Page 71 of The Games We Play
And when I finally looked over my shoulder, when our eyes locked through the low light and thick air, I smiled.
Slow. Knowing. Dangerous.
Checkmate.
21
PENNY
“You’re dangerous,” Mac said, his voice low and rough as he leaned across the bar. His face hovered just inches from mine, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his skin.
I’d slipped away from the dance floor a little while ago, leaving Ellie and Aspen to carry on without me. I could’ve stayed, continued the torture. Instead, I found myself gravitating back to the bar, back tohim.
The crowd had thinned, the noise dulled into the background. It was just quiet enough that Mac could give me his full, undivided attention—and God, did I drink it in.
I liked the way he looked at me like I was a mystery he wanted to get lost in. Every time he laughed, every time his hand brushed close to mine, it was like lighting a match to something already smoldering.
Before everything fell apart, before the heartbreak and the silence, we lived in this tension. A charged kind of dance, a will-they-won’t-they that stretched on for months.
Me—showing up to the bar dressed to turn heads, but only ever wanting to catchhiseye.
Him—leaning across the counter, eyes trailing down my body, never making a move.
Not until the Halloween party.
Not until everything changed.
Mac had always been magnetic. With him, it never felt like a choice. We were two ends of a live wire, sparking when we got too close. I’d never felt anything like it—not before, not since.
“But you love it,” I murmured, letting my voice dip into something low and sweet. I sat straighter, resting my chin in my palm, my elbow balanced delicately on the polished wood of the bar. For good measure, I fluttered my lashes. Slowly. Deliberately.
He let out a soft, almost pained laugh. “Those damn eyes,” he muttered, gaze flicking between them, like he couldn’t decide which one to get lost in first. “They could bring any man to his knees, Penelope.”
My name from his lips did something to me.
“Oh?” I arched a brow, letting my lips curl. “You? On your knees forme?”
The image hit me hard.
Mac, on the floor, eyes dark and reverent, staring up at me like I was the center of his universe. My fingers in his messy hair, the tips of my fingers dragging across his shoulder, circling him while he waited. Watched.Worshipped.
A shiver rolled down my spine, goosebumps rising beneath the thin fabric of my top.
My pulse thundered in my ears.
“Come back to me,” Mac whispered, his voice like smoke, and when I blinked, I realized he was even closer now. Just a breath away.
Too close.
I closed my eyes, just for a second. A heartbeat. A breath. I needed to break the spell before I drowned in it.
Before I forgot every reason we weren’t supposed to do this, not yet.
His words landed with more weight than they should have—soft and simple, but layered.
Come back to me.
Not just to the moment, but to him. To his bed, his hands, his heartbeat next to mine.
