All Over You (13 page)

Panting, she met him thrust for thrust, a sob rising in her throat as she felt herself coming apart again.

“Yes, Grace, yes,” he encouraged in her ear, kissing her thoroughly as her muscles clenched around him.

She felt liquid, languid, sated, and she wrapped her legs around him, locking her ankles together as she rocked her hips, wanting to help him find his own climax now.

Mac had other ideas. Slowing his thrusts, he prolonged each penetration to its fullest, sliding his hips back until his tip almost slid free of her before plunging to the hilt again. Grace bit her lip and tilted her hips to accept every inch, wanting all of him. While his mouth worked wonders on her breasts, he slid a hand between their bodies and found the swollen nub of her clitoris again.

“No, I can’t…” She started to object, but he kissed her objection away and began to work her with his clever fingers.

“Oh boy,” she whispered after a few seconds, feeling the tension tightening inside her once again.

He grinned and picked up his pace. Biting her lip, Grace rocked to his rhythm, her body tensing as she drew closer and closer to her peak again.

This time, he held her face between his hands, his eyes looking deeply into hers. She saw how close he was and knew he wanted them to come together. Holding his gaze, she gave him what he wanted, what he’d worked for, what he’d teased from her. As her body shattered, she stared into his eyes and saw him lose himself for a few crazy seconds. As the last shudders left both their bodies, he pressed a kiss to her lips, held it a long beat, then let his body fall boneless and heavy on top of hers.

They were both panting, their chests heaving in time with one another. After a long, long silence, Mac lifted his head.

“How’s the headache?” he asked, peering down at her.

“Never been better.” She smiled, feeling light and silly and frivolous.

Happy, even.

“You know, orgasm is supposed to be an excellent cure for migraine,” she said.

“Yeah, the pharmacist mentioned it. Seemed a little disappointed he didn’t have one in a jar I could buy,” he said wryly.

“You did okay,” she assured him. “More than okay.”

“I counted three okays, actually,” he said a little smugly.

She laughed. “What a time to be counting!”

“Trust me, it was all postcoital addition. At the time, you were too busy blowing my mind,” he said, nuzzling her neck affectionately.

She ran a hand across his shoulders, exploring the dips and hollows of his muscular back. “I think you were the one blowing my mind,” she corrected him. Placing a hand on his chest, she pushed him onto his back, slid a leg over his hips and straddled him. He didn’t fight, just lay there, a big grin on his lips.

“Having a nice time?” he asked conversationally.

“Not yet, but I will be. I’ve got some catching up to do,” she said, sweeping her hair over one shoulder and pressing her lips to his chest. Trailing her wet, open mouth across to first one nipple and then the other, she was pleased to feel an erection nudging her bottom.

“Start counting, math boy,” she warned him as she slid farther south.

T
HEY HAD TO GET OUT
of bed sometime, Mac knew. Technically, of course, they’d been out of bed several times. Bathroom trips, showers, baths, two expeditions all the way to the door to let room service in. But not once had they considered what lay beyond the four walls of their hotel room, beyond Hawaii, beyond this stolen time away from time.

Lifting his head, he glanced at the alarm clock on Grace’s bedside table.

Six in the morning. Only another hour or two until they had to face the world. Marla and Frank were probably fit to go again today. So he and Grace wouldn’t be alone.

Damn it.

He felt like a kid with a new toy — he wanted to stay in his room and play with it.

Beside him, Grace slept, her mouth pursed slightly, her cheek mushed against the pillow. Even squished she looked divine — his own personal siren, calling him onto the rocks time after time after time.

Lifting a finger, he shifted a stray strand of hair away from her face, smoothing it back into place.

Without opening her eyes, Grace spoke.

“Are you staring at me while I’m sleeping?”

“No. Maybe.”

“Am I drooling?”

“A little.”

“Liar. I bet I’m drooling a lot,” Grace said. Then she smiled, opened her eyes and rolled onto her back. They both laughed as her stomach rumbled.

“All that exercise,” she explained, pressing a hand to her stomach. “Can you remember if they have waffles on the menu?”

“A waffle lady. I should have known. When we get back to L.A., I’ll take you to this little place I know,” he said.

It was only when he felt her stiffen that he registered his own words. Her expression became guarded and her gaze drifted over his shoulder.

“Better shake a tail feather,” she said, wriggling toward the edge of the bed.

In a moment she’d be gone and somehow he knew that if he didn’t act now, he was going to let something precious slip through his fingers. Without actually willing it, Mac reached out to grab her arm.

“Grace, I want to see you again.” The words slipped out before he could consider them, but he meant them. Sometime over the past week, she’d wriggled under his skin — at first in a burr-like way, but now in a good, he-was-going-to-miss-her-when-she-was-gone way.

“Careful there, stud, or a girl might go getting the wrong idea,” she said.

“Maybe she’d get the right idea,” he said.

“What happened to Mr. No Relationship?” she said, her tone still light.

“He met you,” he said baldly.

She blinked. Then she paled.

“Not funny,” she said, tugging her arm out of his grasp.

“Why would I joke about something like this? Grace, I like you. I’m figuring the last few hours of tongue wrangling and moaning and groaning means you like me, too. But this is about more than sex. I want to see you again, I want to see where this goes,” he said.

God, it had been so long since he’d wanted anything. It felt like a revolution to actually stick a stake in the sand and lay claim to his desires. He wanted Grace — and it was more than a sex want. He wanted to wake up with her in his arms again. He wanted to make her laugh, to spoil her, even to spar with her.

“I already know where this goes,” she said coolly. “And I’m not interested in going there.”

Again she tried to get out of bed, but he stopped her with the simple expedient of rolling on top of her. He was a lot heavier than she was and she was probably feeling pretty squashed, but he figured it was the best way to get her to stay put and listen.

“That’s all you have to say?” he asked, his nose a mere inch from hers. Up close, her green eyes were clear and utterly defenseless. Even if he hadn’t been able to feel the tension in her sexy body, he could see it in the sea-green of her irises.

“I told you, I’m very happy with my life,” she said. “I like being in control of my own world.”

“That’s good, because I’m not trying to stage a coup here,” he said. “I enjoy spending time with you. I think you’re funny and smart and sexy. I really like doing this with you,” he said, flexing his hips to press his hard-on against her belly, “and I want to do a lot more of it. I want to hang out with you, get to know you. Is that such a horrible thing? Is that asking too much?”

She stared at him and he realized she looked terrified.

“Yes,” she said in a voice so quiet, so strangled that it barely qualified as a whisper.

He frowned, remembering something suddenly. Grace had been single and celibate for four years before they’d torn each other’s clothes off and gone crazy. For the first time it occurred to him that something pretty profound must have happened to push a natural hedonist like her into such an unnatural, ungenerous state. And she was a hedonist. Her sensual clothes, her love of color and texture, the way she savored her food, the pleasure she took from the world around her — she was hardly a dried-up prune. So why had she backed away from the whole man-woman thing?

“Four years ago — you were in a relationship, weren’t you?” he guessed, his rarely functioning male intuition signaling like crazy from a dusty corner of his brain.

She stiffened further, if that were possible. “You’re getting heavy,” she said, pushing ineffectually at his chest.

“Me or the conversation?” he asked, but he rolled off her. “What are you afraid of, Grace?”

“I’m not afraid of anything. God, you’re as bad as Sadie and Claudia,” she snapped, then she bit her lip as though she’d just blabbed a state secret.

So.

“Tell me about him, Gracie,” he said, tracing the curve of her ear with his finger.

Maybe he wasn’t the quickest guy off the mark when it came to emotional matters, but once he was onto something, he wasn’t about to back away.

Pressing a kiss to her collarbone, he looked deep into her eyes. “Trust me. Tell me,” he said.

G
RACE SWALLOWED
a lump of anger and irrational fear. The past few hours had been heaven on earth and now he’d gone and ruined it all with talk about the future and them seeing each other again. It was just as bad as the last time when he’d given her the brush-off so ineptly. Worse, because now he was asking her to tell him about Owen and that was the last thing she wanted to do.

“Look, contrary to current popular thinking, I’m not a big believer in the whole blab-blab, talky-talky thing,” she said patiently. “Shit happens, you deal with it, you move on. End of story.”

“Humor me,” he said. He kissed her neck again, trailing his tongue down toward her nipple. Instantly, her body went on red alert.

He stopped, grinning at her knowingly. “Humor me and I’ll make it worth your while,” he said, lowering his head to pull her nipple into his mouth. She shivered with need as he ran his hot, wet tongue over and over her nipple inside his mouth, the suction and the roughness of his tongue driving her crazy.

“M-Mac,” she groaned when he stopped.

He just cocked an eyebrow at her.

“My college boyfriend is much more interesting. He crashed my car then disappeared when he was afraid I’d make him pay for it,” she offered.

“Fascinating. I once had a girlfriend who tried to sell my underwear on eBay. We could swap shitty ex stories all day, Grace. Tell me about the last guy. He’s the one I’m interested in.”

“What about the guy after car-crash sneak? He was a pathological liar. I still don’t even know what his real name was,” she said.

“Grace….” Mac growled.

He was getting genuinely irritated and she realized she was turning this into a big deal. And it wasn’t. So…

“Be prepared to be bored into a coma,” she warned.

She hadn’t thought about Owen for a long time. The good times had been too good to dwell on and the bad…Well, why rake over the past? Her mind flicked over a handful of memories, most of them bad. She decided to cut to the chase and give Mac the expurgated version. Anything to get him off her back and his mouth back where it belonged.

“His name was Owen. He was an artist — a painter. He cheated on me and we broke up. Happy?”

She reached for his erection, but he batted her hand away.

“No. How long were you together?”

“Five years.”

“Did you live together?”

She sighed again. “Yes. For four years. Yes, we were happy. At least I thought we were. Anything else?”

“Plenty.” He was frowning. “So the cheating — was it a one-off?”

Pain lanced through her and she smiled grimly. “Wow, you want all the dirt, don’t you?”

He eyed her patiently.

“No, it wasn’t a one-off. They’d been sleeping together for six months before I found out.”

“You must have been pretty pissed off,” he said.

She forced a casual shrug. “I suppose. I understood why it happened, though. She was incredibly beautiful.”

Her sister Serena’s long ebony hair and pale-blue eyes still stopped men in the street.

“You must have been pretty upset,” Mac said.

She shook her head. “No. It was a wake-up call. Some people might do love really well — like Sadie and Dylan, for example — but not me. It always goes pear-shaped for me so I don’t go there anymore. Trust me, the past four years of my life have been great.”

Mac’s face was thoughtful as he reached out to touch her cheek. She stared in astonishment when his hand came away wet with tears. She was
crying?

Mac caught her in his arms and pulled her against the comforting warmth of his body. He arranged them in the classic spoon position, his hips cradling her bottom, his arms wrapped around her body. She could feel his breath on her neck as he pressed kisses into her nape.

“It’s okay, Gracie. I know it’s hard to believe in something when you’ve convinced yourself it doesn’t exist,” he said quietly.

He was so solid and real and kind, his words so gentle and wise. She felt safe, cherished. What would it be like to have a tomorrow with this man, then another tomorrow after that?

She gave herself a mental slap. She didn’t believe in the fantasy Mac was offering her. Because she knew, in her bones, how it would end. It always ended the same way — with her lover walking away or disappointing her in some way and Grace being left with nothing but pain. Owen had hammered that lesson home to her in no uncertain terms.

Suddenly Mac’s arms felt smothering, his warm presence suffocating. Panic welled up in her and she wriggled away from him, nudging him with her elbow to get him to release his hold. He took the hint and this time she was on her feet before he could say any of the things that were written all over his gorgeous face.

She turned her back on him and went into the bathroom. Washing her mouth out, she splashed water on her face and stared at herself in the mirror. It was the same face she’d stared at all her life — the too-wide mouth, the too-big nose, the eyes that didn’t match any of it.

Stepping into the shower, she turned the water on hot and stood under the rushing stream, pushing her hair back from her forehead and trying to calm the panic that was still sitting in her stomach. Then through the glass door, she saw Mac approaching. The next thing she knew he was standing under the rushing water with her, crowding her into the corner of the shower. He pressed his warm, firm body against hers, trapping her against the wall. Capturing her hands in his, he leaned close until his forehead was pressed against hers.