Page 70 of Hot Ice, Tennessee

“I have to be honest about something,” Mason finally said.

“Tell me,” I said. I pulled back and hitched my fingers under the hem of my shirt, popping it off and leaning back on the bed. I liked the way Mason’s eyes surveyed my torso before he spoke again.

“If you fuck me, I’m going to have a crush on you,” he said, point blank. “And I know you don’t want that.”

“I’d be flattered.”

“Flattered and then freaked out,” he said. “I’m not trying to fall for a guy who’s 21, unavailable, and completely off-limits to me, anyway. Your cock may as well be… in a cage, or something.”

“Trust me, it isn’t in a cage.”

My heart was in one, maybe, until you came into my life and started fucking with everything.

“You know what I mean, though.”

“You didn’t exactly say you were in the market for anything either, Cowboy Fuckboy,” I told him. “Why would you care about a crush when you like to fuck anything that waltzes into the Hard Spot and winks at you?”

He rolled his eyes. “The guys at the bar say that shit about me because they think it’s funny. They know I’m a flirt. But they don’t know what’s actually behind it.”

I pinned him with my gaze. “And what’s that?”

“I’m lonely,” he said, his eyes looking off toward my lamp.

I swallowed. “I see.”

He reached his hands up behind his head, stretching. “I fucked around all year because I needed to feel… something. Anything,” Mason explained. “But no, I don’t just want any guy.”

“What do you want?”

“Love,” he blurted out, giving me a hopeless look. “I don’t just want love, I want to beknocked on my asswith love. I know I don’t deserve it, and I need to get my own goddamn life back on track before I could ever be someone truly lovable, but of course that’s what I really want.”

My heart kicked up into high-gear.

I’d said something similar to Elliot, many months ago, pleading with him to just make me feelloved. It was something he could never provide. Not in the way I needed.

Hearing those words on Mason’s lips stoked a smoldering fire in me that I’d thought must have long died out.

Knocked on my ass with love.

I thought I’d buried the idea of that even being possible for me, too.

“I see,” I told him gently.

He looked wrecked. “I know I’m a mess,” he said, his voice bitter with disappointment.

He really thought thatthatwould scare me away? I guess I was the reason for that—I’d told him I was incapable of any sortof relationship right now, because I was so convinced that was what was best.

“Well,” I told him. “If you’re a mess, then I am, too.”

I reached for his hips again and pulled him down onto me at the edge of the bed. He straddled me, letting his knees sink into the mattress next to each edge of my thighs.

His eyes were wild as he looked at me.

So full of raw emotion—all of the things he usually kept behind closed doors, projecting an unbothered, fun-loving attitude to the world. I was seeingallof him, now, though, and the fact that he trusted me with it? That felt like a gift.

I gripped the sides of his hair, gently pulling him into a kiss.

He melted into me. His hands found their way down to my exposed skin, skating along the sides of my body. When he reached my back he gave it a hard scratch with his nails.

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