Messing With Mac

by Jill Shalvis

  He jerked, proving he was not immune. “What are you doing?”

  “I came over here to yell at you, but apparently I’m going to kiss you instead.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.” Before she could move, he grabbed her, whipped them both around and captured her between the hard wall and his harder body.

  Trapped, she gave one startled yelp before his mouth slammed down on hers. His body was like iron, his hands hard and hot as they slid from her hips to her back. And his mouth…oh, his mouth. All of her fantasies of a down and dirty, knock-out-fight paled in significance against the reality of what was happening between them now. Nothing, nothing could have prepared her for the ruthless, ravenous, reckless, unrestrained, raw sexuality of the man holding her to the wall, or her own ruthless, ravenous, reckless, unrestrained response.

  His hands molded her body, sculptured her, and only when they were both shuddering, sighing, lost in the driving, pulsing need, did he pull back. Chest heaving, he lifted his head enough to look into her eyes and grate out, “Who are you kissing?”

  Stunned by the overwhelming emotions rocketing through her, she could only blink.

  His hands held her jaw, his thumbs teasing the lips that wanted his back on them. “Say my name, Taylor. Say it so I know you’re right here, with me and no one else.”

  Oh, but if that didn’t remind her she was furious at him! Shoving him away, she straightened her shoulders and glared at him. “I know who I kiss. And if you think I don’t, then you don’t know me near well enough for me to see this through.”

  With her pride on her shoulders like a ball and chain, she stalked right out of his bedroom, back down the hall and out to her car. It took her shaking fingers a few tries to get the key into the ignition, but she succeeded, and peeled away from the curb with a satisfactory screech.

  It was the only satisfaction she had that entire night.

  SHE WAS WOKEN at six in the morning by the sound of a power tool, which really fried her, because she’d only just managed to fall asleep an hour ago.

  Furious all over again, that he would dare to interrupt her beauty sleep—and she made no mistake, she knew exactly who was down there making the racket—she stalked out of her apartment and down the stairs.

  The first thing she saw when she entered the storefront was the antique hat stand, all dark oak and brass. It stood in the center of the room that was empty except for a makeshift work table.

  Unable to help from touching the beautiful thing, she ran a finger down the unusual stand, guessing it was over a hundred years old.

  “Incredible, isn’t it?”

  Turning, she faced Mac, who stood in the doorway covered in sawdust. Hanging from his hand was the offending noisemaker, a saw of some kind. “Suzanne told me you’re not selling off your entire antique collection,” he said. “That you’re hoping to open a store right here.” He lifted a broad shoulder. “My grandmother left me a few pieces of furniture, most of which I’ve sold, but this piece I kept because of the beauty of the wood.”

  “So it’s yours.”

  “No, it’s yours. I’m giving it to you.”

  He was giving it to her. No one gave her anything, or hadn’t since Jeff. She braced herself for the sharp pain from the thought of him, but all she felt was a nice warm fuzzy. She’d thought about that a lot lately. Somewhere along the line, she’d stopped comparing the two men, stopped putting Jeff on a pedestal. As for where she’d put this man, she didn’t yet know. “Why are you giving it to me?” Her voice wasn’t the angry one she’d imagined on the walk downstairs, but she felt sucker punched at the look in his eyes as he set down the saw, dusted himself off and moved closer.

  There wasn’t any matching anger in his eyes. None. Instead, what she saw was a deep brooding that came from sorrow and regret.

  He cared. He cared deeply.

  Yes, he thought that caring was strictly physical. He thought that caring could be set on the back burner until it boiled over, and then with one night of amazing sex, it could be taken care of.

  Until the next time it boiled over.

  But he was wrong, dead wrong, and she was going to prove it to him. She ran her hands up his tense, hot, slightly damp arms.

  “What are you doing?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Touching you.”

  “Don’t,” he grated out through clenched teeth when she danced her fingers over his chest. His hands fisted at his sides. “I’ve had a really shitty morning.”

  She would have said the same of herself only a few moments ago. “So you’d say you’re…worked up?”

  “Yes.” His jaw bunched. “I’d definitely say that.”

  “Well, that would make two of us, Mac.” She smiled at him beneath her half-closed eyes and squirmed against him, just a little, just enough to have the breath hissing out from between his teeth. “I’m worked up over you.”

  “Well, that’s convenient. I’m worked up over you. I got approval from the town council. I’m renovating two of their projects in the next phase.”

  “Oh, Mac!” She knew how much it meant to him, and her heart hitched. “Let’s celebrate.”

  His eyes raked over her, hands still at his sides. “You’re wearing my T-shirt.”

  “You left it here. I’ve claimed it as my own.” Backing away from him, she shimmied in a little circle to ensure he caught the full effect of his T-shirt on her body.

  Mac caught the full effect all right. He caught the way the torn neck made one sleeve fall off her creamy shoulder, exposing the top of one breast. He caught the way the hem lifted, revealing a peekaboo hint of tantalizing twin cheeks, making him wonder what the hell, if anything, she had on beneath.

  She did another circle and his eyes glazed. She ran her own hands down her body. Her breasts beaded beneath the cotton. Then she turned her back to him again, running her hands through her hair. As she did, the hem of the shirt slipped up another inch, showing another flash of her tight, rounded cheeks.

  No panties.

  With a low growl that reverberated in his chest, he lunged forward, pressing her between the makeshift work table and his own body.

  Trapped, she let out a low hum and bent forward, gliding her hands up the table, thrusting her butt against his crotch. “Mac,” she murmured. “Mac…”

  The sound of his name murmured in that helpless little pant on her lips spurred him on, even as it soothed. She was here, with him, not with anyone but him.

  “Yeah.” His hands slid up her spine, then back to her hips, grinding her against the hard-on to beat all hard-ons.

  “Mac…”

  “I know.” Gripping the cotton of the shirt she wore, he shoved it up to her waist.

  And groaned at the sight of her bare, sweet ass rubbing against his jeans. He could feel the heat of her through the denim, and imagined her soft, bare flesh getting more and more aroused at the friction. Groaning again he reached around her to cup her breasts.

  Thrusting back against him, her hands fisted on the edge of the wood table, gasping as he rasped his fingers over her nipples, capturing them, stroking, pulling, stroking again until she was chanting his name over and over, her hips pumping in a rhythm old as time.

  He was as close to coming in his jeans as a horny teen with his first erection, but it wasn’t enough. He needed to see her face, taste her mouth, watch her go over for him, only him.

  Pulling back, he heard her sound of protest and smiled grimly as he whipped her around. “I’m not going anywhere, Princess, and neither are you.”

  “Thank God,” she panted, and when he lifted her up to the table, she spread her legs for him, sighing when he stepped between them and gripped her bare ass in his hands to hold her in place. Her head fell back on her shoulders, her eyes closed, her mouth open.

  “Look at me,” he demanded, giving her a little shake until she blinked huge, desire-slumberous eyes at him. He rocked his hips, watching those eyes go opaque with need.
“Can anyone else make you feel this way, Taylor? Anyone?” Another slow rock of his hips, and another moan tumbled from her lips. “Like you’d rather have this than breathe? Can they?”

  “Mac…” She tried pulling him down to her, tried to wrap her legs around his waist, which would have pressed the hottest, wettest part of her against the neediest part of him.

  But he’d have lost it on the spot. Instead, he held her still and whipped the T-shirt off her. Then bent to a gloriously full, high breast, whispering her name as he rubbed his jaw along the plump curve.

  In response, she fisted her fingers in his hair and did her best to make him prematurely bald.

  “Answer me,” he said, and ran his tongue over her nipple. “Can anyone else make you feel this way?”

  Taylor tried to respond, honest to God she did, even though her body was tightening, tightening, tightening, lost in desperate need. “No.” She tried to concentrate even as he drove her toward the very edge. “No one else makes me feel like this.” She gasped as he swirled his tongue over her other pebbled nipple. “N-no one. Ty is just…”

  He sucked her into his mouth at the same time he slid a finger into her, and Taylor cried out, her thoughts scattering into nothing.

  “Ty is just…” he repeated for her, doing something with his finger that made her just about swallow her tongue.

  “He’s…” She struggled to concentrate. “I…” He added another finger to the first, and then his thumb got into the action, slowly skimming over her swollen, wet flesh. Her entire body quivered, so close—

  “You…what, Taylor?”

  Oh, those fingers! “He’s like my brother!”

  He went utterly still. “Your…brother?”

  “He’s marrying my best friend.” Licking her dry lips, she stared up at the man who had two fingers inside her, his mouth on her breast and held her on the very edge of an orgasm in a way no one had ever dared.

  She wanted that orgasm!

  She was also falling in love with him. Damn it, damn it, not all the way in love, just a little tiny bit. But even a little tiny bit was bad. There would be no one else for her, she knew in a moment of clarity, it was this man, and as he pressed down with his thumb and wriggled those amazingly talented fingers inside her, it hit her as hard and fast as the explosive orgasm did.

  When her breath finally shuddered back into her lungs, when she could breathe again, she released her death grip on Mac’s shirt and fell back on the table.

  “More?” he asked.

  “Lots more.” She waited while his gaze met hers, knowing that if she couldn’t tell him how she really felt, she could at least tell him this. “No one else makes me feel this way, Mac.” Her breathing still hadn’t returned to normal, and he ran a finger over the pulse she knew raced at the base of her neck. She caught his fingers in hers. “I never let them.” With a slow roll of her hips, she smiled, determined to keep this light, determined not to let him see she’d started the fall. “Now tell me you have a condom in your pocket.”

  “I have a condom in my pocket.” He reached into said pocket and let out a grim smile. “This time I have three.”

  There was something deliciously distracting and sinfully wicked about having the rough wood at her back and Mac, still fully dressed at her front. Just as there was something incredibly touching about the way he drew his fingers down her torso, followed by his mouth, his eyes closed as he worshipped her body with everything he had. It tightened her throat and brought her back around to the terrifying thoughts of forever, watching him make love to her slowly, thoroughly…and yet she couldn’t refuse him, not when he reared up and stripped off his shirt, undid his jeans, then tenderly sank into her, not when he started a devastating rhythm matched with a kiss so sweet and deep she never wanted it to end, and not when he finally nudged them both over so that they exploded together.

  When it was over, he fell on her, pressing her into the wood. He was hot, heavy, and she held on to him, wanting his weight, wanting his heat, and wanting it so much she clung, just a little, when she never clung. And right then, still gasping for breath, legs still hooked around his thighs, she realized the truth.

  She wasn’t just a little bit in love.

  There was no such thing as a little bit in love.

  Nope, she’d gone and fallen all the way.

  16

  ATTEMPTING TO WORK when one’s head was screwed up was a bad idea. All day long Mac passed that work table in the downstairs unit, and like Pavlov’s salivating dog, he got a hard-on from just the sight of it.

  Taylor had vanished, and he went back and forth between looking for her like a pathetic love-struck teen, and wanting to run like hell.

  Swamped by various crews and their questions, he did neither, and by the time he went home, he still hadn’t seen her again.

  But late that night, she came to his door with a soft knock and a warm, sexy smile.

  She came the next night as well. And the next.

  The nights she didn’t, he went to her. And for two weeks they made wild, passionate, devastating love until dawn, and then silently went their own way.

  No strings attached.

  At least that’s what he knew Taylor would have claimed if he’d asked her, but he didn’t ask. He wasn’t that big a fool. He could see, damn it, and what he saw was so much emotion reflected in her eyes he nearly drowned in them every time he looked at her.

  She loved him. Christ, she loved him.

  He was torn between ecstasy and sheer terror.

  One night she showed up at his door wearing a siren red dress that made him drool. The back was a series of strings criss-crossed over her slim spine, the front was little more than a low dipping bodice snug to the top of her thighs.

  Her mile long legs were capped by matching red strappy sandals with heels that put them at eye level.

  Shutting the door behind her, she leaned back against the wood and shot him a little smile that made his penis jerk to attention. “Hi,” she said in a sultry voice.

  “Hi, yourself,” he said, feeling underdressed in nothing but nylon running shorts.

  With a saucy smile, she put her hands on his arms and spun them, reversing their positions so he was against the door.

  With a little laugh, he said, “So I’m guessing you’re in charge tonight—”

  With a yank, she hauled his shorts down to his ankles.

  “Tay—”

  She dropped to her knees. Gliding her hands up the front of his legs, she stared at his body, parting her lips thoughtfully. “You want me, big boy?”

  More than his next breath, but since she was eye level with the proof, he figured the point moot.

  She leaned forward and, as if he were her favorite flavor of lollipop, she licked him.

  His knees nearly buckled.

  “How much do you want me, Mac?”

  They’d been together nearly every night, and nearly every night they’d been silent during their searing, erotic, sexual encounters, unless “harder!”, “more!”, “yes, God, yes!” and “don’t stop!” counted.

  So it shocked him when he reached down to pull her up, intending to carry her off to the bedroom for more hot and fast sex that she held him off.

  “Remember when you had me on your work table?” Still on her knees, she looked up at him. “When you asked me if anyone else makes me feel like you did? If anyone else made me quiver and ache, the way I do when I’m with you?”

  Oh, yeah, he remembered.

  She wrapped her fingers around him, and he couldn’t quite contain the rough sound that rumbled from his chest.

  With a slow stroke that made him quiver, she watched him carefully. “So I’m asking you now…you’ve had the time to figure it out. Does anyone besides me…” She stroked again, then bent and gave yet another mind-blowing stroke of her tongue. “Anyone at all, make you feel like this? Does anyone else make you tremble and ache, the way you do with me?”

  He stared down at her mouth only
an inch from where he wanted it most and felt the shock of her question mix in with the haze of overwhelming lust she’d spun around him.

  Lifting her gaze, she gave him a smile a little shaky around the edges, and he realized she was not as confident and as in charge as she wanted him to think, not even close. “Taylor—”

  “It’s a simple question, Mac. Does anyone else make you feel like this, yes…or no.”

  “Call me slow,” he said, dazed by sensory overload as he hauled her to her feet. “But I’m finally getting it.” Hands on her arms he looked into her eyes. “You’re not holding back on me because of Jeff. You’re not holding back on me because of money. You think… My God,” he said on a mirthless laugh, and shook his head. “You think I’m still in love with my ex-wife.”

  “Ariel.”

  “I remember her name,” he said tightly, and kicking his shorts off his ankles, he stalked naked to his kitchen, where he grabbed a tall glass of water for his suddenly very dry throat.

  “I’m sorry,” she said from the doorway, arms crossed, face miserable. “I shouldn’t have pressed you that way. I know what it’s like to love someone and then lose them. You idealize them to the point where no one else can compare. I did that with Jeff.” She swallowed hard. “I compared you to him, and that wasn’t fair.”

  “Taylor.” He shook his head. He let out a laugh, and then another, and then weak for some odd reason, he sank to a chair to laugh some more.

  She went from miserable to furious. Chin high, eyes flashing, she whizzed by him on her very determined way to the back door. Snagging her arm, he hauled her down and into his lap, where she wriggled and fought him. “Shh, stop.” Damn, he should have put on his shorts to protect himself. “Stop…I’m sorry.”

  “You’re laughing at me.”

  “Are you kidding? No. No,” he repeated softly, holding her still. “I’m laughing at me, because I’m a jerk. I didn’t know that’s what you thought, that I was hung up on Ariel. That I idealized her.” As it was hard to admit the truth with her sparkling, accusing eyes on him, he tucked her face into the crook of his neck, set his chin on her head and spoke into the quiet night. “I met her at a town council meeting, did I ever tell you that?”