Veiled Desire by Alisha Rai Page B

elderly couple again. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Mason, do you see that couple across from us?”
    Mason glanced over, and his face seemed to soften. “Yeah.”
    “What do you see when you look at them?”
    He studied them for a moment longer and then looked back down at his food. A slight flush tinged his cheeks. “I don’t know.”
    She’d seen that expression on his face before, when he knew something but didn’t want to reveal it. It was still just as easy to get him to spill now as it had been at thirteen. “Come on. Please?”
    The look he gave her was decidedly wary. “You’ll get freaked out.”
    “I promise I won’t.”
    “I see…us. What I want for us.”
    Her heart melted right there. Just turned into a big pile of goo inside of her chest. “Oh Mason.”
    He scooted so they were, somehow, even closer, and placed his hand on her face. “You are the only woman I can ever imagine growing old with like that.”
    Any little doubts she may have still had vanished. “You know what you did to me this morning?” Her voice was so soft he had to lean in.
    She glanced up at him from beneath her lashes, her gaze hot. It felt good to be brazen, to be a vixen. She’d never quite tried it out before, but she liked it. At his nod, she continued. “I want to do that to you. When we’re done here, I just want to get you alone and watch you come for me.”
     
    If Mason hadn’t had a boner before, he had one now. It felt like all the blood rushed right to his cock. He couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. He could only imagine Leyla on her knees, on her back, his cock inside her fist, her mouth. God.
    “Leyla.” He’d never heard his voice quite that rough, and he tried to clear the frog in his throat. “You said you couldn’t just jump into bed with me.”
    “I said I didn’t want a one-night stand.” She shrugged her dainty shoulders. “The way I figure it, you’ve been courting me for a few months, haven’t you?”
    Courting. Such an old-fashioned word. But yes, that was exactly what he’d been doing. “Yes.”
    “And we both intend to see each other romantically in the future,” she continued, her voice incredibly pragmatic for someone who’d just declared her intention to jerk him off. “So, there’s no issue with having sexual relations with one another. Sex is a healthy and normal part of any relationship.”
    He stared down at her. Would she ever cease to surprise him? “How do you know I didn’t just feed you a line of bull so you’d hop in bed with me?”
    She gave him a vaguely pitying look. “Please, Mason. I know you.”
    He sat up a little taller. She knew him. Of course.
    In his mind, he dissolved the little pro and con list he’d made regarding their involvement with one another. He didn’t really need to keep score anymore.
    They knew each other. That point pretty much trumped any other con he could come up with. “I swear, if I hadn’t promised myself to give you a romantic, wonderful date tonight, I’d take you home and we could get started on that.”
    She blinked up at him. “I was just telling myself that I couldn’t rush through to get you alone since you’d gone through so much trouble to come here.”
    They stared at each other for a moment. She spoke first. “Go get the car.”
    Mason looked around for the waiter. “We need to pay first.”
    “I’ll pay.” She gave him a shove. “Go. Hurry.”
    He withdrew his wallet from his pocket and slapped it down on the table before drawing her close for a quick, hard kiss. It hurt not to linger and taste all of that sweet spiciness, but he managed to pull away.
    As he stood and walked away, his gaze caught on the man and woman Leyla had pointed out. The man lifted the woman’s fingers and kissed each one as she blushed a pretty red.
    Mason smiled as tenderness softened some of his hard-edged lust. A common mix of emotions around Leyla. He thought of her provocative words and realized that for tonight,