Price of a Kiss (Forbidden Men, #1)(72)

I think his agony got to me more than my own. Tears filled my eyes. When I blinked them away, he choked out a sound of misery.

“Christ, don’t cry.”

I probably should’ve warned him that once I started with the waterworks, they didn’t just dry up on command.

“What do you want me to do?” I sobbed. “Do you want me to call it off? Tell him no?”

I have no idea what happened to all my girl power. A guy I couldn’t have was acting like a butt because I was going to spend a little time with another man. I should be cussing him up one wall and down the next for his * attitude. But there I sat, in tears and begging to know what I could do to make him happy.

Man, I was whipped.

His face contorted and turned an angry red as if he was going to start bawling right along with me. But then his features cleared and he shook his head savagely. “No. Don’t call it off. I want you to be happy. I’m sorry for being a drama queen. Okay? I want you to have fun with…whomever. Just have fun and be happy. Keep being you.”

More tears filled my eyes. Cursing under his breath, he practically leaped across the table to snag his homework out of my hand. Crumpling it in his fist, he shoved it into his bag.

“I have to go,” he muttered, swiping the palm of his hands across his eyes before he rushed off as if the hounds of hell were after him.

As I watched him stride away, it struck me how much I’d hurt him by agreeing to go on a date with Ethan. That hadn’t been my intention at all. I’d only wanted to save myself from getting hurt. I’d wanted to force Reese Randall to move on with her life. But watching him in pain ripped me up inside.

I was in love with him.

Dear God.

I was in love with a gigolo.

It was crazy insane; I was fully aware of that. But this was Mason. My spider killer. My leftover food vacuum. My fellow Harry Potter fan. He was my soul mate. It was easy to look past the gigolo detail when I was with him.

And so it was easy for me to scramble off my bench and fight for him.

Though he hadn’t actually run away, he’d been moving fast when he’d left. Chasing him, I entered the main building, only to spot him nowhere in the glass-ceilinged main atrium. I glanced left down one hall with no luck. When I looked the other way, I saw his retreating back and took off in hot pursuit.

“Mason!”

He heard me and slowed to a stop but didn’t turn around.

“I can’t believe you just walked away from me like that,” I began to rail as soon as I was ten feet away. “We are so not done talking about this.”

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.