by Stella Rhys
From there, I sunk into the couch, delighted by the blanket provided for me to wrap myself in. It was soft and oversized and it made me want even more to call Mason and ask him to join me on my little island. But I stopped myself. Aside from the fact that my dinky little flip phone didn’t have his number in the contacts, I told myself that I needed this time alone.
But that I could see him soon. Right after.
So pouring myself a glass of wine, I grabbed the book I’d been trying to finish for ages now and sunk cozily into the couch, flipping to where I’d left off and finally starting my new chapter.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Been waiting for you, Miss Taylor.”
My eyes fluttered after giving my name to the doorman. I had stayed at the Atrium till closing and my visit to Mason’s apartment wasn’t entirely planned myself so with confusion, I tilted my head at him. “You have?”
“Mr. Leo gave me your name. Said if a Taylor Simms came by, let her up. No need to call and ask.”
“Really,” I laughed softly, my cheeks tingling. “It’s nearly two in the morning. Are you positive you don’t need to call him?” When he nodded, I smiled down at myself. “Well, that makes me feel nice.”
“Likewise, miss. I hate seeing a good man so torn up.”
I looked up with a grimace. “Has it been bad?” I asked quietly, feeling the answer in the long pause the man gave.
“You’re here,” he finally said, nodding toward the elevators. “That’s all that matters.”
I smiled, unwinding the scarf from my neck. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure. Enjoy your night, Miss Simms. Please give my regards to Mr. Leo.”
On that note, I made my way to the elevators, my pulse picking up as anticipation thrummed throughout me. It was mostly excitement – a pleasant buzz of heat that relaxed any tension in my body as I made my way up the building to Mason’s penthouse. My heart was pounding by the time I reached his floor but I wasn’t nervous. In fact, I felt oddly at home.
And when the elevator doors opened, I immediately found Mason, my eyes settling on the profile of his shirtless body sitting at the edge of his couch, sifting through what looked like papers for work. In just grey sweats, he was fucking stunning. He looked like the most beautiful man I would ever lay my eyes on. And the view only got better as he turned and let his gaze find me. It was surprised for all of a second but then he rose to his feet, turning that body to face me as a faint but joyous grin drifted onto his lips.
“Hi,” I finally said, listening to the elevator door close behind me. Mason didn’t answer, only watched as I came toward him, shedding my coat and my cardigan, slipping out of my ballet flats till I was in just a sweater and leggings as I stood before him, pushing him gently back down on his couch and climbing into his lap. I felt the weight of the world expel from the sigh that escaped his lips, and under my palms, I felt the rumble in his chest as he leaned his forehead against mine. For a moment, we simply breathed together. But then he finally spoke and that voice I missed so badly flooded me with relief.
“I thought I knew what it was like to be happy to see you,” he murmured, his breath coating my lips. “But I don’t think I really knew till now.” He opened his eyes to drink me in, pulling away but holding me tight, like I might somehow escape his arms again. But he seemed reassured by the needy curl of my fingertips against his chest. I wanted to hold onto him too. I hardly ever wanted to let go. “You know how sorry I am, right, Taylor?”
Holding his face in my hands, I nodded. “And I think I understand why you did what you did. I just need to ask you one question.”
“Ask me.”
I wet my lips. “The night you came to get me. I still remember the questions I asked you in the cab when I thought you were Aaron. I asked if you still loved me,” I whispered, watching the storm twisting behind his dark eyes. “And you said yes. You said it so convincingly I think I’m just wondering how and why you did that.”
“I really wished I was him in that moment,” Mason answered with a soft laugh. “Sounds harsh but you know it would take a lot for me to ever wish I was Aaron. But I wished it hard that night. I wanted to be the person to save you whenever you needed. I wanted to be the man who took care of you and held you at night. But you were with him a year by that point. You loved him and it was too late for me to be the one for you, so I gave you what I thought what you wanted. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I understand now, Mason. I promise,” I insisted softly, letting him press a kiss to my lips.
“I never wanted to hurt you. And every day from here on out, I’m going to make it up to you, Taylor. That’s all I want to do.”
My lips wiggled into a crooked smile. “Gotta say, you’re off to a pretty good start.”
“Glad to hear that. Happy birthday, by the way.”
“It’s two in the morning, so it’s not my birthday anymore. But thank you,” I said teasingly. “And thank you for bringing my little island to life. I know you thought my birthday wish was lame but it was easily the best birthday of my life today.”
“Good.” Mason brought my face closer to his. Kissing me, he brought me with him as he laid on the couch. I exhaled as I rested my weight on his strong body, running my hands down his sculpted torso as his hot tongue swept against mine. “But they’re only going to get better from here.”
“Birthdays?” I giggled against his mouth, closing my eyes as his hands lifted my sweater up my body.
“Birthdays.” His lips devoured me. “New Years.” Another thrust of his tongue. “Valentines. Christmas.” He smiled back against my mouth between every sweet, passionate kiss. “I’m going to give you everything you ever wanted, Taylor. And all the things you didn’t know you wanted.”
Music to my damned ears.
“What about what I want right now?” I asked, reaching down between us and cupping what I could already feel was almost fully hard. Mason groaned.
“Fuck, I don’t think you know how bad I’ve wanted that the past two weeks.” He moved my hand up and down his impressive shaft, hard and thick against my fingers.
“Trust me, I was hurting for it pretty bad myself.”
“And did you satisfy that craving?”
I smirked. “Is this your way of asking if I’ve slept with anyone since we’ve been apart?”
“I’ll admit I’m curious.” Carrying me, he stood up, eyes locked on mine as he walked me across the living room and toward the staircase. “So tell me.”
“I haven’t been with anyone else, Mase.” My heart lifted with every step he brought me up toward his bedroom. “Your turn.”
“I haven’t been with anyone since we started,” he said, his eyes dipping to my curving lips. “I haven’t wanted to, and I can’t imagine that I’m going to.”
I grinned. “Good answer.”
“Just the truth,” he said as he pushed open the door to the bedroom I hadn’t realized how much I missed till I was in it again. Laid gently on the plush bed, I felt again like a queen. I breathed steady, my cheeks hot as I watched Mason slip his hand under my back and arch it for him to better pull off my sweater, then my leggings. Kissing the straps of my bra off my shoulder, he pushed his sweats down till he could kick them off. He wasn’t wearing boxers underneath, so I gave a little moan as I felt the weight of his hot erection fall between my legs.
“Spread your legs for me.” His command was firm and I could hear in it just how much he missed me, how much he wanted me. In his arms again, it felt so incredibly good. I was already filled with gratification before he entered me, but then with a weighty stroke of his tip against the length of my sex, he confirmed my wetness with a groan and then slid easily inside me.
“Mason,” I gasped, his stroke a gliding force that stretched and rocked me from the first second. We wasted no time with teasing. Our need for one another was already maxed out. I was wetter than I could stand and he was harder than I knew possible. Already lost, I thrust my h
ips up to meet him, to match the mounting intensity of his every push inside me. My abs burned as I clenched up toward him but as Mason pounded in and out of me, I fucked him right back, driven by the deep groans that tore from his chest as our bodies returned to that place of just need, desire and everything we could do to fulfill it. But when I ran out of the strength to meet his, Mason relieved me. Grabbing two handfuls of my ass, he pulled my hips higher and drove deeper inside me, so instantly commanding that I could hardly make a sound.
The kiss he crushed over my lips was frantic now, and in it, I tasted those words he wouldn’t say on our last day in St. Lucia. I didn’t care if now wasn’t the time. I needed to let them out. Tearing away from his mouth, I looked into Mason’s eyes and breathed urgently, “I love you.” He was the second man I’d ever said the words to. The first I’d truly meant them with.
“I love you,” Mason returned, his cock rubbing a sweet spot inside me, his smoldering gaze completely consuming mine. “I have loved you,” he breathed. “I can’t stop, Taylor. Even when I tried, I couldn’t. I can’t control it with you.”
“You don’t have to now. You can love me,” I whispered. My body was slack now, languid as it received the years of Mason’s need in the form of his every mighty blow inside me. “You have me.”
“Tell me again,” he grunted like I was fueling him.
“You have me.” One hand clawing his back, the other fisted the sheets. “I’m yours, Mason,” I panted. “Only yours.”
As if possessed by my words, Mason growled and sank himself with a painful pleasure inside me, filling me completely then pulling out, leaving just his tip throbbing between my walls before plunging in again. He kept his eyes pinned to me as he repeated the torturous stroke, over and over till I erupted to orgasm beneath him, trembling under his weight. Mason cursed under his breath as his cock jerked inside me. Then with a deep, battered groan, he came, filling my delirious body with the satisfying heat of his pleasure.
Though we lay half-awake in each others arms for an hour, I eventually fell asleep on his chest, stirring only hours later when it was morning but still dark out. I could tell from the sound of his breath that Mason was asleep, but as if sensing me, he rumbled awake moments later. A strip of moonlight lit his face as he watched me set my alarm. Then he tipped my chin up and gazed at me. “Going back to sleep now?”
“Yes. Will you be here when I wake up in the morning?” Once upon a time, the question would have been out of fear that he’d decided our night together was a mistake. Now, it was solely because we were back in the real world, both of us due to be at work in barely four hours.
Wrapping his arms tighter around me, Mason blinked, the blue of his eyes gleaming out like stars behind those heavy lids. “I will. Will you?”
“Yes.”
Through his sleepiness, he gave me a crooked smile. “Will you be here the morning after?”
“I can be.”
“After that?”
I grinned up at him in the quiet of the night. “If you want me to be.”
“I want you to be,” he murmured huskily, the sound of his groggy voice striking that odd sense of home inside me again. Melting into his hard body, I breathed out with content so good it felt almost unfair.
“Then I’ll be here,” I whispered, closing my eyes as he kissed the top of my head and drifted slowly back asleep.
*
In the morning, when I awoke, Mason still lay stretched out beneath me. One arm stretched over his head, the other held me on top of him, so protective in its grasp that I couldn’t stir without waking him. With a stretch and a rumble, Mason smiled but to my charmed delight, his eyes remained closed and he continued sleeping for just a little longer. It gave me the time to study him. Imagine waking up to this every morning, I smirked to myself. Once upon a time, I’d woken in this bedroom and thought those words with a rueful envy of whichever girl would someday get to do that.
That day wasn’t even long ago. But I couldn’t count exactly how many passed since. With some people, apparently, life just happened faster. But I imagined it did for a reason – to make up for the missteps, all the wrong choices when faced with a fork in the road. I had obviously chosen incorrectly at least once before. But with Mason, I’d redirected my life. It was a long road over a short time, but I’d finally found myself in what was undeniably the right place.
And I couldn’t deny that as Mason awoke to simply gaze at me with those eyes I could stare into forever.
I worked for this prize. I climbed a hundred mountains and fell ninety-nine times. It was rough but now that I was here with a man I loved with every ounce of me, I had a new mantra.
No regrets.
Not even one.
Epilogue
One Year Later
I was running late for work but I decided last minute that I’d be a little boastful today and wear the diamond necklace Mason had given me back when we were still… whatever we were. More than twelve months into our true relationship and it was literally still a daily effort to refrain from shouting, “Good God, I have the sexiest boyfriend on Earth!” The compulsion came randomly – while browsing groceries with Mason, strolling hand-in-hand on the sidewalk with him or simply sitting next to him in front of our TV. That this man was mine, and that we loved each other the way that we did – the fact had yet to become remotely boring to me. There were some delightfully mundane parts of our days together now, like brushing our teeth side by side in the morning and trying to pick out a movie at night, but still, I was amazed by us. Grateful for us. For him.
So I told myself I deserved to slightly brag today and wear my diamond necklace to just a regular day at work.
Mason lifted his eyebrows when he saw me come downstairs into the kitchen. He was fully dressed for work and sporting a sexy stubble that gave me instant grabby hands.
“Damn it, I love it,” I groaned as I ran my fingertips along his beautiful jaw line. Mason watched with a grin as I then dropped my hands to straighten his tie. It never actually needed straightening. I just liked touching it every morning.
“If you love it then why the ‘damn it’?”
“Because I’m running late and I can’t pounce on you right now.”
“Like running late has ever stopped you in the past ten months of living together.”
I sighed. “I know, but I need to stop taking advantage of Lori’s kindness. And she always just knows when I go to work freshly…”
“Fucked?” Mason filled in wickedly, that gorgeous smirk on his lips. I wet mine.
“Yes.”
“Fine, I’ll keep my hands off of you till you get home,” Mason groaned, falling away from me to return to the cup of coffee he’d been drinking. “I had a surprise for you though. Guess it’ll have to wait.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Nuh-uh, we’re not playing this game. What was the surprise? You need to tell me before I go to work.”
“Do I? Why’s that?”
“Because it’s Wednesday and I can always use a little boost on Wednesdays.”
Mason laughed as he set his cup in the sink. “Jesus, Taylor. You know that’s just a self-fulfilling prophecy now.”
I knew. But I liked to continue my joking hatred of Wednesdays by constantly pointing out when not-so-great things happened on Wednesdays. It wasn’t like it actually bothered me anymore, nor did it make me remotely sad or angry about my past engagement to Aaron. It was just my humorous way of acknowledging the other Leo brother because we were both so thoroughly past him and the presence he once had on our lives.
As predicted, Aaron pulled away from his family, as he had already begun to do during his engagement to Eva Tully. According to Mason’s mother, Aaron was still “finding himself” amid his travels to Southeast Asia. After the almost-wedding to Eva last year, he wound up leaving his second life behind, packing a few things from the Tully estate in Silicon Valley and booking a one-way ticket to Thailand. He still lived there and while either Mason
nor I kept in contact with him, we were in fact relieved to hear he was doing well, and even happier to know that he was calling Clara somewhat regularly – for his standards at least. They were mending their relationship from afar, in the non-confrontational way that Aaron clearly required when it came to approaching his problems.
“I miss hugging him,” Clara confessed when Mason and I visited her for her birthday in the summer. “But any physical presence I’ve lost from my son, I’ve at least gained in a daughter,” she said, holding my face and planting a giant kiss on my forehead. It was a sweet moment that she only lightly ruined by adding, “And hopefully soon…”
“Clara!” I warned her, knowing she was about to say “grandchildren.” From where he sat, Mason laughed, asking his mother to ease off of me.
“Let me marry her first,” he said.
“Then… do it, no?” Clara made a face as if it were the simplest solution. “My other son was too stupid to make her Mrs. Leo, but I expect my older one to be smarter.”
I laughed at the way she phrased it. I quite enjoyed it actually, because I no longer looked back on my three years with Aaron with regret. Not a single day of it. Our complicated journey created the path on which I found Mason. It was a jagged, broken one with more twists and turns than I could’ve ever imagined, but that only attested to our strength – to the universe’s persistence for us to find one another. For that reason, I didn’t worry about when our engagement would come. I just knew that eventually, it would. And like our whirlwind romance, it would be that much better because we waited. Because we stretched ourselves to the breaking point before giving ourselves the reward.
Officially together for a year now, I suspected I could wait several more before I was at my limit. It would hurt, but I could bear it considering the daily victory that came in coming home at nights to Mason.
