Page 48 of Bruised

Oliver frowns as he takes another bite of the chicken. “I’m telling you, Lane, stay away from him.”

“I am.” My gaze drops to my plate. I hate lying. I hate it so much. But I just don’t see any other way. If Oliver found out, he’d be livid with me. He wouldn’t want me to stay at his house anymore if he knew I snuck into his brother’s room every night and, um, let him do all sorts of stuff to me.

I poke sullenly at my food. Even though it’s tasty, I don’t have much of an appetite.

Is Mason really that bad of a person? He keeps provoking Oliver and treating him unfairly, but he’s not like that with me. They obviously have some baggage, beyond the usual brotherly squabbles. It’s not my place to delve deeper and try to solve it, but it still rubs me the wrong way that my best friend and the guy I sleep with dislike each other so much.

Mason can’t be all bad. He’s not the best person in the world, I know; he’s been to prison, for fuck’s sake. I don’t care about that, but picking fights with my best friend is different. Maybe I should try to minimize our encounters even more than I already do. Maybe I should stop letting him mark me with hickeys, even though I love it. I should stop it all around, to be fair, but I’m obviously not going to do that.

I’m not the best at setting boundaries and sticking to them, though. The very existence of the forbidden fling between Mason and me is proof of that.

Oliver and I spend the rest of the day in his room, farming materials for a weapon upgrade. I hear the telltale thuds from the garage, so I figure I’m safe to venture into the kitchen to get us a couple of drinks.

Apparently, I waited too long. As I cross the hallway, Mason comes up the stairs, sweaty and shirtless, fresh from the gym.

I try not to acknowledge him, to just pass him. His bulk takes up the space of the narrow hallway, and I try to sideline him and slip past, but he moves effortlessly to the side when I do, blocking me.

I glare up at him to see his mouth tilted in a smirk.

“Going somewhere, puppy?”

“Let me pass.” I try to keep my voice steady, but the frustration paired with the anxious anticipation of what he’s planning is getting to me.

When I try to force myself past, Mason switches our positions, and I find myself pressed face-first against the wall.

He leans in, and his sweaty bulk covering my back overshadows my whole world. His scent takes me back to last night, when he was inside me. How his abs rippled and his grunts filled my ears as he came.

He doesn’t say anything—he simply leans into my neck and pulls my T-shirt down my shoulder. I gasp as he latches onto my skin, sucking and licking like he usually only does after we’ve had sex.

In his room. Not out here. Out here is dangerous. Out here is bad.

Oliver is at the other end of the hallway. He could walk out at any moment and find us like this, and I don’t think Mason would get away with his bug excuse this time. Despite all that, I let it happen. My eyes flutter shut, and I feel my blood swell to two areas of my body: my neck, where his mouth is sucking hard and determined, and my cock, which is rising fast between my legs. His teeth brush my skin, too soft to mark me but whispering a silent promise: soon.

I squeeze my lips shut to be quiet, but I can’t help the little moan that slips out when he pulls back and murmurs in my ear, “See you tonight, puppy.”

With that, he saunters to his room at the end of the hallway, and I’m left panting and painfully hard, hands against the wall, my groin throbbing along with the hickey he just sucked into my neck.

I nearly collapse to the floor but keep myself up from sheer will and grit. Once my erection has gone down, I go back to Oliver’s room.

“Is Mason back from the gym yet?” he asks.

“Uh, yeah.” He’s back, alright.

“Good. I need to ask him to stop leaving his dirty dishes in the sink. It’s fucking annoying.” When I sit down, he looks at me oddly. “Where are our drinks?”

“Oh.” Crap. I totally forgot. Mason distracted me and made me lose focus. “Um, I’ll go get them.”

I make my way through the hallway again in a daze, my mind cloudy with a heady mix of arousal and white-hot shame.

If Mason wanted to get me even more desperate for our nightly routine, he did the right thing, and going by the smirk on his lips as I enter his room, he seems to know it.

I should scold him for what he did, for the danger he put us in earlier today, but when I see him sitting naked on the side of the bed, the rational part of my brain short-circuits.

I sink straight to my knees, looking up at him between his legs.

He chuckles and ruffles my hair. “Someone’s eager for a treat.”

I am. Fuck, I am. I inhale a shuddering breath, already deep into the submissive state of mind only Mason can conjure.