by Maisey Yates
“Oh, baby, you’ve been missing out.”
“All talk, Denton. You’re all talk. You’re too busy defending my honor to give me any sort of demonstration.”
“Because someone should defend your honor!”
“Bullshit!” Anger rolled through her on a boil, her fingertips tingling, her face hot. “That’s what everyone says they’re doing! Defending my honor. Trying to get me to do the right thing. Stupid Daniel was just trying to help me be better. My parents just want me to be responsible. I don’t want to do the right thing. Or the responsible thing. I want to do what I damn well please!”
She stopped, her breath coming in sharp gasps, her hands clenched so tightly into fists that her nails were cutting half moons into her palms.
Mac just looked at her, his eyes locked onto hers. Then, suddenly, she was in his arms, and he was kissing her like she’d never been kissed before.
Chapter Seven
Mac’s lips were hot and hard on hers, and she was sure she would never get enough. He smelled like beer. And hose water. And he was still sexy.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and threaded her fingers through his damp hair, holding him tightly to her. She never wanted him to stop. Never wanted this to stop. She needed more, needed him, like air. Needed something to fill up that emptiness inside of her, to answer the unbearable ache that was building at the apex of her thighs.
She arched into him, trying to get some friction, trying to find a little satisfaction. The kind that had been denied her for way too long. And she wasn’t just talking orgasms. Just having what she wanted. Something for her.
Rough, hot hands slid beneath the hem of her top and she couldn’t hold back the groan that escaped her lips. She didn’t want to anyway. She didn’t care about being proper, or demure, or anything right now. Because this was about her. Her and no one else.
Mac’s body was a carnival. And she so badly wanted to ride.
She moved her hands down his chest—his very muscular, sexy chest—and pushed her hands beneath his t-shirt. The fabric was wet and peeled slowly up from his skin. It almost made it better.
She broke their kiss for a moment so she could watch the dark fabric pull away and reveal washboard flat abs and tan skin covered in just the right amount of golden hair. It was like he wasn’t even real. Just a mishmash of her deepest fantasies brought to life in front of her.
She tugged his shirt over his head, and he helped. She sucked in a sharp breath and put her hand on his stomach. He was the sexiest sight she’d ever seen: shirtless, in a pair of low, tight jeans, with a belt that had a buckle at the center that was surely designed to point her gaze to the main attraction.
There was no hiding his arousal. No concealing the fact that he was a seriously impressive man.
She kissed the line of his jaw, his neck, her fingers sliding down to cup his denim-covered erection. He was heavy and perfect in her hand. Everything she wanted and more.
“If you don’t want this,” she said, her voice broken by short, sharp breaths, “then say so. I don’t want you protecting me, but I’m also not letting you do this because you pity me.”
He put his hand over hers and pushed it down harder on his cock. “Does this feel like I’m pitying you?”
“Nope.” She squeezed him again, running her palm over the length of him. “But I need to be sure. I needed to give you the out.”
“I don’t want an out,” he growled. “I should. But I don’t. What I want is to tear off that prissy little outfit and have my way with you.”
“I’m absolutely in favor of that.”
“Glad we’re on the same page.” He tugged at the front of her blouse, popping a button off and sending it rolling across the stone floor. “Sorry,” he said, his mouth quirked into a half smile.
“No you aren’t.”
“Not in the least.” He tightened his hold on her and pressed a kiss to her lips, walking her backward as he did, till her back made contact with the living room wall. He reached around her back and unhooked her bra in one, swift motion that would have made her ex green with envy. No struggling over hooks and eyes for Mac, that was for sure.
He pushed her blouse off of her shoulders and it and her bra fell to the floor. “So sexy,” he said, his words sounding choked, labored. She liked it.
“You too,” she said, hands on his belt buckle, making quick work of it and the snap and fly on his jeans. He shrugged them off and she did the same with her skirt and panties. She started to toe off her high heels but he stopped her.
“Leave them on.”
“Really?”
“Fantasy. Needs fulfilling.”
“Sounds fair.”
And then he kissed her again, and she couldn’t think, let alone speak. He raised his hands up to cup her breasts, his thumbs teasing her nipples, tightening them, tightening a coil low in her belly. She’d never been pushed so close to the edge so fast. She wanted him, all of him—forget gentle. Forget foreplay. Forget anything but just having him, hot, hard and perfect inside of her.
He parted from her for a moment, bending down and grabbing his jeans, fishing around in the back pocket for his wallet. He flipped it open and pulled a condom out, throwing the wallet carelessly back to the floor and rolling the protection down his length.
Then he was back, hot and insistent against her, kissing her with all the passion of a man who had been wandering in the desert and found an oasis.
“Now,” she said against his mouth. “Please, Mac. We’ll do this other stuff later, and it will be great, but right now, I just want you.”
“No argument from me.” He grasped onto her thigh and hooked it up over his hip, the blunt head of his erection testing her, moving in slowly at first. Then he flexed forward and thrust hard inside of her.
She gasped and let her head fall back, nails digging into his shoulders, a white-hot streak of pleasure that was so bright it nearly blinded her moving through her body.
Nothing had ever felt so good. It had never been like this. She’d never simply enjoyed the act like this. Had never just reveled in being filled by her partner.
As he rocked against her, searing heat roared through her, his pelvis coming up against her clit with each movement, each thrust into her body. He lowered his head and took one of her nipples between his lips, sucking, teasing.
She forked her fingers into his hair and held on. She was probably pulling. And it probably hurt. But he didn’t complain.
He gripped her thigh harder, blunt fingertips digging into her flesh, the rhythm and force of his movements increasing. She was lost in it. Surrounded by him. His heat, his smell, his body.
She moved her hands down his back, could feel his muscles shivering beneath her palms. Could sense the edges of his control fraying to the point of breaking. The evidence of her effect on him, of his need for her, was enough to push her over the edge.
Pleasure rolled through her like a thundercloud, dark, frightening, pouring release down on her, through her, sending flashes of light behind her eyes.
And then Mac followed her over, a harsh groan signaling his orgasm, his body going stiff against hers as he lost himself in her. He buried his face in her neck, dropping a kiss to her sensitive skin.
Neither of them spoke. Neither of them moved. There was no sound in the room other than their labored breathing. Other than her heart pounding in her ears.
Then he withdrew from her, stepped away. He pushed his hand back through his hair and surveyed the clothes on the floor.
He took a breath and looked at her like he meant to say something, then let the air out of his lungs, put his hands on his lean hips and looked back down at the floor. He bent at the waist, muscles shifting beneath smooth golden skin, and started collecting their clothes.
“Yours, I think,” he sai
d, handing her the black lace bra.
“Unless you have a little secret you haven’t shared with me.”
“Not that kind of secret.”
“I can handle a little kink,” she said, hoping to use humor to diffuse the knot of emotion that was tightening in her chest, binding up her heart and lungs, making it difficult to breathe.
“Oh, can you?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“To date, the kinkiest thing I’ve ever done is have sex with you in broad daylight against a wall.”
“We may have to work on that, Lucy.”
“You’re assuming I want a repeat performance.” She did.
“Yeah, I’m cocky like that.” He was. “But when a woman screams in my ear the way you just did…”
“I did not.” She totally had.
“We can use the scratch marks on my back as exhibit A.”
“I’m sure I didn’t leave any…” He turned around. And it turned out she had.
There were raised pink lines going from the tops of his shoulders down to the middle of his back. Five on each side and spaced just right so that if she put her hands against them in the shape of a claw, they matched right up.
Dear Lord, what had he done to her?
The kitchen timer buzzed. “That’d be the chicken,” she said. For some reason that made her feel embarrassed, when nothing else had. Not the revelation of her marks on his skin, not standing naked in front of him save a pair of high heels. No, the fact that she was currently roasting the man a chicken, and had taken time out to do him against a wall—now, that was embarrassing.
Mac walked out of the room and returned a few moments later, condom neatly disposed of.
“I’m sure we just violated some health codes in a major way,” he said, tugging his jeans on.
“I’m sure.”
She bent down and collected her clothes, dressing as quickly as she could, not looking at Mac once.
“Want to stay for dinner? It’s the least I could do,” he said, still buttoning his shirt.
She walked into the kitchen and took a pair of oven mitts off of the counter and slipped them on. “I don’t know.”
“After that? I owe you a meal.”
“I thought you wanted to stay away from that whole sex-for-payment thing.”
“But sex being… rewarded… with dinner is a tradition as old as time. I think.”
She frowned, her body buzzing, her shirt gaping at the neck where Mac had permanently removed a button. “I don’t think I want a reward, actually.”
“Fine, bad choice of words. Eat with me because I want you to. I would like to have your company. How about that?”
“That’s a little better.” She took the chicken pan out of the oven and set it on the counter, and when she turned, Mac was right in front of her. “I think I need some time alone,” she said.
He reached out and took ahold of her arms, just below her black, bulky oven mitts, and tugged her forward, pressing a deep, sensual kiss to her lips.
She put her hands on his cheeks, then realized she was still wearing her oven mitts. She lifted her hands and shook them off onto the floor behind them, and put her hands back on his face, returning the kiss with all the passion that was, surprisingly, still burning as hotly inside of her as it had been pre-orgasm.
He pulled away from her and took a step back, sweeping her up and down with a quick, very male look that lingered at her breasts and slowly, slowly, returned to her eyes. “Yeah, it’ll happen again. And you’ll have dinner with me.”
She didn’t even have a good set down for that. Nothing. Any biting remark she might have come up with was lost deep in the ether of arousal that was currently fogging her brain.
“Fine,” she said. “But only because I don’t want to eat the chicken cold.”
“It’s as good a reason as any. Hungry?”
“Starving.” She hoped that didn’t sound as euphemistic to him as it did to her. Her face felt flushed, and just that one kiss had her on the edge of release again. She leaned against the counter and pressed her knees together, trying to get a grip on the wild, animal, decidedly not-normal lust that was currently coursing through her.
“Great.” He started setting the table and she just sort of stopped and watched, stunned by how bizarre the whole thing felt. And how comfortable it felt at the same time.
She didn’t know what kind of reaction she should be having, but the one she was having didn’t seem like it could possibly be right.
He looked at her again, the expression in his eyes positively X-rated. It wasn’t hard to tell what he was thinking. More of what had already happened. Maybe on the table this time. An appetizer?
She needed her head checked. But she didn’t care. She started to walk into the dining room, her eyes locked with his, her heart pounding hard.
The front door opened wide, and Lucas Miller walked in with Mac’s sister Carly. She froze in place, realizing that the front door had been unlocked the whole time. And that they could so easily have been walked in on—which had been just seconds away from happening. Given ten more seconds she was reasonably sure that Mac could have had her topless and on her back.
“Hey, smells good in here,” Lucas said, flashing her a smile.
Carly smiled and waved. “Hello. We were in the neighborhood. Thought we’d stop by and see if there was dinner. Do you have room for some additions, Mac?”
She and Mac were still frozen, staring at each other, with the dining table separating them. It took half a second, but Mac suddenly kicked into gear again.
“Of course,” he said. “Let me get a couple more plates. Lucy was going to join me. She has been lately.”
“That’s nice,” Carly said.
She and Lucas crossed the room, holding hands. The easy nature of their relationship hit Lucy hard. She’d never felt at ease with a partner before. Not with Daniel, certainly. She’d felt on edge all the time. And—not that Mac was her partner—but with him she felt on edge in a whole different way.
“Yes,” Lucas added, giving Mac a meaningful look. “Nice.” There was something about the way he said the word that made her feel like he knew just a little bit too much.
Lucy wanted to melt into the floor. “Mac is just beyond generous,” she said, missing the potential double entendre until it was too late.
Mac snorted, and she wanted to kill him. “I am that,” he said. “A candidate for sainthood, even.”
“Right,” Carly said, taking a seat at the table. “Ugh.” She leaned forward and put her head in her hands.
“Rough day at the office?” Mac asked.
“Yeah, you know how everyone on the council is,” Lucas said. “Older than dirt and traditional as hell. Carly was put in charge of organizing a banquet for the school.”
“Which they want to be black tie. Which… great, fine. They do that every year. But the thing is, it excludes every citizen that isn’t part of the elite, no offense, Lucy.”
“I’m hardly part of the elite now,” Lucy muttered, grabbing two extra place settings and putting them on the table.
“You know what I mean,” Carly said. “Anyway, I think that’s a surefire way to alienate a good portion of the donations we could be getting. Every donation matters. We don’t need to do twenty plates at two hundred a plate when we could do a barbecue for ten dollars and include the whole town. Plus we could do an auction. The Ride for the Cure I put on a couple months back was a huge success. A little fall barbecue before it gets too cold… I think it would be great. And I think I’ve proven that this town responds well to a less formal event. Something that really celebrates the community.”
Lucy brought the chicken to the table, and the green salad and broccoli, while everyone talked it o
ver.
“There has to be a middle ground,” she said without thinking.
“You think?”
“Yes. I mean, mostly back East we did formal get-togethers, but when we went to the Cape we would usually do a traditional lobster bake type of thing. But of course, those sorts of people aren’t going to sit in the wind and sand. So we just made sure to organize a seating area and chairs. We used real plates. But we would still have it at the beach and still have that nice basic food.”
“So… you think we could do a formal barbecue?” Carly asked.
“I know, it sounds stupid, but…”
“No. I actually think you’re on the right track. Something that feels more elevated to the stuffed shirts, but still makes it open to other people looking to give back to the school district.”
“It wouldn’t be that difficult. I used to do this all the time for my hu—for my ex-husband.”
Carly brightened. “Do you want to organize it, Lucy?”
“What?”
“I mean, if Mac can spare you for a while, I have plenty of money budgeted to hire a coordinator. Is that something you think you’d like to do?”
She did. She’d thought for a long time she had a gift for putting events together, but somehow, Daniel had always made her feel like she’d fallen short. She didn’t feel as confident in it now as she had at first.
But she was a different woman now. She was the woman who had taken what she wanted. Who had walked away from a husband who was emotionally abusing her. The woman who had just done it against a living room wall with a man who lit her on fire like no other man ever had.
“I’d love to.” She turned to Mac. “I won’t let it make you go hungry, I promise.”
“Hey, I’m not in charge of all your time, Lucy. If you want to take on another job, you’re welcome to it.”
“Thank you,” she said, directing it at both of Carly and Mac. “Thank you so much. I think… I know I can do this.” It was a step in the right direction. A step toward the kind of job she could actually see doing and being happy.
