by Laura Day
Somehow, all the parts of him that made him human faded, and another, more animal side held on. It was a mistake to think of the people you were doing this for—he’d learned that too. To think of Caro, or the girls. No. He focused on his enemy, and on the physical signs of oxygen deprivation.
Sixty six seconds, Mason. A voice whispered in his mind. One one-thousand, two one-thousand…
After Declan went still, Mason held on for a few more minutes, just to be sure. It took longer to strangle someone. He wasn’t interested in a horror movie ending, with the bastard popping up all unexpected. He checked for a pulse and couldn’t feel anything, but then, of course, he was wearing the work gloves. And, he found, he didn’t much care. He hoisted Declan’s body in a fireman’s carry, and started into the woods. He’d prepared the hole earlier. All that was left now was the burying.
It was too easy, in the end. He’d hiked miles in the mountains wearing packs heavier than this bastard, and he thought of it like that. Just another trip, a couple of miles in country. He could feel his brain filing this experience away among his wartime memories, just another nightmare to wake him up sweating. Nothing more, nothing less.
The sound the body made as it flopped down into the hole made his stomach flip, but he swallowed the nausea. He was a couple miles into the woods, off the trails. The odds of anyone finding this spot were ridiculously small, but there was still no reason to leave any kind of evidence if he could help it.
He pulled out the pay-as-you-go cell he’d bought with cash on his way here, and dialed both Munch and then Trish, giving them instructions. The specifics didn’t matter. They’d both handle things. They both wanted this freedom as much as he did.
And then he started to fill in the hole.
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
The knocking at the window was soft and insistent. Caroline had taken the book Missy gave her back to bed and read a few chapters before sleep finally overcame her. She woke up all at once, with a sense that she’d been hearing the sound for a few minutes at least. Her heart pounding in her chest, she went to the window, ready to scream for Jack and Missy if she needed to. The face that greeted her in the window was so filthy that it took her a moment to recognize Mason’s features. “Come to the back door,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”
He nodded, every motion showing total exhaustion, and she grabbed the microfiber robe Missy had laid out for her and slipped it on. He was trembling on the back step, and his eyes were flickering from spot to spot, his pupils way too wide. “Mason?”
“It’s finished,” he whispered, swaying. “It’s done.”
She caught him as he collapsed, managing to brace her feet in time to not fall to the floor herself.
Jack flicked on the kitchen light a moment later, and hurried over to her, slipping Mason’s arm over his shoulder and helping Caroline support his weight. Mason’s head lolled, but his eyes were open. “Just exhausted, I think,” Jack said. “I don’t see any blood?”
“No, but he’s filthy,” Caroline said. “Can we get him into the shower, do you think? And then somewhere to rest.”
“I think so,” Jack agreed. “We have a shower chair from the last time Missy’s mom was here. Do you think you can hold him for a second?”
“Yeah, I got him,” she said, and braced her feet more carefully this time before Jack gave her back his weight.
Mason’s eyes flicked up to her. “I did it, baby. We’re going to be safe now.”
“I’m glad,” she said, stroking his hair back from his face. “Let’s get you cleaned up, and then you can rest.”
“Yes,” he nodded. “Burn my clothes. And wash the shower out. Just in case.”
“Is that really necessary?”
He knew what she was asking, and he nodded. “If they ever find him, it will be.”
Her stomach flip-flopped like she was on a roller coaster. “Okay. I’ll take care of it.”
His mouth grinned, but his eyes didn’t light up. “Simple as that, is it?”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“Did I break us?”
“No,” she whispered. “No, we’re going to be just fine.” She wasn’t even remotely sure that was true, but what else was she going to say?
And then Jack was back. “I’m okay,” Mason insisted, slowly pushing himself back up to standing. Caroline stayed close, her hands braced on either side of his torso, but he walked carefully into the bathroom, then stripped off his clothes and sat down in the shower chair. Caroline reached past him to turn the water on while Jack excused himself. Mason didn’t flinch when it was cold, and he didn’t flinch when it was burning hot, either. Caroline tried to find a temperature that wouldn’t freeze him or scald him while his eyes stayed focused on the shower floor, at the swirls of muddy water that were accumulating there.
“What happened?” she asked finally.
It took a few moments for the question to penetrate, and then he shook his head. “Not something we can talk about, Caroline. Not today. Not ever.”
“Why not?”
He looked at her with a cold expression that she’d never seen before. Not on his face. “You want to be called as a witness at the trial?”
And then, with no warning, his face crumpled. She shucked off the robe, the tank top, and the pajama pants, and she stepped into the shower, holding him as best as she could while he cried.
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
Eventually he was clean, the mud and muck washed off him. She paid attention and didn’t see anything anywhere that resembled blood. She couldn’t decide if that was good or not.
Mason stood still and quiet while she towel-dried him off, and when she handed him the boxers and t-shirt that Jack had passed through the door he put them on without protest. Missy had sleepily offered to clean out the shower once they’d all gotten a little more rest; Mason had considered it for a moment, weighing something in his mind, and then nodded. Caroline had taken his hand in hers and led him down the hallway to the spare bedroom where she’d been sleeping when he knocked on her window. She tucked him in, and then excused herself to pee before she went back to bed.
Jack was waiting in the hallway. “Do we need to be worried?”
She glanced back at the closed bedroom door, and then gestured down the hallway to the living room. Jack nodded and followed her.
“I don’t think so,” she said, very quietly. “He isn’t talking about what happened at all, but he says it’s done, and we’re safe, and Mase—he wouldn’t tell us to let our guards down unless he was sure. He’s too careful for that.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “Thank you. You two—do what you need to tonight, sleep as late as you can in the morning. Missy and I will take care of everything else.”
She nodded, and he hugged her gently, his arms enfolding her and squeezing her with a kind of care that made her sniffle, just a little bit. He went back to his wife. Caroline peed, and then she went back to Mason.
He was lying on his side, in the bed, his eyes open. She crawled under the sheets and moved to him. His arms went around her automatically, but there was no pressure in them as she moved closer to him. His eyes were on her face, but they were seeing something else, something very far away.
“I love you,” she said, simply. Yes, that made his eyes snap back into focus. “I don’t know what happens next. If you have any ideas, I’m listening.”
“Right now, I just want to hold you,” he said. “If that’s still okay.”
“Of course,” she said. He gathered her up like she weighed no more than a doll, clutching her against him. He breathed her in, his face pressed into her neck, her throat, and then he darted lower, inhaling the scent of her breasts, and she couldn’t help the tiny sound that escaped her. She couldn’t help but think of how Missy’s head has rested there, the way her eyes had rolled up like shudders as she came.
Mason jerked back as if she was on fire. “Did I hurt you?”
“No, not at all.” She
smiled for him, reaching closer and kissing him softly. “Rather the opposite, actually.”
He couldn’t meet her eyes. “I didn’t— think you’d want—”
“You?”
His head jerked up, once and down, fast. “Don’t pity me.”
“I don’t.”
“I thought you would.”
She took a deep breath. “You’re being very confusing.”
He barked a laugh that didn’t contain anything close to humor. “That’s fair. Can I hold you?”
“Just hold?”
His eyes met hers again, finally. “Do you really want more?”
“I think—Mase, I think I’ll always want more. I don’t think you could chase me away, not without a hell of a lot of effort. I know it hasn’t been long, and I’m not proposing or anything crazy, but I— I want to get to know you. I want you in my life. I want to find out what it means to love you.” She could feel his cock stirring against her thigh. She reached down to him, still semi soft in his nest of red curls, and smiled. “If you’re not sick of me yet, anyway.”
“I am very not sick of you.” His hips shifted against her hand, quietly, and he sighed. “I am the opposite of sick of you. But I don’t—have anything with me—”
“I don’t either, but this is Jack’s house, and I bet…” she reached into the nightstand drawer, and came out with a box of condoms. “Ta-da!”
He laughed and kissed her again, with more intent this time. “By the way,” he said, his hand sliding up her inner thigh, finding the waistband of her pajama pants and easing them down her hips, “Did you have fun tonight?”
She shook for a second with the memory of the pleasure washing through her. “It was intense. Good intense. Different. Good different.”
“Better?”
“Different.”
“Good.” He slide down between her thighs and his mouth moved over her, greedy and determined. She sighed, twisting her fingers in his hair, trying to keep her noises at least a little quiet. She was fairly sure she’d heard Jack and Missy before, but that didn’t mean she and Mason needed to wake them up. At least, not on purpose.
“How—oooh, yes, right there—how was your adventure?”
He looked up at her, rested his chin on her mound, and rolled his eyes. “Can’t talk now,” he said. “Eating pussy.” And his mouth moved back with a rapid, fluttering motion over her clit that made her stuff the pillow over her face to keep back the cries of delight. His fingers were everywhere, sliding into her ass, sliding into her cunt, fucking her everywhere, and then when she couldn’t stand it—when she had to have him before she stopped breathing entirely—he moved up her body, capturing her mouth with his and sliding deep inside of her. His eyes locked on hers, and he shifted inside of her.
“Mine,” he said. “As long as you’ll give yourself to me.”
“Yes,” she whispered, locking her legs around his hips and trying to urge him past this torturous rhythm that was keeping her on the knife-edge of a shockingly overwhelming orgasm. He refused to move faster, refused to pause at that deeper entry where she could have found the angle she needed. “Yes. I’m yours, and you’re mine.”
“It was kinky,” he said, almost conversationally. “With Trish. Wicked kinky. More than I’ve played before. Maybe a way I want to play again.”
“Whatever. Yes. Please. Anything. Are you going to let me come yet?”
“No. I’m torturing you, hush and enjoy it.”
“Can’t make me.”
“Can,” he said, and his mouth was on her nipple, teasing it, torturing it, and it was almost enough, so close to enough, but just as she started to crest he pulled back, keeping that slow rhythm going. “Jack have anything else in his nightstand of tricks?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and almost giggled at the sulky tone in her voice.
“We’ll have to look later. Where are you going to stay?”
“Does this really matter right now?” She marveled at the fact that he was even having this conversation, buried balls deep in her as he was.
He bent down close to her, and then rolled them so that she was straddling him. “It matters,” he said. “Are you okay with going back to your house?”
“No,” she said, fast and certain. She could ride him until she screamed now, but he’d follow her fast if she did that, and turnabout was fair play, after all. She kept herself almost perfectly upright, moving over him slow and steady, his hands teasing over her breasts, her clit, her thighs, and back again. The orgasm still glimmered on the horizon, and she watched it moving steadily closer, enjoying the approach, the knowledge that they wouldn’t be done until it arrived. “No, I’m never going back there again. I’ll sell the house and—I don’t know, do something. Maybe Jack and Missy will let me stay here for a while.”
“You’ll stay with me,” he said, and the sureness in his eyes, the intensity of the offer—it was a lot more than just an offer of housing. She bent over him then, letting her small breasts move over his mouth, and her hips sped up as he drove up into her, capturing her breasts with his teeth, suckling so hard that she cried out even before she came, cried out even before he slammed her hips down into him, cried out with him as they spiraled out, over the void, together.
Afterwards, she lay in his arms and smiled. He was sleeping, snoring quietly, and she was content. She had no idea what was going to happen next. He had to somehow get the club back together, get the Fallen Angels to accept new leadership, chase out the guys who had been following Declan, or somehow convince them to accept the new way things would go. And he was going to do it all while saddled with a socially awkward accountant.
Well, what the hell. The sex was good. They’d work out the rest.
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
Caroline took a long, long look at the clock on her computer and then glanced over at Jack, her co-worker, who looked like he’d been pounded into his chair by a sadist. A really mean one, with a nasty temper and no use for safe words. Even from here, she could see how crappy he felt. His nose was red and swollen from incessant blowing, his eyes were dazed and bleary, and he flinched at every noise, winced at every movement. “Jack,” she said, and he turned toward her, though she didn’t get any sense at all that he was seeing her. “You really should go home and lie down.”
“No.” He shook his head stubbornly. “I’m fine.” The motion had clearly set off his head, though, and he gripped his desk as the world shook around him. She fought the urge to roll her eyes.
“This is not fine. Fine is very different than this. You’re dripping your germs everywhere, and I don’t want to get sick. Go home and get some rest. Come back tomorrow.”
“No,” he said again, sounding like nothing more than a 3-year-old in a snit. “I told you I’d come in and cover the desk for the last two hours so you’d have time to get ready for your date with Mason.”
“My date isn’t that big a deal. I told Mase to pick me up at 6. If I tell him 7 instead, it’ll be fine. Besides, Missy will kick my ass if she knows I kept you here, feeling like you do.”
Jack made a sound that, if his sinuses were less full of cement, would have been a snort. Instead, it sounded kind of like a truck backfiring, especially since it was completed by him whimpering and grabbing at his forehead.
A few months back, Jack and Missy had offered Caroline sanctuary at their house after the former leader of the Fallen Angels, Mason’s motorcycle club, had assaulted her in her own home. They’d developed something of an informal relationship since then, sometimes just her and Missy, sometimes all three of them.
One extraordinary night, Mason had joined in on the fun. But more than all of that, she and Missy had become friends. Caro’d never had a lot of female friends; she’d never quite managed to know the right secret handshakes to fit in at baby showers and weddings, and at some point, she’d stopped bothering to try. But she and Missy could talk for hours about physics, math, science fiction—it was fantastic.
“That’s probably true,” Jack said. “Are you sure Mason won’t be annoyed? I don’t need the king of the Fallen Angels mad at me.”
“President,” Caroline said automatically. “He’s called the president.” And she had yet to decide who was more uncomfortable with that title, her or Mase.
On the bad days—which there weren’t too many of, but enough—she thought they both might hate it, though their reasons were probably complete opposites. It wasn’t something they’d really talked about, not in any depth.
She knew what the club meant to him. It had been his family when he came back from the war, and that hadn’t changed just because they had a lot of good sex and deep conversations. She’d never ask him to leave the Fallen Angels. She just didn’t know if she could be the long-term girlfriend of the president of a group of outlaws.