Page 5

Mason carried his prize in his arms as he crossed the perfectly manicured lawn belonging to Blake and passed into a garden of wildflowers and homegrown vegetables. Beyond the garden he saw his home, the rough-hewn timber lodge with a large secondary building behind it that housed his carpentry workshop. She shifted in his arms, her gaze taking in the world around them, and he tried to see his home through Hazel’s eyes.

The last week’s storm clouds hadn’t completely vanished from the horizon. All around them everything was a vibrant green. That was his favorite color. Green was life, it was beauty, it was everything that gave a person hope that all would be well after a storm. Hazel’s eyes held beautiful flecks of green mixed with brown, and he loved that green the best. He wondered if Hazel liked green as much as he did.

Light dappled him and Hazel as they walked beneath the shelter of the ginkgo trees that surrounded his estate. It had taken years to grow them to a decent height, but their leaves in the fall would cover the grass with a blanket of pure gold. Hazel silently studied her surroundings, and Mason would have given anything to hear her thoughts. Did she like the way he’d structured his gardens and the woods around the house, creating a wildness blended with planned beauty?

He climbed the steps of his porch and set her down on her feet. She wore no shoes, but he didn’t worry. He had sanded and polished this deck himself. It was utterly smooth. Mason opened the door and gestured for her to go inside. She went ahead of him, and he stared at the tumble of reddish-auburn hair that trailed down her back. His hand flexed as he resisted the urge to grab her hair and use it to spin her into his arms to steal a kiss. That would of course lead to a lot more than a kiss, and he wanted to show her that what he wanted with her wasn’t just sex. She rubbed her arms and glanced around his home before turning back to him as he closed the door.

“It’s so beautiful. It’s warm and cozy, even though it’s big,” she replied.

“You like it?”

She nodded, a delicate blush blossoming on her cheeks. His heart stuttered. He’d already had her in his arms and in a bed, but this... having her in his home? It touched something deep within him, like she’d cast a stone upon the still lake of his soul and now he was feeling the ripples of her presence. Mason rarely let anyone into his home. It was his private sanctuary. He’d never brought any woman here before. He hadn’t dated anyone seriously in his life. He had spent nights with women in expensive hotel rooms, or at their homes, but he was always gone the next day. This was different. Because this was Hazel. How many times had Blake told him about this woman while they’d shared beers and fished on their lake, or while they’d quietly sipped whiskeys while talking about a particularly long week of work?

Hazel was always on his best friend’s mind, and now she was burned into Mason’s soul. Perhaps he should be afraid, should run, but he always listened to his heart rather than his head, and his heart beat a steady rhythm to this woman’s name.

Hazel. Hazel. Hazel.

“Where do you work?” Hazel asked as she turned her back on him to look around at the room.

Mason’s gaze strayed to her ass, and he admired openly how cute she looked in Blake’s dress shirt and boxers.

“Follow me.” Mason led her through the house and into a glassed-in walkway he’d built that connected the workshop and his lodge. He unlocked the door to the workshop and went in first, hitting the light switch. The main floor was three thousand square feet, and dozens of Edison lights illuminated the various projects he was working on. There was a beautiful four-poster bed for a fashion heiress living in Milan, a dresser for a famous architect from Seattle, two matching desks for a married couple who ran their own business and had recently invested in some private Caribbean resorts, and a boat for a client in Maine who liked to sail. The last project he was currently working on was a cradle. Hazel moved through the warehouse, admiring each piece and asking him questions.

“How did you discover you liked working with wood?” she asked when they reached the dresser.

“It’s kind of a silly story,” he said as he rubbed the back of his neck, heat filling his face.

“Then tell me. The best stories are always a little bit silly.” She said this with a serious face, but mischief glinted in her eyes and put him at ease.

“My sisters had a dresser; it was an old wood thing my mom purchased at a neighbor’s garage sale. We didn’t have much room in our trailer, but we did have a space for something to put the girls’ clothes in. Well, the bottom drawer always got stuck. It had warped over time from exposure to humidity, which wasn’t unusual.” He remembered all too easily—the frustrating summer days when he’d knelt in front of that dresser, his little sisters clustered around him waiting for him to wiggle the drawer free so they could find T-shirts or shorts. How he’d hated that dresser and all the grief it caused him until he figured out how to fix it. He’d tugged and tugged and almost broken the drawer, and his eye had twitched for weeks whenever he’d looked at the damned thing.

“A lot of people don’t use the AC in the summer if they can survive without it to save money. That stuck drawer drove us all crazy. One afternoon, I went to my school’s computer lab and researched online what to do if drawers were stuck like that. I found a bunch of tutorials about using sandpaper and oil. I used my meager savings from my after-school job to buy supplies to fix the drawer. That made me feel like a hero, to walk into that hardware store and buy what I needed to fix the drawer. It was the first time I felt capable of fixing something, and I’ve been chasing that feeling of fixing things and building things ever since. After I bought sandpaper and oil, I wedged the drawer out, sanded the warped areas, and oiled the whole thing up. Most dressers have metal sliders that are pre-oiled now, but this one was so old that it was made entirely of wood.” Feeling that smooth, sanded drawer beneath his palm when he’d followed the training instructions he’d found online had changed him. He’d made something broken work again. And something that he hadn’t realized had been broken within him suddenly felt... mended.

“Wait, how old were you when this happened?” she asked.

“Twelve.” Mason knew what she would say next. She was a lawyer, and a good one at that.

“But you couldn’t work legally at twelve.”

“But I did... sort of. I helped out a neighbor who was on disability. He paid me in cash for chores like lawn mowing and helping around the house. Obviously, only my mom knew about the work I was doing. We needed the money.”

“Oh.” Hazel’s eyes softened, not with pity but compassion, and he saw the flecks of green in her eyes deepen.

“Can you show me how to sand something?” she asked curiously as she stroked the edge of the desk they were standing next to with her slender fingers.

Mason took her hand in his, examining her fingers, and smiled. “I would be happy to.” Then he brushed his lips over her knuckles. He didn’t let go of her hand. It felt too good, too natural to hold her hand with his own. He led her toward the cradle. It was a sturdy design, elegantly carved with wild animals like deer, rabbits, and badgers as well as foxes, to give it a sort of woodland fairy-tale look to it. He wasn’t yet finished sanding the spindle, so he retrieved a piece of sandpaper from a packet nearby, wrapped it around the spindle, and gently moved the paper up and down, grinding it against the wood.

“Do it like that. You try.” He gave her a piece of her own sandpaper and reluctantly released her other hand. She mimicked what he had shown her, moving her hands with gentle motions but hard enough to sand the entire spindle.

“You’ll know when it’s finished because it’s smooth to your touch.”

She sanded for a minute or two in silence, her expression one of deep concentration.

“Do you... do you want children?” she asked.

“Kids?” The single word held a universe of questions as he spoke it.

“Yeah.” She didn’t look at him as she ran her fingers along the spindle, testing its smoothness.

“I do, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have them,” he said, watching her face closely to see her reaction.

“Why not?” She finally met his eyes.

Heat climbed his cheeks, not because he was embarrassed, but because he wasn’t used to talking about his deepest desires this openly. “Because any woman I would want that life with? I would want to share her with Blake. And that’s a complicated request for us to make of a woman.”

“Does Blake want children?” she asked, another blush betraying her.

“Yes.” He gave a breathy chuckle. “He feels the same about it as I do. We are a package deal. We want to share one woman between us.”

“That is complicated,” Hazel agreed. “But surely someone out there would agree to that, if they loved you both.”

Mason didn’t say anything more as she picked up a second piece of sandpaper and handed it to him. They sanded the cradle together for several long minutes in silence.

“So, Mr. Boy Scout, are you an expert on knots?” Hazel asked.

“Knots?” He brushed away dust from the spindles and set his sandpaper down.

“You know... to tie things up?” She gave him a meaningful look.

“Tie things up or tie you up?” Mason asked with a grin as he caught on to her game.

“I’ll give you one guess which,” she said, and Mason didn’t hesitate.

He snatched her up in his arms and threw her over his shoulder. He gripped the back of her legs with one arm and rested his other hand on her ass, giving it a light, possessive smack. She laughed and then shrieked as he carried her through the warehouse toward the sailboat. It was a small boat, and he’d turned it upside down to work on the hull, leaving the bottom of the vessel the perfect height to put a woman on top of. Hazel wriggled as he set her down on it, and he reached for a coil of nearby rope. It was a smooth rope of braided cotton, and as long as she didn’t tug on the knots too much, he guessed it wouldn’t hurt her wrists.

He wound the white rope around her wrists in a two-half hitch knot that could easily be undone with a tug on the right spot. Then he stretched her hands above her head and secured the other end of the rope to the opposite end of the boat, leaving her flat on her back on the newly waxed surface of the hull.

Hazel stared up at him as he leaned over her, grinning.

“My scoutmaster would be proud—that is one hell of a double hitch knot,” he said, nodding at her hands above her head. He pulled something out of his pocket, and her eyes widened and then narrowed at him.

This was going to be fun.

* * *

He had gagged her.

Mason had tied a strip of cloth around her head and put it between her lips. She could still easily scream, still make sounds, but just not talk clearly.

He leaned in close and toyed with the edge of the gag by her cheek. “If you’re wondering why I like this, it’s because I like hearing your muffled voice,” he whispered. “It reminds me of the fact that I caught you, little rabbit, and I’m going to fuck you right here.”

Oh God, he knew, they both knew, that she liked being chased and fucked. It was her deepest, darkest fantasy. Had Blake told him?

He stroked a fingertip down her chin to her throat and then along her collarbone.

“That’s a nice shirt, but Blake can afford to buy a new one.” He curled his fingers in the cloth and tore at it.

Buttons flew everywhere as Mason peeled the dress shirt open, baring her breasts to him. He stared at her a long moment, his eyes glowing with desire.

Hazel breathed hard as her own lust went into overdrive.

He bent his head and sucked one of her nipples into his mouth. Her body arched off the smooth hull, the pull at the flesh of her breast zinging straight to her pussy. She moaned around the gag and tried to breathe as his other hand slid under the elastic of her boxers to cup her mound. She strained against the ropes, her muscles pulling, her thighs parting to give him better access. His fingers stroked her labia and abruptly stopped and smacked the delicate flesh up near her clit. She squeaked as his head jerked free of her nipple, leaving it shiny and cold in the air of the workshop.

“Naughty girl.” His growl was low, but the light in his eyes promised she would like being called that as much as she liked being Blake’s good girl.

She whimpered as his fingers stroked along her pussy again, rubbing through the wetness of the folds and teasing her. Her bare feet tried to find purchase on the floor, and she widened her legs and angled upward to wrap her legs around him, but he stepped back.

She grunted in frustration, and he chuckled. “Such a naughty girl.”

She started to aim a glare at him but lost her mind when he hooked his fingers in the waistband of the boxers and pulled them off her legs. Before she could process her own nakedness, he lifted her legs and spread them around his hips, her wet core pressed against the roughness of the zipper of his jeans. Her nipples pebbled into hard points and her stomach tightened in anticipation as she waited for him to do what he would with her prone, primed body.

He leaned over her, his heat tingling her skin, and licked his lips. “Good girls get eaten out. But naughty girls...”

She squirmed as he dragged his eyes down her body, keenly aware of the hardness that pushed against his fly, nestled between her legs. She scooted forward slightly to better feel his cock, and he chuckled.

“Naughty girl, then. In that case...” He lifted her body a little and gently rolled her over so that she lay face down on the smoothly waxed hull of the boat.

Smack!His palm lightly connected with her buttocks as he spanked her. The smack hurt, but it sent a flood of desire following straight afterward. The heat of his palm, the way he jerked her body, moving it where he wanted so he could punish her better, only melted her inside that much quicker. Something dark and secretly wicked within her liked being spanked, liked being punished like this for teasing him and Blake. She loved pushing against their boundaries and still being safe, even if she got spanked for it.

“Ten ought to do it,” he said, then he gave her nine more spankings, each a little harder. By the end she was hot all over and dripping for him.

When he turned her back over to face him, he once more bent his head to her breasts, nuzzling them before nipping at a sensitive peak. She let out a cry through the gag as pleasure zinged straight to her core. The ropes pulled against her wrists as she struggled, but she didn’t mind. She could handle a little bruising, especially if she had done it herself in her own excitement. Her body quivered as she arched her back, offering more of herself to Mason. He groaned and buried his face in the valley of her breasts as he drew in a deep breath.

“You are the only woman I’ve ever met who makes me lose control. I’ve taken women to bed before and have never felt so mindless as I do now.” He lifted his head to look up at her. “You do this to me, Hazel. Only you.” He kissed his way down to her mound. Before, he had handled her roughly, but this time his lips and mouth were sensitive and gentle. He licked and kissed slowly, taking his time tasting her. Each flick of his tongue on her tender, sensitive flesh was too much. She was grateful for the gag because knowing her cries were muffled allowed her to be as loud as she desired. Mason’s tongue circled the bud of her clit before he drew it between his lips. She jerked tighter against the soft cotton ropes that held her prisoner.

“Beg for me, sweetheart,” Mason growled as he reached up to tease the gag out of her mouth.

She sucked in a deep breath, about to say she would never beg a man for anything, but when he looked at her with those burning brown eyes, darkened with sensual secrets, she found herself surrendering.

“Please, Mason,” she begged.

“Please, sir,” he corrected. “If you want gentle lovemaking, you call me Mason, and I’ll give you what you want. But if you want me to wreck you, you’ll call me sir, understand?” He slid one finger inside her, pumping lightly to remind her of what she really wanted.

“Please... sir.” She lifted her hips, and Mason’s face lit with a wicked smile.

“As you wish, sweetheart.” He unfastened his jeans, freed his cock, and within seconds he was thrusting deep, so hard that she cried out at the sudden pressure. He leaned over her, bracing his hands on the boat before he suddenly caught her hands and held them. Even though she was still tied up, his fingers curled around her wrists. Trapping her only heightened the feeling of helplessness in this situation, and she loved it. He moved his other hand to grasp her hip, holding her steady as he withdrew and drove deep again. They both gasped at the same time as he filled her and stretched her.

“So goddamn tight,” he murmured against her parted lips, kissing her. It was one of the best kisses of her life. She let go of all thoughts, all fears, all worries. There was nothing beyond this kiss and the motion of their bodies joining. She felt an ancient rhythm of two hearts and two bodies coming together as one. This was a man she could love—was loving in this moment—and that realization made her tremble and quake. She was losing the battle to guard her heart. Mason had just crumbled the walls of her fortress with one well-placed cannon shot.

Mason deepened the kiss, his mouth urgent on hers. He kissed her as if this might be the last time he would ever kiss her, and she returned it, tears stinging her eyes as her body began to fly. Sharp, almost painful pleasure ripped through her with the force of a tidal wave, drawing water back across the sands of her existence and pulling her out into the deep dark sea where she had no control anymore. She rocked on that ocean, Mason with her, his heat and his strength surrounding her like the rays of the late-summer sun. He kissed away her tears, murmured soft, sweet things to her, things she needed to believe, because if she didn’t, she would lose herself to the fears and anxiety outside him and this moment.

Mason brushed his lips over her cheek and drew a shaky breath against her skin.

“Blake may let you go, but not me, Hazel. I keep what’s mine. I love it and cherish it, and once it’s mine, it’s mine forever.” He lifted his face a little so their eyes could meet. He was still buried deep in her body, and yet despite his claim that she was his, she knew she was the one who could own him. All she had to do was take one step across the line and let her heart be open again. And that was terrifying.

Mason’s nose nuzzled hers before he gave her one more slow, tender kiss that was no less seductive than the ones that had come before. But this one held his heart in it. All she had to do was take it... if she was brave enough.

When he finally withdrew from her body and fixed his clothes, she missed the feel of being joined with him. He pulled on one end of the knotted ropes that bound her, and the bindings came loose. Then he removed the rope and lightly rubbed her wrists, examining them. There were faint red marks from her pulling, but she didn’t mind. His brows lowered and he frowned.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she said. “I like it a little rough with marks.” She thought of the marks left from Blake’s ring on her hip, when he’d gripped her hips tight while making love to her. She wasn’t exactly a masochist, but she did like the occasional proof of mind-blowing sex.

Mason pressed his lips to her skin in a reverent kiss before he helped her off the boat and lifted her up in his arms. He carried her back to his home and brought her straight to his bedroom. In some ways it was a lot like Blake’s, spacious and well decorated, but the style was vastly different. Where Blake’s room was subtle in tone and modern, Mason’s room fit with his love of the outdoors. A green-and-blue plaid coverlet lay across the sleigh bed, and moss-green walls created an earthy feel. Photographs of mountains and birch tree forests in large frames decorated the space.

Mason opened the closet door and pulled out a red-and-gray plaid flannel shirt. “Put this on.”

Then he gave her a fresh pair of boxers and showed her to the bathroom.

He left her alone for a few minutes to see to her needs, and when she emerged from the bathroom, he was waiting for her. Unlike Blake, who’d given her space, Mason simply leaned back against the bed and opened his arms. She went willingly to him. He held her tight, his arms banded around her and his lips buried in the crown of her hair.

“Don’t be afraid of this ... of me,” he murmured.

She wasn’t afraid of him, but rather of love. People who loved you could leave you, they could die, and what if something happened to him or Blake? How could she ever bear to lose one or both of them?

What if...

Those two words held a universe of possible heartbreak. It was so much safer to be alone, but what he and Blake promised her was too wonderful to resist for long. What would she choose when her seven days were up?

* * *

Blake watched the scene unfolding on his laptop. The security cameras in Mason’s workshop had notified him of movement. He hadn’t been surprised to see Hazel on her back, Mason between her thighs, fucking her hard. Blake wished he could be there, touching her, kissing her, but she needed to be alone with Mason, to learn about him and make up her mind about whether she wanted to be with him. Blake would have his own chance to convince her soon.

He curled his fingers and uncurled them, flexing his hands on his thighs as he considered what he would do to win Hazel’s love. Because the truth was, neither Mason nor he would allow her to leave when the week was over. So he had to find a way to show her she wanted them, both of them, forever.

As Mason carried Hazel in his arms and walked out of the frame, Blake slowly closed his laptop and steepled his fingers, staring into the distance and contemplating his next move in his seduction of Hazel Callahan.