Since Clark, she had never been willing to trust a man near such a vulnerable spot.
Actually, she hadn’t ever really trusted
Clark
near that vulnerable spot. Not once she started feeling vulnerable.
“Ignoring your phone, Anne?”
“I wanted to focus,” she said coolly, and his gaze went to the big crafting table and sharpened at all the scattered broken sticks.
He smiled, slow and deep, and stepped inside the house.“Me, too. On you.”
“Mack.” She took a step back, and that pissed her off so much that she clenched her fist loosely to give herself a little more sense of shifting into a boxing stance rather than retreating.
He held his hands up, palm out. “Hey, I kept our walk sacred. I left the sex out of it.”
It made her want to
jump
on something, when he said the word
sex
, to stamp her feet like a child in a temper tantrum, only she wasn’t sure it was with rage. It didn’t
feel
like rage, nor like that concentrated temper in the ring when she went after her opponent. It felt more frantic, more whirling, more incapable of standing still.
And she was the one who could do stillness, who could do coolness. Whose off-camera tendencies to aloof perfectionism had earned her the press nickname Ice Queen.
“Have you been drinking again?”
“I had a beer while I was messing with the grill. Do you know that a group of French chocolatier-pastry chefs who have never grilled a burger in their lives will still
find ten ways to suggest a better technique? No, I have
not
tried balsamic vinegar, or bison, or an olive tapenade. And yes, I
do
like mesquite on the flames.”
She could see it now. The French chefs crowding around him at the grill, Mack grinding his teeth. The vision was so vivid and funny that just when Anne meant to freeze him out, she had to fight the urge to give him a sympathetic squeeze of the biceps instead. He had fantastic biceps, actually, that his tux last night had covered but that his T-shirt today showed off. “You should have seen them around the wedding cakes. You’re getting off easy.”
“Ha. So let them do it and see how they like it. Maybe Sylvain will burn off his eyebrows. It might save his life the next time he tries to raise one in that damn—grrr.” Mack bared his teeth and curled his hands into a stranglehold shape, clearly not even able to think about the way Sylvain raised his eyebrows without losing speech.
Sylvain Marquis did have kind of a conviction of superiority in that lift of an eyebrow, didn’t he?
Of course, he also thought Anne was hot. Anne tried to press down a smug grin at that, and smoothed her skirt. Why she was wearing a skirt in September on the beach, to work in her house, she didn’t exactly know. A nice trim one that showed off her butt, too. “I kind of like Sylvain,” she said.
Mack gave her a dark, suspicious glance. A—jealous glance? Was that possible? “Damn flirt.”
Anne’s grin escaped out of her attempts to restrain it. “He does think I’m hot.”
Mack’s jaw dropped. “That perverted French bastard—he’s younger than your son! He’s married to my daughter! When did he tell you that?”
“I don’t think it was a comment with any actual intent,” Anne said dryly. “He wasn’t talking to me. In fact, I think he was excusing
your
actions to your daughter.”
“I don’t need him to excuse my actions, thank you. If he excuses them again, I might have to hit him.”
Anne laughed. It felt so new and unfamiliar in her chest, that easy, open laugh. But it just bubbled up. Happy.
Mack stood for a moment stock still just inside the glass doors. “You
like
this,” he realized slowly. “Me coming onto you. You don’t know what to make of it, but you like it just the same.”
Well…yes. Maybe. But that look in his eyes made her want to hold up her hands and back away to the other side of the table. And she wasn’t quite sure if it was genuinely to put a barrier between them or because she wanted him to leap over that barrier menacingly and chase her.
“Shit,” Mack said, and took a step forward. “All this time…”
Anne did take a step back. And cursed herself. She didn’t
retreat.
She never retreated.
Mack’s eyes gleamed, old sapphire. He took another step forward.
She took another step back.
Damn.
She braced herself, determined to hold her ground next time.
He took one more step forward, and she managed it, she held up her chin and dug in and locked eyes, and didn’t step back. Which brought him right up close to her, his finger lifting to trace the hollow of her throat. “You want to know how much I had to drink last night?” Mack asked, in that rough voice he had sometimes after three days of meetings as he negotiated a buyout.
Anne half shook her head, then remembered she was supposed to nod. But…she wasn’t entirely sure she did want to know.
“Maybe three sips.” His hand followed that curve at the base of her throat. Back and forth. Thumb stretching up to stroke that soft, vulnerable skin. “I tried, don’t get me wrong. But at first, every time someone would thrust a glass of champagne in my hand, I’d make a toast, there’d be pictures, and then, before I could even drink the damn thing, someone would grab me for something else. And later I…didn’t want to lose my focus.”
And those blue eyes
focused
. Right on her. Like a mastiff focusing on a rival it had to beat.
Anne tried to narrow her eyes at him. “So, what then? You just lost your mind under the stress of being father of the bride?” The man who never caved to the stress of international business negotiations?
“I didn’t lose my mind. My mind just kind of woke up and focused. It’s amazing how effective a dash of cold water on a man’s dick can be at reaching to his brain. And I realized I should trust you.”
What?
Why did that sound so—strange? Opposite? That
he
should need to trust
her
?
“I mean, twenty years, Anne. If you want to knee me in the groin or slap me or say yes, if we have good sex, or crappy sex, or no sex, any way this can go, I’ll still be on that beach tomorrow. Won’t you?”
She sighed very heavily. “Of course I will, you idiot.”
A smile around the edges of his mouth, tight and happy and carefully contained. But his eyes were brilliant. “So I can’t lose you. And that’s the only thing I’ve been afraid of. What about you? What are you afraid of?”
She stared up at him. It was hard to breathe, the hair on her body rising as if it wanted to reach him while her body held still, afraid. But she couldn’t stand to lie to him. If she couldn’t tell the truth to Mack—who was left? Certainly not herself. He
was
her truth. What let it come out. Like a prism revealed a rainbow. “Of letting you in,” she finally managed, almost inaudibly. Yes. Exactly that. Of letting him in where he could hurt. Where he could disappoint. Where he could betray.
His big hand, with the little calluses from squash and golf, rubbed down lower until it lay just over the swell of her breast. “I’m not already in?” he asked softly, puzzled and on the borderline of hurt. The heel of his palm nudged against her chest, the words unspoken:
In there?
Her heart thumped, thumped, thumped against his palm. The strong cords of his throat were just on level with her gaze, the tan from all that beach walking and golf, the lines from half a century of strength. The gray prickle starting to show on his jaw. Ah, yes, then, if he touched his jaw to her nape, it would prickle. The thought of it hummed down her spine.
“I—am I in yours?” she asked, as if it was this great daring question, as if she was afraid, and that was
inane
when she heard it out loud. Of course he cared about her. He’d fought like a lethally intelligent pit bull for her. He’d walked in quiet with her. He’d…been there.
Mack shook his head, those lines that time had started to grow on his forehead deepening. “Anne.” He opened his hand, so utterly baffled by her question. “You know how Julie used to wear that charm bracelet, with a precious stone for me, and one for each of the girls? If I had one of those, I’d have Julie.” He rubbed his thumb and index finger together, against his wrist, as if he was rubbing a bead on a bracelet. “Hers would be beautiful and all worn, from time. Faded. But I’d like having it there, to rub. It would reassure me. And I’d have my daughters. Those ones would be so bright and beautiful, the most vivid, rich colors. Murano glass, maybe, red and blue. I’d have my dad.” A little smile. “He’d be all poky and pointy, aggravating my thumb.” His smile faded into puzzled, searching seriousness. He opened his hand. “And I’d have you.”
Her throat choked up so hard until it was all she could do not to cry. Her chest hurt. As if some great carapace of ice, thickened through many winters, was being broken off it, piece by stubborn piece. “What—what color would I be?”
His fingers flexed into his palm. “The closest I could get to that first gleam of light across the waves when the sun slips over the horizon. Almost no color. Just glow.”
It was so hard not to cry. She didn’t fight the tears because she was afraid of what
he
would do, if she cried. She fought them because she was afraid that if she started, the size of that cry would rip her apart.
That was all that was left of her was a carapace, right?
What would she be if some damn flood of tears melted it away?
She backed away again, and his gaze flared as it held hers, and then just—
locked.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
His mouth compressed, and anger glittered a second in his eyes. “Can’t you?” Danger there.
She liked it. Liked it with the beating, hungry fear of a queen looking down from the ramparts that had walled her in so long at the armored king who had lined his forces up against her.
He could win this. He could tear them down.
“I have to fight.” Broad daylight, just the two of them, and she could not get her voice above a whisper. She backed again, aiming for the table, to put it between them.
His body grew tenser, stronger, that flare in his eyes vivid and dangerous. Mack liked to fight. He was very, very good at it.
So was she.
“I can’t—I
have
to fight.”
Help me. Let me fight.
His fingers curled into his palms, these hungry, half-fists. Not full fists. Because they didn’t want to hit, they wanted to grab.
She had built those walls for so long. From inside them, they looked impenetrable: white and smooth and thick, the treacherous, cruel world so far away. That world she didn’t trust, for good reason.
But
he
could break them down.
He took a step after her.
Her teeth bared a little, energy surging in her as it did when she pulled on her boxing gloves, but so much better, more scared, more intense, and her hands lifted.
“Be careful, Anne.” His voice was the gravel of a battering ram being dragged into place. “Trust me, I’ve had plenty of fantasies where we fight. And I always win.”
Her lip curled, her blood pumping. “You think so?” But she wanted him to win. Behind those walls, she was terrified he would lose. Everyone else always had. Without her even getting a chance to flex her full strength in the battle. Like a wisp of clouds, those other men. They brought up their forces, they pretended to lay siege, and she took a deep breath in preparation for battle—and at its release, they just dissipated.
Hopeless, stupid illusions with no strength.
Mack knocked her hands aside, grabbed the two panels of her tailored white shirt, and ripped them open.
Buttons flew. She gasped, her heart pounding in shock and agonized delight as he tore that outermost wall apart and left her naked.
“I know so. I’ve been practicing this one in my head a long time.” His teeth showed, the promise of a bite. “I know every single move you might possibly make. And what to do about it.”
“You don’t know the version where you lose,” she flung back at him. Her teeth showed, too.
“That’s because that’s not a possible outcome.” He took another step into her, forcing her back against the wall. His chin jerked at her hands. “Go ahead, Anne. Hit me.”
Damn it, she couldn’t. She didn’t want to hurt him. “Fuck you.”
“No, you,” he said, with those glittering, beat-the-world eyes and that battering ram voice. “Isn’t that what we’re talking about?” His voice went low, low, low, so deep it vibrated through her bones. “Fucking you.”
Her fist flew out—toward his chest, a completely safe target. No way she could really hurt him there. Almost no way she could hurt him anywhere with a punch now, his closeness stealing all her power. She’d have to duck and slide away, give herself room to maneuver.
He grabbed her wrist and forced the hand that had hit him back against the wall.
Her whole body responded to that, in one swirling heat of arousal.
Oh, God, what if he actually gets through? We’d better get ready.
The preparation for defeat pressed against her breasts until they were maddeningly desperate for contact to relieve them, made her sex clutch vainly on emptiness.
“Fucking you every way I want to.” That deep vibration spread out from her bones through her whole body. Vibrating mercilessly in every erogenous zone. “That’s a lot of ways, Anne.”
She punched him in the stomach. Knowing the range limited her, knowing that even with all her strength in that shortened punch it wouldn’t be enough to hurt.
He tightened his stomach to receive it, those hard muscles all the shield he needed. His body crowded her even closer against the wall as he caught that wrist, too, his thigh between hers, pressing her up, leaving her no room even to go for his groin. The best her hips could do was bump and grind.
Good.
So she did that. She did that
as if
she was fighting to do worse, and he grunted with the pleasure of it, his hips pressing back.
Every single thing about him was bigger than her. Bigger in height, bigger in the shoulders, bigger in strength, all dominating hers now. She hated how much he outmatched her, but it was so glorious.
He might actually win.