“No. That I’m not wearing any pants?”
Her attention dropped briefly to the blanket barely covering me, not hiding my hard-on, before she yanked her head away, climbing off the sofa arm.
“You should probably get to school.” She sounded reserved, parent-like, trying to draw the line back, putting me on the other side.
“Wait.” I scrambled up after her. My hand wrapped around her wrist, the touch like a jolt straight to my heart and dick. Emery shivered, her eyes shooting down to where I touched her. We both hung in the moment, a bubble of awareness. I knew she felt it as I did, her lungs heaving, her gaze locked on my fingers.
My cock became steel, throbbing in rhythm to the pulse against her wrist. Her gaze dipped low, pink dotting her cheeks, noticing my reaction to her.
The moment was far more than it should have been, swaying my already aching head, about to lose my balance. Dropping my hand away, I put distance between us, my fingers brushing through my rumpled hair.
“You need to get to school.” She pushed out, folding her arms over her breasts. Her eyes looked everywhere but at me, while mine seemed unable to leave her. The last thing I wanted to do was go to school. To leave this house.
“Well, you know, no kid should go to school on an empty stomach.”
Chapter 14
Emery
Kid.
I wanted to laugh. Everything about him defied that word. Shredded it into tiny bits and mocked me.
Mason James wasn’t only physically beyond his years, but mentally as well. Every moment I was around him, he became even more divided from his peers or the men who came up to me last night at the bar. And his body was not anywhere close to a boy’s.
Oxygen ceased in my lungs my body responding to his touch. My skin sparked with fire, my breasts swelling under my tank, my pussy squeezing as my gaze went to his cock, hard and thick in his boxer briefs. Heat filled me like a balloon, all thought and logic floating away. The only thing I could hear was the pounding of my pulse, the air going in and out of my nose.
He needed to leave. To get out of my house and far away from me. The draw to him was too much. The thread between us hummed with an energy I couldn’t explain, proving my sexual drive wasn’t dead, and my body hadn’t closed up shop when Ben died. Right now, I wished it had. I needed an excuse for why I was not interested in any of the good-looking men who came up to me last night or when Dr. Ramirez was trying to talk to me. But it was only Mason who stirred this reaction in me.
All night it was there, the truth. Whenever I talked to someone, I kept peering at the door behind them, disappointed when someone walked through because it wasn’t the person I wanted. I couldn’t say how many times I looked at my phone, about to dial Uber because everything about the night felt wrong and uncomfortable.
I was drinking away the raw, desperate need to go home because what I craved was in my garage, and because of it, I forced myself to stay. To smile and laugh. To pretend I was listening and having fun.
The entire time I tried to convince myself I was going through a glitch in my system, a natural reaction to finding myself single again and attaching myself to something that felt more comfortable to me, and it was all perfectly innocent.
Though when I walked in the door, all those thoughts went to shit.
Mason was sprawled out on his back on my sofa, his pants and shoes on the floor. The fuzzy blanket placed over him was sliding off, displaying his body. He still had on his t-shirt, but it was stretched up, showing off his cut abs and his deep V-line carving down into his black boxer briefs.
The sexual attraction I had been begging for all night from any guy at the bar, including Daniel, fired up the back of my spine, clenching my thighs.
My eyes took in what my fingers had barely brushed earlier. Like an iceberg, the extent of his size had been hidden under his jeans. Now I could see the massive outline of it.
Desire flared brutally through me. The impulse to climb over the sofa and straddle him, pulling down his boxer briefs and sinking down on him, hearing both of us moan in utter pleasure.
“Don’t be mad.” Addison came darting out of her room, wearing her pj’s. For a moment, jealousy and rage locked through my muscles. Had they been fooling around?
“What is going on?” Angry. Demanding.
“There was a party at Noel’s. It was totally low-key.” Lie. I could hear the same inflection Harper used on Mom when she was caught sneaking in. “Just some friends hanging out.” She held up her hands. “Mateo wasn’t drinking.”
“Were you?”
“I had one. I promise.”
“What is Mason doing here?”
She tugged nervously at her messy ponytail. “He got hammered. I don’t know what was up with him. He was angry from the moment he arrived. He was drinking shot after shot.”
My gut pinched, a slight twinge wondering if I had been the cause of that. Don’t be stupid. You had nothing to do with it.
“Mateo drove us home, but Mason wouldn’t get out of the car, muttering something about needing to fix our washing machine. He would only get out of the car here.”
The twinge turned to a spasm.
“It took us both to get him to finally calm down and inside, where he passed out.”
“His clothes?”
“That was all him.” She held up her hands in defense again. “I went to bed. He must have done it after.”
I stared at her, seeing no lie in her features.
“I promise you, Aunt Emery. Nothing happened. Believe me, he was being a pain in the ass tonight.”
I snorted, scrubbing at the headache forming.
“Okay.” I nodded, believing her. “Go to bed. I’ll let his grandparents know where he is. We’ll talk about this party tomorrow. But you are getting up and going to school tomorrow. Not one complaint.”
“We have a game tomorrow. I can’t miss school anyway.” She nodded eagerly, hugging me quickly. “Night.” Her gaze went down to him, her cheeks reddening, and I knew exactly what she was looking at.
“Good night, Addison.” I pointed to her bedroom.
She grinned, the schoolgirl crush still showing on her face as she skipped to her room, conjuring sweet romantic notions of Mason James.
When her door shut, a huge sigh flew from my lungs. I peered down at the passed-out guy on my sofa, pulling the blanket up to his chest.
“Emery…” Still sound asleep, my name came out as barely a whisper. My muscles froze while the rest of my body responded to the hoarse way he said my name. The power it had over me, the yearning it inflicted without my control. My notions were a lot dirtier. Nothing sweet or romantic.
Now, I watched him stroll into my kitchen, still only wearing his t-shirt and boxer briefs, his hair messy. If anyone saw us, looked at my pj’s and bedhead, they would come to one conclusion. And I wouldn’t blame them. It didn’t merely look bad. It was bad.
Even if I explained it, the fact he was walking around half dressed, and I wasn’t putting my foot down spoke even louder.
“I think you should go,” I said, quieter than I meant to.
Mason opened my fridge, his eyebrows crinkling at my empty shelves, ignoring me.
“Mason?” I cleared my throat, wrapping my cardigan around my braless chest tighter. “This is… um…” I tapered off, pressing my lips together. “Improper.”