Chapter Two
MASON
One month.
For a normal man, one month is full of honest work, busy weekends, and lazy Sundays on the sofa.
For me, it’s been an agonizing wait; with most of my mornings spent sitting outside the high-rise apartments, knowing Skylar is inside and that there is nothing I can do to see her again.
She hasn’t left my mind since that night.
Knowing I don’t have her is driving me absolutely insane.
She’s even invaded my dreams. I must be going crazy.
They took the second-highest floor; far enough up that I couldn’t peer through their windows.
I thought about it a few times. I thought about pretending I was a window cleaner, just so I could get a glimpse of Skylar, locked away in her tower.
The more twisted side of me wanted to knock off the delivery driver, bringing all their groceries, and hand-delivering them to my angel.
But, I knew that if I was ever going to see Skylar, if I was ever going to have a chance of claiming her as my goddess, I had to be patient. No matter how challenging it was.
In the meantime, I decided to find out everything I could about her.
My underground connections didn’t take long to dig up a long history for Skylar Summers.
Her parents were good people, the kind of people who helped everyone.
Tragically, they met their end at the hands of a reckless drunken driver.
Skylar inherited their fortune, before moving in with the Mercers, until she could find a place to settle down permanently.
Skylar’s a bright young woman with her whole life ahead of her.
Before her parents passed, she was all set to attend any Ivy League university of her choosing, and had opted for Cornell.
What had happened to her was a damned tragedy, but I’d never have found her otherwise.
It’s wrong to be thankful that life dealt her such bad cards, but I’m not a model citizen, after all.
Early that afternoon, I follow her from the apartment all the way to the mall. She gets out of her car with a little more life in her. She’s dressed in white pants, boots, and a thick pink jacket. Her sexy body fills out the outfit. It hugs her curves, displaying her perfection to the world.
I can tell she’s excited to be out in the world again, but she freezes as she enters the mall, and remains locked in place as people flood in all around her.
I watch her, from my black Cadillac Escalade, as the world consumes her.
Though it pains me, I let it. The fear it instills in her is my perfect entry point.
I’ve seen what a harrowing shock can do to a person, a thousand times before, and Skylar’s no different.
Right now, she feels lost, scared, alone, and as if the whole world is against her. She needs someone to make it right.
That someone is me.
I get out of my car and walk towards her. She hasn’t moved a step since she got through the door. Every inch I move closer to Skylar, the more nervous I get. I’d been thinking, planning, and constructing all of the possible outcomes of our first conversation, ever since that night I saw her in bed.
Even with all my mental faculties prepared, I can’t stop the nerves tearing through me. Why the hell do I feel this way about some woman? I’m not the kind of person that gets nervous, scared, or tongue-tied around anyone. Yet, approaching Skylar feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
“Excuse me, Miss. You doing alright?” I ask, moving next to her, and gently cupping her elbow. It isn’t enough, though. I want to touch her naked, bare skin, not a thick jacket.
The second she turns toward me, my heart pumps all the blood in my body straight to my cock.
The way her soft eyes study me nearly destroys my self-control.
Thank Christ I’m wearing a coat to cover it up.
She swallows hard, struggling to find the words to respond.
Now that we’re up close, I can see that her eyes are bluer than I realized, with a little fleck of brown in her right iris. Beautiful. Absolutely breathtaking.
“Let’s get you out of the cold, hey?” I say.
She doesn’t speak, only follows me away from the entrance, into the mall. When we get away from the other people, and step into the food court beside the entryway, she stops dead in her tracks.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?” I ask, knowing full well what I did.
“It’s… it’s hard to explain,” Skylar sighs. “Just getting me out of there helped me a lot. I haven’t been out of the house in a while and… and, never mind.”
Skylar giggles, blushing a little, and a wild smile grows on her face. The most gorgeous, radiant smile a man could ask for.
“All in a day’s work, Miss. Are you okay though? You seemed a little tense.” It’s getting harder to keep up this calm, cool demeanor, the longer I stand beside Skylar. Her scent, and her beauty, every fucking thing about her makes me want to drop to my knees and kiss her feet in worship.
I’ve dwelt on this moment for a month, yet every speech I practiced disappears the second I stand beside her. My knees feel weak and my stomach twists.
“I’m good,” she replies. “It’s just been one of those months, you know?”
“I don’t think I do,” I reply, leaning against a pillar beside us.
People are going about their business all around us, and Skylar eyes them hesitantly. She looks nervous and scared, and I know I’m to blame. What’s worse, I’m leveraging what I instilled in her to make her mine.
If I had more of a heart, maybe it would bother me.
“I’ve been pretty on edge lately. Some things that happened have made me a little nervous about the world, I guess. It’s nothing to bother a stranger with,” Skylar replies.
“What if I want to be bothered by them? Sometimes talking to someone about what’s going on is the best way to heal an unsettled mind.
You know what’s best of all? I’m exactly that, a stranger.
You can tell me your troubles and send me packing, like a free therapy session,” I say smoothly.
“How about you let me get you a cup of tea and you relax until you’re ready to face the world again? ”
“That’s a generous offer, but I really can’t impose.” Skylar shakes her head, before turning away.
“It’s no bother at all,” I say. “I can’t very well leave a damsel in distress and all on her lonesome. What kind of man would I be if I did that?”
Even as I speak, I know it’s over the top, but I have to stand out. I have to be striking, if I’m going to pique Skylar’s interest. If I’m just some ordinary, run-of-the-mill guy, she’s going to leave, and I’ll have wasted my only opportunity with her.
That’s not going to happen. Today, Skylar becomes mine.
“Are you sure I won’t be bothering you? Don’t you have shopping to do or something?” Skylar fiddles with the ends of her hair, unable to face me. I’m desperate for her to look up and meet my eyes.
“I’m only here for a loaf of bread and some window shopping, so it can wait until you’re feeling better,” I assure her.
Skylar takes a moment to deliberate. She looks up and down the long halls of the mall, scanning back and forth between the shops, before she finally turns to me with a nod. “Okay, sure,” she says. “You’ve got it. Let’s get something warm and… talk about things.”
Just like that, I feel on top of the world. It’s all coming together perfectly.