Jacks, Marcy - Mason Returns to His Mate [DeWitt's Pack 8] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) by Marcy Jacks

Mason could obey a command like that. He surged forward and wrapped his arms around Derek’s shoulders, holding on tight even when he struggled in his grasp.

    Mason Returns to His Mate                      47

    Derek was more muscled and stronger now, but he could never get out of a full-fledged wolf-hug.
    After a solid minute, he stopped fighting, but he didn’t hold  Mason back. He did let his head rest on Mason’s shoulder, however.
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” Mason said.
    “Yes, you did. Dick,” Derek muttered.
    Mason sighed, but Derek spoke first.
    “You’re right, though. We weren’t together long for me to have waited for you like this. I don’t want to come off as a stalker or anything. I don’t know why I never let you go.”
    Mason knew why, because they were mated. He wouldn’t burden  Derek with that information, however. Not when he was going to
    have let Derek go so soon.
    Never mind Derek letting him go. Derek was never going to want  to see Mason’s face when his memories of that night returned.
    “Derek, there’s something I need to ask you.”
    Derek pulled away and looked at him.
    “I need to ask if you remember―”
    He didn’t get the chance to finish when Derek reached his hands  up, holding on tightly to Mason’s shoulders, and then pressed his  mouth to Mason’s.
    The touch of Derek’s lips on his was like having a really strong alcohol in his system for the first time. It was like a tiny, pleasurable jolt sizzled through his body that he couldn’t contain.
    No. No. This was all fucked up. He knew what Derek was doing, and if he allowed it to go on, the other man was going to hate him even more after  he found out the truth.
    It nearly killed him to do it, but he pushed Derek away from him.
    “We can’t do this.”
    Derek’s eyes turned into kicked-puppy sad. “Why not?”
    “Because …because of what I did to you.”
    Derek’s eyes squinted in the way that people’s eyes  did when they were thinking. “What did you do? Leave?”

    48                            Marcy Jacks
    “No. I… ” God, he didn’t even want to say the word. “What do  you remember about that last night we were together?”
    Derek shook his head. He didn’t get it.
    “Derek, you won’t want to be with me if you remember that.  What I did…and I’m so sorry that I did it. I didn’t mean to, I swear to  God I didn’t.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I … ” Mason had to extract himself from Derek’s arms. He
    couldn’t admit to something like this when Derek held onto him for  dear life. “I raped you.”
    He whispered the words, but Derek’s head flew back like he’d  been punched. “You   what ?”
    His yelled words made Mason cringe. He could face down  hunters, take out a fully grown moose with his claws and teeth alone,  but the emotional stuff, terrible confessions, he apparently couldn’t
    do.
    That was why he looked away from Derek’s face and stared at the
    counter and sink behind him instead.
    “It was right after I’d lost the challenge to James. My wolf was  still mostly in my head, and we were both angry for the loss. I went to  you to take it out on, and I knew what I was doing, but I just couldn’t  make myself stop. It didn’t seem to matter. When I came back to my  regular self, you were unconscious beneath me.”
    Then there had been the way Derek’s rented house had been  trashed and the blood between his legs, which was enough to tell  Mason just how rough he’d been.
    “I know none of that’s an excuse, but I just thought you should  know.”
    “Why?”
    Why? Why did he do it? Why was he coming clean? “I don’t―”
    “Why come to me with this now? After all these years? I  remember what happened that night, Mason. I’m starting to think that  you don’t.”

    Mason Returns to His Mate                      49

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