Ride the Tide (Deep Six #3) - Julie Ann Walker Page 0,120

shook his head as if that wasn’t quite right. “Or that maybe I am, but it’s normal given all I’ve been through.”

“It is normal,” Alex assured him.

Mason went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I think I wanna try, Alex. I wanna try for that life.”

Her. World. Stopped. Spinning.

“What exactly are you saying, Mason?”

“I’m saying I want you, Alex.” His eyes searched her own. “I’m saying I want you to be the last thing I see when I close my eyes at night, and the first thing I see when I open them in the morning. I’m saying—”

She didn’t care what else he had to say because he’d already said enough. Besides, the heat and hint of desperation in his eyes told her more than words ever could.

Bright, shiny, incandescent joy filled her up until she was surprised rays of light didn’t shine out of her eyes.

He wants me! The mighty Mason McCarthy wants me!

It was all she’d ever wanted, and more than she’d ever dreamed. With a squeal of unfettered happiness, she jumped into his lap. Straddling him, she grabbed his face—registering the rough scrape of his beard stubble against her palms—and slammed her mouth over his.

If someone had asked her what she was thinking in that moment, she couldn’t have said. Maybe for the first time in her life, her head was completely hollow. But oh! Her heart was full.

Full in a way she’d never felt before. Full in a way she hoped to feel until her dying day.

At first, Mason’s kiss was tentative, as though the man who hated talking actually had more he wanted to say. Then a low groan sounded at the back of his throat, and wrapping his arms around her, he kissed her until they were both panting.

“Upstairs?” he asked in that deliciously gravelly snarl she’d come to recognize as his I’m hard and achy and I need you voice.

“Yes, please.” She nodded enthusiastically and then squeaked when he hoisted her into his arms and raced inside to take the stairs two at a time.

Once they were in his bedroom, he tossed her atop the coverlet. She would have bounced except he immediately threw himself over her, pinning her to the mattress.

When he reclaimed her lips, she had a vision of their future. Of adventures and arguments. Of amazing moments sprinkled in with the mundane. And through it all, she was falling in love with him.

Was that possible? To continue to fall in love with one man for an entire lifetime?

By god, she was going to give it her best shot.

* * *

10:27 a.m.

Mason had said it before; he would say it again. Alexandra Merriweather was a damned prodigy.

He’d never really been a fan of the sixty-nine position. Had always felt it was too difficult to concentrate on two things at once, what his mouth was doing and what her mouth was doing. But somehow, Alex had set up a give-and-take rhythm that’d made the act so fucking hot he’d lost his damn mind.

Thankfully, if her squeals and squirms were anything to go by, she’d lost hers too. And now they lay side by side, sweaty and replete.

“So?” She twirled her fingers in his chest hair. “Are you going to say them or not?”

“Huh?” His brow furrowed as he once again proved how articulate he was not.

“You know, those three little words.”

He ducked his chin so he could look at her. Her green eyes sparked with mischief. But there was also a hint of uncertainty there.

“If memory serves, I wasn’t done talking outside on the front porch,” he informed her. “But you attacked me. Couldn’t keep your hands off me a second longer.”

“True.” She nodded, and he loved the silky slide of her hair against his shoulder. “But now I’m all ears.”

He opened his mouth, but to his great annoyance, nothing came out. He realized that was because the words were so big in his heart, he was struggling to get them past his throat.

After swallowing, coughing, and rubbing a hand over his chest, he managed, “I love you, Alex.”

Her eyes crinkled at the corners. She could see how much it cost him to say the words aloud. But they were all the more meaningful because of it. “I love you too, Mason,” she assured him in a whisper.

With his heart full, his head turned to other matters. “It occurs to me that I’ve never even taken you on a proper date.”

“True.” She frowned. “We seem to have skipped that part. Unless you