to know, Macy, no matter what happens, I’ll never forget this. I’ve got your back for anything you ever need me for. Ever. No questions asked.”
Friends. That word hadn’t tasted very good in his mouth, she could tell. She wasn’t comfortable with it either, even if she was the one who’d thrown it at him earlier. To hell with self-preservation. Her regret at that moment was so immense, it eclipsed everything else but the need to tell him the truth: she wanted so much more than to be his friend.
“Seth, I didn’t mean—”
His cell phone took that moment to come to life, blaring what even she knew was AC/DC’s “Big Balls”. Why he’d chosen that as Brian’s ringtone, she didn’t know and didn’t dare ask.
The mood shattered as Seth answered the call. Macy inwardly cursed Brian’s timing and refocused on the long road ahead, tightening her grip on the steering wheel, heart thudding dully. Despite her exhaustion, suddenly she’d never felt more awake.
She needed to get a grip, so maybe Brian’s timing wasn’t so bad after all. Seth was in the middle of a family crisis. Now wasn’t the time to add her conflicted emotions to his turmoil, no matter how they begged for her to express them. She would be there to comfort him until her friends came, and then she would leave and let him deal with his grief. When he came back, maybe they could pick up where they left off.
Her body still tingled with aftereffects of last night’s sex marathon, and being in this car, with its backseat, was no help. At all. No wonder she was frazzled. She’d probably never be able to ride in this vehicle without thinking of that first encounter many months ago.
The very fact she’d met up with him that night was telling—the first crack in her cautious outer shell. She still didn’t know what had come over her, but when she ran into him at the sushi bar and he asked if she wanted to hang out later, her “yes” had been immediate.
Loneliness? Boredom? Maybe both, maybe a lot more. Candace had just begun messing around with Brian, Sam had Michael, and Macy had…no one.
Nothing had happened, at least not that night. They’d only talked. She hadn’t lied to her friend when Candace grilled her about it a few days later, but she’d tried damn hard to hide the disappointment she’d felt—disappointment she tried to talk herself out of. As bad an idea as the whole thing was, she hadn’t been able to help herself. Surely this edgy, razor-witted, dangerous-looking guy had more in mind for her than hanging out.
As it turned out, it hadn’t taken long for him to show her.
She glanced over at him now, found that he’d finally settled down after hanging up with Brian and appeared to be dozing with his hood drawn over his head. Good. She let the memories of their second meet-up engulf her.
The way he hadn’t kissed her mouth. She’d gone in for the move first—imagine that—and he’d grasped her chin and grazed the side of her neck with his lips…oh, those lips…before scoring lightly with his teeth. She would never, could never forget that. It had been so disconcerting and wildly erotic for him to deny her the taste of him when she was starving for it. He’d had her without another modicum of effort.
After that one intensely vivid moment, the rest was a blur of pleasure. Of desire trumping dignity. Probably good that she couldn’t recall the exact things he’d gotten her to say or the positions he’d had her in so he could get to her in the cramped confines. The degree of difficulty had only made it that much hotter.
He gave her the best sex of her life. But that wasn’t something they could build a relationship on. It should be a perk, not the foundation.
Things like this, though. Being there for each other through crises. Caring. She had no doubt she could call him for anything and he’d be there, even before today. That’s what it was all about, right? And they had that going for them too.
She didn’t want to end up like Raina. That thought terrified her more than anything. He could be making the girl sound worse than she was, but Macy had witnessed the crazy firsthand, and she seemed ruined over him. When he was done giving Macy all the addictive sex she could handle, would he then cut her loose too? Would