by Lexi Blake
“Pepper spray or stun gun?” Kitten asked loudly, her voice rising over the cacophony.
“I told you to run.” Why the hell wasn’t she obeying him?
“You can spank me later, Master,” she said before blowing her air horn again.
He grabbed the pepper spray. It was a lovely pink container and it looked like Kitten had bedazzled the damn thing. He flicked the safety off. His woman was a walking arsenal, even if most of her weapons had tiny rhinestones glued on them. “Call the police and run when you can. I mean it.”
Mason got to his knees, his arm aching but usable. He picked up the stun gun with his other hand. He hoped the pepper spray worked since he’d have to get really damn close to use the stun gun. He placed his back to the Navigator. Damn it. He couldn’t see the guy coming.
Except suddenly he could because Kitten had a mirror and she was on the ground beside him, using it to try to get a line of sight. The car alarms were really fucking annoying. There had to be three of them going off, including Cole’s. He could feel the vehicle vibrating against his back. It was loud enough that security should be on their way.
“I told you to go.” He got the pepper spray ready because he could see the shooter through Kitten’s little mirror. He was walking carefully up the aisle of cars, his gun at the ready. Sure enough there was a silencer on the muzzle. He moved with the efficiency of a professional.
Kitten held the mirror steady as she looked up at him. “I can take the spanking. I can’t leave you.”
And he couldn’t fail her. It suddenly wasn’t a case of using his body to buy her more time. She was forcing him to fight because if he didn’t win, she was dead. Two more seconds. He had to be patient. If he moved too quickly, the guy would be too far away for the pepper spray to be effective. Mason forced himself to breathe. Perhaps she would be smart enough to run when he actually confronted the bad guy. He had to hope the asshole would be happy killing him and let Kitten go, but the way some of his former clients behaved, he doubted it. He swore to himself if he got out of this, he would figure out who was coming after him and he would make them pay. Criminal law sucked. No one had tried to kill him when he’d been writing contracts for corporations.
Almost there. Mason stood and turned and sprayed the pepper spray.
“Shit!” The figure in black took a step back as Mason sprayed the chemical in a back and forth motion.
A direct hit.
The shooter staggered back, cursing again. His gun went off, striking a car to Mason’s right. “This shit ain’t worth it.”
He turned and started to run, a hand against his face.
Mason started to jog toward the fleeing shooter. He’d gotten nothing but relative height and build and the fact that the guy was a white dude.
“Master, he still has a gun. Please. Please stay with me,” Kitten called out.
As if to prove her point, a third shot pinged through the air. The shooter was firing blindly and there was no way to know what he would do. If he kept shooting, he could get lucky and hit Mason. Or at this point, Mason wasn’t even sure Kitten would stay down. She might jog after him and try to offer him aid in the form of lipstick that turned into a jewel-encrusted knife.
He needed to get them out of here. He reached down to help Kitten up. “Let’s go back to Cole’s office.”
God, he was going to have to talk to the police again. His hands shook as he started to pull her toward the safety of the elevators.
“What the hell is going on in here?” a new voice asked.
Mason turned and saw the security guard running from the elevators. He had his gun out, his eyes widening at the scene in front of him. He looked all of twenty, but in that moment Mason would take him. He would take anyone with a gun.
Kitten stepped up, seemingly unfazed. She practically had to shout to be heard over the car alarms. “Someone attempted to shoot my Ma…Mason. My boyfriend. Someone shot at him and I need you to call Detective Darin Craig with the Dallas Police Department. He’ll be handling this case for the police.”
The security guard stopped and stared at Mason, who realized he was still holding a pink can of pepper spray. “He will?”
Kitten collected her diamond-coated armory, gracefully putting it all in her sunny yellow bag. “He will.”
“I’m confused,” the guard admitted. “And why are the car alarms going off?”
“Mason? Kitten?” Cole yelled over the never-ending car alarms. He ran out of the elevator, his face tight.
“We’re over here, Mas…Cole.” She grinned at the security guard. “He’s my other boyfriend. He didn’t get shot at, but he will be very distressed about the incident. You should understand that the yelling he’s about to do is more about his emotional state than your competence. I’m sure you’re doing an excellent job.”
The noise level went down by at least twenty percent as Cole clicked the button on his key fob and his SUV stopped screaming. Mason was pretty sure he should be running after the shooter, but his arm ached something fierce.
Kitten threw her arms around Cole and held him tight. “It was very frightening. I’m so glad you’re here.”
Cole was all over her. He gave her a squeeze before setting her on her feet and inspecting her from head to toe. His hands found her shoulders, his eyes looking her over for damage. “What the hell was that text? What did you mean? You damn near gave me a heart attack. Why are the alarms going off? What scared you?”
Mason walked up to the security guard. The poor guard was about to be in serious trouble. Kitten wasn’t wrong about that. He leaned in. “We were shot at. Guy in all black. I hit him with pepper spray. You should check and see if he’s passed out somewhere and then I would make sure all the cameras were working. That man is Cole Roberts. He owns the building and he’s about to be up your ass, if you know what I mean.”
“Shit. I’m going to get fired.” The young man was immediately on his walkie-talkie, running the way Mason had told him the shooter had gone.
“You can’t send me a text like that,” Cole was insisting.
“You managed to send Cole a text?” When the hell had she done that? When had scared little Kitten turned into a superhero?
“Oh, yes. I’m very good at texting with one hand,” Kitten admitted. “I texted our Master when you pushed me behind the car. I had my phone out because I texted Nat that I finally lost my consensual virginity. I wanted her to know first. I was planning texts to Haven and Tara and Marcy as well.” She frowned suddenly. “That was not gossiping, Master. That was informing my very close friends of a miraculous life event. These things are more meaningful when they’re shared with loved ones.”
“We’ll talk about that later.” Cole frowned fiercely and held out his phone to Mason. “I got this two minutes ago. What the hell is going on?”
Mason looked at the screen of Cole’s phone. Death. Parking garage. And then a kissy face emoticon. He had to shake his head. She was cool in a crisis. He would give her that. “We had an incident, that’s all. It looks like Darin was right. Someone isn’t happy with me. We’re fine now.”
Except they weren’t fine and they wouldn’t be until they figured out who was trying to kill him. His arm might ache, but his stomach was in knots because he couldn’t stay with her. He was the reason she was in danger. Cole had every right to send him away. The idea of not seeing her again made him sick. Hell, the idea of not being near Cole made him ill, and he was too close to being shot at to fool himself that it was all about losing his chance at revenge. He could tell himself that later when his heart wasn’t racing.
“Is that blood on your sleeve?” Cole reached for him.
Mason winced slightly. “It’s nothing.”
Kitten shook her head. “Master Mason was shot. He shoved me out of the way and then he was shot. That was going to be my next text, but I had to help him disable our attacker first. I used my mirror to track the man and then Master Mason cleverly sprayed pepper spray right in his eye
s. He was so good at it. It was very heroic.”
“I told her to run.” Damn, Cole was going to kill him. “I tried to get her out of harm’s way, but everything happened so fast. One minute we were talking about takeout and the next some asswipe was shooting at us, and I told her to hide but she was thrusting rhinestone-studded weaponry my way. Have you seen what she has in her bag?”
“Oh, yes. It’s quite a collection. She used to have a rape whistle but she played with that too much,” Cole admitted. “It was obnoxious. I replaced it with the air horn.”
Now that his adrenaline was flagging, he was starting to get mad. “She directly disobeyed an order given for her health and safety. You’ll have to punish her for that.”
Kitten nodded. “You should, Master. I was a bad girl. I should at least get a thorough spanking.”
Cole closed his eyes for a moment and took a long breath before turning to her. “Why didn’t you obey Mason?”
Her smile dimmed. “Because if I had hidden, he would have died.”
“That wasn’t your choice to make,” Mason insisted. She was his responsibility.
She turned to him. “You can’t have it both ways. You say I’m not an extension of anyone, that I have to make choices. If that’s true then I have to live with those choices and I will always choose to help instead of hide when it makes sense. I used to be scared of everything. I was so scared when Shelley was kidnapped I could barely talk. But then Master Chase forced me to take self-defense classes and I learned how to deal with my fear by being prepared. I’ve been in worse situations and I know things you can’t possibly know. I know that cowardice is far worse than dying. There is a time to hide and a time to fight. This wasn’t a time for me to hide. We were stronger together than we were apart.”
Cole pulled her into his arms. “I’m proud of you, pet. You did wonderfully. I’m certainly not going to spank you for being brave, but I might give you a celebratory flogging.”
“Thank you, Master.” She squeezed him right back. Mason was fairly certain corporal punishment didn’t work on Kitten.
“Cole, this is serious.” She could have been killed. God, he would likely never get the image out of his head. He could have gotten her killed.
Cole’s eyes came up, meeting his with a steady stare. “I know. I’m well aware of how serious the situation was. I can see the blood on your arm.”
“Like I said before, Mason shoved me out of the way. I think I would have gotten hit without Mason’s action.” Kitten had her head turned up toward Cole. “I believe he deserves a celebratory flogging as well, Master.”
“He certainly deserves something nice,” Cole agreed, but then he would agree with Kitten now. Mason wasn’t so sure he would still agree later. No matter how it had turned out, the truth was Mason had placed her in danger and that was unacceptable in his mind.
The security guard came jogging back up. “I think the intruder’s gone.”
Cole stepped away from Kitten and his eyes narrowed. Mason sighed. Yep, Cole was about to blow. “You think? You think he’s gone? I’m not sure you think at all, young man. What’s your name and who the hell is your supervisor because this is a goddamn secured parking garage so I would like to know how the fuck some punk with a weapon managed to get by the gates, guards, and security cameras I spend a god-awful amount of money on. Those security cameras are supposed to be monitored. Are you going to tell me this guy didn’t show up on them? Did he magically appear in the middle of the parking garage? Have we been taken over by ninja warriors?”
“I don’t think he was a ninja,” Kitten said with a shake of her head. “He was wearing a hoodie. Ninjas tend to dress better.”
“You’re going to have my job for this, aren’t you?” The young man had gone a little green.
Cole’s body seemed to swell and he loomed over the kid. “Your job? I’m going to have your fucking soul.”
“Remember what I said about the distress,” Kitten said, giving the young man an encouraging smile. “Don’t let it harm your self-worth. It’s only his worry talking.”
“My worry is going to eat him alive,” Cole shot back between clenched teeth.
The elevator doors opened and Lea Schneider walked off with three other executive assistants and Bob Hays, one of his board members. Bob’s eyes widened as he took in the scene, but Lea frowned.
“Why are the car alarms going off? What the hell is happening?” She looked Mason’s way as if she knew exactly who she blamed. “You can hear it from five floors up.”
Bob held up his key fob and another alarm went silent. “I got a security notice and I thought I’d come down to see what was happening. Good god, did we have some kind of break-in?”
“What we had was a complete breakdown in security,” Cole explained.
Lea frowned. “Our security has always been excellent.”
Bob’s eyes were fixed on Mason’s shoulder. “Do I need to call an ambulance?”
“Yes,” Cole said.
“No,” Mason said at the same time. The last thing he needed was another hospital bill. He already owed far too much. He knew Cole had paid the bill, but he was going to pay him back.
Cole turned and it wasn’t his friend or lover looking at him now. It was his Dom. Mason’s eyes slid away.
“Make the call,” Cole commanded. “Mason’s been shot. Some asshole broke in and attacked him. He almost hurt Kitten as well. I want the police here five minutes ago.”
Mason didn’t argue with that.
“I already called both the police and an ambulance,” the security guard said. “Please don’t take my soul.”
He should have kept quiet because Cole seemed to remember that he had a target he could scream at and he started in on the young man again. Bob stood by Cole, staring down the poor dude.
Lea crossed her arms as she approached Mason. “Is this some kind of stunt to get Cole’s attention? He has to work late, but you always did like to make it hard for him.”
God, why did Cole surround himself with vicious bitches? “This isn’t any of your business.”
“Oh, I think it is.” Her eyes narrowed in obvious distaste. “It’s everyone in the company’s business because you always distract him. You know he used to be the smartest man in the game. He was ruthless and he knew when to go for the kill. He could have made this company the biggest in the country. He was well on his way again, but then you showed up. He always picks the wrong partners. He picks people who drag him down.”
By dragging him down, he was sure Lea meant Cole picked people who loved him and forced him to relax from time to time. “I don’t care what you think.”
“You don’t care what anyone thinks, Mason. You never did. You also never cared about who you hurt. You want things your way, and you’ll do anything to get what you want,” Lea shot back. She looked toward Kitten. “Are we sure whoever this person was, he was after you? I seem to remember the last time Cole got close to a woman, she was mysteriously killed, too.”
She turned and walked away.
Kitten walked up to him and slipped her hand into his and gave him a reassuring squeeze.
He would be dead without her quick thinking and preparation. He owed her everything.
He owed it to her to walk away.
Chapter Fourteen
Cole sat in the study, slowly letting the Scotch begin to work its way through his system. Hours after the police had finished up the interviews and the ER doctors had sworn Mason didn’t even need stitches, Cole’s hands were still shaking.
He’d almost lost Mason. Again. If Mason hadn’t reacted so quickly, he likely would have lost them both. They would have been dead in the parking garage, their bodies left there like so much refuse.
He closed his eyes for a moment as he let that settle in. He’d been a stubborn fool. He’d cost them years they could have spent together, and he had to wonder why.
After a few weeks, the first year after the accident had been almost easy. He’d go
ne cold, arctic even. He’d thrown himself into his work. He’d felt driven, a bit like the first years after his father had died. He and Mason had both been starting their careers. They’d worked long hours and stolen whatever moments they had together as Cole rebuilt his father’s company and Mason built his career. They’d played at The Club and cuddled every night.
Cole hadn’t done anything but work in the first year after they’d broken up. He’d ruthlessly taken down his competitors and made more in that first post-Mason year than his board members could have imagined. He’d even stayed away from the lodge for a while. His bank account and that of his investors and board had grown substantially. He’d been praised as a true captain of industry.
And then he’d slowly realized how empty he was.
He wasn’t a man who lied to himself. It did no good. He was a man who often didn’t understand his own emotions. He struggled with them. It was easier to ignore them than it was to analyze them, but he couldn’t do that anymore.
So much came back to that one night—when Emily died. How had he really felt that night? When Emily died he’d felt horribly guilty because of the relief that it had been her and not Mason. But deeper, way down in his gut, he’d been terrified.
He had to wonder now if losing his parents in such a short period of time hadn’t affected the way he’d handled Emily’s death. The truth was he’d known he couldn’t handle another loss.
He couldn’t handle losing Mason and it was easier to push him away than to hold him close. It had been far more comfortable to sink into work and tell himself that it had been about honor and trust when it was all about… Fuck, it had been about cowardice.
He’d taken Kitten in because he’d been so sure he could teach her, train her, and the little thing had already taught him more about life and how to really live it than he could have imagined.
Master, I’ve been in worse situations and I know things you can’t possibly know. I know that cowardice is far worse than dying.
