by Laura Day
God, she wanted her hands. She wanted to touch his sac, tease her fingers over his balls. She wanted to explore him with everything she had.
It was like he saw that desire in her eyes. He leaned forward just a bit, to pin her wrists down to the bed, which put him farther into her mouth. For a moment, it was amazing, and she surged up under him, swallowing him deeply, but then it was too much—she coughed, almost gagged, her eyes widening in panic—
And the weight of him was gone, moving smoothly to the side, pulling her along with him, his hands moving softly over her back, not saying anything, not breaking the mood, simply finding a holding pattern while she recovered, finding her breathing again.
“Good,” he said, when she had recovered. “I was done with your fucking mouth anyway.” He watched her carefully, gauging her reaction, and nodding when she didn’t protest.
He reached into the nightstand, found the condoms, and slid one in place with practiced ease. He brought her with him as he lay down on his back, settling her with her innermost lips spread over the granite of his pulsing cock. She bit her lip; she was eager, but from here it seemed like all the flaws of her body were obvious.
The damage that gravity had done to her already less than impressive tits, the loose skin of her belly where she’d fought her weight and won, but gotten scars in the process. She wanted to duck and hide, move where he couldn’t see her. She wished she could turn out the sun, or cause blackout curtains to suddenly fly up and cover the windows so that he was at least seeing her through shadow.
“You sexy bitch,” he murmured, using his hands to urge her into a slow slide over his cock. “So hot, so incredible. You burn me up, Caro. God, you do. Do you want me to fuck you? Do you want me to watch you? Because I want to see you. I want to see what you look like when you clench, when you come for me. Can you do that for me?”
She looked deep into his eyes, into the yearning there, and realized that yes, she definitely could. She slid up to the tip of his cock, and with a little bit of maneuvering, she slid him into the very beginning of her open cleft. His eyes and his nostrils were flared wide, and his hands came to hers to give her somewhere to brace.
As slowly as she could manage, she took his length inside of her. She’d never been in control in this position before, and it was different. Beyond different. He was deep inside of her, deeper than she could remember feeling, and it was intense, emotional, and she had to pause to breathe every so often, to think of opening, spreading, accepting him into her.
And then he was fully sheathed in her body, touching the end of her, and she felt that warm sparkle start to swell up in her belly as she shifted experimentally, rocking him into her just a touch farther. A touch deeper. He groaned, hard, and rolled his hips up into hers to give her all the access she wanted.
As she dragged him out of her, the tightness of her body pulled at her clit, sending waves of liquid want through her limbs, helping her find her rhythm, build her pace, everything moving towards the intensity of motion as he rocked with her. “Hands,” she whispered. “I need my hands.”
He didn’t argue. The twine came free with a quick tug, and she leaned down, bracing herself on either side of his shoulders. Her breasts were within reach of his mouth, and he took her nipple in between his teeth, scraping gently at it while she cried out.
The orgasm didn’t come all at once, intense and hard, like it had before; it was soft, rolling in gently, washing farther and farther up her body until she was submerged. Far away, she could feel her body rocking into him, hard and irresistible, crying out as she lost herself in the joy of total sensation. But in her head it was quiet, all the noise silenced, taken up entirely with the sensation of his hands on her hips, steadying her, grounding her. Keeping her safe.
He rolled them, before the aftershocks had entirely passed, letting his weight settle down onto her body. He took her hands back, pinning them with one handoff his own, while the other roamed her body as he thrust into her.
The tenderness was gone from his expression, and his eyes were consumed with his own need, his own determined taking. She pulled her legs up, wrapping them around his waist, inviting him deeper; he responded by slowing for a moment, then reaching down with his arms and hooking her knees up over his shoulders. She cried out at the depth of his thrusts, the tightness of her body, and he slowed for a moment.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Fuck me fast, though, hard— do it, go, do it.”
He didn’t wait for more permission than that. His eyes watched her, but his body slammed into her, hard and fast, inattentive to her cries and movements. She tangled her hands in his bright red hair and focused on the intensity of the sensation, feeling the painful edges dissolve into bright light and expansive welcome.
He came all at once, silent at first, his body trembling at the peak, yearning into her as he dissolved, and then tumbling down, moaning and growling as his body shook and pulsed and spasmed. He released her knees as he crumbled down over her, managing to fall just gently to the side so that he didn’t entirely crush her. She held him while his breath heaved in and out, tired and ragged.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Afterwards, they lay tangled together. Mason’s arms were tight around Caroline, and her fingers traced idle patterns over his skin.
“I hate waiting,” he said.
“I know.”
“How long do you think it’ll take for him to find something out?”
She shrugged. “Depends on whether or not he has to bribe someone, or if they can find it out without causing themselves a conflict of interest. There’s still a real possibility that he won’t be able to find out anything at all.”
He sighed. “At some point, I’m going to have to take this to Declan.”
“The guy who doesn’t like you?”
He nodded. “That’d be him. It won’t be pretty. It’s going to take actual evidence that something is going on, not just my hunch. And right now, everything there is points to me.”
“You’re a good guy, Mase. We’ll figure this out.”
He smiled, but there was something cold about it that she didn’t like at all. “You don’t know me as well as you think, Caro. Don’t assume.” And then the coldness passed, and he was holding her softly and carefully again. He kissed her hair and snuggled her close. “How long do we wait for Jack to contact us?”
“As long as it takes,” she said, but then she heard her phone ringing in the other room. It was late afternoon now; had he really tracked things down so fast? She didn’t bother to throw on clothes, just hurried down the hall into the living room, grabbing her phone out of her purse where she’d left it. “Hello?”
Jack’s voice was tight, harsh. “Caroline?”
“Yeah, Jack, it’s me. What’d you find out?”
“Where are you?”
“At home, why?”
“Is he there with you?”
Her heart was throbbing again, and she wished she had pants. Underwear, at least. Mason had followed her out of the bedroom, and he was standing in the hallway, watching her carefully. Hoping for information that would lead him to whoever was trying to sully his name and pin the theft of all this money on him.
He’d pulled his jeans on before walking out. It suddenly seemed that he was at an advantage to her, and that made her feel incredibly nervous. “Does it matter?”
“These are not good guys, Caroline. I was able to get names for the account. It’s not just one guy making deposits, and the money they’ve been skimming from the garage—that’s just the beginning. There are interests from all over. My friend was able to tie some things together, and he’s reasonably sure—not sure enough to contact the DA, he said, but sure enough to tell me—that these guys are running stuff into the state. Big stuff. Heavy stuff.”
“What do you mean, Jack?” Her heart was slamming so loudly in her ears that she could hardly breathe. She tried to keep her expression neutral, but Mason was paying extra attention, so close, so st
udied, his eyes neutral and cold.
“They’re moving meth. Heroin. Guns. Maybe girls; my friend wasn’t sure. Dirty deeds done, but not dirt cheap. There’s a lot of money here, Caroline. A metric shit ton, if you’ll excuse the expression. Either your guy is oblivious as hell, or he’s involved. There’s no way this is happening outside of his notice.”
“Is there a name? Jack, do you have a name for me?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Declan McDermott. There’s a lot of other names, guys my friend says have ties to the Fallen Angels, but it all comes back to him. Which makes sense, I guess, since he’s their ring leader.”
“President,” she said, almost absently, as she ended the call. “He’s called the president.”
Her phone rang almost immediately; she saw Jack’s name, and she silenced the call. She looked at Mason, who was still watching her with that neutral, cold expression.
This wasn’t the man she’d just slept with, the guy who’d let her fall asleep on his lap a few hours before, then brought her back lunch. This was the Fallen Angel, the guy who said he’d never gone “code white” again after his time in the military, whatever the hell that meant.
This was the guy who would put that family before her, every chance he had. Because that was what happened when your guy was a biker. He chose the club first. You were never even second best.
“What did he say?” Mason asked, and she jumped.
“I need to get dressed,” she said, pushing past him, and hoping that he’d let it go.
Instead, his hand circled her wrist, grabbing her and holding her as still as if she’d been chained. “Caroline,” he said, and that coldness seeped into his voice. “Tell me what Jack said. What’s going on?” He tried to smile, but the expression looked more like a grimace.
She yanked her wrist away from him, and he let her go. She was quite sure that he let her go. That he could have held her if he’d chosen to. “I am not talking to you about this naked in the hallway. I am going to get dressed.”
The look in his eyes went from ice to fire in the space of a single heartbeat, and she knew what it felt like to be a rabbit who’d just seen a wolf step out of the tall grass. She kept her chin lifted, her eyes focused tightly on his. There were rules with predators. You never let them see you falter. You never let them see your weaknesses.
After a moment, he moved to the side, letting her pass him by. But he followed her into the bedroom, watching her reach down for her pants, put her bra back on, find a clean t-shirt. There wasn’t any arousal in his eyes; he was watching her with all the interest of an iceberg.
As soon as the hem of her shirt settled around her waist, he nodded. “Tell me what is happening,” he said.
She rubbed at her head and tried to focus. “Tell me what the club does for its ‘off the books’ businesses.”
“I told you. Lightweight stuff, adults only, and yeah, maybe we don’t look too careful if a guy wants to sell a bike, quick and for cash, but we don’t do anything that should make you look at me like that.”
“Don’t you?” She didn’t mean to be that blunt about it, but the words were out, and she couldn’t take them back. “Don’t you deal in lots of other things?”
“No,” he said, firmly. “Declan wanted to, for a while. But me and the other guys, we all said no. That we didn’t want that kind of club. We wanted to keep things clean. Safe. Family friendly. We wanted a family, not a bunch of pimps and drug lords. We all live here. Some of the guys have kids here.”
“All of them?”
“No, of course not all of them. What are you getting at?”
“Jack said that you either were an idiot, or you were lying to me.”
It was Mason’s turn to rub at his eyes. “Caroline Lewis, I am doing my very best not to be pissed off here, but I do not know what the fuck you are talking about and I’m getting real damn close to losing my patience with this conversation.”
“Oh?” She stood up, getting into his space, putting her hands on her hips and glaring up at him. “Is that supposed to back me off? Telling me that you’ll hurt me? Hit me? Is that supposed to scare me?”
It did scare her, it scared the hell out of her, but Jack had said girls. Not women, girls. Girls like she’d been, once upon a time. And there was no goddamn way that she was going to protect the kind of piece of shit who’d been involved in something like that.
“No.” He put his hands up and tried to back up, but she followed him. “Caro, I haven’t lied to you, not once. I’ve told you nothing but the truth—”
“But have you told me all the truth, Mason? Is there more going on here than you’ve been letting on?”
“No!” he roared all of a sudden. “I don’t know what is going on. I told you everything I know. I’m trying like hell to keep up, but I’m not a genius brainac like you. So could you maybe just fucking explain yourself, and use the small words so I can keep up?”
She forced herself to ratchet down a notch, to give him the benefit of the doubt. If Jack had found Mason’s name tied to the records anywhere, he would have told her. The only connection was still the fact that Mason was the treasurer, and his sister’s name. That was it.
“Jack’s source found more than just one name tied to the accounts. Lots more than one. And there’s also evidence that they’re not just skimming from the garage. There seems to be money coming in from all sorts of sources. Jack’s source couldn’t find enough that he felt he’d need to go to the DA over it, but he was sure there was drug money coming in. Hard drug money. And guns. And maybe girls.”
She watched him, watched those words hit him like a sucker punch to the solar plexus, and watched the color drain out from his already pale skin. He staggered, holding himself up against the wall, and still she followed him, pursuing him.
“Jack said that it was too obvious, there was too much money coming in and going out. He said that anyone in the club had to know what was going on, or else they were totally oblivious. So you tell me, Mason? Which is it?”
“Girls?” His eyes staring at her were rung out, exhausted, haunted. “He’s using my—my fucking sister’s name and running girls?”
She’d forgotten how to breathe. She touched his hand, found it icy cold. “Jack wasn’t sure. But yeah. He thought so.”
His throat clenched, and for a moment, she was sure he was going to vomit on her floor. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, closed his eyes, and breathed for a few moments. And then he opened his eyes, and there was nothing like compassion there. Nothing to be seen but rage.
“I am going to kill him,” he said, calmly and quietly, an evil grin spreading across his face like a scar. “I’m going to feed him his own nut sack, and I’m going to stick a red hot poker into his intestines and watch him scream. It’s Declan, isn’t it?”
She nodded, more afraid of him now than she was when he was shouting. “Jack’s source says it all comes back to him.”
Mason shook his head. “I should have known. There were always rumors among the girls. They didn’t go near him if they could help it, and we should have… we should have listened. We let him brag on it, let him tell us that they couldn’t handle that he didn’t want a relationship. I always wondered, but I didn’t—I didn’t stop him—” That choking motion in his throat again, and this time, his eyes bugged out, his hand pressed more firmly to his mouth.
He pushed past her, out of the room. She stayed in the bedroom, trying not to listen as he lost lunch, breakfast, maybe every meal he’d eaten since the day he found out his sister was dead. He wouldn’t want her to see him like that. She waited until he came back. Pale, shaky, but back in control.
“Thank you for helping,” he said. “I’ll take care of this from here.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The right thing to do would be to nod, to let him go, and to keep the past 24 hours packed away, crystallized in amber, for viewing on cold nights. To let it tell her something about the kind of guy she wanted to meet, and t
hen to forget the specifics. Jack was right. She had no idea who Mason was, or if he was involved with something. This could all be an incredibly convincing act. She’d fallen for them before.
“No,” she said. “I’m coming with you.”
He laughed, a harsh, cold bark. “Are you kidding right now?”
“No.”
“You are something else, you know that? I am trying to protect you.”
“Yeah, I can practically see you, putting on your armor and mounting up on your white charger to ride off into certain death while the wee little woman waits at home, doing whatever the hell it was Odysseus’ wife did while she was waiting.” She put herself in his space again, and he let her, scoffing at her.
