Mace (Cocky Cage Fighter #4)

by Lane Hart

  I take my seat at the sound of applause, glad to be out of the spotlight. Reachin’ for my glass of water, I sip on it as I let myself watch Mason, only because he’s standin’ up and everyone else is lookin’ at him too. God, he’s so freakin’ sexy. Tonight he’s wearin’ a white dress shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, which shows off the tattoos on his forearm, with a pair of camel colored khakis made to display his incredible ass. I noticed his backside when he walked into the restaurant tonight in front of me.

  “I suck at this sort of thing, but here goes,” Mason says, and if he wasn’t so tan, I’d swear the big man was blushin’. “From what I hear, love can blindside you and sometimes you find it in unexpected places, you know like walking down a random street, standing in a coffee shop, or even in the back room of a strip club,” he clears his throat and everyone laughs knowin’ a strip club is where Linc and Claire first met. Wait, did he just say coffee shop? “But the important thing is that you hold on to it when you find it, regardless of the obstacles that try and stand in your way. Because like Hailey said, in the end I can’t imagine there’s anything better than going to sleep and waking up every morning beside the person you love more than anyone else in the world, at least until the two of you make miniature people to love together. So, Claire and Linc, don’t take a second of those days or nights for granted, because some of us can only dream of being as lucky as the two of you. Congratulations!” he says, raisin’ his glass of water in toast since he’s too young to drink. “Oh, and, Linc, just a reminder, if you break my sister’s heart, I’ll remove both of your arms and then bludgeon you to death with them,” he warns my brother with a wink.

  Everyone laughs and applauds. I’m unable to help my own smile as I watch Mason retake his seat. When his sad, golden green eyes lock on mine from across the table, I hear the shatterin’ of my heart breakin’ into a million pieces a second before the agonizin’ pain hits me. He-he’s in love with me. No, dammit. He can’t do this to me! I’m too weak and selfish. If he says one word to me or lays a finger on me, I don’t know if I can keep stayin’ away from him! Then he’ll lose the career he wants more than anything. The one he’s worked so hard for and deserves. We would never work out for the long-term, then I’ll be heartbroken and an even older old maid. Alone with not even a cat to keep me company, because I’m allergic to them. I’ll wrinkle up and die without ever havin’ kids or grandkids come see me, watchin’ as everyone else around me lives happily ever after.

  My chest tightens and suddenly I can’t breathe. I need air. Throwin’ my purse over my shoulder, I stand up from the table and head out the front door of the restaurant when I can’t find the bathroom right away. I weave through the people standin’ and waitin’ around the entrance until I reach an open area around back. I’m still gaspin’ for air when a strong arm wraps around my waist from behind. When I look down and don’t see tattoos, I let out a sob. I’m so tired of expectin’ one man and only gettin’ another.

  “Please don’t throw up,” Mason says into my hair. Mason, not Senn. His left arm, not his right. I spin around to make sure and then wish I hadn’t. I want to kiss the worry, the pity, and the stupid love right off his beautiful face.

  “I wasn’t…I just…needed air,” I hang my head and tell him, since I can’t keep lookin’ into his warm, sincere eyes.

  “Good,” he says on an exhale, but he doesn’t let go of me. The past few days he’s been constantly hoverin’ around me probably to try and catch me throwin’ up. At night, he’s locked my bathroom door and not unlocked it until he wakes up, which sucks. I’m still havin’ to run upstairs to use my parent’s bathroom in the mornings when I wake up and have to go because our toilet is, “Out of order.”

  “Listen, I’ve been thinking,” he starts, and I wince, knowin’ what’s comin’ and bracin’ myself. I’m gonna have to hurt him for his own good and I don’t want to. I want him. Tonight. Every night. “Senn is a pretty good guy, and I’m starting to believe that in his own, strange way, he actually cares about you.”

  “What?!?” I exclaim, almost breakin’ my neck at the speed in which I look up at him. Why is he talkin’ about Senn?

  “Maybe you should give him another chance,” he says, and now I know I’m goin’ nuts.

  “So…so you don’t want to be with me?” I ask in confusion.

  “Yes! Fuck yes, I want to be with you,” he grumbles, squeezin’ me to his chest even tighter. “But you’re right. I’m not what you need right now, but maybe…maybe he is. Besides, there’s the bro code and I’m an asshole for having crossed it as far as I have with you, knowing you had been with Senn. But never doubt that I want you and wish things were different.”

  My body sags with the weight of his words. Words that are true, I just don’t want to freakin’ hear them. I pull away from Mason’s embrace and turn my back to him. Rifflin’ through my purse, I look for a tissue as more tears start slidin’ down my cheeks. When I see the random red stirrer, I suddenly know exactly what I want to use it on. It’s the only way to get what I want, and to make sure he walks away tomorrow hatin’ me without losin’ a shot at a contract. I wrap my fingers around the stirrer and pull it from my bag.

  “Mason, do you remember the mornin’ you were late to get me because you were fuckin’ those two girls?” I ask when I face him again.

  “Ah, yeah.” He nods, strokin’ his bristly jaw.

  “And you said you owed me. Anything I wanted.”

  “Uh-huh. Why? You decided how you want me to make it up to you?” he asks, lookin’ down at the stirrer in my hand.

  “I have.”

  “Okay. So let’s hear it.”

  I spread my palms over his firm, muscular abdomen and work my way down, easin’ the stirrer into the front pocket of his pants before I look up to tell him. “I want you to make love to me tonight. Just tonight, and then I never want to see you again.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mace

  I’m pretty sure I love this woman, but at the moment I sort of hate her.

  What Hailey’s asking…it’s gonna kill me. Tomorrow morning I’ll wake up gutted and fucking miserable when I have to walk away from her. But she’s playing the trump card that I can’t refuse. We had a deal. I told her I owed her anything she wanted for my selfish two-hour delay getting to the airport. Maybe I deserve to be filleted like a fish for my past sins. I honestly can’t think of a harsher punishment than to be with the woman I want more than anything and then get tossed out with tomorrow’s trash when she gets on a plane and leaves me for good.

  “May-Son?” Hailey asks in her slow southern drawl when I remain silent, too shocked and hurt to respond. At the same time, the idea of finally being with her revs up my pulse and swells my cock.

  “Fine, Hailey. If this…if this is what you want, then fine. But you get me for the whole damn night, until eleven tomorrow morning when we have to start getting ready for the wedding.”

  “And then you won’t call me or show up in New York to see me?” she asks. Even though I hear the words come out of her mouth I know, I fucking know that’s not what she really wants. How do I know? Because I can see into her soul when I look in her beautiful blue eyes. She’s lonely and sad because she wants me, maybe even loves my dumbass, and she knows that I can make her happy. But for some stupid reason, she’s insisting on pushing me out of her life for good.

  “You’ll never see me again,” I assure her through clenched teeth. “Well, except for family get-togethers,” I amend.

  “Promise me, May-Son,” she says even though she’s blinking back tears.

  “Dammit, Hailey, why are you doing this? Why do you keep pushing me away?” I finally explode in frustration.

  “Because anything else is just a waste of my time. I don’t…you’re just not…I don’t think you’re the one for me.”

  Goddamn, her words are brutal, but I see past them, too. She’s lying to herself and to me, I just don’t know why.

  “So, you d
on’t think you could ever love me?” I ask her point blank, brushing my thumb over her cheek.

  I hear her sharp intake of breath before she looks away, and mutters, “Uh-uh.” She makes that sound when she doesn’t want to come out and straight lie but doesn’t want to admit the truth, either. “I thought you were just sayin’ how I should be with Senn,” she deflects.

  I was ready to bow out, to let Senn have his chance, but now that’s she’s found a loophole, and I’ve seen on her face how she feels about me…I can’t give her up just yet.

  “Do you think you could love him?” I ask and possibly chip a tooth from the amount of pressure caused by grinding the rows of my teeth painfully against each other.

  “Maybe,” she says, and I know that’s her honest answer, too. But I also know he’s not her first choice. He’s the runner up. A consolation prize. “We better get back inside,” she insists. “You can go in first and then I’ll go back so no one notices we were both gone.”

  “No,” I tell her. “You go first, and don’t stop at the bathroom.”

  “You’re awfully bossy to be so young,” she says teasingly with a small smile.

  “If you throw up, our deal is off. Voided under the vomit clause,” I warn her.

  “Vomit clause? You’re so full of shit,” she replies with a shake of her head, tossing her long blonde hair over her shoulder before she goes back inside. The fact that her hair is down tonight makes me feel a little better about the chances of her dinner staying down. If she actually eats something.

  I give Hailey a few minutes before I follow her back to the table. Everyone is so busy discussing plans for the wedding tomorrow that they thankfully don’t notice my return. Only Hailey notices.

  I pull out my phone to check the time. How much longer do I have to sit here and endure small talk and steak until I get to go back to the house and get inside Hailey? Oh, it is going to be so damn good. Feeling her gaze on me, I shoot her a look that tells her so. She reads it so well she actually fucking shivers. So hard her mom asks if she’s cold and needs her sweater. Nope, no sweater. All she needs is my cock in her pussy. All. Night. Long. Great, now the Lionel Richie hit is stuck in my head.

  Two agonizing hours later, we’re finally loading up in the cars to head back to the house. Conveniently, I end up with Hailey in the very back of her mom’s SUV with Claire and Linc sitting in the middle row and her parents in the front. In the pitch-black dark, I reach over and rub a hand up Hailey’s thigh, underneath her blue dress. The same blue dress from the first day I saw her at the airport. I keep moving up, up, up making her breath catch, but then it’s me who gasps like a drowning man when I go far enough to feel she’s not wearing any panties. Damn it. If I had known that, I would’ve taken her behind the restaurant.

  No, that’s a lie. I wouldn’t let our first time be a quick fuck against a brick building. Hailey deserves to be comfortable in a soft bed when I love her with everything I’ve got to give, my body, my heart and my soul. Afterwards, there will be nothing left of me, but that’s fine as long as I get to keep a little piece of her. I know she’s stubborn and not willing to surrender her heart, and she’s too self-conscious to completely give me her body, but she can’t hold back the way she feels about me. I’m convinced that my soul recognized its missing half that made it whole that day in the airport. From the second I laid eyes on Hailey, there was a shift inside me. Now there’s no turning back to the way things were before we met. That’s why having loved her and then lost her might destroy me.

  Hailey reaches for my hand, I assume to pull it out from between her legs. Instead, she presses harder, trying to force my fingers inside of her. I know what she’s doing, hoping to distract herself or me from the intimacy she asked for, but is now scared of. She wants to make tonight about sex and self-gratification like usual and not emotions. I pull my hand away, literally not letting her off that easy. This is my last chance to prove to her that we can have more. We’re supposed to be together.

  After the longest car ride ever, the SUV finally comes to a stop at the beach house. Just before we can slip away into the basement, Hailey’s mom reminds her that they have hair appointments at nine a.m. Nine fucking a.m. That cuts out two hours of my time with her. I’m down to eleven hours, which is not enough time to convince this stubborn woman to agree to giving us a shot! As if that wasn’t a big enough kick to my nuts, Senn calls out for Hailey before we make it down the stairwell.

  “Can I talk to you a minute?” he asks her at the basement door.

  “Ah, sh-sure,” she replies with a quick glance at me before the three of us go down to our ground floor apartment.

  “Good night,” I say before giving her a look that says if she doesn’t get rid of him in five fucking minutes I’ll pick him up and throw him out of the goddamn basement.

  So what do I do when the two of them go into her bedroom and shut the door? I go in the bathroom and eavesdrop, of course.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hailey

  “I’m exhausted tonight, so I hope you’ll make it quick,” I tell Senn when he shuts my bedroom door. Honestly, I’m countin’ the seconds until Mason bursts into my room and tosses him out; the truth about us be damned. I know he’s lurkin’ in the bathroom. How do I know? Because I’m startin’ to know him as well as he knows me.

  When Senn not only sits down on the foot of my bed but falls backwards on it, I inwardly groan. This is gonna take a while.

  “What’s up, Senn?” I ask when he doesn’t say anything.

  “There’s a chance I…I’m not sure, but…there’s this girl…”

  “Spit it out,” I say impatiently with my arms crossed over my chest.

  Coverin’ his face with both hands, he finally says, “I may have gotten a girl pregnant.”

  “What the…are you serious?” I ask in shock, sinkin’ down on the bed next to him.

  “I don’t know,” he replies, still flat on his back. “She says it’s mine, even though it was just one time and I sure as fuck used a rubber.”

  “You think she might be lyin’? Who is it?”

  Sighin’, he mumbles some ‘A’ word name that sounds like Addie or Annie. Wait… “Abby?” I exclaim, jumpin’ off the bed. “Like Linc’s Abby?”

  “Linc’s ex Abby,” he corrects.

  “Well, I know that, but still. That girl must be really freakin’ fertile! Linc knocked her up and now you. Oh God. I hope she doesn’t lose this one like little Thomas Lincoln. Does she want to keep it? Of course she does, right?” I ramble.

  “I guess so. We didn’t really talk much,” Senn says when he sits up again. “Mostly, I called her a liar and then flung my phone into the ocean.”

  “Oh,” I say in understandin’. “And then I asked you about kids. Bad timin’, huh?”

  “Yeah, but that’s why I wanted to talk to you. I mean, I still want us to work out. I could really use your help with the whole baby thing,” he says, and then he grabs my hips and pulls me forward until I’m standin’ in between his legs, his forehead restin’ on my stomach. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do, Hales.”

  “It’ll all work out,” I tell him, and then pat his head since I’m not sure how else to react. When I hear the toilet flush, I know Mason’s warnin’ me that I need to wrap it up.

  “What about us?” he asks, lookin’ up at me and movin’ his palms down to cup my ass. “Are we gonna work out?”

  I reach around and raise his hands to my waist. “That’s…I don’t know. Can we see how things go, you know, after I go back to New York?”

  “You mean you want to see if I’m gonna come see you and call you?”

  “Uh, yeah. Somethin’ like that.” I need to figure out if Mason and I are really done after tonight. Even if we are…I’m not sure I’ll be ready to even think about seein’ anyone else.

  “I will, Hailey, I swear. I only want to be with you.” My eyes lower because all I can think about is bein’ with Mason right now, even if
it’s only for a night.

  “Look, it’s late and tomorrow’s a big day, so just…give me some time, okay?” I ask to wrap up the conversation.

  “Okay.” He finally nods his agreement. When he gets to his feet, I almost jump for joy. Urgin’ him to leave, I step out of his arms and go over to open the bedroom door wide, sendin’ the clear message.

  “Good night,” I tell him to move him along.

  “Night, Hales,” he says, and then with a quick peck of a kiss, he’s gone.

  My stomach flips viciously with nervousness when there’s nothin’ else keepin’ Mason and I from bein’ together. I’ve waited almost a week for this moment. What if...what if bein’ with me sucks and is a let down for him after all the hype? I don’t want to be a disappointment. Now I don’t know what to do? Take a shower to calm myself down? That seems like a good place to start, and then I can wait for him to come to me.

  With a plan in mind, I rush back into my room and right into Mason’s arms. His mouth is on mine before he reaches behind me to shut and lock the door. Then his hands are in my hair, holdin’ me while his tongue slowly but thoroughly invades my mouth and strokes suggestively against mine.

  Slidin’ his palms down my neck and then my shoulders, he eases both spaghetti straps off and peels my dress until it falls freely into a puddle at my feet, leavin’ me naked since I didn’t wear a strapless bra and I went commando tonight.

  Now I need Mason naked, to feel all of his warm, muscular skin against mine. I unbutton his shirt that he quickly shrugs out of. My hands shake when I undo his belt and pants so that he can kick them off with his shoes and socks. As soon as we’re both naked, he pulls me to him in a crushin’ embrace while I wrap my arms around his neck. He holds me like he’s desperate for me, and can’t bear to ever let me go. Eventually, he picks me up and moves us to the bed, layin’ me down and coverin’ my entire body with his much bigger one. I clutch him tighter with my hands diggin’ into the hard plane of his back.