Page 94 of House of Payne

For the first time in months, the ache between my legs isn’t distracting.

Nor do I feel a burning desire in the pit of my stomach.

Now, there’s more of a dull roar in the back of my head that I just can’t shake.

Goddamn Mason Payne.

Once should’ve been enough.

Once should’ve cured me of the insane need to feel him inside of me, and it should’ve shaken some sense back into me.

I’m annoyed that it hasn’t.

I should be back in my room, figuring out a way to make things right with Noah and my dad.

But the thought of leaving the East Wing and everything that happened between us right away doesn’t sit well with me. I can smell Mason on the sheets, and it makes me want to curl up against the pillow and burrow my face into it.

Why do I want to relive the last night over and over?

Wave after wave of confusion rises within me.

Why don’t I feel guilty?

Hours after my conversation with Noah, I raced into Mason’s bed.

I should be horrified, but I don’t have an ounce of guilt, which scares me even more.

I don’t know what it says about me.

All the time I’d spent fighting Mason and staying away from him, and all those nights I denied myself release, can’t have been for nothing. I’m relieved to realize our chemistry wasn’t just in my head, but I also wish that was the case.

Because I don’t know what to do with myself now.

I don’t know how to process anything that’s happened.

And I don’t know where to go from here.

Or why I keep replaying how it felt to be touched by Mason, how the feel of his hot mouth against my skin made me abandon all my defenses, and how I relished his body pressed tightly against mine.

Mason hadn’t just been inside of me.

He’d seen right through me without flinching.

Every inch, and every dark desire I hadn’t known existed.

With practiced ease and an infuriating smirk, he’d drawn it all out of me, and now that I was lying there in the cold light of day, I didn’t know what to do with the side of me he’d uncovered.

How was I supposed to shove her back into the darkness?

How was I meant to act like last night was a mistake when everythingin me is telling me it wasn’t?

And how the hell am I meant to act like I don’t want more?

Jesus, look at you. One night of good sex, and you’re ready to abandon all your beliefs. Have you forgotten who you were fucking? Come on, London. He wasn’t that good.

Except he was.

He was so much better than anything I imagined, and that’s not the worst part.