The simple answer is yes. It’s worked before. The right combination of liquor and my body has loosened Hatchet’s lips in the past. I know I can do it again. I have to. “It works.” My cheeks heat with shame.
“Men aren’t that stupid.” He grimaces as if he hears the lie in his own words.
“Women have been using their bodies to get what they want since the beginning of time.”
He doesn’t respond.
“I’m begging you, Mason, to let me do this for her. I’m asking you to wait for me. Please, don’t let this be good-bye.”
“I can’t. I . . .” He drops his head back and closes his eyes. “Knowing that you’re giving your body to someone else, sharing yourself with another man, is more than I can handle, Trix.”
“My body is just a shell. It’s—”
“Nothing but skin and nerves. I know. You’ve made that clear.” He laces his fingers behind his neck and drops his chin. “Fuck!”
“Except when I’m with you.” I place my hand on his knee, and when he doesn’t flinch away, I run it down the length of his thigh, scooting myself closer so that I’m between his cocked legs. “Every time, from our first kiss until now, my body has been yours. My heart, mind. God, Mase, it’s like my very soul has belonged to you since day one.” I run my palms up his bare chest to his shoulders until he finally looks at me. “You’ve seen me dance. You know what everyone else is seeing isn’t really me. Only you have seen the real me, and I need you to know that you’re the only man who ever will.”
A long desperate sigh falls from his lips.
“I’m in love with you, Mason. You’re the one I want. Forever.” I slide my hands to his, which are fisted at his side. “Let me prove it to you.”
His eyebrows drop low and he cocks his head. Pushing to stand, I pull him to his feet and lead him to stand at the foot of the bed. Without a doubt in my mind, I pull off the T-shirt and let it fall to the floor.
“I told you I was saving a part of me, a very private part of me for the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.” I sit onto the bed, and he tracks every movement with flawless concentration. “This is my commitment to you.”
I drop to my back and take a shuddered breath as I lay myself out before him and pray he doesn’t reject me.
He’s silent for a minute that slowly ticks into two. I squirm as his gaze glides over every inch of my body.
And here is the deciding moment, the choice I’ve laid out before him.
Choose me or walk away.
Mason
It’s so close to everything I’ve ever wanted. I have her love, her distant future, but not her loyalty. Not her body. Not her heart, at least, not completely.
Her desire to solve her sister’s murder isn’t what shocks me most; it’s the irrational idea that she’ll be able to do it on her own. And if she thinks I’m going to sit on the sidelines twiddling my thumbs while she throws herself and her naked body in front of a man who’s not only unsafe but tied to a murderer, she’s out of her motherfucking mind.
I put a knee to the bed between her open legs, their golden length spread out before me as a runway to the heaven that waits between them. My hands smooth over her ankles, up the thin contours of her shins to her knees. She takes a shaky breath and chews her lip.
“Are you scared?” My voice is low and harsh.
“Yes, only scared that you’ll take what you want and walk away.”
What I want. Ha. It’s almost laughable. What I want is her heart, the one thing she doesn’t seem able to give until she finishes what she started. “Do you trust me?”
“I love you. But I don’t know if you love me, and that makes this scary.”
Ah, so she thinks I’ll take the one thing she’s saved of herself and throw her away right after. Trix, you don’t know me at all.
Rather than set her mind at ease, I continue to run my palms up her smooth thighs, pressing them apart farther and farther with each stroke until her knees are bent and her feet are flat on the bed.
My breath catches in my throat at the view before me: her lush little body open and practically trembling with anticipation while her chest rises and falls with quickened breath.
I lean over her, making sure to keep my hips high. I know how badly she needs to be touched, but by the time I get my mouth between her legs, I want her begging, desperate to be reminded of what we have.
“This”—I dip down to suck one firm nipple deep into my mouth—“and this”—I move to the other and do the same, this time clamping down with my teeth and leaving a mark—“are mine.” It’s animalistic, barbaric, but I need to mark her. I dip to the hidden cavern beneath her breast and suck the tender flesh deep into my throat. She gasps, arching into my mouth. I suck her deeper and groan when she lifts her hips to rub against my dick. With a firm grip, I press her hips to the bed and release her to find a dark purple spot where my mouth once was.
“Tell me you’re mine.” I need to hear her confirmation.