Chapter Nineteen. Mackenzie
chapter nineteen
MACKENZIE
No matter how hard I tried not to feel anything for Sam, I could never fully shake the dream I had about him the night we met.
We were at the trailer where he introduced himself, with that smug lean and cocky grin.
Before I knew it, we were tearing off each other’s clothes, so fast and heated it bordered on punishing.
But then I met his eyes. They were so tender. So warm and steady on mine.
I’d never seen anyone look at me like that in real life. It made me realize it was a dream so fast that I jerked awake.
But whatever is happening between us now is no dream. Sam meets my lips for another slow, searching kiss, sliding his arms beneath my knees and around my back. He lifts me from the couch so easily that I let out a little gasp, feeling as weightless as I did in the pool.
This time when his eyes meet mine, it’s with a current so electric that I know I’m not waking up from this. And if I waited all these years to let myself feel it, I’m damn well going to take my sweet time.
“Oh, you think you get me that easily?” I keep my arms hooked around his neck, but ease my feet onto the floor. “Years of driving me up the wall and you can just have me without settling the score?”
His hands wrap around the small of my back, migrating down. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he says lowly. “Remind me of my crimes?”
I tilt my chin up at him. “There are enough that it might just take all night.”
He leans in slowly, kissing me just above my ear. “As long as you’re the one deciding the punishment.”
“Well,” I say sweetly. “In that case.”
I take a step back and plant my hands on his chest, pushing him on the couch so he’s laid out on his back.
I take my time straddling him, dipping low and sucking just hard enough under his jaw to leave a mark.
He tastes sweet, like salt and rainwater, but the groan I feel rise up in his throat is anything but.
“That,” I say, “is for the time you wore one of my ex’s ugly sneaker brands onstage for a month.”
He snickers, then plants his hands firmly on my hips to settle me on top of him. He lifts his hips and I let out a gasp at how achingly hard he already is underneath me.
Then he skims down the robe, hoisting me up a slow kiss that ends with him dragging his teeth along my lower lip.
“That’s for the time you set off that glitter cannon in the middle of our set.”
I push my hand on his chest again, dragging my fingernails down his torso as I deliberately roll my hips over the hard length of him between our underwear.
“Fuck, Mackenzie,” he says.
I’ve never loved the sound of my name more than when it’s coming out of Sam’s mouth.
“We’ll see,” I tease. “But first, that’s for acting like a total jerk to any guys I brought around.”
One moment I’m on top of him, and the next I’m in the air again, his arms firmly hooked under my shoulders and knees. He takes me down the hall and all but tosses me on the bed.
“In that case,” he says, his eyes dark, “that was for making me watch you date jerks.”
I tighten the robe around myself, smirking as I sit up.
He saunters over, grabs me by my ankles, and tugs me to the edge of the bed, stepping between my legs.
He reaches for the tie to the robe. I shift up in silent permission, and then I’m letting the loose fabric slide off my shoulders, and he’s staring at every inch of me as I stare back.
“Well?” he asks. “Any last misdeeds to punish me for?”
I nod. “Just—trying to remember which ones.”
“Maybe we can stir up some memories.”
Doubtful. Any thoughts I have are entirely consumed by the sight of Sam sinking to his knees, by the warmth of his mouth on my inner thigh. I reach for a fistful of his hair, and he kisses upward, sucking so lightly that tremors roll up my whole body.
The tips of his fingers graze my underwear. He looks at me with mock innocence as he slowly slides it off.
“Anything yet?” he asks.
“Don’t worry,” I say, trying to keep my breath even. “I’m sure it’ll come to me.”
He teases a single finger at my entrance. I’m so wet that I don’t feel the first finger he slides into me until he hooks it upward and I let out a sharp pant.
“Sooner than later, I’d say,” he tells me.
“Please,” I say, in a voice I’ve never heard before—quaking, but with a bite.
“Patience,” says Sam, sliding his finger back out. “I have a few things to get back at you for, too.”
He dips his head between my legs, sliding his tongue with torturous slowness before sucking lightly on my clit. I spread wide as he pulls back, kissing my inner thighs again almost like he’s mapping them— here and here and there . I brace myself on my elbows, letting my head fall back.
“I must have done something really— bad ,” I say, hitching on the last word.
Sam’s tongue is only at my entrance for a few seconds before sinking in deeper.
My hips buck in surprise and he grips my thighs like anchors as I tug on the back of his hair, already so startlingly close to coming that I am dizzy with the shock of it—the way it’s swelling in me, so overpowering that I already know I’ll have no choice but to give in to it soon.
“Fuck,” I say. “This—you—I’m gonna—”
He twists his tongue just so, pressing his thumb to my clit, and I see stars . The pleasure slams into me so unexpectedly that I cry out just as the first strike of lightning hits, the immediate, booming thunder drowning out the tail end of it.
Once I catch my breath, the only words I can summon are, “What the fuck was that?”
Sam is still on his knees. “Revenge,” he says huskily.
I sit up and reach for his robe, which is inexplicably still on him. “Well, that’s not fair,” I say, breathless. “I still haven’t gotten any.”
As he rises to his feet, I slide the tie off his robe, drinking in more of Sam than I’ve ever seen.
The lean ease of his body. The full woven tapestry of his tattoos across his arms and legs, the ink fresh and old, telling stories I know and stories I have yet to hear.
The sharp cut of muscle that dips into his low-slung boxers, the tempting tuft of dark hair just above the seam.
I press my palm over his boxers, the length of him so warm and hard that I shudder in anticipation. Or maybe the shudder is Sam’s; his lips are parted, his breath uneven, as I gently, firmly stroke upward.
Just like that I forget all plans to make him wait for it, to make him beg. I’m too eager to dip below the seam of his boxers, to hold him firm and pulsing in the palm of my hand.
“Of fucking course ,” I say as I pull his boxers off him. “Of course this is as infuriatingly perfect as the rest of you.”
I’m expecting a cocky response, but from the look of him he might have lost the power of speech. Good. I want to undo him every bit as much as he just undid me. Maybe we aren’t rivals anymore, but this is a competition I am determined to win.
I might just be losing track of the rules, though, because Sam’s hands find mine, weaving through my fingers. He uses them to lift my arms over my head, putting my naked body on full display for him.
“Mackenzie,” he says in a low voice. “If you’re going to punish me, then—the worst thing I can possibly imagine—” He’s closer to the edge of the bed now, his fingers squeezing mine possessively, his eyes burning with intent. “Is doing whatever I have to do to see that look on your face again.”
For all my years spinning lyrics, I have no words left. There is just the pulsing, immediate need to have as much of him as I can possibly take, and nothing else.
He releases me, only to pull his fingers through my hair and slowly push me back onto the mattress. Another strike of lightning crackles outside, illuminating him like the very fallen angel I’ve always imagined him to be: sharp-edged and beautiful and impossible to look away from.
When he lowers himself the weight of him is so satisfying that I wrap my arms around his back, pulling him in even tighter.
The crush of his ribs against mine steals my breath, but I keep him there, listening to the unsteady beats of our hearts.
When he looks down at me it’s with the kind of awe that makes me scared to blink and miss one split second of watching what this is doing to him.
“Whatever I do next,” he says, “is payback for knowing my tell , when I’ve spent years trying to read your mind.”
I’m dizzy with want, a dam on the verge of collapse. But something else spills out of me then. The secret I’ve been keeping from him. The one that’s been stuck in my throat for so long that it’s impossible to keep for another minute.
“I was a big Candy Shard fan before we met.”
Oh, fuck . That’s not the secret I thought I’d tell him. Somehow, it’s worse.
Sam doesn’t move, his voice wry when he says, “You were?”
My cheeks are searing. “I had posters. I knew all the words to your songs. I just—” I let out a breathy laugh. “I never told anyone. But you thought I hated you when we met. But the truth is, I didn’t.”
I crush my eyes shut. Jesus. I’m no stranger to self-sabotage, but this might take the cake. Every inch of me is burning for him, and if I lose this now, I’ve got nobody to blame but myself.
It’s just—we spent so long pretending. Using the rivalry as our only excuse to get close. In a way, we’re even doing it now.
I can’t pretend with him anymore. I want the real damn thing or nothing at all. Even if it means giving him this piece of myself I swore I never would.
“Mackenzie.”
Sam runs his fingers through my hair, pushing back the loose curls.
“Mackenzie,” he says again. “You know what I thought the first time I saw you?”
I finally meet his gaze, and there it is. That look in his eyes that I dreamed about. It feels so much like love that I don’t know what to do with it except brace myself.
Except this time, I don’t wake up.
“That’s a lot of glitter?” I say weakly.
He shakes his head. “I thought—that woman’s either gonna change my life, or end life as I know it.”