Infatuation - A Club Destiny Novel (32 page)

“
I want to drop the
lawsuit against Susan.” Luke spoke for the first time since he
walked into the room.

Tag jerked his head toward him. “What?”

“
You heard me. I want to
drop it. Sierra won hers, so there really isn’t any more we can do.
As we all know, nothing is going to stop her from getting what she
wants.”

“
And what does she want?”
McKenna asked.

“
Fuck if I know,” Luke
growled, his normal, disgruntled tone letting everyone in the room
know what he thought of the situation.

“
She feels as though she
was jilted by Luke and Cole, right?” McKenna asked no one in
particular. “And if I had to guess, no one has approached her
civilly because of the way she’s acting out, am I
right?”

Tag glanced back at Logan
and Luke. McKenna had nailed it accurately because Luke and Cole
both had tried to talk to Susan, but Tag knew without a doubt there
wasn’t anything civil about the conversation.

Since the day Luke called him, advising him
to file the lawsuit for breach of contract, he’d been irrational
any time her name was mentioned. Even Logan had tried reasoning
with Luke, but he failed just like the rest of them. So, Tag had
done what he was hired to do.

And yes, Sierra had won
the lawsuit Susan filed against her accusing her of
misrepresentation, and Tag had sat back watching the entire thing
play out. He hadn’t been Sierra’s legal counsel because he was a
corporate attorney, but the man she had hired was one of the best
Tag knew.

Granted, it didn’t hurt
that Susan really was bat shit crazy. He was surprised the judge
was able to keep a straight face anytime the woman showed up in
court. He certainly hadn’t been able to.

“
What are you suggesting?”
It was Logan’s turn to ask.

“
I don’t know.” McKenna
dropped her head into her hands.

And there lie the problem.
They continued to circle back to the same answer every time. No one
knew what to do, how to handle it, or even what the next step might
be.

It was beginning to piss Tag off because
quite frankly, the group surrounding him were some of the smartest
people he knew and not a single one of them, himself included, had
made it this far in life by not solving problems. There was some
way they could get out of this, maybe not entirely unscathed, but
there had to be some way.

Tag was just worried that the McCoy brothers
were going to take matters into their own hands after this. And
there lie the other problem.

They were going to have to beat Tag to
it.

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

McKenna managed to get out
of the XTX building without having to talk to Tag one on one.
Unfortunately, she knew her good luck had run out the moment she
pulled into her driveway. His car was parked on the street, and he
was standing beside it. Not sitting in it, but standing beside
it.

She was tempted to hit the button to close
the automatic garage door once she pulled safely inside, but she
knew that would be childish. Not that she really cared.

She didn’t.

She took her time
gathering her things before slowly exiting the car. Taking her time
didn’t help to strengthen her resolve any. Now she was standing
just outside of her car, staring at the provocative man who still
looked intensely sexy even with that grim look on his face. As she
stood in front of him, McKenna realized her spacious two car garage
had never felt smaller than it did right then.

Fine. If he wanted to
talk, they could have it out right here because she was
not
letting him into her
house. She watched as he turned his back on her and went to the
entry door that led into the house.

Shit
. She was letting him into her house.

McKenna had no choice except to follow
because he was standing at the open door waiting for her. She
refused to act like a petulant child, although she felt she was
more than entitled.

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.

It was the main reason he
had pushed her away so forcefully that day in his private room at
the club. He was scared shitless about what she made him
feel.
That
she
made him feel. He didn’t want to feel anything because he had
gotten so damned used to not feeling at all that it bothered him
more than he cared to admit.

“
You’re leaving? Just like
that?” Her eyes pierced his, and from this far away, all of the
colors merged together, but it was the brilliant blue that sparkled
like a gas flame. She was furious, and he’d be damned if it didn’t
make her just that much fucking hotter.

“
I shouldn’t have come,”
he finally said when she didn’t stop looking at him.

“
No, you shouldn’t have.
But, damnit, you owe me an apology.”

Tag saw the moment she realized she had said
too much. She was right though. He did owe her an apology. Hell, he
owed her more than that, but he couldn’t figure out a way to tell
her without giving too much of himself away. He refused to fall for
this woman.

Absolutely fucking refused.

“
I’m sorry,” he muttered
halfheartedly.

Yes, he was a world class
asshole, but he didn’t know what else to do except try to piss her
off to the point that she pretended that this never happened. Same
as he was. Tag didn’t want to feel more for her, didn’t want to
lose himself in one woman because that would only lead to him
losing himself somewhere along the way.

He wanted to go back to the two weeks where
he managed to stay as far away from her as possible because it made
things just that much easier.

And he was a fucking liar.

“
Fuck you, Murphy,”
McKenna screamed before storming back up the driveway.

Fuck him?
Why the hell did he let her get to him like that?
He knew he should keep moving toward his car, but damn his legs,
they turned and did the exact opposite of the instructions from his
brain.

By the time he caught up
with her, McKenna was back inside her house, and he managed to stop
the door just when it would’ve slammed in his face. Pushing it
open, he let it crash into the wall before reversing the motion and
slamming it closed.

When she turned on him,
fire smoldering in those brilliant multi colored irises, he lost
every last ounce of his control. Stalking her, he managed to
control himself long enough to slam her into the wall without
hurting her before he crushed his mouth to hers, letting the
intoxicatingly sweet taste of her kiss burn through him like wild
fire.

Maintaining a small
semblance of sanity wasn’t an easy feat, but Tag waited to see
whether she would shove him away. But she didn’t.

No, McKenna Thorne stole
his breath when she pulled his head roughly, crushing her mouth to
his in a tangle of lips and teeth and tongues. They battled for
control of that one sweltering kiss for long minutes until they
were both panting as they fought to suck in air.

He lifted her, pressing
her against the wall none too gently when she began to climb his
body, their mouths fused together, ragged groans being torn from
both of them as the fury raged into a conflagration of lust and
need.

Tag couldn’t get enough of
her, and he figured she felt the same when she began thrusting her
pelvis against his raging hard on, grinding against him until he
was furiously working to release his slacks, at the same time he
was trying to hold her. It wasn’t that she was heavy, but there was
so much movement, her hands snaking between them trying desperately
to remove his shirt. When it was apparent she wasn’t having any
luck, he heard the sound of buttons snapping, popping off and
flying against the wall behind her.