Page 14 of Drown Like Heaven
Nobody had ever asked me that, even though I had an answer.
But Mason was unlike anyone I’d ever met.
The way he somehow saw past all the smoke and mirrors, poked right at the disgusting heart of me. It was tempting.
“Your worst fantasy,” he murmured. “The shit you’d never say out loud—not even to yourself. The thoughts wrapped around the very core of your soul, the darkest, most shameful ones. Tell me.”
My heart was slamming on my ribs so hard it almost hurt.
“No,” I whispered.
I couldn’t say any of it. Couldn’t say the violent things that consumed my brain in the dead of night, all the awful things I imagined evil men doing to me, the things that made me squeeze my thighs together and bury my face in a pillow.
“I want all your secrets, all your bad thoughts. I want to know everything about you, own every truth you hide from everyone else. You got that?”
Too bad, because I’m never going to see you again after today. And I’m not fucking telling you now.
“Let me be clear,” he started. I gritted my teeth, arousal coiling in my core. “You made a mistake by trying to save me.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you shouldn’t have done it. You shouldn’t have made me notice you.”
His gaze dropped to my lips. Slowly, painfully, it dragged back up to meet my own.
He wasburning me.
“Come here,” he murmured, motioning with his fingers.
I couldn’t look away from his handsome face, couldn’t stop smelling him.
“I don’t even know you,” I panted.
“Do you need to?”
My eyebrows slanted together, a soft whine lodging in my throat. No. I didn’t need to know him to fuck him.
But maybe I should.
Maybe I should pump the brakes on this whole thing.
I rested my forearm on the center console and leaned forward a little, my heart hammering wildly. Mason watched raptly as my tongue darted out to wet my bottom lip. It was too warm in the car, the air too thick. Heavy heat thrummed between my thighs.
Mason leaned in, tilting his head, then barely brushed his parted lips over mine.
I couldn’t contain the shiver that trickled through my body at the feeling of his mouth against my skin.
Up close like this, I could finally tell what it was he smelled like. He smelled likethe ocean. But he didn’t smell like the saltwater and the sand and the seaweed.
Mason smelled the way the darkness of the ocean felt.
Bottomless depth, curling tendrils of invisible currents, violence and nature and unstoppable swells of shadowed water. Like a riptide in the middle of the night, something to pull me under the surface, suck me down into the only place I could be free: in the darkness.
His hand came up to cup my jaw and he kissed me for real. His lips were firm but soft, slowly working mine open. I couldn’t stop myself from moaning pathetically into his mouth.
He helped me climb over the center console and straddle his lap, reclining and moving the seat back to give me more room. I was panting now, my body aching with the need to be touched. My desire consumed me, like wildfire burning through a dry forest.
Mason’s fingers played with the zipper of the sweatshirt I wore, flipping it up and down, tugging it down a half-inch as he kissed me deeper. I wasn’t wearing anything underneath it, and he knew that.
