Page 47 of Black Roses

Mason races over and puts his palms by either side of my head on the door, forcing it closed. “Where are you going?”

“Isthatwhat you wanted to show me?” I hit the door with my open palm. “That you’re getting back together with your ex-wife?”

He sighs so long and hard I can feel the back of my hair part under his heavy breath. “She’snotmy ex-wife.”

“Girlfriend. Whatever.” I stare at the blue steel door just inches from my face. “You could have just told me.”

“I’m not getting back together with her, Piper. I told you that already. I’ll never get back with her. She’s a manipulative shrew.”

“But you kissed her. Is that younotgetting back together?”

“You’re wrong.” His hands lower, caging me in place. “I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me. Just another one of her spiteful tactics. She’s threatened by you. I haven’t had a woman in my life in a long, long time.”

“Hmph,” I pout through my closed mouth. “It sure looked like you were kissing her.”

“I wasnotkissing her. God, you are so stubborn, woman.” He puts a hand on my arm and I tense. He immediately removes it, placing it back in its previous spot. “She surprised me. I was saying goodbye to Hailey, and before I knew what was happening, she swooped in like the predator she is.”

I shake my head, not knowing what to believe. Cassidy is everything I’m not. She’s extraordinarily beautiful, walking-the-catwalk-in-Milan beautiful. And although her breasts aren’t real, evenIthink they’re spectacular. She oozes sexiness from every pore. I’ll bet she doesn’t cringe when men touch her. I’ll bet she doesn’t feel her skin crawl just thinking about being with a man.

It would be so much easier for him—for any man—to be with her over me.

He takes my silence as incredulity. “Piper.” He gently puts his hands on my shoulders and spins me around to face him.

I can’t look directly at him. I stare blindly into his chest as my thoughts stray to what it might look like under his tight-fitting polo. I have a pretty good idea. After all, I’ve seen him shirtless at the gym.

He puts a finger under my chin, raising my head until our eyes are forced to meet. “I wasn’t kissing her. Believe me, if I was kissing her, that’s not what it would have looked like.” He grabs my face, his hands on either side, his thumbs meeting in front to rub across my bottom lip as he stares at the slow gesture. “Thisis what it would have looked like.”

He leans down and his lips crash into mine so forcefully, it propels my body against the door behind me.

“Ugh.” When the hard steel meets my back, my mouth opens and my breath escapes me, right into his welcoming kiss. He takes the opportunity to push his tongue into my mouth. His silky, firm, demanding tongue. His tongue that has infiltrated my every thought since he kissed me last night.

After his tongue relentlessly takes everything it can from me, his mouth parts from mine, never once leaving my skin as he trails feathery kisses from the edge of my lips over to my ear.

My head tilts as he devours the space between my earlobe and my shoulder. He slowly works over every centimeter of my skin, studying it with his lips. Each flick of his tongue sends electric shocks spiraling through me. Each light sucking movement causing tremors across my body.

Never in my life have I felt this way. I’m standing on air. No, I’m floating. I get it now—what people mean when they say they are on ‘cloud nine.’

All too quickly, he pulls away, and for the first time, I’m left wanting more. Needing more.

Craving more.

And if his triumphant smile is any indication, it’s written all over me like a cheap romance novel.

He places a chaste kiss on my lips and laughs. “Was that just our first fight?” His hand lingers on me, tracing the curve of my neck.

Smiling, I say, “No, that would have been the airport. You know, when you called me a bitch and a drunk.”

“Oh, right.” He has the decency to look shameful.

“It wasn’t even our second fight,” I say. “That was at Skylar’s when you said I wasn’t an athlete and my legs were too short to run a marathon.”

His eyes fill with regret. “I was a dick, Piper. I’m really sorry. I think I was just trying to fight my attraction for you from the very beginning. Anyway, you proved me wrong. Those little legs beat my ass and now you have bragging rights.”

“Whatever.” I roll my eyes, knowing he let me win. “So, you find me attractive, huh?”

“You have no idea, do you?” his eyes snap down to his tented pants.

My pulse races. And not in a good I’m-standing-on-a-cloud kind of way. It races in a turn-and-open-the-door-and-run-for-dear-life kind of way.

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