by Mandy Baxter
She didn’t think she’d ever get enough of the compliments that flowed so effortlessly and honestly from his lips. “You can thank my shampoo.” Accepting those compliments didn’t come quite as easily for her.
“No,” Mason said with a laugh. “It’s not your shampoo.” He ran his nose down her temple and Charlie’s head tipped back as though she had no other choice. He inhaled again at her throat before putting his mouth to her. “You smell like the ocean. Salty and clean.” He kissed her again and she shivered. “You smell like sex.” He took her hand and guided it to his stiff cock. “See what you do to me, Charlie? Feel how hard I am for you.”
She took him into her hand and stroked from the tip to the thick base.
“Do you want me to fuck you, Charlie?”
Her stomach did a backflip before it drifted back into place. “Yes.”
“Tell me you want me.”
They’d played this game before, but Charlie was happy to indulge him. Especially because every word from her mouth was the truth. “I want you.”
“Only me.”
“Only you.”
“Good.”
*
He shouldn’t have needed to hear those words from her yet again. It wasn’t like Mason was some untested, unsure pup. Doubt scratched at the back of his mind. There was a piece of him that had always felt empty. Somehow, Charlie managed to fill that space tonight. It made Mason greedy for more. He couldn’t kiss her enough, taste her enough, touch or take her scent into his lungs enough. He vowed she’d be ruined for any other man after he was through with her, but it was he who had been ruined.
He was goddamned lost. To her.
Mason pulled her close. Her eyes, clear and endless blue, stared back at him. Her lips, so inviting, parted on a breath. He brushed the pad of his thumb across the flawless blushed skin of her cheek and let his fingers wander to the wavy strands of strawberry blond that framed her face. She was everything he could have ever wanted. He refused to acknowledge that once they got back to San Francisco, the spell would be broken.
His mouth found hers in a slow and sultry kiss. Mason’s need for her burned like a cinder in his gut, pulsed through his veins like molten lead, and ate away at his chest. If he didn’t fuck her—didn’t take her hard and deep right now—he’d go out of his damned mind. There would be time for softly spoken words and gentle caresses later. Now, he had to purge this damnable need from his system before he cracked.
Charlie answered his kisses with building fervor and intensity. Her mouth slanted across his, her tongue traced his bottom lip before sliding against his in a sweet, slippery tangle. His cock throbbed hot and hard, his muscles burned with unspent energy. The heat of her skin met his, her lush breasts pressed into his chest. The head of his cock brushed the crease of her thighs and Mason groaned into her mouth.
He turned and took her down to the mattress. Charlie let out a squeal of surprise and the brilliance of her smile rivaled the sun. He kissed her petal-soft lips, her cheek, her shoulder. His mouth found her breast and he sucked her nipple before dragging his teeth over the sensitive peak. Charlie gasped as she arched into the contact, her expression blissful as her eyelids drifted shut.
Mason came up on his knees, tore open the packet and rolled the condom on with a groan of relief. He couldn’t wait to take her. To join their bodies once and for all. He trembled with need as he settled himself between her thighs and braced himself with one arm beside her as he guided his cock between her parted legs and probed at her opening.
Charlie’s hips rolled up to meet him and he thrust home. Their mutual sounds of relief surrounded him. She needed this as badly as he did. He stilled inside of her, almost fearful to move, to break the spell that held them both suspended in the moment. She squeezed him tight, her inner walls clenching around his girth.
“Charlie, look at me.”
Her eyes fluttered open and Mason brushed her hair away from her face. He held her gaze as he moved slowly over her, shallow thrusts of his hips that caused Charlie’s lips to part as she drew in tight little breaths. She was so beautiful like this: flushed with passion and completely undone. His lips found all of the places he’d already explored. Charlie’s legs wrapped around the backs of his thighs and her heels dug in as she urged him to go deeper. Swept up in a whirlwind of passion, Mason obliged, grinding his hips against hers as he buried himself to the hilt. She drew in a gasping breath that released on a low, sultry moan. With every press of his hips, her clit slid against his shaft, intensifying the sensation.
There wasn’t a thrill in the world that could compare to fucking Charlie. Mason thought he’d known excitement, but his life up until now was a pale representation. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, his heart pounded in his chest. Their panting breaths and low moans accompanied the sounds of their bodies meeting and parting in the quiet room. They had been reduced to creatures of frenzied, raw want and need.
They shared the same goal and Mason was going to get them both there.
“Harder, Mason,” Charlie panted. “It feels so good.”
Good didn’t cover it by a long shot. Mason didn’t think there was a word in any language to properly convey what he felt right now. He wrapped his arms around her, anchored her body to his own as he fucked her hard and deep, purging himself of the emptiness that had consumed him until the day Charlie walked into his life.
Charlie pushed up and rolled them until Mason was on his back. Her thighs lined up with his and her heels pressed against him as she began to ride him. The sight of her straddling his cock, her breasts swaying with every roll of her hips, her flushed skin, her hair like a wild summer sunset, blinded him with lust. He settled his hands at her waist and pulled her down hard, thrusting upward to take her as deeply as he could. Charlie gasped, her head rolled back on her shoulders.
She reached down and guided his hands to her breasts. “You’re going to make me come,” she said between pants of breath. “Don’t stop.”
Never. He molded his palms to the perfect roundness of her and squeezed gently. Charlie moaned her approval and he upped the ante, rolling her tight nipples between his fingers. Her head snapped up and her eyes went wide. Charlie cried out as she came, deep wracking sobs of pleasure. Chills broke out over her skin and he let his hands roam over the raised flesh that covered her arms, torso, the backs of her thighs. Her pussy clenched him tight and a rush of warmth bathed his cock.
“That’s it, Charlie,” he crooned as she rode out her pleasure. “Come for me.”
With every cry from her lips, every tight contraction of her body, she brought him closer to his own release. Mason fucked her with abandon. His hips bucked. His fingers gripped her. He pulled her down hard over his cock. His sac tightened, pressure built at the base of his shaft and a rush of sensation exploded through him as he came. One wave crashed after another. A violent storm of pleasure blasted through him. Mason’s back came up from the mattress and he buried his face in the crook of Charlie’s neck. Ragged breaths escaped his lungs and he wrapped his arms tight around her as he slowly came down from his own euphoric high.
Fucking amazing.
For what felt like forever, they simply held each other. Charlie’s fingers threaded through his hair and Mason shivered at the contact. Her breath brushed the outer shell of his ear and she whispered, “I can’t wait to do that again.”
Mason’s rumbling laughter filled the silence. That made two of them. “I can do better,” he promised. “You’ll see.”
She pulled away to look at him. Her sly smile was the most seductive thing he’d ever seen. “Better?” She cocked a skeptical brow. “Are you implying that you were holding out on me?”
“Not exactly.” Mason felt his own lips tug into a silly grin that he couldn’t suppress. “But I’m a firm believer that practice makes perfect.”
Her smile dimmed a fraction. “You must have had a lot of practice, then.”
The truth was, he hadn’t. Mason’s career had always been more impor
tant than his sex life. Aside from a few random girlfriends here and there, Charlie had been the first woman he’d been with in almost a year. “Not really,” he replied. “I’m just obsessed with impressing you.”
She smiled. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” He took a few errant strands of her hair between his thumb and forefinger and stroked the silken length. He was absolutely obsessed with her hair as well. The color, the texture, everything. “Are you? Impressed?”
“I think I can safely say that now I truly know what Jell-O feels like. Does that answer your question?”
He kissed her once. Slowly. “We have a few more hours before we have to get ready to fly out. Let’s shoot for making you feel like something a little less solid this time.”
Charlie’s smoky laughter stirred his lusts once again. “Like I said, they’ll have to wheel me out of here on a luggage cart.”
“I take it that means you’re up for the challenge?”
She leaned in and took his earlobe between her teeth before drawing it into her mouth and sucking. “Absolutely.”
Chapter Eighteen
Mason stared up at the ceiling. His brain wouldn’t settle down enough to allow him to sleep. The warmth of Charlie’s hand splayed over his chest, her body tucked close to his, her head resting on his shoulder, comforted him. The even rise and fall of her breath as she rested was a welcome distraction from the thoughts that plagued him.
He’d chosen his path a long time ago, just like Kieran had. So why did he suddenly feel so guilty about the way everything was going down?
“Did you know my dad’s a lawyer?” Her sleepy voice sliced through the silence.
Mason wrapped his arms tighter around her. “He is?”
“Yeah. Corporate law. He wanted me to join his firm after I passed the bar.”
Apparently Mason wasn’t the only one in a contemplative mood. “Why didn’t you?”
Charlie let out a slow sigh. She traced a pattern over his left pec and he let out a sigh of his own at the pleasant sensation. “I sort of resented him for pushing me into law in the first place. I guess I figured if I was going to be this thing that he’d molded me to be, I was at least going to choose how I pursued it.”
He and Charlie were more alike than he’d thought. “Was he disappointed?” If Charlie’s dad was anything like Mason’s, there was no question how he felt. “That you chose criminal law?”
“Devastated,” she said with a quiet laugh. Their hushed voices penetrated the darkness, binding them together in something that Mason knew he would never be able to disentangle himself from. “You would have thought I’d decided to become a drug dealer or something. He said if I was going to practice criminal law, the least I could do was become a defense attorney. That I could make a name for myself taking on high-profile cases.”
“No guts, no glory, huh?”
“No glory, no money,” Charlie replied drily. “Civil servitude wasn’t what my dad had wanted for his daughter. Probably because his own reputation would take a hit. I could single-handedly prosecute and put away every criminal in the country and it wouldn’t be enough to impress him.”
“When my dad found out I was entering the academy, he shit a brick.” Mason still remembered that visit. It was the last time he’d seen him until a couple of weeks ago. His dad’s expression of betrayal and disgust was burned in his memory. “He called me a traitor, accused me of siding with the people who’d put him away. He even asked if I’d tipped the cops off before they arrested him. He said I was conforming to a system designed to keep people like us down. That Kieran was his true son—the only person in his life still loyal. I didn’t talk to him again after that. I wrote him a couple of letters. Tried to open up the line of communication. He ignored me, though. Didn’t want to have anything to do with me until a couple of weeks ago.”
It sucked that he’d been made to feel like a disappointment for not following in his dad’s footsteps. And Charlie had felt the same way. Whatever happened to loving your kids unconditionally?
“Did you?” Charlie’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Tip off the police?”
Mason let out a soft snort. “No. He got caught because he let his ego get the best of him. That’s how they all get caught. But they never acknowledge it. It’s always someone else’s fault, you know? It’s never their wrongdoing. It’s society’s stupid laws. Someone’s always got it out for them. I can’t tell you how many times I heard it growing up. ‘I’m just tryin’ to make a living. What’s so wrong with that?’”
Charlie put her lips to Mason’s shoulder. The gentle kiss caused his stomach muscles to clench and his cock to stir. “Following your own path was brave, Mason. I wish I could have done that.”
“What would you have done?” He couldn’t help but wonder what interested Charlie. He wanted to know everything about her. “If you weren’t working for the DOJ right now, what would you be doing with your life?”
“I honestly don’t know.” The sadness of her tone sliced through him. “For as long as I can remember, my dad hammered law school into my brain. I didn’t have time for fun growing up because I was always studying. I wouldn’t get into a decent college or a good law school if I let my focus slip. I didn’t date. I didn’t play sports. I didn’t even really have girlfriends. I hit the books all the time. I worked toward my dad’s goal for me without ever once wondering what it was that I wanted for myself.”
Mason might have lost his family in the process, but he was glad he’d had the balls to follow his heart. His dad’s lifestyle had never sat well with him. When Jensen was teaching him and Kieran how to properly forge a master’s artwork, or how to effectively hustle someone, Mason had secretly resented it. It bothered him to think that his dad and Kieran shared the same pride and ego. That their disdain for the law equaled Mason’s respect for it.
“How do you feel about it now?” Did Charlie feel as trapped in her life as Mason sometimes felt in his? There were days when he needed an escape so badly that he considered changing his name and finding a jungle somewhere to disappear into.
He felt her shrug against him. “The same way I felt about it then, I guess. Like I have no choice but to keep going. Keep proving myself. Beat my dad at his own game.”
Mason knew all about that. He’d been trying to prove a point to his dad for fifteen years. Hell, longer. “You’ll never live up to his standards.” He had plenty of experience in that department. “So why even try?”
Charlie drew in a slow breath. “Because if I’m not the best, then my entire life has been wasted. If I don’t have any bragging rights at all, when I look back at all of the years I spent on his dream, I’ll realize what I’ve lost, and it’ll break me.”
“Life is what you make it, Charlie. Not what other people make for us.”
“Is that why you’re doing this now?” she asked. “To prove that your father and Kieran have absolutely no influence on your life?”
Okay, so he was a bit of a hypocrite. Sure, Chief Deputy Carrera had come to Mason specifically because of his connection to Kieran. He’d been maneuvered. Leveraged. And maybe at the end of the day none of them were more upstanding or righteous than his dad, Kieran, or any of the people they associated with. Mason had been living in his dad’s—and Kieran’s—shadow for most of his life. The stigma of his family had kept him from moving up the ranks with the San Francisco PD. It had nixed his chances at being accepted into the U.S. Marshals. It had landed him a job with Customs and Border Patrol and he’d spent nearly a decade pretending to live the criminal life, setting up smugglers and thieves in order to bring people just like Kieran to justice. Rather than allowing him to escape his upbringing, everyone in Mason’s life had used his past to benefit them. Just like now.
“Maybe I should take some of my own advice once in a while.”
“Why did you take this job, Mason?” Charlie brought her head up as though she could read the truth in his expression through the dark. “I read your fi
le. You got screwed.”
At least someone besides him was willing to admit it. “For the same reason you work so hard to win every single case that comes across your desk,” Mason said. “I want to prove my dad and Kieran wrong. I want them to know that they didn’t win.”
Charlie reached up and cupped his cheek. “Win what?”
Mason let out a bark of disdainful laughter. “I don’t know.”
“Everything is black and white for us,” Charlie said softly. Her voice was like a caress, reaching out through the dark to tickle Mason’s senses. “Right or wrong. There’s no in-between. We can’t be compromising because there’s no room for compromise. Guys like Kieran, like your dad, and even Katarina, they live in the gray. They have the sort of freedom that we don’t. They can be as compromising as they want because they make the rules as they go. That’s why we fight back, Mason. Not necessarily because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s not fair that they get all of the leeway and we get none.”
“You’re beginning to think like a criminal.”
“Not beginning,” Charlie said. “I’ve always felt this way. It’s not fair that I have to follow the rules and they don’t. That’s why I fight so hard to put them away. Because I’m jealous of that freedom. I’ve never had it easy, so why should they? It’s childish and petty, I know. I’ve never told anyone that. But it’s the truth.”
Her trust in him caused Mason’s chest to swell with emotion. “It was my dad’s lack of conscience that got to me.” Kieran had always teased Mason for being a bleeding heart. “He didn’t care who he hurt, who he swindled or stole from. He always found a way to justify what he did. They have insurance, or The guy’s got millions, what does it matter if I free him of a few hundred thousand? or It’s not my fault if they’re too stupid not to know they’re getting a forgery.” Mason filled his lungs with air and held his breath for a moment before letting it all rush out. “I don’t think getting ahead is a good enough excuse. People struggle all the time. They grow up disadvantaged. And not all of them are out there running cons.”
