“Sage?”
She slowly turned around to face me, a knowing smile on those full red lips. The closer I got to her, the more I could appreciate that perfectly tattooed body, which was more on display than should be legal. The damn shirt she wore was tied up underneath her tits, which were halfway exposed in the unbuttoned flannel shirt. Her purple lacy bra was staring me in the face, torturing me.
“Hi, Mason,” she purred up at me when I stopped in front of her.
“Got car trouble?” I asked. The whole scene felt oddly familiar to me, but I wasn’t quite sure why.
Her face transformed into a full-on pout that normally would not turn me on. But on this woman? There wasn’t anything she could do that wouldn’t make me hard as a goddamn rock.
“I’m not sure what’s wrong with it,” she said in a husky voice. “Will you help me?”
That was when I realized she had a wrench in her hands and a few grease stains on her chest, right above the swell of her tits, which my eyes were naturally drawn to.
I was struggling to find my words. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
She put her hand on my chest when I took a step toward the car, biting her lip in an innocent gesture that had my dick twitching. “Can you teach me? I want to learn.”
I swallowed slowly around my dry mouth. “Yeah. Sure.”
I stood behind her, putting my hands on her arms as I showed her the basic stuff to check whenever her car suddenly dies. I was painfully aware of how good her ass cheeks felt against my dick, how perfectly my hips cradled her own, how small her body felt dwarfed against my larger form.
“You’re so good at this,” she whispered, leaning back into me.
I groaned softly when she started to wiggle that ass back against me, right over the bulge in my jeans, which was growing so large it was threatening to punch through my zipper.
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” I said as I began to grind my hips into her, my hands running up her sides, growing more urgent as she picked up her pace.
“I think I might need some practice too.” Her hand reached behind her and squeezed me through my jeans, drawing a deep moan from me. “There’s some other things I think you could teach me, Mason. And I want to practice them on you.”
Holy fuck.
What was happening?
The next thing I knew, I was being shoved onto the hood of the car. When did she close that? I wasn’t really given a chance to think as I watched Sage—tits out, ass up—climb onto the car on her hands and knees, eyes glued to the juncture between my thighs.
“I want you to show me how to make you feel good,” she said either to me or my dick, I wasn’t sure since her eyes never left the tent in my pants.
Her hands went to my button and I tried to stop her, though I had no fucking clue why. “Sage, hold on. Anyone could see us out here.” It finally registered with me that we were on the side of the road, though I hadn’t seen a single car pass us since I approached her.
She looked up at me, her eyes burning with lust. “I don’t care. I want to hold your cock in my hand, Mason. I need to see my fingers wrapped around it.”
Oookay. This was clearly the best day of my life.
I didn’t protest again as she got my jeans down my legs and my dick out. And when she gripped me in her small hand, I swear I nearly shot all over the place.
“Oh, Sage…”
“I’ve never does this before, you know. I need you to show me what you like. How does that feel?”
Um. Amazing? Fucking spectacular? So good I think your pussy would probably kill me if your hand alone felt this incredible?
“Really good,” I told her, unable to catch my breath. “You can do it harder.”
She tightened her hold around me as that hand moved up and down my shaft, stroking slow and steady. “Like this?”
“Yes. Oh yeah, that’s right. Just like that.”
“How about this?” she asked as she twisted her hand right at the base, sending a jolt of pleasure shooting through me.
“Oh, fuck yeah. Keep doing that.”
She increased the pace of her strokes, going faster, faster, until I thought I was going to lose my mind with the need to come. She smeared the moisture of my pre-come, coating my length and her hand with it, making it easier for her to pump quicker.
“Come all over my hand, Mason,” she demanded.
“I’m going to…I’m about to…”
My hips were pistoning out of control, my eyes screwed shut with the will to hold back a little bit longer but I couldn’t.
“Let it go,” she said. “Just let it all go.”
I felt it building, building. It was there, right at the base. “Sage!”
I forced my eyes open right as the first shot of my release was about to—
I jackknifed off my bed, my eyes opening for real this time. I took stock of my surroundings, realizing I was in my own bedroom, in my own apartment, and not on the side of the road with Sage Tucker’s hand wrapped around my dick.
A fucking dream.
And I just had to wake up right before the best part.
Life can be such a cruel bitch.
I fell back on my bed and laid there for a few minutes, trying to figure out what just happened. There were obvious reasons why I would be dreaming about Sage—the woman was a bombshell. But a hand job? Really? Out of all the fantasies I could conjure up starring a woman like her, my subconscious settled on a fucking hand job? She hadn’t even put her mouth on me, and I still woke up covered in sweat with a hard dick.
I looked down at said appendage and couldn’t help but notice that he looked sort of sad. “You and me both, buddy.”
I forced myself to put Sage in the back of my mind as I dragged myself out of bed and started my day—after I had a healthy jerk-off session in the shower, of course. I mean, I had to finish that dream. Couldn’t leave the big guy hanging.
But it certainly did not escape my attention that a woman who had the power to work a man up in his dreams with a mere hand job had the potential to be one hell of a complication. Or a gift.
Hell. Either way, Sage Tucker was just plain trouble.
##
“Uncle Mason’s here!” two little voices screamed the second I walked through my brother Dawson’s front door.
I was almost tackled to my feet as my four-year-old niece and nephew slammed into my legs, wrapping their little arms around my thighs. I laughed and tried to hug them back. “You guys are getting pretty strong. Has your dad been teaching you some football moves?”
“Daddy told me girls don’t play football,” Gabby pouted, crossing her arms over her chest.
I tried to stifle my laughter but was unsuccessful. Dawson had a hard time telling the cute little thing no most of the time and I could see why. You never wanted to deny that face. I looked over at Leo, noting the differences between the twins. Gabby was the spitting image of her mother, all dark, curly hair and lighter colored skin—although she had Dawson’s brown eyes—while Leo looked so much like Dawson it was almost creepy. He had the same dark skin, dark hair, and the personality of my older brother, though he had inherited his mother’s hazel eyes.
“What about you, little man?” I asked him. “You going to be a football player when you grow up?”
He looked at me like I had grown a second head. “No! I’m going to be a baseball player like Uncle Parker. Duh!”
His attitude could never be mistaken for anything but that of a Cruz boy. My younger brother Parker was the third baseman for the Boston Red Sox, who had just won the World Series back in October, and was one of the most famous athletes in any sport today. It was a total mind warp sometimes to think about how far we had all come, especially Parker. Wealth and status were never things any of us ever thought about growing up.
We were too preoccupied with how much food we were going to have to eat for dinner that night.
Or whether or not our father was going to be in one of his drunken stupo
rs.
But we had all made something of ourselves, and I couldn’t be prouder of my brothers.
“You better make sure you practice a lot then,” I said to Leo. “If you want to be a good player like Uncle Parker, you have to work hard at it.”
He nodded enthusiastically. “I know. Clay was teaching me how to pitch at Thanksgiving. I think I’m going to be a pitcher.”
Clay Masterson had been Parker’s best friend since they were seven. Parker had grown up with the Mastersons, had basically been adopted into their family, and was now dating Clay’s younger sister Kinley. Since we didn’t have much in the way of parents ourselves, Dawson and I had also been accepted into the Masterson family fold. We ended up spending a lot of our holidays with the whole clan.
It was nice, being a part of a stable, loving environment like that. Dawson and Mickie had made that with their family, of course, but it felt good to have an entire unit like we did with Sam and Diane Masterson’s family.
Growing up with Sal and Sandra Cruz had basically been the complete opposite of that.
“Yeah, well I’m going to grow up and be an animal doctor,” Gabby said pointedly. “I’m going to work in a hospital like Mommy but with animals instead of people. Like dogs and cats and birds and—”
“Where is Mommy?” I asked, cutting her off. She could go on forever if I didn’t step in. What she was going to be when she grew up changed on a daily basis anyway, so I figured I’d hear a different story by tomorrow.
“She’s in the kitchen making supper,” she replied. “Do you want to build a fort with us? Mommy said we had to stay out of the kitchen while she was cooking.”
As if on cue, I heard a crash come from the kitchen, followed by Mickie’s grumbling. “You guys start on the fort and I’ll go see if Mommy needs help.”
When I walked into the kitchen, I saw my sister-in-law Mickie pulling ingredients out of the pantry with a look of frustration painted on her pretty face. “Everything okay, Mick?”
She looked over at me, her eyes softening. She looked tired and was still in her work scrubs. “Yeah, sorry. Just a crazy day at work. Dinner’s going to be a little late.”
She had been an ER nurse for the past ten years and oftentimes had to work long, irregular hours. Having lived in their basement after I got out of rehab when I was putting my life back together, I understood how her schedule and Dawson’s erratic hours as a detective for the Baltimore PD could get ridiculously hectic.
The twins had been babies back then and my living with them had worked out for everyone. They gave me a place to stay while I worked my shit out and saved up some money, and I was always available for free babysitting. It hadn’t been an easy few years as I fought through the constant temptation and they figured out how to balance their jobs with being new parents. But I think we all came out stronger and closer because of it. And I’d forever be grateful to them.
I rolled up my sleeves and helped her get out the pots and pans. “It’s no problem. Tell me what I need to do and I can help.”
She looked a little frazzled as she assessed what she had just grabbed from the pantry. “Um. If you wouldn’t mine cleaning some vegetables, I’d appreciate it. I’ll get the meat I’m marinating out of the fridge.”
I had often helped with cooking dinner when I lived with them, so it was easy for us to work together. My heart broke a little bit when it was obvious how relieved she was at having some help.
“Dawson working late tonight?”
She released a deep sigh. “He wasn’t supposed to, but he called when I was on my way home and said he’d be at least an hour late. He was meant to pick up the kids, so I didn’t get to run the errands that I’d planned to on my way home.”
“You know you can always call me up,” I said softly. “It’s never asking too much, Mick. You know that.”
“I know,” she replied flatly.
Her voice didn’t sound like the usual Mickie I was used to. Ever since she got her promotion to department supervisor last year, she’d been acting…dejected. Like she was constantly being drained of the energy and spirit that was so distinctly Mickie. It also hadn’t escaped my notice that Dawson had been acting similarly. With both of their jobs, they were exposed to a lot of negative circumstances, so it was understandable for them to go through times of emotional stress. Every married couple does after all.
But something about the situation between my brother and sister-in-law had just seemed off lately. They hadn’t been their usual in-sync selves. It worried me. Dawson and Mickie couldn’t have problems. They had always been that indestructible, impenetrable couple you saw on the street or in the grocery store that you envied.
And if they couldn’t make it, there was no hope for the rest of us.
“Speaking of which,” she went on, “is there any way that you could pick the kids up from school on Thursday? I hate to even ask because I don’t want to bother you while you’re working. It’s just that it’s a half day at school and my usual babysitters aren’t available.”
“Please,” I chided her, smiling, “you know that never bothers me. They love the shop and all the guys love having them there. They’re a source of entertainment.”
She huffed but I heard the humor in the sound. “More like the other way around.” She looked over her shoulder at me, quirking her eyebrow. “Did you know that last time they were there Leo came home telling me that he saw a naked woman on one of the guy’s arms? He asked me why someone would want to paint a naked girl on their body. Said that was gross.”
I burst into laughter. I couldn’t help it. “That would be Grady. He’s like the raunchy uncle of the family. And yes, he has a tattoo of a naked woman on his forearm. His wife. Said he got it back during Vietnam so that he would never forget what she looked like in case he lost her picture.”
Mickie giggled, shaking her head. “Then, I guess it would be asking too much to have them watch their language, huh?”
I shrugged, smirking. “They try. Those kids just have bat hearing or something.”
“That’s all kids,” she muttered.
Almost an hour later, Dawson walked through the door just as we were setting the table. He looked at me and slapped me on the back. “Hey, bro. About forgot you were coming over.”
I snorted. “Nice to know I’m missed around here.”
We all sat down and dug into the vegetable stew Mickie and I had whipped up. I hadn’t had a good home cooked meal since the last time I had come over. I was a decent cook but I just never had the desire to go through all the trouble if I was going to be the only one eating it.
“So, how’s work going?” I asked Dawson after the kids finished their meal and left the table.
At the question, Mickie shot up and started cleaning the table off. I offered to help but she insisted I stay put. Dawson kept shooting glances at his wife every now and then and I wasn’t sure what they meant.
“Same as every other day,” he answered. “If I’m not chasing down leads, I’m buried in paperwork.”
He didn’t often talk about his police work in detail. I think it was in effort to separate all the crap he had to deal with at the station from his life at home. I couldn’t imagine some of the stuff he had seen, so I was never going to ask about it.
“How’s the shop?” he asked, taking a sip of his beer at the same time that I took a drink from my Coke. They always had some in the fridge for me, knowing that I never drank alcohol.
“Great. Business is steady. Starting to re-build a 383 for a ’70 Road Runner, so that’s going to keep me busy.”
Up until that point, I’d been doing a decent job of not thinking about Sage. It had been maybe…an hour since I had imagined what the tattoos she had underneath her clothes looked like. Because I knew she had more than just the ones on her arms. And I wanted to see them all.
“Oh, yeah?” he asked. “What was the problem with it?”
“Busted camshaft. Said she wanted to keep the original engine
in there, rather than replacing it with a new one so I told her I could re-build it.
I glanced up to see him smirking at me. “What?”
“‘She’ huh?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, it’s a woman. And before you say anything, yes, she’s hot and yes, I’ve thought about asking her out.”
His eyebrows rose. “I wasn’t going to ask. But thanks for sharing so willingly.”
I pinned him with a hard look. “I’d rather tell you straight off than have you bust my balls over it.”
He chuckled. “Good point.” He rubbed his chin as he studied my expression, but I gave nothing away. “She know cars?”
I nodded. “Yep. Knew what kind of engine she had. Even had a good idea of what was wrong with it in the first place.”
He looked impressed. You haven’t even seen her, man. He would really be impressed then. “She knows cars and she’s hot?”
I groaned. “You have no idea. A body like you wouldn’t fucking believe. Tattoos, a few piercings but attractive ones, you know? And she’s a huge Metallica fan.”
“Shit, bro,” Dawson mused. “Did you need me to go with you to get the ring? ‘Cuz it sounds to me like she’s the perfect woman for you.”
I sighed, scrubbing my hand over my face. To be honest, I hadn’t really decided yet what I was going to do about the Sage situation. We hadn’t been around each other much to determine a course of action, so I figured that I would still give it a little time to feel her out.
Fuck. All I wanted to do was feel that woman out.
I shrugged nonchalantly. “We’ll see how it goes. It’s not like I’m ready for matrimony, but I’m never opposed to having some fun.”
He huffed like he thought I was full of shit. “Yeah, let’s see how long your ‘fun’ lasts.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He gave me a look. “That’s what you say about any woman you hook up with. You’ve been avoiding relationships for years, man. One of these days you’re going to find a woman who you won’t be satisfied with just ‘having some fun.’ What then?”
The Art of Sage (Cruz Brothers #2) Page 5
