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  “You served?”

  He laughed again, but there wasn’t any humor in the sound. “My hair was shorter then. Less ink.”

  She studied the marks on his arms again, the way they circled his wrists and the way they extended part way up his inner arms. She saw the connection, let it settle in, and then let it drift away. Asking would only confirm what she now realized, and making him admit it wouldn’t help. “And then you found the club?”

  He nodded. “Growing up—my family wasn’t around. The Fallen Angels—they took me in. I didn’t mean to stay forever, just needed someplace safe to stay while I got my head on straight, but I’d learned mechanical stuff while I was in and I liked having my life on my back. Knowing that I could leave whenever I needed to.”

  She wanted to reach out and touch his hand, but she wasn’t sure what she would do if he pulled away. What would be the right thing to do. He was so focused on the glass of water; if the heat of his gaze could make it boil, she was pretty sure it would be bubbling by now.

  Mason brought his hands to his face and scrubbed them brusquely over his skin. “Anyway,” he said, with the sound of someone who was shoving the demons back into the box and stuffing them under the bed with the dust bunnies and the monsters, “no one expected me to be Treasurer of the club. Declan—he’s the president—and I have had some lively disagreements. About how some of the, uh, “off book interests” should be run. And some of the guys backed me when he expected them to back him. When I took over, he looked pissed enough to chew nails and spit tacks.”

  He smiled, drifting off to that lost world again. “My gramps used to say that.” He shook himself. “But Declan. I don’t know why he’s so pissed. It’s more than just an upstart kid taking a place he wanted for someone else. There’s something going on.”

  She did reach out touch his hand then. In her mind he’d grab onto it like a lifeline, cling to her for a moment, and then pull her in close to kiss again. That wasn’t what happened in real life, but then, how often did real life actually match up to fantasies? He did let her fingers curl around his and he offered her a small smile. “I appreciate your help,” he said. “Your cousin said you were straight-up, honest. He said if something was going on, you could find it.”

  The faith in his eyes and voice made her shake just a little. It was more than she wanted to accept. “I’ll do what I can.”

  He nodded and she went to work, doing the tedious job of matching ledger lines with receipts, billings, and check stubs.

  She sat back, her hands shaking. Mason had wandered off a while ago, and she didn’t blame him. Watching an accountant work was boring at best, and mind-numbingly excruciating at its worst. He’d kept her full of coffee and pushed food within her reach at regular intervals, but otherwise left her undisturbed. He’d wandered into the living room, made friends with Gloria, then taken her out to the yard to play for a bit. He’d cruised through her bookshelves and settled on the couch with an urban fantasy by one of her favorite authors. There was something about him stretched out on the couch, idly petting her dog, reading one of her favorite books, that twisted up her feelings into a strange mix of longing and wariness.

  Being careful was important. He shot lightning bolts through her every time he touched her, and while she was old enough to know that there was more to relationships than that, she was also old enough to know that there wasn’t too much point, for her, in seeking a relationship without that spark. But there were so many other things.

  Teddy was a good guy, but there was nothing about his lifestyle that she agreed with. He screwed women and then left them. He had two kids that she knew about, and while he did his best to take care of them and their mothers, it was a constant source of strife for him. She didn’t object to a little bit of recreational mind expansion every now and then, but over the last few years, he’d become more and more likely to wake and bake. And here was this gorgeous guy, this incredibly sexy guy, saying that Teddy was the only person he trusted. What did that say about Mason?

  He was fun, and he could be a fling, and Lord knew she needed a fling, but she needed to get her head settled. He wasn’t going to be anything more than that. No matter how much she wanted to straddle him right now and drive them both straight off the edge of ecstasy.

  “Mason?” she called out.

  “Yeah?” The familiarity in his voice shocked her because of how much she enjoyed it. Just a fling, just a fling. It was a moment before his feet hit the floor, and he padded back into the kitchen. “Did you find something?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Do you know who Anna Bessette is?”

  He couldn’t have looked more shocked if she’d hit him with a two-by-four. “Yes.” His voice was faint and thready. The color drained out of his dark complexion, and he rested his hand on the counter as if he needed it to keep himself steady. “Yes, I know her.”

  “Mason?” He didn’t say anything else. “Who is she?”

  He swallowed hard, then took a long, deep breath. “She is—was—my sister.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Caroline had never seen such a big man so shaken. Mason looked like he could be knocked over by a stiff breeze. She reached out for his arm and felt the tension thrumming through him. She pulled on him gently and settled him in a chair before he fell down.

  “Is she dead?” she asked as gently as she could.

  He nodded, a numb jerk of the head without much meaning to it. “When I was in my second tour. Her mother’s boyfriend. Went nuts one night and—” He cut himself off, turning his head to the side and blinking fast and hard.

  She looked away, trying to give him as much privacy as she could as he struggled with his emotions in her kitchen.

  Finally, he said. “They gave me compassionate leave, but I—it was all left to her grandparents, and they didn’t give a shit about her soldier half-brother. She was buried before I could get home.”

  She heard him take a deep, ragged breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was stronger.

  “It was good in some ways, the way it happened. The funeral, I mean. The bastard really messed her up, and I didn’t have to see that. I remember her spunky and beautiful and her eyes so bright and shining. If I’d seen what he did to her, seen it in more than just pictures…” The wooden arms of the chair creaked as his grip tightened. “I’d be in jail, but that sorry excuse for a man would be dead. And that’d be worth something.”

  Caroline reached out and touched his shoulder. Mason jerked, eyes wide. It was as if he’d forgotten there was anyone else in the room. “Sorry,” he said. He shook his head, and there was a bit more focus in his eyes when he looked back at her. “What does this have to do with the books?”

  She took a careful breath. Gloria had slept half the afternoon with her head in his lap, and she was a significantly better judge of people than Caroline would ever hope to be. She didn’t think Mason was dangerous; she had to trust that he wasn’t. Or she would be about to make the mistake of her life.

  “How long ago did you first join the Fallen Angels?” She asked.

  “About five years ago. Why does it matter, Caro?”

  Teddy’s old nickname falling off his full lips made her lose focus entirely.

  “Because right around that time, someone started writing checks to Anna Bessette. Every month. The amounts change up a little bit, but they add up." She said. "They add up to a lot. Before that, there’s some small stuff, subtle things that could be chalked up to clerical errors, like a purchase being made for resale, so tax free, but then tax is charged in the ledger, but they’re chump change compared to this. These checks—there’s a couple hundred thousand gone, Mason.”

  He hadn’t started screaming yet. She wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or not.

  She kept her eyes trained on him, not sure if she wanted to know the answer to her next question.“Who else knows about your sister? In the club, I mean.”

  Immediately, he shook his head. “No one. I don’t talk abou
t her. I should have—” he sighed. “If I’d stayed out of the damn military, I could have gotten custody. I was a bright young man with a promising future.”

  He said it all in quotes, she could hear them, right along with his sarcastic tone. “And her mother was a junkie who financed her habit by selling herself. But Anna told me she was okay, that she had friends, she’d handle it. If I’d stayed—” He rubbed at his eyes this time, and this time she didn’t look away.

  She laid her hand on his shoulder and felt the vibration of his sorrow through his very being.

  “There’s no way to know what would have happened,” she said softly.

  He slapped her hand away with a suddenness that shocked her. She fell back into the counter, and he rose to his feet, bearing down on her. “Do not give me that Freudian feel-good bullshit. I know damn well what would have happened, and I know exactly who is responsible for her death.”

  “So do I,” she said, swallowing the fear that was threatening to coil through her limbs as she reached up and traced his cheek, scratchy now with a night’s growth of beard, with her fingertips. “The fucker who killed her. That’s who’s responsible.”

  He kissed her viciously, grinding his teeth into her mouth, twisting her ponytail around his hand and using it to pull her head back. She gasped, but not in pain. In eager anticipation. He pulled her tight to him. Mason lifted her up onto the counter, pressing in between her thighs, and bit at her breasts through her shirt. She cried out, her hands tangling in his long hair.

  “Tell me to stop,” he whispered as he found the seam of her jeans and pressed it hard into her body. “Tell me to stop if you want me to stop, and I will go and get a bottle of tequila and drown myself in it and figure out what the fuck to do about this. I will be okay. I don’t— Tell me to stop if you want me to stop.”

  “I want you to keep going,” she said, and his fingers clenched on her thighs so hard she thought they would bruise.

  “I feel mean,” he said. “I feel vicious.”

  “Good,” she said, wrapping her legs around his waist and pulling him tight to her. “Sounds like a good time.”

  He groaned and thrust against her for a moment, sucking at the delicate skin at the base of her throat. “Condom,” he said. “Please for God’s sake tell me you have one.”

  She laughed and reached between them to cup his denim-cased erection. “I was clearly never a Boy Scout, but I still try to be prepared.”

  It seemed bizarre and impossible, but it also seemed that he’d been holding back as he kissed her before. He was wild with need now, and she tried to let go of the fact that it wasn’t entirely need for her. It was need for release, for the feelings of grief and loss and guilt that he couldn’t express on his own, that drove him as much as anything else. But that was okay. She was surprised that she felt that way, but it was okay.

  She scooted herself down off the counter and took his hand. He followed her to the bedroom, but once they passed the threshold, his eyes went completely dark. He pushed the door closed and they fell against it together. His hands found the fly of her jeans and she helped him to wriggle them, and her panties, off her hips; his followed quickly. The front of his boxer briefs was damp, but she was not disappointed by the bulge she saw there. She slipped her hand over him, running from tip to base a few times through his boxers, and then she darted her hand underneath the waistband.

  “No,” he growled, reaching for her hand and slamming it against the door, pinning it above her head. “Not yet. You get to wait your turn.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Everything inside of her clenched at his tone, and she found herself whimpering.

  Somehow it seemed like he maneuvered both their shirts off without letting go of her hands for more than a moment, and then he was in motion again, his mouth and teeth and fingers everywhere on her body. When he slid his fingers down her well-trimmed mound and traced the lightest circle she could imagine around her clit, she bit down on her own lip, choking on a scream.

  “Oh, really?” he said. “You that eager?”

  “Yes,” she gasped. “God, yes.”

  “You want me inside you?” His fingers moved down farther, teasing at her entrance. She was moaning, rocking her hips, trying to buck him inside of her, but he evaded her every movement.

  “Please.” She didn’t have enough air to do more than whisper. “God, please. Yes. Please.”

  “Tough,” he said, and dropped to his knees, spreading her thighs into a wider stance and softly blowing air over her swollen and heated entrance. She cried out, her hands pressing wide, searching for something to give her balance; without giving her time to recover at all, he separated her folds with his tongue, drawing her clit into his mouth and suckling it.

  She screamed, her hips moving against him frantically. It was too intense to make her orgasm, too much entirely, but she was desperate, urgent, so full of need and want and he was filling her up with his tongue, then teasing her clit again as his fingers penetrated her, opening her up as she cried out against his rhythm.

  One hand braced on the doorjamb, the other resting on her bureau, and she let him guide one leg over his shoulder—let him take her weight as he knelt before her, fingers, tongue, body entirely given over to him and his quest for her pleasure.

  When she came, her eyes flew wide, and she didn’t make a sound. All she could do was inhale, more and more, as her body rocked with him and stars burst behind her eyes. Distantly, she was aware that she was all but riding his face, that he was crying out, the vibrations of his sound driving her to higher peaks, that his tongue was filling her body and that his finger had opened her ass, and she was more full and swollen and amazing than she’d ever been before.

  She didn’t scream until the aftershocks started, and then she collapsed entirely, thrusting and convulsing, her belly rippling as he dragged wave after wave after wave of pleasure out of her. When she thought she was done, he’d drag his tongue over her one more time, thrust into her ass just a little bit deeper, and she’d discover there was more yet to give.

  When she was so worn that all she could do was gasp, he finally released her, laughing to himself as he eased her down on the bed. “Feel good?”

  She managed to swallow and get her throat wet enough for a raspy laugh. “All right, I guess? I mean, if that was your best effort.”

  The low, rumbling growl from his throat woke her body up all over again. She reached down the front of his boxers and cupped him in her hand. He thrust against her palm for a moment, his head on her shoulder, his hair falling around his face, and then he pinned her hands up above her head again. “Condom,” he murmured into her ear, bucking his body up against hers.

  “In the nightstand.”

  He nodded. “Move your hands one inch, and I will slap your ass until you bruise.”

  In the corner of her mind that wasn’t utterly consumed with lust, she spared a moment to be irritated with the fact that he could spank her if he wanted to, but she seriously doubted she was strong enough to bend him down without his consent. The rest of her responded with a flush of interest, with a surprised splash of wet that made her wriggle and squirm for him.

  “You like that?” The pressure on her hands increased just a little more, and she sighed up against him. This sensation, this giving over of control—it was fine. It was good.

  “I don’t know,” she said, honestly. “I’ve never… done that before? But I… don’t think I would object out of the gate.”

  He nodded. “Noted.”

  He reached into the nightstand drawer and found a condom. Mason was subtle as he glanced at the expiration date, but she still saw it, and she liked it. She didn’t move an inch as he smoothed the latex in place, and then he was between her thighs, holding her hands down with one of his own as he teased her clit with the other, pressing into her.

  She angled her hips up, welcoming the sense of fullness as he buried himself to the hilt in her, and she watched him sigh in quiet ecs
tasy before his eyes opened all the way again.

  He locked his gaze onto Caroline’s as he started to rock into her. The intense eye contact was incredibly erotic. He was leaning far down over her, his weight bearing her down into the mattress as his rhythm started to pick up.

  She wrapped her legs around him, high around his back, letting him enter her more deeply and pulling him into the angle she wanted. His motions vibrated up through her clit, and she moaned with the warmth building up in her body again.

  She didn’t think she could come again, didn’t think she had the energy left in her. But as his pleasure built, and his thrusts grew ragged, desperate, he got louder, groaning and grunting as drilled deeply inside of her, touching spaces that had been left dark for so long that she didn’t even know what was contained within.