Broken Empire A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance - Callie Rose Page 0,54
green eyes were hidden by his closed lids, and his thick brown lashes curved gently over his cheeks.
He was beautiful.
But even in sleep, there was a hardness to the set of his features, a tension he carried in his muscles. As if even at his most vulnerable, he kept a shield up between himself and the rest of the world.
I chewed my lip, tilting my head slightly as my fingertips brushed over his chest.
In all the time I’d known him, Mason had always looked like this. I had never seen the tension drain from his face.
Except once.
Today.
When he was inside me.
I dropped my head back to his shoulder again, resting my hand over his on his stomach and curling into his body.
He had heard my quiet, barely-whispered words earlier. I was sure of it. But I truly was glad he hadn’t said anything, because I was fucked up in the head about it enough as it was.
Maybe the problem was that there weren’t enough words for love in the English language—not enough variations to express what we truly meant to say.
I wasn’t in love with Mason. So much more time would need to pass for me to know if that was even possible.
But what was the word for when a broken soul recognized another just like it? For when they joined together and their jagged edges fit?
Maybe it wasn’t love. But whatever it was, it made me want to wrap the blanket around the two of us and try to find peace in the storm, to let Mason protect me and to protect him right back.
I fell asleep in his arms again as those thoughts chased each other around and around in my head, and a few hours later, a loud knock on my apartment’s door jerked us both awake.
“For fuck’s sake,” Mason groaned, craning his neck to look at the clock.
My heart had jumped into overdrive when I was startled awake, and it didn’t slow down as the knocking came again. “Is it the other guys?”
“What do you think?” He rolled his eyes and sat up. Then he hesitated before leaning back down to cover my body with his own and kiss me.
It wasn’t as desperate as our previous kisses had been, but there was something… intentional about it that made my chest warm. He pulled back and stared down at me, his green eyes un-shuttered and fuzzy with sleep like they had been the night I’d gone up to his dorm to learn the truth about my mother.
He ran his fingertips over the line of my jaw, studying my face with a serious gaze. “Princess…”
“You don’t have to say anything,” I told him quickly.
I didn’t want to hear false words—hell, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to hear true ones. Whatever was going on between me and the Princes was confusing enough already without adding anything else into it.
He didn’t look satisfied with that answer one bit, but before he could say anything else, someone banged on my front door again.
“Fucking hell.”
He shook his head, and I almost laughed at the annoyance in his voice. The four boys were like brothers, and that included being able to irritate each other like brothers.
Although, in fairness, it was possible the other Princes were just worried—or that they had something important to tell us. Neither of us had picked up our phones for several hours.
Mason threw off the covers and stood, walking unabashedly across the room to pick up his clothes while I hobbled over and grabbed a worn t-shirt, new panties, and a pair of yoga pants from the dresser. I didn’t look at him as I dressed. I knew how to be naked with someone in the context of sex, but in the aftermath, I felt a little awkward about it.
He’d already seen everything, but for some reason, I felt suddenly shy.
He waited until I was tugging my shirt down to stride out the door, and I followed him a second later. Cole, Elijah, and Finn were already pouring into the apartment when I stepped out of the bedroom, and from the looks on their faces, no one had any doubts about what’d just happened between me and Mason.
Elijah and Finn looked almost amused, but Cole’s face was unreadable. His ice-blue gaze cut back and forth between me and the other boy before he looked away.
Mason didn’t seem to think there was any need to explain or defend either one of us though, so I decided I wouldn’t either.