Resolution (Mason Family 5)

Dara stirs, pulling the edge of the sheet toward her chin. Her eyes are sleepy as she looks up at me.

I know the moment she realizes that she’s here. Her body stiffens, and her eyes go wide, but then she smiles and relaxes against me again.

Sweet fuck.

I close my eyes and pray for guidance.

“You aren’t asleep?” she asks in a yawn. Her arm takes its spot across me again. “I thought you were out before me.”

“Insomnia and I are old friends.”

She grins against my side. “What keeps you up at night?”

“Oh, the usual.” I glance down at her. “Just every wrong decision that I’ve made in the last thirty-some-odd years.”

She laughs. The sound whispers across my skin, easing some of my tension.

I stroke the middle of her back while I tell myself I’m not going to. So much for self-restraint.

“Wanna see something?” I ask her.

“Wade.” She rolls onto her back and nearly glares at me. “While I have thoroughly enjoyed myself tonight, I cannot possibly go another round with you and still have legs to walk out of here tomorrow.” She glances at the clock. “Or in a few hours since it’s already tomorrow.”

I chuckle. “I like your line of thinking, but I was actually wanting to show you something in my office.”

This gets her interest. She scoots up in the bed. The linen drops from her clutches and pools at her waist.

In the soft moonlight streaming in the windows, she’s the epitome of beauty. Her skin is soft and glowing. Her breasts are full and heavy, hanging in a perfect teardrop. And the way she looks at me? Fuck.

I stop myself from reaching over and touching her because I know she doesn’t want that. She told me. And there’s no way in hell that I’m about to make her think that she’s here just to touch.

She’s so much more than that.

Get up, Wade.

I climb out of bed and head to the closet. I slip on a pair of sleep pants, and despite being perfectly content with her walking around my house nude, I find a long Alexander Industries T-shirt that I got from my old friend Cane a while back. I never wear it.

I definitely won’t now.

“Here,” I say, tossing the shirt onto the bed. “If you’d like to refuse it, I’m perfectly fine with that.”

She grins, slipping the material over her shoulders. “Not that you haven’t seen everything that I have to offer, but I’d appreciate it if we could pretend that I have some modesty left to protect.”

I offer her a hand. “You do.”

I help her off the mattress and onto the floor. My intentions are to lead her into the hallway. But once I see her doe eyes looking up at me—her flushed cheeks and lips swollen from me ravaging them—all intentions are out the door.

Pulling her against my chest, I grin. “There’s one spot that I haven’t explored yet.” I grab both of her ass cheeks in my hands and give them a rough squeeze.

She yelps, her eyes going wide. “No. No, no, no, no, no. No.”

I snicker.

“Not funny, Wade.” Her laugh is strained as she swats me away. “Just the thought of … that.” She gulps. “It makes me all …”

She fans her cherry-red face and exhales.

“You know, I was just kidding, but now that I see your reaction—I’m into it,” I say.

“Be into whatever you want, but you are not going to be into this ass.”

She strolls out of my bedroom like she knows exactly where she’s going. I follow her, appreciating that ass.

If only things could be different.

“Down the stairs,” I say as we pad into the hall.

Light pours into the house thanks to all of the glass I had installed when I rehabbed the place ten years ago. Dara takes the steps carefully, her unfamiliarity with them obvious, and then steps onto the hardwood below.

She looks at me. “Now where?”

“To the left.”

She pivots and starts through the formal sitting room that I never use and should really revamp. Then she comes to another hallway.

“The only door on the left,” I tell her.

We make our way past pictures of structures that I’ve designed, a sketch my father helped me with in college, and a photograph of Gramps’s old homeplace where he was born.

She flips on the light in my office.

I walk around her to my desk. She stands beside me while I pull out a sketch pad. I hope she doesn’t notice the slight tremble of my hand as I lift the cover.

And there it sits. The reason I haven’t been getting much sleep.

Or one of them.

“What’s this?” she asks quietly.

She peers over my shoulder at the drawings I etched out over the past two nights.

“It’s … insomnia.” I shrug.

“Funny. It looks strangely like a house.”

I look up to see her grinning.

“Scoot,” she says.