Chapter 27
Mackenzie
“You make me want to become a better man, Mackenzie. Wanna stick around and see if that’s possible?”
Those words, that shy smile, the feel of his body pressed against mine. It had all my very sensible instincts being shoved to one side, burning them up as surely as a bushfire would bone dry leaf litter.
“But…” I gasped between kisses. “Troy…”
“What?” He asked that question in a gentle tone, grinning when I couldn’t answer right away.
“I thought you’d be mad.” With a wince, I remembered what Charlie and I had done.
Gone through his financial modelling first, then when I saw a bunch of unexplained expenses, we’d looked through bank statements and followed the trail to discover just what their father had been doing.
Extorting money from Troy and the rest of the family, from what I could see.
That had led to us trawling through the filing cabinet in the office and pulling out a contract of sale. “Your dad—”
“Is a bastard and I really, really don’t want to talk about him right now.
” I was picked up, my legs instinctively going around his waist. “He’s not in this room, but you are.
” Laying me down on the bed, Troy didn’t join me yet, instead, hovering above me.
His hand touched my cheek, the knuckles grazing my skin.
“You are, and right now, that’s all I… care about. ”
This was getting too real, a small voice said inside me.
I had little experience with flings, but I was pretty sure no guy that was keeping it casual looked down at a woman like that.
It was dark inside the room, so I only saw the shadows of him, but somehow I knew.
When my hand touched the hard planes of his face, the rasp of his stubble, it was like I was trying to memorise the shape of him.
“Well, if you’re not gonna chew me out for meddling with your business, what are you going to do?”
I’m not sure if Troy knew just how devastating he was when he smiled. It was like a light in the darkness, that flash of white teeth, and it felt like my heart skipped a beat at the sight of it.
“Everything you deserve, of course.”
But my heart had no place here.
Just my body, the physical connection that came from touching another person, so that’s what I did. Running my hands across that broad chest, glorying in the muscular breadth of it, I looked up when I felt the muscles pop.
“Are you… flexing for me?” I asked.
“Can’t help it when you touch me like that,” he growled. “Makes me feel all big and strong.” His lips brushed against mine. “And you’re so soft, I just want to sink into you.”
His raspy words, his slow kiss, had me rethinking every part of my body.
When I was a teenager, I despaired of my curves, but Troy had me thinking they were just perfect.
As his lips trailed down my neck, setting the sensitive skin aflame, as I raked my fingers across his back, feeling the rock hard muscle, it was obvious we were made to fit together.
I traced the bump of every rib before reaching the waistband of his shorts, then started to ease them down.
“Nope.” My wrists were caught and stretched up over my head as he rose up, grinning down at me. “That’s not how this is going to work.”
“Don’t need my hands,” I said, wriggling my hips until I was grinding against him. Watching his eyes roll back in appreciation, his lips falling open, was very edifying.
“Don’t need clothes either.” Mine were removed with startling swiftness and when I fell back against the bed, that feeling of vulnerability rose again.
Momentarily distracted by him pulling his shorts off, he gripped my wrists with one of his hands the moment he was naked. “Now, where was I? Ah, making amends.”
My cheeks flushed as I remembered the conversation of last night. While intellectually I stood by what I’d said, being that frank still sat uneasily.
“You don’t… oh!”
Lips closed around my nipple, giving it a little tug, then he ran his tongue over the aching point before looking up at me.
“You were saying?”
“That you need to keep doing that, right now,” I panted out.
All the tension of the last few days, all the horrible things that had happened, it felt like they were licked, sucked away. My body desperately wanted to surrender, and I let it.
“I will,” he promised, “and you… You just need to feel what I’m doing to you.
” His mouth captured my nipple again, swallowing with hard pulls that provoked fireworks of sensation.
“Just stay with me, Mackenzie.” My eyes flicked open and I stared into his eyes, unable to miss the shift in tone.
The smile was gone and something far more intent had replaced it.
“Stay right here, with me, in this bed.”
It was like he was looking right into my head, seeing the messy tumble of thoughts, feelings, everything, desperate to push forward and demand my attention.
Instead, I watched as he dropped his head, watching me the entire time as his tongue flicked out.
I could feel every tastebud on his tongue as he slowly circled my nipple.
My whole body jumped when he flicked at it.
The velvety softness of his lips took a year and a day to clasp around the bead, then his tongue pressed hard against the point as he sucked.
I was with him when he pulled away, mapping the slope of one breast with kisses, then when he approached the other. The first nipple ached in sympathy when he began to suck the other. My thighs rubbed together when he drew back, forced to release my wrists as he kissed his way down my stomach.
“Troy…”
I was with him right in this moment. The slip of his hair between my fingers, the shape of his head imprinted on my palms. The way he looked up the line of my body, eyes dancing, before he parted my thighs.
Kissing his way across the soft inner part of my thigh held my attention, partly due the delicious ticklish feeling, partly because my hips began to flex, needing more.
“Yes, Mackenzie?”
That sly tone, the way he paused, had me grabbing him by the shoulders and dragging him upwards.
“You want me to stay in the moment. Well, maybe that should be true of both of us.”
After a few abortive attempts to move, he worked out what I meant, turning around so I was face to face with that formidable dick.
“Like this?” he asked.
“Mm…” I placed a kiss on that throbbing shaft and listened for his hiss of pleasure. “Yes, just like this.”
Sixty-nines were always hard for me. I’d either get lost in what the guy was doing to me or too focussed on him to register his tongue.
Not this time. As I slid my tongue up Troy’s shaft, his parted my folds.
When I traced the shape of the crown of his cock, his did the same to my clit.
My pleasure, his pleasure, it became something else.
Ours.
Troy got his wish, because I couldn’t have been more in the moment.
His moans and mine. The hair on his thighs catching at my fingers, right as they sank into his glutes, dragging him deeper.
My head, his cock, his tongue, my cunt, we were stuck in a competition, trying to provoke the most pleasure out of the other person.
My hand wrapped around the base of his dick, stopping him from pulling away as he grew diamond hard.
“Mackenzie… Mac… I’m…”
Going to come. I already knew. The frantic pulse of his hips, his raspy breaths, the way his heart beat in time with mine, bunny fast, it told me everything I needed to know.
My own pleasure was like a bloom, slowly opening, but his was a river, ready to burst. Salty volleys shot down my throat and I sucked down every bit, licking my lips when he finally pulled away.
“Well, if we’re doing different things tonight…” I let out a yelp as he picked me up, placing my hips so I straddled his chest as he laid down on the bed. “This is something I’ve needed since the moment I met you.”
“You…” My voice faltered as he drew me forward. Nose nudging my clit, his tongue couldn’t do much else other than bury itself in me from this angle. “This is what you always wanted?”
My hands slapped down on the bed half so my weight so I didn’t crush him, the other to keep my balance.
Hands yanked me down harder on top of his face, making clear there would be no hovering, and then I felt his answer.
A long humming sound of approval had me squirming, and that just made me worse.
“OK, maybe you were right…” My voice cracked as my nails dug into the headboard, unable to stop my hips from moving. “Yeah, I think… I think…”
Bliss tore through me like a wildfire, burning away all inhibitions, all pain. That couldn’t coexist, not while he was in the room. Licking, sucking me through the first peak, he threw me down on the bed as the second was about to hit.
“Mackenzie…”
The way he growled my name had me shivering, but not more than when I felt his cock notch at my entrance.
“Yes, yes please, Troy. Now—”
“The way you talk…” The ecstasy that came as he thrust deep inside me had what I was feeling before doubling, trebling, growing exponentially until a little scream escaped me. “Right there with you, love.”
That little term of endearment was like a spear stabbing into my heart, because he didn’t get it. Making me stay perfectly present, staring into my eyes, mapping every expression of pleasure, meant he was piercing through every barrier, every boundary, leaving me naked, open, vulnerable.
And I couldn’t seem to regret that.
“Troy…”
My fingers gripped his hips, mine jerking up, meeting him stroke for stroke. Our bodies crashed together like waves did a sea cliff, slowly eroding the other, smoothing every jagged rock away until we absorbed the shape of each other.
“Mackenzie…”
His body pressed mine into the bed, his weight on his elbows as he stared into my eyes, right as our bodies erupted.
Never in my life had sex been such an intimate thing, and as we recovered, I think we both realised that.
With a shaky smile, we pulled away, but not for long.
Him, to retrieve a cloth and clean up the mess.
Me, into his arms, needing that safe harbour right now.
I had been smashed into a million pieces and now I needed putting back together.
He did that with the softest of forehead kisses and then these words.
“You told me that an apology isn’t real until changes are made to ensure the same shit doesn’t keep on happening.” His voice was almost inaudible, as if speaking to himself, not me. “Well, I’m making changes, Mackenzie.”
“That’s good…” I said, fighting the wave of exhaustion that threatened to crash down over me. Didn’t win though. My breath evened up and then I fell deeply into sleep, comforted by the hard press of his body.
Which was an impediment when the phone call came.
Mom had her own ringtone and it was the only one I didn’t mute.
Hard coded instincts had my eyelids fluttering, then fighting my way free of the covers when I realised she was calling me.
A groan escaped me when I saw the moon was still high in the sky.
Trying to get out of bed, Troy snorted and hauled me back.
Just in time to hear the phone go silent.
With a sigh, I flopped back on the bed, thinking that she just messed up the time differences, but then the screen lit up again. Shoving a pillow into Troy’s arms, I managed to claw my way over to my clothes and fish out the phone.
“Hello…?” I said.
“Oh, Mackenzie, honey.”
It took me a few seconds to realise who was on the other end of the line. Not my mom, but Alex’s.
“Sandra?”
“I’m sorry to ring you like this at…” She let out a huff of breath. “I’m not sure what time it is in Australia, but Mackenzie, you need to come home.” Somehow someone had snuck up on me in the darkness, only to stab a knife made of ice into my heart. “Your mom…”
“What?” I asked, far too sharply. “What’s wrong with Mom?”
“She’s in the hospital, honey. You need to get back to the States as soon as you can…”
The details were missed as the phone fell from my fingers, only to clatter on the floor.