PerpetualPleasure (4 page)

Lucie had expected some sort of tête-à-tête to take place.
What she hadn’t expected was for C to simply usher them out. Or know MacCale by
name. “What did you give him?” she asked.

He rolled a shoulder. “My sincere thanks.”

She had the awful feeling she was somehow being played. “You
knew about the club. The gay and bi clientele.”

“So?”

“Bruno didn’t recognize you. And he knows everyone.”

“It’s been a while.” Another flippant shrug. “He didn’t work
here back then. And before you ask, I’m not into guys. But I know some great
guys who are, so yeah, I’ve been here before. Many times.”

Feeling silly, and not a little ashamed somehow, Lucie
stuttered, “I-I thought—”

“Yeah, you thought. And assumed the rest. Disappointed?”

More like surprised, Lucie thought, her calm slipping fast.
She had pegged him for the type who would get uncomfortable fast with advances
coming from men and plain confused with the attention of the
guys pretty as
gals
, as Mac had put it. “My bad,” Lucie quipped.

“Ah, forget about it.” Mac pulled her to him, gripped her
elbows and tilted his head.

Poised for a kiss, Lucie stared at his mouth. What she’d
been beating into submission all night—all week, dammit—reared its head with a
vengeance. Excitement. Anticipation. Need. Longing. She couldn’t dismiss those
feelings, no matter how watered they were or how weak they made her feel. They
made her reach for him and touch him in return.

She pressed her hands to his chest. His flesh was hot, hot
and hard as she spread out her fingers on his shirt, her eyes drifting over his
face and to his eyes.

The heat was still there. So was that dreadful hint of
inspection.

“Yeah, I’ll forget about it,” she said. “If you’ll forget
about the stupid lip gloss and just go for it.”

His smile caught her square in the heart while his mouth
made its way to hers. His lips made it a breath away.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. Remember what happened last
time?”

At Boyd’s? Did she ever.

“It’s gonna happen again,” he said. “I kiss you. Then I need
to kiss you a little more. A little deeper. A little lower. All over. Your
neck. Your breasts and belly. Your thighs. And if I kiss these lips right
here,” he said, brushing his mouth over hers for a fleeting second, “I need to
kiss those lips down there.” He pressed his hips to hers. He didn’t grind, he
didn’t force her closer, merely held her where she could feel his cock swell
against her belly.

“You owe me a taste of that sweet spot. And when I’m done
nibbling on your pussy—” He kissed her lower lip but didn’t linger. He never
finished the sentence, either, only took a step back along with several deep
breaths.

If he needed a moment to deal with the hard-on, so did Lucie
need one to try to put up the guard she had let drop around him. Again. She was
going against one of her golden rules taking him home with her, but she needed
the strength being on her own territory gave her now more than ever.

He couldn’t run the show. He could enjoy the ride, but she
could never let him call the shots.

No matter how much pleasure that might bring her.

* * * * *

Had a silence ever felt that uncomfortable? Usually, the
less said the better when it came to one-night stands. Now Lucie simply felt
awkward.

They had talked very little walking to her car. She had said
something trite about the bustle in the streets and Mac had commented on the
to-go-cups in the hands of a boisterous group of people passing by and how
spacious the downtown still felt for all the traffic and activity.

She badly wanted to ask him what he was doing in town for so
long and when he would leave. She had found his name in the Ferguson family
tree. His mother was a Savannahian, born and raised, as were his maternal
grandparents. He had a brother, a sister-in-law and a niece, and he’d never
been married.

She’d had to stop herself from going online and trying to
find out more about him. The less she knew, the faster she’d forget about him.
Except Mac had haunted her since Boyd’s birthday party.

“What?” Mac caught her staring at him.

He turned his eyes back to the road. Lucie turned to look
out the passenger window and bit her lower lip.

Stop. Drooling.

The air was stifling and the Fiesta hopelessly too small for
both of them.

Lucie opened the window. It would mess with the
air-conditioning but screw that, she needed the breeze on her face.

This was a mistake. She should tell him to turn around,
drive back to town and go home, wherever he was staying, and she would take a
cab to her place.

The words never came.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Never better,” she chirped. She never chirped. She didn’t
blush or get nervous, and she sure as hell didn’t obsess over men.

You do now.

As if sensing her unease, he snatched her hand in his and
laid it on her thigh.

“Having second thoughts already? I only want this if you
do.”

Her poise MIA, her act falling apart, Lucie remained silent.

Snap out of it!

She had done this countless times. Why did it feel different
with him?

Because of
him
, something about him. Whatever it was,
it scared her as much as it drew her in. His watchfulness made her painfully
self-conscious. That alone messed with her MO. He said he could be tenacious.
She bet. She bet he wouldn’t fail at anything he put his mind to. If he was
bent on seducing her and not the other way around as she had planned, how the
hell would she survive it?

How the hell would she even fight it?

Ask him to turn around. Do it.

“The next left. That’s me.”

The drive from town took less than fifteen minutes,
overgrown fields turning into forested land that hid the mansions and country
houses Mac knew lay along the riverside. He veered off the two-lane highway
onto Lucie’s driveway, a long passage of oaks arching over a dirt road.
Moonlight dappled the Spanish-moss-festooned trees and road the ahead, Lucie’s
open window letting in the cool breeze and a flowery scent so strong that
whatever they were, there were plenty.

The road curved to the right, the pathway opening to a sweep
of land. In the middle stood a simple but massive two-story house of pale
clapboard poised high upon a brick basement, a double staircase leading up to
the entrance.

So he’d been mildly surprised when she’d instructed him to
drive out of town. She didn’t strike him as a country girl, or a native
Savannahian. She had the manners and the air of mystery of a local but not the
dress or overall demeanor of one.

Whatever Lucie was or wasn’t had kept him up at night and
bothered him during the day all fucking week. It didn’t matter his mind was
already cluttered with the work waiting for him back on the west coast, the
upcoming Scottish Games, worry over Boyd’s ailing health and his brother and
sister-in-law thrashing between hope and despair as they dealt with secondary
infertility.

The enigma Lucie was, the challenge she posed, the
combination of strength and vulnerability he sensed in her and found appealing
to no end pierced through the work and the worry and left him wondering. Left
him absolutely obsessed to meet her again, talk to her some more and finish
what they’d started at his great-uncle’s.

Mac pulled beneath the portico and climbed out to open the
door for her.

He offered her the car key.

“Thank you kindly.”

God he’d missed that voice. That smoky, luxurious voice and
that hot little mouth. He wanted that sweet mouth all over him. But not before
he’d tasted all of her.

Mac followed her up the sweeping stairs. Lucie opened the
door, prodding him inside before switching on the center hall lights. Heels
clicking on the well-worn parquet floor, she moved to throw her purse on a
sideboard leaving him staring down the corridor.

A row of doors, some shut, some open, lay on both sides of
the long hall that led to double doors at the far end. He would have bet those
doors opened to a garden and the river, that fields had once grown where the
forest now stood, and that the house was originally a plantation home.

“You live here alone?” he asked.

Without looking back at him, Lucie started down the hall.
“This house belonged to my parents. It’s mine now.”

Several thoughts assailed him at once as he followed her. In
true Savannahian form, the rooms they passed weren’t done in any particular
style. They mixed up a range of different periods he couldn’t name but which
screamed refinement without a hint of pretension.

It wasn’t a museum, it was a home,
her
home, yet he
couldn’t help but notice the heavy stillness that surrounded him, everything.
It was the feel of an empty house. Thoroughly lived in, maybe, but somehow
desolate.

“You must have an army of housekeepers and groundkeepers and
whatever else people like you have to keep this baby up and running.”

“People like me?” Lucie glanced at him over her shoulder.

“Old Southern money.”

“My father won the lot at cards,” she said, her stare as
level as her tone.

Mac gave a low whistle. “That must have been some game.” And
she’d evaded his original question. If anything, she raised others with her
clipped, cryptic answers. Her father had won the lot? Did she mean “house”,
because the building must have sat where it lay for a couple of centuries.

Lucie led him through a wide, arched doorway into an
eclectic sitting room of tall mirrors, drawn heavy draperies and a huge
chandelier that looked like a frozen waterfall. If it hadn’t been for the
shades of gold and crimson shimmering on the walls and carpets, the massive
leather and mahogany furniture would have made the room oppressive.

“Scotch?” she asked.

“Bourbon, please. If you have any.” He took the seat she
motioned at.

Moving to the bar set up on a heavily carved sideboard,
Lucie asked, “How long are you planning on staying in town?”

Interesting. Did she really want to know or was she only
making conversation? “That depends,” he said.

She turned to face him. “On…”

“The circumstances,” he stymied, nodding at the bourbon she
offered.

“Which are?” She offered him the glass and sat in a
chesterfield across him, pulling her dark-denim-clad legs underneath her.

“Complicated.” And getting more intriguing by the second,
Mac thought as he watched her take a healthy sip of the fiery liquid and
swallow greedily before she shot him a heated glance and downed the bourbon in
one gulp.

She looked more confident and collected than she had back at
the club, and as sexy and enticing as ever. She didn’t question him further or
volunteer any information as to what she was thinking or feeling, her stare
making him uneasy in its intensity.

Before MacCale could dwell on what exactly made him so
restive about her expression, Lucie had set aside the glass, gotten up, walked
over to where he sat and straddled his lap without saying a word.

Following her lead, Mac threw back the shot, put away the
glass and cupped her bottom to knead her softly.

Lucie put her mouth close to his and gave his lower lip a
tentative lick. “Now that we have the nightcap covered, would you like to follow
me upstairs and have that late-night snack?”

Whoa. Okay. Someone was in a hurry.

She gave him a firmer lick that had him tightening his hold
on her. Hands going to her hips, Mac pressed her mound against his crotch and
went for her mouth. She quickly retreated but he didn’t relinquish his hold,
only tortured them both a little with the bulge he ground against her. She
could no doubt feel it, even through the rough fabric of her jeans.

“Upstairs. Now,” Lucie breathed. She was definitely feeling
it.

“Hold on tight, honey.” Lucie wrapped her legs around him as
Mac stood and balanced her in his arms. She hailed him to the narrow staircase
at the back end of the entrance hall, up a flight and down yet another corridor
lined with a string of rooms he didn’t have time to inspect.

Her bedroom was the only room that interested him at the
moment. The mistress of the house plain fascinated him.

“Stop. We’re here. No, the other side.”

Still firmly in his arms, Lucie reached out to open the
door. Mac stepped inside and closed the door behind them with his foot, Lucie
reaching over his shoulder to snap on the lights.

The room was more comfortable and personal than anything
he’d seen downstairs, dominated by a monster of a canopied four-poster bed at
one end and a stately mantel at the other. The room still managed to fit both a
dressing table filled with feminine paraphernalia and a writing desk
overflowing with books, papers and figurines, and two doors that led to a
bathroom and who knew what other secret lair.

Laying her gently on the antique bed, Mac shook his head in
confusion. For seven long days he had tried to keep his head on straight. For
seven endless nights he had tried to jack off the tension caused by having to
wait on her in vain. The workouts in preparation for the Scottish Games had
obviously done nothing to quench the need raging in him.

Women had come on to him at Smoke and Mirrors, some
flirting, some making open and outrageous suggestions, but he hadn’t wanted to
follow them home. He hadn’t wanted them.

The only woman he had made love to slow and easy then taken
like an animal in heat and every damn variation to the theme was Lucie. The
dreams had been feverish and the longing hell. But none of that mattered now.
No dream matched this, nothing came close to the real thing, nothing could be
as good as being with her in the flesh, minutes away from skin to skin.