He whirled around, catching me by surprise. I gasped when he grasped my arm, his grip hot and firm but not painful. Spinning me toward an opened nearby doorway, he corralled me into an empty classroom and slammed the door shut to pin me against it.
The breath rushed from my lungs as his body pressed into mine. He felt…oh, my God…really nice. Warm, protective, muscled, male. My insides wept from the beauty of it.
With a tortured groan, he lightly pounded his forehead to the door and our cheeks brushed by each other. Then he bowed his face and rested his chin on top of my shoulder.
“Was he in your apartment all night? Did he sleep on your couch? Did he touch you? Did he kiss you?” Another sound escaped him. A kind of sob, kind of curse. Grazing the side of my neck, he shifted his fingers around lightly until he found my scar. “Did you tell him the secret behind this?”
“No. Mason, stop.” It was killing me to listen to his misery. When I cupped his cheek, he lifted his forehead from the door to look down at me.
His whole body shuddered, and I knew it was from regret. “God. Reese, I’m trying to be cool about this. I’m trying not to blow off the handle. And I know I’m failing. But damn…”
His thumb traced the curve of my cheekbone until he swiped away some moisture from my recent sob fest.
A look of utter wonder and sadness crossed his face.
Then he shook his head and gritted his teeth. “This sucks. He can ask you out and take you to dinner and try to steal a goodnight kiss. He can go as far into it as you’ll let him take you. And I can’t even compete.” He grinned, though his eyes were still full of agony. “I think I fell for you the moment I heard you laugh across the campus courtyard. When I looked over and saw you, I knew. You were something different. Something incredible. I knew from that first glance that nothing was ever going to be the same again. You were…a complete game changer. Even when I realized you were sitting with Eva and might be like her, I didn’t care. I wanted to know everything about you.”
I shook my head, too amazed to think clearly. “And here I thought you hated me from that first glance.”
He shook his head. “I never hated you. You just scared the shit out of me, so I tried to stay away. I was afraid to get to know you because I wanted to so badly. I thought surely you couldn’t be as good as I’d already built you up to be in my head. Except every time I turned around, there you were, and you ended up being better than I ever imagined.” His grin fell. “The more I got to know you, the more I knew I should stay away. I could only hurt you. But I could never quite stay far enough away.”
As if he couldn’t stay away now either, he sank closer, his breath caressing my lips. When his eyes slid closed, I knew he was going to kiss me. I wanted it more than my next meal, but I needed to be certain of one thing first.
“Are you still a gigolo?”
He froze, then drew in a breath and pulled back to send me a ragged look, begging me not to go there. “I’ll always be a gigolo, Reese.”
My chest collapsed in on my lungs. “No.” I shook my head. “No, I don’t believe that. You can stop. You can—”
“Don’t you get it yet?” He stepped away some more until we no longer touched. “It doesn’t matter if I stop or not. This stigma, this curse, will never go away. Eighty years from now, people will read my obituary and say, ‘Mason Lowe? Wasn’t he that gigolo?’ God!” He squeezed his eyes closed and whipped his hand through his hair, grabbing fistfuls. “That even rhymes. They’ll probably make a damn limerick out of me and I’ll become an immortal prostitute.”
He began to turn away but I caught his arm. “Mason, I don’t care about your reputation. I don’t like your past, but I don’t care about that either. All I want to know about is right now. So right now…are you still having sex with other women?”
He dropped his hand from his head and studied me. I had the strangest notion he was debating with himself over whether he should lie or not. Then he winced and glanced away. “Well, I think you do care about my reputation. Ethan Riker is pristine white and you agreed to go on a date with him, didn’t you?”
That wasn’t fair. I clenched my teeth. “Mason.”
When I reached for his arm, he lifted it to ward me back. “Don’t. It's fine, okay. I'm not the type to bring home to your parents. I get it.”
"No, you don't get it!" Growling out my frustrations, I flashed my teeth at him. "Just shut up for a second."
Blowing out a harassed breath, I massaged my aching temples. We were arguing two totally different points, and it was confusing me. I wanted to tell him I'd be proud to show him off to my mom and dad, but I had to know if he was honestly free from a certain lifestyle first.
After arching my eyebrows at him in warning to silently tell him not to stray off the topic again, I took a breath and started fresh.
“In the library that day,” I said, trying a different tact, “you told Dr. Janison you weren’t scheduling any more clients.”