Freeze Frame

by Mia Watts

  Just when I was starting to trust you.

  “Listen, when you unfreeze, if you think my feelings about you are funny, just don’t say anything. If you think you’d like to start something with me, make a move.” Dill leaned in like they’d been earlier, between kisses.

  He looks great up close. Far away. In a car stalking me. Under me on a bed.

  “I know this is a point of trust for you. You don’t like being trapped. You like being in control. You made that pretty clear.”

  I thought Sage was the mind reader.

  “So I’m going to give you my trust and we’ll see what you do with it.”

  Dill stared into his eyes as though waiting for an answer.

  “First, I’ll answer your questions. I don’t want there to be any reason you have to stick around here, unless you want to. We clear?”

  Crystal.

  “If you stay once you unfreeze, it’s because you want to be here. With me.”

  Oh fuck, why did he have to make him hope?

  “I don’t know the client behind my contact, but you’re important and because it’s DNA, I figure the crux of the information is about whether or not you’re family.”

  Family? I have no family, he thought bitterly.

  “It’s important enough that when we obtained the DNA, Harper Security was asked to keep an eye on you through any threats. I’d guess you have a benefactor out there trying to locate you. It could change everything if you let it, or it could be something you walk away from.”

  Don’t I have a choice in this matter?

  “It’s not for me to judge. This is yours alone.” Dill paused. “You have no idea how bad I want to kiss you right now.”

  Ditto.

  “I’ll find out what’s happening. I’ll find out who’s after you and why, to the best of my ability. I’ll drag in my brother and sisters if that’s what needs to happen. I wouldn’t do this for anyone else. Do you get that?” His gaze darted between Mason’s. “No one but you.”

  Kiss me.

  “Those are all the answers I have with a promise tacked on. So here’s the other half of this confession. I want you.”

  Fuck, yes.

  I want your hands and mouth all over me. No strings. I’m not asking you for anything you don’t want to give. I want sex and rubbing body parts. Yours preferably.”

  Dill smiled, a wicked little thing that deepened the dimples on either side of his lips. For a man as rough hewn and masculine as Dill, Mason was a little surprised to see the gorgeous harmony of deep angles and whisker marked jaw turn him into the whisper of a pretty boy. There was nothing pretty about Dill Harper, and the incongruity of tough edges and soft words made Mason’s body ache for everything Dill wanted.

  “I want your cock, Mason. I want it any way I can get it. If that scares you off, then you should leave once the spell wears off.” His voice lowered with promise. “If it interests you, then stick around and let me make it worth your while.”

  Dill’s breath teased Mason’s lips. Having said his peace, or perhaps sidetracked, Dill pressed his parted mouth over Mason’s. Feeling crawled to life in Mason’s body. Dill’s lips, softly lining his, stilled.

  Mason completed the kiss on his own, moving away to get a good look at Dill in mid-kiss. “You look damn good when you’re kissing. You ought to see this.”

  Standing up, Mason slowly unbelted and popped the top button of his pants. The chain looped at his waist jangled invitingly, and making sure to stay inside Dill’s line of sight, he pulled his pants off, then his boxer briefs. He stood, naked before Dill, hoping he could see and think in the frozen moments.

  “So if I understand you correctly, you want this. I’ve never been one for long, drawn out confessions, but I think I’m a new believer in them. Everything you said was exactly right to get me in the sack.” Mason chuckled then. “Of course, you could have said, c’mere, and that would have done the trick. You talk a lot when you think no one is listening.”

  Mason laced his fingers behind his own neck, relishing the open view he gave Dill, enjoying the feel of the muscles he worked hard on in the gym while dealing with his personal frustrations. Did Dill like what he saw? He figured the chances were pretty good considering his words.

  He unlaced his fingers, dragged them over his shoulders, over his chest and playfully rubbed his torso. Canting his hips out to best display his happily erect cock, he then dragged his hands further down his body and gave a couple of slow, twisting pulls on his cock. “I want your mouth on this. I won’t try it now since I’d come and then you’d choke on my shit when you wake up. Doesn’t seem right,” he told Dill.

  “If I touch you, will you wake up?” He tried it, lifting Dill’s hand and forming it into a fist around Mason’s cock. Dill didn’t move. “This is a fucking awesome talent to have,” Mason exclaimed, thrusting once into Dill’s hand.

  Next, he carefully laid Dill out on the bed. “You gave me consent, so I’m going with it.” Removing his clothes was more complicated than Mason had imagined, but he kept at it until Dill was as naked as Mason.

  “Impressive, Harper. Nice stash you got there. I can appreciate the nod to rebellion with that barbell at the base of your cock.” He held Dill’s penis, examined it. “Thick, ugly bastard. I’d enjoy every one of those ridges on my tongue. Too bad you’re too comatose to enjoy it.”

  Mason cuddled Dill’s balls in his hand, bent to his pierced cock and took it in his mouth. Dill began to move sluggishly beneath his mouth. His cock filled, thickening in Mason’s mouth. He moaned his approval.

  Slipping off the tip of Dill’s cock, he looked up the naked landscape of Dill’s rugged body. “That’s it Dilly-bear, wake up, and join the private party.”

  “More,” Dill rasped, his vocal chords not yet limber.

  It was all he needed to hear. Mason, settled on his belly between Dill’s legs, pinning the other man’s thighs under his arms and gripping his hips to hold him steady. Then with diligent interest, he tasted Dill’s cockhead. He curled his tongue over each side of the head, flipping the rim, nipping it between his rolled lips.

  Dill’s fingers clumsily gripped Mason’s shoulders.

  “That’s it, wake up,” Mason coaxed.

  Breath exploded from suddenly working lungs, wringing out a guttural choking sound from his throat.

  Mason traced the tip of his tongue underneath the flared head, nudged it forcefully at the soft underside where the rim parted.

  “Mason,” Dill gasped.

  Sliding his mouth over the now fully engorged head, Mason worked the most sensitive part of Dill over and back on his lips, sucking with hollowed cheeks and taking him deeper with each consecutive pull.

  Dill’s hips lifted against Mason’s lips. His belly tightened, compacting Dill’s well-developed abdominal muscles and drawing his ass cheeks into rock-hard swells. Dill in full cum was spectacular. Beads of sweat broke out on his brow, his eyes crinkled from squeezing, and unable to hide the depth of his pleasure, his lips had drawn back and every muscle in his neck and jaw strained with him.

  Mason watched in awe, taking, sucking, enjoying his effect on the powerful man whose next breath depended on the treatment of his cock in Mason’s mouth. Already Mason tasted the first salty signs that he was close.

  Flexing his hips faster, holding Mason tighter, Dill ground his cock into Mason’s mouth. But it wasn’t until Mason pressed a knuckle into Dill’s perineum while thumbing his balls, that the other man shouted and lost all control. He bucked, fully awake now, slamming his hips up as his cock got sucked off. With a bellow, Dill came, shooting hot cum deep into Mason’s mouth until he finally sagged with exhaustion.

  Mason spat in his hand, spread the combined fluids of sex and spit on Dill’s tightly clenched hole. “Let me in,” he murmured encouragingly.

  Dill’s eyes opened, his breath labored past his lips, but arousal hadn’t left the naked expression on his face. Mason liked that expression. He liked it a lot.


  Working his finger into Dill’s body, he gently stretched him while keeping his eyes glued to his face. He could stare into those blue eyes for eternity and not get tired of seeing the reflection of Dill’s pleasure. Pleasure Mason had put there. Part of him wanted to linger with kisses and soft touches, curl up with him and make him cry out with need over and over again. It was a dream another man, who didn’t know how the world worked, could get lost in.

  Sometimes ignorance was bliss.

  Dill lifted his leg. Mason helped tuck it to his ass, opening him wide, then climbing forward, Mason pressed the tip of his weeping cock to Dill’s relaxed hole. Body heat lured him on and he didn’t resist, pressing until his cock rim popped through the tight muscle ring.

  Dill’s eyes clouded.

  “Talk to me,” Mason murmured.

  He shook his head. “I’ll say something lame.”

  Mason chuckled, inching deeper into the enveloping furnace of Dill’s body. “I doubt it.”

  “I like you. Stick around afterward.”

  Mason’s brow furrowed. “You said no strings.” His cock was fully embedded now. Not moving took everything he had, that there might now be strings attached and he’d have to withdraw seemed beyond his ability to manage.

  “No strings. I meant it.”

  He pulled out, then thrust home. Both men shivered with the blissful friction of their bodies coming together.

  “I’m not a strings guy,” Mason said, apologetically. He dragged out, pushed in, grinding his hips into Dill’s as they met. He loved the weight of Dill’s balls trembling on the sensitive flesh above Mason’s cock.

  “I know. I am when I find someone string-worthy. If you ever want strings, bring them to me,” Dill told him.

  Drag, thrust, grind. God, Mason thought he might explode. Too soon. No one had ever wanted him. Why would Dill? He had a family and friends. He had respectability in a way tattooed bald dudes didn’t.

  Being wanted was one hell of an aphrodisiac.

  Dill caressed Mason’s chest with teasing strokes and sharp pinches to his nipples. Mason threw his head back. He felt so good. So good.

  “Say it again,” Mason demanded gently.

  “I want strings,” Dill complied.

  Drag, thrust, grind.

  “I want you,” he added.

  The words were a balm to Mason’s neglected heart. His cock felt full and needy. Expressing his appreciation the only way he knew how, Mason rocked forward again and again. He fucked Mason with increasing force, watching his lover’s face tighten with pain and pleasure, and still Dill bathed him in affirmations.

  “I want your arms around me. I want your lips on mine. I want to taste your cum and feel it on my face. I want these pinpoint nipples on my tongue and between my teeth. I want you in my ass, inside my body. I want your head on my shoulder at night.”

  The words blurred together taking him higher. So high.

  “Fuck me, Mason. Fuck me like you mean it,” Dill challenged.

  The words prickled through him, tightened his balls and tripped the cascade of nerves which burst from the base of his spine and raced up his back. With a grunt, he emptied himself into Dill. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” he yelled, broken yet sated.

  Dill tried to pull him down on top. Mason fought him. They grappled halfheartedly, and Mason’s cock slipped from Dill’s body.

  No holding after sex. No strings. No holding. Fuck! No holding. Get away. Gotta get away. It would be better for both of them. He never should have given in to the hunger. Dill had a lot to offer. He had family and home and fucking strings, damn him.

  Mason shoved off of Dill and rolled off the side of the bed, swiping up his clothes and yanking them on as he went.

  “Mason, don’t go.”

  “Strings, you sonofabitch! You fucking said no strings.”

  “There aren’t any. I’ll take you however I can get you.”

  “With guys like you, there is nothing but strings. Goddamn webs of them,” Mason yelled. He tore out of the room, passing the three frozen members of the Harper family he’d already met and four others in mid-greeting outside.

  Definitely time to go. He didn’t want to stick around for the part where this family asked him to go, too. This time, it would be his decision.

  Chapter Seven

  Four days later, Dill was still trying to find a way to talk to him. Mason had looked through him at a coffee shop and in the parking lot of the same club where Mason had been hurt.

  It seemed to Dill that his mark wanted to get killed. He made the rounds of each place there’d been an attack and boldly continued living in his apartment. The tattoo parlor owner had forcefully escorted him out for the third time that morning.

  It was a matter of time before whoever was trying to get at Mason, got at Mason. As it was, Dill and the other Harpers were double timing to keep Mason’s ass covered. Even Jenson seemed exasperated by Mason’s bullshit.

  In the meantime, Dill dug up as much information on Mason’s childhood as he could. Whoever wanted the DNA had to be family, and that meant Dill had to start at the roots of the family tree.

  It also meant he had to get into his own brother’s security files. Not an easy feat when that brother could read minds and headed up a top-notch security firm. All he’d given Dill was the client’s contact person when case details needed to be addressed, like when the DNA had been secured and notifying the contact that Mason could be in danger.

  He’d learned a lot about Mason in the gap days between sex and now. Most obvious was that following Mason on a mission was like trying to catch a windblown feather. Nearly impossible to keep up with, and every swipe netted a fistful of almost.

  Dill finally found him at the cemetery. Dill rapped a knuckle on the roof of Sage’s car, relieving him, and took off on foot across the immaculately greened lawn.

  “Hey,” he called, taking the last few steps to join Mason.

  “Hey.”

  The stone had the date of the stabbing below the words, “Diego Carteval, Brother.” After the research he’d done, Dill didn’t miss the significance of Mason not only paying for the headstone when no one else had come forward, but for the kinship that had formed between the two men while they drifted, unwanted by the system. They were two who’d fallen through the cracks.

  The silence carried weight to it. Not wanting to interrupt it with the crass brutality of words, Dill quietly reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, a flyer from the political activist waving them in front of the tattoo parlor. Dill’s movements were somber, reverent as he handed it to Mason.

  Mason took it, opened it, read it, then shoved it into his pocket. He sighed. “What’s this about?”

  “Carla Leon, the lioness of human rights,” he said spitting out the propaganda.

  “Yeah, I know who she is. The whole Goddamn city knows who she is. Why the fuck are you at my brother’s grave handing me a pink paper with her slogan on it?”

  “She started her career eleven years ago. Six years before that, she was Carla Newcomb and eight years before that, she was Carla Levaro. And before that—”

  “Before that she was Carla fucking Jane Doe,” Mason said gruffly.

  “Nope. Before that she was Carla Haliday, a twenty year old who’d run away from home at the age of fifteen when she got pregnant,” Dill finished.

  He let the words sink in, saw when they did, and Mason’s cocky chin in the air routine faltered. Then he stared at the ground, his eyes hazed as he stared at nothing and his hands curled into his t-shirt at his middle.

  “She’s my mother?” Mason rasped.

  There was no need to answer. They both knew the truth.

  “Carla Leon is our client,” Dill added. “I’ve been communicating with her contact, Jenson Price.”

  “Oh, God.” Mason’s hands shook. His knees gave and he sank on the damp ground at Diego’s headstone. “I never—I never thought I’d find her. I figure she’d gone to hell giving
me up. Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m gonna skin the bitch,” he swore violently.

  Dill dropped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. The raw pain on Mason’s face, the way he crumbled upon hearing the news made Dill ache for being the bearer. If only Mason would let him offer comfort, but his defenses had been raised. The visual sparring during the past few days had everything to do with having sex. Amazing sex, damnit.

  “Who’s my father?”

  “Don’t know,” Dill said. “The DNA will solidify your parentage to Carla. It’s merely a formality.”

  “Did you give her the results yet?”

  “They’re expected by special delivery tonight. She’s pulled some favors to speed up the process, bump it to the top of the priority list.”

  “Did she say what she wanted once she got it?” Mason asked.

  “She’s campaigning for human rights. She could be trying to repair former mistakes by bringing you home again, preserving your rights as a part of her family.”

  “I’m not a mistake,” Mason corrected.

  “Her mistake in letting you go, Mase, not in having you.” Dill kneeled beside him. “You knew what I meant. You’re picking this fight on purpose.”

  Mason moved his shoulder. It was a gesture meant to show his displeasure at having Dill’s hand on him, so Dill let go. He hated this distance. Having been close to him already, intimate with him, the emotional barrier Mason had lifted felt like a physical barrier between them.

  “Go away, Dilly-bear,” he mocked. “I’m bad news. People disappear around me. Or they die, like Diego.”

  “It would be easier for you if I disappeared. You wouldn’t have to look into the face of someone who actually gives a damn about you. I want you around. Can’t fucking figure out why when you’re an ass most of the time.”

  “I’m an ass all of the time. If you don’t like it, get lost,” Mason remarked tightly.

  “I can’t.”