Enemies with Benefits, page 14
So yeah, my feelings about the guy aside, he didn’t tolerate criticism or focus on his family members without good reason.
"I guess," I said, because although yes, she absolutely could be a ball buster, and he said it first, I didn't want to push my luck by agreeing with him. Even as an only child, I knew the rule 'I can say what I want about my siblings, but you better be careful what you say about them around me' extended well into adulthood.
"Amazing," Mason chuckled, pulling the zipper of his riding jacket down and revealing only a tank top underneath. While still clothing, it left my apparently overactive imagination to contemplate a little too much for my liking. "I finally got him to agree with me about something, and it's about my sister's ball-busting behavior."
"Whose balls?" a new voice piped up, and I winced as I turned to find Moira standing behind me, a brow raised. She'd gone with heels high and thin enough that I wondered when her ankles were going to give out, but I'd never seen her falter in them before.
"Anyone you can get your hands on," Mason said without looking, not at all surprised by his sister's presence. In fact, despite the fact that I hadn't heard her approach and his back was to her, part of me suspected he’d known she was coming. Moira had never really spoken about their bond and shrugged it off when people brought up twin senses or a twin thing, but she’d always been a practical woman with her feet firmly planted on the ground. Yet there were times when I’d noticed they were always aware of the other one's presence and had a good read on the other's mood and well-being. It was a quiet thing, and I avoided bringing it up around her because, well, for one, she scoffed at that sort of thing even though she unconsciously listened to whatever voice told her about Mason, but also because anything related to Mason was strictly off limits during our relationship.
"I have never had my hands on your balls."
"Mmm, I distinctly remember you having them in your hand and threatening to crush them."
"We were ten and you deserved it."
"Was that when I was trying to use your favorite dolls as test dummies?"
"No, it was when you'd raided my clothes to go with the heels you took from Mom's closet."
I squinted. “You were crossdressing?"
Mason chuckled. “First of all, I do great in heels. Secondly, it was part of a brilliant plan that—"
"Absolutely would not have worked," Moira finished and then looked at me. "You came back, I see."
"At your mom and...Micah's request," I said after a moment of hesitation, wondering how to refer to the boy. If she noticed the awkwardness, she gave me some grace and chose to ignore it.
"And how did you find out about that?"
"Ooh, me!" Mason said, raising his hand.
"Mmm, that would explain the bruises that mysteriously appeared the other night," Moira said, looking me over. "And the healing bruises on you."
Mason gasped. “I'm offended at the suggestion!"
She pointed at him and then shifted the finger to me, bouncing back and forth. "Look, you two. If Jace is going to be...around more often, you need to work out your issues with each other."
Mason smirked at me. “I think we made some progress."
"Doubtful."
"Why? We were closer than ever."
My face burned, and I gritted my teeth at the reminder, hating him for using that against me when I would clearly prefer to ignore that...that blip because it was an abnormality that shouldn't have happened in the first place. I couldn't stand the man, and he couldn't stand me, and while he might have discovered whatever bisexuality existed in him, no such thing existed in me. I had never been inclined to...well, not strictly true, but...no, I was not going to let Mason Beckett get the better of me.
Which, of course, required ignoring the stirring in my groin at the memory I hated and wanted to forget. The desire I needed to push away was the same overwhelming, intoxicating feeling from the other night. Thankfully, it wasn't nearly as strong, so while I was fighting the urge to yank him up by his hair and deck him, I also wanted to pin him against the wall and see what parts of him felt right under my lips and teeth, but it wasn't taking over like before. I still had to sit a certain way not to give away my predicament, but I was in control.
"Whatever," Moira said with a roll of her eyes, thankfully unaware of what was silently shared between Mason and me. "If you're actually figuring things out, then good for you. But if figuring it out requires beating the shit out of each other, do it away from Micah...and everyone else, for that matter, but especially Micah. And most importantly, figure it the fuck out at some point, understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," I muttered, tearing my eyes away from Mason.
"Suck it up," Mason said, chuckling when Moira slapped his shoulder. "Calm down. We'll figure out how to play nice. There are just some...kinks that need to be worked out."
Anger made it easier for me to look at him with a furious glare at the bad joke. Though to my horror, I discovered that anger didn't make it just easier to meet his eyes after what we'd done, but also more difficult. Anger had always been a reliable emotion to fall back on, especially when it came to Mason. Now, however, that one goddamn incident had been tainted by...by lust.
"Like I said," Moira said with more emphasis than before. "I don't care how you do it. Just do it, figure out a way to exist around one another without giving off murder vibes."
"Murder vibes?" I wondered aloud.
Moira sighed, running a hand through her hair. "That was Micah's words."
"He said that? Murder vibes."
"Yes?"
"O...kay."
"Told you he was weird," Mason said with a chuckle, leaning back in his seat. Which, of course, meant I absolutely did not notice that the move shoved his crotch forward.
"I was gonna say he picks up on stuff, and he knows how to describe what he sees well," I said with a scowl.
"There's that. But it also makes him weird. I didn't notice shit like that when I was his age."
Moira flicked him on the back of the head. “Probably because you were too busy causing trouble and finding it too."
"True," Mason said, giving me a wink for some odd reason. "But now I'm older and wiser."
"One of those things strikes me as more true than the other," Kayden said with a snort.
"Not hard to guess which one," Moira said with a roll of her eyes. "In the meantime, you two try to behave while you sort your issues out."
"You know," I said, turning my bad mood on her. "I think we understood what you were trying to say. We'll behave."
"Good," she said, narrowing her eyes at me and glancing over her shoulder. "Otherwise, it's my mother you'll be dealing with."
Mason scrunched his nose. “Trust me, if you haven't been on the receiving end of that kind of trouble. It's awful."
Not that I doubted their mother could be an effective...punisher. She had raised the likes of Mason after all, but just the fact that Mason brought it up was a sign. He was a man who had feared no teacher, no cop, no anything. So for him to straight up admit that I didn't want to be on the receiving end of what his mother was capable of said more than anything Moira might have said to warn me off.
"Best behavior," I said, holding up a hand like I was swearing in court.
"Good, because here they come," Moira said.
I glanced over and saw them making their way toward us. Once again, I was struck by how much of me showed in Micah's face, and I wondered how I couldn't have noticed it upon seeing him. "Christ, it's so much worse when you're paying attention and seeing it."
"Don't feel bad," Mason muttered under his breath. "You were distracted by my dazzling presence. It happens all the time. Welcome to the club."
"Fuck you," I hissed, leaning closer so my face would be blocked by the back of the chair, my voice low enough that Kayden and Moira could only hear my tone but not my words.
That prompted Mason to lean in close, his warm breath tickling my ear. “If you think you're man enough, go ahead and try. Might be as fun as the other night, who knows?"
I jerked back, hastily trying to school my features into something that didn't betray the horrifying mixture of outrage, disgust, anger, and an unexpected flush of desire, all happening at once and leaving me to wonder what the hell was wrong with humanity that they could feel so many strong and conflicting emotions at once and still somehow get through their lives. No wonder people behaved in erratic and seemingly destructive ways if we were capable of being so...contrary.
"What's up, Punk?" Mason asked, twisting in his seat and snatching Micah up by wrapping an arm around his waist. The kid was still pretty skinny, and like me, Mason wasn't exactly little, so he didn't struggle to scoop up the protesting boy.
"Mason!" Micah protested, and while he might have managed a commendable amount of outrage in his voice, it was ruined by his sudden burst of laughter as he was all but flipped upside down. "Stop! I'm not a little kid!"
Mason stopped, but in a way I'd expect from him, he stopped immediately and just...hung Micah there. "But...you are a kid. And you're little."
"Mason!" Micah said, crossing his arms. If you ignored his size, his attempts at seriousness were ruined by the fact that he was helplessly upside down, his hair practically sweeping the ground as he hung there doing his best to seem as adult and intimidating as possible. It was such a stupid, insignificant thing to act defensive over, but he was willing to do his best anyway.
"Mason," Moira sighed as their mother finally walked up, shaking her head. "Quit."
"I did," Mason insisted, eyes going wide as if that was somehow going to make him seem more innocent.
"Mason," their mom repeated with another shake of her head. "Quit the nonsense already, he said stop."
"And I did," he insisted.
"Good God," I growled. "For someone who always wanted people to respect when he didn't want to do something, you're being a hypocrite right now."
Mason turned, his mischievous expression hardening as he stared back at me. I braced, ready for the acerbic comeback that was bound to tempt me to fire back. Instead, he rolled his eyes and quickly set Micah back on his feet, adjusting his hair so it fell back into place. "Better?"
It might have been my imagination, but I could swear there was a distinct but unspoken 'Dad' thrown in at the end. I huffed, biting back a comment, which wouldn't have been all that witty, and grunted instead. It was strange for him to listen to something I'd said, it was done with a dirty look and a sarcastic tone, but it was still more than he would have done before. Hell, the Mason I'd known growing up would have done the complete opposite just to spite me, so I guess that effect kids apparently have on people was coming through.
"A lot better," Micah muttered sullenly, brushing off his clothes, which hadn't seen the slightest touch of dirt.
"Micah," Moira said, raising a brow at her son and then looking at me.
"Oh. Right. Thanks," he said, then turned to Mason and huffed. "Jerk."
I snorted and went to say something until I caught the look from Moira, making me shut my mouth. What I was going to say, Micah had covered perfectly anyway? The kid knew exactly what his uncle was, and there was plenty of love there for sure. Not that I’d seen much of their relationship, but I knew enough about the family to know that, as weird, crazy, and often frustrating as they could be, there was no denying each member was devoted to the other with an intensity that confused me and left me full of envy.
I wasn't surprised to see that Mason chuckled and rubbed Micah’s hair again, but this time gently, as if careful not to mess it up. "Yeah, I know. But you knew what kind of person I was long before this, so no use complaining about it now."
"I can complain if I wanna," Micah said and turned to look at me. "Right?"
"Whether it's the right thing to do or not, you're not going to find me shying away from complaining," I said with a shrug, resisting the urge to look at Mason as though daring him to say something smart. "So feel free to complain if you want."
"I will," Micah said with a nod and then smiled up at me. "Mom didn't say you were going to come."
"She probably didn't know," I admitted, realizing that if this was going to keep going, then I needed to get her number. Communication clearly wasn't something either of us was good at. To be fair, it had been one of the nails in the coffin of our relationship before, so I wasn't all that surprised to see it hadn't improved.
"Well," their mother said with a wink at me. "I'm glad my message reached you. I hope everyone's hungry. I put in an order for some of our pizza before I came down."
"For everyone?" Micah asked, looking at Kayden, who had so far managed to keep his mouth shut. After Mason, he was the one most likely to comment.
"You know I never order too little food," she said with a laugh. "There's more than enough to feed everyone. And if not, I own the place and can always order more."
I snorted. “Hear that, Kayden? Someone else is taking pity on you...again."
"It's my oh-so-charming face," he said, beaming at me and leaning back in his seat while I rolled my eyes. Why people thought he was charming was a mystery, but it probably had something to do with the fact that he was handsome with just a touch of cute.
That thought gave me pause, and I stopped there, drifting away from the conversation as I stared at Kayden, who was thankfully distracted as the food reached our table, and tables were moved so we could all sit together. Never in my life had I thought of another guy as being handsome. Sure, I could understand when a man was good-looking, but it was never personal. Yet with what should have been a castaway thought, I was suddenly aware of the boyishness in his looks that charmed so many people.
It was no longer a simple observation, and with mute horror, I ripped my eyes away from him before that all too personal acknowledgement became...something else. Bad enough that I’d felt a flicker of something I definitely should not be feeling for Kayden, I was not going to give it the chance to grow into anything else. Something was clearly wrong with me, and I didn't need my friend to get pulled into the crossfire. Knowing Kayden, he wouldn't have minded in the slightest if I had ever been insane enough to tell him what had just happened.
I found my gaze falling on Mason, who, unlike the others, was not distracted by the conversation and was watching me with a curious expression. Considering that I would never even dream of having thoughts like that before he’d come along and...did what he did, I placed the blame on his shoulders without a moment of hesitation. Anger bubbled inside me again, more familiar than that unwelcome pang of lust I had just felt, and I glared at him.
His brow arched as he clearly caught my anger, even though I was trying not to be obvious. My brow furrowed further when he glanced at Kayden for a moment, cocking his head. To my mounting horror, his brow gave another quirk, and surprise flashed across his face, before being replaced by a smirk aimed at me. I didn't know how he’d figured out what had just happened with me, but he clearly had, and more anger rippled through me.
Too much anger, in fact, too much to contain in any case. That asshole had already done enough to screw with me, and I placed the blame for my new issue squarely on his shoulders. If he hadn't confused the shit out of me with his...degeneracy, then I wouldn't have been in the fucked-up head space to come remotely close to thinking dirty thoughts about my best fucking friend.
Anger threatened to give way to fury, and I knew if I didn't take a quick breather, I was going to lose control and break my promise to Moira in record time. And it wasn't even my promise I was afraid of, it was the fact that I hated that Micah was aware of how much anger and hate there was between Mason and me. As a kid who’d grown up knowing when his parents were fighting, which was all the time, and exactly who they hated and why at any given time, I knew how much weight that could put onto someone that young's shoulders.
Screwing my face into what I hoped was a believable smile, I quietly excused myself from the table before anyone else caught on to what was going on. Well, I was sure Kayden probably knew from the way he glanced at me, his eyes lingering and his lips thinning before flashing a believable smile when he was asked a question. I didn't bother to look at Mason, he obviously knew I was pissed off, and I didn't need to see his amusement at my mood to make things worse.
I didn't actually know where to go, so I just wandered off in the vague direction of where I thought the bathrooms might be. After wandering for a couple of minutes, I found myself in a quiet corner of the building. It was a short hallway without anyone else around, but from the signs, it looked like this was the part of the hotel that the staff used for storage. More importantly, it was quiet and it didn't have people around.
I leaned against the wall, ran my hand through my hair, and forced myself to take a deep breath. It had taken me only two minutes after swearing I would be able to control myself before I had nearly lost that control. I had always hated how much effect Mason had on me, and it was especially frustrating that it didn't seem to have dimmed with time, and now with this recent...development, it had grown worse.
If I wasn't careful, that one event would find its way deeper under my skin, and I would never be able to shake it. I knew enough about myself to know that when something well and truly got to me, I was more likely to randomly keel over and die than I was to let it go. And with Mason, he had always been able to find his way deep under my skin. But in that one case, I had to make sure he didn't manage that. Mason lived for driving me up a wall, and if I could succeed in keeping control, then he would finally have found something that wouldn't work on me.
I knew damn well that was easier said than done, our shared history spoke volumes of how well that wasn't going to work. But damn it all, I was a grown ass man, and I had grown as a person. I could keep control and stay that way over one thing. All I needed was to summon my willpower and keep it going, maybe even take a page from his book and enjoy watching him squirm and grow frustrated because he was finally having to struggle to get on my nerves.
