Freefall (The Indigo Lounge Series, #5) (30 page)

His mouth compresses into a blade. “I’d been building
Seven
as a side project at the time. I altered her parameters and programmed her for the sole purpose of finding Toby. She pinpointed a mile radius of his location on the seventh day, to some farm in Virginia. But...we were too late.”

Oh God
. I pull him tighter into my warmth, but he’s statue-still and chilled despite the sunshine surrounding us. “Mason.” I say his name, not to prompt him into any sort of action or response, but to let him know I’m there. “Mason. Mason.”

I give in to the urge to kiss his cheek and feel the blood flow beneath his skin. I’m encouraged that there’s life beneath the petrified sorrow and rage. I trail my mouth to the corner of his mouth and kiss his frozen lips. I don’t get a response, but I’m not dissuaded.

“Mason.”

He jerks his head back when I try to deepen the kiss. I recognize his need to purge, and I place my head on his chest again, my thoughts calmed a little by the rhythmic beat of his heart.

“He took him, Keely. Right from underneath my nose. So you see, you’re not the only one who was fooled into ignoring the warning signs. I’ve had a long time to think about those signs.”

My fingers glide into the hair at his nape in a gesture of inadequate comfort. “What signs?”

“Peterson was a schizophrenic. He’d hidden his condition with medication while he’d been under scrutiny at his job. If I’d known about it, I would have been more cautious, but instead I dismissed his sometimes erratic behavior as embarrassment because he wasn’t learning the code fast enough. Truth is, he’d stopped taking his meds. By the time I found him two months later—”

My head snaps up. “You found him?”

Mason lowers his head and his gaze connects with mine. The raw barbarity stops my breath, but it’s nothing like the sadistic smile that curves his mouth. “Yes, I found him.”

“On your own?”

“Yes.”

My throat has gone desert-dry, but I try to swallow anyway. “What did you do?”

His eyes are so dark they’re almost black. Every single moment of danger—latent or otherwise—which I’ve felt since meeting Mason, fuses into that moment. That look. And although I know it’s not directed at me, my insides still congeal with fear.

“I made him pay,” is all he says before he surges to his feet with me still in his arms.

His phone starts to ring again, and he turns away from it.

“Mason.”

He strides through the room to the door before he sets me on my feet. “It’s noon. We have an appointment downstairs,” he replies, his voice a sharp blade, punctuating the air. He yanks open the door and pulls me after him.

“Wait!”

He slams to a stop and crowds me into the wall. “
I can take it
—those were your words to me. True or false?” His hot breath washes over my face as he bends his knees and looks into my eyes.

“True,” I exhale.

“Good. I’m going to hold you to that.”

Our trip down the elevator to the lower deck is conducted in a cracked silence, foaming with sex and despair, rage, and tortured sorrow. Mason doesn’t hide his erratic breathing. The sound fills the small enclosure, fills my every pore, until I’m breathing in synchrony with him. His head turns and his gaze meets mine.

“Mason,” I murmur his name.

Something shifts in his eyes, but it quickly disappears.

The doors part, and we’re confronted by Titus Morton. He has two scantily clad women hanging off each arm, and his black silk shirt is secured by a single button. His gaze swings from Mason to me, and proceeds to crawl over my body.

The raw snarl from Mason’s throat snaps everyone’s attention to him.

“This is your last warning, Morton. You keep your fucking eyes to yourself when you see us coming—”

“Or what?” the pudgy man stupidly challenges.

Mason lunges forward and wraps his hand around Titus’ neck. The girls dart out of the way to keep from being flattened by the seething mountain that is Mason Sinclair. “Or I’ll introduce you to scuba diving without a tank.”

Titus’ eyes bulge, then he throws out his hands in a quick gesture of surrender. “Hey, it’s cool, Sinclair. I just thought since we both fish in the same pool, you wouldn’t mind, you know...sharing—”

He never sees the hand coming. But the agony of a possible broken nose, and the blood spurting onto his chest, certainly registers as Mason calmly steps back.

“What the fuck!” Titus screams, clutching his nose with both hands.

“We never have, and never will, have anything in common. Keep out of my sight, or the next time we’re this close, you lose more than a little nasal cartilage.”

Mason calmly turns to me and holds out his hand. “Come.”

I slip mine into his without question, and we’re walking down the hall as if the past two minutes never happened. I’m a little ashamed that the raw exhibition of Mason’s jealousy has me all hot and wet, so I keep my head down, my body tucked close to Mason’s and drag my free hand up and down his arm.

“Kitten?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you breathing like that because you’re afraid, or because you’re turned on?” he rasps in a strangled voice as he reaches the last door along the corridor and throws it open.

I see where he’s brought me, and my nostrils quiver on a weak breath. “Can I be a little of both?”

“I prefer a seventy-thirty ratio.” He puts his hand in the small of my back and pushes me into the spanking room.

“Why thirty?” I ask.

The door slams behind me, he keys in the code that locks it. A moment later, he’s standing behind me; a tower of white-hot heat that I imagine can melt my clothes off. “It’s a perfect balance that keeps your blood pumping. I want it pumping long and hard for me.”

I bow my hips backward and rub my ass against his thickening crotch. “Consider it done.”

He circles to stand in front of me. Dark hazel eyes examine me with intense contemplation. “Hmm...just like that?”

I want to say soft words that will show him how much I feel connected to him through our pain. But Mason isn’t in the mood for soft, and the only connection that speaks the loudest is sex.

Nevertheless, I put my hand on his chest, and luxuriate in the hard, warm muscles rolling beneath my fingers. “Our agreement was for you to fuck and use me as you please. I know I’ll get what I need from you in return. So why argue the point?”

With his gaze locked on mine, he curls a hand over my hip and drags me into his body. “You remember when I said you could be perfect?”

How could I forget that damning compliment? “I remember.”

“You just graduated to near-perfection.” He licks the corner of my mouth and I purr. “My kitten. Purr for me again.”

I make the sound, and he groans.

“You’re so getting fucked, baby. Take your dress off.”

I slip it over my head and fling it away. As per his instructions, I hadn’t bothered with a bra this morning, so I stand in only my black French panties and await my master’s pleasure.

My heart catches when he strides toward the spanking equivalent of a jungle gym. High handle bars mean the spankee will be hanging at least a foot off the floor while begin spanked. I like Mason’s hand on my ass when I’m naughty or bolshie, but I don’t think I’m ready for that. I breathe a sigh of relief when he walks past it. My relief turns to tension when he slides the familiar three-sided partition from an enclosed wall panel.

A visceral reaction punches through me. “Mason, no.”

He freezes. “Say that again, kitten?” he asks with veiled softness.

“I won’t be put in that thing.”

He turns and faces me across the room. “Because...?”

Resentment fires higher. “Are you kidding me? I watched you pleasure another woman in it. Fine, you were just testing the equipment, but she still got off by your hand. I’m not getting into it. You can use any other gadget in this room. But not that one.”

His head tilts a little. “Come here, Keely.”

I make a growling sound in my throat as anger and jealousy twist inside me. It colors my hurt and defiance, and he sees it. He lets go of the equipment, and returns to me.

“I don’t care what the punishment is, Mason. I’m drawing the line.”

His answer is to tug his T-shirt off, fling it across the room and send his shoes and socks to join it. I gape when he continues undressing until he’s gloriously naked.

Then he closes the gap between us, surrounds me with his warm, intoxicating heat, and cups my cheeks. “You keep striding towards perfection, and I just might have to alter our arrangement again.”

Astonishment pouches a hole in my chest. “What? You’re not mad?”

“That you’re ready to defy me because just the thought of sharing something I
didn’t
give another woman makes you crazy?” His thumbs slide over my heated skin. “Kitten, I just punched a guy in the
fucking
nose because he looked at you,” he breathes.

Keely

D
espite the howling eddies of loss and rage that still grips us, I can’t help it, I smile. “You’re swearing.”

“Your bad habits are rubbing off on me.”

I sway into him. “What else can I rub off on you?”

“Your trust. A little bit of it right now will please me.”

The lighter mood evaporates, and we’re back to raw intensity. “Mason...”

“Come with me, baby.”

The plea in his voice is what tips me over the edge. I take the hand he holds out, and I pray that whatever is going to happen in that partition, it’ll be over quickly so I don’t lose my shit.

We reach the corner of the room, and I stop. “That’s...”

“The first prototype I used last week. This one,” he points to the newer, shinier black one in front of me, “has never been used.”

My eyes widen. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” he says with a wry twist of his mouth.

I’m a touch ashamed of my little display now, but not enough to not be seriously turned on and seriously disturbed that he’s as viciously possessive of me as I’m becoming of him.

I’m astute enough to know that doesn’t bode well for me, emotions-wise, so I focus on the gadget in front of me, and decide to save the ponder-and-prod of what’s happening to me, for later.

“What is it, exactly?” I ask.

Mason shrugs. “I don’t have a name for it yet, but it’s pretty much every sex toy you want it to be.”

My brows spike as I stare the plain partitioning. “How is that possible?”

He presses his finger to a raised rectangular button and the center partition starts to vibrate. I look close and see that while the two sides are only a few inches thick, the center partition is almost twelve inches thick. Mason presses another button and a thin front layer slides back.

The membrane-like gel shimmers, and I reach out and touch it. “It’s warm. Oh,” I gasp as the life-like skin molds and clings to my fingers.

“It’s something I developed a few years ago. I call it Memory Membrane. It retains dimensions and produces a sequence of programmed movements when required. Step up against it. I’ll demonstrate.”

I step onto the black square in front of the partition, and a wall of soft heat bathes my front. Mason slides one hand down my back as he presses a few buttons in the panel. An outline begins to form. I recognize Mason’s body shape in about ten seconds, then my mouth drops open when it begins to turn three-dimensional. In about half a minute, I have a body double of my lover in front of me, complete with abs, pecs, and that thick cock I’ve become addicted to in such a short time.

“Fuck, I think I’m going to come right now,” I say to the living, breathing one behind me.

“That’s the idea, baby,” he responds gruffly.

I hear the darkness in his voice, and I’m reminded of what he confessed a short while ago. I glance at him over my shoulder, and see the turbulence jumping in his eyes.

Keeping my gaze on his, I step closer to the Mason-like outline and run my hand from its chest to thigh. Real-life Mason’s cock jumps as he watches my hand.

“Is it nuts to be so goddamn turned on and fucking jealous at the same time?” he rasps.

I wonder if he realizes he’s swearing again as I slide my palm down to the thick, very lifelike cock in front of me. “Show me what else it can do,” I encourage.

He drags his attention from my slowly cock-pumping hand and presses another button. Arms extend out and hover just above my waist.

“Wow. I so want to fuck that big brain of yours right now”

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

Again, I hear the edge in his voice, and I shudder. We may have been heading down here anyway, but the parameters have changed for him from
need-to-fuck
, to
need-to-fuck-hard-enough-to-forget.

I recognize that need for oblivion, the need to fling oneself over the edge and hope the world helps you crash out of existence.

So I turn and face Mason. I wrap both hands around his cock, and plead, “Use me. However you want. For as long as you want.”

Relief and gratitude leaps in his eyes, and I almost want to cry.

His throat moves as he swallows. “Kitten.”

He cups my skull and slants his mouth over mine. The barely-leashed violence in his kiss jacks up my animal arousal, but the human part of me that wants to nourish and care, whimpers with concern.

My mind contorts around everything Mason hadn’t said during his confession. What did he do to the man who took his son? Was he alive? Was he dead?

I don’t really care. Whatever retribution he’d received wouldn’t have been enough in my book. But I’m more concerned about the effect it’s had on my lover. I’m even more concerned about what it will mean for us when he finds out what I did.

I realize I’m thinking beyond today, about future revelations and judgments. Future pleas for understanding and forgiveness. I try to check myself from ways to make my case and keep whatever place I have in Mason’s life, but what’s the fucking use?

The circumstances of our meeting set an irreversible path I know I’ll see to its conclusion.

Acceptance seeps through me, and I release the chains of
what ifs.