by D. J. Heart
Chris got up and left, leaving Mason alone in the office. He walked over to the desk, found the old phone sitting by the computer, and called his mom.
***
Chapter 17
Chris had already packed his bag, and his gear was stashed away in his car, so while Mason was on the phone with his mother he prepared to leave.
“Thank you for coming,” he told Mick, not sitting down as he moved back into the kitchen. Watching his old friend, none of the feelings he’d had before were gone. He still wanted to press close and just… hold him.
He didn’t understand.
“You’re leaving?” Mick asked, standing up. He moved closer, his strong thighs pressing against the denim of his jeans, his shirt stretched tight over his shoulders. In the time they’d spent apart, Chris had forgotten just how handsome Mick was.
Chris shrugged. “I want to get started, you know?”
“Well, I’ll take care of Mason. He’s cute.” Mick laughed. “And he’s got some spunk. I can see why you bonded with him.”
Chris swallowed, the words giving him little comfort. “You can?” he asked.
Mick nodded, rueful.
Without giving himself time to think about it, Chris took a step forward and wrapped Mick up in a hug. Chests pressed together, he could smell the other man’s musk as he breathed into his neck. The hug lasted longer than it should, and when Chris pulled back he didn’t look Mick in the face.
“I’ll see you in a couple of days,” he said, heading back to the office. Mason was on the phone, crying and grinning into the receiver, so Chris just waved at him and pointed at the door.
He would be fine with Mick.
***
Mick heard the front door shut for the second time that morning, and for a second he considered storming after Chris just so that he could strangle him.
Why would he hug him like that? What good did that do either of them?
Angry and hurt, Mick rinsed out his mug and gathered up the napkins and empty bag on the table before heading out to find Mason. Since he was responsible for the boy until Chris joined him at the cabin, it seemed like a good idea to know what he was up to.
Mick had never really spent much time with omegas, outside of one-night stands at seedy bars and in clubs. He wasn’t a relationship kind of guy, and whenever he’d fucked an omega he’d made sure not to knot them so that he could be certain he wouldn’t bond.
“Mason?” he called out, walking out of the kitchen.
“In here!” Mason answered, and Mick headed toward the sound of his voice. Mason was in Chris’s office, sitting behind the desk with a smile on his face. His eyes were red like he’d been crying.
“I talked to my mom,” Mason explained, his grin widening. “She’s so mad at me.”
Mick nodded, not sure why that was making Mason so happy. Then he remembered that Mason had been kidnapped and sold to a brothel, so obviously he would be happy to talk to his mom. He’d probably thought he’d never see or talk to her again.
It seemed almost cruel to take him to the cabin rather than back to her. Then again, Mason was a bonded omega now. His mother had no right to him.
Mick winced at the awful thought. That was traditionalist bullshit, and any decent alpha would kick his ass for even thinking it.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked. He didn’t like being this close to the club, and he would prefer to get going as soon as possible.
“We’re leaving now?” Mason asked. He looked surprised.
“Yeah. Chris just left, and I figure we should get going as soon as possible. Unless you need to stay?”
Mason shook his head. “No, I want to leave. I hate this place.”
“Great. Why don’t you go change and then we’ll go,” Mick said.
Mason grimaced.
***
Mason didn’t have anything, so the first thing Mick did was take him to a superstore to buy him clothes and toiletries. They got a few looks, Mason in his dress-like T-shirt and shoes that looked like he was playing a clown, but there was no helping it.
Once Mason had changed into clothes that fit and put on his new sneakers, they put the rest of their purchases in the trunk and got on the road.
“I’m sure Chris will pay you back,” Mason said, biting on his thumb and shooting Mick an anxious look. He’d been obviously uncomfortable when Mick had paid, and he’d chosen the cheapest of everything.
Wherever Mason had come from, he was obviously used to pinching pennies.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, shooting Mason a smile. “Do you want to listen to the radio?”
Mason nodded, looking relieved at the idea of something to fill the silence. Mick didn’t feel as awkward with the omega as he had when he first stepped into the kitchen, but Mason still reeked of Chris, and there was never going to be a time when Mick didn’t find that upsetting.
He felt bad for the kid, though. Being snatched and sold to a brothel couldn’t be easy.
“So how did you end up at Rover?” he asked after they’d been driving for about an hour. He was curious, and he wanted to know more about what was sure to become the most important person in Chris’s life.
He winced. Was the most important person in Chris’s life. Bonding wasn’t a gradual process. It happened all at once, and Mick knew that if Chris was forced to choose between him and Mason, Mason would come out on top every time.
That was just the way nature had wired them.
“I borrowed money from a loan shark, but then I couldn’t pay it back,” Mason said, turning his head to look at Mick. “My mom was sick, and if we didn’t pay the hospital bill they would have transferred her out of the program she was in. The doctor said it would reduce her chance of surviving the cancer by fifty to seventy percent.”
“That’s tough,” Mick said. He couldn’t imagine facing that sort of problem. He’d been rich growing up, and with hazard pay now, he had more money than he knew what to do with.
“My mom thought I worked out a deal with the hospital. She didn’t know I’d borrowed the money.”
“I can see why she was mad,” Mick said. Then he looked at the omega. “But I get why you’d do it.”
“It’s my mom, you know?” Mason shrugged. Then he snorted. “And now I have an alpha.”
Mick wrinkled his nose, but he couldn’t be angry with Mason for what had happened with Chris. It certainly wasn’t his fault.
They kept driving in silence, stopping at a fast-food restaurant for lunch before going shopping at a grocery store. Mick picked up a whole bunch of DVDs from the clearance rack, along with a small portable DVD player in case the cabin was the rustic type. He also got a pack of cards and groceries to last them about a week.
That should be enough.
“You ready to go?” he asked Mason, making him jump. The omega had been looking at the newspaper stand, and Mick asked him if he wanted to buy any of the papers.
“No, I’m good,” Mason said.
Mick paid for the groceries and movies, after which he and Mason got back in the car. The last two hours of their drive was spent in comfortable silence, and when they reached the cabin, Mick was surprised to see that Mason had fallen asleep.
He woke him up and together they unpacked the car and headed inside.
***
Chapter 18
The “cabin” wasn’t at all what Mason had been expecting, and even calling it that was ridiculous. It was like referring to a Wi-Fi-equipped six thousand dollar refrigerator as a cooler. It had three stories, the exterior made up of horizontal logs stacked up on top of each, and enormous windows looking out at the woods from the second and third floor.
It was like a billionaire had wanted something that sort of looked rustic, but that wasn’t.
Just how much money did Chris have?
The road leading up to the house was unpaved, with thick forest lining each side for as long as Mason could see, though the driveway was paved with gravel. His feet crunc
hed on the jagged little stones as Mason helped him carry their stuff into the huge house.
“Does Chris own this place?” he asked once the last of their bags was inside. Looking around at the minimalist modern furniture, he tried to imagine why Chris would need a huge house in the middle of the woods.
Mick laughed. “No, Chris is just borrowing it for a week or two. The owner lives in a town a few hours south of Melville.”
Mason bit his lip and walked farther into the grand foyer, wondering what they were doing there if it wasn’t Chris’s house.
Was it just a vacation? Mason wrinkled his nose. The idea of going on vacation was foreign to him. His mother had never been able to afford that kind of time off, and while he was in school he’d worked his ass off during every break.
“Why are we here?” he asked. Mick just shrugged.
“Chris has some work he needs to do, and this place is out of the way and quiet.”
“What kind of work?” Mason asked.
“He’s going to figure out who bankrolls and profits from Rover,” Mick said, grabbing his duffel bag and walking to the stairs. “Come on, let’s find our rooms.”
Mason frowned, wanting to know exactly what was going on. He couldn’t help but feel that Mick was holding out on him.
“How is he going to do that?” he called out, grabbing the bags with his clothes and toiletries and running after the alpha.
“If he wants you to know that, he can tell you,” Mick said, going past the second story and up to the third floor. Mason was a little out of breath when he caught up.
“Is it something bad?” he asked, wondering what the big secret was.
“I don’t think so,” Mick said, leading Mason to suspect that other people might disagree with him.
What exactly was Chris going to do?
Mick rounded on him. “It’s nothing bad,” he said, looking exasperated. “He just needs somewhere quiet to work through the information he’s gathered. Okay?”
Swallowing, a little intimidated by Mick’s stern tone, Mason nodded.
“Okay. I’m just curious…” he said, speaking under his breath and looking past the agitated alpha. “Are these all bedrooms?” he asked, walking past Mick and into the hall that ran from the stairs to the other side of the house. On either side of the hall there were two doors.
“Not sure. Why don’t we find out,” Mick said.
Mason opened the first door on the left, walking into an airy bedroom with a nice view over the treetops.
A lot of treetops.
Looking out, Mason couldn’t see anything but green as far as his eyes could see. They really were in the middle of nowhere.
The bedroom had a big bed, with a state-of-the-art TV hanging on the wall, and an en suite bathroom. Walking back into the hall and checking out the other three rooms, they were pretty much the same, with matching views from the other side of the house.
“Why don’t you and Chris take that room,” Mick said, pointing at the room farthest to the end of the hall on the right, “and I’ll take this one.”
He threw his bag into the first room on the left. Having no objections, Mason carried his things into the bedroom Mick had suggested.
After he’d put away his things, he explored the house. It was just as ridiculous on the inside as it was on the outside. The first floor had a massive combined kitchen and dining room to the left of the foyer, with a large living room to the right. The second floor was basically just one huge living room, with couches and tables set up strategically around the fireplace and near the windows. The top floor he’d already investigated, and the door leading down to the basement was locked.
“So what do we do now?” he asked Mick. The alpha was in the kitchen, drinking beer out of a can from one of the two cases he’d bought at the store.
Mick shrugged.
“Up to you,” he said. “Are you hungry yet?”
Mason shook his head. It had been a few hours since their stop at the fast-food place, but he was still pretty full.
“We could watch some movies,” Mick suggested. “It looks like the living room down here has a pretty sweet TV.”
“We can do that,” Mason said, reaching into the fridge and grabbing a beer for himself. When Mick frowned at him Mason gave him a judgmental look.
“I’m twenty-eight,” he said, a little offended. “I can drink beer.”
Sometimes people had a tendency to treat omegas almost like children, and it was always infuriating.
“I didn’t say anything,” Mick defended himself, holding up his hands.
“Your face did,” Mason grumbled.
***
The rest of the night was spent watching the cheesy movies that Mick had bought at the grocery store and eating dinner on the couch, and Mason had to admit that he was having fun. It was weird to think that less than forty-eight hours ago he had been locked into the little room at Rover, scared what was going to happen next, but Mason was thankful.
Sinking into the plush leather couch, nursing his fourth beer of the evening, Mason laughed as the main character in the movie got his knot stuck in a pineapple. It was just too ridiculous, and Mason was just tipsy enough to appreciate it.
“Tell me about Chris,” he said after a while, losing interest in the characters on screen. Mick turned his face toward him, raising his eyebrow.
“What about him?”
“What’s he like?” Mason asked. He wanted to know more about the man that he was mated to, and who better to ask than his best friend.
“He’s… intense,” Mick said, looking at him. “Usually pretty quiet, except when he’s drunk. Then he gets chatty. He’s a good guy. You don’t have to worry about him.”
Mick looked down at the beer in his hand, a sad smile on his face. Mason felt bad for him, but he didn’t regret that he and Chris had bonded.
“I guess you know him pretty well,” he said. He put his beer down on the table and pulled his legs up on the couch, crossing them.
“I guess I do,” Mick replied. “He’s had my back for a long time, you know?”
Mason didn’t really know, but he nodded anyway. He had friends he liked to spend time with, but none of them were really close.
“What about you?” Mick asked, changing the subject. “What’s your story?”
Mason leaned back and shifted his body around so that he was looking at Mick without having to turn his neck.
“I’m an only child. My mom raised me after my dad left when I was five, and it’s been the two of us ever since. I have a bachelor and master’s degree in biology, and I just finished my second year of medical school this spring.”
Mick blinked. “Medical school? Really?” He sounded impressed.
“Yeah. Do you think Chris will mind if I go back and finish?”
Mick would know that, right? He knew Chris and how he thought. So far he didn’t get the impression that Chris and Mick were particularly traditional, despite their Army backgrounds.
“I can’t imagine why he would.” Mick grinned, taking a sip of his beer. “Does Chris know that he’s bonded to a brainiac nerd?”
The question was teasing, but it was obvious that Mick wasn’t being mean. Mason smiled and shook his head.
“We haven’t really talked about anything.”
“Well, you’ll get to know him soon enough,” Mick said.
Mason bit the inside of his cheek and nodded. He supposed Mick was right.
Turning his attention back to the TV, Mason let his head roll back against the couch. He was relaxed and happy, but he found himself wishing that Chris was there.
It was very weird to miss someone you didn’t know, but Mason did. He missed the feel of Chris’s powerful body curling around him, shielding him and holding him tight. He missed the way Chris smelled and tasted, and the way his eyes went dark when he loomed over Mason right before he fucked him.
It was silly.
“Are you okay?” Mick asked, giving him a weird g
lance. Mason jumped, blushing when he realized that he’d been rubbing his crotch with the palm of his hand. He yanked his arms up, crossing them over his chest.
“I’m fine,” he said, feeling mortified.
“Okay,” Mick snorted, turning back to the TV. When Mason looked at him, there was a smirk on his face.
“I think I’m going to go to bed,” Mason said. He felt a little weird, and he wanted to shower and go to sleep. It had been a long day with a lot of things he had to adjust to, and a good night’s rest was just what he needed.
