She might have been able to tell herself to knock it off with all this romantic bullshit if he hadn’t been so goddamned tender. If he hadn’t touched her with a reverence that made her tremble. If he hadn’t smiled at her when he lifted her just long enough to sheath himself in a condom.
Maybe more than anything else that did her in was the smile.
He smiled like he was happy to be there, to be with her.
Like he was happy.
She was useless against that smile.
Liv lowered back to move against his erection. His deep, guttural groan filled her with such erotic satisfaction that she did it again. He responded with another growl and suddenly rolled her onto her back. And then the kissing began again. Slow and sexy. Her legs wide open. His hard erection nestled against her throbbing center.
“Fuck, Liv,” he groaned, grinding against her, and then he was inside her.
Filling her up.
Making her soar, soar so high that she knew in an instant that the fall back to Earth was going to hurt.
Mack passed out.
He didn’t know when it happened or how it happened, but one minute he was basking in the postcarnal glow of the single most exquisite sexual experience of his life, and the next he was out.
And he only knew that had happened because he woke up cold and alone.
He rose up on his elbows and looked around his dark bedroom. “Liv?”
She emerged from his bathroom. Partially clothed.
He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Going home.”
“Why?”
“We did what I came here to do.”
His first reaction was to be offended, but then he remembered what Malcolm had said. She was going to be vulnerable after this. She was going to pull away. He’d played a role all night, and so had she, and the game continued. So he went along with it.
Mack leaned back against the headboard and pretended he wasn’t pouting inside. “Don’t I even get a good-night kiss?”
She obliged, lingering just long enough to make him hard again. He slid his hand around her waist and tried to draw her back, but she stood. “It’s better for both of us if I go.”
“I definitely need that one explained because I think it would be better if you got naked again and bossed me around some more.”
“It’s for your own good.” She threaded her arms through her T-shirt and pulled it over her head. “I have you figured out, and I can tell that you’re going to need some time to process this.”
The observation was unnervingly accurate. “I can process just as well with us naked in bed.”
She shrugged and shook her head with a pitying expression. “Here’s the thing. If we’re not careful, you’re going to fall in love with me. And I just can’t have that on my conscience.”
He barked out a laugh. A nervous one. Because damn. “What makes you think I’m going to fall in love with you?”
“Because that’s what you do.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t get my heart broken. I’m a wine-’em-and-dine-’em guy.”
“Who reads romance novels and is so desperate for a woman, he spent a thousand bucks on a cupcake.”
“Am I ever going to live that down?”
“Face it, Mack. You’re a walking Hallmark hero.”
That one stung. “Explain,” he growled.
She gestured at his bedroom. “You live in a castle that you built for a princess who doesn’t exist. You’re a softy inside . . . I don’t want to be the one who breaks that tender heart.”
This time, the observation was so sharply on point that he felt the sting of it all the way through him. She was joking of course. But for one freakish moment, he worried that she could actually see right through him. “You’re not kidding, are you? You’re actually leaving?”
“I am.”
She bent and kissed him again. And just like that, she walked out on him. Because that’s what she did.
Mack listened to her feet on the stairs, the door as it opened and shut. He flopped down on his pillow. This woman was suddenly blowing his cover in every way. And he didn’t fucking like it.
His phone rang five minutes after she left, and he answered without checking the name. “Change your mind?”
“Huh?”
Shit. Mack sat up straight. It wasn’t Liv. It was Sonia. “What’s up?”
“I need you and Liv to get over here. There’s some girl here named Jessica.”
Mack whipped the blanket off his legs, hung up, and quickly dialed Liv’s number. She answered with forced flippancy.