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“Did…did you just pinch yourself?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
Jasper chuckled and gently removed his fingers from my ass, caressing my ring to ease the sense of loss.
The man was entirely too good to me.
And I hadn’t had nearly enough.
Afraid he would roll away and leave me, I grasped at his shoulder as he wiped his fingers on my sheets. “Hold me?”
He didn’t scoff at my pleading tone. Didn’t make fun of me for sounding so desperate. Jasper simply scooted back up the mattress to lay beside me and tenderly wrap his arms around me. Hot exhales moved over the top of my head as I buried my face against his chest and clung to his back.
Jasper was all lean muscle and bone, and I adored how perfectly we fit together, how he rubbed along my spine with soothing gestures. But even more? I enjoyed being vulnerable with him when most people with my childhood trauma would run for the hills. Rather than questioning my lack of self-preservation, I allowed myself to enjoy him. Take what he offered without resistance.
“When was the last time someone loved you, Mason Thomson?” he murmured against my hair.
My throat swelled. I didn’t need to wrack my brain to answer his question, and that settled heavily on my mind. But the fact that I was willing tosharethe truth with a near stranger regardless of how comfortable I felt with him baffled me. I hadn’t ever shown those kinds of cards before.
“Never,” I whispered, once more desiring honesty between us.
Jasper’s hand stilled on my lower back for a few seconds before sliding once more upward toward my nape. “Mother? Father?”
I would give him what I could and pray the rest of my past would remain buried so it wouldn’t be able to rock the foundation of what we’d started.
Because what we had was undeniablysomething. Something I longed to pursue. Something I wanted to last forever.
“My father was a chickenshit to his core and bowed down to my mother.” I shared what even Kellen didn’t know. “She was a narcissist of the worst sort, a manipulative bitch who walked all over him. I have a sister who fared about as well as I did—not too well—and we tiptoed on eggshells, knowing our father wouldn’t ever stick up for us.”
“My God, Mason.” Jasper kissed the top of my head again while squeezing me gently as though careful of my sore ribs.
“Marin is two years younger than me,” I continued, my floodgates opening. “She moved to Montana the day she turned eighteen, declaring she would never return. Six months after relocating, she fell in love with the man she ended up marrying. They’ve given me two nephews I’ve never met in person. They love me, I suppose.”
I didn’t tell Jasper that the younger boy was both physically and mentally challenged and that their health insurance hadn’t covered all of his medical needs the previous sixteen years. Nor did I reveal that I sent my sister money every month to help them keep a roof over their heads since she wasn’t able to work outside the home due to him needing care twenty-four-seven.
Yet another reason I hadn’t gone to the police that night…
“What about you?” I asked while rubbing at my chest, ready to change the topic from why I’d stayed on at the job that had begun to leave me empty as a husk.
“I’m an only child. My mom adored me, but my dad was a bully of the worst sort. He always made fun of me for being too sweet, too pretty. Said I was a useless waste—” Jasper cut off abruptly, but I stayed quiet, giving him time. “He tried to beat the gay out of me when I was twelve,” he eventually finished, his voice quiet and full of pain even though years had passed.
While my mom hadn’t ever laid her hands on me, I hadn’t escaped wound-free from my childhood. Words oftentimes hurt worse than fists.
I lay my hand over Jasper’s heart, my eyes clenched shut. “I’m sorry he treated you that way, but you have to know you arefarfrom useless. You’re damn near perfect as far as I’m concerned.”
Jasper released a quiet, sarcastic huff of laughter as though he disagreed. “You and I have different parents but similar childhood wounds. And for the record, I think you’re too good to be true too, Mason.”
A heavy, contented sigh sagged me thoroughly into Jasper’s arms, exhaustion once more creeping over my brain.
I gloried in his hold while slipping back into sleep, praying nothing would tear us apart.
Chapter6
Jasper
Mason released those cute puffed exhales over my chest, and I lay quiet. Contemplative.
Could the man be any better of a fit for what I’d been hoping to find? His looks, his sexual preferences, and the simple fact we shared similar upbringings, which allowed us to understand each other better than others would,didseem too good to be true, exactly as I’d told him.
