Page 27 of Mason

“It’s just that…I think about all the other girls, and…”

“Babe, trust me when I tell you, I don’t care about the other girls. Hell, I haven’t even looked at one since I showed up on your front porch.”

“What about Angela?”

“Who?” Mason asked. He searched his memory, but for the life of him couldn’t figure out who the hell she was talking about.

“The girl you were with that night in the restaurant…your blind date?”

Ohhh. He remembered that. “I got so wasted that night. I was pissed at myself for upsetting you when you were sick.”

“I wasn’t sick,” she confessed. “I saw you with her, and I wanted to be anywhere but there. It was my excuse to leave.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “Even then, when I fought my feelings for you, I couldn’t stand you being with anyone else, and I knew it wasn’t fair because I was with Ray.”

He kissed her forehead. “It’s okay, baby. I couldn’t stand the thought of you with Ray either. I was putting up with it so I could be near you, even though it was like a knife to my heart every time I saw the two of you together.”

“Did you sleep outside that night?”

Mason laughed. “I did. Passed out right there sitting up against the fence. I think someone shook me awake later.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I’m a fucking sexy idiot,” he countered.

“You are.” He grew alarmed when her face turned serious. “That’s why I was so upset earlier. I was afraid…”

“What?”

“I was afraid I’d go home to California, and you’d realize there were women out there who weren’t insecure or scarred up who could give you what I couldn’t.”

Mason did let his anger out this time. “Don’t you dare say that to me ever again, Josephine Marie Maxwell. You could have scars over every inch of your body, and I’d still love you. They don’t matter to me.”

“But they do to me.”

Mason growled something even he didn’t understand, but instead of shouting, his hands traveled down the backs of her legs until they found the bottoms of her leggings. He pushed them up, ignoring her squawk.

“Oh, no, baby girl. It’s about damn time you realize just how much I don’t care about those scars.”

“Mason…”

He put a finger to her lips and grinned.

Jo was about to learn exactly how much he loved her, scars and all, and he was going to enjoy teaching her that particular lesson.

Mason’s original plan had been to just push her leggings up, get it over with like ripping off a Band-Aid, but he changed his mind. Jo deserved better. So instead, he gently set her on the couch and slid off so he was resting between her spread thighs. Fuck, but the sight of her like that, pressed up against the back of the couch, spread-eagle…he’d dreamed about her in that exact position.

But this was about Jo and her insecurities with her leg. She needed him to tamp down his lust and focus on her, and he would, even if he died from perpetual blue ball syndrome.

“Mason, please…I can’t…”

“Do you trust me, Josephine?”

Those big blue eyes of hers widened, and she didn’t even hesitate. She nodded, and his entire world shifted.

He’d never understood that saying before. Nik told him once that was how he knew he loved Lily. There was a moment when everything in him became focused only on her. She was his moon, his sun, and all the stars centered into one tiny woman who had the ability to crush him. And yet, his entire being shifted and focused around her. He’d tried to describe the feeling, but Mason found he could no more describe it in this moment than his brother had, except to say his center shifted from him—heck, even from him and Jo—to simply Jo.

---