Page 83

He drops his belt and pets my welted and flaming skin gently with one hand, while the other slides around my thigh to slip between my legs.

“Ah, my brave kitten.” His voice drips with thick satisfaction. “So wet and fierce and so fucking gorgeous.” He leans over me and aligns his rough cheek against mine. “Are you ready for your reward?”

My whole body trembles. “Yes, sir. Please, sir. Now.”

He slams into me, the force of his possession mashing both my knees against the vanity. The hand in my hair moves to cup one breast. He yanks on the nipple as he pistons, hard and fast and devastating.

Within a dozen thrusts, I’m cresting toward the edge. I cry out, and he stops.

“No!Oh, God… Please, sir.”

I’m ready to commit murder when he pulls out of me, but he yanks me about and sets my ass on top of the vanity. The cool surface soothes me, but the action of pulling myself forward and parting my thighs wide to receive him is tough on my ravaged skin. Yet I’ll endure that, and worse, just to feel Mason deep inside me.

I gasp when he lifts me clean off the vanity and impales me on his cock.

I throw my arms around his neck, ready to die with happiness. “Yes!Thank you, sir.”

“Jesus. You fucking destroy me,” he growls against my ear as he plunges me up and down on his steely erection.

“I’m coming. Oh, I’m coming!” A hazy thought that I should be quiet fleets through my head, but it melts under the furnace of release surging through me.

“Do it, baby. Come with me,” he commands, before he takes my mouth in a searing kiss.

I let go and let him catch me when my body loses all effort to remain upright. I lay my head on his chest and absorb the sound of his pounding heart.

We’re still shuddering and twitching in each other’s arms when three loudbloopsfrom my phone announce incoming emails. I flinch and try to hide the premonition of doom that skates over my skin, but I fail miserably as I’m plunged into icy shockwaves teeming with dread and fear.

Mason’s finger slides under my chin and tugs my head up. He scrutinizes my faces for several intense heartbeats before he turns to where the phone is lit up like a macabre Christmas ornament.

“What’s going on, kitten?” he asks, his voice once again deceptively soft.

I shake my head, doubting my ability to form words just yet. Or ever.

“We’re going to leave here right now and return to the yacht,” he says with another slow, mind-bending kiss. His voice is almost conversational, but I’m not fooled by the steel framing his tone. “Once we’re there, you’re going to explain to me why you jump and look like your worst nightmare comes to life each time your email pings.”

23

KEELY

I’m not going to tell him. Of course I’m not.

If anyone deserves to know what happened to me six years ago, what shaped my life, it should be Bethany. Maybe she doesn’t know it, but while she’s been leaning on me through the shit in her life, I’ve been leaning on her.

Her needing me has saved me more times than I can ever tell her. Because while I concentrated on her, helping her get over the super-douche ex who left her for another man, and the tribulations of dealing with Zach Savage’s life before he met her, I’ve efficiently distanced myself from dealing with my own shit. Now she’s found her rock-steady happy, she’s more than strong enough to deal with whatever issues I bring to her.

So, by rights, she deserves first spot at my confession table.

But the moment we walk into Mason’s suite, the weight of burden is suddenly too much to bear. I want relief from that weight. I want to ball it up and dump it, even if it’s into a near stranger’s lap. He might judge me, most likely condemn me. But I’ll be selfishly lighter, less of a festering wound.

“Keely?”

His tone is a cattle prod that demands a reaction. I put my clutch down, minus my phone, which he has in his pocket, and turn. I raise my hand to push back my hair, and I smell him on me. He’s imprinted on me as indelibly as the welts I can feel on my ass. He’ll fade with time, just like the marks on my skin. But for now, he’s a reality I can’t ignore.

And I don’t want to.

“You want me to tell you something I’ve never told another human being, not even the people who brought me into this world. Why?”

He watches me as he shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it slowly over the back of the sofa. “Because you’ve given me control over you, and you wouldn’t have unless a part of you trusts me not to hurt you or use anything you say against you.”