A violent surge of possessive energy pulses through my body. She’s not mine. She’s not mine. I repeat those three words, hoping that it’ll squash my urge to land a haymaker on my friend.
“She got a man?” Caleb directs his question toward Blake.
“How the fuck should I know?”
“Have Layla set me up.”
“What? You can’t ask a chick out on your own?”
“I can, but have Layla feel it out for me first.”
The urge to piss disappears, and I take my seat back on the couch. “She’s got a man.” I’m usually a horrible liar, but those four little words flow effortlessly from my lips.
Caleb looks at me. “She does? You sure?”
I shrug and pretend to watch the game. “Her bike got a flat after work, and her man came and took care of it.”
Aw, shit. My chest swells with blooming warmth at the truth in my lie. I’ve considered what it would be like to be the man that Mac calls hers. The voice in my head tells me she deserves better. The shame trailing my issues screams that I’m not worthy of her. I drop my head and study the carpet, heavy with the physical weight of all the reasons why she shouldn’t want me.
But the thought of her being with anyone else is something I can’t bear. Now that I’ve felt her lips on mine, I’m craving more. My body reacts as it always does and nausea piggybacks my arousal.
I excuse myself and hope a quick splash of cold water will do the job of a cold shower. Walking down the long hallway to the bathroom, I hear female voices coming from Jonah’s bedroom. I stop and peek inside the open door to find Raven, Layla, and Mac all sitting on the bed. Raven’s sitting cross-legged with one hand on her small pregnant belly. Layla is lying on her side, her head propped in her hand. But my eyes are drawn like magnets to Mac. She’s sitting on the bed, one leg cocked up and her other foot still on the floor. Her head is thrown back in laughter, and the smile that accompanies it sucks the air from my lungs.
I duck back into the hallway and listen.
“What about you, Mac? Where are you from?” Raven’s the one who asked.
“Oh, um . . . I’m from a crappy little dirt town. You’ve probably never heard of it. It’s about two hours from Vegas and in the middle of nowhere.” Mac’s voice gets soft, and I can picture the pink that probably colors her cheeks.
“That’s nice.” Layla’s voice is cheery, as if she’s trying to ease Mac’s discomfort. I knew she sounded embarrassed. “So you have family nearby.”
Seconds tick in silence and I resist the urge to peek around the doorframe to see what’s going on.
Throat clearing. “I don’t have any family. My parents are dead.”
A small gasp. “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“I’m not. I was really young, and the memories I have of them weren’t all that good.”
Mac lost her parents? Makes sense. Her strength and independence comes from somewhere, but I’d never guess she didn’t have a family. We have more in common than I thought.
“I know what that’s like,” Raven says. “My mom and I only started to have a relationship these last six months. And my dad, well, I . . .”
I’m stuck in place, hanging on to every word.
“Yeah, I heard,” Mac says. “Sounds like you did what you had to.” She sounds angry?
That can’t be right.
“I did,” Raven says with soft determination.
We’re like a threesome of misfits. No parents, lost to the world, and searching. But Raven found her future with Jonah. She’s pieced together her history and reconciled it with her present.
Unlike Mac.
She has no family, she’s living with a stripper who has horrible judgment when it comes to men, and from what I can tell she doesn’t seem to be surrounded by friends. She didn’t even have anyone to call the night I met her in the alley with a flat tire.
I may be like her in a lot of ways, but I could name ten people off the top of my head who would drop everything if I needed them. Sadness wells up in my gut, remembering a time when I had no one, after I was released from the hospital and before I started kickboxing. Dammit. The memory is so close to the surface, but not close enough to touch. Only the loneliness is vivid.
“Rex?” I jerk my head up to find the three girls in the hallway, staring at me. Layla steps closer. “You okay?”
“Oh, yeah, I just wanted to see if I could steal Mac for a second.”
One eyebrow lifts along with the corner of her mouth. “Sure.” Layla turns to Mac. “We’ll be pigging out if you need us.” She takes Raven’s arm and leads her down the hallway toward the kitchen.
Only then do I have the courage to meet Mac’s stare. Her eyebrows are pinched and head cocked to the side like she’s trying to figure me out.
“Mac, I um. . .” I scrub my hand through my hair. Why is this so hard? “If you want, would you like to go, with me, on a—”
“Yes.” There’s a hint of a smile in her voice.
“Yes? But you don’t know what I was asking.”
She shrugs and steps in close. “I had a feeling. And honestly, there isn’t much you could ask that I’d say no to.”
A grin pulls at my lips. “Yeah?”
She nods.
“So . . .” I run a lock of her hair through my fingers, making sure to brush my fingertips against her cheek. So fucking soft. “What if I’d asked you to rob a bank? Your answer would be . . .?”
“Yes.”
“Mmm.” My fingers trail a path down her arm, now exposed without her leather jacket, and goose bumps chase after my touch.
“And if I asked for your bike?”
“Yes.” She’s breathless.
“Really? Huh.” I step in close, and I’m overcome by her sweet, tropical smell. “And um . . .” Hooking my fingers beneath her chin, I tilt her head back. “What if I asked . . .?”
The heat of her soft curves presses against my ribs and I’m suddenly hyperaware of my own heartbeat. Her breath is quick against my lips, unleashing a fierce euphoria that makes me dizzy.
“Yes.” She pushes up on her toes and presses her lips to mine. But unlike the two times before, she glides the tip of her tongue along my bottom lip.
The wet heat ignites a desperate need that has me driving my fingers into her hair. She smiles against my lips before tilting her head and opening to me. I groan into the warm heat of her mouth. Our tongues slide together, the first contact so intense that my eyes slam shut and I push her back against the wall. I pinch my eyes closed, thrashing in the waves of both abhorrence and my fierce appetite for more.
She moans and arches against the drywall, shoving her fingers into my hair, fisting until my scalp burns. The sting feels so damn good.
“Fuck yeah,” I say against her lips.
Her teeth rake against my tongue and then latch on to my piercing. She pulls against it with possession, an animalistic bite that forces me to pull her back by her hair. She lets go only to tilt her head and devour me deeper. The violence behind the kiss is mind-numbing.
It’s been so long since I’ve kissed a woman like this. Hell, I’ve never kissed a woman like this.
The sound of voices reminds me we’re in Jonah’s hallway and not in the privacy of our own lust-laden room.
I break the kiss but keep my hold on her hair. “Shit, that was hot.” There’s no rush of nausea in my stomach, only the slight quiver of excitement.
“When’s the game over?” she says breathlessly. Her hands slide down from my hair to my chest.
“An hour or so.”
“Can we go out after?”
Her eagerness to pick up where we’ve left off reminds me that I was asking her out on a date before I kissed her into a wall.
I step back and admire how sexy she looks, pinned against the wall, her lips swollen and a brighter shade of red than usual. Her shirt must’ve lifted a little during our rough encounter because a wedge of the porcelain skin of her stomach draws my eyes. I take a moment to let myself imagine what it would be like to run my hands all over that skin. I’d trace the tender flesh of her belly button before shoving my hand down the front of her jeans and—ugh! Revulsion stabs me through the gut. I clench my shirt and swallow back the sour taste in my throat.