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“No.” Mac moved towards his bedroom. He was a gruff person, but this was extra surly, even for Tyler McCoy. As he walked past her, she got a whiff of pine and metal. She swayed towards his body, and as though drawn by a magnetic force, Maggie followed him.
Mac sat in a computer chair facing a large wooden desk with a dual monitored screen. His bed butted up against the far wall, tidy and made with a solid green comforter and a set of beige sheets. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as she walked into his room, but he didn’t tell her to leave. A set of floating shelves sat above his desk, and Maggie appreciated the memorabilia he had showcased. There was an intricate Lego R2D2, a Newton’s Cradle, and a Galileo thermometer. A battered set of Tolkien’sLord of the Ringswas stacked with their spines out. One book,The Two Towers,was missing from the set and a quick glance around the room showed the book on the small wooden nightstand next to Mac’s bed. At the very end of the top shelf was a familiar black and green box with blocky yellow letters—the Megazord Maggie had sold to him—and next to that was a little yellow ball with bumpy edges, so bright that it scalded her retinas.
“You’re in my room.” Mac’s words were a rumble of distant thunder. Maggie’s bones vibrated with the impact.
“I am.” She boosted herself up onto the edge of the desk. A taller woman would have been able to keep her feet touching the hardwoods, but Maggie’s swung a few inches off the ground. That kind of ruined the confidence she was trying to exude, but she ignored it. She wasn’t right in front of Mac, but she was close enough to him that his forearms could brush her thighs if he leaned forward. Maggie struggled to draw in enough air. She wanted him to lean forward.
“What are you doing here?” Mac’s voice dropped lower, and he did what she wanted, leaning forward to brace his palms on the surface of his desk. He was wearing another Henley with the sleeves pushed up, and the heat from his forearms seeped through her thin black leggings. She flexed her thigh muscles, overwhelmed with the need to bring their bodies into fleeting contact.
“I don’t know,” she said. She was lying.
Mac had been his normal self, and she’d been unable to stay away once they made eye contact. And she didn’t want to go downstairs and flirt with random men. She wanted Mac to come down with her so they could sit on the beanbags and pretend not to stare at each other.
Mac kept his eyes on his outstretched hands as the fingers clenched into fists and then released.
“I don’t mean in my room. I mean, here at the house with Cal’s friends.” He let out a breath that sounded as shaky as Maggie felt. “You have a boyfriend, and those guys are under the impression that—”
“Oh, we broke up.” Maggie didn’t enjoy interrupting people, but she couldn’t let him finish that sentence. “Cal actually invited his friends here to see if I had chemistry with any of them. Not that I—”
“You what?” Mac lifted his gaze to hers. “You and Dean—”
“Broke up.”
This conversation, discussing the implosion of her relationship, should have embarrassed her a bit more. Maggie would deny it to almost anyone, but the more Mac’s jaw clenched, and the more his hands fisted, and the more he mentioned the men waiting in the living room, the bigger the ache between Maggie’s thighs became and the harder her heart pounded.
“Chemistry,” Mac repeated, raising a hand to run it through his thick hair.
She nodded.
Maggie reached her foot out and ran her toe up Mac’s calf. She wasn’t sure what possessed her to do that. She only knew she might throw up or pass out if she didn’t touch some part of his body with some part of hers. His jeans were rough against her sock-clad foot, but the warmth was there, along with an intense array of tingles that moved up one of her legs and settled into the warm, damp place between them. Maggie watched Mac’s knuckles turn white against his skin.
“I love Dean,” Maggie said. “I always will, but there wasn’t any—I didn’t feel—” Maggie stopped.
Mac didn’t need to hear about the tingles and the heat and the aches. Except maybe he did. He was the one causing them. She should tell him and jump him and experience some of those magnetic intimacies Audrey had talked about. And orgasms. Mac looked very capable of giving her orgasms. Ones she wouldn’t have to work for.
“Didn’t feel what?” Mac asked.
His voice grated against her ear. He shifted his hands on his desk until his pinky finger was resting against the outside of her thigh. Mac’s eyes were glued to the spot where they touched.
This!Maggie thought and opened her mouth to tell Mac, but the word stuck in her throat. Her whole being angled towards the spot where he touched her, all the neurons firing in her brain pinpointed the small contact. Maggie didn’t break a sweat, which was surprising, given how her body burned. Her brain hiccupped, wanting him to wrap his hand around her thigh. To wrap his hands around both of her thighs and spread them wide. Maggie shifted her hips to relieve some of the pressure in her core. Mac moved his eyes from the roll of her pelvis up to her mouth.
She wanted to kiss him, but she still had the movie to get back to. Audrey would send out a search party if she didn’t go downstairs soon. Not that the thought of being caught with Mac was embarrassing—she doubted Audrey would care—but when she finally tried to ease this need, she wanted enough time to do it the right way.
“I have to go back downstairs.” Maggie said, her voice a ragged hum.
Come with me. Tell those other guys to go.
The words were on the tip of her tongue. She could taste the shape of them when Mac pulled his hands away. He leaned back in his desk chair. The furrow between his brow was back.
“Yeah,” he said. “Go.”
The heat that had been building in her bloodstream turned cold at his tone, but the ache was harder to ignore.
“What? No—”
“I said, ‘go,’” Mac lifted his eyes to hers, his pupils blown wide, eclipsing the dark of his irises. They pinned her with a cold and unwelcoming glare.
“You’re mad.” Maggie said, which was ridiculous.
