“We could go inside.”
His lips lifted in a dangerous smile that made her quiver. “I don’t want to go inside. I want you here. Do you know how pretty you are in the moonlight?”
She’d never hear that from a man in the city. She tucked her bottom lip between her teeth, mesmerized by his face, the lines snaking out from the corners of his eyes because he never wore sunglasses. She reached up, traced the lines on his face, the ones that spoke of working while the elements beat down on you.
He took her wrists in his hands and tucked them down at her sides, then captured her lips again with a slow slide of his mouth against hers that made her forget she was on the back porch, made her forget everything but being in this place with this man. She tingled all over, was singly aware of every brush of his lips, every flick of his tongue against hers.
He cupped his hand at her neck, then let it slide down to her collarbone, burning a path toward her breasts.
“You aren’t wearing much.”
“I took a bath. Threw on this nightgown.”
He leaned back, scanned her body. “Sexy.”
Her nipples were tight points awaiting his touch. He slid his thumb over them and she damned her gown for being in the way. She gasped, wanting more, needing to feel his hand against the taut, aching buds. This tease of his thumbs rolling over her made her legs shake, made her wet and needy and ready to pull the gown off so he could cup her breasts. But he laid his hand between her breasts, then snaked his fingers down over her belly. It quivered in response. He tugged on the hem of the gown and bunched it in his fist.
“I want to take a lot of time with you, Valerie, but I don’t have much patience.”
“I don’t need it.”
He tightened his hold on the fabric, lifted it over her hips to bare her lower body to the cool night air.
“You naked under this?” he asked, his gaze direct, probing, hot.
“Yes.”
“Damn. Part your legs.”
Mason was no-nonsense about everything, including sex. He went after what he wanted, a trait that had always thrilled her, especially now when she didn’t want hearts and flowers and sweet-talking. She wanted him with a primal passion that belied her usual reserved nature.
She broadened her stance, giving him access.
He wasted no time, sliding his palm across her sex. She gripped his shoulders at the first contact of his calloused hand on her flesh, his touch sparking pleasure peaks along her clit. She shuddered at the contact, arched against him, craving more.
He was relentless, not giving her time to breathe as he rubbed her flesh and slid his finger inside her. Heat and moisture pooled as her pussy gripped his finger in a tight vise.
“Look at me, Val.”
She tilted her head back, her body shaking with desire as she read the tension on his face when he touched her. Mason knew her body like no one else ever could. Maybe that’s why she’d never let another man touch her. Who could give her this kind of pleasure but him?
She rose up on her toes to draw closer to his touch, waves of pleasure undulating around her. She arched against him, rocking her sex against his hand, silently begging him to take her there.
“I’ve missed being inside you.” His whispered words were harsh and filled with promise as he wrapped his arm around her back, drove his hand against her clit and shattered her.
He dipped down and took her mouth, drinking in her cries of pleasure as wave after wave crashed over her, leaving her shaky and senseless. He took her down easy, his finger still inside her, pumping slow and easy.
He’d always mastered her body like this, made her forget where she was, who she was. Who they were.
And who they weren’t anymore.
He eased his finger out of her, smiled down at her, made her ache inside for more. It would be so easy to touch him, to unbuckle his belt, slide her hand in his jeans and wrap her fingers around the hot, hard heat of his cock. Even the thought of fucking him outside, sheathing him inside her, made her weak in the knees.
But she’d already lost her mind once tonight, had connected with him in a way she’d sworn never to do again. And she wanted to again, wanted him inside her so fiercely it shook her to her core.
She shouldn’t want that much. She shouldn’t want Mason. This was wrong. Hadn’t she spent two years away from the ranch so she could get over him, so she could stand next to him without feeling the bone-melting desire for him that had always made her lose her senses?
Maybe two years hadn’t been long enough.
She took a step back and his smile died.
“What’s wrong?”
She smoothed her hair back, bent down and reached for the blanket to wrap it around her like a shield of armor. “We shouldn’t have done this.”
He arched a brow. “Why not?”
She felt awful, like she’d led him on. She hadn’t meant to, hadn’t meant for this to happen at all. “I think you know why not. We’re divorced.”
His jaw set in what she knew was irritation, he said, “Doesn’t mean we can’t fuck.”
“Is that all we are together?” Then again, he should be pissed. At her. He had every right. God, she was confused. “And don’t you have a girlfriend? What is she going to think?”
He rubbed his temple. “What the hell are you talking about? What girlfriend? I don’t—”
She held up her hand. “Never mind. Maybe I’m wrong. And why don’t you have a girlfriend? It’s been two years, Mason. You have to let me go.”
He stared at her, shook his head. “Woman, you make no sense at all.” He turned and walked away, down the stairs, blending into the darkness.
Valerie stood on the porch, watching him disappear, feeling a hundred times stupid for letting this happen. For hurting him, when she should have known better.
She was always hurting him. And herself in the process.
She should have never come back, no matter how much Jolene demanded it.
Two years hadn’t been enough time.
seven
“you’re grumpy as a horny bull with no cows,” Jolene announced the next day.
Mason decided to ignore Jolene, instead putting all his concentration on rewiring the section of fence they’d set out to work on today.
“Are you deliberately ignoring me?” she asked.
“Trying to.”
She bent beside him, clipped off the end of the wire that Mason had just wound tight around the top of the post, then stood, moving down the line next to him. “It’s Val, isn’t it?”
“Leave it alone, Jo.”
“Oh, right. She gets you all riled up and I have to deal with the aftereffects. So I don’t think I’ll leave it alone. What did she do now to piss you off?”
Got him hard, came apart under his hand, then said the whole thing was a mistake. She made him half-crazy, confused the hell out of him. He had no idea what Valerie wanted, didn’t know why he’d bothered to step up on the porch last night. He should have ignored her, walked by without saying a word. But she’d looked so damn lost sitting up there by herself. And he was just fucking stupid enough to want to comfort her.
He should have known that comfort would lead to sex. Or almost sex. She’d gotten off, anyway. Being with her only led to complications. Complications he didn’t need.