Chapter 134 I Want to Watch
Emily's POV
At first, it was just comfort I was seeking—the simple human need to be held, to feel something solid and real when everything else was falling apart. Mason's arms around me were steady, grounding, and the heat of his body against mine pushed back the cold emptiness that Alex's absence had left behind. I told myself that was all it was. Just comfort. Just warmth.
But then I became aware of other things. The way his chest rose and fell beneath my cheek, the rhythm slightly uneven, quickening. The faint tremor in his hands where they rested on my back. The subtle shift of his body, the tension coiling in his muscles. And beneath it all, the undeniable evidence of his arousal pressing against my hip through the thin towel.
I should have moved away. Should have acknowledged it and created distance. But instead, I found myself leaning into it, craving the distraction it offered. If I focused on this—on him, on the physical—maybe I wouldn't have to think about the gaping wound Alex had left. Maybe I could drown out the guilt and the grief and the crushing weight of my own failures in something immediate and overwhelming. Maybe I could replace the pain with sensation, with heat, with something I could control.
His lips brushed against my forehead, soft and tentative, and I felt the first spark of something other than numbness kindle in my chest. Not love. Not yet. But want. Need. A desperate, aching desire to feel anything but this hollowness.
There was something raw in his eyes, something desperate and aching, and it mirrored the hollowness I felt inside. He leaned down slowly, giving me every chance to stop him, and pressed his lips to mine.
The kiss was soft at first, careful, but it quickly deepened, his hand coming up to cup the side of my face. I kissed him back, my hands gripping the towel at his waist, pulling him closer. I wanted to lose myself in this, to forget everything else, to just feel something other than the crushing weight of guilt and loss.
But then I became suddenly, acutely aware of the laptop still open beside us, the glow of the screen casting pale light across the bed. Ethan. Ethan was still there, still watching. I turned my head sharply toward the camera, my lips still swollen from Mason's kiss, my breath coming fast.
"Ethan, I—" I started, the words tangling in my throat. I didn't even know what I wanted to say. An apology? An explanation? Some desperate attempt to justify what he'd just witnessed?
On the screen, Ethan had gone completely still. His hand, which had been resting casually on his knee, was now gripped tight against his thigh. His gaze darkened, pupils dilating until his eyes looked almost black. His lips parted slightly, and he took a slow, deliberate breath.
He leaned forward, closer to his camera, and when he spoke, his voice was low and rough, stripped of its usual easy warmth. "You don't need to explain." A pause, his eyes never leaving mine. "Keep going. I want to watch."
My heart stuttered in my chest. I stared at him, searching his face for any sign of anger or hurt, but there was none. Just a calm, deliberate focus that sent a shiver down my spine.
Mason's hand was still on my face, his thumb brushing lightly against my cheekbone. I turned back to him, and his eyes were wide, questioning, waiting for me to tell him what to do. And in that moment, I realized something that should have terrified me but didn't.
I wanted him. Not just because I felt sorry for him, not just because I was trying to fill the void Alex had left. I wanted him because of the way he looked at me, like I was everything. Because of the way his body responded to mine, eager and trembling and so utterly vulnerable. Because for the first time since this whole mess started, I felt like I had control over something.
And beneath that want was something darker, more reckless. The boundary I'd set for myself—the line I'd drawn to keep Mason safe, to keep him in the role of someone I was helping, protecting—had shattered the moment Alex walked away. What did those rules matter now? What did any of it matter when the person who'd forced me to examine every moral compromise, every ethical boundary, was gone?
The careful structure I'd built around my life had collapsed, and in its rubble, I found a strange, intoxicating freedom. If I'd already lost Alex, if I was already the person he thought I was—greedy, insatiable, unable to draw lines—then why keep pretending? Why keep holding back?
I leaned forward and kissed Mason again, harder this time, and his response was immediate.
He made a soft, desperate sound against my lips, his hands sliding down to my waist, gripping me tightly. I pushed him back against the mattress, straddling his hips, and felt the heat of him through the thin towel.
My hands moved over his chest, tracing the lines of muscle beneath his skin, and he arched up into my touch, a broken moan escaping his throat. I'd never felt this with Alex or Ethan—this sense of power, of knowing exactly how to unravel someone with just my hands, my mouth. It was intoxicating.
I looked down at him, his eyes half-closed, his lips parted, his chest rising and falling rapidly, and something fierce and possessive surged through me. I wanted to hear him beg. I wanted to see him fall apart beneath me.
I leaned down, pressing my lips to the hollow of his throat, and felt his pulse hammering beneath my mouth. He made a soft, desperate sound, his hands clutching at my hips, and I traced a slow path down his chest with my tongue. His skin was warm and slightly damp from the shower, tasting faintly of soap and salt, and when I reached his nipple, I circled it with the tip of my tongue before taking it between my lips.
His reaction was immediate and overwhelming. His entire body went rigid, a broken cry tearing from his throat, and his hips jerked upward involuntarily. I sucked gently, then harder, and he gasped my name, his voice cracking on the syllables. His hands flew up to tangle in my hair, not pulling, just holding on like I was the only thing keeping him anchored.
"Emily—God—I can't—"
I moved to the other side, giving his other nipple the same attention, and the sounds he made—high and needy and utterly unguarded—sent a bolt of heat straight through me. I felt myself getting wetter, the slick heat between my legs becoming impossible to ignore. The knowledge that I was doing this to him, that I had this kind of power over him, made my head spin.
I pulled back just long enough to yank my shirt over my head and shove my sweatpants down my hips, kicking them off onto the floor. I needed to feel him against me, skin to skin, nothing between us. When I pressed myself back against him, the full length of his body beneath mine, he groaned low in his throat, his hands sliding up my bare back, trembling.
"Please," he whispered, his voice wrecked. "Emily, please—"
And that—the sound of him begging—made something inside me ignite.
My hands moved lower, slipping beneath the edge of the towel, and he gasped, his hips jerking upward involuntarily. His erection was hard and insistent against my palm, and I wrapped my fingers around him, stroking slowly, deliberately.
"Emily," he breathed, his voice shaking. "Please—"