kissed me; we clashed in the middle somewhere, me arching up and him leaning down. I didn’t want gentleness; I wanted him , raw and punishing like those painful days after he’d abandoned me.
The thought renewed the anger in me and I shoved his leather jacket off his shoulders until it hit the floor, my meaning to him explicitly clear.
Mason tucked both hands under my thighs and picked me up. I wrapped my legs around his waist and we stumbled, my back hitting the wall beside the calendar with a crack.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered against me.
I bit his bottom lip. “Shut up.”
I couldn’t bear to hear it, gripping the back of his neck and devouring his mouth again, rolling my hips as he ground me back against the wall. I felt his cock stiffening in his jeans and tried my hardest to focus on that, to lose myself in just the physical . The alternative was too terrifying to contemplate. I tried to cling to my fury and I couldn’t—it kept slipping through my fingers like fine sand.
Between us, I wrestled off his t-shirt and started attacking his buttons and zipper. Mason was always a strong young man, throwing around hay bales on the Fosters’ ranch all weekend long and clearing plates at the diner, but now his muscles stood out sharp under his tanned skin, shifting as he held me up so effortlessly.
I knew beyond a doubt that he wouldn’t drop me; it was absurd that the pure instinct to trust him still ran so subconsciously deep.
“Taryn,” he gasped, as I palmed his cock within the suffocating space between our bodies.
“You missed me, huh?” I asked sharply, stroking him quickly, hard. God, I’d missed him ; I ached between my legs, the dull press of him there torturous.
“More than you would believe right now.”
I shook my head, so torn between wanting to hear his sincerity and wanting this to be the last time, the closure I so desperately needed.
“Then show me,” I demanded.
His expression turned determined, a small smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth—dammit, he had me. Heat flooded all through my body at that familiar roguish smirk.
The first time I met him he was wearing that smirk.
No, I couldn’t think of that. I couldn’t allow that to cloud my feelings.
He hauled me up against him, securing me in his arms, before turning and propping me against the breakfast island in the middle of the kitchen.
Mason’s fingers hooked into my pajama shorts, peeling them and my panties slowly down my thighs. I spread my legs, a moan caught in my breath, and he sunk a hand into my hair and kissed me, soft and wet and endlessly thorough.
He leaned his forehead against mine. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop it,” I choked, dizzy on the taste and anticipation, the warm air of the kitchen against my exposed lower half.
He cupped his palm between my legs, rough skin against my clit and fingertips teasing gently through my folds. “Stop this?”
“Absolutely not that.”
“I can’t stop apologizing. I won’t.”
His eyes were fierce, pupils dilated. He meant it— God, how was I supposed to cope with that? He was supposed to be cold and aloof and wanting nothing but a quick fuck, leaving no doubt in my mind that we were all better off without him. I didn’t know what to do with this version of him, so eager to make me believe his regrets.
I ran a hand across his bare shoulders, his skin dampening with sweat, and tried to arch into his stubbornly teasing palm, desperate for him to do something .
“You’re so damn hot like this,” he told me roughly.
Ditto, I thought, his dark expression so intently focused on me, his cock hard in the V of his open fly. I wanted more of it, to show him what else the years had changed, and I tugged off my shirt to expose my breasts, completely naked now and leaning back on my elbows, splayed out for him to see.
Maybe this was a punishment too, letting him see what he’d been missing all these years.
He swallowed, his tongue wetting his lower lip. The