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“No,” she says with conviction, even though her voice is shaky. “You’re not. ”
My body is not ready to process her rejection. My c**k wants inside of her so bad that I start to envision pushing her to the floor and burying my face between her legs, just like I did last time we were together, so she would have to acknowledge that we still very much want each other.
But the look on her face stops me. It tells me, Not gonna happen.
Anger rises up inside of me at being denied, not just because my body is craving her, but because it f**king hurts to get rejected. “I don’t get it. You want me, and I want you. Why are you being this way?”
“I do want you,” she says softly. “I want you a lot. But I want more than just sex. I need more than just sex. ”
I just blink at her, hearing what she’s saying… but not really. I’m not comprehending at all. I don’t want to comprehend, but I find myself asking, “What more do you need?”
“I want a relationship. Dating, conversation, shared secrets. I want it all, Matt. I deserve it all. ”
A myriad of emotions rage through me. My common sense immediately denies her request, and my walls stay firmly in place. Part of me though… part of me says, Go for it. Try it.
That part, however, is quickly drowned out with a thousand voices of reason telling me that I’m destined for hurt. That my life has been pretty f**king fantastic the last few years by subsisting on nothing but one-night stands. It’s not a bad life to go back to.
Shaking my head slowly, I say, “I don’t have that to give. ”
“Yeah, you do,” she says tenderly, her eyes seeming to look deep into my soul, like she sees something there that I don’t even know exists. “You showed me you do in Nashville. You have a lot to give. ”
She reaches a hand out toward me and, for a split second, I think about taking it. Then I’m backing away, locking the walls in place. I make a last-ditch effort to make sure that there’s not some other factor that I may be overlooking… that may be causing her to be stubborn about this. Again, I can’t understand why she’s turning her nose up at something that is so amazing between us.
But then, a thought strikes me. “Are you seeing someone?”
Before she can answer, an even more awful thought strikes me. “Fuck… please don’t tell me you’re dating Cal. ”
“No,” she says in exasperation. “I’m not dating Cal. We’re just friends. ”
Friends, my ass.
Heard that story before. Turned out his type of friendship involved putting his c**k in my wife. “Please… that man just wants in your pants, and he’ll get there, too. ”
“He doesn’t want in my pants,” she shouts at me. “You’re just going to have to trust me on that. ”
Trust?
She dared to throw out the word “trust” to me? The man who is the poster child for having his trust abused?
My lip curls upward in derision. “See, that’s just it. I don’t trust you. ”
Mac actually takes a step back as if I had slapped her, but I don’t feel guilty in the slightest. My lack of trust in her is nothing but the God’s honest truth. Why should she expect more?
I feel her slipping away for good. In fact, I know it’s a lost cause.
So I think my next words were nothing more than a set up to make sure that we ended this for good… once and for all… so I could have some f**king peace. Because I know what the answer is to my next question, and I’m counting on her saying no.
“I’ll ask one more time… Let me come home with you tonight. I won’t ask again, McKayla. ”
She shakes her head, eyes brimming with sadness. “I’m sorry. I can’t. ”
That’s what I needed. That’s what I was counting on.
She just gave me my freedom.
“No skin off my back,” I tell her quietly. No condescension, no mocking tone. I want her to understand how deadly serious I am right at this very moment. “You’re not the only game in town. ”
Chapter 21
Rifling through my inbox, I take another look for the Memorandum of Law my paralegal drafted for me yesterday. I know I put it somewhere on my desk, but the f**king night janitor probably threw it away. Flipping through the stack, I manage to neatly slice my finger open on a piece of paper, causing a barrage of curses to pour out of my mouth.
I suck on the cut, cursing internally now, and use my other hand to move shit around. Finally, I punch a button on my phone and when my paralegal answers, I snarl, “Brenda… where is that f**king memo you drafted for me?”
I can hear her sharp intake of breath, because I never cuss at my staff. “I put it on your desk before I left last night, Mr. Connover. ”
“Well, clearly you f**king didn’t, because I can’t find it,” I snap at her. “Print it off again. ”
I disconnect the call and flop down in my seat. That was wholly unfair to Brenda because I know for a fact she had put it on my desk because I saw it. But, of late, I seem to be taking all of my rage out on whoever seems to be standing closest to me.
Gee… wonder why that is?
I stare out the window until my office door opens, and Brenda practically runs the memo up to me. I snatch it from her hand and take a glance at it. Immediately, I see that she’s brought me the wrong document. I’m betting that she was so flustered by the way I talked to her, she just printed the wrong thing off.
Think that changes what I’m about to do?
Nope.
“What the f**k? Can’t you do anything right?” I sneer as I throw the document back at her. She makes a terrible attempt to catch it, and it goes fluttering to the floor. She picks up the document, sobs out an apology that I just roll my eyes at, and runs out of my office.
Closing my eyes, I scrub my hands over my face and lean my head back on my chair. I think I actually may be going crazy. Or, I’m turning into a girl and I’m PMSing, because I cannot seem to get control of the rage that has been bubbling low inside of me since I walked out of Mac’s office last week.
I know I can be an ass**le on any given day, but I’m usually an ass**le with class. I tend to belittle people in an almost polite manner, so they’re not really even sure that I’m getting the better of them. I’m very stealthy that way.
But the new Matt Connover is the proverbial bull in a china shop. I’m just running rampant over everyone, shattering sensibilities at every turn.
It’s the only thing that’s making me feel better.
To make others feel bad.
I wish the way to feel better was to grab a woman and f**k Mac’s existence out of my memory. But six days after walking away from Mac, and I’ve yet to use One Night Only. Instead, I go home, drink two or three scotches, and fall asleep… or jack off and fall asleep.
Yes, I jack off thinking of Mac. A pathetic fact of which I’m ashamed.
In fact, just last night, I downed a few scotches and decided to take a shower. I immediately thought of the time Mac and I were getting it on in the shower, and I slipped… breaking her showerhead. It was f**king funny as hell and yet, I still f**ked her pretty good. It was one of my favorite times with her.
It brought forth a bittersweet taste in my mouth and a hard-on between my legs. I grabbed a bar of soap and lathered up my cock, swirling it in a circular motion over my balls. With closed eyes, I imagined it was Mac. When I got good and slippery, I dropped the soap and wrapped my hand around my dick, pulling and stroking. My grip was firm, twisting slightly on every upstroke at the head in a way that f**k… that feels good.
Laying a forearm against the tile, I let the water pound on my back while I rested my forehead on my arm. I let my mind drift… remembering all the ways I’ve taken Mac. Remembering the way her heat surrounded me, and the noises she would make. I remembered all of the filthy things I would say as I drilled her. I continued to pump my cock, my h*ps getting in on the action so my hand didn’t have to do all the work.
I pretended my hand was Mac’s gorgeously f**kable mouth. I remembered how she would suck, lick, and sometimes she’d even nip, while looking from beneath her lashes at me in a naughty way. She’d smile at me, and I’d smile at her.
And f**k… my orgasm hit me so hard that my h*ps bucked forward and I threw my head back, crying out almost painfully as I unloaded all over my tiled wall and watched it swirl away down the drain.
My breathing was rough, my balls were still tingling, and I felt absolutely dead and empty inside.
Rinsing off, I stepped out of the shower, completely sated and soft dicked, but I still felt tension vibrating everywhere. That had been happening to me… a lot. I could experience a pleasurable orgasm, and rather than feel relaxed and mellow, I’d feel pissed and strained.
Because it wasn’t the orgasm I wanted. It wasn’t with Mac. It was a pitiful replica done by my palm with images of Mac behind my eyelids, and it was f**king unsatisfying as hell.
I dried myself off and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. Pouring myself another scotch, I sat down in the living room and pulled some stuff out of my briefcase. The top document was from Mac. It was some Answers to Interrogatories on the Jackson case I assigned to her last week, and she had put them in my office sometime today when I was out and about.
I hadn’t seen her all week, intentionally staying away from her, and she had clearly been doing the same with me.
Reading the first page, I realized that this was as close to Mac as I would ever get. The most intimate thing we would share from here on was work product. Fury flooded me as I realized the utter unfairness of it all, and I knew that I needed an appropriate outlet for my anger.
And since Mac was the cause of all these problems, I think I knew where to direct it.
***
A knock sounds at my door, and I know it’s Mac. I had sent her an email telling her to see me on an urgent matter in the Jackson case.
“Come in,” I tell her and force myself not to look up. I wait until I can hear her sit down, and then I grab the Answers to Interrogatories that I had reviewed last night. I hand it across my desk to her, and she takes it without a word.
Sitting back in my chair, I watch her carefully, to see how she’ll react to my “feedback”. She flips through page after page, her eyes flying over my words. Every time she flips a page, I see splashes of red, which is the color of pen I used last night to write said “feedback” on the document.
By the time I was finished with it, it look like someone sacrificed a goat on it or something.
Mac finally looks up at me, her eyes confused… maybe hurt. Which is not what I want to see on that achingly beautiful face. I’d rather have her antipathy.
“I’m disappointed in you, McKayla,” I tell her in my best tone of condescension. “The draft you handed in to me was sub-standard at best. A first-year law student could have done better. ”
Those words were calculated by me to strike hard. But when her face flushes red with embarrassment, I’m not quite getting that giddy feeling I had been expecting.
Her eyes go back to the document, and I let her take all the time in the world to go back through my comments. They were cruel, meant to hurt and belittle.
You didn’t put much thought into this.
Are you sure you went to law school?
I’m not sure you’re cut out for this type of work.
Every comment I made was designed to knock her down… to make her feel as bad as I felt.
Mac finally looks back up at me and I tense, wondering what she’s going to do. Just a few moments ago, I wanted to make her tremble before me. Now, if she even shows me a hint of hurt, I might crumble like a f**king pu**y and beg her forgiveness.
“Matt… some of these corrections are just semantics. I think it’s a little unfair to call my work sub-standard when you’re basically disagreeing with word choices. ”