“Tell me again,” he grunted like I was fueling him.
“You have me.” One hand clawing his back, the other fisted the sheets. “I’m yours, Mason,” I panted. “Only yours.”
As if possessed by my words, Mason growled and sank himself with a painful pleasure inside me, filling me completely then pulling out, leaving just his tip throbbing between my walls before plunging in again. He kept his eyes pinned to me as he repeated the torturous stroke, over and over till I erupted to orgasm beneath him, trembling under his weight. Mason cursed under his breath as his cock jerked inside me. Then with a deep, battered groan, he came, filling my delirious body with the satisfying heat of his pleasure.
Though we lay half-awake in each others arms for an hour, I eventually fell asleep on his chest, stirring only hours later when it was morning but still dark out. I could tell from the sound of his breath that Mason was asleep, but as if sensing me, he rumbled awake moments later. A strip of moonlight lit his face as he watched me set my alarm. Then he tipped my chin up and gazed at me. “Going back to sleep now?”
“Yes. Will you be here when I wake up in the morning?” Once upon a time, the question would have been out of fear that he’d decided our night together was a mistake. Now, it was solely because we were back in the real world, both of us due to be at work in barely four hours.
Wrapping his arms tighter around me, Mason blinked, the blue of his eyes gleaming out like stars behind those heavy lids. “I will. Will you?”
“Yes.”
Through his sleepiness, he gave me a crooked smile. “Will you be here the morning after?”
“I can be.”
“After that?”
I grinned up at him in the quiet of the night. “If you want me to be.”
“I want you to be,” he murmured huskily, the sound of his groggy voice striking that odd sense of home inside me again. Melting into his hard body, I breathed out with content so good it felt almost unfair.
“Then I’ll be here,” I whispered, closing my eyes as he kissed the top of my head and drifted slowly back asleep.
*
In the morning, when I awoke, Mason still lay stretched out beneath me. One arm stretched over his head, the other held me on top of him, so protective in its grasp that I couldn’t stir without waking him. With a stretch and a rumble, Mason smiled but to my charmed delight, his eyes remained closed and he continued sleeping for just a little longer. It gave me the time to study him. Imagine waking up to this every morning, I smirked to myself. Once upon a time, I’d woken in this bedroom and thought those words with a rueful envy of whichever girl would someday get to do that.
That day wasn’t even long ago. But I couldn’t count exactly how many passed since. With some people, apparently, life just happened faster. But I imagined it did for a reason – to make up for the missteps, all the wrong choices when faced with a fork in the road. I had obviously chosen incorrectly at least once before. But with Mason, I’d redirected my life. It was a long road over a short time, but I’d finally found myself in what was undeniably the right place.
And I couldn’t deny that as Mason awoke to simply gaze at me with those eyes I could stare into forever.
I worked for this prize. I climbed a hundred mountains and fell ninety-nine times. It was rough but now that I was here with a man I loved with every ounce of me, I had a new mantra.
No regrets.
Not even one.
Epilogue
One Year Later
I was running late for work but I decided last minute that I’d be a little boastful today and wear the diamond necklace Mason had given me back when we were still… whatever we were. More than twelve months into our true relationship and it was literally still a daily effort to refrain from shouting, “Good God, I have the sexiest boyfriend on Earth!” The compulsion came randomly – while browsing groceries with Mason, strolling hand-in-hand on the sidewalk with him or simply sitting next to him in front of our TV. That this man was mine, and that we loved each other the way that we did – the fact had yet to become remotely boring to me. There were some delightfully mundane parts of our days together now, like brushing our teeth side by side in the morning and trying to pick out a movie at night, but still, I was amazed by us. Grateful for us. For him.
So I told myself I deserved to slightly brag today and wear my diamond necklace to just a regular day at work.
Mason lifted his eyebrows when he saw me come downstairs into the kitchen. He was fully dressed for work and sporting a sexy stubble that gave me instant grabby hands.
“Damn it, I love it,” I groaned as I ran my fingertips along his beautiful jaw line. Mason watched with a grin as I then dropped my hands to straighten his tie. It never actually needed straightening. I just liked touching it every morning.
“If you love it then why the ‘damn it’?”
“Because I’m running late and I can’t pounce on you right now.”
“Like running late has ever stopped you in the past ten months of living together.”
I sighed. “I know, but I need to stop taking advantage of Lori’s kindness. And she always just knows when I go to work freshly…”