Infatuation - A Club Destiny Novel (33 page)

By the time he freed his cock, she was
clawing his back with her sharp nails as he slid his hand between
their bodies, lifting her skirt and ripping her panties. As soon as
he had access to her wet, warm pussy, Tag slammed his cock into her
repeatedly.

Here they stood, her
against the wall, his hands holding her ass as he plowed deeper,
with ferocious need while she continued to claw him, holding him to
her as their mouths sought everything they’d denied themselves for
the last two weeks.

It wasn’t gentle, or
sweet, or any of those romantic words that would describe two
bodies coming together. This was an all-out fucking, and they were
both intent on more. Their bodies were coated in perspiration by
the time McKenna whimpered, breaking her mouth from his and
dropping her head against the wall, screaming his name as she came
in his arms.

Tag had no choice but to
follow when her internal muscles clamped down on him painfully, his
orgasm ripping him damn near in two, leaving him absolutely and
infuriatingly altered down to his very soul.

*** ~~ *** ~~ *** ~~ ***

McKenna hadn’t been
positive her legs would hold her once Tag put her feet back on the
ground, but somehow she managed. The relentless way they had gone
at each other left her feeling just a tad dizzy. Never, not one
time in all of her life had she ever done that. That type of up
against the wall, take it because you want it, soul shattering sex
was foreign to her.

Now that she’d had it, she knew she was
going to want it again.

With Tag.

Which didn’t help her cause any.

Damn it.

She managed to readjust
her skirt - although her panties were a lost cause - as Tag was
pulling his pants back over his hips and buttoning them. His shirt
was about as long gone as her panties thanks to her need to rip it
clean off of him.

Now, as they stood facing
one another, their breathing coming back to the realm of normal,
McKenna had no idea what to say to him. The silence was strained,
and more than a little awkward, which only made McKenna want to
fidget. She mentally forced herself not to.

She couldn’t help but ask
herself the obvious question: Was this makeup sex? Or was it
just
I-can’t-get-you-out-of-my-system-but-I’m-damn-sure-gonna-try
sex.

She knew which one she wanted it to be, but
she also knew that what she wanted and what he wanted were two
entirely different things.

“
McKenna,” Tag said
gruffly.

That was all it took to
break whatever small bubble of hope that had swelled up in her
chest for all of a minute. The way he said her name was the
equivalent of slamming her head against a brick wall, and everyone
knew you could only do that so many times before there was
permanent brain damage.

She turned and walked
away. She didn’t run, and she didn’t even walk very fast, but she
did move with purpose. Straight to her bedroom where she grabbed a
pair of clothes from her dresser before heading into the bathroom.
She was going to take a shower, and when she got out, she could
only hope Tag would be gone.

Twenty minutes later, she emerged from the
bathroom at least calmer than when she went in. She needed to eat
something and then she was going to head over to Sensations, Inc.
to see if she could assess the damage a little more with a clear
head.

As she walked through the
living room, she clutched her chest in shock because seeing Tag
sitting there was more than she expected, and honestly, it scared
the shit out of her. Along with the brief flash of terror from not
expecting him to be there, another emotion surfaced; one she didn’t
want to even consider.

With his head in his hands, she wasn’t even
sure he knew she was there. She was almost certain he didn’t
because this was Tag and he would never allow anyone to witness him
looking so... vulnerable.

Her heart pounded harder, but this time it
wasn’t from fear. Once again, it was that damn hope surging out of
the blue and threatening to make her look like an idiot one more
time.

Did she say something? Should she clear her
throat and let him know she was standing there?

“
Come sit down,” he said
before she could string together enough words to make a coherent
sentence.

Reluctantly, McKenna moved
closer to him, but she didn’t sit beside him on the sofa. She chose
to sit on the edge of the chaise lounge she much preferred. Once
she was seated, she waited to hear what he would say
next.

God, she hoped it wasn’t an apology because
based on what she witnessed outside, he really sucked at those.

“
Will you come stay with
me for a few days?”

His question couldn’t have been more
unexpected than if he had asked her to marry him and have his
babies. She couldn’t mutter a single word because her heart was
suddenly ten times larger than only seconds before. Was he asking
her because he realized that there was something more between them
than just intense, blinding lust?

“
Or I could stay here with
you,” he continued, looking up at her now.

There was an influx of
nerves that rioted in her tummy, likely from a horde of tap dancing
butterflies, but McKenna still couldn’t form a sentence. She was
smiling too. Smiling because she just couldn’t believe this was the
same Tag she knew so intimately.

“
And if not, let me hire a
bodyguard for a few days.”

The bottom dropped
completely out of her stomach, and McKenna suddenly felt...
nauseous.

“
A...
bodyguard?” Damn her stupid,
stupid
heart for thinking that this man was capable of
feeling a damn thing.

“
Yes. I’m worried about
what Crawford might do next,” he explained as though he hadn’t just
ripped her heart into a zillion tiny pieces before grinding them
into the hardwood like dust.

McKenna swallowed. Hard.
Then she stood. Once she was sure she wouldn’t either fall over, or
go after him with the closest sharp object, she turned toward the
kitchen and didn’t stop until she was no longer in the same
room.

Stopping at the counter,
she had to take a deep breath to keep the tears at bay. She would
not cry. No matter what, she would
not
cry. Not in front of
him.

Damn it! She wanted to scream from the pain
that had ripped through her from her own stupidity.

“
McKenna,” Tag called from
behind her. “Are you ok?”

No, dammit, she was not ok. She would never
be ok again because the idiot that she was had mistakenly given her
heart to this man knowing that he just didn’t want it. She suddenly
whirled on him.

“
I want it back!” she
cried out, tears streaming from her eyes no matter how hard she
tried to hold them back.

“
Want what back?” Tag
looked confused, and she wanted to laugh and cry all at the same
time.

“
My heart,” she told him
with as much conviction as she could. “I want it all back. Every
single minute I spent with you, every single kiss I shared with
you. I want them all back. You don’t deserve them.”

Tag didn’t move, and McKenna felt like an
overemotional lunatic, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

“
You
need to go.”
Finally, something that made
sense.
“You need to leave, and I don’t
want your help. I can take care of myself.”

She turned away from him, sobbing like a
baby with her face in her hands. When she heard the door click shut
behind him, McKenna crumbled to the floor.

~*~*~

Tag sat in his car,
staring at his house. He couldn’t bring himself to get out of the
car just yet because he still wasn’t sure why he was here. He was
half tempted to turn around, go back to McKenna’s, pull her into
his arms and tell her all of the things he knew she wanted to
hear.

Watching her heart break because of him was
the worst thing he could have possibly imagined. And the worst part
of it all, he did care about her. Hell, he would almost venture to
say he had fallen for her, but he didn’t quite believe it.

How? How could he possibly have fallen for
her?

What they had was nothing more than an
extremely passionate case of lust. That’s all it was. He hadn’t
known her long enough for it to be anything more. Right?

There was no such thing as
love at first sight, and he wasn’t capable of giving a woman all of
the things his father had given. His entire life. His happiness,
his sense of self. All of those things his father had given his
mother and the day that she died, Tag watched his father damn near
die right along with her.

He wasn’t the man who would be able to give
to one woman because then there would be nothing left for anyone
else. Just like how his parents were. He knew they loved him
because he was their son. But the love they had for one another
blinded them to anyone and everyone else.

It might have taken years,
but his father somehow found another woman that he would devote his
entire life to, which in the long run, left Tag without. Cole had
never understood Tag’s issues because his mother still, to this
day, doted on him and loved him the way a mother should, even if
their relationship was rocky.

Tag didn’t have it in him. He couldn’t give
everything away. Where would that leave him? Who would that make
him? He would no longer be the man he had worked so hard to be.

Instead, he would be nothing.

Except, when he thought
about McKenna, he sensed that there was something he was missing.
When it came to her, even in the short amount of time he had known
her, he knew that she had changed him. And instead of losing
himself, he seemed to understand more what he was capable
of.

Putting his forehead against the steering
wheel, Tag wanted to curse himself for being such a jackass. He
could come up with more excuses, but it only went to prove one
thing.

McKenna Thorne scared the shit out of
him.

Why? Because he felt too damn much for
her.

Ever since their eyes met
that very first time, he knew there was something about her. And
each and every encounter since then only proved that she was the
one woman who could so easily take his heart and smash it like
glass beneath a jackhammer.

He couldn’t afford to care for someone like
McKenna. She was too outspoken, too ornery, too funny and cute and
smart. She was too everything that he wanted but didn’t know
whether he could actually have.

Tag wished like hell he
had a sad story to tell, one that would explain why he feared
commitment the way he did, but from the outside looking in, even
his parents’ love for one another didn’t seem like a sad story.
Since Tag had refused to ever allow a lover to get close, he
couldn’t even blame a broken heart for the fear that consumed
him.

Forcing himself out of his car, Tag went
inside his house heading right for the shower. It was high time he
got his act together because this was not the man he was. And he
didn’t have time to contemplate love.

Because he had already decided... it wasn’t
for him.

Tag walked into the club a couple of hours
later, wanting nothing more than a couple of hours where he didn’t
have to think about anyone or anything. The second he spotted Luke,
he knew he’d come to the wrong place.

“
What’s up?” Luke greeted
with a handshake when he approached.

“
Hopefully nothing,” he
said, quickly shaking his hand and then brushing past
him.

Relief flooded him when
Luke shrugged him off and walked the other way which allowed Tag to
take a seat at the bar and order a Jack and coke. “Go light on the
coke,” Tag told Kane.

“
Rough day?” Kane asked as
he grabbed the bottle from behind him.

Kane’s comment conjured up an image of when
McKenna had been wrapped around him like a damn blanket just a few
short hours ago. Rough. Literally. And damn he wanted more of her
right now.

Tag didn’t answer Kane, he
just nodded his head. The last thing he wanted to do was talk. He
preferred to sit right there, drown his thoughts in whiskey and the
unruly chaos happening around him. Unfortunately, the crowd seemed
a little subdued tonight and Tag found himself glancing around to
see what was different.

Nothing really. Not as far as he could see
anyway. The club was packed like usual with people laughing,
talking and having a good time while some were dancing. Even the
tables were all full. Not much different than any other night he
supposed.

That’s when he saw her.

Just when he was turning back around in his
seat, Tag’s eyes landed on McKenna, sitting across the bar from
him.

With Travis Walker.

A wave of jealousy so
powerful swept through him, Tag wasn’t sure how he hadn’t fallen
off the fucking barstool. The professional in him wouldn’t allow
himself to stalk across the room and take her by the arm, pulling
her away from that damn cowboy.

The alpha in him told the professional to go
fuck himself.

Tag emerged from his seat,
downing the last of his whiskey before slamming the glass back on
the bar top. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears; feel his
hands balled into fists at his side as he moved around to the
opposite end where the two of them were talking.