Chapter 36
Em
I stir as a dark, rumbling sound of amusement tickles my dormant consciousness. The distinct timbre resonates with familiarity. It warms my chest.
My eyelids shutter. I smell cologne.
Mason’s.
It doesn’t surprise me that I’m dreaming of him. He’s been on my mind all night. Jake told me he saw Ash in the alley, but when he mentioned the gray kanji on his bike, I knew. It wasn’t Ash who stopped by. It was Mason.
“You’re a heavy sleeper, aren’t you, baby girl?”
My shorts are gone. I went to bed wearing them, but in my dream I’m naked from the waist down. I can feel him. Oh my God, can I feel him.
“Such a good girl…” His hips pull back. “You come for me even while you’re asleep… calling out my name.”
His mouth slants over mine, and then there’s pressure as the pierced head of his cock enters me.
We both moan.
“Such a good. Fucking. Girl,” his coarse voice grates out .
A firm grip claims the back of my knee. Mason retreats and slides deeper, but he doesn’t force it. He opens me gradually, drawing a chorus of whimpers.
I give myself over. Thighs spread and my arms up by my head, my hips rock into him. I surrender to the dream.
The friction between us is slick. He feels so good. Each thrust drives me higher, and my toes curl as the sensation in my belly crests. I think I’m actually going to climax.
“That’s it, baby.” Mason picks up his pace, slamming his hips into me with growing urgency. “You’re going to come for me again. I want to feel you.”
Come for him again? My hazy mind finally catches on. I taste myself in his kiss. It’s too real.
No!
A flare ignites in my chest, ripping me away from the edge of my orgasm when my eyes fly open. My sight comes into focus to find Mason on top of me, my legs hiked up at his sides.
He flashes me a crooked grin. My shirt is pushed up, laying my breasts bare, and I have a pretty good idea where else his mouth has been.
I notice a cut at his left brow that’s maybe a day old. Was he in a fight?
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I rip my shirt down and scramble away from him. “Leaving that creepy message on the mirror wasn’t enough, you had to come back to find out how far you can go before I wake up?”
I reach for the blanket next to me to cover myself. Mason is shirtless but still wearing his jeans. Captivated by his flexing chest and chiseled abs, I almost miss the confused look on his face as he adjusts the waistband of his boxers.
He leaves his fly unzipped like we have unfinished business.
Gripping me by the knees, he drags me back under him. “Don’t pretend you didn’t like it.”
“I didn’t.”
“Liar!” His fingers grip my jaw, and he squeezes my chin to look at him. “Your body said otherwise,” he insists. “You were moaning my name in your sleep. You can’t deny that.”
I tear myself free. “Well, I guess I’d have to believe your word on that… since I was unconscious at the time.”
Mason’s hands shoot out to lock around my wrists. He drives them into the pillow above my head. “Tell me that you can’t still feel me inside you… that you can’t taste me on your lips. Tell me that you hate me for coming back to claim what’s mine.”
“I hate you.”
My spunk draws a chuckle. “Say it again,” he dares me, a smirk dancing over his lips. “But this time, like you mean it.”
With my arms pinned on either side of my head, his face hovers over mine in challenge.
“Mason, stop! Please.” As much as I want him, I won’t do this behind his brother’s back. “Don’t put me in this position. It’s not fair to Ash.”
At the sound of his brother’s name from my mouth, something snaps in him. I can see it in the shadow crossing his eyes… in the tension of his jaw… feel it in his grip around my wrists .
His lips twitch, then pull away from his teeth.
“You’re lying to yourself if you think you’ll ever have this with anyone else,” he snarls.
“Or that you can live without it now that you’ve had a taste.
I know you, Em. You crave this as much as I do, and without me, you will wilt and die.
Only I can feed you. Only I can make you feel this alive. ”
Mason’s eyes dart back and forth between mine for several seconds as if searching for something. Then he releases my wrists and sits back on his heels with an air of remorse.
“I wanted you so badly I was willing to throw my brother at you if that was what it took for you to let your guard down.”
“And then what?” I sit up too, the pressure behind my eyes rising. “Were you hoping he’d get his fill of me? Lose interest? Is that why you put me in his bed instead of your own?”
“Ash doesn’t care for a girl once she’s spread her legs for him. He only wants you because you’re mine.”
My voice attracts a quiver. “And how long until you lose interest?”
His shoulders drop with a sigh. “Em, I’ve never connected with anyone like this.
There’s something in you that wants out.
I hear its call…” His hands come up to gesture.
“It sings to me. It’s the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard.
I’ll never grow tired of it.” He clasps my face.
“I see your dark side. Let me show you how beautiful you are.”
His words are full of demand, but there’s a plea in his eyes he won’t voice. I see that he’s hurting. That for the first time he let himself become vulnerable .
So I give in. I don’t resist.
The moment his lips meet mine, Mason’s rage dissipates. It’s replaced by something else. Desperation.
“You’re a drug, Em, better than the high of adrenaline, and I can’t fucking breathe unless I’m inside you.” The stubble lining his jaw is harsh against my skin. A burn chases the friction.
Mason opens my mouth with his. Pressing his chin to mine, he urges me backward until I’m flat on the mattress, caged beneath the unyielding demand of his body. Every muscle ripples with tension.
His shallow breaths judder as his hands work his boxers down, then in one sweep, the blanket is gone, and he’s settled in between my thighs.
Mason aligns himself, never breaking from his kiss. He spears me in a single thrust, his hips slamming into me so sharp and raw, it rips a cry from my throat.
“That’s it, baby girl,” he rasps on his retreat. “Let me hear you.” Thrust. “Cry for me.” Thrust.
A shockwave after shockwave thunders through my body. His left hand curls into a fist at the base of my skull, forcing my head back while the steep points of his fingers dig into the muscle of my ass.
The headboard bangs against the wall. Mason lets me feel every thick inch of his engorged length. Tip to base he comes at me again and again, and with each thrust, he kisses me harder, biting my bottom lip like he wants to devour me.
My fingers twist through his hair. I match the frenzied motion behind his kiss, his panting breaths, the growls and grunts as my nails scrape across his scalp .
I pour every ounce of myself into our kiss, into his hunger, healing the cracks that threaten to shatter him. I give him this last time. I don’t care how rough he is. I don’t care about the marks he leaves on my skin with his hands or his teeth.
A fist in my tangled hair, his mouth scotches a path along the front of my throat, and his pace accelerates. He hooks his other arm around the back of my knee, pounding into me at a deeper angle as he shifts my hips and folds me.
“You hate this?” Mason thrusts into me so hard and deep that black spots crowd my vision. “You hate how good it feels?”
Tears well in my eyes, but I can’t stop chasing the sparks that jolt through my womb with the slick suction. My orgasm peaks, and I know he can feel it.
“Tell me how much you fucking hate me, baby girl.”
My joints stiffen. My muscles quiver. My mouth opens, but the words choke in my throat as my arms wind tighter around his neck.
I do hate him. For coming back… for giving me this… for reminding me what I can never have with him. I can’t be the reason for them hating each other, and I blame him for forcing me into this role. But above all, I hate him for making me fall for him and ripping my heart out at the same time.
The dam breaks. A cry bursts from me, and my hips buck underneath him, milking him into me with every clenching pulse of my core.
Mason gives two more thrusts, then his own climax rushes him as violently as mine. He locks into me, crushing me in his hold .
His hips jerk. His groan vibrates up my throat where his open mouth lingers until the last heat of our ecstasy is extinguished by an icy touch of regret.
Mason removes himself from me, shifting his underwear back into place before my arms even unlink from him.
His dark eyes are downcast. “You should hate me,” he says, his voice low and hoarse with emotion. “I’m not a good man… and an even worse brother.”
I sense some kind of inner torment behind his words fueled by self-loathing, but it doesn’t excuse his actions.
When he pulls away from me, I can’t hold the tears back any longer. With my vision blurred, I reach for the closest thing on my nightstand. My mind doesn’t even catch on to what it is before I strike him with it.
Mason’s head flings to the side with the delivered blow. He saw it coming, but he didn’t block it. He didn’t even flinch.
Blood wells above his left eye where the gash has opened back up. It’s deep enough he might need stitches.
Clutching the can-sized Bluetooth speaker, I’m in shock for a long moment, expecting him to lash out and strike back at me… but he doesn’t.
Mason pushes off the bed to leave, grabbing the sweatshirt beside him. I notice his eyes swing toward my mirror on his way out, like he’s recalling the words he wrote on it using my lip gloss.
My voice trembles. “Don’t you dare come back.”