by Score, Lucy
“I’m all yours,” she said.
He wondered if she noticed the easy routine they’d settled into. How sharing a bed and a dog seemed second-nature, now.
“Good. Let’s take a field trip.”
The old fire station sat on a skinny lot on the far end of Main Street. There were two stories on one side and a long, low bump-out on the other. Paint peeled from the garage doors. The windows were dirty enough to obscure the view inside. But the brick, the roof, the bones of the building held up as they had for all the decades the building had been in service.
“Wow,” Mack said when Linc let them in through the side door.
Under the layer of mustiness that all old buildings had, it still smelled vaguely of diesel fuel inside. The concrete floors were stained from decades of use. The exposed brick in the main garage was a restorer’s dream, though the hideous green wood paneling in the community room and on the second floor left much to be desired.
“This was my home away from home when I was a kid,” Linc told her as they strolled over old oil stains and ducked under cobwebs.
The place held a host of memories for him, ghosts of times and people past. Of childhood dreams and young adult experience. He’d ridden to his first call out of this very bay. He’d scrambled around trying to collect “exhaust samples” in sandwich bags while the rest of the crew laughed. He’d celebrated his first save, mourned his first loss. All within these walls.
“There’s a pole,” Mack said with delight.
“Had to stop using it after one of the LTs landed bad and fractured his tibia,” he recalled. “I started visiting my uncle here when I was five or six. The guys would let me try on their helmets and climb around the engine. One time, I sat on my uncle’s lap while he pulled the truck out of the garage. I got to turn on the lights.”
“And you were hooked,” she said.
“Yeah. It was never going to be anything but fire for me.”
She nodded, getting it. Getting him.
“I had my prom pictures taken here,” he told her, pointing at a spot by the big doors.
“Who did you take to prom?” she asked with a smile.
“No one. I had a date, but she changed her mind.”
“Who turns down Lincoln Reed?” she teased.
“Karen Aucker.”
“And what happened to this Karen Aucker?”
“She became Karen Garrison, and a few years later, she died in a car accident.” He kept his tone even. But that didn’t make the feelings go away. “Let me show you the upstairs.”
He turned, not wanting Mack to see the sad.
She followed him up the creaky staircase to the second floor. Here carpet frayed, and more of that hideous paneling bowed off the walls. He paused in front of one of the windows that looked out over Main Street and the town that held all his memories.
“I’m sorry,” Mack said. Her hand settled on his shoulder. “I’d heard that Luke didn’t like you because you’d asked his wife out.”
He sighed. “We were all just kids. Luke wanted the military and for Karen to go to college. Karen wanted to get married. They broke up over it, and maybe I thought I had a shot.”
“You liked her,” she filled in.
He had. A lot.
“She was pretty and smart. Hard-headed, like someone else I know,” he said, shooting Mack a look. “Anyway, when I heard they broke up, I waited a respectful twenty-four hours before showing up at her front door with a handful of daisies—her favorite—that I stole out of my mom’s flowerbed. I asked her on a date, and she said yes. I felt like I was on top of the world.”
He could still remember how it felt. A victory a long time coming. Landing the girl he’d been thinking thoughts about since thirteen or fourteen.
“I took her to dinner at the Italian place. She was sad about Luke, but I worked my charming magic to cheer her up. It was working. We talked and laughed. And I was feeling pretty hopeful. So I suggested that since she didn’t have a prom date and I didn’t have a prom date that we should go together.”
He remembered exactly how she’d looked as he asked. Looking back, he could see the hesitation. But at eighteen, all he noticed was the yes. “She said yes,” he continued. “I was so sure that she was finally seeing me.”
Mack leaned back against the brick between dirty windows, listening.
“Garrison and I had it out the next day. He came at me wanting to know why I was moving on his girl. I wanted to know if she were his girl why he’d just let her go like that. We went a few rounds. Nothing serious. Moretta broke it up. And Garrison took off all pissed off. She called me later that night. ‘Good news! I don’t have to cramp your bachelor style. Luke and I are back together and he’s taking me to prom.’”
She winced. “Ouch.”
Linc shoved his hands in his pockets. “It was just a crush. I was eighteen. I didn’t know anything about life or love.”
Sometimes he still felt that way.
“You knew her favorite flower. And you get sad when you talk about her. Feelings are feelings whether you’re eighteen or eighty.”
“She hadn’t even taken me seriously. She said I was a good friend helping her make Luke come to his senses.”
“A dick move,” she said.
“She was eighteen and in love.”
“Oh, so Karen could be in love, but you just had a crush?” Mack pointed out.
“Girls are emotionally more mature than boys,” he argued.
“A fair point. But that doesn’t mean your feelings weren’t real.”
They’d been real. Real enough that even years later, when he’d arrived on the scene of the accident that had taken her life, he’d frozen in place. She was already gone when they got there. All the dozens of what-ifs running through his mind.
What if he’d fought for her?
What if she’d chosen him instead of Luke?
What if she’d seen beneath his flirty teenage exterior?
But he hadn’t. She hadn’t.
And at some point, he’d stopped believing there was anything else but the easy-going, serial flirt. He was a good man but never good enough to be someone’s partner.
“I was there. On the scene,” he said, the memories rising up as they did sometimes late at night when he couldn’t sleep. “I remember thinking that it was officially the end. I didn’t even know I’d held out hope that someday she’d see me. Choose me. We lived in the same town, ran into each other everywhere. It wasn’t like I was hoping she’d get divorced. I’m not that big of an asshole. But I guess I’d always hoped that maybe there was still a chance someday. Someday I’d have that. And then it was all over. No more chances.”
Mack didn’t say anything as she pushed away from the wall. She just wrapped her arms around his waist and held on tight.
“Sorry for bringing the mood down,” Linc whispered against the top of her head.
“Don’t be a dumbass,” she said. “Ask me how I got this scar.”
He went still for a beat. “Are you sure you want me to ask?”
“We’re sharing painful shit. You shared. I share.”
He nudged her chin up so she’d look at him.
“How did you get your scar, Dreamy?” he asked, tracing a finger over the jagged ivory mark.
She took a breath and let it out slowly. “I was a resident in an emergency department in Texas. A patient was brought in. Car accident. I knew him, but we were short-staffed, and it was life or death. I worked on him, did everything I knew how to do, and it still wasn’t enough. He never revived. I called it.” Her eyes had a faraway look in them.
“I lost the patient. My first. His girlfriend—I knew her, too—was…distraught.” Her voice was tight. “When I told her he was gone, she broke a glass vase at the nurses’ station and came at me with a big shard. It took two orderlies and one really pissed off nurse to get her off me. I couldn’t even fight back. She just kept saying that I killed him. I ended my shift getting stitched up
.”
“Bad enough to lose one, but to have someone blame you?”
“Loudly. In my workplace, where I was trying so hard to prove myself,” Mack recalled. “She was high. Turns out, so was he. He overdosed. He might have survived his injuries. I did everything I could. But I still felt responsible. Even now, whenever I learn a new procedure, a new protocol, I wonder if I could have saved him if I’d known more.”
“Ghosts,” Linc said.
Her gaze returned to him. “Yeah. They’re always there, lurking in the background.”
“How do we exorcise?” he joked. Then winced. Ty was right. He was hiding.
“Maybe we just move forward and leave them behind,” she mused.
“Sometimes it’s a tough choice,” he said, tucking a wavy piece of hair behind her ear. “Knowing when to abandon the past and when to build on it.”
She slid her hands up his chest, over his shoulders, and linked her fingers behind his neck. “I think you should forget about the past and kiss me right now.”
He backed her up slowly until she was pressed against the wall. Her breasts were flattened against his chest. His cock went hard between them, blood pulsing with the need to fuck his way inside her. “How’d you like me to kiss you, Dreamy?”
She wet her lips, and the pink tip of her tongue ignited a want that ached inside him.
“Kiss me like nothing else matters,” she whispered. Her green eyes were serious, pleading. And he was helpless to do anything but give her what she wanted.
41
The kiss changed from soft and sweet to something darker, needier, and Mack reveled in it. Linc crushed his mouth against hers, teeth scraping her lips until she surrendered, opening for him on a thready moan. He pinned her to the wall with his hips. His erection was hot and hard against her belly, and his hands were everywhere at once.
Tugging at her hair, digging into her hips, and then sliding under her sweatshirt, shoving layers out of the way to get to her electrified skin.
His tongue claimed her mouth like it was a distant mountain peak. Something to be conquered victoriously, triumphantly. She wanted him to claim the rest of her. To take it all until she had nothing left to give.
He broke the kiss and yanked her hoodie, then her t-shirt, over her head. Burying his face between her breasts, he let out a pained groan. His hips gave a shallow thrust against her that made the throb in her core thrum faster.
He needed this. Needed her. And she wanted to be needed like this.
She pushed him back just far enough to pull his shirt over his head, sank her teeth into the ink over his pec.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” she told him, dipping her tongue over his nipple.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “If you’re not okay with me taking you against this wall right now, I need you to say it, Mackenzie.”
The staccato beat of her heart thundered in her ears. A need so fierce, so base, clawed its way through her.
“Fuck me against this wall.”
He swore darkly as if she’d unleashed something in him. In one desperate motion, he’d dragged her shorts and underwear down her legs. She managed to free one foot before he was boosting her up and wrapping her legs around his hips. The boot made her feel off-balance, but Linc’s arms held her tight, and the brick braced her from behind.
“Thank God for gym shorts,” she whispered, reaching between them and freeing his cock.
He growled low in his throat when she gripped his shaft. Pressing her against the wall, he yanked her bra down under her breasts and greedily fastened his mouth to one nipple.
It hit her like lightning. Her entire system was alive and on fire. Those decadent, desperate pulls at her breast, the marble hard dick in her grip that was just an inch away from where she needed it to be.
“We don’t have a condom,” she breathed.
He let out a litany of curses against her breast and then dragged his teeth over her pebbled nipple.
She let out a little gasp. “I’m good if you’re good.”
He released her breast with an audible pop. “Yeah?”
There was so much she could see in those blue eyes. So much more than simple, uncomplicated lust. Letting him in, trusting him, meant something. It did to her, too. “Yeah.”
“I’ve never—”
“Me neither,” she admitted. “But I want you like that. Nothing between us.”
He didn’t say another word. His jaw clenched, making the cords in his neck stand out as he eased into her inch by perfect inch. Those blue eyes bore into her like he wanted to see inside her, reveal all of her secrets.
“Mackenzie.” He drew out her name as he sheathed himself in her.
She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe as he invaded her, stretching her to make room. There was a sliver of pain wrapped around the edges of a pleasure so intense she wasn’t sure she’d survive it. Then he was filling her completely and going still as she adjusted.
Full. So beautifully full. He was deep and bare, and she reveled in the feel of being possessed. She was nothing but sensation. The rough bite of brick at her back. The hot, hard muscle to her front. And that magnificent cock connecting them both in the most intimate way possible.
She didn’t feel empty and sad now. She glowed from the inside out.
He ducked his head and closed his mouth over her other breast, sucking and licking until she writhed against him, desperate for more friction, more motion. She cried out when he gave a shallow thrust with his hips.
“I’ve dreamed of this, baby,” he whispered between masterful laps of his tongue.
“Of what?”
“Being buried inside you, bare. Feeling you come on my dick, those hard, hungry squeezes. That hot flood when I make you let go. Of filling you up when I come inside you. Making you mine.”
He was so fucking primal, and so was their need for each other. Biology. Love and lust tangled up together in unconquerable knots.
Gripping her hips, he withdrew slowly and then thrust back into her. Hard. She dug her nails into his shoulders.
“More.”
“You like how I fuck you, Dreamy?” His breath was hot on her face and hair as he pulled almost all the way out again. She hated how her body felt without him inside her. Empty. But then he was driving back into her, and everything was right again. Maybe that was the secret rhythm of life. The empty existed to appreciate the full.
“God, yes,” she moaned.
His fingers gripped the curves of her hips possessively. Thrusting faster now into her. Mack bucked her hips and squeezed him with her thighs. Sweat slicked their skin. She bit him on the jaw. The neck. The flesh of his shoulder.
He was pounding into her now. A wild rhythm that she couldn’t keep up with. She could only take. Dizzy with want and need, she clung to him.
He growled and groaned dirty sweet nothings against her skin. Telling her a thousand ways how much he loved her body. How good it felt to be inside her. How right they were for each other. Her orgasm was on a hair trigger, but she wanted to go over the edge with him. Wanted to come as he did.
Her muscles trembled, thighs locked around his hips, inner walls around his cock as he slammed into her over and over again. Her breasts bounced between them with every powerful thrust.
“I feel how close you are, Mackenzie,” he whispered in her ear. Grunting every time his cock seated fully in her. “I feel you gripping my dick. I’m gonna make you come, and I’ll feel like a goddamn hero when you do.”
“I want you to come with me. In me.”
His heavy-lidded eyes widened. In wonder, in surprise? She wasn’t sure.
“I don’t deserve you,” he gritted out.
“Yes. You do. Now take what’s yours.” This time she kissed him. Her teeth latching on to his bottom lip. Their bodies were out of control, racing toward something so powerful, so primal it was encoded in their DNA. He held her tighter while she carved scratches into his back, arching against him until the head of his
cock was hitting her in some magical place.
“That’s right, baby,” he said. “That’s what I want.”
Her muscles fluttered around his shaft as he burrowed into her again. She could feel him, going impossibly harder, thicker inside her, as he chased his own release.
“You’re going to make me come, Mackenzie.”
She let out a gasp as the flutters changed speed, as she plunged headlong into an abyss of pleasure. Her body contracted and released as the first wave curled her toes and closed her walls around his thick shaft.
His grunt was guttural, wrenching, as he drove into her, pinning her to the wall and holding there. She felt it, that hot flood deep in her core as her muscles clamped down again. He moved, matching her waves and his so every time her walls trembled, he was fully sheathed in her.
They stared into each other’s eyes, not wanting to miss a second of the rawness. He was fucking beautiful when he came. Strong. Powerful. Vulnerable. Here. Now.
Right now, there was no past to overcome. No ghosts to chase. Right now, there was only their twin heartbeats and the pleasure they gave and took.
Mack’s breath was coming in gasps. Whimpers worked their way out of her throat as they rode each other out. Sweat dotted her chest and trickled down her back. And when it was over, while he was still sheathed inside her, while their pulses thundered victoriously together, he rained soft kisses over her face. Whispered words of praise and gratitude in her ears while their bodies were still connected.
42
Mack’s phone rang for the fifth time under the stack of files on her desk. Insistently. She was in the clinic. That was her excuse for not answering. Sure, the practice had closed an hour ago, but she really wasn’t interested in ending her day on a sour note.
She waited an entire minute before pushing play on the voicemail message.
“Mackenzie, it’s your mother. It’s very important. Call me.” The voice was singsong and had a trademark Texas twang despite the fact that her mother had been born and raised in Delaware and now lived in Illinois.
“Men love a southern belle, Mackenzie,” she’d always said. Andrea O’Neil-Leyva-Mann was an expert on what men loved.