Price of a Kiss (Forbidden Men 1)

“No.” I shook my head. I needed to get him as far away from me—and therefore as far away from Jeremy—as possible before Jeremy realized who Mason really was. I took a step back. “No, I need to get to my next class.”

Mason—damn him for caring so much—wasn’t about to let me go anywhere by myself. “Reese.” He grasped my arm. “Where?” he asked so quietly, only I could hear. He didn’t even move his lips as he spoke.

Before I could answer—not that I was really

going to tell him where Jeremy was—a familiar, super creepy arm slithered around my waist.

Jeremy’s potent aftershave gagged me as he tightened his grip.

“There’s my Reese’s Pieces,” he murmured in my ear, cuddling in close. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, baby.”

My entire body went rigid against his, and I could only imagine how white my face was as I gaped up at Mason.

I decided right then and there, I’d never seen him truly mad before. His jaw popped before he turned his attention to Jeremy and looked pointedly at the other man’s arm wrapped around me.

Jeremy hitched his chin in greeting. “So, you’re one of Reese’s professors, huh? You look kind of young to be a teacher.”

“That’s because I’m not,” Mason answered, his voice hard and tight. When he jerked his bag off his shoulder and tossed it to the floor by his feet, both Jeremy and I glanced down at it in confusion.

Neither one of us saw the fist that came streaking out of nowhere.

But seriously, Mason hitting Jeremy in the jaw was flat out amazing. He moved so fast, I had no warning until the slap of flesh and crunch of nose cartilage made me scream out a startled yelp. Jeremy’s grip left me, and he toppled over backward, landing on his ass in the middle of the hallway.

“You hit him,” I said in utter shock, blinking at Jeremy on the floor before I looked up at Mason with the same stunned gaze. “I can’t believe you just hit him.”

That hadn’t been in my plans at all. But I liked this new turn of events. A lot.

“He tried to kill you,” Mason argued with me as if he thought my shock was from disapproval. “Hell, yes, I hit him.”

I gawked a moment longer before I shook my head. “But that was just so…cool.”

Mason’s proud grin was instant. His eyes flashed with heat and he stepped toward me as if he wanted to do a little celebratory kissing.

But, of course, simply hitting the bad guys never kept them down.

One second, my wonderful, amazing, spider-killing, stalker-punching, ex-gigolo soul mate was shifting toward me, looking like he wanted to take me against the wall of the school’s hallway. The next, he noticed something on the floor. His face contorted in horror, and he shoved me—yes, shoved me—aside before he dove on top of Jeremy.

I stumbled into the wall, taken aback. When I steadied myself enough to focus on the two guys rolling across the floor in a tangle of arms and legs, I was so shocked to watch them actually wrestling I didn’t see what they were wrestling for until someone yelled, “Gun!”

Pandemonium reigned. Girls screamed. People scattered. And a stampede ensued. I was jostled back against the wall as a horde of students torpedoed past me. Crying out Mason’s name in fear for his life, I fought the flow of fleeing traffic to reach him.

God, I was so stupid. I should’ve known Jeremy would be armed and dangerous. And since his knife hadn’t done the trick the last time he’d gone after me, he’d pulled out the big guns this round—literally. Okay, honestly, it was kind of a small handgun he and Mason were fighting over. But I’m sure it still had the capacity to kill a person just as dead as a big gun could.

As soon as a path cleared for me to shove away from the wall, I scrambled toward the wrestling, grunting, swearing men on the floor. No one else had jumped in to assist Mason, so I decided I would, even though my heart was pounding in my chest.

But they were moving so much, constantly struggling to best the other, I had no idea how to help without getting in the way.

About to have a conniption fit, I cried out Mason’s name.

Big mistake.

My hysterical voice took his attention away from the psycho under him, and he glanced my way…just as the gun went off.

CHAPTER THIRTY

I paced the corridor of the hospital, ready to crawl out of my own skin. I hated waiting.

Why was this taking so long?