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Jonathan froze at first, but then laughed softly and returned the embrace. “This girl is good for you,” he said as they broke apart. “And for the Manor, I might add. Liz went on about Addison’s cinnamon rolls for three days.”
Christ, the fucking cinnamon rolls again. It would always be the cinnamon rolls. “Who can blame her?” he said with half a smile.
With a final chuckle and a, “See you tomorrow,” Jonthan patted him on the shoulder and left the room.
Mason took a minute to just let himself breathe. Everything would be all right in time. He was sure of it.
He’d need to talk to the other guys soon. Each and every one of them deserved an apology for how he’d acted the last year or more, but that would have to wait.
For now, only one thing mattered.
Addison.
“You’re awfully quiet this morning,” Mason said as he unlocked his front door. She’d barely spoken on the drive over.
Addison moved toward the little table where her collar waited without saying a word, but he put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. Only half turning toward him, she asked, “Don’t you want me to get ready, Master?”
Okay, he wasn’t imagining it. Something was definitely off. “I’m sorry I couldn’t talk much the last few days,” he said, watching what he could see of her face for her reaction. “I needed to be extra attentive to Tara after I ran out on her like that.”
She turned the rest of the way, peering up into his face with a confused frown. “Do you think I’m mad at you?” It sounded like genuine surprise in her voice.
“Aren’t you?”
Her smile eased the building pressure in his chest. “Not even a little bit.”
“You put on your application that you don’t ever want to be shared or have scenes with other people,” he said, feeling the need to explain how he jumped to this wrong conclusion. “Then you were so quiet after I ran off to be with Tara, so I wasn’t sure...” He let the sentence trail off.
She huffed out a little laugh. “I know you have a job to do, and it doesn’t bother me at all. Honest. Not wanting to be double teamed or passed around is a whole different thing.” She wrinkled her nose, and it was fucking adorable. “I can’t be the only kinky girl to feel that way.”
“Not even remotely,” he assured her. “But there is something wrong, though. Isn’t there?”
She studied his face for several seconds before a decision gleamed in her gold-flecked eyes. “Do you think maybe we can keep being Mason and Addison a little bit longer? I kind of want to talk to you about something.”
Alarm bells went off in his head. That wasn’t quite a gravely delivered we need to talk, but it was damn fucking close.
Don’t do this. The desperate plea filled his mind, his heart, all of his senses. We’ll figure out how to make this work somehow. Don’t give up before we even try.
Outwardly, all he did was nod, leading her over to the living room with a hand on the small of her back. He waited until they settled on the sofa, both partially turned to face one another, to ask, “What’s on your mind?”
“Why did you drive me to New Mexico?” she asked, her expression unreadable.
Mason’s mind cycled through the different possibilities of where she could be going with this. None of them seemed particularly good. “You needed help, so I helped you,” he said, choosing his words carefully.
“That’s all?”
Frowning, he tried to figure out what the hell that was supposed to mean. Wasn’t that a perfectly good reason to do something nice for someone else?
Unless...perhaps she really did mean it when she accused him of helping with ulterior motives.
“If you’re asking if I only drove you down there so you’d keep sleeping with me, I?—”
“No,” she interrupted, laying a soothing hand on his thigh. “That’s not what I’m asking. I’m sorry I ever said that. I wasn’t thinking rationally at the time.”
Mason looked down at her hand, wishing he had the courage to place his own hand over it. Since when had he become such a fucking coward?
In the end, he decided the truth was the only way out of this. “Addison, I’m going to be honest with you. You’re scaring the hell out of me right now. What’s the matter?”
Grimacing, she said, “I’m sorry, I’m doing this all wrong.” She heaved a sigh that he felt in his bones. “I’m trying to ask if you did that just because you’re nice, or if you”—she gulped—“have feelings for me.” She couldn’t look him in the eye anymore.
