious? Mack sat up in bed, pillow clenched in her hands. “Maybe because you’re always too busy regaling the bar with stories of your latest fuck to ever be available to have a conversation.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  “You mean you don’t leave every night with somebody new and then come in and tell us all about it?”

  “Every night? Could you exaggerate a little more? So I have sex, Mack. So I’ve had sex with more than one person. I don’t recall you complaining the other night. In fact, until you ran out on me today, I thought you might even have been looking forward to having sex again.”

  Oh, that was unfair. She punched the pillow. “Why on earth”—punch—“would you think”—punch—“I’d want to have sex with you again? When I know”—the pillow twisted in her fist—“as soon as we’re done you’re going to find somebody else?”

  She hated how she sounded. Whiny, like the problem was that she expected some kind of insta-relationship when instead it was that he was a conceited asshole obsessed with his talent and his dick. Both of which were admittedly prodigious, but that still didn’t give him the right.

  “Since when—” He inhaled sharply. “Since when does this have anything to do with me finding somebody else?”

  His voice was suddenly quiet. Mack released her grip on the pillow and realized that her hand hurt.

  “Since you showed up in Gold Mountain three years ago, realized I wasn’t down for a one-night stand with someone leaving the next day, and decided I might as well not exist.”

  As soon as she said it she wanted to take it back. Who cared that they’d flirted a tiny bit when they first met ages ago? Nothing overt had ever happened between them that night. She had no right to complain.

  She could hear the silence thick and heavy between them, the weight of her admission hanging in the air. Three years she’d been wanting—and not wanting—to say that. Now she was the problem, the one who couldn’t let go.

  “Jesus, Mack,” he started.

  “Forget it,” she said quickly. “Forget I said anything. I called to tell you this can’t happen anymore and that’s not changing. The reasons don’t matter. What did or didn’t happen before doesn’t matter.” She was pleading with him now, begging him not to touch this, not to pry her open and poke around until he found the prize. “Let’s agree to drop it, okay?”

  “I didn’t start talking to other people because I didn’t want you,” Connor said. “It was three years ago. What do you want from me?”

  “I don’t know.” The admission startled her. “I guess I want you to let me design the place I want and name it Mackenzie’s and not get in the way or be a dick about it.”

  “So basically do everything you want and not exist. Is that it?”

  “No, Connor. That’s not what I mean.”

  “It’s finally making sense to me now. Why you’ve always given me a hard time. You weren’t interested, but you still got pissed when I backed off.”

  “That’s not what happened.”

  “You were talking to me, gave me free drinks, I thought we both knew where things were going. And then suddenly you got all businesslike, busy with work, barely looking at me for the rest of the night. I went back to talk to my brother, and there may have been some other women that we talked to, I don’t remember, but you’ve been mad about it ever since. Am I wrong?”

  “You’re twisting my meaning. But yeah, Connor, as long as we’re in confession mode, I think that was a pretty shitty thing to do. You acted like you were into me, and then you couldn’t even be assed to wait until the end of the night, or ask me on a fucking date, or find out what I might have been thinking, or learn one damn thing about me beyond what you thought you knew from a few hours of flirting at the bar. When I didn’t immediately jump you, you made it clear I was yesterday’s news so why bother.”

  “You pulled away,” he said. Not accusing, just confused. “You definitely shut things down, and I may be heartless but I thought that understanding pretty clear signals made me…not a terrible guy.”

  “I didn’t—” Her voice caught. Was she crying? No, no, no. This had to stop. She had to get off the phone. The dark of night, the fact that he was on the other side of town, both of them cocooned in their separate spaces—it made it too easy to say the things she’d sealed under a patchwork of brick and sheer determination. She took a breath, tried again. “You told me you were leaving, that you and Matthew were just passing through. There’s a difference between putting the brakes on something because you don’t want it and slowing it down because you’re—”

  Afraid, she almost said. But didn’t.

  “Mack…” The tenderness in his voice when he said her name nearly broke her. “Mack,” he said again.

  “Just forget it. It sounds so pathetic when I say that out loud.”

  “You need to know—”

  “I don’t want to. I’m telling you, forget it.”

  “It’s not like I was trying to pick up just anyone.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When I met you. That night—and after. I wasn’t just going for whoever was around.”

  “It sure seemed like it. I’m not judging. It’s your life. But it never made me feel like, Hey, he might really be into me…”

  She could hear his frustrated sigh. “I honestly never thought you were interested. I came back to the bar the next few nights, I tried to talk to you, but I didn’t want to be an ass. And it was like this wall was up all the time, and good Lord, Mack, do you know how you shut people out?”

  Mack’s stomach twisted. She was so embarrassed—by what she’d said, and by what he was saying now. He’d wanted her? He hadn’t just been looking for whatever he could get?

  “That still doesn’t make any sense,” she said. He may not have picked girls up literally every night. But it sure felt like that when she had to witness it time and time again.

  “I’m not saying it was the right thing
to do. But tell me the truth. Haven’t you ever tried to get over someone by getting under someone else?”

  Um.

  She wasn’t going to answer that. Since the answer was obviously no. “You’re a fucking dog, you know that?”

  “I’m not, Mack. If you took the time to get to know me, you’d know that I’m not.”

  This was crazy. Mack leaned back, hugging a pillow close to her. She wasn’t punching it, at the moment. But neither was she letting it go.

  She had to remember this was still Connor she was talking to. Even if she had taken him home, it wouldn’t have worked. They were too different. There was no way for them to work together, sleep together, and not kill each other. If anything, giving in to him all those years ago would have only made an even bigger mess than the one she was in now.

  They didn’t say anything for a while.

  “Why didn’t you go home with me the night we met?” Connor finally asked.

  Mack thought about how to answer. I could already tell you were an asshole was on the tip of her tongue. But she was tired, and it was harder to lie when she was tired, to keep up the barriers she needed to maintain to prevent it from all falling down. “Lots of people come through this place. They stay for a few days, a week, whatever. And then they’re gone. It was my shitty luck you decided to stick around.”

  “You thought I was leaving.”

  “You were leaving.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “That was the plan.”

  “I’m not looking to marry anyone I take home. I don’t mean it like that.”

  “But you weren’t looking for someone who’d be out of there the next day. I get it, Mack. I do.”

  She sighed.

  “I wish I could see you while we’re having this conversation,” he said out of nowhere.

  “Why?”

  “To know what you’re thinking. Whether you’re mad at me, or what.”

  “You can’t tell anyway?”

  “It’s different. Usually I can read your expressions. It’s harder now to tell what’s going on.”

  “Well come over then,” she joked. “You can see my ticked-off face in person.”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  She almost dropped the phone. Was he serious?

  “You’re not driving over here at midnight,” she said, her throat suddenly dry.

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s ridiculous.”

  “You don’t ever do anything ridiculous?”

  “I’m pretty sure I demonstrated that’s not the case today. By the lake,” she added, in case he didn’t get her drift, and then cringed. What was she doing, bringing that up?

  “That was a lot of things. I don’t know that ridiculous was one of them.”

  “Not even a little?” she asked, against her better judgment.

  “It was amazing, Mack. You’re amazing.”

  He let out a low noise, stifling a groan. Mack clenched the pillow. The sound of his voice did things to her. Soft, wet, achy things.

  Things that shouldn’t happen.

  Things she couldn’t seem to stop.

  “Reliving the memories?” she asked.

  This time his groan wasn’t stifled. “Every second since you left.”

  “And?”

  “And you know what you do to me.”

  Hang up. I need to hang up.

  She was supposed to be ending this, not egging it on.

  But instead she asked, “Are you hard?” Because right now, that was all she needed to know.

  He said yes so fast, her breath caught.

  “I’m lying in bed in my boxers and I’m fully, and I mean fully, at attention.”

  She licked her lips. The movement was involuntary, but it happened. “Do you sleep with a shirt on?”

  “No.”

  She tried to picture his chest, the muscles she’d felt under his shirt, the press of him sliding against her. She hadn’t seen him naked, but the thought of him splayed out in bed like that was enough. He may not have thought her creative when it came to concepts for the restaurant, but he should trust her imagination worked just fine.

  “Touch yourself,” she told him.

  “Anything you want.” His voice was low, teasing, a mix of serious and playful that could be so frustrating in the kitchen because it meant he was never fully one or the other.

  Only now it had her chest tightening as the warmth pooled deep in her body and spread through her like a flame.

  “Tell me you’re wearing that fucking lacy thing you had on at the bar,” he said. “Or better yet, absolutely nothing.”

  “Pajama pants. They have foxes on them.”

  She could hear his smile. “Cute.”

  “And a tank top. Black.” She ran a hand across her stomach, slipped it under the fabric. Pulled on her nipple as it hardened in her hand. “I’m not wearing a bra.”

  “If I were there you wouldn’t be wearing that tank top, either.”

  “We said we weren’t doing this.” But the breathlessness in her voice gave away exactly what she thought about that.

  He didn’t seem to care, either. “Where are your hands?”

  Mack bit her lip. God, what was she doing? But there was no way she was going to stop. She closed her eyes. “Right where I want your tongue to be.”

  His moan said she’d hit the jackpot. She wondered how he stroked himself, if it was quick and urgent or if he was taking his time, building it up, savoring the feeling the way she was, her finger slipping down to where her skin was soft and slick.

  “You left before I could do everything I wanted with my tongue.”

  “Do it now,” she said urgently. “Tell me.”

  “I want to kiss you, Mack. Your lips, the side of your neck, that freckle on your right ear.” Jesus, he’d noticed that? “I’d take your breasts in my hands and run my tongue over your nipples. Soft at first, then harder if you want me to.”

  She let out a moan.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “Yes.” The word was a gasp and an exhalation, affirmation and a plea. There wasn’t nearly enough yes to capture what she wanted, which was for him to take her the way he had in the bar, by the lake—to take her hard, not like she was small and fragile but to hold her down and fuck her.

  “Then I’d lick you like I did at the bar. Only I’d be in bed with you so I could lean you back and spread your legs.”

  “Did you like that?” Mack asked, desperate to hear him say it. “Did you like the way I taste?”

  “You taste fucking incredible, Mack. I can’t stop thinking about it. Touch yourself in those nice little circles. Go as hard and as fast as you want it. That’s how I’m going to lick you, until you’re trembling in my hands. Touch yourself and think about how you’re going to come on my tongue.”

  Her thighs shifted under the blanket, opening at his words. Her fingers moved as he said, making circles that grew faster and firmer as he talked.

  She knew this was just a fantasy. They weren’t going to do this anymore—not in person, not for real. And that was why she was so wet right now. Her body was eager to pretend, her mind more than willing to trick her into playing along.

  “Are you wet?” he asked.

  “So wet. I don’t know how you do this to me.” It was the truth. She really didn’t understand it.

  How could you spend three years thinking you knew someone and never suspect how their voice caught as they commanded you to fuck yourself and do it harder? She’d never have guessed that if Connor Branding told her over the phone to slide one finger inside herself and then another, she would do it and groan out loud with the pleasure, groan so he’d know what he was doing to her.

  “Tell me how hard you are,” she panted as she worked her fingers, bringing herself up to the edge but backing off, controlling the movement so she could feel it grow.

  Connor barked out something between a growl and a laugh. “As a hammer.”

  “God,” she
moaned. “I wouldn’t mind feeling that right about now.”

  “What would you do?” He couldn’t disguise the eagerness in his voice. And since Mack knew exactly how he looked and felt when he was that hard, neither could she.

  She might have felt self-conscious, and if this were the middle of the day and they were in person and she hadn’t spent hours turned on out of her mind after leaving him by the lake, she probably would have. But she was way past that point now. It was like sex with him had been. Once it started, she couldn’t seem to stop.

  “I’d wrap my fist around your shaft,” she said, “and work you out of those boxers you have on. I’d stroke you up and down, touching every inch of you.” He groaned. “And then I’d get on my knees, because I know you like that.”

  The groan grew louder, thick with his desire. “Put my cock in your mouth.”

  Oh God. The way he said the word “cock” and made it a command, like he had at the lake. Take it. She felt herself clench around her fingers.

  “I’d lick every inch of you, run my tongue over the tip, take you all the way back to my throat. As deep as you’ll go. And then deeper.”

  “Fuck,” he said.

  “Are you touching yourself?”

  “Fuck,” he repeated. “Yes.”

  “Touch your balls while you stroke yourself. Think about coming in my mouth, down my throat. Remember how my tongue felt. Remember how I swallowed every drop you gave me.”

  She recalled the feel of him drawing her forward, his thighs clenching, the scrape of his fly against her cheek. In bed he’d be naked, spread out before her, his cock standing straight up and her mouth moving over him. She loved giving blow jobs. Even blindfolded, her hands tied behind her back, the power was hers. Abbi had once announced that she loved the taste of come because it was the taste of victory. Mack had held that little gem inside her ever since, and now that she remembered it, it seemed less terrifying to have been in the dark and at Connor’s mercy that afternoon. Now it was completely arousing.

  “If I were there I’d have to hold back. I don’t want to be getting ahead of myself,” Connor said, and Mack grinned.

  “Oh? What would you want to do first?”

  Connor groaned. “You know exactly what I want.”