Thirteen
Over the next week, I divided my time between work and sneaking out to see Mason. I’d had a brief conversation with Jenna after I’d confessed that we’d slept together, but I wasn’t about to share everything . How could I when I didn’t understand what was going on myself? My sister’s words still rang in my ears, ‘I’m happy for you Amy, but be careful. I don’t want you to get hurt.’
It appeared Mason and I were indulging in a friends-with-benefits type of relationship. Although sometimes we didn’t even speak. He was like a sudden addiction and I couldn’t get enough.
It was probably a bad idea, but I met him by the pool one day. We were having sex in the water together before we’d even said hello. It was thrilling and I couldn’t have explained it if I had tried, but it felt natural and unforced. No airs and graces were necessary, we just came together and fit so well, physically anyway.
I did find myself wondering how many other girls Mason had been with before I realised that going down that road would be uncomfortable. Another example of how the boy had weakened me over the last few weeks.
If I hadn’t already fallen, I was falling.
I was now taking the contraceptive pill. So, nothing got in the way, no fumbling for protection or asking passion-killing questions, it was so much easier to be spontaneous and in the moment.
Mason was teaching me so many things I hadn’t known about my body, what I liked and what I didn’t like and let me say, there wasn’t much I didn’t like. This boy had put so much energy into dragging me out of my comfort zone and I was thankful for that. The less inhibited Amy was much more fun. And although it sounded extremely exciting, that ‘no-strings thing’ I wasn’t stupid , I knew I was developing genuine feelings of affection for him. How could I not? Deep inside I knew that to Mason, our situation was probably sex only and I had to come to terms with that. If I became too needy, I could lose him so I distanced myself on the outside.
What I was experiencing with Mason McKenna was like a foreign thing to me and I needed to tread carefully until I fully understood it. Maybe this thing between us would burn itself out eventually. He was the only person I had been with and so I didn’t have anything to compare it to. So, who knew? But for now, things were good.
After that special moment together in the water, I’d retrieved my bikini (the one I’d worn at the beach that day) and Mason had readjusted his shorts so we were both decent again.
After I’d recovered from what had been one of the most intense orgasms, he had given me so far, Mason had taken control, holding my hand tightly and assisting me over to the side of the river. He’d then towel-dried my body, taking his sweet time and the way his eyes had devoured me, had turned me on all over again. So much that I wanted him there on the embankment where you could probably have seen us from his house. Shameful I know.
Once we were dry, he laid our towels down before he scooped me up into his arms and kissed me. His lips were firm and teasing against my own, and he slid his tongue between the seem of my mouth which parted for him immediately. It was like a stamp of ownership and I loved it. Relished in the way my body tightened in all those special, sweet places.
Mason had broken the kiss and nuzzled his nose against mine before lowering me onto the ground. The damp softness of the towel caressed my bare back. He then joined me, settling back onto his own towel, never breaking eye contact.
Mason had run a hand down my face, “You’re so beautiful,” before turning onto his back. “I can’t look at you without wanting you and I need to get my breath back,” Mason said in a gruff sexy voice. His damp skin still glistened from the water and I so wanted to run my tongue across his chest and capture that moisture.
I never knew that desire could be so powerful, I’d never felt anything like it with previous boyfriends, which I know was limited but still. I had only recently climaxed and yet was still hungry for more. The memory of the blunt head of his sex driving into me beneath the coolness of the water was sensational. I had straddled his waist and he had held me as if I weighed nothing at all. We had been joined together in the rhythm that he’d set .
With Mason, he was all about control but it didn’t bother me. I allowed it. It appeared I liked being dominated from time to time. I took the initiative occasionally, of course, I was a strong, modern female. We were equals.
We lay together on the embankment, staring up into the sky. The breeze was cool against the dampness of my skin and I felt so content. I loved that trickling sound of the water as it kissed the rocks and the greenness of the grass and wildflowers which grew in the meadow. It was such a pretty place to be, I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t spent more time there as a child. Jenna had always loved sneaking there, hiding in plain sight, although she didn’t visit it as much now that she and Nixon were together. I knew this was the place where they’d meet up. Their rendezvous point. Jenna had said the pool was the place she’d first met Nixon in person, up close and to talk to that is. So, it was now special to both of us. I pushed thoughts of Jenna seeing the doctor to one side. If there was something wrong, I knew she’d tell me.
I was embracing where things were going with Mason and yes, I didn’t know if it would be a forever thing, but I was just taking in the now, that’s all I could do.
You see, it wasn’t just a sex thing now. Mason and I talked, like really talked and sometimes for hours . We spoke about people in the village, our brothers, my sisters, and Mattie and briefly about our parents. We steered away from the subject of Nix and Jen for obvious reasons. Although I had chilled out about their relationship and had managed to leave them to it. I still held a slight amount of animosity there. I wasn’t really a water-under-the-bridge type of girl. Not good I know.
Things were going well and when I wasn’t with Mason, I couldn’t help thinking about him. And not just his slick mouth, amazing body and what he did with his hands. Mason McKenna as a person, I enjoyed listening to his opinions about various things, from farm life to what went on outside of Norfolk, the list was endless. It was almost like girlfriend and boyfriend stuff, although it wasn’t really, was it? Not yet. We hadn’t discussed that part and I was too chicken-shit to bring it up.
Yes, I was weak and cowardly, but Mason never said anything either and so I realised that we probably weren’t on the same page.
It was early in the evening and the sun was partly hidden by low clouds. I lost all concept of time when I was with Mason and it didn’t seem to bother either of us that we could have been seen. My brother wouldn’t have. Mattie never came to the pool and so the chance of him catching us was non-existent. Fortunately, both sets of parents were still away and so they wouldn’t be able to interfere either.
I wondered fleetingly what my father would say if he found out that I had slept with Mason. I quickly pushed the unpalatable thought aside. Me or Mason or both of us being ground into human fertiliser and all that!
Mason and I were stretched out on our towels, facing each other. Our heads rested on our hands.
“So, I haven’t heard you bitching about Nix in a while. Are you good now?” Mason questioned, his eyes assessing my face. That slight amount of stubble he fashioned made him look even sexier, a bit rough. Just what I liked, it appeared. His voice washed over me like a caress, almost as if he was touching my skin. His hard-muscled body was extremely distracting, as was the thought of what was in those shorts of his.
I drew my bottom lip into my mouth, thinking about my reply. I didn’t want to say anything insulting and ruin the moment, “I think I’ve just accepted it now.”
Relief entered his features, “That’s the best thing, Amy. Accept it, and move on to more interesting things.”
“Like?” I said with a suggestive curl to my lip.
Mason knew I was fishing but he didn’t smile, “Yes, like us , but also you . Focus on yourself. You surely don’t want to carry on mucking out horses at Kipling’s forever?”
Shrugging my shoulders, I pursed my lips, “I guess I’ve never really thought about it. Dad wants me to work on the farm and deal with the paperwork side of things but the thought makes me nauseous.”
“I’m not surprised. You’re an outdoor girl. I couldn’t be dealing with desk-based shit either,” Mason explained.
“Maybe I could ask Dad for a loan and set up my own business. Maybe a photography one,” I said honestly. Yes, I liked nice clothes and stuff but I wasn’t that materialistic really.
“Well, your work is certainly good enough. I checked out the pictures on your SD card,” Mason confessed .
“Thank you for giving it back to me,” I smiled and he returned that look. “And I do think about myself. Some people think too much sometimes.”
Mason rolled his eyes, “No you don’t. Not really. That’s a front. You’re too busy focusing on Jenna and her life to have any time for yourself.”
I didn’t like what he was saying but couldn’t deny it anymore. I had been too involved in my sister’s shit over the past couple of years. It had just taken me time to realise that.
“You seem to enjoy playing second fiddle to your sister, but you don’t have to,” Mason whispered. He wasn’t being mean; he was encouraging and I totally understood his point.
Mason McKenna was right. I had spent years idolising my sister, putting her on that pedestal, envying the fact that she was everything I could never be. But who cared right? We were different people and I needed to accept that. I knew my parents loved me even though they had always put Jenna first, but why wouldn’t they? I’d projected that false front that I was fine; a confident female, tough and savvy. I didn’t need anyone. That confident aura I had polished over the years had probably been the reason my parents left me to it. I had no one to blame but myself if I’d felt second best. My parents and Jenna were not responsible for that. That was on me.
But the fact remained that despite my own insecurities, I was stronger than Jenna. She needed more support and encouragement from our parents, she was shy delicate; a sensitive soul who needed to be treated carefully.
Yet after years of being tough and hoping it would protect that non-perfect part of me. My suit of chainmail had, at last, been pierced by this boy’s attention. He’d pushed me over the edge and I had glorified in that.
“You’re probably right,” I replied with a shy smile.
He looked at me with such tenderness at that point, that goosebumps suddenly flittered over my skin.
“Are you cold?” Mason asked softly as his dark eyes ran over my bare flesh. I loved the way he looked at me. It was like he couldn’t get enough. New feelings were consistently emerging between us, I was sure of it.
“No, not really. ”
His eyes narrowed, “You’re shivering.”
I smiled, “Trembling,” I corrected, “Maybe it’s the company I’m keeping.”
He returned my grin, “So, I make you tremble?”
Stretching my legs, I took my time to answer, “You do more than that Mason.”
And then things changed.
My words appeared to unsettle him, his expression which had been warm, suddenly dipping in temperature. I wouldn’t say it turned cold, lukewarm maybe? I didn’t like that and wanted to kick myself for being too obvious. Didn’t they say men liked the chase? If I made it too easy for him, would he lose interest? That thought made me want to bleach my brain.
I watched as Mason rolled onto his back and stared up into the sky.
“What do you think is happening here, Amy?” he questioned in a low, unreadable voice. This time I shivered due to the indifference in his tone.
Shrugging my shoulders, I shuffled further toward him and slipped my bare leg over his.
“I don’t know. I thought we’d decided not to put a label on it,” I replied with confidence which I suddenly wasn’t feeling.
Mason shifted on the ground and placed both hands under his head, those massive arms of his bulging. I drank him in, he was masculine perfection at its best and I couldn’t get enough of him. Odd considering our past relationship, but I suppose how could I ever have known it could be like this?
“You do realise that whatever this thing is between us has a sell-by date? At least, what we are doing now anyway.”
A further jet of cold slid into my bones. His words caused something in my soul to tear. What the hell did that mean?
“A sell-by date? Like I’m a piece of fruit or a ham sandwich?” I volleyed, untangling my leg from his.
Mason turned his head to look at me, “You know what I mean.”
Chewing my lip, I pretended to think about it. Of course, I knew what he meant but I’d rather him spell it out. Pain ripped inside of me .
“Not really. But you apparently do. So, when we do expire ?” I didn’t manage to keep the snarky element out of my tone. How could I? We had just had mind-blowing sex which had been so intimate and perfect and now he was saying that the clock was ticking. I could feel that old emptiness inside me returning like a fucking race car.
He turned back onto his side and looked at me down his nose.
“I think when our parents come back, we will have to stop this. The sneaking around.”
Another twinge of pain shot into my heart like a dart. My parents were due back the following week. Now I only had seven days with this man? What the hell?
I needed to calm myself, I couldn’t let him see how his words had affected me. I knew this had only been sex for Mason, hadn’t tried to fool myself it was anything but. To do that would have made me weak as well as pathetic. And McKenna boys prayed on the weak. My old insecurities started to return.
“I see. So that’s it then. We become enemies again?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” he huffed, his expression twisting. I couldn’t read that expression on his face but it wasn’t good.
I chewed the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. Don’t let him know how upset you are.
“OK, fine. I get it.” My throat was closing like a vice had been attached to my neck and the cog was slowly being twisted.
There was a three-beat silence as he watched me with penetrative eyes. He could probably see beneath the fa?ade. My poker face was severely pathetic.
“We were never enemies, Amy. Even when we were children. You annoyed the hell out of me, but there has always been a place inside of me that cared about you.”
Snorting, I arched an eyebrow, “Really?” I said disbelievingly.
“Yes, and you felt the same way. We didn’t really hate each other. We got caught up in a family row that was caused by our great-grandparents and had, sorry, has , nothing to do with us.”
Sniffing, I nodded, as he was right. We had always been fighting someone else’s battle. My brother and sisters didn’t really care about the meadow or the pond, we had been brainwashed by our parents and our parents by theirs and then some. A never-ending cycle.
Mason cleared his throat, “What’s ironic is that, yes the dispute started off as a disagreement about the meadow, but it became more personal when one of my ancestors started banging one of yours, apparently.”
His words were new to me and it forced me to push aside the hurt I was feeling from his rejection.
“What do you mean? That our grandparents were at it or something?”
“Great-grandparents,” he corrected with raised eyebrows. He was so good-looking.
Mason shuffled his large body further toward me and told me the story about the fallout between our ancestors, as it had been told to him.
So, in a nutshell, my great-grandmother on my father’s side had an affair with Mason’s great-grandfather. They had both been married at the time, my great-grandmother Dorothy had already been living at Orchard View for years and the farm which became the McKenna farm had been empty and for sale for six months. The fact that the property was in-between ownership, allowed my family use of the pool area which was supposedly (I took that bit with a pinch of salt) part of the McKenna land at that time.
When Derek McKenna, Mason’s great-grandfather purchased the land and moved his family onto the property, all rights for my family to access the meadow and pool were lost. After a couple of years, Derek and Dorothy started an affair and things got ugly. David Taylor, my grandfather then started to investigate the legalities about the boundary which separated the two estates. It was revealed that it wasn’t on either of the land deeds. After this, the battle focused on the boundary issue alone. As a smokescreen to what the real issue was in the first place; Derek McKenna stealing my great-grandmother from my great-grandfather.
Mason said that rumour had it that when things ended badly between Derek and Dorothy that Derek signed over the meadow and pond to Dorothy. To appease the situation. It hadn’t of course .
I listened as Mason explained that nothing could ever be registered as the deed didn’t exist to sign over the land in the first place and therefore, the offer was an empty gesture.
As we lay there under the darkening sky, it all sounded much too familiar. Almost like history was trying to repeat itself. When Mason first started to explain that our ancestors had been involved, I felt a twinge of worry about there being that chance that we were related in some way, but Derek and Dorothy met when they were older and already had families of their own.
“So, the meadow and pond do belong to us then,” I pointed out with a slight smile. His story had given me time to shelve my hurt, but I still felt like shit.
“Don’t push it,” Mason replied with a smile of his own before shoving into a sitting position. I followed the motion.
We both stared across the river, we were on Mason’s side. That thought of ‘sides’ twisted painfully in my gut and I suddenly wanted to fill the bloody river in. It was like a divide between us that represented our relationship. Those fence posts were still there half finished.
The river was reckless, and fast, swooshing this way and that, a mirror of what I currently had with Mason. The relationship with the sell-by date. A river that ran who knew where.
I pushed to my feet and dusted my hands off. Mason helped me into my dress and it should have felt nice but it didn’t; bittersweet almost.
Once we were dressed, I stood before him, staring up into that perfect face I now loved so much.
LOVED… what? Where did that come from? I batted the thought to one side.
Mason looked down into my eyes with such a searing tenderness that I almost started to cry.
“OK, so. The clock is ticking, so let’s have fun whilst we still can…” I allowed my voice to trail off, not sure of what to say.
Mason wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me up against him gently. His expression was dark like he didn’t appreciate my comment.
“Fun, is that all this is?” he shot down into my face. Talk about mixed messages .
I pushed my arms around his neck, slightly confused by his words, “Yes, lots of fun,” I replied with a smile.
Mason’s face darkened further and his hands slipped to my buttocks before yanking me against him, his mouth crashing down on mine.
It was a hard, almost angry kiss and my mouth parted as his tongue lanced inside, stoking, feeding off me. Heat pooled between my legs and I thrust my lower body against him, feeling him growing against my belly. I so wanted him inside me again.
We were liked two starved people, his kiss was aggressive and demanding and although he didn’t hurt me, I wanted him to. Knew there would be pleasure in the pain. My hands were in his hair and I pushed my mouth against him, matching that level of passion as our tongues literally danced with each other.
And then it stopped, Mason released me and stepped back. A mixture of emotions passing over his face and my mouth opened but no words developed.
“Come on, I’ll walk you home.”
As we gathered our stuff and walked back across the water toward my house, there was silence, almost as if we were both reflecting on something. Our future perhaps or maybe how this would end.
I wasn’t sure what was going on, I felt confused, angry, and hurt.
Mason’s expression had been wiped clean as he pecked my mouth as we came to the bottom of my porch. The brush of his lips against mine was impersonal, cold almost. There was a beat of silence as he looked down into my eyes before turning and setting off back to Lamb Hill.
I watched him walk away, a band of agony wrapped around my throat, stopping my true feelings from pouring out.
This wasn’t just fun to me; this was so much more than that.
After all this time fighting him and myself, I was now at that stage where I had no control over anything.
I was in love with a boy that didn’t return those feelings and never would, and to make matters worse, he was a McKenna and an enemy of my family.
Swallowing down my agony, a thought came to me. No matter what happened, I wouldn’t let him win. I would carry on with my own life as if this thing between us had never happened and if Mason wanted me, he would have to come to me. I was done being that mixture between the girl chasing the boy and the one lurking in the shadows behind her sister.
It was time to play dirty, something the McKenna boys were extremely good at. Well, they had taught me a thing or two over the years.
Anger bloomed in my chest. Over the last few weeks, I’d learned a few moves of my own and I for one, was looking forward to proving that more than anything, I was no man’s mistake.