Messing With Mac

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?”

“No. Mac-”

“She was the friend of a friend’s daughter.”

“You don’t have to-”

“Shut up,” he said. “I was young, and dazzled. She was sweet and warm and loving, and wanted me for me, and not who my parents were.”

“So you got married.”

“We eloped. It was what she wanted, and I was touched because I’d told her how I intended to make it on my own without my parents’ help, and I thought she was showing me she wanted that, too.”

Taylor shifted in his arms so that she could see into his face. “I don’t want you to apologize for loving her, Mac. I love it that you’ve loved before, that you’re not afraid to admit it. And deep down, I’m even a little flattered that you compared me to her, that it made caring about me so hard because you loved her so much.”

“Really?” He closed his eyes, let out a harsh laugh. “You’re really not going to like the rest of this then.”

“I’m…not?”

“No.” He drew a deep breath. “Ariel started asking about money, wanting me to get some from my parents. She wanted a big, new house. She wanted a new car. New clothes from Europe. She wanted parties. She wanted, wanted, wanted, and started to hate me for not giving in.”

“Oh, Mac. I-”

He put a finger to her lips. “I have to get the rest of this out, Taylor, and with you looking at me like that, with your heart in your eyes and your body sitting on my very naked one, I’m feeling far more inclined to see how strong this table is than tell you the damn truth.”

“Tell me,” she said, and bit her lip, ostensibly to keep herself quiet.

Mac wondered if she’d be so pliant in a minute when she heard the rest. “She decided I had been a mistake, a big one. She went after other men-wealthy, affluent men who could give her what she wanted.”

“She left you,” she breathed, and her eyes hardened. “Forget it. I am nothing like her, nothing.”

“I know that,” he said, and sighed wearily.

“There’s…more?”

Oh yeah, there was more. “When she picked out the right guy for herself, she ran up every credit card I had, emptied every bank account and screwed me over for the building loan I had been trying to get to start my first renovation project, all as a goodbye present.”

Taylor’s eyes widened even as they filled. “My God, how could she? She loved you.”

“She never loved me.”

Her eyes never left his. “And…there’s still more isn’t there?”

“Yes.” Mac’s heart started beating heavily, he’d never said the words out loud before. “When she went to file for divorce, she found out she was pregnant. And…she didn’t want to be. I didn’t want her anymore, but the baby. God. I wanted that baby.” To his horror, his eyes burned. “She, um…aborted.”

Taylor let out a soft sound of disbelief. Sliding her hands into his hair, she put her forehead to his, offering neither empty platitudes or meaningless compassion.

He wanted neither.

She gave him the only thing he did want, herself. Slowly, gently, she put her mouth to his, kissing first one corner, then the other, and then pulled back, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “I want to love you, Mac. Not wild, up-against-the-wall sex, not on this table…I want to take you to your bed and love you until you forget.”

He looked at her, in her, feeling his entire chest constrict at what he saw in her eyes. Once upon a time he’d have said it couldn’t be done, no one could make him forget, but as he stood with her in his arms, as he strode down the hallway toward the bed, he thought maybe, just maybe, she was the woman to do it.

TAYLOR WOKE UP just before dawn, and with a deep sigh sat up. Time to go, just like every other dawn for the past few weeks. The best nights of her life, and she paid for them by having to get up before the sun so that neither of them panicked and felt claustro phobic.

Well, she didn’t feel claustrophobic, and hadn’t, not once during a single one of those nights, humming with pleasure in Mac’s arms, and not last night.

Last night…she’d held Mac for hours and had wondered how anyone on this earth could have treated him as Ariel had. If Taylor had been lucky enough for someone to love her like that, for Mac to love her like that, she would have lived every single day loving him back with everything she had.

Her eyes filled thinking about it, because she knew now why he resisted so much, just as she now knew things wouldn’t change. He cared about her, no doubt. No one could make love to her the way he did and not care deeply. But that was only part of intimacy, and she didn’t see it going much further. They were in Mac’s comfort zone now, and there they’d stay. If the only option to her was walking away…well, she wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

Putting her feet on the cold wooden floor, she went to stand up.

And was stopped by a big, warm hand to her wrist. “Without even waking me?” came his sleep-roughened, sexy-as-hell voice.

He lay sprawled on his belly, his broad shoulders and long, long legs taking up nearly the entire mattress. Only seconds before she’d been right there with him, and she was shocked by the immense yearning to leap back in and snuggle tight.

If she did, if she so much as touched him right now, she’d lose it. “Got work, Slick,” she said, and lightly slapped his very nice butt.

“No, you don’t.” Without letting go of her, he pushed up, sat back against the headboard and tugged.

She fell against that warm chest, and had to close her eyes when she braced her hands against it. “Mac-”

“Don’t go.”

She tried to wriggle free. “I need to.”

“No, you don’t. You’re running out of here because you think that’s what I want.” He waited until she opened her eyes, helping her along by putting his hands on her face. “You don’t want to scare me,” he said in a terrifyingly gentle voice. “You don’t want to worry me with your feelings-”

Again she tried to get up. “Mac-”

“No, listen. I have to say this. I had a dream. You were gone.” A spasm of pain crossed his features as he held her still. “And I was back to the way things were. Alone. I hated it. It felt cold without you, Taylor. Empty.”

“It…did?”

“It’s all happened so slowly, I didn’t realize…”

Her heart stopped. “What happened so slowly?”

He blew out a breath. “Before you, I told myself I never wanted to share myself again, and that included my bed. I told myself I would never open up to a woman, that I would never want, need or ache for one to distraction.”

“I know, Mac. God. I know-”

“But I was wrong. Life can’t be lived like that. You taught me that. Only you, Taylor.”

She stopped trying to get free and stared at him. “I’m sorry. My heart just stopped, which means I’m not getting any blood to my brain, so I must have heard you wrong. Could you…”

“I love you, Taylor.” His smile, a bit wobbly, jump-started her heart. His thumbs stroked her jaw, helping with blood flow. “Did you hear that?”

“I…yes,” she whispered, stunned. “Yes.”

“I love you with all I’ve got, and I hope to hell you feel something close to that for me, too, because I don’t think I can go through this again and have you not feel it back…” He stared at her, then hissed out a breath. “Could you say something here? Anything?”

She put her fingers to his mouth, and through a half laugh, half sob, put her forehead to his and managed to repeat his words back. “I love you. God, Mac, I love you with all I’ve got. And I’ve hoped like hell you felt something back, too, because I know I can’t go through this again.” She let out a shaky breath. “And not have you feel it back.”

Closing his eyes, he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed so hard she could hardly draw a breath, but who needed air? Not her, she had Mac, she had his love, she had everything she could ever want, forget breathing.

Mac rolled over, tucking her snugly beneath him, pressing her into the mattress as he lifted his head. Sinking a hand into her hair, he smiled down at her. “Be mine, Taylor. Be my wife, my lover, my heart.”

His smile nearly burst her heart. “Yes. Yes to all of it.”

His lips found hers in a sealing, promising kiss. “So from now on you’ll wake up with me? Forever, just the two of us?”

She held her breath, not because he was still squeezing her too hard, which he was, but because she had yet to share her one last, very private, very secret fantasy with anyone. “I’ll wake up with you, only you.”

He grinned.

And she slowly let out that breath wondering if she was going to get hurt after all. “Until we have a baby. A little girl,” she added breathlessly when his grin faded, “with your beautiful eyes and my savvy fashion sense and then there will be three of us.”

He didn’t say anything and she rushed on. “She’ll want to pounce on us early in the mornings, and snuggle in,” she teased, while inside she was dying, dying, dying, not knowing if he would ever want to have kids after what Ariel had done to him…

He ran a finger down her jaw, her throat, to where her heart lay in her chest nearly beating its way past her ribs. “You want to have a baby,” he said, his voice thick. “With me.”

“I do,” she whispered. “Only with you, Mac. What do you say?”

He watched his finger circle over her heart, eyes solemn. Then he slowly smiled and lifted his head. “I can’t think of anything more perfect than that.”

Her heart sighed, completely content.

“Let’s do it, Princess. Let’s do it all.” He rolled with her over the bed again, and then again, until they were both laughing.

Then bent his head to hers to make it all come true.