“Thank you,” she said softly. “Just one thing, though…”
“Yeah?”
“Can I call you Seth?”
A grin broke over his face. “I think I can live with that.” And then a fist battered against the window.
Chapter Four
“Oh my God. Were you getting it on?” Candace’s eyes were big as saucers as Seth pushed the door open.
“Well, not anymore, thank you. Jesus, what kind of friend are you?”
Macy shoved her face into his shoulder, trying in vain to squelch laughter she didn’t understand given the awkwardness of their situation. At least they’d stopped when they did. Except…dammit! She’d never put her panties back on. At least his hoodie was big enough to hide anything that might still be on display.
“Is it safe?” Brian asked from an area near the back of the car.
“Yes, they’re clothed, at least.”
He appeared next to his girlfriend. “Hey, man, we’re ready to jet. But Candace’s car has a dead battery. Do you have cables?”
“Do I have cables. You know what’s pathetic? That you don’t have cables. Have I not taught you anything?”
Macy didn’t miss Candace’s little grin as she extricated herself from the car so Seth could get out. Immediately, she staggered on her weak knees, which she knew had very little to do with the beer she’d imbibed and everything to do with what he’d just done to her. Seth reached out to steady her, his knowing gaze holding hers for a moment longer than necessary. Cold air tickled the bare heat between her legs, and she shuddered.
“You straight?” he asked. She nodded, suddenly feeling shy under the scrutiny of their friends. As she was about to glance away, she noticed the white writing on his black T-shirt, visible now that he wasn’t wearing his hoodie. It read Why can’t you all die and leave me alone?
Macy frowned. Jesus. Couldn’t take him anywhere. But then, public appearances probably wouldn’t be part of this deal, anyway.
Any relationship between them would be founded on nothing but sex. Raw, hotter-than-hell sex. It was all they had, really—this blazing chemistry that turned all her once coherent thoughts into grainy mush.
Was there anything really wrong with that, though? All her life she’d prepared herself for The One, and subsequently examined each potential relationship only for its capacity to become something enduring. It didn’t have to be that way. Seth was a guy she wouldn’t want to be with long-term, and it was probably a good thing because he didn’t strike her as the relationship type anyway. But damn, he made her hormones growl.
Even now, her gaze clung to him. Maybe that had always been the case, but it was ten times worse at the moment. She was fidgety, empty, unsatisfied. Still aching, still trembling deep inside. She should’ve asked him what time he would get off, and if she could get him off soon after.
He and Brian set about their task of jumping Candace’s car, and Macy found herself laughing with the other girls at their banter, especially when Ghost made the crack about Brian and Candace being so into each other even their vehicles were copulating. They had her car up and running in no time. Then Brian and Candace spent a good five minutes saying their overly affectionate farewells, even though they were only parting for the few minutes it would take to drive back to their apartment in separate vehicles.
Damn. All her friends were going to go home and get laid. Macy was in for yet another long, lonely night if she didn’t do something. Seth had already grown exasperated with his friends’ exuberance and headed back to his car, but not before prying them apart long enough to make sure Candace was driving Macy home. Since Candace rarely drank more than a swallow or two, they’d dropped Macy’s car off at her apartment and ridden together, but it touched her that he would look out for her. She took a deep, fortifying breath and followed him.
He glanced back at her as he popped open the driver’s side door. Without hesitating, she walked up to him and put her arms around his neck. “Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. Seriously?
“For making me feel a whole lot better.”
His mouth found her ear, sending a chill skittering down her spine when he flicked the lobe with his tongue. When he spoke, the warmth of his breath only intensified the sensation. “How ’bout I call you later tonight?”
Giddiness erupting inside her, she nodded into his shoulder, then stepped back and realized she was still wearing his hoodie. “Oh, here.” As her hand came up to take it off, he caught it with his own.
“Looks better on you. Stay warm.” So what if it had a big white skull with flaming eyes on the back and her fingers didn’t reach the end of the sleeves? It smelled like him, and that was so good she might just sleep in the damn thing from now on. With one final dazzling grin, he dropped into the driver’s seat. She’d begun to shuffle over to her friends when his voice called her back.
“Hey, Mace.”
Desperately trying to hide her own smile, she glanced back.
“Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Damn.
Considering he was Ghost’s best friend, Brian Ross sure was a sadistic bastard. He’d apparently been in on this ploy to throw Ghost and Macy together for a little Valentine’s rendezvous, but he’d still agreed to let Ghost unknowingly give himself a galloping case of blue balls by letting him work the rest of the night.
Or maybe that had been his ploy all along, since Ghost sometimes got the impression Brian didn’t really like Macy.
Yeah, he was a sneaky one.
Dermamania, Brian’s business and Ghost’s beloved place of work, had been trashed to hell and back in the midst of Brian and Candace’s tumultuous genesis as a couple, and it had broken everyone’s hearts. But at the moment, Ghost would have burned the place to the ground and roasted marshmallows over the open flames if it meant he could get out of there any sooner. It was no easy feat to sit on a stool and concentrate on precision when he had a raging hard-on that refused to subside because he couldn’t get the memory of Macy’s gorgeous tits out of his head or the sounds she made when she came. He was practically in pain.
Which was why, at nearly one a.m., when they generally tried to close, he wanted to cheerfully maim the trio that walked in the door and asked if they had time to get some needlework done.
NO, you assholes! I have a five-alarm situation here!
But all the other artists looked at him, deferring to him as usual in Brian’s absence. That, at least, hadn’t changed since he’d been gone. And they all knew Brian usually wasn’t about turning away walk-ins if it was a small job and they were available. So Ghost wasn’t about it, either—even if he had to grit his teeth as he told their clients, “Sure, no problem, come on in.”
So the others wouldn’t see the outright devastation on his face, he ambled over to his station to set up, trying to refrain from sighing heavily. Or throwing a cuss fit. He tapped out a quick text to Macy, letting her know he was held up. And then, because fate was a bitch, he got stuck with the client who was female and pretty and petite and must’ve worn the same damn perfume as Macy…or maybe her scent was just ingrained in his head forever. It wasn’t that he deliberately tried to make comparisons, but Macy had lit a fire in his blood and it roared on unchecked. Right now he saw her everywhere he looked, and he would until he was inside her again.
Macy didn’t text back. Which, in her condition, wasn’t good.
His client perched on his table and looked up at him with big blue eyes. She’d picked out two little cherries as the design she wanted, which he could bang out in ten minutes. Maybe fate was smiling upon him at last.
“Where do you want it?” he asked her and groaned inwardly as she whipped her shirt off to reveal a black bra that thankfully covered everything except her upper swells. But that was the spot she indicated with an almost seductive slide of her finger.
“Here, please.”
This was just what he needed. He inhaled, trying to clear the fogs of lust from his brain, and concentrated on Winds of Plague blaring over the sound system. “Drop the Match,” indeed. Macy had better not pass out before he could get to her; he had a lot of frustration to work out.
Five minutes into the design, Starla made the announcement they all dreaded to hear. “Oh, hell. Psycho ex incoming.”
It was met with the usual panicked chorus of “Whose?”—they all had them, unfortunately—but Ghost had a familiar sinking feeling in his gut without even looking up. His own psycho ex was like a bloodhound. He’d been back in town for six hours, and she’d already sniffed him out. He knew it.
The door dinged as it opened. Starla cheerfully called out, “Hi, Raina!”
Damn, damn, triple damn. He still didn’t look up, even as Raina struck up a brief conversation with Starla as if the two had ever liked each other. Starla, bless her, was trying to run interference for him, but she wasn’t having any luck. Raina made a beeline for him.
“Hey, you. When did you get back?”
That throaty voice, purring into the mic at their gigs, purring into his ear, had once driven him wild. Now it was like nails down a chalkboard. Finally, he threw her a glance. Tiny, ferocious and—he couldn’t deny it—completely fucking crazy from her multicolored dreads to her heavy black boots, she wasn’t someone he’d wanted to welcome him home tonight. Shit. “Today.”