by Nicki Rowe
Axe was silent for a long time, and I started believing the worst. I stood, gathered my shoes and headed for the door. I was just entering the hall when Axe caught up with me. He put his hands on my shoulders and spun me.
“What the fuck is going on, Mason?”
“I can't do this.”
I didn't look at him. I couldn't. I didn't want him to see how hurt I was that he wouldn't go on one fucking date with me. I wanted him, but I was not going to stick around for this shit.
“You can't do what anymore? Be fuck buddies?”
I nodded.
He grabbed my chin almost painfully and forced me to look at him. His eyes were soft, but his jaw was clamped shut. I saw the muscle tick just below the surface. “I'm not seeing anyone else. I promise.”
“Do you want to date me?” I asked.
“Mason, I—”
I ripped my chin out of his grip and looked up at him. I was shaking so bad the room looked like it was vibrating. “How about you give me a call when you pull your head out of your ass.”
I turned, and made it to the door before Axe spun me again. A look of hurt flashed in his eyes for a moment, and it almost had me taking back everything I said. His fingers were digging in my shoulder, and I watched him as he tried to figure out what to do next.
I wanted him to kiss me. I knew that he only kissed someone when he cared about them. If he kissed me then I would know that I meant something to him. I was more than just a fuck to him. If he kissed me I knew that would mean there was something between us.
His eyes went to my mouth as if he knew what I wanted, but then they snapped up to my eyes, and what I saw was unreadable. He let go of my shoulders.
“Bye, Mason.”
He didn't say anything else. He walked down the hall to his room and closed the door.
I stood there for a few moments, trying to decide if I should go after him and apologize or leave.
I left.
Chapter Five
Axe
I heard the door open and close as Mason left. I debated going after him. I debated telling him that I did want to date him, but I was scared. I was scared that once he realized who I was and what I have done then he wouldn't want me. I was already scared of what this man was doing to me. I couldn't add the fear of his rejection to the list of things that terrified me.
How could one man make me question everything I have known from the moment I had broken up with Tina seven years ago? How could one man take my plans of being alone forever and rip them up?
Fuck, what was I thinking? This was never going to be just friends with benefits with Mason. We wanted too much from each other for it to be just that.
“Fuck!” I hollered.
I stood, clamboring to my feet, the rage burning inside of me was making me uncoordinated. Blindly I reached for my dresser, swiping everything from the top. All my pictures, my knives, the bottle of lube and condom that were now reminding me of what I had just lost were all on the floor.
“Fuck!”
I stomped through the apartment ripping at my possessions as I went. I tore the one picture in my hall off of the wall, tore my movies off of the shelf in the living room. I was like a whirlwind of blind pain, lust, rage and something else that I refused to acknowledge. I didn't even realize I had punched a hole through my kitchen wall until I came out of my tornado of fury.
“Fuck,” I said more calmly as the rage ebbed to the edges of my brain and I was able to think more clearly. “What the fuck?”
I sank to my knees in the middle of my kitchen. My cell phone was resting on the counter. I contemplated picking it up, calling Mason and demanding he got his ass back here.
I didn't. I couldn't.
I had to let Mason go. He was better off without me.
~ ~ ~
One week. It's been one week since Mason left my apartment. I was even more fucked up by the fact that I hadn't seen or heard from Mason in seven days then I have ever been fucked up by anything in my entire life.
I haven't eaten really. I have slept only a handful of hours since Mason walked out of my door. I kept fucking up at work, so much so that Grizz and Mills had taken over my clients and Grizz had given me the rest of the week off.
“Fuck.”
Fuck seemed to be the only word my brain could come up with in order to process what was happening to me. I had never felt like this for someone. Not even Tina. I wouldn't say I was in love with Mason, my brain couldn't wrap itself around that four letter word, but I felt something for him—something that ran deeper than just liking Mason.
I cut in front of a man in a slow moving truck on the highway between Seattle and Glensville. My bike was the only thing that was making me feel normal. The feel of the engine under me, and the chrome gleaming in the moonlight was the only thing keeping me from popping my fucking top again. I've put more miles on my Indian in the past week then I put on her in a month.
It took me forty minutes to finally see the lights of Seattle ahead of me. I sped like I was running from something, and I was. I was running from Glensville. I was running from Mason. I was running from my feelings.
I pulled up to the bar that Grizz, Mills and I sometimes frequented back when we lived in Seattle called One More Shot. It looked like a rough and tough biker bar where only shitheads and assholes go to drink, fight and then fight over someone to fuck. It was also the only place I could go to truly feel like myself. A place where I can drink how much I want, fight whoever I want, and fuck whoever I want. It was my own personal haven.
Walter Pyke owned the bar with one of his friends, Cason Shields. Wally was fifty-seven but built better than most thirty-year-olds and Cason was in his late forties. They were both hot in an old dude, biker sort of way.
“Axe!” one of the bartenders exclaimed.
I made my way over to Lacey and plopped down on a stool.
Lacey was a real cute, petite girl who was fresh out of college. She looked sweet and innocent like an angel, but she could handle a knife better than anyone—almost even better than me. She had grown up in a neighborhood much like my own and had to learn to defend herself.
“What brings you to town?” Lacey asked, already filling a beer mug with a dark ale that I like to drink when I'm at One More Shot.
I don't want to tell her all my troubles or about the teal eyes that have been haunting me since Mason walked out of my house a week ago so I tell her the one thing that I know will get Mason off of my mind. Even if it's for a moment.
“Pleasure.”
Lacey nods at me understandingly. Lacey and I had never fucked, and I wouldn't say no to a night with her, but Lacey doesn't fuck anyone. She hasn't tried to be with another man since some piece of shit raped her at a college party five years ago.
“Well, Dawn Finn usually comes in around ten and Lance DeMarco will be in within the next fifteen minutes,” Lacey tells me, naming off two of the people I had fucked in the past.
“I want someone new, Lace.”
Lacey nods at me again. “What about her?”
I turn to where Lacey is pointing and see a woman in her thirties looking at me up and down. I don't get hard under her heated gaze, but I stand up and make my way over to her anyway.
“Hello,” she says.
She has golden skin and dark hair, pretty features, but that's all my mind is seeing. I don't care what she actually looks like. I don't care about anything about her. I don't even care what her name is. I just need her to get Mason out of my mind.
“Follow me,” I say, turning and heading towards the door. I don't turn around to see if she's following me, every part of me—except that roaring in my ears that's telling me I need to get Mason out of my mind—is wishing the woman would stay in her seat.
When I'm in the alley between the bar and a nail salon I finally do turn around and find the woman did in fact follow me. She presses her soft, curvy body into me and is whispering in my ear. I don't hear a word she's saying.
; As if on auto-pilot I lift the woman's shirt and find she's not wearing a bra. Her tits are small, made to fit in the palm of the hand, but as I reach for them I start to see teal eyes and creamy skin. I can hear Mason's breathy groans as I push into him.
I get an instant erection at the image of Mason bent over the counter in Thorns and Roses Ink, the last time I was buried deep inside of him before everything went to shit, and I move my hips away from the woman so she doesn't think that erection is meant for her. I find that I don't want the image of Mason tarnished by the woman in front of me.
I push the woman away from me. Her back hits the brick wall, and she's looking up at me drunk and confused.
“What the hell?” she hisses.
She's trying to come at me again, telling me how good she can make me feel, but I'm not listening. She clutching at my jacket, pulling me towards her, rubbing herself on the erection that isn't meant for her.
“Fucking stop!” I snarl and it has her standing stalk still and looking up at me with fear, and rejection in her eyes. I run my hand through my hair, and look at her regretfully. “I'm sorry. It's not you.”
She huffs at me, but doesn't say anything. She turns on her overpriced heels and goes back inside the bar.
I let a huge breath out and slide down the alley wall until I'm sitting on the disgusting, rain slicked ground as realization dawns on me.
I only want to fuck Mason. I only want to spend my time with Mason. I only want to be with Mason.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Mason
One week and three days. I haven't heard from Axe for ten days, and I'm starting to think he's never going to want me in the way I want him. I was still sitting by my phone waiting for him to call—rather I was pulling my phone out of my pocket every fifteen minutes to see if I have missed a call or text from him. But there is nothing. Not one call or text in ten days.
Maybe he's moved on. Maybe he's found someone else to be fuck buddies with.
I can't process those thoughts. The thought of him with someone else makes me want to cry. Or vomit. Or both.
And I have cried. A lot. I cried in my car before leaving the apartment building on that night. I've cried almost every day for three days. I cry whenever I drive by Thorns and Roses. I cry if I even hear the word axe. I'm fucking pathetic.
“Stop thinking so much,” Diego says, like it's just that easy to stop thinking about the guy who turned your entire world upside down. “It's not going to change anything.”
“Shut up,” I tell him, but my words hold no heat, in fact I sound miserable and meek.
The sounds of Edward shooting zombies on the screen pulls me out of my mind and back into the present. Diego invited Edward and I over to play video games, but my head and my heart weren't in killing the zombies that were trying to take over some fictional town in bumfuck, Kansas.
“I set you up with someone,” Edward says. “I met him at The Clip and Save.”
“He's not some hippie weirdo, is he?” I attempt at a joke. But the word 'weirdo' has my eyes tearing up again. How long has it been since I called Axe a weirdo? I had been coming to think of it as our thing.
Edward threw a wadded up napkin at my face. “No. His name is Anthony Palmer. He's perfectly normal. Almost too normal.”
“What are we saying?” Diego asks. “He may hide dead corpses in the basement?”
It was a running joke between the three of us that 'normal', boring people were the ones who had the darkest secrets.
Edward rolled his eyes. “No. He's just very straight laced and quiet.”
“Need I remind you,” I said, “of the straight laced and quiet teacher you are marrying.”
A wicked smile crossed Edward's lips. “He's not always like that.”
I wanted to ask what Edward meant by that, but then the doorbell rang.
“Oh, did I mention you and Anthony are going out tonight?”
“Edward!” I yelled, running to the bathroom. I had no interest in dating anyone if it wasn't Axe, but I certainly wasn't leaving the house with my hair all messed up and with chip dust on my pants. I cleaned up in Carter and Diego's guest bathroom, using some of the mouthwash Carter's father had left behind when his parents had visited a few weeks ago to mask the fact that I had been munching on ranch flavored chips for the past two hours.
When I got back out to the living room I could hear Diego and Edward talking to who I assumed was Anthony Palmer. They said something and the man laughed. The man's laugh was deep and throaty.
Anthony was good looking in a teacher or lawyer sort of way. He had blond hair and blue eyes. In any other scenario I would have totally thought him to be hot, but I couldn't help but wish he had dark hair, green eyes, a surly attitude and tattoos covering his arms.
“You must be Mason,” Anthony greets me, holding out his manicured hand.
“You must be Anthony.”
Anthony smiles and puts a hand on the small of my back. If this was Axe I would have loved the move, but it's not Axe, so I step away from Anthony. He pulls back and opens the door for me.
“Shall we?”
Anthony leads me out of Diego's house and down the steps to a sleek black Lexus. I don't know what type of Lexus it is, but it's shiny, sporty and beautiful to look at. I slide into the passenger seat, loving the way the leather feels against my overly hot skin.
We ride in silence, but Anthony doesn't seem to mind. I expect him to take me somewhere fancy like Va Luca's in Seattle; he seems like the type of man that likes to flash his money. I almost laugh when he pulls up to Chen's Chinese Restaurant.
“What?” Anthony asks, looking at me confused.
“Nothing,” I replied, getting out of the car and stumbling slightly. Luckily Anthony didn't notice. “I just can't picture a guy like you eating at Chen's.”
“A guy like me?”
Anthony steered me into the restaurant. I had to admit I kind of liked the feeling of a hand on my back, but the hand wasn't big enough, he wasn't forceful enough, and my body didn't react to Anthony the way it did to Axe.
“Yeah, rich, successful, polished.”
Anthony nodded in understanding. “I'm not like those other rich, successful, polished douchebags.”
I believed him. Something about Anthony seemed down to earth and sincere.
The second we stepped through the door I felt it. That prickling in my skin that lets me know when Axe was near. I looked around the restaurant for him, and saw him and Mills at a table just on the left and diagonal of the door.
“We should go,” I told Anthony.
As soon as the words left my mouth Axe's head swiveled and his gaze met mine.
“What's wrong?”
Axe stood and before I could get another word out he was stalking towards us. His hands fisting and unfisting at his sides. Even from this far away I could see the storm of emotions brewing in his green eyes: lust, anger, betrayal, and something softer that I wish I had seen that night when I left his apartment. If I had seen it then I wouldn't have left.
Anthony stepped in front of me, thinking that Axe was coming over to hurt me or him. I wasn't sure what Anthony was thinking. I was frozen in the spot. Axe looked so beautiful, and I just wanted to grab his face and kiss him and demand that he see me the way I see him.
“Sir,” Anthony said, holding up a hand. “You need to stop right there.”
Axe continued to barrel towards us. Mills had stood now and was standing with his arms crossed and his feet braced apart. He didn't make any moves to stop Axe, and there was this look on his face like he knew what was going to happen.
I gently moved Anthony to the side so he wouldn't be pummeled over by Axe. He didn't slow down until he had me backed up against the doorjamb and the wall. I was vaguely aware that everyone in the restaurant was looking at us, but I couldn't make myself give a damn. One of Axe's hands fisted in my shirt, and the other wrapped lightly around the side of my throat the way I liked. His thumb smoothed ov
er my jaw as he breathed in and out, trying to get a hold of himself.
“What are you doing here, Axe?” My breath was coming out short and breathy.
Just the feel of his body pushed up against mine, and his thumb lightly playing over my jaw and my bottom lip—a contradiction to the anger holding the rest of his body ridged—had my cock standing at attention. I wanted to grind our hips together. I wanted him to take me out of here and fuck me until I couldn't even remember my own name.
“You're on a date?” Axe's words came out pained and clipped.
“Has anything changed?” I countered.
His eyes went wide. His fingers wrapped around my neck more forcefully, and I let out a whimper. Not a whimper in fear—I could never be afraid of Axe, and he wasn't actually hurting me—it was a whimper of lust, of want, of need. I wanted him so much it hurt.
“Answer my question, Mason.”
“Answer mine, Axe.”
“Sir,” Anthony's voice came from somewhere behind Axe. “Let go of him. I just called the police. They are on the way.”
“Fuck off!” Axe turned his head and growled.
“Axe, stop,” I said, reaching up and putting my hand under his chin, forcing him to look at me. “Answer my question.”
“Answer my question.”
Stubborn man. I gave him a half smile. Still not caring that people were watching us, I finally did one thing I wanted and ground my hips into his. I hissed in a breath when I felt his bulge brush mine.
“You still want me.”
“Of course I want you,” Axe said, all the anger had gone out of his voice. “You're all I think about.”
The sound of sirens broke through the silence and mine and Axe's ragged breathing. He still hasn't let me go, and I didn't want him to.
“The cops are here.”
Axe snorted. “Cops love me.”
I smoothed my hand over the stubble of his jaw. It was then I realized how bad he looked. There were bags under his eyes, and he looked like he hadn't shaved in a few days. The body pressed up against me felt like it lost some weight.