Once inside, she set her purse down on the bar before turning to face him. Only she had to take a step back, which put her dangerously close to him and the hard countertop pressing into her back. She could barely breathe for how close he was to her.
It wasn’t like her house was small and he didn’t have plenty of square footage to take up, so she didn’t understand why he insisted on being quite this close. If she could find her voice, she might just ask him.
Nope, voice had definitely gone on hiatus.
Shit.
And now he was touching her. The warmth of his rough fingers slid over her cheekbone, then traced her jaw until he was gripping her chin and tilting her head back even more. When she met his eyes, she realized he was fixated on her. More importantly, he was fixated on her mouth, and damn her traitorous body for doing a sudden and intense quick preheat.
Still no voice.
Instead, she licked her lips.
Mistake.
Tag leaned in closer, his fingertips still tilting her chin, his mouth hovering dangerously close to hers as she inhaled the unique, dangerous scent of him into her lungs. And wouldn’t you know it, the man didn’t even have bad breath, so she was hard pressed to find any reason to try to break away from him.
Closing her eyes, McKenna tried to focus on breathing, but the only thing she managed to do was absorb the warmth of his chest through her clothes and into her skin. He wasn’t quite touching her physically anywhere except for his fingers on her chin, but she felt like he was wrapped around her completely.
God she missed this; the security that blanketed her by his mere presence. The way he swamped her senses with his nearness. If it weren’t for that persistent little reminder flashing brightly in the far recesses of her brain, McKenna might very well have given in to him right then and there.
“What do you want, Murphy?” McKenna deliberately called him by his last name, trying to prove to him as much as herself that he wasn’t going to get away with intimidating her or whatever it was he was trying to do.
“You.”
McKenna’s eyes jerked open, meeting his, and she noticed he had moved a fraction of an inch back allowing her to see his face clearly in front of her.
“Me?” she laughed. “You want me? Well, you have a damn funny way of showing it.”
That got him moving. She inhaled desperately as he walked away, pacing back and forth just a few feet from her but enough that she could refill her lungs with much needed oxygen.
She waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. He began walking through her house from one room to the next looking at everything in detail. Gripping the countertop, she forced her feet to remain planted firmly where she was. She would not follow him. She would not. Eventually, he would have to come back to the kitchen, and if she was lucky he would leave.
No, she didn’t want him to leave.
Yes, damn it; she did want him to leave.
Inhaling slowly through her nose and exhaling even more slowly through her mouth, McKenna tried to figure out what the hell she did want. How could she possibly let him walk in here and treat her as though nothing had happened when she deserved an apology at the very least?
Two weeks damn it. Two long weeks he hadn’t called or emailed or texted. Nothing. Not a single word and all of a sudden she ends up face to face with him and he suddenly wants her again.
McKenna heard the sound of his footsteps as he came back into the kitchen and she calmed herself enough to let go of the counter and turn to face him. Only this time, when she turned around, she was gifted with the sight of his back... as he walked out the door to the garage, closing it quietly behind him.
What the fuck?
~*~*~
Tag knew he shouldn’t have come. He knew that he in no way deserved any of McKenna’s attention, yet the second he saw her at XTX, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from needing to know she was ok.
Well, goddammit, now he knew.
He kept moving, his feet eating up the sidewalk as he made his way back to his car, hoping like hell he would be able to get in it and drive away before he did something as stupid as turning around, going back inside and pushing McKenna against the wall and taking her with the intensity that he felt coursing through his entire body.
He was just stepping into the street when he heard a door slam behind him, her heels clicking on the concrete and then her voice when she screamed at him. Screamed.
“What the fuck are you doing, Tag Murphy?”
He smiled but kept his back to her. Now she was calling him by his full name.
Debating on whether he should turn around, he just stopped where he was. The sound of her heels clicked furiously on the pavement as she walked toward him. The woman was fast.
When she appeared in front of him, he straightened. McKenna got to him in ways he damn sure wasn’t comfortable with. It wasn’t until he had been perusing through the knick knacks and pictures, getting a better glimpse of who she really was that Tag realized that. Or rather remembered that.