“You can think that all you want, but you’re both fooling yourselves. I’ve never seen Mac act this way with a woman before. Never. He’s been undressing you with his eyes all night, and every time Blair or any other guy comes near, I expect him to pound his chest and roar like King Kong. This might not be a permanent thing in your minds, but it isn’t something light or casual either. You guys aren’t kids planning a covert sleepover.”
Lily’s eyes found their way back to Mac. He was smiling at something Jake said, his arm around his buddy as the two of them chatted with Steven Edwards. Something tightened inside Lily, something hot and a little painful. He looked relaxed and happy, and, man, did she like that look on him.
Could Raine be right?
“Just promise me you won’t close yourself off from the possibility of something more with Mac, because I know that he will. He doesn’t think that he wants what Jake and I have. He doesn’t think he needs what Cain and Maggie have. But he does. Hell, Mac needs it more than anyone I know, and I think that maybe…I think that maybe you do too.”
Lily tore her gaze from Mac, but Raine had already slipped away, her lithe body lost among the burgeoning crowd in line for the margarita bar.
With a sigh she rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the tension that sat there, but it was no use. She was wound too tight and suddenly nervous as hell. She shook out her hands and wiped damp palms across the tops of her thighs.
God, this is going to be a disaster. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been with anyone. The baseball player in Texas? Maybe?
Lily’s cheeks burned as she remembered that night. Jake had already left for Crystal Lake, and she was alone in Texas. Her brother had taken a turn for the worse, and she’d drowned her sorrows in a bar around the corner from the hospital. She’d ingested way too much tequila and had allowed a jock to take her back to his hotel room.
She didn’t remember much other than the walk of shame the next morning and him calling her a dead fuck.
Frigid. That’s what her ex-fiancé had called her just before he’d told her that her sister, Maddison, was a better lay. All this time, Lily had thought she was just bad at sex, that her body wasn’t made right. That she wasn’t quite right…but Mackenzie had blown that theory out of the water.
Turned out, she was just waiting for the right man to come along, the right man who could push all the right buttons.
Warm breath caressed the back of her neck as two large hands slid around her waist and she was pulled back against a hard body, effectively pushing away all thoughts of Raine and commitment and anything else that might have been knocking around the back of Lily’s mind.
“Five minutes, Boston. Say your good-byes now.”
Mackenzie’s voice slid over her as she melted into him, and she shuddered when his right hand splayed over her rib cage, resting just beneath the curve of her breast.
“I don’t…”
His mouth brushed across the sensitive area beneath her ear and she shuddered.
“Let’s just go,” she said hoarsely. She wanted to erase all the memories and pain inside her, and Mackenzie was the key.
Mac’s hand slid to hers, and he led them through the crush of people at the silent auction table before cutting across the dance floor to the other side of the room.
Lily nodded to the few people she knew personally, and they paused as Mackenzie scooped up his tux jacket from their table and nodded to a few men she didn’t know. A couple of guys tried to wa
ylay him, but he sidestepped them like a pro, and before Lily knew it, they were at the exit.
The air was heavy with humidity, and in the distance, she could see the last bits of daylight dropping below the horizon. An owl hooted nearby and she shivered—an omen?
“No turning back now, Boston.”
Lily glanced down at their hands, still linked together intimately. His skin was golden next to her paleness, the fingers long and masculine. Even though Mackenzie had an office job in the city at some big architectural firm, she knew he still got his hands dirty. The pads of his fingers were rough.
She breathed in the hot, heavy air that was full of Mackenzie, and the ache in her lower belly grew stronger by the second.
Her heart was racing. Her cells were buzzing. Her body was alive.
Lily St. Clare had never wanted anything or anyone as badly as she wanted Mackenzie Draper. If she lived to be a hundred years old, she was pretty damn sure she’d never feel this way again.
“Are you going to talk all night or take me back to your place?”
Mackenzie’s eyes bored into her as he tugged her behind him, into the dark, toward the parking lot. He gave her one searing-hot kiss before securing the seat belt across her lap, and then he hopped into the truck, the key in the ignition and the motor turning over within seconds.
He pulled out of the parking lot and pointed his truck toward the lake.
And he didn’t say one more word.