Page 104 of Freaks Of Nature

My fingers twist through his hair. I match the frenzied motion behind his kiss, his panting breaths, the growls and grunts as my nails scrape across his scalp.

I pour every ounce of myself into our kiss, into his hunger, healing the cracks that threaten to shatter him. I give him this last time. I don’t care how rough he is. I don’t care about the marks he leaves on my skin with his hands or his teeth.

A fist in my tangled hair, his mouth scotches a path along the front of my throat, and his pace accelerates. He hooks his other arm around the back of my knee, pounding into me at a deeper angle as he shifts my hips and folds me.

“You hate this?” Mason thrusts into me so hard and deep that black spots crowd my vision. “You hate how good it feels?”

Tears well in my eyes, but I can’t stop chasing the sparks that jolt through my womb with the slick suction. My orgasm peaks, and I know he can feel it.

“Tell me how much you fucking hate me, baby girl.”

My joints stiffen. My muscles quiver. My mouth opens, but the words choke in my throat as my arms wind tighter around his neck.

Idohate him. For coming back… for giving me this… for reminding me what I can never have with him. I can’t be the reason for them hating each other, and I blame him for forcing me into this role. But above all, I hate him for making me fall for him and ripping my heart out at the same time.

The dam breaks. A cry bursts from me, and my hips buck underneath him, milking him into me with every clenching pulse of my core.

Mason gives two more thrusts, then his own climax rushes him as violently as mine. He locks into me, crushing me in his hold.

His hips jerk. His groan vibrates up my throat where his open mouth lingers until the last heat of our ecstasy is extinguished by an icy touch of regret.

Mason removes himself from me, shifting his underwear back into place before my arms even unlink from him.

His dark eyes are downcast. “Youshouldhate me,” he says, his voice low and hoarse with emotion. “I’m not a good man… and an even worse brother.”

I sense some kind of inner torment behind his words fueled by self-loathing, but it doesn’t excuse his actions.

When he pulls away from me, I can’t hold the tears back any longer. With my vision blurred, I reach for the closest thing on my nightstand. My mind doesn’t even catch on to what it is before I strike him with it.

Mason’s head flings to the side with the delivered blow. He saw it coming, but he didn’t block it. He didn’t even flinch.

Blood wells above his left eye where the gash has opened back up. It’s deep enough he might need stitches.

Clutching the can-sized Bluetooth speaker, I’m in shock for a long moment, expecting him to lash out and strike back at me… but he doesn’t.

Mason pushes off the bed to leave, grabbing the sweatshirt beside him. I notice his eyes swing toward my mirror on his way out, like he’s recalling the words he wrote on it using my lip gloss.

My voice trembles. “Don’t you dare come back.”

Mace

My fingers clench around my sweatshirt.

WHAT FUCKING MESSAGE?

Em

Stretched out on my bed, I scroll through my meager social media feed for a distraction. I haven’t left the house all day and barely picked at the late lunch I cooked only to have a reason to get up.

I crawled back under the covers after a few bites.

Mason’s cologne clings to the sheets, and I’m utterly at odds with myself. I hate him, and yet I want him.

I never told him that I kept all his sketches tucked into the cover of one of the books on my shelf. I’m not sure why I kept them. As disturbing as they are, I couldn’t throw them out. I had the urge to guard them like a secret. A treasure. Not so much because they’re images of me, but because with each detail, he poured so much of himself into them. They hold pieces of him.

Fuck!

What if he’s right? What if I gave up my one chance to ever feel something more than lukewarm?