by Maisey Yates
“I know,” she said. “I’m not really proud of that. But who loves who they were in high school?”
“Not me. I was a douche.”
Lucy laughed, light and happy. It made something in his chest expand. “Were you? I didn’t know, I didn’t hang out with you.”
“Oh, you know, nothing major. Mainly that I was sure I was God’s gift to women. I couldn’t afford to buy them anything, but I made up for it in… other ways. Lucas and I weren’t good for each other that way.”
“I never heard any stories about you going around the school.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t have. We didn’t seduce high school girls.”
“You seduced who, then?”
“Women we met in bars.”
“Bars?”
He shrugged. “We had fake IDs.”
“Fake IDs? Shameless, Mac Denton. That’s what you are.”
He arched a brow. “And lawless, remember?”
“Clearly.”
She was smiling. Really smiling. And it meant more to him than it should.
She stuck a toothpick in the top of the cake and her smile widened when it came out clean. “I wasn’t seducing anyone in high school. That was not where my head was at.”
“You were seducing guys without even realizing it.”
“I doubt it.”
“Don’t. You had my attention.” It was the truth, one that had stung at the time. The fact was that the reason Lucy had gotten to him so much was because he’d had a bit of a crush on her. That he’d thought she was the most beautiful girl in the school.
Even knowing he never had a chance with her. It actually made her even hotter.
Until she’d given him a major set down just for speaking to her in the hallowed halls of her high school kingdom. That had been a reality check.
“I did?”
“Are you kidding? You were a hottie back then.”
“Back then, huh?”
“Not excluding now, but back then… that was what we called you.”
“I bet that’s not all you called me.”
He grimaced. “No, there were other names.”
“I deserved them.”
“No, you didn’t. We were all just stupid kids, and none of us really understood what any of us were going through. So we were mean.”
“You weren’t mean. The one time you were mean to me I deserved it. Totally.”
“You did.”
“Ha! I thought you might argue a little bit.”
“No. Not about that.”
“Maybe if I had seduced a few guys in high school Daniel wouldn’t have seemed so incredible.”
“Do you think?”
“First boyfriend. First… you know. I had first-love syndrome with him.”
“First love or fifth love, honey, it doesn’t matter. It still ties you in knots and turns your world upside down. Still makes you think the risk is worth it. That you should give up everything to have that other person.”
“You’ve been in love like that?”
“Nope. But I’ve watched my parents. My dad falls in love often, with everything in a skirt. My mom only loves him. She sacrifices her happiness, her dignity, her self-respect for that love. And my dad lets her because of his… many loves. They would all call it love. I call it bull. And it doesn’t matter how many years pass, or how many people you find it with. People are still jackasses for love.”
“But not you?”
“Nope. Not me.”
“So what do you do instead?”
“Excuse me?”
Lucy looked down and traced a curved line over the counter with the tip of her finger. “What do you do instead of falling in love? Instead of having real relationships?”
Mac looked at her, at her face, so flawless and lovely, and tried to ignore the sudden tightening in his gut. The rush of desire in his veins.
He was tempted to show her what he did instead. Thankfully, the counter was between them, so hauling her into his arms wouldn’t exactly be a simple matter. But he wanted to do it anyway.
He should walk away. He should not say what he was thinking. But he did.
“I have sex,” he said, the words coming out raw and harsh. Just the way the kiss he was fantasizing about would be. “Sweaty, hot, unattached sex.”
Lucy blinked, her dark eyes owlish. “Oh.”
He shrugged. “I’m a man. I’m not exactly going to live a celibate existence just because I don’t want a relationship.”
She frowned. “What does you being a man have to do with anything?”
“Men have needs.”
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Women do too.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Like hell it’s not. How long is the longest you’ve ever been celibate since your first time?”
The question caught him off guard. And made him feel a little dirty. “Maybe four months.” Maybe.
“I’m running on ten. Ten. And before that it was months, if not years, of boring, lights-off, missionary-position sex between two married people who resented each other a whole lot more than they wanted each other. So I think I can tell you that women most definitely have needs. I can tell you because mine haven’t been met in a real way in far too long and it… it sucks, quite frankly.”
“So… what does that mean? You think you want to just have… sex? Meet needs?”
She bit her lip and started pacing around the counter, her focus on the air in front of her. “Yeah, I think some of that sweaty, hot sex wouldn’t be so bad. No. It really wouldn’t.”
She stopped in front of him, her eyes trained on his chest. She was breathing hard now, her face flushed. The sight was making his heart beat faster, was making him feel sweaty and a tiny bit nervous, and he really couldn’t figure out why.
He couldn’t remember a woman ever making him nervous in his life.
Then she put her palm flat on his chest and flexed delicate fingers, the fabric of his shirt sliding over his skin, sending a spark of heat through him.
“Yeah, a little hot sex might be just what I need.” She went up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his cheek. His knees nearly buckled.
Then she angled her head and her soft, perfect mouth met his. Instinct took over everything else. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her tight against him, her full breasts flush against his chest. Then he tilted his head and deepened the kiss, teasing the seam of her lips with his tongue. She opened to him and he took a long taste. One that seemed to meet with her approval.
She moaned, the sound vibrating through her petite frame as she arched into him, demanding more. Demanding hot, sweaty sex. And he really, really wanted to deliver.
But it was a bad idea. He couldn’t exactly remember why it was a bad idea right now. Not when she was arching into him and all but purring, stroking her tongue against his. Harder still with the throaty little sounds she made every time he moved his hands over her back.
He didn’t want logic, or thought. He wanted to pull her expensive skirt up around her hips, leave the designer shoes on, and bend her over the counter and show her all about hot and sweaty and definitely not missionary position with the light off.
But the warning, the one that was telling him Bad Idea, was only getting louder and more insistent.
She works for you, you dumbass.
Oh. Yes. That.
And he was the asshole kissing his housekeeper. While she was making him a cake. A cake he was paying her to bake. And he was kissing her like a sex-starved teenage boy, and he couldn’t seem to stop.
Stop. You have to stop.
And he did. Somehow. He put his hands on her hips and pushed her firmly back while he pulled away.
/>
“Lucy. No. This is a bad… this is a bad bad idea.” His rock-hard cock begged to differ.
“Why?” she asked, her eyes huge, glittery.
“Because you work for me. You’re my housekeeper. You cook my food, you… you… .”
“I scrub your floors,” she said, sounding dazed.
“I can’t do this.”
She drew back as though he’d slapped her. “I see. So… I’m beneath you now. Because I’m the housekeeper. Wow. That must have felt good, Mac. That must have felt pretty damn good.”
“Lucy, that’s not…”
“What? You’re just not that into me? It’s not me, it’s you? You should just stop before it gets awkward. Oh, wait, that ship has sailed. Why don’t you stop before I’m tempted to commit violence then?”
“Lucy…”
“Save it. I have frosting to make. And since it’s the only dessert you’re going to have today, you may want to make sure I don’t screw it up.”
Chapter Six
“Women are fucking inscrutable.”
“It’s not even five, and you’re at least one beer over your limit.”
“I am not, Lucas,” Mac said, knowing he sounded like the drunk ass he was.
“You used fucking and inscrutable in the same sentence. Yes, my friend, you are a bit drunk for a Monday afternoon.”
Mac scowled into his bottle. He was still on fire from that kiss with Lucy. He wanted very badly for chocolate cake to be a pre-dessert to what would be his real dessert, which would involve Lucy and her naked body. In bed, against the wall, whatever, he wasn’t particular.
“Women really aren’t all that hard to figure out, Mac,” Lucas said. “She wanted you. You said no. You damaged her pride. Simple.”
“I was being a gentleman,” he said. “Probably for the first time ever. And I get no thanks. None at all.”
“No. You’re a gentleman a lot more than you think. But go on.”
“I was being a gentleman. Not pressuring the woman who works for me into having sex with me. A woman dependent on the paycheck she gets from me. Dependent on me for the roof over her head. Morally that ranks up there with stealing money out of your grandma’s purse.”
“It doesn’t matter. She wanted you; you turned her down. When I was first with Carly—”
“I don’t want to hear about you and my little sister. I don’t care how relevant it is. I don’t care if the story contains clues as to how to solve world hunger, I don’t ever want to hear anything about how you hooked up with Carly.”
“Fine. It might have helped you.”
“It won’t. I’m not in love with Lucy. I want to do it with her.”
“You’re classy when you’re drunk.”
“I don’t want to marry her. She doesn’t want to marry me. She just spent nearly a decade married to the biggest douche bag on the planet,” Mac said.
“It sounds like you both want the same thing.”
“Except I’m in a position of power.”
“You don’t seem real powerful to me, man. You seem like some woman has you by the balls.”
“I wish she did.”
“You have got to stop drinking.”
Mac stood up and his head spun in a circle. Or maybe it just felt like it did. Either way, it sucked. “Yeah, okay. I need to stop drinking.”
“What would Carly say if she could see us, sitting in a bar in the middle of the day? We’re maligning the reputation the good councilwoman has worked so hard to build up.”
“She’s your problem. Not mine.”
Lucas smiled and slapped him on the back. “I know. Aren’t I a lucky bastard?”
“You’re a bastard, anyway.”
“Great. Now I’m going to drive you home.”
“My truck is parked out front. If it ends up here for hours on end it’s going to look bad.”
“Great. Let people talk.”
“Honestly, you know Carly hates that.”
Lucas smiled, that smug getting-laid-all-the-time smile. “She doesn’t hate it so much anymore.”
“Your influence?”
“Yeah. I’m a baaaad influence on your sister, Mac.”
Mac showed Lucas a choice finger and walked out of the bar ahead of him. The sun did a good job of stabbing its way into his skull and through his buzz.
He stopped by Lucas’s truck and blew out a breath. “I don’t know how much longer I can play gentleman, to be honest. I think maybe I should let her go.”
“So, you’ll fire her because you want to sleep with her, so that you don’t sleep with her while she works for you and feel like you’ve taken advantage of her? One of those options is stupid.”
“Oh really, which one?”
“Well, in one of them, neither of you has an orgasm and she’s out of a job.”
Mac looked at the ground. “Huh.”
“And in one of them she still has a job and you both get some.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“I thought you might.”
“You make it sound easy.”
Lucas shrugged. “Stop trying to be her hero and let the woman make her own damn decisions.”
***
“He turned me down.”
“What?”
Lucy shifted the phone to her other ear and clamped it down with her shoulder so that she could open the oven and check her roast chicken. “He turned me down. Mac did. I kissed him and he told me to stop.”
“This doesn’t sound like a baking question.” Sarah had the bad luck of being the only woman in Lucy’s life who was speaking to her, and that meant she had to field all questions pertaining to issues of cooking and men.
“It’s not. It’s not even a question. It’s more of a general whine. But I haven’t made a move on a guy since my divorce. Scratch that, I’ve never made a move on a man in my life, and I’m only slightly bruised over the fact that I offered him sex. Sweaty, hot sex, no less, and he said no. Why would he do that?”
Sarah cleared her throat. “I’m, um… not sure I’m the person you should be asking for advice from on this… particular… subject.”
“Seriously. Is there something wrong with me?”
“No!” Sarah answered quickly.
“I didn’t think so. I’ve spent the past few months getting increasingly sure that there wasn’t anything wrong with me, in spite of what my ex said. And stupidly, today made me feel like there was something wrong again. I’m tired of that feeling.”
“It is tiresome,” Sarah said on a sigh.
“What’s wrong with a couple of adults with mutual needs taking care of those needs in a horizontal fashion?”
“Uh…”
“And what’s wrong with a woman taking charge of what she wants? Of grabbing the bull by the horns, so to speak, and riding a man like a cowgirl? Huh? What?”
“N-nothing…” Sarah said it as if it was a slow revelation. “Nothing at all.”
“Exactly. So why is he being such a prude?”
“Maybe you should ask him.”
“No,” Lucy rested her hand on the counter and drummed her fingers. “I don’t want to do that. I’ll sound desperate.”
“You sound desperate to me.”
“Because I am! For sex. Not a relationship. I’ve had enough of relationships to last me my whole life. I just want sex. Nothing but meaningless, hot—”
She heard a noise behind her and turned around to see Mac standing in the doorway, looking like he’d just put his head in a horse trough.
“I gotta go.” She hung the phone up. “What happened to you?”
“Don’t change the subject,” he said, his tone surly.
“From what? Why you’re dr
ipping all over the kitchen floor?”
“Lucas took it upon himself to sober me up. Frankly, I wasn’t drunk enough to merit the punishment. You were talking about sex.”
“And you were eavesdropping on my private conversation.”
“That you were having on my phone. During your work hours.”
“I called about a… cooking question.”
“What question?”
“Something about chicken?”
“Lucy…”
“I’m not talking about this. A girl’s ego can only take so many beatings. I’m not going to stand here and let you willingly punch it.”
“I didn’t punch your ego on purpose. Listen to me. You’re working for me. You live here as part of your pay. If I take you up on your sweaty sex offer, I will always feel like I might have manipulated you into it in some way. And even if I don’t feel that way, people will definitely question it if they find out. I pay you to work here, and I don’t want people wondering if I’m paying you to share my bed.”
“You’re overthinking it, Mac. I didn’t ask for anything other than one night.”
“It would take a lot more than one night to burn all this out.”
“You think?” she asked.
“I know.”
“High opinion of yourself there.”
“So? I know that I’m good in bed.”
She couldn’t help herself—she laughed. “Oh, really? And what guy knows he sucks in bed?”
“Trying to goad me into a demonstration?”
“Nope. Just asking. I’m sure my ex thinks he’s a racehorse in bed, but he’s more like those little Shetland ponies that get walked around on a lead rope at petting zoos.”
“Then trust me, I know a lot more about what I’m talking about than you do.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. I’ve had some really good sex, Lucy.” His eyes met hers, the fire in them intense. “And you should try it sometime.”
“Men always think sex is good. You can just have finished a bitter fight where they called you fat and ugly and they still get off. Let me tell you a secret: The woman doesn’t. Unless she’s into something freaky. And I’m not.”
