“Brian could do it if you come back another night.”
“Brian hates me.”
And I don’t? Luckily, he refrained from saying it. There might have been a meltdown of nuclear proportions if he’d let it slip, and he tried to keep his drama out of here. Besides, he didn’t hate the girl. He was too indifferent, really, to hate her. He just hated to see her.
“Raina, the fact remains that I’m busy at the moment, as you can see. And we’re shutting down in a few. It’s been a long day for me. If you want to come back some other time and talk about it, that would be awesome.”
“Did you change your number? I’ve really wanted to talk to you. And since it was Valentine’s, I was hoping—”
“I did change it. A while back.”
“Avoiding me?”
He completely stopped what he was doing and turned on the stool to face her, pouring all the warning he could into his eyes and his tone. “Raina.”
She huffed and gave an annoyed little toss of her head. “Fine. I’ll leave. But we do need to talk. It’s about the band. I asked Mark about coming out to Austin and singing with you guys again. He was all for it.”
“Why? I thought you were done with that.”
“I’ve just been feeling the itch, you know. Anyway. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t have a problem with it.”
“Are you fuckin’—” He broke off and sighed. “I’m not getting into it here, but I think that’s a really, really bad idea, and you know it is too.”
She sniffed and fell silent for a long, long time. Uncomfortably long. Finally, she said. “See ya,” and flounced toward the door. He turned back to his client with an apology. God. It wasn’t as if that was embarrassing as hell or anything. And two minutes after Raina left, he was getting outraged texts from Brian, whom Starla apparently had alerted in case there was trouble. Great. Interrupting the boss and his girlfriend on Valentine’s night with this stupid bullshit. Now he’d have damage control there too.
And then there was Macy who, if she hadn’t passed out yet, was waiting for him. Seeing Raina had been like dousing cold water on his hard-on.
Who the hell was he kidding? There was way too much piled on his plate, and with his nana finally going into the nursing home and the tension in the band due to his absence, the heap just kept getting higher. If he was honest with himself, he knew it wasn’t the greatest idea to add Macy to the top of it. She didn’t deserve to be yet another thing he’d cast aside or neglect altogether.
That didn’t change the fact he couldn’t wait to see her.
Chapter Five
Macy flopped away from the annoying sound blaring in her ear. She was about to contemplate unconsciousness again when her body suddenly acted on its own behalf before her brain could catch up. Her hand shot out for the iPhone—which her face had apparently been pressed against—and it took more than one attempt to slide the stupid freaking button all the way across to answer. The garbled word that came out of her mouth sounded something like, “Hulluh.”
“You passed out, didn’t you?” a deep voice accused teasingly. A voice she’d been hearing in all the torturous sex dreams she’d been having since, yes, passing out.
“No.”
He laughed. Dark and rich, it made her rub her thighs together. She glanced at the clock and saw that it was almost two a.m. “Are you off?” she asked.
“Finally. I texted you earlier but I doubt you got it. How are you feeling?”
She did a quick assessment. Head throbbing, check. Stomach not quite right, check. Truthfully, she felt like crap. Somehow still horny crap, but crap all the same. And definitely not sexy crap that was anywhere near ready for a man to come over and make passionate love to her. “Um…I’m…”
“Yeah, I was afraid of that. I had kind of a bad night myself. It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.”
“There’s always tomorrow. Or tonight, since it already is tomorrow.”
“I wanted to see you,” she confessed. “Where are you?”
“Driving home, now. But I want you to stay on the phone with me, okay?”
She rolled over on her back and got as comfortable as she could, smiling at nothing in particular. “Okay. What about your night? You said it was bad?”
“Torturous.”
“Really? Why?”
“Just was.”
“Tell me.”
“Because I was so hard from what we did in the backseat that I couldn’t even think about anything else. I’m hard right now, just hearing your voice, so sleepy and sweet.”
The words shocked her eyes wide open, and all at once she was more awake than she’d ever been in her life. Would she ever get used to him? “Oh,” she breathed.
His voice dropped even lower. “Where are you right now?”
“Lying on my couch.”
“Hmm. I’d like for you to get up and go get on your bed. Will you do that for me?”
At the moment, she’d do anything for him. But she knew where this was going. Her heart began to thud double-time. “I’ve never done the whole phone-sex thing before.” Nevertheless, she got up and shuffled toward her room, yelping as she sustained a bruised shin in the process.
“Well, good.” Somehow that last word was full of wicked promise.
“I mean, I might not be very good at…talking. Like that.”
“You don’t have to say anything. I’ll say it all. Believe me, right now just hearing you breathe will get me off. Leave your room dark.”
Breathing she could handle; she was already doing way more of it than she needed for survival. Ignoring the lamps, she crawled onto her bed. He must’ve heard the covers rustle when she pulled them back.
“Take off the covers. I don’t want there to be anything on the bed except you, right in the middle.”
Heat flared through her. “Can I keep a pillow?”
“Just one.”
The rational daytime Macy might’ve said this was a little absurd. The still half-tipsy, aroused, middle-of-the-night Macy couldn’t strip the bedding fast enough. “Are you home yet?” she asked him as she worked.
“Getting there.”
She crawled back onto the mattress, now only with the fitted sheet and one pillow, and positioned herself directly in the middle. She put him on speakerphone as she settled. “I’m done,” she said into the darkness.
“Are you still wearing the same thing I last saw you in?”
“Yes.”
“Lose it.”
The command in his voice shuddered through her. She wasn’t used to taking commands; she was used to dishing them out. But there was something so thrilling, so forbidden about it that she couldn’t resist. It was only the two of them here where the night would always keep their secrets, and it felt right.
He wasn’t a guy for a slow, seductive reveal. She liked that. She usually wasn’t much for foreplay, as a woman who got more from the action than the build-up. He’d always gotten lucky with her—or so she liked to tell herself—because he went in for the kill so fast.
“I’m pretty sure I lost my panties in your backseat,” she told him.
“Oh, shit, seriously?”
Her shirt, skirt and bra landed in some unseen location across the room, and she lay back down. “Think you could find them and get them back for me? They’re kind of a favorite pair.”
“Hmm, maybe. What am I gonna get in return?”
She grinned. “My gratitude for giving back my rightful property?”
“I might want to keep them as a souvenir of the sexiest Valentine’s night of my life. And they’re so hot and red and lacy too. Were you hoping to show those off to someone tonight, babe?”
He was so bad. “Not necessarily. But I’m glad I did.”
“Me too. Yeah. I can’t even begin to tell you how glad I am.”
“You do deserve something, though. I didn’t get to return the favor.”
“You’ll get your chance.”
She mewled with frustration. He wasn’t here to see her, and she wanted so badly to be nak*d for him like she’d never really been before due to the cramped confines of his backseat. She wanted to open her legs like a wanton and imagine him standing at the foot of her bed, his dark eyes drinking her in. She wanted that chance now and cursed herself again for her stupidity. “Okay,” she whispered. “I’m undressed.”
He groaned, as if just the thought of her nak*d was agony to his arousal. “You’re so f**king hot, Macy. But you know, I wanted to imagine you lying there in nothing but those red panties. I was going to tell you to leave them on.”
“I have others like them. Different colors, though.”
“Which colors?”
“White. Black. Beige. And teal.”
“Hmm. The black. Put them on for me.”
“Are you serious?”
“Hell yes, I am. I need the mental image. Put them on.”
“Twisted,” she muttered as she climbed from the bed and was rewarded with his dastardly chuckle.
“You know it.”
Once her task was completed, she settled back on the bed in her black panties. “Now what?”
“Now talk to me, I know you can do it. I’m there with you. What do you want me to do?”
Macy had begun to forget her headache, her questionable stomach and all the other afflictions she’d woken up with. “I wish you were here. If you want, you could still—”
“Shh. What do you want me to do?”
“Kiss me.”
“Where?”
God, she was going to suck at this. But suddenly it didn’t matter. “My mouth, at first.”
“Just like I did in the car? Slow and teasing? Or rougher?”
She licked her lips just thinking about it. “Just like in the car. Slow and teasing to start off. Then rougher, like you can’t get enough of how I taste.”
“I couldn’t. And I’m there with you now, and you’re nak*d except for your panties, so you know I can’t resist kissing your n**ples. Run your fingers over them for me.”
They were already torturously tight from his words, his voice. Now her fingertips drew them even tighter. Her head sank into her pillow as she arched into her own hands, taking the full, aroused heaviness of her br**sts into her palms. She would offer them to him like this, cupping them underneath so he could kiss and lick his fill.
“You teased me in the car,” she said softly. “You didn’t put your mouth on my n**ples. I wanted you to.”
“I would do it now. I’d lick them and suck them until you couldn’t take it anymore. I wouldn’t take my mouth off them until you came, if you didn’t want me to.”
“I think I’d eventually have other uses for your mouth.” This really wasn’t that hard.
“Oh yeah? Tell me about them. I’m home, by the way. I’m getting into bed.”
She smiled into the darkness, glad he’d made it safely given the content of their discussion. “What are you wearing?” she asked.