Page 73 of Sin

He looks at me this time. Not at the lube. Not at the clothes on the floor. Me. Which is somehow worse. His expression is unreadable at first. Then it shifts into something darker. Something I’ve seen in flashes before. In the truck. On the plane. Across the hotel room in the middle of the night.

Want.

Mason turns his back.

“I forgot my presentation folder,” he says. His voice is rough.

“It’s on the desk,” I say.

I sound like I’ve swallowed glass.

He moves toward it without looking at me. His shoulders are rigid beneath his jacket, his hand flexing once at his side before he grabs the folder. Then he stops. One hand on the folder the other braced on the desk. His head is bowed and the door is still open behind him.

He could leave. He should leave. I should let him.

I know all of that.

I know it with the part of me that has survived by being smart. Careful. Practical. The part of me that knows exactly what this is and what it will cost. But my body is shaking beneath the blanket. And my heart is pounding. And after five days of sleeping beside him and not touching him, of hearing his breathing in the dark, of pretending the pillow wall between us was enough to protect either of us from this, I am so tired of almost.

“Mason.”

His whole body goes still.

“Don’t,” he says. Just one word. A warning or a plea.

My fingers tighten around the blanket. “Don’t what?”

“Say my name right now.”

“Why?”

He laughs once but there’s no humor in it. “Because I’m trying to leave.”

The room tilts. My pulse pounds between my thighs, under my ribs, in my throat.

“Are you?”

His head turns slightly. Not enough to look at me, but enough that I see the hard line of his jaw.

“Laurel.”

“If you want to leave,” I whisper, “leave.”

He doesn’t move. The silence after that is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. Rain against the windows. My uneven breathing. His.

Then he closes the door and turns.

His eyes find mine first, like he’s giving me one last chance to pull the blanket to my chin and pretend this is only embarrassing and something we’ll never mention again.

I don’t.

I hold his gaze.

Then his eyes drop. To the blanket. To the shape of my hand beneath it. To the tension in my body that I can’t hide. When he looks back at me, his control is hanging by a thread.

“You need to tell me what you want,” he says.

My mouth goes dry because I know what I should say. For him to go downstairs and come back when I am dressed and sane and capable of remembering that he is married.