Page 27 of Homecoming Heartbreaker

Mack grimaced. “Nasty. What happened?”

Molly wanted to push her hair off her face but her hands were full so she resorted to trying to blow the annoying curl out of her eyes. Mack placed his box on the next stair, removed the books and files from her hands and placed them on top of his box. “Why didn’t we get a porter to do the heavy lifting?” he ruefully asked.

“Because we thought Jameson would have a file, maybe two, not a truckload of paperwork.”

Mack lifted his hand and with his finger, pushed her curl off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. He looked down at her and, once again, wished she could tell what he was thinking. She didn’t like being shut out, not by Mack, not by the man whom she once knew inside out. “You were telling me about your dance injury.”

Molly rubbed her left wrist with the curled fingers of her right hand. When she saw Mack looking at the action, she immediately stopped. He knew it was something she did when she was feeling anxious or out of her depth.

“It was dress rehearsal and I caught my foot in my dress and I went down. I heard the pop and I knew it wasn’t good. I was helped off stage and then they started phoning around for someone to pick me up and take me to the hospital.”

She wouldn’t tell him that, delirious with pain, she’d told them to call him, insisting that he’d come and get her. The EMS techs tried him but he hadn’t answered. Then they tried her mother and her brothers, none of whom they could reach.

Eventually, it was Jameson who met her at the same hospital Travis had recently left. And he’d held her hand when they told her that dance, like Mack, would never be part of her future again.

She felt its loss like a body blow.

Molly shrugged off those bitter memories. “They did reconstructive surgery but it will never be as strong as it was so pirouettes and arabesques are solidly off-limits.” She gestured to the narrow stairs above them. “So I now mostly climb stairs.”

“I’m so sorry, Mol,” Mack told her and her eyes burned at the emotion she heard in his voice. He’d loved to watch her practice, had encouraged her to pursue her passion when her mother and brothers dismissed her talent. He’d understood, on a fundamental level, how important it was to her...

“I do still dance, modern and hip-hop mostly, but it’s not the same. I loved ballet.”

“I know,” Mack said, looking and sounding serious.

“Yeah, well, hell happens,” Molly said, ducking behind flippancy.

“Yeah, it really does,” Mack said, his hand cupping her cheek, his thumb sliding over her cheekbone. His eyes drifted over her face, his stern mouth relaxed. “At seventeen I thought you the most beautiful creature I’d ever set eyes on. But you are lovelier today than you were back then. It’s blowing my mind.”

Molly rested her palms flat against the wall behind her, watching as his mouth descended toward hers. He smelled different, Molly thought, his scent more subtle but powerful, a dizzying combination of citrus and spice. His beard was stronger, his cheekbones more defined, those eyes shuttered, but God, his lips, when they touched hers, were still the same. A little sweet, a little soft, devastating and demanding at the same time. Mack placed his thumb on her chin, an unmistakable command for her to open up so she did, letting him slide inside.

Unable to stop herself, Molly placed her hands on the balls of his shoulders, feeling his heat beneath the material of his casual, expensive shirt. As he took a long, languid discovery of her mouth, she ran her hands down his arms, feeling the bumps of those impressive muscles, the raised veins in his forearms. Needing to explore herself, she slid her hands across his wide, hard chest and danced her fingers over his ladderlike stomach, until she hit the button of his jeans. Later, she wouldn’t be able to decide whether she touched accidentally or on purpose, but when the side of her hand brushed his erection, she heard his swift intake of breath.

Mack whipped his head up, stared at her, his eyes wild and wicked and then his mouth, hot, sensual and rather wonderful, covered hers again. This time he used his big body to gently press her against the wall, and while his tongue was dancing with hers, she released a breathy moan. His scent rolled over her, earthy and primal and hot as fire. Molly gripped his shirt, twisting the material as he dragged his stubble across her jawline, stopping to pull her earlobe into his mouth. A little tease and a little taste and he was off exploring again, his mouth trailing down her neck, nudging aside the material of her loose silk T-shirt to expose the skin of her shoulder.

They shouldn’t be doing this; it was a lethal game. They were tempting a tornado, flirting with a firestorm. Too much had happened between them—hurt, anger and disappointment—but Molly couldn’t force herself to verbalize the words that would make her drop out of the game.

Desire shimmered between them, hot and feral and uncontrollable. If she made the slightest move, if she gave in to temptation and allowed her hands to roam, her mouth to feast, she’d tumble into a situation that would spin, rapidly she was sure, out of her control.

It took everything she had to stand still, to harness herself...

“Come on, Curls, give me something. Anything,” Mack muttered against her lips, his teeth gently nipping her bottom lip.

It was that small bite, that sexy nip, that shattered her control. Swamped and slapped by passion, she gripped his shirt, twisted it and pulled her to him, feeling his hard body pushing her to the wall again. Her tongue slipped into his mouth, and he moaned when she feasted on him, needing more, needing everything.

She’d missed this; she’d missed him. He knew how to touch her—his hand on her breast, capturing her nipple between his thumb and finger proved that—knew when to advance, how to retreat. Molly sighed when his hard shaft pressed against the juncture of her thighs and, oblivious to where they were, she opened her legs to give him better access. Frustrated, she lifted her knee to curl her leg behind his thigh, thanking God she was still ballet flexible. Mack’s hand ran up and down the back of her thigh, his fingers curling inward, coming dangerously close to her happy spot. Mack bent and held the backs of her thighs, easily lifting her, and it was the most natural thing in the world to wind her legs around his trim waist, to hook her ankles in the small of his back.

They were groping on the back stairway of Moonlight Ridge and she didn’t care. At all.

They shared another hot, hard and wild kiss and Molly lifted her hips to scrape her core against his erection. Man, he felt so good. Nothing made sense but for them to get naked, immediately.

The slam of a door below them made them flinch, and the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs below them, a floor down, had Molly dropping her legs and Mack bending to pick up the heavy box to hide his erection.

As the footsteps reached them, they continued their slow walk up the stairs, standing to the side to allow the fit, and young, porter to pass them.

Neither of them looked at each other; they didn’t speak.

And when they hit their floor, Mack pealed left to go to his office and she went right to hers.

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