Page 54 of Summer Lessons

“Yeah?”

“Don’t I get a kiss for bringing you dessert?”

Mason smiled into his harlequin face and some of the fear in his heart reknit itself into hope. Leaning carefully, he put his coffee down while Terry put the rest of the cookie down on the table in front of them. “God, yes.”

Sweet. His mouth tasted like coffee and cookies, and as Mason kissed him harder, longer, languorously, the two of them melting into the couch and mindful of Mason’s ankle, Mason was continuously recognizing the difference. Not a squirrel. Not a child. A man. Terry’s hands on his chest knew what they were doing, and his kisses—slow and drugging—made Mason sob for breath.

Terry shoved his hands under Mason’s shirt and rubbed him, simply feeding his skin hunger, until Mason ground up against him in frustration—and accidentally tweaked his ankle and let out an unmanly yelp.

“Oh!” Terry sat up. “Oh no!”

“We have to stop?” Mason whined, only partly because his ankle hurt.

“Yes, dammit. A bed—you said a bed would work, and this isn’t.” Terry scowled at him, and his pocket buzzed, and he sighed. “I have to go anyway.” He leaned forward and kissed Mason on the forehead. “I just needed to see you. It was good seeing you. Not enough, but good.” He pulled back and Mason read his eyes again: begging for it to be enough.

“Can you stay the night Saturday?” Mason pleaded.

Terry grinned shyly. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I can, if I can leave early Sunday to get my mom to her friend’s before you all come over.”

Mason’s stomach uncoiled a tiny bit more. “We can do that,” he promised.

Terry took his mouth then, hard and brief, a man’s kiss, before tearing off for the door.

Mason was left staring at the door long after he’d let himself out, harboring an almost forlorn hope that someday, Terry would unleash that same tiger who’d just kissed him stupid, and Mason would finally get to bottom.

“ARE YOUsure he’s coming, sir?” Mrs. Bradford asked.

Mason looked at his phone and nodded, trying not to yawn. Dane had apparently found the YouTube channel of his dreams this past week, because he’d woken Mason up every night giggling at his computer.

Okay, time to make a decision. His phone saidThere by 1:00. It was 1:05, and Mrs. Bradford was about to go out to lunch herself. She knew Mason ate at his desk sometimes, and since he hadn’t brought anything, she was offering to bring him back something just in case.

He was just about to tell her to get him a sandwich that he could take home if he didn’t eat it when he got a text from Skipper.

Jefferson’s downstairs—security thinks he’s lost.

Oh shit.

I’m omw—tell him I’m coming.

WAIT! He’s embarrassed. Just tell security to lead him up here.

Oh hell. Mason picked up the in-house extension and talked to the security guy downstairs. Mike sounded dubious, but he agreed to escort the guy with the takeout up to the fifth floor of the building and to Mason’s office.

“He’s on his way,” Mason said happily, and Mrs. Bradford raised her eyebrows.

“Mike’s not a very good security guard,” she said bluntly. “He is, in fact, the reason people make fun of them.”

True on both counts. Out of shape, lazy, and clearly happier playing with his phone than actually making sure everyone who got through the front doors of Tesko belonged there, Mike Buford was not an exemplary employee by any stretch of the imagination.

“And your point is?” Mason asked hesitantly. He knew where this was going.

“Why wouldn’t he let your friend in the door?”

A knock sounded, and Mason stood up and hopped one-footed to the door, gesturing Terry inside. He was wearing cargo shorts and a tank top (it was forty-two degrees outside) with a baseball hat on backward, and tennis shoes.

He grimaced apologetically at Mason and then looked around the office. “Oh geez,” he said, taking in the wood paneling and the cream-colored carpets. Mason’s furniture was standard Tesko issue—pine with sort of a salmon-and-green color for the cushions—but Mason had gotten to order from the catalog, and he’d chosen the most comfortable chairs he could. The desks were a nice warm camel color, and the varnish was the deep expensive kind that resisted cracking.

Mason liked his office, but he didn’t think much about it.