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“Mason—”
“They weren’t you,” he said, clinging to me, drawing me in tighter to his chest atop his knees. “They were never you. None of them.”
My heart skipped. I stared over Mason’s shoulder at the darkness of the wall. This wasn’t what I’d imagined when I’d stared up at the darkness of the ceiling down the hall.
I thought I could take those women’s place. Slip into the role they played for Mason. Become one of them. Take the pleasure they received and leave like one of them. But it was never going to be like that. Not between Mason and me.
I saw that. I could never be his Miss Last Night. But I could never be the wife he’d loved for more than ten years, the wife he’d agreed to spend his life with and stayed for. If I was going to be anything to Mason, play any role with him, it would have to be something else. Something new. Something we created together.
Softly, uncertainly, I whispered in the hot, unmoving air, “And if they’d been me…all those women…?”
Mason’s hands moved hesitantly up the small of my back. He splayed his fingers wide. From pinkie to thumb, thumb to pinkie, he spanned my entire back. With his hands braced just below my shoulders, he lowered me back. Pulling away from the warmth of his chest was like a sudden grey cloud on a perfectly sunny day. I longed to go back to him. To drag him toward me. To fall back with him. To cover myself with his heat.
But Mason kept me suspended away from him. Holding me like I was falling back from a cliff’s edge. His arms shook even though I knew I couldn’t be heavy. Mason’s eyes met mine in the dim light. He was looking at me with a sort of disbelief. Like he couldn’t quite believe that I was there. Like it hadn’t been him who’d thrown us away. Like all the years we’d lost hadn’t been because of him. His fault. Fucking his.
An anger so deep it was nothing but pain welled up in my chest till I couldn’t breathe. I hated Mason because we’d had it. We’d had it. I hated him because this could have been us for all these years. Bodies quivering against one another. Muscles strained. Desire swelling. This closeness. This intimacy.
He stole it from us. He robbed us. And yet there he was with this look of disbelief, like I was the one who left.
Mason rocked his hips, sending his cock slowly, but deeply into me again. I nearly sobbed. It was the most intense pleasure and the most brutal pain all mixed into one. It was hate and it was love. It was devastation and it was hope. It was wanting to get away, to flee, to run; it was wanting to sink even further onto him, into him. To give all of myself. To give absolutely nothing.
I clung to Mason’s biceps like there really was a chance of falling. Like I didn’t trust his hands on my back. Like I was afraid. Because I was. As Mason thrust into me, that’s all I was: afraid. Afraid of how much I loved it all. The feel of him. The strength of him. The restraint of him as he measured his pants and clenched his jaw. Afraid that I couldn’t stop loving this.
That’s what sheer terror is: knowing the thing you need is the thing you cannot ever have, will not ever have. I’d fallen into the temptation of my favourite drug while knowing there was no more of him. Just the one hit. Just now. Just tonight.
Every time Mason pushed all the way in, he reached a place that only he knew. It made my toes curl. My fingers dug into his skin, burying into his muscles. It made me twitch in his arms. Buck against his slow, steady, excruciating pace. I realised I was sobbing, this desperate, pathetic sob. Miss Last Night had never made that kind of noise. And yet I was no different from them. Was I?
I looked across the small space between my naked chest and Mason’s. His eyes were locked on my face. He hadn’t looked away yet.
But I didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to see him seeing me. And yet it was everything, everything that I’d ever wanted.
He reached out and wrapped a possessive hand around my throat.
“Mine.”
“Yours,” I gasped as he held me atop him, held me as he reached that spot deep in my body, in my heart. As he squeezed my neck, holding my life in his hands.
I came with a gasping shudder against his chest. He followed right after me, crushing me so tightly against him that my ribs might break.
My lungs struggled against his lungs. My heart ran to catch up with his. We stayed there, me on his lap, him still inside of me, our arms wrapped around each other. We stayed there for a long time.
I breathed in the scent of him, my nose pressed against the tight muscles of his neck. He had his face in my curls. Each of us hiding. But maybe it was okay if we were hiding in one another. Concealing ourselves with the other’s body. Maybe it was okay that we hid the truth from one another if we hid it with warm skin. With wild curls. With strong chests and supple breasts.
Maybe we could keep our secrets and keep each other. Maybe it would be okay if we just kept holding one another. Maybe we wouldn’t have to face the morning if we kept our eyes closed…
