About a Dog

by Jenn McKinlay

  At the moment she didn’t really care. She just knew she wanted to take and be taken, to feel the magic that happened only when she was with him. She pulled her other hand free and shoved him onto his back.

  He looked good against the masculine black and gray comforter, very good. Mac took note but she didn’t linger on the image of him sprawled and at her mercy. She had a mission to get him as bare as she was. She straddled him as she tugged his T-shirt over his head, tossing it across the room.

  When he would have distracted her by grabbing her hips and holding her hot spot against his erection, she wriggled against him once just to tease him and then she went to work on his pants, unfastening the button and lowering the zipper. When she curled her fingers into the waistband and pulled them down over his hips, she heard him hiss out a breath.

  That sounded like an invitation to her, so she pulled his boxer briefs down, too, and lowered her mouth to the hard part of him that had sprung free and was desperately seeking some attention.

  She worked him over with her tongue until she felt a light sheen of sweat covering his body and his hips bucked repeatedly while he groaned in a beautiful sort of agony. She moved to take him all the way in her mouth but was thwarted when he reached down and caught her about the middle, pulling her up his body.

  When she was lying fully against him, he sighed as if this contact was the most amazing thing he’d ever felt. Then he rolled so that she was under him and he kissed her. Long, slow, openmouthed kisses as if he was memorizing the feel of her mouth against his, the taste of her, the way she moaned against his lips when his hand slid down her body and cupped her breast.

  She was still in her bra and undies as he moved down her body, his tongue trailing a path on her skin as he tasted each and every part of her. His tricky fingers managed to remove the last of her clothing without her even being aware of it. Then his mouth was on her, tasting her, teasing her, making her cry out but not letting her come. Not yet.

  When she was balanced precariously right on the brink, he pulled back and reached for protection in the top drawer of his nightstand. Mac was panting and sweating and pretty sure she was going to combust right there on his bedspread.

  He slid on the condom with one hand and with the other he put his thumb right on the spot that made Mac insane. She arched her head back, and said, “Gavin.”

  She didn’t know if it was a curse, a plea, or just the need to say the name of the man she loved, but she felt the smile on his lips when he kissed her and slid into her at the same time.

  And that was it. Mac’s body responded to the feel of his immediately. Her pussy convulsed around his cock so hard that he grunted as she climaxed, leaving him no choice but to come with her. A couple of deep hard thrusts and Gavin wrapped his arms around Mac and held her tight as their bodies were simultaneously ripped apart and mended by the bliss that rocked them from the inside out.

  Gavin rolled onto his back, pulling her with him and covering them with the bedsheets while they caught their breath. Mac peeled herself off of his chest and gazed down at his face, feeling as if she could never look her fill of the man beside her. How long had it been since she’d felt this way about anyone? Had she ever felt this way about anyone? She traced his lips with her index finger and he nipped the pad of her finger and then sucked it gently into his mouth.

  The part of Mac that should have been sated for at least a month roared to life. She glanced from his mouth, which had moved from her finger to her wrist to her elbow, to his eyes. They were dark again and she knew he was feeling the same way she was.

  “Water,” she croaked. “If we’re going for round two, I need water.”

  She pushed off of him and grabbed his T-shirt from the floor. He propped himself up on one elbow and watched her pull the shirt over her head.

  “Sexy,” he said. Then his eyes narrowed. “Come here.”

  Mac felt her heart thud at his tone. He sounded very serious. She sat on the edge of the bed, but he wasn’t having the distance. He pulled her over to him, and lifted her up so that she was straddling him through the bedsheet.

  Her body rippled with another little burst of pleasure at the feel of him right between her legs, but she forced herself to put it aside as he swept his hands up her arms and combed his fingers through her hair.

  “There’s something you need to know,” he said. His gaze met hers. “I would have told you before I made love to you, but I got distracted.”

  Mac smiled at him. Distracted was a lovely word for it.

  “The truth is, Mackenzie Harris, I’m in love with you, and I think I have been for my whole life,” he said. Then he pulled her down and kissed her in a kiss unlike any Mac had ever received before. Raw in its honesty, sweet in its intention, loving in its purpose, it was a kiss that was a promise of forever. She was undone.

  The words I love you, too bubbled up inside of Mac but Gavin never gave her a chance to say them. With his revamped knowledge of her body and her response to his touch, he made love to her again and again as if he could make up for the seven years between their first time and now all in one night. Mac didn’t think it was possible, but she was happy to help him try.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, the foot of the bed dipped and twenty-five pounds of puppy snuck her way in between the feet of the two bodies that were curled around each other, sleeping the dreamless sleep of the happily exhausted. To the puppy, this was her new pack now and she was not about to let them out of her sight.

  • • •

  It was the blast of midmorning sun that woke them—well, that and their cell phones ringing as a belligerent fist pounded on Gavin’s front door.

  “Wake up, you two, there’s a wedding today,” Zach yelled through the door.

  “Mac! Gavin! Brunch is in half an hour. Unless you want Emma to disown you forever, you’ll answer the damn door,” Carly shouted.

  Mac reared back from a cold nose being shoved into her eye. Tulip! She turned away and saw Gavin asleep beside her and the stupidest, happiest grin spread over her face.

  Then the banging on the front door resumed and she reached for her phone to check the time. The phone was buzzing in her hand but she ignored it.

  The time read nine thirty. Nine thirty!

  “Gavin! Wake up!” she yelled. “Oh, my god, we’re late. Emma is going to kill us!”

  “Huh? What?” He opened his eyes and saw Mac staring down at him and a slow smile spread across his lips. Then Tulip pounced and kissed him good morning on the mouth. “Ugh, blerg.”

  “It’s nine thirty!” Mac cried.

  The banging on the front door resumed with both Carly and Zach yelling for them to get up.

  “Nine thirty?” Gavin asked as he sat up. “Oh, shit!”

  Chapter 33

  There was no way to ignore the two people at his door; otherwise Gavin would have. It would have been especially lovely if Carly and Zach had the grace not to comment on what had clearly gone down in his apartment the night before, but they did not.

  When he opened the door wearing just his pants, Carly strode in carrying a duffel bag with Zach trailing behind her.

  “Whoa, nice shiner, dude,” Zach said. He squinted at him. “How’s the other guy look?”

  “Way worse,” Gavin said. “He got rocked by Mac’s purse with a blow to the temple, so I’m betting he’s waking up in jail today with one hell of a headache.”

  “Nice,” Zach said and they exchanged a high five and a fist bump.

  “I have some makeup that might cover that,” Carly said.

  “No, just no,” Gavin said.

  “Yeah, that look is much manlier,” she agreed.

  Tulip raced out of the bedroom and began to bark, clearly trying to overcompensate for the fact that she had slept through the initial knocking and yelling. Zach and Carly both bent down to give her love. They
didn’t seem surprised to see her here, so the story of Mac and Gavin’s rescue of the dog had made the rounds.

  Mac hurried into the kitchen wearing just Gavin’s T-shirt and a pair of his boxers as shorts; he had to pause a moment to take that in. Then he shook his whole body like Tulip after her bath, trying to shake loose the lust that suddenly had him by the short hairs. For a crazy second, he feared he was going to shove his friends right back out the door and have his way with Mac up against his kitchen counter. Oh, boy, what that girl could do to him.

  Tulip trotted to Mac’s side and pressed against her. Mac put her hand on the puppy’s head as she stood in front of the Keurig coffeepot as if willing it to brew faster. Judging by the way she was tapping her bare feet, it wasn’t working.

  Her brown hair tumbled around her shoulders and his gray T-shirt clung to parts of her that he was now intimately familiar with and wanted to be so again. Gavin turned away before he embarrassed himself.

  “So, it looks like someone has been trimming the hedges in Mac’s lady garden,” Zach said to Carly.

  “No kidding, look at her face.” Carly snorted. “That’s the glow of a girl who spent the night having her moo-moo milked.”

  Zach doubled up with laughter. “And we’re on again. Bet I know more euphemisms for lady parts than you do.”

  Mac’s entire face went bright red. In fact, when Gavin lowered his gaze to her throat, it looked like her entire body was blushing with embarrassment. She sent him a desperate look.

  “Put the brakes on, you two,” Gavin said. His tone made it an order.

  “Oh, dude,” Zach said. His grin was wicked and he wagged his eyebrows at them. “I am just getting started.”

  “No, no. No, you’re not,” Mac protested. “Today is Emma’s day and we’re not going to do anything that might take away from that.”

  “But—” Zach argued before Mac interrupted him.

  “Back me up, Carly,” she said. “The bride will shank him if he goofs up her day with vaginal euphemisms, am I right?”

  “Yeah, Emma will cut you,” Carly said to Zach. “Probably, with a pearl-handled cake server, but, yeah, don’t mess with her day. This”—she paused to gesture at Mac and Gavin—“needs to be kept on the down low. This is Emma’s day and no one else’s. Clear?”

  “Fine.” Zach sighed, obviously feeling put out.

  “All right,” Carly said. “We have twenty minutes to get you two presentable for brunch. Let’s go.”

  “Make it fifteen,” Gavin said.

  Once the festivities started, he knew he wasn’t going to have another chance to talk to Mac, so he grabbed her hand and pulled her into the bedroom, slamming the door in Carly and Zach’s faces. Tulip scratched at the door but he ignored her.

  He pushed Mac up against the wall and pressed his body the length of hers. Man, he loved the way they fit perfectly together.

  “We don’t have—” Mac protested but he kissed her. He knew it was going to be the last long and lingering one he was going to get for a while, so he made it count. When she was clutching his bare shoulders and arching into him, he broke the kiss.

  “No time to fool around, I know,” he said. “Pity.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed against him.

  He pushed her hair back from her face and studied her warm brown eyes. He didn’t know what he was looking for—wait, that was a lie. He knew. He was looking for regret, uncertainty, or doubt. When her soft gaze met his, however, there was none of that. What he saw made him catch his breath. He didn’t think he was fooling himself. What he saw was love.

  Bang. Bang. Bang. A fist rapped on the door. Tulip barked.

  “Kids, we’ve got to go,” Zach cried. “I will leave you here. I am not getting shanked by a cake server over you two.”

  Gavin grinned and Mac smiled.

  “Really quick,” Gavin said. “How do we want to play this today? Because I really don’t care if anyone can tell, my sister included, that you and I are now a thing.”

  “Oh, we’re a thing, huh?” Mac asked.

  She looked ridiculously pleased, which made Gavin’s own heart swell with relief and delight. After all these years, Mac was his. He was having a hard time, a wonderfully hard time, wrapping his head around it.

  “Yes,” he growled and leaned into her. “We’re a big thing.”

  Mac’s laugh was deliciously sexy. “I can feel that.”

  He almost locked the door and dragged her back to the bed, Zach and Carly and brunch be damned.

  Then Mac cupped his face and kissed him ever so sweetly. “Let’s keep it quiet, just for today, for Emma,” she said.

  He hated the idea, detested it, but he trusted that Mac knew his sister and the inner workings of the female brain better than he did.

  “All right, but I’m driving you from the church to the reception and if we have to take a detour to an old secluded spot on a hill beneath two old copper beech trees, so be it.”

  The smile she sent him blinded him, and Gavin was pretty sure this was the most perfect moment of his entire life.

  • • •

  Mac and Carly raced into the brunch right behind Gavin and Zach. They were ten minutes late but given how strong the temptation to blow off brunch and stay in bed with Gavin all morning had been, Mac figured ten minutes was more than acceptable.

  Plus, she’d had to hand off Tulip to the aunts with very specific instructions not to let her out of their sight. They were coming to the wedding later as Jessie had agreed to come over with her girls to watch Tulip, but in the meantime the puppy was on the aunts’ watch. Mac tried not to worry.

  The aunts did not comment on Mac being out all night, but when she was leaving she saw Sarah nudge Charlotte with her elbow and they both giggled. Mac ignored them.

  Brunch was a casual affair at Mr. Tolliver’s house and everyone was dressed in shorts or jeans as they went over the last-minute details of the day. The spread of food was immense, as the wedding party, the immediate family on both sides, and the out-of-town guests had been invited to partake.

  Dining was buffet style so Mac loaded her plate—mercy, she had worked up an appetite—and found a table with Jillian at the edge of the back terrace. From there, they ate and watched the Tolliver cousins play in the yard while their mothers talked, pausing to scold the kids now and then before digging right back into the family gossip.

  Mac watched Gavin greet his aunts and uncles with kisses and hugs. The aunts all fussed over his shiner while the uncles slapped him on the back in macho approval. He tossed the football in the backyard with his younger cousins and then he paused beside his father to chat.

  The morning sun shone on his light brown hair, turning it the rich color of honey. Mac could still feel it against her fingers. When he tipped his head back and laughed, his full lips parted and showed his teeth and Mac remembered those same teeth nipping the pad of her finger and other parts as well. When one of his little girl cousins ran up to hug him, the dimple in his right cheek deepened as he picked her up and tossed her in the air, making her screech with giggles.

  Mac sighed. Had he always been this impossibly handsome?

  “Mac, hello? Mac?” Jillian pinched her upper arm and Mac jumped.

  “Ouch!” she cried as she rubbed the spot.

  “Wow, you really got shagged stupid last night, didn’t you,” Jillian said.

  “Carly told you?” Mac gasped.

  “Oh, puhleeze, you’re staring at Gav like he’s standing there naked,” Jillian said. “If you’re trying to keep it quiet, you’d better dial it back a bit.”

  “Ugh!” Mac lowered her head to her chest. She reached for her mimosa and took a sip. How was she going to get through a whole day of being with him but not with him?

  “Be my spotter?” she asked Jillian.

  “Always,” her friend said. �
�Can I say one thing?”

  “That depends,” Mac said. “Is it going to damage my self-worth?”

  “No.” Jillian laughed. “I just want you to know that in all the years I’ve known you, which is twenty, I’ve never seen you look so happy.”

  Mac hugged her friend close. “I’ve never been this happy.”

  “Then don’t mess it up,” Jillian said.

  “I’m trying really hard not to,” Mac said. “But it’s complicated.”

  Jillian swiped a piece of bacon off of Mac’s plate.

  “No, it isn’t,” she said. “Be open and honest and you’ll be okay.”

  “I will,” Mac said. “Or at least I plan to, you know, after today.”

  They both glanced at Emma, who was making the rounds of family and friends, with Brad at her side. In jeans and matching T-shirts that read Bride on Emma’s and Groom on Brad’s, they were about as sickeningly adorable as a couple could be.

  “She’s going to be okay with this, you know,” Jillian said. “She was ecstatic when she heard you and Trevor were kaput. She loves you and Gavin. She’ll be thrilled that you found each other.”

  “Maybe,” Mac said. “But there’s the little issue that she asked me to watch over him not sleep with him—oh, and let’s not forget the news that I defiled her baby brother seven years ago and never mentioned it.”

  Jillian shook her head and her long dark curls bounced around her shoulders. “I’m telling you, it may take time, but she’ll be all right with this, all of it, really.”

  “I hope so,” Mac said. “Because I honestly don’t think I can give him up.”

  After brunch, it was off to the hairdresser’s for the girls and the barber for the boys. Then it was back to Emma’s father’s house to get dressed for the girls and back to Emma and Brad’s house for the boys.

  There was one panicked phone call from Brad to Emma when Zach managed to tear the inseam on the pants of his rented tuxedo. One of Emma’s aunts grabbed her sewing kit and zipped over to the boys’ house to mend the situation. She reported back that all was well and that she’d never seen such a group of fine-looking men.