The Price of Mason (Forbidden Men 10)

“Hmm.” She bit her lip, pleasure sparking in her gaze while she studied the wall I was leaning against as if picturing the whole thing in her mind. “That sounds…fun.”

Fuck, yes, it would be.

Just when I started to wonder if maybe she’d give in and take me up on the suggestion, she broke into a grin as if she’d been teasing me the entire time. “I guess since we’re friends and you’re not going to take me, I’ll give you that time and space you need then.”

I wanted to cry. I seriously wanted to sink to the floor and bawl.

Time and space was the last thing I craved. So when she took a big, deliberate step backward, away from me, I sighed in extreme disappointment but played along, tsking and shaking my head. “Evil, evil, evil.”

She shrugged, grinning mischievously. “Would you really have given me a freebie just now?”

“Just say the word,” I answered, meaning it with every fiber of my being.

Except she didn’t say the word. All she did was smile as if pleased with herself, and she nodded. “Cool.” Then she abandoned me there in the kitchen so she could fetch her purse from the table and disappear into the hallway, only to return with her phone she’d left on the floor when she’d called me during

Sarah’s seizure.

I fell into a chair to sit with my elbows resting on the tabletop, my face in my hands.

“I guess I’ll see you around,” she said softly.

I glanced up to watch her slip the phone into her purse. “Are you seriously going to walk out of here right now after I just confessed my soul to you, cool as a cucumber, without reciprocating at all?”

She blinked once, only to roll her eyes. “Mason Lowe,” she teased, ruffling my hair affectionately, “if you don’t know by now that I’m attracted as hell to you, you’re freaking blind.”

I shouldn’t have been relieved by that. It shouldn’t have made everything better. But it did.

“There,” I muttered. “Was that so hard to admit?”

The brat stuck her tongue out at me. “Good night, Hotness.”

Hotness? Was that her name for me? Her version of my Glowing Girl? I grinned and shook my head. Reese was definitely something else.

She started for the exit, and I watched her go. “’Night, Reese,” I whispered.

As soon as the door closed behind her, I rested my face back in my hands and blew out a long breath. But, fuck, this sucked. How could one quirky, carefree, childlike, express-every-emotion-she-felt-all-across-her-face girl get me so twisted up inside?

When I heard the back door squeak open, I surged to my feet, my breath catching. She had come back. She—

“So, Reese is the babysitter, huh?” Patricia said, slinking inside and leaning against the very bit of wall Reese had just backed me into.

I narrowed my eyes and pointed. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

“My house,” she said sweetly. “My name’s on the title, darling, not yours.”

With a snort, I glanced around the dilapidated kitchen. “Oh, you want to play the landlady card, huh? Then I have a whole list of repairs we need done around here.”

“Mason, Mason, Mason,” she sighed and slipped her hand up and down the wall behind her, right where I’d pressed my back only minutes ago, tainting the special memory I’d just made there with Reese. “We’ve already been over this. You know what you need to do in order to get those repairs done.”

“And you know that’s not ever happening again, not even if hell freezes over.”

Her pleasant expression dissolved, and she stepped away from the wall, narrowing her eyes. “What is your problem lately? Why are you resisting this so hard?”

“Why do you want it so bad?” I countered. “If you’re that damn horny, I can find you some willing schmuck who’d happily—”

“This has nothing to do with sex,” she cried passionately, which made me lift an eyebrow, because sex was the only thing she ever tried to get from me. Then she flushed slightly before frowning. “I tried others, but they’re just not you. They’re not as obedient, or respectful, or willing to learn.”

“I wouldn’t say I was ever willing,” I muttered, hating all her descriptions because I could honestly only argue the one. Sadly, the rest were true.