Page 43 of Fallen Hero

I turned to face him and immediately wished I hadn’t.

He was lounging on a chaise. Bare chested. Eyes glued to my legs.

I looked back at the fountains below and contemplated jumping. I could make my escape less dramatic and go back into my room.

“Sorry to disturb—”

“Adrenaline or overtired?” he asked.

Neither.

I was afraid of what I’d see in my dreams.

“Maybe both,” I lied.

“There’s another lounger,” he offered.

I glanced back over at him and his bare chest with a dusting of hair over his pecs. A perfectly formed happy trail disappeared beneath the elastic band of his track pants.

Yeah, I really should jump and put myself out of my misery. Obviously I’d finally cracked. Something had to have broken inside of me. This kind of attraction was not right. No one wanted to jump on top of a man she wanted to punch in the face more than seventy-five percent of the time she was around him and beg him to do naughty things to her. Especially a woman who has never had anything close to naughty.

Unless getting to third base in high school was considered naughty. Then I’d been naughty.

But nothing after that.

“I should—”

“Come sit down, Calli.”

Before I could talk my feet out of obeying Mason, they took me to the chaise next to his. Instead of sitting, I stared at the tan cushion.

“I don’t bite, sweetness. You can sit.”

“I seem to remember you telling me that when you tried to get me to sleep with you,” I told him as I sat.

“Tried? I seem to remember waking up next to you.”

I carefully tugged the edge of the robe down, painfully aware I hadn’t put on panties.

As sad as it was, this was the most undressed I’d ever been around a man. I crossed my ankles, clenched my thighs, and stared at my toes.

Mason cleared his throat. “You did good tonight.”

I didn’t want to talk about tonight. Or what was going to happen in a few days. Or sex slaves. Or the state of the world.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

The silence that ensued had me glancing over at him.

He was doing that Mason thing again, where his eyes took in every detail, looking for the smallest element he could note and file away. Every microgesture. I was too tired to put in the effort of hiding who I was.

“Not tonight,” I whispered. “Don’t study me. Don’t look for my tells. Don’t analyze my every word and movement. Tonight, right now, I just need to be as normal as I can be. I want to forget the evil, vile, wicked things people do to each other and sit up here and pretend it doesn’t exist. I want to be Calli. I want you to be Mase. I want to pretend we didn’t zip-tie and gag three monsters earlier. Though, before I forget them, I hope rats have chewed off their balls and have moved on to eat their eyeballs. I just need to forget everything. Just for a few hours.”

“Okay, Calli.”

He was giving in. Relief flooded.

“I live in Imperial Beach, in a condo a few blocks from the beach.”