“Rain in Washington. How shocking.” Alise’s dry observation brought a reluctant smile to his lips…
Right before the room plunged into complete darkness.
“That’s new.”
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“Wine and potato chips,” Alise sighed, biting down on a sour cream ’n’ onion chip.
“Ah, the dinner of champions.”
“You could be chewing air,” Mac pointed out from his office chair. She glanced at him and couldn’t prevent her grin. The dancing flames of the candles they’d located in the staff break room flickered over his long legs, crossed at the ankles, and bare feet propped up on the edge of his desk. Alise had never seen Mac so relaxed. He’d loosened his tie and tossed it, freeing the button at his throat and revealing an unnerving amount of olive skin. How his skin could appear so toasty warm and golden in the rainy, overcast winter eluded her.
Damn but that patch of skin was so lickable…
Dragging her starving gaze away, Alise returned it to the near empty bag of snacks.
Reaching down to the floor, she snagged the coffee mug with the best wine she’d ever tasted and lifted it to her lips. Taking a deep sip, she sighed again, tilted her head back against the arm of the leather couch and crossed her ankles on its dark maroon cushions. “Now those are some good squashed grapes.” She took another sip and snickered around the rim. “You’ll have to thank ol’ Nicholas for me. Who knew such a putz could have such good taste in wine?” She pictured the founding partner’s son, Nicholas Gordon. Handsome, sophisticated and a complete lecher.
“Putz?”
Alise flashed him an unrepentant smile. “I figured that was kinder than asshole.”
Mac grunted. “Asshole might have been more accurate.” His eyes narrowed.
“Why? Has Nicholas tried—” The muted hum of his cell phone cut off his question.
Unclipping the small phone from his belt clip, Mac glanced at the screen. His expression 12
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altered into another of those rare smiles as he pressed a button and lifted the cell to his ear. “Hey, Selig.”
Alise straightened against the arm of the couch chair and eavesdropped without a hint of shame. Mac had mentioned this mysterious friend of his a handful of times in the year she’d known him. All she could pry out of Mac was Selig Richardson was a lawyer in Boston. Yet he had to be more to bring a smile to McKenzie Dunn’s face.
“You heard about the storm all the way in Boston…Yes, I guess a blackout would make the news…We’re fine, though…Yeah, we. Alise Layton and myself. I was going over a contract with her in the office when the storm hit. With no power and it being pitch black outside we’re stuck here until it passes…” Mac glanced over and didn’t seem surprised to find her hanging on his every word. He held her gaze as she lifted the coffee mug to her lips. “I suppose there are worse people to wait out the storm with.”
She choked, coughing on the wine trapped in her throat. Carefully, Alise lowered the cup to the floor and stuck her tongue out at Mac.
A corner of his mouth kicked up.
As did her pulse rate.
She averted her eyes, knowing the heat spiraling through her chest and knotting her womb would be revealed in her hungry stare.
“I’ll call you when we’re out of here.” After saying one last good-bye, Mac returned the phone to its clip. “You okay?”
Alise waved off the underlying humor in the question with a flick of her fingers.
“Fine.” Once certain her emotions were locked back in the hiding place she’d sentenced them to for all these months, Alise curled on her side. Propping her elbow on the wood arm, she cupped her head in her palm. “So tell me. Is Selig as hot as you?” She wriggled her eyebrows, her grin as lascivious as she could manage. Instead of the scoff or smile she’d expected, he fixed a stare on her, his scrutiny long and steady.
“You think I’m hot?”
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Alise blinked, taken back.
Hell yeah.
The words hovered on her lips but were trapped by the terror of rejection and humiliation.
She’d never been a coward.
At eighteen, she’d left her parents’ home and struck out on her on.
She’d put herself through college by working two jobs.
She’d picked up her entire life and moved hundreds of miles to a new town and established her own business.
So no, fear wasn’t something Alise associated with herself. Until now. Until this moment when she looked the man she loved in the eye and faced the opportunity to admit how she wanted him. Or she could protect the pride she had managed to maintain by hiding those same feelings and not deal with the “it’s me, not you” speech.
She inhaled a deep breath. Studied the hardwood floor beneath her. Exhaled. And lifted her eyes to his.
Fuck safe.
It didn’t keep you warm at night. And it wouldn’t answer the “what ifs” that would haunt her if she took the easy way out, never discovering if maybe, just maybe, her attraction for Mac could’ve been reciprocated.
Before she chose to give up on that dream and move forward with Vince, she had to know.
“Of course,” she conceded, straightening and tucking her legs under her hips. The tight clasp of fingers in her lap betrayed the calm of her voice. “Are you going to try to convince me you don’t know your appeal to the opposite sex?”
“No, I’m not going to try to convince you.” Mac’s unnerving inspection never wavered. “But I had no idea you thought so.”
“I’m a woman, right?” She shrugged. “Besides what does it matter? We’re just friends.”
“True.”
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A dagger to the heart. “And you don’t date women my…size anyway.”
“True again.”
There. Questions answered. Now she could go curl up with her defeated hope.
“Why?” She almost cringed at the hoarse whisper. Common sense raged to leave what he said alone. When had she turned masochistic and relished the pain his rejection wielded?
She closed her eyes.
“Alise.” When she didn’t respond, Mac’s voice softened and worsened the ache.
“Alise, look at me.”
Reluctantly, she obeyed, pride rising to the call.
Not a coward, remember?
“My mother is your size. Petite. Delicate.” Mac bent his knees, uncrossed his ankles and dropped his feet to the floor. With his elbows balanced on his thighs and his hands dangling between his legs, Mac leaned forward, capturing her attention. “As a child and teenager I watched my father—my larger, stronger father—use her stature against her. Even in the bedroom.”
Alise stared at him, shocked by both his revelation and that he actually opened up to her. She shook her head. “You wouldn’t—”
“No, I wouldn’t abuse a woman. Ever,” he agreed, “But I’m a large man like my father. And while I wouldn’t intentionally hurt a woman, I know it’s possible. I don’t do gentle, easy sex, Alise. I want it raw, wild. So I fuck woman who can take it—can take me.”
Even as his reasons registered, her pussy heated, the lips swelled and dampened.
Raw, wild sex. W
ith him
. His cock burying between her hungry sex again and again until he catapulted her to orgasm. She wanted to be filled until every inch of his cock imprinted her pussy. A shallow breath whistled past her lips. Her chest heaved up and 15
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down as if struggling for the air that had been replaced by pure lust. “Do you know what I’ve dreamed of this past year?”
Mac didn’t reply but she caught his harsh drag of breath as his arms dropped from his legs and he leaned back in his office chair.
“You,” Alise whispered. “I’ve dreamed of you from the moment we met. Your eyes.
Your mouth. The rare gift of your smile. I’ve imagined you surrounding me…inside me.” Her heart pounded in her throat, echoing fear and hope. The stranglehold she maintained on her fingers tightened to the point of pain. Still, she continued.
She couldn’t hold back now.
“I’ve awakened with the taste of your cock still on my lips, my pussy aching from being fucked so hard and deep I almost cried because when I woke, it wasn’t real.”
For several long moments the sound of their rough breathing filled the silence. She could almost believe that New Eden had disappeared beyond the dark window, leaving her and Mac the only two people in the world.
Him, with his rigid body and heavy silence.
And herself, with the weight of her dreams.
Alise shifted and lowered her legs to the floor. Her hands tumbled down beside her thighs, the palms upward as if in supplication.
“Mac,” she murmured, “fuck me.”
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Nothing could have kept him in the chair.
Her husky demand was a fisted stroke to his cock while the insecurity in her chocolate gaze twisted his heart.
She looked as if she expected his rejection, but he couldn’t resist touching her any more than he could restore power to the darkened town outside the window.
Desire twisted his gut. Anticipation hammered at his chest. The fire of her hair drew him like a beacon and his fingers itched to tangle in the bright strands.
To feel the silk wrap around his hands.
To tug her head back so his cock could slide past the wet plumpness of her lips to the tightness of her throat.
Fuck, did he want that.
As he crossed the small distance separating him from Alise, he lowered his hands to the belt at his waist. His gaze focused on the woman sitting quietly on the couch, he undid the buckle, sliding the leather free with a subdued swish that reverberated in the dark quiet. When his knees bumped hers, the belt hung open and he fingered the button of his pants.
“No.” Alise reached up, her fingers covered his and, with a gentle but firm brush, moved his hands aside. “Let me.”
Nodding, Mac complied. Instead of dropping his arms to his side, he gave in to his need and slid his fingers through the heavy weight of her hair.
“Damn, Alise,” he groaned, flexing his fingertips against her scalp, drowning in the heaven of the silken fire falling over his hands and wrists, caressing his suddenly sensitive skin. Staring down into her upturned face, the tremor of her full bottom lip 17
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and the soft sigh of breath didn’t escape his notice. He wanted that breath on his cock, cooling the wet heat left behind by her mouth.
Her touch shook, fumbling slightly before pushing the button through the stitched eyelet. As she grabbed the zipper, his breath caught in his chest and his erection throbbed like a toothache. Fuck, if she didn’t free him soon…He couldn’t remember ever being this eager and desperate to have a woman touch him.
Not any woman.
Alise.
Every second seemed an eternity as she lowered the zipper. As if from a great distance, he watched her small hand dip inside the panel of his slacks. And when her fist enclosed his cock, time sped forward, brutal pleasure jerking him back into his body.
The loud, harsh groan could’ve been his…it could’ve belonged to her. Mac didn’t know—didn’t care. Lust flogged him, lashing at his spine, his cock, his balls. Alise stroked upward until her fist covered the cockhead. And squeezed.
“Shit,” Mac hissed, his fingers tightening in her hair. “Again, sweetheart. Squeeze my cock again. Harder.”
She obeyed, humming her agreement. Sliding her fist back down his cock, Alise used the other hand to push his pants farther down his hips until the material bagged around his ass. With another foray inside his pants, she cupped his balls, liberating the tight sac to the cool air of the room and the heat of her gaze. Hell, Mac thought, grinding his teeth together, he could come just from the hunger in that dark brown stare.
“Are you hungry, sweetheart?”
Her eyes flicked up to meet his before returning to his cock. As if she couldn’t drag her gaze away from it.
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“Starving,” she whispered. Leaning forward, Alise rubbed her cheek against the rigid stalk. Her soft skin and gentle breath rocked him. His hips jerked forward of their own accord, seeking more.
She gave it to him.
Her tongue peeked out, the narrowed tip licking up his cock from root to under the ridged head. A small caress that enflamed and devastated. He growled.
“You’re teasing,” he accused with a sharp tug on the fiery strands in his grasp. Her purr of pleasure vibrated over his cock, eliciting a small trickle of pre-cum from the tiny slit on the pulsing head. Spotting the clear fluid, she gave a greedy murmur and lowered her head, sipping as delicately at his cock as she had at the cup of wine.
Her lashes lowered, fanning across her freckled cheekbones as her tongue slicked over the sensual curve of her bottom lip.
“Just like I dreamed,” she breathed.
“Not quite.” Mac spread his fingers wide, cradling her head in between his palms.
“Open for me. I need your mouth.” Her lashes lifted and her chocolate gaze connected with his. In them he saw desire…and trust. “Ah, sweetheart, when you look at me like that…” He swallowed, his eyes closing for a brief moment. “Give me your mouth,” he whispered, reopening them.
On a quiet sigh, she rubbed her lips over the cockhead before swirling her tongue over and under the flared cap. A flash of apprehension tightened his stomach as he watched the swollen, throbbing head bump against her lips. Thick and flushed dark with arousal, it appeared almost too big and brutal for her to take…
Alise drew back, her tongue taking one last taste of his cock. She tilted her chin up, a small amused smile curving her lips.
“I saw you naked once.” Her hushed admission stunned him, stilling the worried voice in his head. “I did,” she continued, pumping his flesh. She leaned forward and placed a pursed kiss against the tight crown. “When I crashed at your apartment on New Year’s Eve, I accidently walked in on you while you showered. I watched for a few 19
Naima Simone
moments. All I could think about was pushing back the curtain, stepping in and going down on you in that shower.” A whimper escaped her lips as she again rubbed her cheek against his cock. “I went back to the guest room and touched myself until I came, screaming your name in the pillow.”