Messing With Mac

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,