Freefall (The Indigo Lounge Series, #5) (26 page)

When the look gets too intense, I jump up and run to the door.

He lunges after me, but a couple entering the room stop his progress long enough to give me the head start I need to make a dash for the ladies.

I slam the door behind me and dump my clutch on the vanity before my shaking takes care of it for me.

Shudders race through me as I stare at my ashen reflection in the mirror.
What the fuck is wrong with me?

My brain is eating itself with questions and cravings too terrifying to contemplate. Frantic, I dig through my purse and grab my phone. Bethany is about to get an earful.

She answers, and I suck in a breath, just as the washroom door crashes open. The other female occupant in the room gasps in outrage. “
¿Qué diablos es eso?
”

“
Salir. Ahora!
” Mason snarls.

“Hello?”

Bethany’s voice flares from my phone, but I can’t lift my hand to answer. My stomach twists as Mason locks the washroom door and strides to where I’m frozen. He plucks the phone from my hand.

“Bethany, how are you?” he asks in a perfectly reasonable voice that isn’t in any way marred by the sadistic madness I see in his eyes.

I hear Bethany’s spluttered response, followed by a garbled question.

“No, Keely is going to be indisposed for a while. I can guarantee that she will be alive by the time I’m finished with her, but everything else is distinctly debatable.”

He hangs up, places my phone on the vanity next to my purse, then leans against the sink, arms crossed.

“Now, where were we, kitten?”

The latent danger in his voice shudders through me. “Nowhere. We were nowhere.”

He snaps his fingers as if I didn’t just speak. “That’s right. You were saying I had no right to question if someone hits on you.” His head tilts to the side. “Have I got that right?”

“Don’t blow it out proportion.” I flap my hand in a
don’t be ridiculous
way, then screech when he lunges for me and slams me back against the wall.

“Flippancy is your answer?” His eyes are narrowed, incisive.

The scent of sandalwood, muscle and man engulfs me. Wholly inappropriately, my knees start to weaken. “Mason—”

“Feral fuck parasites. I guess that explains your distance earlier,” he broods.

I open my mouth, but no words emerge. He captures my chin in his hand, and I try not to let my panic show. “You have something to say?”

I shrug. “To determine distance don’t we have to know closeness?” I ask.

“And you don’t think we’re close, given that we’re
fucking
parasites?” 

My heart lurches at the dirty word again. He’s beyond livid, and all I’ve done is hold a mirror up to our torrid little arrangement.

“I don’t recall agreeing to a closeness that involves me spending every spare minute with you, or you getting bent out of shape over who does or doesn’t make a pass at me,” I reply, then exhale on a groan when my mistake stares me in the face.

“You don’t
recall
?” he growls with veiled softness.

Danger tingles dance along my spine. The little happy freak inside me races to embrace it. “Mason...”

“You’re deliberately goading me. Is that what’s happening here? You want a
reaction
from me?”

I shake my head. “No.” I want to say more to alleviate the situation, but a part of me realizes I
do
want a reaction.

When his hand goes to his belt, I exhale in a rush.

“You need a reminder, kitten?”

“Maybe,” I respond shakily.

“The three reasons I gave you this morning and afternoon weren’t enough?”

I shudder in recollection of the rough fucking I’d received at his hands a mere three hours ago. The two, which had preceded it, had been relatively tame, in consideration of the raw pounding from the middle of the night.

“I’m a little confused. Sir.”

A muscle ticks in his jaw at the last word, but his expression doesn’t alter. “You’re confused. Well, allow me to provide some clarity.” He steps back and reaches for his buckle. My heart jumps into my throat. I watch with sick fascination as his belt whistles from its loop as he yanks hard at it.

One hand spreads across my lower back, and he pushes me to the vanity.

Our gazes clash in the mirror and the charge that explodes between us steals my breath away. “Bend over and hold the edge. You let go, I start again. Understood?”

Dirty anticipation dissolves in liquid heat between my thighs. My happy freak squeals in delight, even as a part of me recoils at what I’m doing. What I’m letting happen.

“What’s the matter, Keely? I thought silence didn’t work for you?” he sneers.

I clear my throat and force my voice to work. “I...Mason, please.”

“Please, what?”

I shake my head as thoughts of denial and acquiescence clash in a battle to end all battles.

“We never got round to picking a safe word, did we, kitten?” he asks as he pushes me forward and snaps up the hem of my dress. “Now’s your chance, baby. Go for it.”

The cool air hitting my ass makes my brain freeze for a moment. The heat from his proximity helps me along, and I blurt the word that jumps into my head. “Fortis.”

His brow slowly lifts, and one hand trails between my ass cheeks and up my spine to tangle in my hair. “You are that, my
brave
little kitten,” he breathes in my ear.

The belt lands next my right hand. From its coiled position, I can feel its warmth and I experience an insane desire to caress it.

That thought flees my head as merciless fingers hook into my panties and rip them off. “Oh!”

Mason’s fingers tighten in my hair. “No, kitten. You don’t get to gasp your delight, or arch your back and moan. You answer
yes
,
sir
, or
no, sir
, or use your safe word. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

He stares at me for an eternity, before he pockets my shredded pink lace panties. They look delicate and decadent, dangling from his precisely tailored pants. For some reason, I can’t look away from them.

I jump when someone attempts to open the door, but Mason barely blinks. Coolly, he reaches for the belt, and steps back.

“I said you would be mine until the yacht reaches its final destination. Do you remember?” he demands softly.

I swallow. “Yes, sir.”

Smack
.

The sting flames pure fire through my veins, spreading pleasure to my cunt, and tears to my eyes. I eat my moan and shudder through the pain.

“I distinctly remember using the word
completely without exception
. Did I not?”

“Yes, sir.”

Smack
.

“As an intelligent woman, did you think that meant I would be okay with other men hitting on you?”

I tremble at the naked fury in his voice. “N–no, sir.”

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

The harder hits tell me that this is what enrages him most. My skin’s on fire and tears pour down my face. My left knee buckles and smashes against the vanity.

“If you think of us as parasites, then so be it. But we will be parasites with no distance between us,
in the bedroom or out of it
. Do you understand?”

He’s changing the terms of our agreement. “No, sir.”

“No, you don’t understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s simple, kitten. You’ll be mine in
and
out of the bedroom,
completely
, or this is over.”

I want a fuck load of things I can’t have. Our initial agreement set boundaries that I could see, if not totally control. Agreeing to this would wade me deeper into bat shit craziness of oceanic proportions. His gaze holds mine, fierce and demanding. I feel the clock to my demise counting down.

“What’s it to be, kitten?”

“Yes, sir.”

Smack
. I flinch. A hand slams repeatedly against the toilet door, followed by a demand in muffled Spanish.

“Will you forget again?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Do you want me fuck you now?”

Every fiber in my body jumps at the low-rasped demand. “Yes, please, sir,” I answer with a ferocity that speaks to my unbridled craving.

He drops his belt and pets my welted and flaming skin gently with one hand, while the other slides around my thigh to slip between my legs.

“Ah, my brave kitten.” His voice drips with thick satisfaction. “So wet, and fierce and so fucking gorgeous.” He leans over me and aligns his rough cheek against mine. “Are you ready for your reward?”

My whole body trembles. “Yes, sir. Please, sir. Now.”

He slams into me, the force of his possession mashing both my knees against the vanity. The hand in my hair moves to cup one breast. He yanks on the nipple as he pistons, hard and fast and devastating.

Within a dozen thrusts, I’m cresting toward the edge. I cry out, and he stops.

“No! Oh, God...please, sir.”

I’m ready to commit murder when he pulls out of me, but he yanks me about and sets my ass on top of the vanity. The cool surfaces soothes my ass, but the action of pulling myself forward and parting my thighs wide to receive him, is tough on my ravaged skin. Yet I’ll endure that, and worse, just to feel Mason deep inside me.

I gasp when he lifts me clean off the vanity and impales me on his cock.

I throw my arms around his neck, ready to die with happiness. “Yes! Thank you, sir.”

“
Jesus
. You fucking destroy me,” he growls against my ear as he plunges me up and down on his steely erection.

“I’m coming. Oh, I’m coming!” A hazy thought that I should be quiet fleets through my head, but it melts under the furnace of release surging through me.

“Do it, baby. Come with me,” he commands, before he takes my mouth in a searing kiss.

I let go and let him catch me when my body loses all effort to remain upright. I lay my head on his chest and absorb the sound of his pounding heart.

We’re still shuddering and twitching in each other’s arms when three loud
bloops
from my phone announce incoming emails. I flinch and try to hide the premonition of doom that skates over my skin, but I fail miserably as I’m plunged into icy shockwaves teeming with dread and fear.

Mason’s finger slides under my chin and tugs my head up. He scrutinizes my faces for several intense heartbeats before he turns to where the phone is lit up a macabre Christmas ornament.

“What’s going on, kitten?” he asks, his voice once again deceptively soft.

I shake my head, doubting my ability to form words just yet. Or ever.

“We’re going to leave here right now and return to the yacht,” he says with another slow, mind-bending kiss. His voice is almost conversational, but I’m not fooled by the steel framing his tone. “Once we’re there, you’re going to explain to me why you jump and look like your worst nightmare comes to life each time your email pings.”

Keely

I
’m not going to tell him. Of course I’m not.

If anyone deserves to know what happened to me six years ago, what shaped my life, it should be Bethany. Maybe she doesn’t know it, but while she’s been leaning on me through the shit in her life, I’ve been leaning on her. Her needing me has saved me more times than I can ever tell her. Because while I’d concentrated on her, helping her get over the super-douche ex who left her for another man, and the tribulations of dealing with Zach Savage’s life before he met her, I’ve efficiently distanced myself from dealing with my own shit. Now she’s found her rock-steady happy, she’s more than strong enough to deal with whatever issues I bring to her.

So, by rights, she deserves first spot at my confession table.

But the moment we walk into Mason’s suite, the weight of burden is suddenly too much to bear. I want relief from that weight. I want to ball it up and dump it, even if it’s into a near stranger’s lap. He might judge me, most likely condemn me. But I’ll be selfishly lighter, less of a festering wound.

“Keely?”

His tone is a cattle prod that demands a reaction. I lay my clutch down, minus my phone, which he has in his pocket, and turn. I raise my hand to push back my hair, and I smell him on me. He’s imprinted on me as indelibly as the welts I can feel on my ass. He’ll fade with time, just like the marks on my skin. But for now, he’s a reality I can’t ignore.

And I don’t want to.

“You want me to tell you something I’ve never told another human being, not even the people who brought me into this world. Why?”

He watches me as he shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it slowly over the back of the sofa. “Because you’ve given me control over you, and you wouldn’t have unless a part you trusts me not to hurt you or use anything you say against you.”

The naked, raw truth in that staggers me for a moment. “And I am right? Can I trust you?”

“To a point. We don’t know each other well enough to demand unquestioning trust. We have it where it matters most, but you probably don’t want to lose sight of the fact that a bastard lives beneath this skin. Trust me with what you need to unburden, and I promise I’ll think long and hard before I let it influence our interaction any more than it’s doing right now.”

My mouth gapes for a moment, before I recover from that. “Can I have a second to think about that?”

He smiles and strides to where I’m standing. He cups my jaw and tilts my head up until I look into his eyes. “No. We promised each other the truth, Keely. I’ll never waver from that even if it’s not what you want to hear.”

“What if what I tell you isn’t what you want to hear?”

His thumbs brush my cheek, as hazel gold eyes probe mine, and I glimpse a wasteland of weary regret in his gaze before he blinks it away.

“Firstly, I’ve seen and done things that gives me very little right to judge what other people do. Secondly, and this is very important, so listen closely,” he pauses to suck my lower lip into his mouth. His tongue rolls over it, once, twice, before he releases me. The tingle he starts radiates throughout my body, and I lean closer to him. “I’ve never been surer in my life that nothing you tell me will diminish my need to fuck this stunning body, for as long and as often as it’s available to me. And Keely...?”