Sitting behind his desk, he’s turned my way, staring at me as I stare at him. I take him in as a whole: his big muscled body—the sheer physicality of him. And I see the details. The details are what throw me.
“You look like hell,” I blurt out.
His eyes lock onto me, and I’m momentarily hurtled back to being seventeen again. Those eyes, deep set and carob brown under black brows that are straight, angry slashes. When he was a kid, those eyes somehow managed to appear angelic and sweet with their long curling lashes and shining depths. Now he resembles an Old Testament archangel, all fierce judgment and wrath—the type who smites wrongdoers with one look.
“Well, hello, Ms. Delilah Baker,” he drawls. “So nice to see you too.”
“Sorry.” I force a smile, though it feels strained on my face. “That was rude of me.”
He waves an idle hand. “No, no, do go on. It’s been years since anyone has insulted me to my face. I’d say about ten years.”
“Surely I haven’t been the only one to insult you in all this time.”
Macon’s lush wide mouth, surrounded now by stubble so thick it’s nearly a beard, pulls in a half smile. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” He shrugs one shoulder. “And I do look like shit, so . . .”
He doesn’t really. He’s still Macon, brutally handsome and possessing far too much charisma for one man. He’s just beat up as all hell and in a wheelchair. A cast encases his left leg from the knee to his foot. Another soft cast is on his right wrist. He wears his hair cropped so short it borders on militaristic, but it also highlights the clean bone structure of his face and the fact that his right eye is black and blue and slightly swollen. Various scrapes mar his tan skin, and a line of surgeon’s tape bisects his right brow.
“What happened to you?” I step farther into the room.
“Car accident. Broken fibula, sprained wrist, two bruised ribs, and a gash over my eye, if we’re being exact.” He appears to find his list of injuries amusing, but I don’t.
“I’m sorry.” And I am. Whatever animosity has passed between myself and Macon, the idea of him bloody and broken sends a chill through me.
He simply looks me over, his gaze leisurely and irritating. His attention stalls on my lips, and that slanted smile of his reappears. “A lady friend once told me that when a woman wears red lipstick to meet a man, it’s for two possible reasons. Either she wants him to fuck her, or she wants to tell him to fuck off.”
My body seizes on the word fuck and the way it sounds coming out of Macon’s mouth—all carnal and hard. Normally, if a man I was meeting for business used that word in front of me, I’d have turned and left. But this is Macon. We’ve cursed each other out on multiple occasions—although never quite with this undertone.
Heat flushes over my cheeks, and I find myself glaring. “We both know when it comes to you it’s the latter.”
“Considering you’ve arrived alone, I’d rethink that tone, Tot.”
I’m so tempted to snap back that my lips twitch. But he’s pointed out the dreaded truth of the situation. Sam isn’t here. And I’m screwed. But I can’t show weakness.
“The day I offer to have sex with someone to get out of a sticky situation is the day I swim out to sea.”
“I wasn’t asking. Perhaps you should start explaining why you’re here without Sam.” He gestures to the chair in front of the desk. “Have a seat.”
Part of me is still stuck on the fact that I thought he had teased me with the idea of prostituting myself. Unfortunately, to my horror, I picture it anyway—rounding the desk, hiking my skirt up to straddle his thickly muscled thighs. What would he do? Push me off, or pull me close? Would he grip me tight? His hands are wide, his fingers long. My sex clenches with the thought of being penetrated by those fingers, being used by him.
Jesus, Dee. Get a grip. You hate this man.
But I’ve never had hate sex. Hot, sweaty, angry sex. Hate sex with Macon. Hmm . . . I could leave him weak and panting for more, then stride out of the room.
Beneath my top, my breasts grow tender, and I grit my teeth. Thinking about Macon in conjunction with sex is just asking for a drop