My heart skipped a beat as recognition washed over me.
There he was, standing before me looking as hot as ever.
Blue jeans. White tank top. Grey sweater, unzipped. Green hat turned backward. Adorable dimples.
That same cocky swagger. Yep, it was him.
His sparkling green eyes took me in in one glance, seeming to appraise me in a single instant.
“I’ve had girls offer to blow me before, but never to blow my brains out,” he mocked in that deep baritone that made butterflies flitter through my stomach.
I could only manage one word in response.
“Mason,” I whispered in horror.
Chapter 3
Carly: Pre-college years
“Mason,” I called as I weaved in between and around the surrounding trees. “Where are you?”
I stopped for a moment to listen for a response, my breathing producing a white fog from between my lips. A moment later I heard his voice in the distance, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
What on earth is he doing out here in this cold? I wondered, resisting a shiver and pulling my heavy sweater tightly around me.
Following the direction of his voice, I reached a small clearing a minute later and got my answer.
Sweet Jesus. My breath caught in my throat.
Under the winter sun, only god knows what he was doing, but he was punching and kicking the air, spinning around with a velocity that stole the breath from my lungs.
The way he moved his body was astounding, but I think I was more enthralled by his physique. Sweat glistened on his chest and back as he moved with intense precision, fighting an imaginary foe. He was practicing his martial arts I suppose, but why he was doing it out here in the forty-degree weather and half-naked was beyond me.
“Why in the world are you out here with no shirt on!” I demanded. “You’re going to be sick!” I was shocked by the concern in my voice. Usually, I tried to be as bitchy with Mason as possible, but I couldn’t help myself.
Mason completed a powerful roundhouse kick — probably to show off — into the air and then turned to grin at me, his eyes twinkling with amusement. “Because I’m not going to let a little cold get in the way of my training. You should try it sometime. It feels good.” He grabbed his shirt — the one that he should’ve been wearing in the first place off of the ground and dabbed at the sweat pouring down the sides of his face.
Is he doing this shit with no underwear on?
Mason had on gray sweats, but I could see a large imprint in his crotch area . . .
I snorted, warding off guilt and trying to keep my eyes away from his abs and his bulge. “Please. I’m not dumb enough to do something so stupid. You really should put a shirt on. You could catch pneumonia out here!”
Mason chuckled away my concern. “I’m fine, Carly, really. The energy I’m expending is keeping me warm.” He flexed his well-defined arms out in front of him. “The laws of thermodynamics, you know?”
“Whatever,” I muttered. Mason loved to tease me with his intelligence, not that I was stupid, mind you. It was just that he was the smartest person I knew. The ironic thing was his brains conflicted with how much of an athlete he was. Usually jocks were as dumb as hell, but Mason certainly defied the stereotype.
Whenever home, he spent a lot of his time on the computer, frequenting online forums and user groups. He called himself a hacker, but I wasn’t sure if that was talk or what.
With both hands, he wiped at his abs in one smooth motion. “It might be cold out here, but I’m hot as fuck.”
You can say that again, I thought, though it was something I’d never in a million years let him know. My eyes roved down his chest and abs to his happy trail and then to that bulge before I quickly averted them, heat rising from within my stomach.
Mason was really fricken’ hot. There was no denying it.
But I was ashamed to harbor a crush on him — almost from the very moment our parents met some years back. He was my stepbrother and there was no way we could be anything more.
I cleared my throat, hoping he hadn’t seen me checking him out. “Mom wants you to help her take down the Christmas tree,” I informed him. “She’s been waiting for your help for a while, you know.”
Every Christmas, my mother would buy the biggest tree there was and decorate it to the nines, it was a tradition she’d do every year.
Mason, when he could finally be bothered to, was usually the one tasked with helping her put it up and take it down. Not that she couldn’t do it herself, but my mother always made him do it for some reason.
Mason seemed unconcerned with it, though, as usual. “I’ll do it later. She’s waited this long — she can wait a little while longer.”
“But she wants help now,” I insisted stubbornly.