Price of a Kiss (Forbidden Men 1)

“Are you a student?” Mrs. Garrison asked, fishing a little too deeply for my taste.

Not wanting to upset the woman who owned Dawn, Sarah, and Mason’s home, I nodded. “Yeah. I attend Waterford.”

“With Mason,” she added.

Wow, she certainly liked to bring him up. That was kind of…really creepy.

“Umm…I guess,” I hedged. “We don’t have any classes together, though.”

“I see.”

I had no idea what she really saw. The entire conversation was growing way beyond my scope of understanding, so I shifted closer to my driver’s side door and found my car keys. “Well, it was nice to meet you.” I waved and smiled again.

“You too, Reese. Have a nice night.”

I didn’t realize until I was halfway home that she’d called me Reese, and I’d never told her my name.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Another week passed. Things between Mason and I stayed distant, and yet not. He still refused to sit with me at lunch, but we remained friends of a sort. After our talk on the night of Sarah’s seizure, our relationship morphed into friends-that-flirted status.

On Tuesday, I saw him across the courtyard while I was snacking on cheeseburger sliders and curly fries—both of which I’m sure he would’ve stolen if he’d been close enough—and everything inside me brightened. I straightened and waved. When he returned the wave, I patted the seat next to me and gave him an encouraging thumbs-up. He smiled but shook his head and kept walking.

I slumped back into doldrums land.

A second later, my phone buzzed with a text.

Still need some space to cool off.

Groaning, I typed back: These pesky horny guy urges are beginning to annoy me. See, told you I was going to steal that phrase.

Well they might go away faster if you stopped being so...you.

That did it. I was crazy about this guy. He could've told me to stop licking my lips, or tossing my hair, or wearing revealing clothes, or simply to stop being so hot. But he went after my personality. How was a girl supposed to resist that?

Too pleased not to turn playful, I set my phone on video mode and clicked record when I saw my own face reflected on the screen.

“Would you rather I be Eva instead?” I asked the phone aloud. Giving the best impersonation of my cousin as I could manage, I mimicked, “Good morning, Mason. Looking good today. What say we skip classes and have some...fun.” Then I toyed with the collar of my blouse and let the camera see me undo one button before I focused it on my face again and winked.

A minute after sending that bad boy off, he returned with: Need more cleavage please.

The ‘please’ part made me throw my head back and shout out a laugh. I typed, Perv, and almost as soon as I hit send, a text came back to me.

See, your laugh is exactly what's keeping me away, woman. I just want to kiss those lips and hoard that sound all to myself.

My breath caught in my throat. Suddenly the amount he’d told me he charged his customers seemed like a mere pittance. If he talked like that when he was on the clock, no wonder why he had such a lucrative business going. Damn it.

My throat was a little constricted and it was hard for me to draw in air because I felt so full of emotion. It took me a moment to realize he’d just admitted he’d seen me laugh.

Face zipping up, I glanced around, shocked to learn he was nearby.

Are you stalking me?

I'm sitting on the bench by the eagle statue. I thought you saw me.

When I looked, he lifted his hand. Rolling my eyes, I typed him a new message. Mason, you goober, just come sit by me already.

From where I sat, I saw him shake his head. Not yet. I need to get to class anyway.