by Laura Day
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
He hung around the garage until it started to get dark, then got on his bike and crossed town to Trish’s building. She never came to the garage—not anymore—but everyone knew that Declan kept her in style in a condo building in the nicest part of the city.
Everyone knew because he bragged about it, right along with how long she sucked his cock, and all the kinky things he made her do. Most of the guys rolled their eyes about it. Some of them were jealous, and Mason had always listened and wished there was a way to check in on Trish. Not that she’d have wanted him to. Their friendship was too long ago for him to pull that card now. Not after he’d turned her down when she’d finally told him she was interested.
If Declan caught him anywhere near her place, he’d freak out. He wouldn’t care that Mason and Trish were friends back to grade school—Mason’s sheer presence would be a threat to his property. Declan was that kind of dick.
His only regret in all of this would be that he hadn’t done it sooner.
He checked the block for Declan’s Harley, but it wasn’t anywhere in sight. Still, he was careful as he walked to the door of the building. The inner door was locked; you either had to have a keycard or be buzzed in. He scanned the mailboxes, found Trish’s name, and punched her number into the intercom.
It took a bit for her to answer. “Yeah?” he heard finally, a layer of irritation buried under a lot of nerves.
“Trish? It’s Mason. Mason Butler? I know you may be pissed at me, but—”
The door buzzed, loud and intrusive, and after a moment, he pulled the door open. That had been unexpected.
Trish—Patricia Lague—had been the one girl who spoke to him even when he was a skinny kid with his nose buried in a book. She’d helped him fix up his first bike, and she’d fronted him the money for the leather jacket he found at Goodwill when he didn’t have the cash for it himself. They’d been best friends for a dozen years until he’d deployed.
She’d tried everything to keep him from leaving, offered him anything he wanted. He’d told her over and over again that he had to, that it was his only way out of the trap laid for him by genetics and circumstance. She didn’t hear him. He enlisted, and then he deployed.
When he came back, and everything was already ruined, he’d turned to Trish. She’d introduced him to the Fallen Angels and offered to be his girl in more than just name. And Mason had turned her down. He’d told her the truth—that he was way too screwed up to be with anyone—but all she heard was the “no.” She hadn’t spoken to him since then, not really.
He walked up to her condo and rapped gently on the door. The building had been converted about five years ago from a luxury hotel, and some of those touches still showed in the sconces that were spaced every so often on the walls; the plush carpet; and the shiny brass door numbers. She pulled the door open just enough for him to see half her face; she’d thrown the chain before she opened it. It made his heart wince to see it, but hey, at least she’d opened it, and at least she was being careful.
“Well,” she said, her voice laced with honey and sugar. “‘Bout time you came to see me. I’ve missed you, too.”
“Hi, Trish,” he said, trying to stay neutral. He’d loved her for years, but he’d never crossed the line into wanting to touch her. She was more like a trusted friend, a little sister. And then he’d come home, his mind so close to breaking, and he’d wanted so badly to take comfort in her, but he was convinced he had nothing to give. Caroline was showing him differently, but he owed that to her, not to Trish. “We need to talk. Is Declan here?”
She rolled the one eye he could see. “No, you jackass, he’s not. You could have called if that was all you wanted.”
She started to close the door, and he pushed out with his arm, locking his elbow and bracing the door open. “Trish, I don’t want to talk to him. I want to talk to you about him.” She was still heaving against the door, unsuccessfully trying to slam it in his face. “I know about the girls.”
She went limp then, and the door yanked to the end of the chain. One fast hit, and the chain would pop—that was the great weakness of that sort of set up, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He needed her to let him in.
Trish looked up at him, that one eye welling with tears. After a second, she moved into the gap in the door, and he could see that the left side of her face was bruised, the eye almost swollen shut. “This is what happened when I tried to talk to Declan about the girls. I am not interested in talking to him again.”
“I don’t need you to talk to him. I need you to talk to me.”
He watched her fight a war with herself. The Trish he’d known as a kid would have lit the world on fire to protect someone weaker than herself, but things had changed now. She’d been through her own war, he could see that, and he had learned a long time ago not to judge a fellow soldier. Everyone had their nightmares, and everyone had their own way of trying to find the light again. He could help people onto what he saw as the right path, but judging was beyond his authority.
“You can come in,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “The second I think anything is weird about you, I'll call the cops and tell them you did this to me.”
He nodded curtly, and released his hold on the door so that she could close it and take off the chain. He expected the sound of her throwing the bolt followed by a maniacal laughter, but instead the door closed and then opened again.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Trish stepped away from the door, walking down the hall and into a galley kitchen. He stepped inside, closed the door, and bolted it. He followed her down to the hall and sat at the bar seats. She poured two glasses of iced tea, and he smiled quietly. Some things never changed.
The way she added an inch of whiskey to her glass was new, though.
“How much do you know?” she asked. “I don’t want to waste your time telling you shit you’ve already figured out.”
“All I know is that they’re there. And that they’re young.”
She chuckled to herself as she sat down next to him. “Of course that would jumpstart your sense of justice.”
“It doesn’t piss you off?”
“Don’t be an asshole,” she snapped. “Of course it does. I put up with the drugs because—well, look at me, who the fuck am I to judge? But the girls… he promised me that they were willing college students dancing for tuition and shit. And then I found out where the club was, and I went to go see—”
Her eyes were far away, in that warzone. He knew the look painfully well. “He wasn’t lying, not exactly. But he was omitting the truth in a big way. They’re refugee kids. Ones who came here with their families and then ran away, or ones who had no families back home and lied about relatives to get out of the camps. Vulnerable. Some of them don’t even speak English.”
She rubbed at her right eye. “I freaked out, Mason, just like I’m sure you did. I told him I was getting CPS involved. He didn’t appreciate that suggestion.”
“When did this happen?”
She shrugged. “Last night, I think. I obliterated myself afterwards. It’s always nice to find out how much of a coward you are.”
He reached out and touched her hand, avoiding the bruises where she’d tried to defend herself. He was glad to see that. It was when people stopped trying to even defend themselves that they were as good as dead. She was still fighting, somewhere deep down.
“Trish, if you were a coward, you wouldn’t be helping me. You wouldn’t have let me in. You wouldn’t be agreeing to tell CPS what you know about the girls, once I let you know Declan’s out of the picture.” He watched her carefully, gauging her reaction as much as her words.
The snort of laughter surprised him. Not at all what he was expecting. “You’re taking on Declan? Mason, you didn’t even want to lead the way down the street when we were going to a movie. You’re not taking over the fucking Fallen Angels.”
“I’m not trying to. But Declan is a rabid dog.”
&nbs
p; “And a rabid dog needs to be put down?”
He nodded.
“Why should I help you? How does that help me? I’ll lose everything.”
“Except your pride. Except your ability to heal, and start over.”
She was trembling on the edge of something, and she finally looked up, meeting his eyes again. “Kiss me.”
“Trish—what?”
“You know you want to, darlin’, you always have. I’ve seen you watching me, seen you watching how I move, how I shake my ass when I dance.” She slipped in close to Mason, her hands just below his shoulders, her hips pressed close to his.
He willed his cock to relax, but he’d wanted her in an idle, friendly way for so many years—and she was so warm, and his stress level begged for a little more releasing. “Show me you’re still the guy I fell in love with when we were kids? Show me you’re still decent, still good, and I’ll help you do anything you want.”
“Trish—”
“Kiss me,” she said, stretching up onto her tiptoes and tracing her tongue over his lower lip. He fought himself for just a secondand then found the willpower to push her just an inch away, give him just enough space to breathe.
“I want to, Trish, okay, you’re not wrong about that. And not just because I need your help. But— I got a girl right now, and I need her to sign off on it first, okay?”
Trish executed the pout she’d perfected when she was in kindergarten. “What if she says no?”
Mason smiled, thinking of the way Caroline’s eyes had lit up when she’d been talking to him about Jack and Missy a lifetime ago. “She won’t say no.”
“If she won’t care, then tell her later.” She reached for him, palming him through his jeans, and he pushed her hand away.
“I didn’t say she wouldn’t care. I said that she will be okay with it. There’s a damn difference, Trish.”
She stepped back from him, and she smiled in a soft way he hadn’t seen in a lot of long, lonely years. “I’m glad you know it,” she said. “Once she’s said yes, I’ll be in there.” She gestured down the hallway towards a dark room. As she walked away, she put plenty of extra sashay into her hips. He had to shake his head to clear it before he could dial Caroline’s number on his phone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The room was lit by candlelight, which surprised him. Trish, in all the years he’d known her, had swung practical, not romantic. So he’d thought he’d be walking into a bedroom, but nothing with Trish was ever simple. It was a play room, clear and simple. There were piles of pillows, a reclining couch, a carved wooden chest that he was sure held a variety of toys. The light was dim, but he was fairly sure he saw handcuffs bolted to the wall.
But Trish was the thing that really caught his eye. Trish, splayed out on a pile of pillows. Trish naked except for black scraps of lace over her breasts and her vagina. His cock twitched in his pants, hardening quickly.
“I take it she said yes,” Trish said, her fingers wandering idly over her body, twisting at her nipples, pushing the crotch of her panties aside for a moment and—he choked back a groan—delving all the way inside of her while her eyes rolled shut for a moment, and she bit her lower lip, her fingers pumping into her.
“Yes,” he said, and he was relieved that his voice didn’t crack. “I assume you have condoms?”
She grinned at him, at the affect she was having on him. “You assume correct. Strip off, and come over here.”
His erection was hard and upright as he stripped off for her, and she didn’t give him a chance to come to her; she crawled, sinuous and sexy, across the floor, taking him in her mouth as he pulled his T-shirt over his head. He groaned, his knees weak for a moment, bracing himself on her shoulders. “Jesus, Trish.”
She laughed, her mouth still around him, and the vibrations made him shiver. She sucked him hard for a moment, so hard that he had to focus on breathing to make sure he didn’t suffocate.
“Not gonna last long like this. That what you want?”
She laughed again and pulled back, circling the base of his dick with her hand and squeezing him softly. “Your girl not taking such good care of you?”
“She takes amazing care of me. But you know how it is. One great bike makes you want two more.”
“That’s my Mason,” she said. “Never satisfied.”
She suckled him for another moment, her hand cupping his balls and gently stretching his sac down, and he fought to keep his hips still. He wanted nothing more than to grab her hair and fuck her mouth until he spurted down her throat, but there was more happening here, more that he didn’t quite understand yet. But he was sure this wasn’t in the plan.
“You ever played with a violet wand?”
He forced his two remaining brain cells to rub together and make a spark. “Shock toy, right?”
She reached past him and brought out a wand with a flog attachment made out of narrow metal chains. “I’m going to suck your cock,” she said, conversationally. “I’m going to suck it as hard as I can. And you’re going to flog the shit out of me.” She gave him a wicked grin. “If you don’t leave at least one bruise, I will be incredibly disappointed.”
He started to ask her how this was supposed to prove anything, but her mouth was around his cock again, nibbling and suckling, and holy hell it felt amazing. Too many guys he knew thought of oral as useless unless it was followed up by them getting to stick their dick in something, but he’d always loved being entirely at a woman’s mercy like this, knowing that she knew it too.
He forced himself to focus, and reached down to lay the chains of the flog along the base of her spine and draw them slowly up her back. She shivered, and all suction on his cock vanished as she gasped around him, the tip of him so far back in her throat that he could feel her throat working against him.
The sensation was utterly amazing, and he was close to trembling. He drew the flog back, and she drove her mouth back down onto his cock, licking and sucking and nipping at him as he groaned and gasped and kept fighting for focus. He brought the flog down on her back, gently, and she gasped again, hard, her mouth tight around him.
“Yes,” she murmured, and he drew back and hit her again. “Harder,” she said, and he complied. “Harder!” She glared up at him. “You fucking coward, hit me already, grab my hair, fuck my mouth, make it fucking worth waiting for!”
A small corner of his mind told him to stop, to wait, but her mouth was so hot and tight on him, and it was so much what he wanted. He wrapped his hand in her hair, shoving her onto him in the perfect rhythm, the flog falling in an off-beat pattern.
She was groaning into him, moaning and meeting him, suckling him, and he was so fucking close to coming, his balls tight and hard against his body, but just as he started to swell, the tone of her cries changed. He heard the panic, heard her whimper “stop.”
It wasn’t a scream, it wasn’t a cry, just a tiny little word, and he heard it, and no matter how fucking close he was, he couldn’t make himself pretend that he hadn’t. He let go of her hair, pulled back from her, and as his knees gave out, his balls turning into burning pebbles of pain between his thighs. He shut off the wand and let it fall to the floor, and his hands gently cupped Trish’s face. “Trish? You okay?”
Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she was smiling. “No,” she said. “I’m really not. But I think maybe I’m gonna be.”
He was aching so much that it was hard to think past the pain in the moment, though part of him savored the swollen hot feeling. “Trish, I love you, but what the hell are we doing?”
“You, baby, are going to fuck me until I scream for you, and then you are going to make sure that son of a bitch is never coming near me or those kids again, and then I’m going to get them some help. I know who to talk to. I can make it go smooth.”
“Trish, I—thank you, but what the hell?”
She shrugged. “It’s all well and good to say you’ll stop when someone asks you to. I needed to know you would. That you
were still my Mason, deep down under all that leather and those broken eyes.”
She reached out, and they tumbled down into the pile of pillows. His nuts were aching. She was stroking him softly, and he thought he’d be able to get past the pain. She slipped a condom on him, easy as that, and then turned over for him, spreading her thighs and nudging back against him, the tip of his cock pressing against her swollen body.
“Trish—are you sure? I don’t want to hurt you, you don’t have to do this.”
She looked back at him over her shoulder and gave him a grin that turned him inside out. “I want to, baby; do you? If you’re done, if it was too mean a trick, I get it, I’ll still help you.”
His balls told him, in no uncertain terms, what they’d do to him if he walked out of here when he didn’t have to. “I just want you to be sure.”
