Page 107 of Shattered Promise

He blinks once, then twice, and something in his expression clicks into more focus. He tosses the rag on the workbench without another word.

By the time I turn toward the door, I can hear the scuff of his boots behind me. The warmth of him presses close. His hand ghosts over the hem of my dress, rough fingertips trailing the skin at the back of my thigh.

“Trouble,” he murmurs, voice lower now, more gravel than air.

“I’m just taking a shower,” I say over my shoulder, trying and failing to smother my grin. “Unless you have a better idea.”

He catches my waist with both hands, his mouth skimming the curve of my shoulder, lips brushing warm against my skin. “I do.”

I laugh and pull away just enough to keep walking. Slow, teasing steps across the gravel, up the porch, through the kitchen, and down the hall into his bedroom. He stays behind me, hands on my hips again, then my waist, then sliding underthe hem of the sundress, callused fingers dragging against bare skin.

By the time we reach the bathroom, I’m already breathless from the chase.

And he hasn't even really touched me yet.

He doesn’t bother with subtlety once the bathroom door closes. He turns the shower on with a flick of his wrist. The backs of my knees hit the counter and suddenly I’m sitting, my dress bunched in a wrinkled halo around my hips.

He kneels, yanking my sandals off, then traces the arch of my foot with a thumb, drawing a shiver up my spine that had nothing to do with the temperature. I reach for him, threading my fingers through his hair, and he looks up—eyes a little wild, a little reverent, like he was half-expecting me to disappear if he blinked too long.

The dress is next. He peels it up, tugging it past my ribs and over my head, then presses his palm to the center of my chest, holding me in place—not forceful, just certain. He kisses the inside of my knee, then up, slow and deliberate, as if he wants to taste every patch of skin that has ever seen sunlight.

A laugh sneaks out of me—half nerves, half delight—and Mason grins into the bend of my thigh, teeth scraping the soft skin there.

“You’re a menace,” I whisper, but I’m the one trembling when he finally stands.

He lifts me off the counter. My back slides against the cool tile wall, and for a second, I forget how to breathe.

The bathroom is already filling with steam—mirrors fogged, the air syrup-thick and pulsing with heat. He sets me down inside the shower and steps in after, crowding me beneath the spray. Warm water, hotter skin, his hands braced on either side of my head.

It’s nothing like before. No slow build, no gentle question marks. He kisses me like he’d been waiting for decades. Hungry and focused, his tongue rough and searching. I cling to his shoulders, melting back into the tile, the world shrinking to the press of his body and the ache low in my belly.

He puts me down only to shed his own clothes, before scooping me back up and walking us both into the shower.

My balance tips, knees skimming the edge of the porcelain, water sluicing over my hair, then down the arch of my spine in a kind of fever. Mason’s hands are everywhere—palming my hips, mapping the curve of my ribs, brushing the wet hair from my eyes as if he wants no barrier between us at all. He presses his forehead to mine, breathless, both of us already half-drowned in all the things we’d never said out loud.

He kisses me again, slower this time. Less teeth, more tongue. Deliberate and lingering, as if he could memorize the taste of me like a favorite song.

One of his hands finds the base of my neck, thumb rubbing the spot where my pulse hammered.

“Mason,” I breathe out his name.

“I missed you like this,” he murmurs. “All soft and wet andmine.”

I don’t have a clever response. Just a choked sound in the back of my throat as he nudges my legs further apart with his knee. His fingers trace down my stomach, teasing, until I’m panting into the tile.

He doesn’t rush. Not this time. Every kiss he presses to my neck feels like an apology. A promise and a prayer.

And then he moves.

He grips the underside of my thigh, lifts it high until it’s slung over the crook of his elbow. I gasp, bracing both hands on his shoulders. My body trembles as he bends enough to align us. His free hand finds my hip, steadying.

He pushes in, slow and careful, the way he always does, but I’m already so desperate I nearly sob when the stretch becomes fullness, and then the fullness becomes a pulse, and then it’s nothing but the sound of water drumming and the animal noise caught between my teeth.

He stays still for a breath, buried deep, his forehead pressed to my shoulder.

“Fuck, baby,” he mutters. “You feel so good.”

Mason’s jaw flexes as he starts to move, hips rolling with an unhurried rhythm that feels almost reverent.

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