Walk Me Down The Hallway

Chapter Twenty Two

He knew.

From that annoyingly smug as all heck smirk on his ugly as sin sculpted piece of heaven face, I knew that he knew.

The only question remaining was: how did she get ahold of my sweater.

To top off all of the questions in my head, she was still tugging on the thread. She was going to put a hole in that sweater, and I was not going to be responsible for my actions once she did. I was not above stripping it off of her in the middle of the kitchen. Mal would enjoy the view, of that I am certain. Besides, it was my own damn kitchen that she had perched her fifty percent sag, fifty percent silicone buttocks on, in my sweater. I could do what I dang well pleased.

I cannot say I am a mature, responsible adult. I mean, half of my life includes my mother yelling at me for being reckless. I don't know who I would be if I were not absolutely one hundred percent recklessly stupid. So that is what we will blame my instinctual decision on.

I mean, she had my sweater on. Her little STD'd boobs were filling the fabric, and risked stretching it out in ways I could never dream of fixing. What was I expected to do? Come up with a new plan, when the irrational one that had flitted through my head in the hallway would work just as well?

Ya, right.

We have already established that I do foolish things in anger.

So, that is probably exactly why the next thirty seconds found me marching across the kitchen, (I tried to pull a sexy strut, but heck, I probably looked more like a wobbling penguin, and anyways, from the earlier scene in my room, I didn't think I really needed to try much to wrap Mal around my finger once again), grabbing his tie -who wears a tie when he works from home?- guiding him out from between her skeevy little legs, and yanking his head down to my level.

Thankfully, his tie was loosened already -likely from her spiderlike, creepy, long fang line fingers but we were not going to think about that- so I didn't seem to be choking. Despite the wide eyed, wary look he was giving me, he didn't seem to mind that I was half an inch away from cutting off his air supply.

I didn't really give him much of a chance to get away anyways. Once his head was low enough that I could reach him on my tiptoes, I kissed him.

Now, I will totally be the first to admit that I did not forget the way he kissed me. I will also totally be the first to admit that this kiss was nothing like that particular one. This was likely because he was absolutely stunned.

I guess guys don't expect you to kiss them after they spend eons trying to piss you off. 

They also evidently underestimate how low a woman will stoop to piss an enemy off.

I began to pull back when his soft lips remained unresponsive, the flood of embarrassment rising from my collarbone and heading straight to my cheeks.  I was going to have to accept the fact that he didn't want to be kissed by me, my plan had failed, and the wicked witch of the west would have one more thing to laugh at me over.  I had begun to accept that, as our lips separated.

That was when the groan of protest rumbled deep from within his chest, his arms banded around my back like bands of steel -I know, a horribly overused analogy, but you try breaking away from a giant horny man, and tell me those pipes don't feel like steel-, and he backed me into the opposing counter.  Our lips weren't touching anymore, our noses just barely brushing. In the background, I vaguely recognized the gasp of shock from witchy, but it barely registered on my radar when I had Mac's absolutely wild, half lidded eyes staring down into my own. My arms were jammed against his chest, and I busied myself with loosening his tie enough to unbutton the top few buttons of his top without it looking like a Magic Mike stripper moment.

I knew he was smart enough to register somewhere in the back of his mind that I had done this to piss a certain someone off.  Just like in the back of mine, I knew I had walked into a pit I didn't anticipate being so deep.

My fingers barely brushed the base of his throat, where his collarbone protruded, when another rumble started in his chest, and I was dragged up far enough for his lips to slam onto mine.

One thing was for sure, this man owned a kiss.  He didn't leave me the option of opening my mouth for him, instead practically prying it open and delving into my mouth.  His chapped lips didn't caress, they punished, and I silently swore to god I would pull more stupid stunts if it ended with this kind of punishment. No questions asked.

I'm fairly certain the fingers he had digging into my lower back were going to leave bruises, and if I could have worked up the motivation to separate our mouths, I would have sighed with relief when they shifted away...

Straight down to my bum. And then he grabbed tight and hoisted, and I found myself perched in a similar situation as the witch had been, only he was a tad more interested in what we were doing than he seemed to be when I had walked in. He wedged between my legs, which immediately latched around narrow hips to drag him in against me.

The need to breathe seemed to enter our brains at the same moment, and he pulled back with a curse.

"Christ, woman. You can't lecture me this time. You started this." I stared at the narrow expanse of chest bared by the white dress shirt, and panted.  I didn't have much of a retort. His voice was low, gravelly, and very, very similar to the one he had when he first woke up in the mornings.

"Nothing to say to me?" he asked, softly, leaning back in until our noses brushed.  I know this started as a revenge plot, but you really can't blame a girl for giving into base desires when you have someone like this pressed between your legs.  He held himself back enough that I couldn't feel everything, but from the way his breaths rasped through his lungs, I didn't think I had to worry about how he felt.

"I will lecture you if you don't kiss me again," I huffed, raising my chin in a show of confidence and defiance that I definitely wasn't feeling.

"If we keep going back and forth like this, you're never going to get to the bottom of this places' secrets," Mal murmured, but his head tilted down further until he swept me right back up into his little kissing tornado.  If the clatter of heels was any indication, Miss Witch had decided to take her leave.

Still with my sweater.

But I mean, I think I got a bit of a better prize.

This time, my fingers moved to rake through his hair, tugging, and pulling his head against my own.  This kiss was too slow for me.  I needed faster.

Harder.

"Mal," I whispered, moving my mouth to nip along his jaw.  His hands slipped up beneath my shirt, leaving warn finger trails along my skin. I hit a soft spot, and he jerked up against me with a moan.  I didn't make it much further before his teeth nipped the side of my neck, his hands forced our faces back together, and I was once again learning the definition of 'taking my breath away'.

Literally.

It is really hard to breathe when a guy wont let you separate lips, and his tongue is down your throat, and his hands are tugging at your hair to the point of pain.

There was only a sliver of space between us, before I crossed my legs behind his back, and suddenly he was very hot against a very soft, sensitive spot. And hard. And really, really big.  I don't think anyone can blame me for the way my hands tore his dress shirt out of his slacks, opened the button, and lowered the zipper.  Or for the way my fingers dipped below the waist line of what I knew would be boxer briefs, probably black.  Or for the way my nails raked along his happy trail, delving below the elastic, and scraping his skin until he shivered.

"Sweetheart," he rumbled, pushing up against me before he began to move back. "You can't do that to me in here."

"Take me somewhere I can, then."