“You know what I think?” he said, moving closer. “I think you’re the one who needed time to process things, so you made up some stupid story and left me hanging for two goddamned days.”
Her body burned hot and cold at once. Hot because of the scorching look in his eyes. Cold because, damn him, that wasn’t fair. He’d backed her into the kitchen. Boxed her in. If she let him stare into her eyes, he’d see right through her and realize he was telling the truth.
“This is what I was afraid of,” she rasped. “You’re already attached to me. I’m a heartbreaker.”
Mack pressed his palms to the counter on either side of her and leaned in. His eyes had an exhausted, strung-out look to them, and she wondered for a moment whether that could actually be real. Had he really missed her? Had it really hurt his feelings that she had avoided him for two whole days?
Mack made a grumpy face. “Would it be so fucking bad if I cared about you?”
Her heart sputtered. “You don’t, though.”
“Don’t I?”
“Maybe you think you do, but it’s not real.”
He groaned and rolled his eyes. “Oh please. Do continue.”
“You have a hero complex and think I’m in danger or some shit, so your . . . hero hormone is firing at all cylinders.”
“Hero hormone?”
“Yeah. And then we threw sex into the mix, and boom, you went full Disney prince on me.”
He crossed his arms. “Wait. I thought you said I was going to fall madly in love with you. Now I don’t care about you? Make up your mind.”
She winced. Plot hole. “You think you care about me because you’re the type to fall in love. But you don’t really care about me.”
“So your fear isn’t that I’ll actually fall in love with you, just that I will think I’m in love with you.”
She looked sideways. “Yes.”
He gazed down at her, the corner of his mouth tilting in a reluctant smile. “Damn, Liv, you’re complicated.”
She shrugged. “It’s your issue, not mine.”
“Well I hope you’re right, because caring about you would be a major inconvenience.”
“Then consider yourself off the hook.”
“Thank you. That definitely makes my life easier.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Liv?” he murmured, bending way too closely.
The unmistakable scent of him hit her with the force of a wrecking ball. The man never smelled bad. Sweaty, dirty, bloody, cocky piece of shit. He still smelled like pure lust to her. “What?” She said with a heavy rasp.
“I think you’re full of shit.”
He wasn’t wrong. Which is why her heart overruled her brain and said, fuck it. Who needed gravity anyway? Liv grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him forward. Their mouths collided, and she let him do his thing. And that thing went from a deep, hot tongue kiss to a hand up the shirt in about ten seconds flat. And after that, there wasn’t much argument between her principles and her pink parts because both seemed to be on the same page. The one that said, Sure, let’s get naked, because holy shit, what that man could do to a nipple with just the flick of his fingers ought to be illegal.
Liv moaned and arched into his touch.
Mack pinched her. “Who’s the boss now?”
“You’re going to ruin this with that mouth of yours.”
“This mouth of mine is going to prove you wrong.”
Mack suddenly dropped to his knees, and truly, Liv had no idea how it happened, but suddenly she was sans pants, and that mouth of his was licking her through the lace of her underwear, and she was hanging on to his head.
“Just so you know, I haven’t actually agreed to sex again,” she moaned.
“This isn’t sex, honey,” he teased. His left hand snaked up her thigh and stopped at the opening of her panties, where nothing but a thin layer of cotton separated his fingers from the pulsing ball of desire that so desperately needed his touch.
“It feels like sex,” she moaned.
“Then you need to do it more.”
She had just started to whimper incoherently when he shoved the fabric aside to bare her flesh. He did the licking thing again, and when he slid two fingers inside her, she was done. Just like that. Fireworks exploded. She bit her own arm to keep from belting out the national anthem.
He wasn’t done, though. In her haze, she became aware of him nibbling his way up her body, fumbling with his pants, the sound of a condom wrapper—