The Mason Dixon Line (A Horizons Novel) (11 page)

“What was that?” Her father’s forkful of
lettuce stopped halfway to his mouth.

“I want to know why you brought it up. I
can’t imagine any purpose other than to embarrass your daughter while she’s
attending a celebration meant to honor your anniversary.”

Oh, shit. Her father looked poleaxed, her
mother nervous, and Todd might have swallowed his tongue.

Gwen, on the other hand, looked ready to
spit nails.

“We are family here, and as such, are
completely honest with each other,” Gwen said. “And we don’t need outsiders to
come in and criticize.”

“Oh, I think you do,” Mason returned. “You
don’t have a job, as I understand it, right Gwen? You’re one successful husband
away from being in Carolyn’s position and I don’t think you like it much. And
Mr. Hart, I think you like it when your daughter comes running to you and asks
for a loan.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Her father’s chest
swelled under the fine fabric of his dress shirt.

“Is it? Isn’t it a little satisfying for
you to be able to deliver these kinds of lectures? You say you don’t want to
hear you daughters fight, but when you criticize Carolyn in front of this one—”
he jerked a dismissive head toward Gwen, “—you have to know that’s going to
happen. You’re egging it on. So I have to guess that a part of you would be
pretty disappointed if Carolyn told you to go straight to hell and to keep your
money, wouldn’t you?”

“That is enough from you, young man!” Her
mother finally joined the conversation. “If you can’t be civil, you’re not
welcome here.”

He shrugged. “I can’t say I’m missing out
on much.” He stood, a line of worry between his brows. “I’m sorry if I ruined
your evening.”

“You did,” Gwen spat.

“Oh, I don’t care if I ruined
your
evening.” He looked back at
Carolyn. “I meant you. You’re the only one here I care about. I’ll be outside
waiting. Stay as long as you want.” He patted his jacket pocket. “I’ve got a
sketch pad. I’ll be fine.”

“No, don’t.” Carolyn put an arm on Mason’s
elbow as he started to leave. She couldn’t even process what had happened, didn’t
even know what to think, but she knew he was right, and her family was wrong.
Why should
he
be thrown out? “I
thought we were all okay with the truth. After all, we’re family here.” Hmmm,
apparently Gwen didn’t much like having her words thrown back at her, if the
way she bristled indicated anything.

“I hope you aren’t under the impression
that this man’s babble in any way resembles the truth,” Gwen said.

“It doesn’t resemble the truth, it
is
the truth.” Chills swept over her. God,
he’d met her family once and put his finger on something that had eluded her
for years. “You criticize me for living beyond my means, and that’s fair
enough. I should be criticized for that. But you don’t want me to spend less
money, you want me to earn more. Or more precisely, marry it. Dad, I know you
mean well, but Mason is right.” It hurt her to say this to her father. She
loved him, she really did, but damn it, it needed to be said. “You like holding
the strings a little too well. And I’ve let you because I didn’t want to change
how I lived my life. But that can’t go on. It’s gone on too long and it’s made
me miserable.”

Her father’s eyes misted, and she looked
away, knowing she wouldn’t be able to hold back her own tears if her father
lost it. “And Mom, I know you like nice things. You’ve never had to give a
thought to money because dad has always taken care of that for you. That’s
lovely, but that’s not my life.”

Her mother shook her head. “If only you’d
stayed in college. You might have met a good guy there who could have taken
care of you.”

“Mom, really. In this day and age? I don’t
want to meet a good guy to take care of me. I have to figure that out for
myself. If I can’t sustain a lifestyle myself, I shouldn’t be living it.” It
was common sense, really. Why had she taken so long to figure it out? She
swallowed and retrieved her Gucci clutch from the table. She had to do it while
she still had the nerve. “And this is the first step.”

She dug inside until she found her wallet
and pulled out a stash of credit cards. They were all here. Home Retail
Channel. Discover. Visa. MasterCard. Macy's. Neiman Marcus. A couple of others
she didn’t even remember applying for. These pieces of plastic, and her
inability to stop using them, had nearly wrecked her life.

It was time for them to go.

Piling them on the plate, she pulled a
candle from the candelabra and held the flame to the first card.

Nothing happened.

Sweat broke out on her upper lip. So much
for her dramatic gesture. She was going to feel like an idiot if credit cards
wouldn’t burn.

“I think you need an accelerant,” Mason
offered. “Here.” He poured his whiskey on the pile of cards, and they caught
with a whoosh.

Carolyn looked at him. “How did you know
that?”

“My misspent teen years. I may have gone
through a fire-setting phase. Don’t worry,” he said at her alarmed look. “No
living things were harmed.” Slowly, the cards caught, blackening, curling. A
horrid stench rose from the plate, equal parts whiskey and hot plastic.

“Ma’am!” A server appeared at her shoulder,
aghast. “That’s against the fire code. I’m going to have to ask you to put it
out and leave!”

Other diners turned their heads. A gossipy
hum went up around them.

“I’ll do that.” Mason plucked up a cloth
napkin and smothered the fire, putting it out in moments and adding the smell
of scorched linen to the mix.

A second server appeared and whisked the
smoldering mess away on a tray, shooting them a shocked look.

“I think it’s best that you go. Both of
you.” The gravity in her father’s voice broke her heart.

She’d hurt her father, and that didn’t make
her happy. The only thing that let her walk away with her head up was knowing
that she’d finally, for once, done the right thing.

#

Mason pressed the elevator button, a little
smile playing around his lips. “You kick ass.”

She lifted her eyes to his. “Really?”

The elevator opened. They stepped inside,
never breaking their gaze. The doors shut, leaving them alone, confined. He
pushed the button for the third level.

“Really.”

He touched her cheek, pushing aside a wisp
of hair that had escaped from her updo. She looked at him, but said nothing.
She knew her heart was in her eyes. She couldn’t help that. Why make herself
even more vulnerable by telling him how she felt when he didn’t feel the same?

“I know you don’t do casual,” she said, her
voice unsteady.

“No, I don’t.” His eyes shone. “But right
now, the way I feel about you is not very casual.”

He leaned in. Her heart sped. She let her
eyes drift shut and was rewarded by sweet, firm pressure on her mouth. She
parted her lips and his tongue met hers, eager, searching. He embraced her and
she felt the elevator wall against her back as they lurched into upward motion.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and
pulled him tighter, wanting to taste him, smell him, to consume him and be
consumed by him.

If she’d had any doubt about his need after
his crazy-hot kiss, the heat and hardness pressing against her abdomen would
have cleared it right up.

He fumbled at the fabric of her skirt and
cool air brushed her knees. What the —

He was lifting her skirt. In the elevator.
Mr. No-Casual-Sex was trying to do love in an elevator.

Not that she minded. He slipped one strap
of her evening gown off of her shoulder and kissed the skin he’d bared, his hot
mouth heating her until her blood burned.

The elevator doors opened to an empty
parking garage level.

He tore his mouth away from hers. “Damn.”
He pressed his forehead against hers, his eyes half-closed and drugged with the
same familiar desire that overwhelmed her. “Not exactly a convenient place for
our first time together. Not how I imagined it.”

“You’ve been thinking about our first time
together?” She thought he’d put the whole idea out of his mind after the
incident in the woods.

“Are you kidding me?" His eyes gleamed
behind his glasses. "I didn’t think it would ever happen, but I’ve been
thinking of nothing but.”

“Me too.” She blurted out the confession
without thinking. “But I didn’t think it would ever happen either. I thought
you . . . well, I didn’t know how you felt about me.” That was an
understatement. “I mean, I know you think I’m pretty.” She wasn’t being
conceited. All her life, everyone had thought she was pretty. It hadn’t worked
out that well for her.

“You’re not pretty. You’re beautiful. I
think you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever seen.” His breath warmed her
skin. “And I don’t think I can wait to drive all the way back to the cabin to
be inside you.”

Her lips curved. Suddenly she felt every
bit the femme fatale. Beautiful, sexy, and ready to use it all to please the
man she . . . liked. “We are in a hotel, you know.” She frowned as a thought
occurred to her. “Damn. I don’t have any more credit cards.”

His teeth flashed white. “I got this one.”

He pulled away to hit the button on the
elevator to go back down to the lobby. He kissed her until they couldn’t
breathe. She wanted so desperately to pull his clothes off, to pull him down to
the ground. Even the ten minutes it would take to get a room seemed
interminable.

This was finally going to happen. She was
going to go to bed with this man—a guy she had nothing in common with but was
totally infatuated with anyway.

When the elevator reached the ground floor
again, they kept right on kissing, unable to end this closeness until a sound
of a clearing throat got their attention. A middle-aged couple stood there, the
woman smirking, the man surprised.

“Sorry.” Mason pulled her after him. In the
lobby, he nodded at the plush sofa in front of a roaring fire at one end of the
gilt-and-glitz room. “Wait for me while I get the room.”

She pressed up to her tiptoes to give him
one last kiss. “Hurry.”

His eyes darkened. “I will.”

The sight of the keycard dangling from Mason’s
fingers electrified her. Together they rode up in a different set of elevators
to the eighth floor. They weren’t alone and kept a discreet distance from each
other. Her heartbeat thudded so loudly she imagined he could hear it.

When they reached their floor, she followed
him in silence, nerves setting in big-time. He stopped in front of a corner
door and swiped the card. He opened the door and flicked on the light to reveal
a spacious suite. On one wall stood a fireplace surrounded by cozy chairs. Past
that was a flat-screen TV surrounded by a grouping of sofas. To the left was a
kitchenette. Soaring windows with a spectacular view of downtown lights rounded
off the main area. Doors on the right led to what she assumed was the bedroom
and bath.

“They’re almost full for the night, between
a wedding and your parents’ anniversary party. I had to get a suite.”

“That’s fine.” She was glad of the
reprieve. Opening the door to a pair of double beds would have put pressure on
them to jump into bed right away. On one level, that sounded wonderful. On
another, she wanted to savor every moment. She went to the gas fireplace. She
flipped the switch and it flickered on with a whoosh. He stood at the door, his
hands tucked in his pockets, watching her.

In Todd’s borrowed clothes, he looked more
like a sexy dot-com entrepreneur than her geek artist. Once she would have
heartily approved of the change. Now she wasn’t sure.

He went to the kitchenette and opened the
minifridge. “Want some wine?”

“Sure.” She sat in the nearest cushy chair.

He flipped a light switch and the room
dimmed, dark except for the firelight and the city lights streaming in from the
windows. Alarm skittered through her.

Stupid. She’d had sex with a few—okay, maybe
several—guys. She had more experience than he did. So why was she nervous?
Because it had never meant much before, and this time it did?

He handed her a glass of wine. She took it
reflexively without looking at him. “Thanks.”

“Don’t.”

“What?”

He lowered to sit on the rug before her
chair and took a sip of his own wine. “Don’t think it to death. Don’t have
second thoughts. Don’t wonder if we’re doing the right thing.”

“Is it that obvious?” As usual, he’d seen
right through her. His understanding calmed her, a little. She sipped her wine.

“Yes.” He set his glass down on the
hearthstone and knelt down, lifting the hem of her skirt. Her heart pounded and
she had trouble drawing a breath, exhilarated and a little scared at the same
time.

But he didn’t pull the hem very far up,
just to her knees. He lifted one strappy sandal-clad foot and put it in his lap,
running one hand up the smooth muscle of her calf. “These shoes are beautiful
but they don’t look very comfortable.”

“They’re not,” she confessed, heat
skittering across her skin as he fumbled with the delicate buckle on the strap.
It opened and he eased the shoe off.

She sighed and wiggled her toes. “That
feels good.” She hadn’t realized how uncomfortable she was until she wasn’t
anymore. She drained her glass and placed it on the carpet, where it fell to
one side.

“It’s going to feel even better in a
second.” He looked up with a smile of half sexual promise, half worship. The
worship bit made her a bit uncomfortable. She hardly deserved it. But then he
pulled the other shoe off, freeing her aching foot from its constraint, and she
forgot all about what she deserved.

He took one bare foot into his hands and
began to work it, rubbing and heating her skin with his strong hands. He sank
one thumb into a particularly sore spot in her arch and wrung a moan from her.
She held on to her tension at first, sure this was a quick preliminary and he’d
be moving on to something overtly sexual in a minute.

But as the moments dragged by and he simply
rubbed her aching feet, she relaxed into the ample cushions of the chair,
letting her eyes slide shut. The bubbles from the sparkling wine had moved
directly into her bloodstream, fizzing and sparkling in her very veins. The
heat of the fire and the firm, certain pressure of his hands sent languor
creeping through her.

Then his hands slid up to her ankle, and
her eyes popped open. Over the mound of white satin bunched up over her knee,
his eyes met hers. His hands slid up, up, up to part her knees and suddenly she
couldn’t draw a breath.

“Mason.” The wine, the man, and the moment
combined to make her voice unsteady.

“Shhh.” He leaned in to kiss the inside of
her knee, and she melted. Hmmm, he was good at this. The memories of their
encounter in the forest assailed her and she shifted on the seat with a sigh.
She threaded her fingers through the rough silk of his hair and steered him
closer to the apex of her thighs, earning a low laugh that vibrated against her
thighs.

“Patience,” he chided.

“I don’t have much of that.”

“You’ll have to gain some, then,” he said, moving
the bunched fabric higher, revealing the nude thong she’d worn for maximum
invisibility under her sleek dress. Pushing her legs wide, he kissed his way up
her inner thigh. Her breath caught as his mouth hovered for a moment over the
apex of her legs, and then he did a head-fake, moving on and pulling the top of
her thong down to press kisses to her lower abdomen.

“Oh, you bastard.”

His laughter against her skin stirred her
even hotter. Restless, she tried to close her legs, move around, take control
or move things along somehow, but he took a thigh in each hand and held her in
place.

At last he pushed the wisp of fabric aside
and put his mouth where she wanted it. The muscles in her stomach clenched,
making her body bow. He added a finger and soon had her hips moving wildly out
of rhythm.

He pulled away for a second, earning a cry
of disappointment, but returned in a second with his wine glass and a cocksure
grin. He held the near empty glass above the apex of her thighs.

“I didn’t have a chance to finish my wine.
I think I’ll do that now.” He tipped the glass to pour it onto her, and she
gasped through clenched teeth at the shock of the cold sparkling wine against
her hot skin.

He dipped his head. “That tastes absolutely
amazing,” he murmured. “You and the wine together.”

“Oh, God.” Her voice didn’t sound like her
own. “Oh, yes. Don’t stop. Don’t—” She broke off as he slid his finger inside
her once again and then added another, keeping up a steady pressure on her
clitoris with his tongue. She came with a groan, grasping his head to keep him
right where she needed the pressure and heat the most.

He pulled away to kiss the inside of her
thighs, leaving her a boneless mass slumped in the chair.

After a minute, he raised his head. “You
okay?” The tender solicitude in his voice made her heart clench. She nodded,
wiping away a tear that had meandered down her face at some point. He rose to
his feet stiffly, and she could see why. His erection stood out from the front
of his pants.

She reached out to stroke him through the
fabric, but he dodged her touch and took both of her hands, pulling her to her
feet.

“Let’s get you out of the dress.”

“It zips up the back.”

“Let me.”

She turned to give him access and sighed as
he unzipped her, warming the revealed skin with the heat of his breath. He
kissed the nape of her neck, dropping kisses in a line down her spine. Kneeling,
he let his tongue explore the hollow above her tailbone. Sliding her underwear
off, he rained kisses and nips around her hip and over her buttocks. The
lassitude that had crept over her vanished, and she turned, wearing only her
bra.

He knelt at her feet, watching avidly as
she reached behind her to flick free the fastener. He flushed as he bared her
breasts. She knelt beside him, and he seized her mouth in a kiss before she’d
even come to rest on the carpet.

One hand rose to take one of her breasts in
a firm grip and she sighed, her body heating and pulsing with renewed desire.
His crisp clothes against her bare skin set her afire. She reached to loosen
his tie, but he pulled his mouth free and pushed her hand aside. “I can’t wait
anymore,” he said on a ragged groan.

“Then don’t.” She reached for his belt and
together they freed him, lowering his pants and boxers enough free his
erection. On an impulse, she lowered her mouth to engulf him.

“Don’t do that. I swear to God, I’ll come right
now if you do.”

His bluntness took her breath away—God, she
liked making him lose control—but she pulled away with a last regretful swipe
of her tongue anyway.

They’d save that for another time. Right
now, she wanted him inside of her.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a
condom. “You carry condoms with you?” That was a good thing, right? She ought
to be grateful that he took safe sex seriously, but still. Packing condoms in
case he could arrange a quick screw didn’t fit her image of Mason.

“When I booked the room, I ducked into the
men’s room off the lobby and bought a few. Thank God for vending machines.” He
rolled on the condom as he spoke.

“Oh.” That sounded more like the man she
knew. Thank God. She didn’t have unsafe sex but she’d have been mightily
tempted with him. He tended to short-circuit her brain.

“Stand up.” He helped her to her feet and
turned her around. He put a hand between her shoulders. “Bend over and brace
your hands on the back of the chair.” She complied, desire zinging through her
in response to his urgency. He couldn’t wait to get to the bed. God, neither
could she.

He used his foot to nudge her feet apart.
She closed her eyes, awash in the sensation of leather and linen against her
bare skin. She felt him at her entrance, and with one deep plunge, he was in
her, taking her breath away.

“Oh, Jesus.” Mason’s groan from behind her
told her everything she wanted to know. She closed her eyes and savored the
pounding thrusts, feeling her desire spiral up and out of her control. He
reached to caress her clitoris with one and cup her breast with the other and
before long, she whimpered, gasped, and cried out. Her pleasure ratcheted
higher and higher. She gave into it with a cry.

“Mason!” she sobbed, and tears rolled again
as she came with almost painful intensity.

“God. God!” He’d lost control, his thrusts
growing frenzied and rough. After a minute, he cried her name and came hard,
his body trembling against her hip and backside. He pitched forward to brace
himself on the seat back, his hands beside hers, his body sheltering hers. The
scent of his soap and sweat assailed her. She turned her head to nuzzle his
cheek, bumping into his glasses. Tenderness toward him overwhelmed her. She
wanted to pull him into her arms, hold him, cushion his head on her breasts and
press a thousand kisses to his skin.

One random thought ricocheted through her
head and made her chuckle softly.

“What?”

“I think my friend Suz was right.”

He turned his head to her, eyes still
unfocused and hazy with pleasure. “Yeah? About what?”

“She said once you go geek, you never go
back.”

He laughed. “You calling me a geek?”

“In the very best way possible, yes.” He
pulled free of her body and she sighed at the loss. She straightened and rubbed
the small of her back. She hadn’t noticed the ache in the heat of the moment,
but now, the achy sensation from the awkward position made itself known. “Hmmm.
That was wonderful, but my back is killing me now.”

“Did I mention I excel at back rubs too?”

“No, but I’m interested in finding out
more.” She tugged on his tie, pulling him down to whisper in his ear. “Come to
bed. And bring the wine. I have plans for that.”

She left him standing with his mouth open,
a smile on his face as she walked away. She could really come to love this
sexpot thing. Maybe she could even come to love Mason, but she wouldn’t think
about that. Yet.