Chapter 20 Mason
Mason
I woke in Lee’s bed as he climbed in beside me. I vaguely remembered him getting out of bed a few minutes earlier. The morning sun was pouring through the sliding glass door onto the deck. The light was on in the bathroom, and the air was a bit humid, so I guessed he had taken a shower.
As he slipped his arms around me, I could smell the most amazing scent, a cross between vanilla, amber, a touch of clove—something I was certain I had smelled once before in my life, but my exhausted brain couldn’t quite make the connection.
Beyond that scent, I could still smell the candles that had burned the previous night, and heat crept up my face as I remembered what had happened.
Fuck. I was a worthless piece of shit. I’d had a gorgeous man laid out for me, and I couldn’t even keep it up long enough to seal the deal.
The shame of it was overwhelming. Growing up, Ricky had sometimes forced his whores to try and “make me a real man”, then mocked me when I couldn’t get an erection.
Ricky and Dreyven would sit nearby and mock me relentlessly, until they grew tired of the game and let me go after fucking me, or letting someone else do it.
They’d repeatedly told me being fucked was the only thing I was good for anyway.
Once Dreyven even threatened to cut my dick off, since my hole was the only thing useful about me.
I’d still not been able to do what he wanted, and it had been one of the worst beatings I’d received from him.
But the very worst had been the night he’d turned the tables, and instead told me if I didn’t get an erection and fuck the woman he brought me, she would be the one who got the beating.
I was all of fourteen maybe, when that happened. Despite her best efforts, I couldn’t get hard. He’d made me watch as he beat her senseless. He’d kept her close to us for the next several days, making sure we both knew that she was suffering because of me.
I felt a single hot tear slip down my face as I remembered the hollow, accusing look in her eyes.
More tears followed as I lay there. This was different, I told myself.
I'd wanted this god damn it! I wanted Lee. And he wanted me, but my fucking past had reared its ugly head, and I’d proved Ricky right, again.
Even wrapped in Lee’s arms, I felt cold and numb.
I must have made some noise or movement, because suddenly I felt Lee’s arms tighten around me. He was awake, and he knew I was, too.
“Shhhh…” he whispered, his hand stroking up and down my arm as he held me tight. “It’s okay, Mason. It’s okay…”
His voice was husky and low, fatigue turning it into a low rumble. The feel of his chest against my back and his arms around me in a protective cocoon was too much. His understanding, his acceptance, the care in his voice, it was all too much. I needed a little distance.
I sat up slowly and swung my feet over the side of the bed.
He released me, but I knew that if he’d really wanted to, he could have kept me lying down.
Only then did I realize I was still naked, my morning wood bouncing against my thighs.
I shook my head as I looked down at my traitorous dick. Fuck. Now you get hard?
“Talk to me, Mason,” Lee said, sitting up behind me.
I could feel him lay his face along the back of my neck, his morning stubble scratchy and stiff against my skin.
He peppered my shoulders with small kisses.
“You’ve seen my scars,” he reminded me. “You can show me yours. What happened last night?”
I took a deep breath, trying hard to focus on the here and now, instead of the past. I wanted this damn it, and if it took some pain and humiliation to get there, it wasn’t like I wasn’t used to it.
“I… was afraid of hurting you,” I managed to get out through gritted teeth. “Hurting you… like I'd been hurt,” I whispered, running my hands through my hair.
“Oh, baby…” he said, a sigh escaping him. “It was so far from hurting, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
I nodded my head, desperately wanting to believe him, but the words tumbled out one after another.
“I started… started seeing them…in my head. All the men over the years. The ones who used me, the ones who hurt me. I saw all their faces. Then something… changed. It wasn’t their faces I was seeing, it was mine. I felt like I was just like the men who’d… who’d…”
I couldn’t keep the tears back any longer and I started to sob.
“…the men who’d… raped me.”
I could hear Lee whispering my name over and over, feel his hands running up and down my back.
I’d expected him to be angry—or at the very least disappointed in me.
I mean, it practically made me the world’s biggest tease.
I got him all hot and bothered, then didn’t—couldn’t—follow through.
I mean, seriously, who gave up the opportunity to fuck an ass like Lee’s?
Me, apparently. Stupid, stupid, fucking Mason Malone!
As my mind wandered, Lee continued speaking to me, but it was like I heard it from a distance. My fingers clenched in my hair, my nails digging into my scalp as I tried rein in the whirlwind of emotions inside me.
I could hear Lee’s voice take on a kind of panicked urgency, but I couldn’t seem to reply.
My only warning was a slight shift of the mattress, and suddenly I was on my back looking at the ceiling, which was quickly blotted out by a worried-looking Lee leaning over me and… surely he wasn’t going to…
His lips landed on mine, his hands grasping my own.
For a moment I was too shocked to respond, but then I felt something dark and hungry grow in my chest, and the kiss that had started out gentle and sweet grew until it was a hungry, clashing need, all tongue and teeth and heated breaths.
We kissed upside down, for what seemed like years.
Finally, we came up for air and I could admit I was more than a little out of breath. I gasped up at him.
“Is this, like, our thing? Spiderman kisses?” I babbled.
A huge grin broke over his face. Watching Lee smile, his face going from worried concern to sexy relief was one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen.
“Yeah,” he nodded, still upside down to me. “Definitely our ‘thing’,” he rumbled, leaning in for another kiss.
“I’m sorry….” I began, but he stopped me with another kiss. “No, seriously, I’m sorr—” and another kiss stopped me.
“Every time you try and apologize for something that was outside your control, I’m going to kiss you,” he said.
“Sounds like a lot of positive reinforcement,” I grumbled. His brow furrowed.
“Good point. Maybe I should spank you instead,” he said, waggling his eyebrows at me.
Oh, my fucking god, the man was so fucking sexy.
My morning wood, which had abated slightly as we’d talked, was suddenly at attention again.
He could spank me any time, and he was apparently far too adept at reading me, because next he said, “Hmmm. You might like that a little too much. We’ll need something else… ”
He got the cutest little divot between his eyebrows as he wrinkled his forehead up in deep thought. “I know!” he said, his face lighting up in evil glee. “I’ll make you do… Algebra!”
A surprised laugh burst from me at his unexpected answer.
“Algebra? Noooo! You’ve found my one weakness!” I laughed, clutching my chest and rolling on the bed. “Superman has kryptonite, I have Algebra and Geometry. How did you know I hated math?” I demanded, stopping and staring at him in mock accusation.
“Easy,” he answered smugly, his green eyes twinkling like mossy green gems in the morning sunlight. “You’re an artist. Everyone knows artists suck at math.”
“Hey! I don’t suck at math,” I said, my voice taking on a pouty tone. “I just hate it.”
Lee leaned in and pressed another kiss to my lips, this one slow and gentle.
“That’s okay, whether you suck at math or not, I like you just the way you are,” he said.
I paused, looking up into those gorgeous green eyes, watching the sunlight play through the strands of golden hair on his head.
“You might want to think twice before you say that. That’s… that’s taking on a lot,” I said. “I’m sorr—” he started to lean in to kiss me again, but I held my hand up and he stopped. “Please. I need to say this, Lee.”
He leaned back a little, eyes studying my face, lips pursed as if ready to kiss me at a moment’s notice.
“I’m sorry about last night. Not about… about what happened, because I couldn’t control that.
I’m sorry about how I reacted to it. I should have told you what I was thinking and feeling, and what was going through my head.
I’m… as clichéd as it sounds, I’m not used to anyone caring what I think or feel, especially in bed. But I shouldn’t have run.”
“No,” he said after a few minutes. “You shouldn’t have run, and you should have told me what you were feeling.
” He agreed. “But… I get it, Mason. I really do. You should have seen me…” His voice grew thick with old grief.
“You should have seen me the first time I was with someone after Mack died. Similar issue, similar result,” he said ruefully, smiling, but a certain wryness pulling at the corner of his mouth.
“Except, he was just some guy at a club. I never saw him again,” he said, his voice low.
“Sometimes I wish I could find him to apologize. He had no idea what was going on in my head, or how trying to give him a blow job was just too much of a reminder of Mack, and how suddenly I felt like I was betraying our entire relationship by being there.”
Lee’s eyes stared off into the distance for a moment, then he looked back down at me. “Mack had been dead two years at that point. I’m pretty sure he was beyond caring, but I’ve always wished I could find that guy and apologize, try and explain what was going through my head.”