Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
DAKOTA
“Do angels dream?” I asked quietly as I laid next to Mason in his bed, my hair still damp from our shower.
Thankfully, whatever he’d been planning with my swimsuit had been pushed to a different night.
I wasn’t sure if my reaction to the roadkill had any influence on that, or if he could just tell I was tired, or sad, or whatever.
He didn’t elaborate when I questioned him. He never did.
“We can dream, yeah.”
“Do you dream?” I traced the tip of my pointer finger over his bare chest, barely able to see through the darkness in his bedroom. My body was heavy, sinking into the mattress, tiredness infusing my limbs. He smelled good.
“Sometimes.”
“About what?”
“I’d rather not talk about that,” he said, rolling over onto his side and wrapping his arms around me, tucking me close against his warm body. “You need sleep.”
“Nightmares?” I adjusted my head on the pillow and bent my legs up in front of me.
“Are possible,” Mason said, finishing the statement. “Close your eyes, baby. You’re going to be tired tomorrow.”
“I’m going to be tired either way.” My eyes slid shut. “What did you delete from your phone?”
“I’m not going to tell you, so it’s not worth your time to keep asking.”
Fine.
Mason’s arm tightened around my waist, his hand tangled in my oversized t-shirt, his warmth and strength solid behind me.
I wiggled backward, trying to be closer, truer, wishing I could eliminate all the space between us, every single molecule.
Until every breath I breathed was straight from his lungs, and his from mine.
If I could connect our veins, I would do that, too. Feel his ichor in me.
But there would always be this lack of honesty, and it was growing every day.
Even during sex, with his body inside mine, as close as physically possible, I felt the lies between us.
Deepening and forcing the only real truth I’d ever get into my head over and over, hammering it into my brain.
He’s always going to be like this. He doesn’t change.
I’d crossed so many lines with Mason, either being forced over them or stepping willfully into the danger myself, but there was one line I’d crossed that scared me the most.
Jumping to my own death in an attempt to make him open up to me.
Using my own corpse as my leverage.
Fucking reckless.
The sensation of stepping off the edge of the cliff, of plummeting towards the salt-kissed rocks, my hair tangling wildly in the wind, my eyes squeezing shut while I prayed for him to catch me…
Even after I did that, things didn’t change how I wanted them to. Even after I gave him my whole entire life, he refused to let me in.
Soon, I wouldn’t be able to reach him at all.
How far am I willing to go for this? For him?
Too fucking far.
I shoved the thoughts away.
My tiredness eventually overtook my stubborn brain, and I drifted to sleep.
━━━━━
I dragged my backpack up onto a stool at the island in Mason’s kitchen, setting my laptop on the black marble and powering it on.
My grades were seriously slipping, and I was going to lose my scholarships if I kept this shit up.
But I was finding it difficult to care about that in the face of everything else.
I resigned to just working on my Unit Ops stuff.
If nothing else, I could keep my failures from infecting that class.
Mason was on the phone in the hallway, talking to someone I presumed to be Micah. My chest ached. I missed him.
“She’s here and safe.” A pause. “She’ll be fucking fine here without you. I don’t need you stepping in on everything.”
I flinched, lowering my head to focus back on my school work. The energy between them had somehow only gotten more tense—probably because my transgressions with Mason were finally out in the open. No more pretending it didn’t happen.
No more pretending it wasn’t still happening.
“I’m dropping her off. Should I walk her all the way to the classroom?” Mason said, but it wasn’t a genuine question. He was pissed. I wished I could hear whatever Micah was responding. “Fuck you.”
Mason entered the kitchen a moment later, making me jump as he slammed his palm on the counter, breathing hard. I watched the rise and fall of his shoulders, his head tilted down. My pulse fluttered nervously.
“I’m taking you to his class today,” Mason informed me through gritted teeth, still not looking away from the black countertop. “I’m going to fuck you again beforehand. And you’re not going to shower. Clear?”
“I don’t want to be part of this,” I said lowly as my stomach twisted, shameful heat spreading through me. Mason’s eyes shot up to meet mine. “Part of this game,” I clarified. “With you and him.”
“Too late for that, baby. You don’t get a choice.
You’re the integral piece.” He straightened up and rounded the island, turning my stool so he was standing between my knees and cupping my face.
On instinct, I leaned into his touch. I couldn’t stop myself.
His words wove me into a dark fantasy, awakening the most disgusting parts of me.
The thought of showing up to Micah’s class smelling like Mason’s kapnos was stirring up a flurry of horrible thoughts.
“God, you’re pretty. Why the fuck do you let him have you?”
“What happened between you and him?” I pressed, ignoring Mason’s rhetorical question.
“I fucked up. It’s my fault Aamon wants to kill you, and Micah is mad about that.”
I narrowed my eyes. Neither of them ever gave me the same answer.
Always these half truths, these vague statements tied in complicated knots.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I argued.
“Yes it does.”
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry or scream. Mason’s brown eyes lingered on mine, searching for something, as my mind contorted itself. He knew I didn’t believe him, so it couldn’t have been acceptance he was hoping to seek out in my irises.
Something else. Weakness? Naivety? Hope?
The small set of secrets I’d managed to keep out of his grasp so far?
My thoughts folded and tangled, forming little chain links in my skull, like the kind you make in elementary school with construction paper for each holiday.
All the links were messy, though, connecting in the wrong ways.
Not just in a straight line, but in a net of confusion and hatred and want and need.
So instead of laughing or crying or screaming, I launched myself at him, wrapping my legs around his torso, my arms around his neck, turning my head to kiss the side of his throat.
Mason stumbled backward a half step, his hands instantly grabbing me, holding my body to his.
“Fuck me,” I murmured, sighing against his skin.
I’d long since given up trying to understand the way my brain worked, the way my emotions progressed. They’d never make sense.
“Of course.” His hands massaged my ass.
He walked briskly to his bedroom and dropped me on the bed, his dick already visibly hard in his boxers. Nothing was ever easy with Mason, but this was the closest we ever got to it. Just sex. Just fucking. In a bed, with only the two of us. No guns or water or other men listening from upstairs.
But this shit wouldn’t last—didn’t last.
He wouldn’t be satisfied like this, and neither would I. Not forever.
Whatever wires that’d gotten crossed in both of our brains needed more. The more was the danger that would inevitably wreck us in the end. Everything with Mason was deeper than I really wanted to think about, and I didn’t know exactly when that’d happened. When I’d slipped so far.
The first day I met him. That’s when.
Mason bent over me and buried his face in my chest, inhaling deeply, lowering himself down my body and groaning into my t-shirt.
He pushed the hem up over my chest, dragging his lips along my stomach, then the curve of my breast. I tipped my head back, eyes closing, skin tingling, lips falling open on a soft moan.
He fucked me hard, until both of us were sweating and I knew his scent had infused itself in my every pore, then he came all over my back—as if he needed to mark his territory any more than he already was.
As if I wasn’t already letting him fuck me stupid, face down on his bed, mindlessly panting and desperately arching, coming harder only because I knew Micah was going to know I’d done this.
I’m so fucked up.
Per Mason’s request, I didn’t shower his scent off of me before we left for campus. I was perversely grateful he’d told me not to, so I could blame it all on him instead of my own twisted mind.
We arrived at Blackpine’s campus and Mason parked, not listening to a word of my protest as he started walking me to the chemical engineering building.
“You can leave me here,” I pleaded at the entrance to Stanton.
“Yeah, no. I’m walking you all the way to his classroom. I’m already here.”
“You should piss on me. That would be less obvious,” I grumbled as Mason followed me through the glass doors into the building.
The way he referred to the lecture hall as his classroom grated on me; it was in his tone.
Felt like he was disrespecting it in some backwards way.
Letting me know he thought this pursuit of chemical engineering I shared with Micah was stupid or insignificant.
“You’d like that?” Mason draped an arm over my shoulders.
“No. Absolutely not.”
I increased my pace, walking quickly through the hallways, until I reached the lecture hall.
Through the small window cut into the door, I could see Micah standing behind the desk at the front, his eyes focused on his laptop.
The weight of Mason’s arm pressed down on my shoulders, adding to the constant heaviness of my guilt.
Shrugging Mason’s arm off me, I pulled the door open. Micah looked over immediately, spotting me first, then Mason standing behind me. His expression darkened.
But he didn’t do anything other than turn his focus back on the screen.