Just Rules (14 page)

She never imagined either that he would look at her like he did when she went running out of there. Like she had hurt him deeply inside.

It didn’t matter, she said to herself, because she was never going to see him again.

Why not?
Her hormones whispered.

She was never going to see him again because she didn’t want him to make fun of her and because she didn’t want to have to think about the possibility that, without knowing it, she had spent the last year of her life in love with her fiance’s best friend. It was absurd and very sad.

Anyway, in the unlikely event that he felt something for her, even if it was just out of curiosity, she could never trust a man like Kev.

For thirty minutes, Mac didn’t move from the front door of his house. He couldn’t get her out of his head, and he couldn’t stop thinking about Susana’s face as she left.

What the hell happened?

If what had just went down happened with any other woman, Mac would have said that he’d just had the best fuck of his life. But the woman who made him lose all control –and his mind-, the woman who turned him on with her passion and with her kisses, the woman who had turned him into an animal in heat, incapable of controlling himself, was none other than Susana Lobato.

Susana, ex Steel Pants (he could never call her that again), the woman who had been making his life a living hell for months on end with her comments, the woman who almost become his best friend’s wife. The woman he had been obsessing over for months, although he wasn’t aware of it. The woman he had refused to touch would be forever etched in his fingertips.

He breathed deeply and felt as if Susana slid back inside his body.

Before, when Susana recited all of the little things she knew about him, like for example, that he was left-handed but he ate with his right hand, Mac realized that he knew just as many silly and intimate things about her (or more): her favorite actress was Meg Ryan, and although she hated Keira Kightley, she was obsessed with
Pride and Prejudice.
She always ordered a straight shot of espresso, but when she was really exhausted changed to mint tea. Her family lived in Miami and she always called her parents on Wednesdays. She barely had a relationship with her siblings and her best friend was Pam. She didn’t bite her nails, but when she was nervous she played with the ring she wore on her right hand. She didn’t know how to work her phone and she was always cold.

Mac didn’t know why Susana had decided to change her name to Susan, but he knew the reason was important. And he knew that she had never told that reason to Tim.

He needed to know the reason as much as he needed to kiss her again, to get lost inside her.

She had called him Kev. Before she kissed him she had called him by his real name. She looked him in the eye and for a second didn’t hide anything. She gave him everything and called him by his name.

And when they finished she took it all away and started to call him Mac again. That was the cruelest thing she could possibly have done. She gave him the most precious gift and then took it away. He didn’t mind that his friends or teammates called him Mac. It all started at the university when during a game one of the commentators called him
Hurricane Mac.
The nickname stuck like glue. At first it seemed strange to him, but at this point he was used to it. The journalists and the players all called him Mac.

His parents and his brothers called him Kev.

Susana had called him Kev.

He breathed deeply and as he did, he breathed in the scent of Susana’s perfume that was still lingering in the air. Or maybe he had just imagined it. What the hell had he done? He had jumped on top of her like a wild animal and made love to her standing up, against the door, without even taking all of her clothes off. That’s what he had done, and even if he tried to, he would never regret it. Kev did not want to regret it for he did not regret it at all. In fact, if right now Susana magically appeared at his house he would do it all over again. And again.

And he would do much, much more.

But judging by the way she looked at him when she left, he knew it was impossible. Susana wasn’t coming back.

The only things he regretted were not kissing her until her lips hurt, not undressing her, not whispering to her enough, not covering her entire body with his touch, and not asking her to kiss and touch him and never stop.

It was the first time he had felt alive with a woman’s touch. The very first.

When Mac discovered sex for the first time, he felt like he had been ripped off. His body acted like that of any other teenager would have, of course, but deep down inside he felt that something or someone had deceived him. To him, sex was a big con act. At that point in his life he didn’t worry about it too much and the thought instantly disappeared from his head. But that feeling of emptiness returned as time went on. His body reacted physically whenever he was with a woman he liked, but it wasn’t a reaction that shook him to the core. Inside, there was a part of him that didn’t feel anything at all.

He always thought it was his fault, that he was lacking in some way, like when someone has no sense of smell or is blind. Once he tried to explain it to his brother and when Harrison looked at him with confusion, Mac compared what he felt to wearing gloves; you know what you’re touching, you can feel the shape and weight of the object, but you don’t know what it actually feels like. Harrison laughed, and luckily both were so drunk that forgot about the conversation. But now he remembered it.

Now he knew that he wasn’t the problem. The problem was that until now he hadn’t touched Susana.

He lifted his hands and rubbed his face. He would do anything to turn back time and at least take her dress off. That way he would at least see her skin, the blush covering it while he touched her. But then it would be impossible for him to get her out of his head.

Too late for that.

God, he should have stopped it. He should have backed away from her and forced her to really look at him and talk about them. He should have made her think about what she was doing. But when he felt Susana’s lips on his body he stopped thinking altogether. His hands wanted to rip open her skin and get inside her. Susana’s mouth was the only one that had drove him crazy like that, her kisses, the way her bottom lip trembled just before kissing him was the most sensual reaction any woman had ever given him. The moans that came from her throat could have made him come in less than a second. And when he was inside of her…He had to stop thinking about it or he was going to have a real problem.

Why had Susan gone to his house at three o’clock in the morning? What did she say about wanting to prove something? Why did she stay? Why did she run away?

Was she also asking herself what exactly had happened between the two of them?

If he stayed there, he was either going to go crazy or tear down the door. He sighed, turned around, and walked toward his bedroom. As much as he may have wanted her to, Susana wasn’t coming back.

He lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling.

He didn’t know the answer to any of those questions, or to any of the other questions he asked himself about Susana. Why had she kissed him? What did that night mean for her? Was she trying to get back at Tim by sleep with his best friend?

Oh, shit!

He had slept with his best friend’s fiance.
Ex-fiance,
a voice inside of him said,
and Susana
was never like that with Tim,
added the same voice, although Mac didn’t know whether to believe it.

What would happen when Tim returned? Mac had to tell him before he came back. He had to tell his best friend what had happened with Susana. He wasn’t the type of guy who slept with his friends’ wives or girlfriends. But what if Tim wanted to get back together with Susana? And what if Susana wanted to get back together with Tim?

He felt nauseous and had to clench his jaw and breathe through his nose.

No, that was never going to happen. Tim was determined to get Amanda back and Susana…Well, Mac had no idea what Susana wanted, but deep down inside he was convinced that if she was thinking about getting back together with Tim, she wouldn’t have kissed him like she did, nor would have practically ripped his clothes off and demanded him to kiss her and touch her. More, that’s what she said. That’s what he felt. She had left there saying that she did not want to see him again, true, but she was also the one who pulled his pants down and threw herself on him, making him burn with desire. So for the moment he’d have to settle for that.

The next morning, rather, the next afternoon, Susan came to the conclusion that having gone to see Mac in the dead of night was the craziest thing she had done in her whole life.

She took full blame for what had happened. He was just a man, after all, who acted in the most natural and predictable way possible. What had happened between the two of them, the blood burning through their veins, the wet and passionate kisses, the sweat, how their skin longed for the other’s touch…all of that was the result of two bottles of tequila, lots of frustration, and all of the rage both of them had been containing for months.

He couldn’t stand her and she couldn’t stand him either…and in the end they both blew up in the most unusual and unthinkable, although somewhat logical, way.

What she needed to do now was act like a grown woman and tell him that she regretted the incident and that she hoped everything would go back to normal between them, in other words, that they keep on ignoring each other for the rest of their lives.

A mature woman would call him and invite him to have a drink or a coffee and then she would very sophisticatedly tell him like it is. Susan considered herself a grown woman, sometimes too much, but apparently Mac had the power to turn her into a teenager because in the end, she wasn’t capable of calling him and she decided to write him a message instead.
Sorry. It was my fault. It won’t happen again. Goodbye, Susana.

She hit the send button and left her phone in the kitchen, which was where she was drinking a coffee, despite the fact that it was lunchtime. She had probably spent half an hour staring at that damn phone, waiting to receive an answer from Mac. And when that half an hour turned into an hour, and then into two, and then into three, Susan figured that he wasn’t going to answer. Maybe for Mac what had happened between the two of them was of such little importance, that she didn’t even deserve a message in return.

How was it possible?

He had kissed her like he needed her to breathe, and now he was incapable of answering a simple message?

It was better off that way. It was precisely what she wanted, for things to return to the way they were before. Mac (he wasn’t Kev anymore) finally went back to being the jerk he always had been. Now she had to remember that and convince herself that passion and sex weren’t important in her life.

Mac was about to throw his phone against his living room wall, but he contained himself, although he was squeezing it so tightly that he felt the screen crunch beneath his fingers. If Susana were in front of him he would tell her just how at
fault
she was last night.

Damn it. She made it sound as if she had to force him when the naked truth was that he hadn’t even lasted five minutes inside her and barely took her clothes off!

And what was it exactly that she was sorry about? For having kissed him? For having had sex with him? For having left? He had always been fascinated by Susana’s way of thinking —yes, now that he had decided to admit how he truly felt for her, he wasn’t going to worry about denying it anymore— but right now he would grab her by the neck and…kiss her until he stopped thinking.

And it won’t happen again,
shit, it seemed like she was apologizing for having arrived late to work or for having gone over the speed limit. You don’t apologize for having given someone the best orgasm of his entire life. Enough said.

He let go of his phone and left it on top of the couch he had been sitting on, in order to think about what he was going to say to Susana when he called her. The problem was that he had taken so long to find the perfect thing to say (that in the end it was going to be a very sophisticated
Hi it’s me, do you want to have dinner with me tonight?
) that she beat him to the punch and sent him that stupid and impersonal message ruining any possible chance for the two of them to be together.

Damn it.

What could he say to her now?

Until he read that message, Mac thought Susana had enjoyed last night just as much as he did. In his mind he justified her swift departure by saying that she probably felt overwhelmed by the intensity of their feelings, whatever they were. After all, they had made love standing up, against a door without even taking their clothes off. Mac thought Susana would get a good night sleep and would wake up calmer and ready to think about them without running away.

He had imagined that he would call her and that they would see each other later…and that they would spend hours together, in bed and out of it.

What an idiot. Susana wasn’t mulling over them. She simply regretted having slept with him and didn’t want to see him again. As simple as that. He should understand it more than anyone. When he was younger he had done something similar on a few occasions; leaving just after having sex with a woman. It was only fair that Susana did the same thing to him.

But aside from the logic of it all, or whatever it was that he told his brain, Mac couldn’t stop thinking about how she kissed him, and he was still convinced that there was something more to those kisses other than attraction. It had to be.

I wasn’t just his imagination.

I really wasn’t.

And yes, he wasn’t exactly sure either about what was happening between the two of them, but he wanted to find out. His stomach churned just thinking about the possibility of not trying.

His phone rang, and Mac wanted it to be her so badly that he answered it without even looking who was calling him.