His eyes flutter closed. The tension in his shoulders eases by degrees.
I run my fingers through his damp hair—it’s curling at the temples, the humidity and sweat undoing whatever product he usually uses to keep it under control. The sight catches me offguard. In three years, I’ve never seen Mason’s natural curls. Another thing he hid. Another piece of himself he kept carefully controlled, carefully managed, carefully out of sight.
How much of him have I never seen?
The question hurts more than it probably should.
He works for me, I remind myself. I’m not entitled to anything more than what I pay him for.
But then Mason makes a low sound and presses closer. His forehead finds the curve of my neck, and his breath comes in hot, ragged bursts against my collarbone. His hand tightens around mine, fingers interlacing, palm pressed flush against my palm.
Then he murmurs something against my skin.
The words are indistinct, muffled by the press of his mouth against my collarbone.
Reluctantly, I pull back. Just far enough to hear him properly. Just far enough to see his face, flushed and damp and more open than I’ve ever seen it.
“What did you say?”
Mason’s eyes flutter open. Gray, storm-tossed, rimmed with red. He looks wrecked in a way that has nothing to do with the heat and everything to do with whatever’s been eating him alive for the last decade.
“I need you to understand,” he whispers.
My heart clenches. Part of me wants to stop him, to press my fingers to his lips again and tell him we can talk about this later. My pride is still smarting from the revelation that I’ve spent three years pining for a man who was already claimed by someone else.
But it’s so hard to resist the pull of him.
I adjust our positions until we’re face to face, noses nearly touching, my hand still threaded through his damp curls. The intimacy of it is almost unbearable. His breath ghosts across my lips, his eyes so close I could get lost in them.
“Okay.”
Mason swallows hard. His throat bobs. When he speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper.
“I presented as omega when I was fifteen.”
I nod slowly. “That’s pretty late.”
“And there wasn’t anyone else like me here,” Mason continues, his voice going distant. “I looked up the statistics once. Male omegas are only like 1 percent of the population. So in a town this small, I was it. The only one. My parents are betas. They had no idea what they were supposed to do with me.”
“What about everyone else?” I ask softly, though I have a sinking suspicion that I already know where this is going.
Mason’s expression goes flat.
“Male omega is code forgayto a lot of people. Regardless of who you’re actually attracted to. You know people make assumptions because of designation all the time.” His jaw tightens. “It doesn’t help that female alphas are almost as rare, but people always think they know exactly what to expect from an omega. Submission. Weakness. Sexual availability. Guys who were fine with me before I presented just…turned overnight.”
“Oh, Mason…”
“There were the usual locker room incidents. Slurs painted on my locker. Football players used to like to corner me after school. See how far they could push before a teacher intervened.”
Horror crawls up my spine, cold and sharp. My hands have stopped moving in his hair. I force them to start again, petting him like a stupid soothing gesture will make a difference.
“What about your parents?”
“They weren’t cruel. They just didn’t know how to handle it. Heats were just this weird thing they learned about in health class.” He shrugs, the movement small and defeated. “Most ofthe people in this town see the world the same way as they did fifty years ago.”
“But not Dom and Judah?”
Mason stills. For a moment, I don’t think he’s going to acknowledge the question before he finally speaks, so softly I can barely hear it.
