Page 59 of High Sea Seduction

I jerk the covers over my nudity when I realize Mason only mentioned audio files earlier. I never thought to ask him about cameras. Surely he wouldn’t do something so intrusive?

Reassuring myself doesn’t work, especially not when my mind throws up our conversation in the kitchen. The cold and clinical testimony of his deliberate cruelty toward his family sends another shiver down my spine.

The man who fucked me so thoroughly on the sofa was the kind of man to gossip to girlfriends about. The man in the kitchen was capable of just aboutanything. Including secretly recording our sex for whatever purpose he might choose somewhere down the line.

The thought disturbs me enough to send me out of bed. Since my clothes are still in the wash, I grab a cashmere blanket from the bottom of the bed and wrap it around my shoulders.

Mason gave me a brief tour after our shower earlier, but the mansion is immense, easily big enough to accommodate five families, and I get hopelessly lost several times before I decide to give up. Making my way back to the central staircase, I hear a sound coming from a room at the end of the second-floor hallway.

I approach quietly, not wanting to disturb Mason if he’s working. Lights flicker from beneath a heavy closed door, but I hear the sound of faint laughter before it stops. I bite my lip and toy with retreating back to bed. The clock I passed in one of the many hallways reads 3a.m. It’s early morning haunting hour, and I decide that whatever Mason has gotten out of bed for is none of my business.

I start to turn away, but the repeated sound of laughter stops me. A child’s laughter, joyous and unfettered. A few seconds later, it cuts off again.

My heart pounds as I put my ear to the door and shamelessly eavesdrop. The irony doesn’t escape me that I’m doing the same thing I ripped into Mason for doing the first time we met. When the door swings an inch inward, my heart jumps into my throat. I freeze and wait for Mason’s inevitable appearance and the reciprocal ripping to follow.

Nothing happens.

Fuck it.

I refuse to cower behind the door like a naked, spineless thief. I knock lightly. “Mason?”

Nothing but silence greets my knock. I take a deep breath and push the door open wider.

The outer edges are shrouded in darkness, but the center of the room is bathed in sky-blue light reflected from the screen. My gaze skates across what turns out to be a cavernous cinema room to the single occupant in the large club chair.

Mason is seated upright, staring dead ahead at his screen, a remote clutched in his fist.

“Mason?” I try again.

He doesn’t respond, but my instincts tell me this isn’t one of his mind-fuck silences. He has no awareness that I’m here.

My gaze darts to the screen, and I see a freeze-frame of a boy of about five or six with dark brown hair. His head is turned away from the camera, but by the curve of his cheek and chubby chin, it’s clear he’s laughing.

My breath catches as Mason lifts his hand and points the remote at the screen. The picture jumps forward in jerky slow motion, and the boy’s face gradually swivels toward the camera.

He’s gorgeous, with warm hazel eyes, a button nose and a mischievous expression. He’s missing one front tooth, but his smile is so broad it almost splits his face. My insides twist painfully as I stare at the screen.

A sound rips through the room and cuts like a knife through me, drawing my attention back to Mason. With each frame, I watch his face morph into a mask of raw agony.

But that’s not the only expression on Mason’s face. My heart stops as I read the other emotion: murderous, incendiary rage.

The boy’s face fills the screen and Mason presses the button to hold it.

I’m not sure how long we all stay frozen. My brain tries to grapple with the myriad reasons for the naked anguish blanketing him and the tears filling his eyes. None of them are good, and I’ve known enough anguish of my own to accept that, in this case, Occam’s razor will prevail. I’m staring into the heart of a worst-case scenario, and I die inside as I stand there, knowing I can’t offer the man who saved me from an icy death anything worth a damn.

When I finally force my legs to work, I retreat silently and make my way back to the bedroom. I lie awake, torn between sneaking downstairs to hunt down my clothes so I can make a quick, cowardly getaway, and waiting for Mason to return. I’m not sure what I’ll do when the latter happens, but it seems like the better thing to do. Creeping away in the middle of the night because I don’t want to confront potentially heart-shredding revelations reeks of self-preservation, and I’m well within my right to do so, especially in light of actively fleeing my own secrets.

But leaving feels wrong.

I stare at the exquisite crown moldings that decorate the ceiling, my hands gripping the sheets hard enough to cause my palms and knuckles to scream out in pain. I don’t let go because I don’t want the pain to go away. I don’t want to swap this superficial pain for the one that lies beneath the surface of my mind, seeping poison.

But it’s already rising.

It’s too late.

I seehisface. The cutest nose. His tiny, perfect hands. Eyes of indeterminate color framed by the most perfectly tipped lashes. I remember the absurd thought I had looking into his eyes. How glad I was that they were nothing like mine. Because then he wouldn’t see into me, wouldn’t know the dark, horrific thoughts lurking in my heart, eating away at the fierce love I felt for him the brief time I held him in my arms.

He screamed as the thought grew. Loud enough to attract concerned nurses to find out if he was okay. I wanted to join in the screaming, shout that of course he wasn’t okay. How could he ever be?

---