by T. N. King
“We understand your concern, we’ll take it into consideration,” Mason added, his tone just as even and blank as it had been before this portion of the conversation came up. “Our decision was already made however and we’re not going to be altering it.”
He ‘d made it so final, in a way that her emotional rant had failed to accomplish, Nicole’s gaze rotated over each of the faces around them and their various levels of concession to that statement. Like Mason had said before, they didn’t need to understand it, they didn’t even need to like it, they just needed to accept it as what they had chosen to do and not try and come between them. It was all that either of them was asking for.
“I just want to go home,” Nicole interjected, falling back more firmly into Mason’s chest and exhaling roughly. “I just want to go home and go to sleep.” Be with Mason, talk to Mason, and not have all of the other’s opinions and reactions to worry about or have to contend with.
“Perhaps that’s a good idea,” Dr. Friedrich acknowledged, once more looking from Mason to her and back again, putting his hand over her mother’s when she opened her mouth as if she was going to disagree with the lot of them. “We’ve all had a tumultuous evening, it might be best if we all went home and digested all of the information and waited until morning to make any other decisions.”
Again, her mostly silent father this evening was nodding along with him, as if he could use any excuse to escape from the revelations that had been forced upon him this evening.
“It might also belay any further hasty decisions,” there was no missing that twinkle in Dr. Friedrich’s eye, his lips twitching to one side and seemingly going over her mother and father’s head who seemed, all of a sudden, much more fond of the idea than they had been a few seconds previous.
Marie’s sigh seemed almost exaggerated, her mostly empty cup of coffee being pushed away from her place even as she stood, hands brushing down the front of her already wrinkled pantsuit with slow deliberation. “Fine, I’ll admit that I’m drained as well, I can only imagine what everyone else is feeling. A cup of tea and bed sounds nice. I’m not going to pretend that the idea of the two of you just suddenly living with one another doesn’t bother me, but then there’s not much about this situation I’ve wrapped my head around yet.”
“It’s hardly the first time they’ve lived under the same roof,” Paul finally added, speaking for what seemed, to Nicole, to be the first time all night. His words were dry enough that she couldn’t tell if they were sarcastic or censoring, eyes refusing to land fully on either Mason or Nicole completely, and Mason’s half snort going ignored by almost everyone except for Marie who looked at him as if in warning.
“Well, he isn’t wrong. I didn’t take advantage of her then, I’m unlikely to now.”
Nicole could feel her very ears heating at Mason’s words, both for the implication and the… dishonesty of it, at least what she hoped was dishonesty. She wasn’t trying to force some sort of physicality or implicate that it was necessary, but she wanted… she didn’t even know, her shaky laugh cutting through whatever her father may have been about to answer, standing up herself and grabbing again at Mason’s hand once he was standing as well. If her mother’s coughing was anything to go by, the ride to Mason’s apartment was going to be even more awkward than the past few minutes had been.
She shifted her weight between feet uncomfortably, preparing to follow the three adults out of the restaurant only to be stopped by Mason’s lack of movement. Something that the other three noticed as well after several moments, looking back at the two of them tenderly, and in her mother’s case- worriedly. “Mason? Nicole?” As if waiting for another bomb to be dropped, Nicole’s heart constricting at the sudden shift in demeanor, at the way her mother obviously worried about what was about to come out of either of their mouths… but Nicole herself didn’t know why they had stopped, her face turning as well to question Mason.
“I think we’re going to take a cab home,” he said by way of answering the lot of them, one arm wrapping about Nicole’s shoulder and her weight gladly falling into his side.
She didn’t even know, after all he’d been through himself that night, how he was able to support her like he was, but she was more grateful than she would ever be able to fit into words that he could.
“We’ll see you guys in the morning.”
“But—”
Again, following the pattern of the night, Marie was cut off, Paul’s hand closing around hers and his head lowering in a slow nod. “Okay then kids, give us a call when you two are ready to talk more tomorrow.” And again, because of his seeming silence previously throughout the night,
Nicole was taken aback by her own father’s voice, near tearing up at the staid compassion coloring his voice. She didn’t even know how to answer him, fingers curling around the fabric of Mason’s shirt at his side, her head leaning even further into him and her heart skipping a beat. She was beyond ready to be back at his apartment, beyond ready to even be in the cab on the way there, even if she had a feeling that, when they did get inside of the vehicle she was going to fall asleep.
“Dr. Friedrich? Thank you for coming,” she called out, shoulders pushing in towards her chest. “And mom? Dad? …. Thank the two of you too, love you,” her tired voice petering out near the end and her hand waving the three of them off to their various responses, none of which she actually heard. She was done, slowly moving with Mason once more when he began to head outside, presumably to the cab that he had called for or texted, her eyes drooping as he helped her through that door and outside. She just wanted to be home…
Chapter Twenty-Three
Mason felt disoriented, unloading the still sleeping Nicole from the back of the taxi-cab that they’d gotten into outside of the diner, her half-snuffle snores pressed into his chest as he tipped the driver and turned from the car entirely. He was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with wanting to sleep, his body sore despite the lack of actual physical exertion that had taken place today. He’d attempted, for a moment, upon loading into the cab at the diner to try and discuss something with Nicole, only needing her to half-nod as she had been and fall back into his chest before he realized how pointless such an attempt was. She was exhausted, it had been obvious before they had even begun preparing to leave the diner, before Dr. Friedrich had even joined them, her attention span so obviously preoccupied outside of the discussion that he, Marie, and Paul had been having.
“No, there are pufferfish Mason, I don’t like pufferfish. They look bloated,” came the sleepy mumble from his chest as he keyed in the entry code to his apartment building, half snort of amusement at her words escaping him as they passed through the then open door. No, she didn’t like pufferfish, that was a conversation nearly older than his feelings changing concerning her, but one that had nothing to do with things as they were currently. Obviously, she still hadn’t outgrown the talking through her sleep when stressed, another thing that he was hardly going to bring up to her when it was she was able to communicate effectively again. “Mason,” more distressed that time, her fingers curling into the lapels of his shirt and pulling until he could feel the stress put on the fabric about his neck.
It didn’t sound like she was complaining about pufferfish any longer, her body twitching within the confines of his arms and twisting as if she were trying to escape something, or possibly get down… but she was still asleep, eyes squeezing even more tightly shut, her legs shifting against one another restlessly. “Mason don’t. Please.” Her distress was growing, obviously so, each passing second bringing more shifting and her voice dropping, slight whimper at the end of her random plea, those fingers gripping his shirt tightening all the further. “Don’t do it. He’ll win. Please.” Those stairs to his apartment were taken three at a time, arms tightening to keep her from being jostled as much as physically possible on the way up. He was even more convinced her mind had turned from those childhood annoyances to the events of the day, shuffling her weigh
t around in his arms to access his keys and open that front door.
He’ll win sounded slightly insulting, especially if she were referencing Aaron like he thought that she was, but more importantly, her arms had begun to shake, tremor working its way through her body. She needed sleep, and so did he, which meant that he needed to attempt and get her into his bed and calmed down without having to wake her. Something that seemed completely impossible once her eyes shot open, whole body lifting like she was trying to sit bolt-upright in his arms and scream. “MASON!” Screeched right in his face, his feet propelling the both of them through his now open front door, kicking it shut behind them and trying to capture her attention despite all of her flailing and panting.
“Nicole,” he finally answered, his tone more exasperated than he had meant for it to be, shifting her body again in his arms so that she was facing him…but it was like she couldn’t see, her hands flailing out towards him, slapping at his face and torso randomly until he had no other option but to put her down, dropped unceremoniously on his bed. Then his own frame taking a full step and a half back until he was out of reach, watching her struggle to set herself to rights, and apparently wake fully up, rubbing at her face haphazardly and blinking up at him.
“Mason?” Much less desperation driven, those tears finally escaping her tear ducts and leaking slowly down her face. “Oh God, I’m sorry, you carried me all the way up here? You shouldn’t have done that!” She wasn’t even looking around, scooting like she was onto her knees and towards the edge of the bed as if she wanted to be even closer to him, and while that was flattering… he didn’t know if he could handle the proximity knowing she was awake currently, not with as charged as the both of them were. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe I fell asleep like that- and I never should have just assumed as many things as I did at the diner, I just keep doing that to you, and dumping these things on you with no warning all at once, I don’t even know wh—”
Bending at the waist and grabbing her face to shut her up, his mouth slanted down over her own, swallowing whatever other nonsense words she was going to prattle on about next. She was rambling, and it was probably more annoying than he should have allowed it to be, He wasn’t sorry. Not for any part he had in the events of the past two days, not for her knowing and reciprocating those feelings he had been hiding for the better part of their lives… not for any of it, which meant that she needed to get over her guilt complex and move past it already as well. There were only so many apologies he could take for things that he didn’t care if she was sorry over or not. Her insecurity level was astounding, especially considering all of her attributes.
“You’re insane,” he mumbled against her lips, only coming up long enough for air, his fingers framing the outline of her face on either side slowly until he was more securely holding her up to him and his advances. “If I wanted an apology,” his teeth drug along her lower lip following his words, tongue indenting that soft flesh just after. “I would have asked for one.”
He didn’t want an apology. He didn’t want an explanation. He didn’t, unsurprisingly, want anything at all to do with words or discussions revolving around today. He didn’t know if he were going to manage staying out from behinds bars, something that he’d had enough of over the years. It was the same reason he didn’t visit zoos, the same reason he didn’t attend those wildlife exhibits, or even the local shelters or pounds. He didn’t like seeing bars, much less envisioning life behind them, dealing with the mental state in which it put him to even consider it. He didn’t want to be an animal on display, didn’t want to spend the rest of his life incarcerated in so many ways and eking out a living in some menial prison-to-pipeline scheme that the state founded and the prison funded. The threat was ever-looming now, each notification on his phone, each possible knock on the door a possibility of the news that could put him there, lock him up….
He didn’t want to be focusing on that any more than he wanted to hear her apologies. He wanted to revel, for just a little bit longer, in the fact that he was actually allowed and able to touch her, especially since the latter of that might be changing at any given moment. There wouldn’t be any conjugal visits for the two of them if it came down to it, and there was no telling, with the previous ‘attack’ on file, how long of a sentence it is that they would want him to serve if he ended up being convicted. Or how many charges they managed to make stick with the accusations against him.
There were too many things in the air, too many questions with determining factors that he couldn’t at all influence no matter how much he wished he could. What factors he did have control over were beneath his palms, her skin already heating and her face lifting so willingly up into his own, little noise of content at the contact his lips made against hers passing between the two of them, his exhale near shaking in response.
“Mason… maybe,” cutting through his lips rolling against hers, her voice low and still full of that obvious physical response coursing through her. Maybe he should have let her speak, maybe she was more preoccupied with all of the other, there were any number of things she could have said following that interruption, but his hands rolling down from her face and against the sides of her neck was gentle, yet effective in cutting her words off at the source.
“I love you,” he said in place of whatever words she’d been going to utter. The words were foreign on his tongue, stuck in the back of his throat nearly with the hushed way in which he forced them into being. It wasn’t that he wasn’t sure, it wasn’t that he didn’t know, it was just the absence of having said those particular words. The absence of sequencing for him to follow to ensure that he was passing them on as they should have been, but she seemed so much less concerned with the likes of that than she did actually hearing the words, whole body leaning further into him and encouraging his lips back down onto hers.
She tasted like the first rain after a drought, hitting light upon his tongue and still somehow soaking through the whole of him. She tasted like a home that he had never known, hands falling even further still on her frame, finding those buttons of his shirt that she was still wearing, working those buttons through the holes that held them and surrendering her olive-hue skin once more to his gaze, those bruises and teeth marks lining her neck near forcing his body into even quicker a response…
… and stayed just as quickly by those green and purple marks lining her ribcage, discoloring the skin and marring that visage of bruising that he had so been enjoying. Those marks where Aaron’s boots had driven again and again into her body… his hands pushed the sides of his shirt back, revealing even more of her skin and lowering the gathered fabric down either of her arms until it was pooled atop the bed behind her. She was just as pretty as she’d been the night before, just as toned and curved in all of the places that he liked it best—but now, other than those marks he had left there himself when they’d been wrapped up in one another, there now also lay a myriad of bruises not left by him, or anyone else with even half the same intent, across the taut lines of her torso.
He could see her catching on, see her body shrinking inwards in either embarrassment or an attempt to cover up what that asshole had done to her. His response was automatic, hands running down her sides, careful to jump over those areas of more discolored flesh, in order to engulf both of her breasts within his palms, roughhewn skin rolling slowly over the peaks and his fingers digging into the softness of those mounds simultaneously. “You’re so fucking gorgeous,” he said instead of what else he was thinking, lips traveling the side of her face, peppering kisses along the line of her jaw and down her neck and those already raised lines that he had left from before. “You’ll tell me to stop if I hurt you.” It was more than command than question, one hand smoothing lightly over those bruises that weren’t from him as she rolled her body towards him, her hips pressing hard against the front of his.
“Uh-huh,” she breathed out into the side of his face, fingers grappling for some sort of hold against his shoulders, and
his body leaning forward to lower her slowly onto her back, his own following to fit up and over her. “You’re not going to hurt me.” She sounded so sure, her breathy voice caught up in the back of her throat and low with the desire that his hands were so obviously inspiring.
His hand smoothing down over her and not rolling her breast between his fingers travelling even lower, fitting between those borrowed sweatpants and flesh until he could fit his finger down along the slick, wet line of flesh that he had been thinking of since she first started rolling back into him.
“No, little girl, but I am going to fuck you,” he promised, pushing with the heel of his palm to rid her of that fabric too, even as she fought to disrobe him as well. His muscles rounding at weird angles to try and allow her help in doing so, only for the hesitance at waiting until he could accomplish it himself.
Her legs lifted willingly, aiding in his quest to slide that fabric down and off of her legs, her naked form spread out before him and stretching, thighs falling naturally to either side as if to encourage him to fit his way between them, her hands fumbling at pushing his own pants down and off of his thighs. Something he was all too happy to help her with, stepping out of the legs of his pants one leg at a time and lowering his torso to engulf the nipple that wasn’t currently being twisted between his fingers with his mouth, teeth scraping against the sensitive flesh and working it into even higher a peak.
“You promise?”
His whole body shuddering down into hers at how sensual she’d made the two words sound. The challenge so clearly made that his intention to fit his mouth even lower over her was thrown to the side, newly naked hips fitting between her thighs just where she’d originally been trying to guide him. His dick pressed just into the lining of her folds and held, her little pants coming all the quicker with each stroke against her that he made.