Chapter Twenty: Dress

Georgie

DRESS

Performed by Taylor Swift

Mac was kissing me as if there was nothing left in the world but us. As if the world had stopped. And it felt like it had. There was a deep pool of emotions between us now. It wasn't just lust. It wasn't just a kiss. It was life springing up anew. Passion and sin and hope all tangled together in a way that I knew wasn't going to last but to which I couldn't say no. I wanted this just like I'd wanted it each time he'd kissed me.

I'd thought that, like Descartes, the more he kissed me, the less impact it would have on me. The more reality would fly in between the dreamlike senses. But these kisses weren't less. They were more. Deeper. Those first kisses had brought our lives closer together, but this kiss was wrapping invisible strings around us. Strings that would be difficult to unbind. Strings that would find their way into my heart where I didn't want them but where I knew they would tear a hole if and when he pulled away.

It wasn't until the limo stopped that Mac withdrew his lips from mine. He caressed the side of my face with a gentle hand and then twined our hands together as the driver opened our door. He stared at me for a minute. Trying to read me. Or maybe trying to read himself. The driver cleared his throat, and Mac turned away.

I felt like I'd just lost something. Opportunity. Hope. I didn't know what, but I followed as Mac helped me out of the vehicle. We were quiet on our way up to the apartment. There were things I wanted to say but didn't know how to start.

Mac opened the door, throwing keys and wallet and phone on the counter. I placed my evening bag there as well. When I did, he captured my hand with his and pulled me toward him. I collided against his chest. His wall of muscle.

"I'm not sure I can stop kissing you yet," he said quietly, his already deep voice going down several notches more and sending goosebumps across my flesh.

I said, "Dani thinks we should just do it and get it out of our system."

He looked at me, eyes hooded for a second, as he took in my words, then his lips quirked at the corners as he tried not to smile. "What are we, sixteen?"

I smiled weakly back at him. "I think she just meant that trying not to feel anything for each other is just enhancing the emotions. Like anticipation. Blowing it all out of proportion."

"Please don't use that word," he groaned.

"Blowing?" I teased, and his eyes sparkled at my dare. He ran a finger down my cheek, to my neck, over my shoulders, and then down my back where the dress dipped, leaving the skin bare. My flesh—that had already been on alert—ached everywhere he touched.

"Do you think she's right?" he asked.

My hand went from his chest, where I'd been balancing myself, to my hair that suddenly felt tight in the updo I'd swirled it into earlier as Dani had watched, amazed, until I'd reminded her that I'd been a hairdresser for more years than I'd been anything else.

"Maybe…I don't know," I answered, pulling the pins loose and watching with pleasure as Mac's eyes darkened when my hair spilled about my neck and breasts. His hand at the back of my waist tightened, and the other hand came up to tangle in my dark waves, wrapping them around his fingers and then pulling so that I was forced to inch my face toward his.

"Maybe we should find out? Dani is rarely wrong." He kissed my jawline, inching slowly down toward my neck, and I couldn't help but tilt my face upward, granting him better access. His breath and kisses in the little curve where my jaw met my ear were heated, melting my nerves and my knees.

"Rarely isn't never," I managed to say in a voice that wavered. I knew he'd heard the quivering, but he didn't stop his kisses. His attack on my senses. He moved lower down my neck until he was placing kisses at the juncture of my neck and my shoulder—another tender spot—filling my body with desire by a touch and a caress.

"What's the worst that could happen?" he murmured .

The worst would be that we would find out that we couldn't live without each other. That those strings tying our bodies together would be hard to sever without cutting holes in our hearts.

He licked my skin, and my knees completely buckled, and he caught me. "You taste like golden sunsets."

My heart skipped a beat.

His hand found the zipper on my dress and tugged at it.

"Tell me no, Georgie."

"I can't. I bought it imagining you doing just this."

He groaned, and I swallowed the groan with my mouth on his. Joining our lips as if they'd always been together.

As he pulled the zipper down, his hand caressed the skin underneath, making me ache with need. I pulled away enough to let the dress cascade around my hips and slip to the floor. Mac's eyes darkened as he took in my body with breasts bare and only a thin strip of black lace covering me.

"Georgie," he breathed out my name, saying it as if it was the word stunning or beautiful or gorgeous .

He pulled me back to him, hand to my nipple, caressing. Then, his mouth took command of mine. Tongue and lips and teeth, teasing and pulling and twisting together. Hearts and pulses pounding.

He lifted me up, and my legs encircled his waist. While I was only in my heels and my black underwear, he had on too many clothes. They rubbed along all my sensitive parts as he carried me down the hall. We'd gone halfway when a tearing sound stopped us, pulling our lips apart with wide eyes.

He smiled at me. "Damn. Now I'm going to have to pay for this tux."

My hands flew to the back of the jacket and found where the arm and back seam had split apart, and I couldn't help the laugh that escaped me. "I guess this is the reason Russell buys his own tuxedos."

His smile faded. "I don't want to talk about Russell."

He finished the journey to his room before setting me down. I tugged at the buttons on the tux, pushing the jacket away while he pulled at the tie, our movements, which had been slow and heady, picking up pace as we tried to remove his clothes while still kissing. His chest was bare before the rest of him, and I kissed it slowly, moving down his abdomen until he was groaning again.

I undid the belt and the button on his pants, and he was tripping over them before he could remove his shoes. I sank down on the masculine, gray comforter that was on his bed. I pulled up one foot and removed the strap on my stilettos.

He stopped me once I had the shoe off, grabbing my foot and pulling it to his mouth, kissing the side and the sole, sending shivers down my whole body. He then pulled the other foot up and slowly undid the strap himself, the fast pace edging back toward the languorous one we'd had in the limo.

We were both in our underwear. His were tight, showing every part of him that wanted me, while mine were ready to slide from my body with desire. He put his hands down on either side of me on the mattress, leaning in to take my mouth in his. To take my breast in his hand.

We moved our way back on the bed, Mac trailing kisses up my leg, placing a hot kiss over the thin fabric of my underwear, making me moan. He journeyed up my stomach to each breast, giving them each their fair share of attention before trailing kisses up my neck and finally to my lips. My hand caressed his back and journeyed over the defined lines of his abdomen and down until a guttural groan escaped him when my hand touched him, making me shiver again, longing enveloping me.

"Mac," I whispered, having to say something before I couldn't.

"Don't," he said, kissing my neck, and my chin, and the corner of my lips.

"Don't what?"

"Don't say anything. Don't stop us. Just don't."

"Just need to set the ground rules." I gasped as his tongue returned to my breast, a hand journeying down and tugging at the fabric of my underwear.

"No rules," he said, switching to the other breast. My body burned, fighting to get the words out.

"Rules."

His tongue and mouth stopped the caress of my breast, and he looked up at me from his position there. The desire I saw in his eyes stopped my breath, made my words almost disappear.

"One night. When it's done, we don't have to continue. We can stop. No regrets. No feeling bad about calling it quits. No hard feelings," I said quietly, chest heaving. And I couldn't tell if he was disappointed or approving. Uncertainty wavered in his eyes. He nodded and moved as if to take me back in his mouth, but I pulled on his hair. "Say it."

"One night, Georgie. But I mean one full night. All night. Not just once. Not twice. I'm talking all night."

My body quivered as his hands moved across me. I smiled, moving my hand over his underwear again, and his eyes closed. I teased, "Just exactly how many times do you think we can get in?"

He groaned. "Stop talking, and we'll find out."

And we did, moving together as if our bodies knew exactly where to touch and kiss and suck and bite and surrender. As if we'd done this many times before. As if fate and the stars were laughing at our promise of one night. I tried to keep my heart tucked inside my body, but Mac's caresses slowly tugged my skin apart, leaving it open and raw.

When he finally reached for the bedside drawer and the condoms that were stored there, I felt like I was more exposed than I had ever been before. When he rolled the condom on, and my hands went there automatically, smoothing it on with him, pulling at him, eager to have him inside me, his moans were echoed across me. When I looked into his eyes, I saw nothing that spoke of the one night we'd agreed on. I saw, in his eyes, a future he wanted, and I still wasn't sure it could happen. I saw pain and the idea of love that might never come true.

But we continued, bodies pleasing each other, souls breathing into each other's hearts. Morning was going to be painful, but it would have to wait until we were done with the pieces of us that needed this. The touch that we'd feel for a long time after.

? ? ?

I woke to a smell that was unfamiliar. Masculine. Salty. Like the sea. A scent as intoxicating as coffee, but this was full of promises I couldn't have. My body was wrapped in muscular arms that held me so tight I was afraid to breathe in case I woke him.

My heart leaped, and I told it to go away. To hide back in the cavity of my chest.

I opened my eyes, Mac's face inches from mine. He looked peaceful. Younger than the twenty-eight years we both showed on our driver's licenses. My body was sated and sore all at the same time. The challenge of one night that I'd laid down had been more than fulfilled as we'd savored each other over and over again.

But it was morning now. I could see the light beginning to filter in behind the gray blinds that covered the windows that I knew looked out toward Capitol Hill, because they faced the same direction as the windows in my loft.

Descartes was wrong. Dreams and reality could be the same thing. In this one brief moment, they were. They were a truth. The problem was, I couldn't make the moment last. The reality would drift apart from the dream. This was just a glimpse of a point where the x- and y-axis crossed briefly before journeying back along their own lines, the reality and dreams going their separate ways.

I moved slowly, testing to see if it would wake him. But it didn't. He was out cold. Our "night" had barely ended, but I was unaccustomed to being in someone's arms. Even when Jared and I had spent the night together, we'd always had our own sides of the bed. We'd never been so entangled―so exhausted from the passion―that we'd just fallen asleep where we'd stopped moving.

I continued my measured moves, not wanting to risk waking him.

Eventually, I'd removed all of my body from his, and I skirted to the edge of the bed, picking up my underwear and shoes. Then, I turned back for a last glance at him. His skin still bore the deep bronze of the ocean from his weeks of sailing just as his body still bore the mark of his military career. Toned and unforgiving in many ways. His dark hair was mussed from my hands. His blue eyes were hidden behind closed lids. He was more gorgeous than any man I'd ever shared a bed with. Jared may have been on magazine covers, but this man was built in a way that was both real and mesmerizing.

Last night hadn't felt like anything I'd experienced before now. It had felt like it was full of emotions that I'd never let out. Emotions that I'd always resisted. It felt like my life was now forever going to be known by a series of moments that included before and after. Like the lock sliding shut on my storage unit in July. Like the before and after that had defined my life from when my dad had been arrested. I would forever be looking at my life as before and after this night with Mac.

I tore myself away, walking out of the room.

I picked up the green dress from where it had pooled on the floor by the kitchen. I'd known when I bought it what I was doing. I'd known exactly where the dress would lead us. But I hadn't been able to get out of my head the idea of him unzipping it once I'd put it on.

I moved to the loft to retrieve clothes before going to my bathroom to shower. When I came out, the apartment was still quiet.

I grabbed the bag that held my research for Theresa and left the apartment, shutting the door quietly. I needed time and space because I didn't know if I'd be able to look him in the eyes and stick to what I'd said the night before. I'd said we could walk away with no regrets. That it was just one night. But the truth was, I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't anywhere near ready to walk away, and yet, I had to give him the chance to do so.

I spent the day at the law library, reading my textbooks, taking notes, and working on Theresa's research. I succeeded in keeping my mind off Mac as long as I didn't move, but once I did, the glorious aches from the night before would return, and my heart would speed up to a traitorous pace, reliving our moments…our kisses.

My phone vibrated on the table.

DANI: Mac is acting weird.

ME: Are you back from your night with Russell?

DANI: Yes. Why aren't you here?

ME: I'm at the law library. Like always.

DANI: Why aren't you here ?

ME: I just told you.

DANI: This is why Mac is acting weird. You slept with him and left. Was he that awful? I mean, I don't really want to know. He's my kid brother. But I did have more faith in him than that.

ME: I'm not talking to you about this.

DANI: But you're not moving out, right?

ME: Why would I leave?

DANI: You're the best roommate we've had in ages.

ME: Puhlease.

DANI: Truth. You're family already.

ME: Trust me. You don't want me as family.

DANI: Too late. You already are.

This hit me in the heart. I hadn't been around them long enough to be family, but Dani had accepted me wholeheartedly, even knowing who my family was…maybe even more so than Mac had. I didn't know how to respond, so I didn't.

THE GUY: Dani says you're at the library.

ME: Yes.

THE GUY: Will you be home soon?

My heart stuttered again. Family. Home. It was just too much. I had a family I loved. That loved me back. But the only place that had ever felt like home was the apartment above the salon I'd grown up in that was now gone. I didn't really have a home anymore. Dani and Mac felt too much like home. Too much like things I could lose.

THE GUY: Do you want us to order from Bentley's for you?

ME: You're tempting me with gnocchi?

THE GUY: I'd love to tempt you with more than that.

I couldn't respond right away because my heart wanted to patter happily and hopefully at what he meant. Was he saying he wanted more than one night? I plunged forward, figuring it would be easier to read his answer than to have to look him in the eye. Chicken. I'd never played chicken until Mac.

ME: That would break our one-night rule.

THE GUY: You left before our night was over, so I feel like you broke it first.

ME: The sun was out when I left.

THE GUY: The end of a night is not the sun rising. It's being able to kiss the woman you were with as you wake up. To maybe have breakfast with roaming hands. To savor that moment together .

ME: I think we savored the heck out of it.

THE GUY: That wasn't anything. I could have gone a few more rounds.

ME: Liar.

THE GUY: I don't lie.

My body turned slowly into bubbling liquid covered in goosebumps at the thought of Mac having more in him. Of him being able to touch and fill me a few more times before I'd left.

THE GUY: So, gnocchi?

ME: No.

THE GUY: Too late, Dani already ordered it.

ME: Then, why did you even bother asking?

THE GUY: Come home. We need to talk.

ME: We already talked.

THE GUY: Come home, Georgie.

The demand and the plea were written in the text. Or maybe I just wanted to believe it was there, and my heart hurt from it all. From wanting to be wanted. From wanting to be a part of their family. From the guilt of knowing what my addition would do to them.

But I also knew I wouldn't be able to resist. That I would go home, drawn like a bat to the darkness of its cave as the dawn approached, hoping I wouldn't be trailing with me any blood-borne pathogens.