Then his smooth fingers danced up the back of her knee, and she squirmed under his touch. His caress continued, sliding along her thigh and higher still to glide across the skin of her right ass cheek. His other hand reached around her and grabbed the condom from her hands.
“Won’t be long before they come looking for us,” she said. He was torturing her, making her wait for what she really wanted as he continued to assault her senses with his feather-like touch. She wanted to hurry them along. She was ready for a quickie. Already she could feel her core clenching with wet heat. Her plans of seducing him had left her craving him.
“You are incredibly impatient,” he said, his voice a slow drawl.
“Like you’re not,” she whispered when her ass came in contact with his sheathed cock. He traced his fingers up her inner thigh, and he used both hands to spread her thighs wider. She pushed her fingers down on the table to help stay balanced and grasped one pole of his four-poster bed. He bent over her and angled himself toward her core. He pushed inside halfway, and they both groaned.
“This is what happens when you set out to seduce someone,” he said.
She laughed and pushed back against him. But his hands on her hips held her still to his assault. He swiveled his hips, hitting her deep, and she cried out. He was punishing her for trying to seduce him. Just like he’d promised he would. And she loved it.
“Shh,” he commanded through clenched teeth.
Oh, right. Parents downstairs. She had to be quiet. It heightened the pleasure, making her tense, forcing her to concentrate more on keeping her body under her control, when all she wanted was to spiral out of control.
“Damn it, Mason. Hurry it up back there,” she said.
He chuckled and pushed farther into her. He was so deep from this angle, hitting her in all the right places. She met each forward thrust with a backward glide of her own, her fingers and arm muscles straining to keep her upright. She clamped her mouth closed against another moan as he rocked inside her. His sweat-slicked skin slid against hers as he leaned forward to kiss the side of her neck. He sucked and grazed her with his teeth, bringing her to the precipice of orgasm.
“Oh, I’m almost there.” Her voice was high, and he pulled nearly all the way from her, just touching the edges of her entrance.
“Well, we’ll just have to see what we can do about that, won’t we?” he teased.
She could hear the smile in his voice, though she couldn’t see his face. His tone made her grin like a fool even as frustration built inside her. The feel of latex against her skin was familiar as he thrust. She missed the skin-to-skin contact of their previous encounter, but as one hand moved up to tweak her right nipple and the other snaked around to flick her clit, she stopped caring.
“How’s that?”
She moaned in response, and he pulled back and surged forward again just as he squeezed both her nipple and her clit between his fingers. She sucked her lips between her teeth to keep from crying out as she orgasmed. Her arms shook as she tried to keep herself vertical. Mason grunted behind her as he joined her in bliss.
A moment later, she was lying in Mason’s arms in his bed. He nuzzled the back of her hair and slipped from her.
“Sorry, I couldn’t stand up for another second. Figured we could safely fall this way.”
She grinned and turned to face him. He kissed her slowly, caressing her body and face with his hands as his tongue danced with hers. She pulled back from the kiss. They only had a little time before they had to be back downstairs. “Hmm. Guess I get my cuddle after all this time.”
“Yeah, but only for a minute.” He smiled lazily and exuded such an air of contentment that she burrowed deeper into his touch, licking her way down his chest. “This is absolutely insane. You do get that, right?”
“Yes. But this moment, right here—you can’t tell me it isn’t worth the risk. I know my dad will freak if he finds out. Not sure how Martha will respond, but I’m guessing not well. None of that matters right now.” She looked up into his bright blue eyes, and she could see the wariness there, the fear of what would come next encroaching on his afterglow. What would it take to make him live in the moment with her?
“Mason?” Martha’s voice called.
His eyes went wide. “Shit!” He scrambled from the bed. She’d have to settle for thirty seconds of cuddling. At this rate, maybe she’d get a whole five minutes by the end of the weekend.
Chapter Eleven
Mason pulled the condom off and threw it in the wastebasket. “I’ll go downstairs. You come down from the bathroom in a few minutes.” He hadn’t hidden a girl in the bedroom since he was a teenager. At least he didn’t ask this one to hide in the closet or under the bed. He yanked his boxers and pants on as Amy rushed from the bed and grabbed her clothes. She started pulling them on, and he couldn’t help but pause for a moment and admire her flushed skin as she moved.
He’d put that glow beneath the creamy whiteness, and he wanted to savor it, but he couldn’t.
“Coming, Mom,” he called out as he slid his arms into his shirt. He leaned over and kissed Amy on the cheek and then buttoned his shirt. After a quick glance in the mirror and a deep breath, he left his bedroom and headed down the stairs.
His mother was on the third step up, and she went back into the kitchen as he came down.
“Mason. What’s going on?”
Sheesh. He couldn’t hide anything from her hawk eyes. Raising four kids had given his mother a keen sixth sense. He shrugged. What could he say to that?
“Nothing. I just ran upstairs to check my phone. There’s been some intense stuff going on in the office. Where’s Amy?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I came in the kitchen to help finish cleaning up, and you were both gone.”
“Well, I left her in here cleaning while I ran upstairs.”
She narrowed her eyes. Would she buy it?
“So did you call your boss?”
He nodded as he moved toward the sink. After rolling up his sleeves, he plugged the left sink and poured in some soap, then flicked the water on.
“Yeah, Steve’s pissed. The new ad was supposed to be finished yesterday by my team, and it wasn’t done on time.” He rambled on about his hard-ass of a boss. Distracting her into scolding him about working too much should keep her off the train of thought of him and Amy missing together.
“Doesn’t he understand the meaning of the word vacation?” she said. Her tone was sharp. Score.
She walked over to the sink beside him as he started washing dishes. His fingers shook just slightly with the adrenaline still coursing through his arteries, and he hoped she didn’t notice, or attributed it to work-related stress if she did.
He set the washed dishes in the other sink so Mom could rinse them.
“Sorry,” Amy said from behind him. He turned to look at her as she came through the kitchen. “I completely flaked on cleanup duty as soon as you went upstairs.” She smiled. She’d stopped to touch up her makeup. Her chin and cheeks were pale once again, all trace of flush from their encounter gone. Not a hint of beard burn marred her skin either. “How goes it?”
“Fine,” Martha said. “Except for the fact that my son insists on taking work-related phone calls in the middle of my holiday.”
He glanced at Amy, widening his eyes, trying to tell her that this was their cover.
“Well, that’s no fun,” she said. “Maybe we should chuck his phone in the sink.”
He and Mom laughed, and Amy walked to the island behind them and began emptying leftovers into the plastic containers. James soon joined them in the kitchen, and they worked in silence for a few minutes. No one mentioned Lewis and his overly dramatic exit. For that Mason was grateful. He didn’t know how to find the balance between wanting to protect his mother, wanting to see her happy, and wanting Amy all at the same time. Everything seemed to pull him in different directions.
After cleaning, they sat down to have pie. Fortunately Amy sat acros
s from him this time, in the seat Lewis had occupied for dinner. He was glad she was too far away to touch, but frustrated for the same reason. If he wasn’t careful, this woman would be his undoing. Every time Mom looked at him, a pang of guilt shot through him. He’d broken his promise, and he was now lying to her about two things. Both lies were by omission, but that didn’t make him feel any better.
Maybe he was just like his father.
He shoved that repulsive thought away and forced himself to accept the warmth of family that surrounded him. Mom and James seemed to have come to some kind of agreement when Mason and Amy had been otherwise occupied. The four of them slipped into a comfortable rhythm of conversation, eating, and cleaning for the rest of the night. Before he knew it, they were all heading upstairs after an exhausting day to go to sleep.
Mason fell into bed, fatigue weighing even more heavily on his body than the guilt. Mom deserved better from him. He closed his eyes and tried to force his mind into the same state of tiredness as his body. But that was impossible. All the ideas and emotions he’d been putting off through the day swamped him at once. He needed to see Amy again, if only to talk to her.
Honestly, though, he wasn’t sure he could be in the same room alone with her and do anything resembling talking. And he was almost tired of having quiet sex with her. Well, not really. Because quiet sex with Amy was a hell of a lot better than no sex at all. But she’d pulled herself back from letting go fully both times they’d been together. She was such a wild spirit, such a force of nature. He wanted to hear her when she really let herself get lost in lovemaking.
He strained his ears. The house was quiet. Asleep. Could he successfully sneak down the hall into his sister’s old room where Amy was staying? Would she already be asleep? He didn’t even have her number to text and ask if she also lay awake wondering what the hell they were doing. He opened his eyes. Sleep wouldn’t be coming to him anytime soon. Not until he talked with Amy. And explained why it was important they stopped sleeping together.
She was worried about ruining things for her dad. He understood that. But she didn’t seem inclined to let that stop her. How could he make her see he felt like he was betraying his mother every time he met up with Amy in secret, without making her feel like it was her fault? The last thing he wanted was to make her feel bad. But he didn’t think he could keep sneaking around.
He clenched and unclenched his fists and stood up. He grabbed a shirt from the floor and pulled the soft fabric over his head. If he wanted to have any hope of doing something other than having sex with her again, he had to go down the hallway fully armed. Clothing was like armor where Amy was concerned. He needed it to remind them both to stay on task. Though the thought of her ripping off his clothes to have her silent way with him heated his blood.
He’d had her just four hours before. How could he want her again so soon?
He crept on bare feet to his door and opened it as slowly and quietly as he could. He slipped into the hallway and closed the door behind him. He turned to make his way down the hall and practically ran into James.
“Uh, sorry, Mason,” James stammered. “I was…just headed to the bathroom.”
“Me too,” Mason lied. “You go ahead. I’ll run downstairs and go.” He kept his voice low, aware of his mother’s room at the end of the hall. And of Amy in the room right next to the one her father had just come out of.
“Right, of course.” James nodded, and his dark gaze darted to the side. The man looked guilty as hell. Mason imagined he had a similar look on his face. God, would James tell Mom that Mason had been sneaking out of his room in the middle of the night? If Mason asked for his silence, it would only confirm that he was doing something wrong with Amy.
He turned, trying to save them both from this horribly awkward midnight hallway meeting. “Good night,” he called back quietly over his shoulder as he headed left toward the stairs. He took his time going down them carefully and couldn’t help grinning as he passed the bottom few steps, his mind flashing back to the visceral image of Amy straddling him. He walked to the bathroom off the living room and twiddled his thumbs for a minute, then flushed the toilet and ran the water.
Hopefully he’d given James enough time to sneak into his mother’s room. He cringed at the thought of his mother having silent sex right down the hall. And then he stifled a laugh, because James had probably thought the same thing about Mason. But he wanted to get into Amy’s room to talk. Just to talk. He would have to stick to his guns this time, no matter how delectable she looked. He climbed the stairs, and the bathroom door was open, the hallway deserted. Could he risk it now? If James had gone back to the room right next to hers, he was certainly still awake. No doubt he’d hear Mason’s late-night prowl. Mason would have to wait to make sure James was down the hall or asleep.
He turned back to his room, disappointment clenching his gut. He opened the door…and laughed.
“Shh,” Amy whispered.
He closed the door quietly behind him and stared at the incredibly daring woman lounging on his bed. Already he felt his resolve weakening.
“Imagine my surprise when I snuck in here and the room was empty.”
“I bet it wasn’t nearly as much as my surprise when I snuck out into the hallway to come visit you and found your father sneaking around too.”
Her eyes widened, and she covered her mouth to stifle her laugh.
“Except he was on his way to visit my mother. Jeez, how did this get so complicated?”
She was surrounded by his stuff, by his life, and he shook his head in wonder. She looked good there. He could take a moment to admire the view, now that he figured their parents were busy…er, getting busy. He forced his mind away from that horror and took in the sight of Amy’s smile as she pulled her hands away from her mouth. Her hazel eyes sparkled even in the dim light from his bedside lamp, but he wouldn’t let them distract him.
“Look, Amy, much as I wanted to visit you and let you seduce me all over again, I can’t keep lying to my mom. She’s had enough of that in her life, and I feel like shit.”
She sat up straighter, all hint of playfulness gone. He ached to take back what he said, but he couldn’t.
“She really did tell you to stay the hell away from me, didn’t she?” Amy’s voice was so small and hurt he had to fight himself to stop from rushing to her side. She spoke as if Mom had warned him away from her because she was no good for him, when it was the opposite.
“It’s not you, honest, honey. It’s me. She’s afraid I’ll…um…”
“Take my innocence?” she said. At least she didn’t sound so distraught this time. “Well, you can tell her that ship has long since sailed.” She smiled a bit.
“Not your innocence, exactly. She just knows you’ve had kind of a rough life with your mom gone and taking care of your dad. That’s all. She doesn’t want me to make you my next conquest, I guess.” Saying it aloud made his cheeks burn with shame. He wasn’t pleased that his mom thought he had conquests and not lovers. But he’d never corrected her, because deep down he knew the truth. He couldn’t be faithful. He couldn’t be more than a good time. Not for anyone. Even Amy. Maybe especially Amy. She seemed to unravel him at every turn, making him burn in ways he hadn’t known were possible. Making him long, for the first time in his life, that he was different.
But he wasn’t. He was no good for her, and it was about time he made her realize it.
“I promised her I would stay away from you, and I broke that promise. It’s been killing me. I’m sorry, Amy. I can’t do this anymore.” Maybe if he made it about the promise and not about himself, she would pull back to try to save his relationship with his mom. She was just that kind of a person. Selfless. What kind of kid didn’t blame her dad when she wasn’t allowed to celebrate Thanksgiving or have birthday parties and Christmas presents?
Her eyes didn’t even widen at his declaration. She just nodded and stood up.
“I’ve definitely caused enough trouble a
round here. The last thing I need to do is come between you and your mother. But that’s it, Mason. No more yo-yoing. I’m not going to keep trying to entice you into changing your mind. If I walk out the door, I’m not coming back.”
The statement was like a knee to the balls. He couldn’t get enough air.
Chapter Twelve
Amy hated giving him an ultimatum, but her self-preservation demanded it. She ached to live in the moment with him like she did in every other part of her life, but he already held too much sway over her. She had to be smart about this. He stood in front of the door. He had to make the decision for himself. No persuasion from her, no attempts at seduction. If he was going to be with her, then he had to be with her. If they were going to keep it a secret, that was fine.
She honestly didn’t want to cause him heartache, and it was clear that was what she was doing. Maybe she shouldn’t have left the decision in his hands. She should just bow out gracefully and do the right thing for him. But the words already hung in the air between them. She couldn’t take them back now.
He stood immobile, watching her, his eyes assessing her. Was he trying to decide if she was bluffing? He ought to know enough about her now to know she didn’t bluff. Ever. It was an important principle in the classroom. Never threaten what you were unwilling or unable to follow through with.
“Do you think your dad will say anything to my mom about seeing me in the hallway?” he asked. Still, he didn’t move.
“I don’t think so. He’s pretty private. He was probably embarrassed as hell when he saw you.” She’d known from the first time she’d kissed him that she wanted him. But she also knew they could only have a few days. She’d reconciled herself to that fact. So why did the thought of cutting things so short leave her with a gaping ache in the middle of her chest?
“Mom’s just trying to protect you.”
Spicy with a Side of Cranberry Sauce Page 9
