Locked and Loaded (18 page)

“That's it, Charlie,” he crooned as she rode out her pleasure. “Come for me.”

With every cry from her lips, every tight contraction of her body, she brought him closer to his own release. Mason fucked her with abandon. His hips bucked. His fingers gripped her. He pulled her down hard over his cock. His sac tightened, pressure built at the base of his shaft and a rush of sensation exploded through him as he came. One wave crashed after another. A violent storm of pleasure blasted through him. Mason's back came up from the mattress and he buried his face in the crook of Charlie's neck. Ragged breaths escaped his lungs and he wrapped his arms tight around her as he slowly came down from his own euphoric high.

Fucking amazing.

For what felt like forever, they simply held each other. Charlie's fingers threaded through his hair and Mason shivered at the contact. Her breath brushed the outer shell of his ear and she whispered, “I can't wait to do that again.”

Mason's rumbling laughter filled the silence. That made two of them. “I can do better,” he promised. “You'll see.”

She pulled away to look at him. Her sly smile was the most seductive thing he'd ever seen. “Better?” She cocked a skeptical brow. “Are you implying that you were holding out on me?”

“Not exactly.” Mason felt his own lips tug into a silly grin that he couldn't suppress. “But I'm a firm believer that practice makes perfect.”

Her smile dimmed a fraction. “You must have had a lot of practice, then.”

The truth was, he hadn't. Mason's career had always been more important than his sex life. Aside from a few random girlfriends here and there, Charlie had been the first woman he'd been with in almost a year. “Not really,” he replied. “I'm just obsessed with impressing you.”

She smiled. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” He took a few errant strands of her hair between his thumb and forefinger and stroked the silken length. He was absolutely obsessed with her hair as well. The color, the texture, everything. “Are you? Impressed?”

“I think I can safely say that now I truly know what Jell-O feels like. Does that answer your question?”

He kissed her once. Slowly. “We have a few more hours before we have to get ready to fly out. Let's shoot for making you feel like something a little less solid this time.”

Charlie's smoky laughter stirred his lusts once again. “Like I said, they'll have to wheel me out of here on a luggage cart.”

“I take it that means you're up for the challenge?”

She leaned in and took his earlobe between her teeth before drawing it into her mouth and sucking. “Absolutely.”

Chapter Eighteen

Mason stared up at the ceiling. His brain wouldn't settle down enough to allow him to sleep. The warmth of Charlie's hand splayed over his chest, her body tucked close to his, her head resting on his shoulder, comforted him. The even rise and fall of her breath as she rested was a welcome distraction from the thoughts that plagued him.

He'd chosen his path a long time ago, just like Kieran had. So why did he suddenly feel so guilty about the way everything was going down?

“Did you know my dad's a lawyer?” Her sleepy voice sliced through the silence.

Mason wrapped his arms tighter around her. “He is?”

“Yeah. Corporate law. He wanted me to join his firm after I passed the bar.”

Apparently Mason wasn't the only one in a contemplative mood. “Why didn't you?”

Charlie let out a slow sigh. She traced a pattern over his left pec and he let out a sigh of his own at the pleasant sensation. “I sort of resented him for pushing me into law in the first place. I guess I figured if I was going to be this thing that he'd molded me to be, I was at least going to choose how I pursued it.”

He and Charlie were more alike than he'd thought. “Was he disappointed?” If Charlie's dad was anything like Mason's, there was no question how he felt. “That you chose criminal law?”

“Devastated,” she said with a quiet laugh. Their hushed voices penetrated the darkness, binding them together in something that Mason knew he would never be able to disentangle himself from. “You would have thought I'd decided to become a drug dealer or something. He said if I was going to practice criminal law, the least I could do was become a defense attorney. That I could make a name for myself taking on high-profile cases.”

“No guts, no glory, huh?”

“No glory, no money,” Charlie replied drily. “Civil servitude wasn't what my dad had wanted for his daughter. Probably because his own reputation would take a hit. I could single-handedly prosecute and put away every criminal in the country and it wouldn't be enough to impress him.”

“When my dad found out I was entering the academy, he shit a brick.” Mason still remembered that visit. It was the last time he'd seen him until a couple of weeks ago. His dad's expression of betrayal and disgust was burned in his memory. “He called me a traitor, accused me of siding with the people who'd put him away. He even asked if I'd tipped the cops off before they arrested him. He said I was conforming to a system designed to keep people like us down. That Kieran was his true son—the only person in his life still loyal. I didn't talk to him again after that. I wrote him a couple of letters. Tried to open up the line of communication. He ignored me, though. Didn't want to have anything to do with me until a couple of weeks ago.”

It sucked that he'd been made to feel like a disappointment for not following in his dad's footsteps. And Charlie had felt the same way. Whatever happened to loving your kids unconditionally?

“Did you?” Charlie's voice was little more than a whisper. “Tip off the police?”

Mason let out a soft snort. “No. He got caught because he let his ego get the best of him. That's how they all get caught. But they never acknowledge it. It's always someone else's fault, you know? It's never their wrongdoing. It's society's stupid laws. Someone's always got it out for them. I can't tell you how many times I heard it growing up. ‘I'm just tryin' to make a living. What's so wrong with that?'”

Charlie put her lips to Mason's shoulder. The gentle kiss caused his stomach muscles to clench and his cock to stir. “Following your own path was brave, Mason. I wish I could have done that.”

“What would you have done?” He couldn't help but wonder what interested Charlie. He wanted to know everything about her. “If you weren't working for the DOJ right now, what would you be doing with your life?”

“I honestly don't know.” The sadness of her tone sliced through him. “For as long as I can remember, my dad hammered law school into my brain. I didn't have time for fun growing up because I was always studying. I wouldn't get into a decent college or a good law school if I let my focus slip. I didn't date. I didn't play sports. I didn't even really have girlfriends. I hit the books all the time. I worked toward my dad's goal for me without ever once wondering what it was that I wanted for myself.”

Mason might have lost his family in the process, but he was glad he'd had the balls to follow his heart. His dad's lifestyle had never sat well with him. When Jensen was teaching him and Kieran how to properly forge a master's artwork, or how to effectively hustle someone, Mason had secretly resented it. It bothered him to think that his dad and Kieran shared the same pride and ego. That their disdain for the law equaled Mason's respect for it.

“How do you feel about it now?” Did Charlie feel as trapped in her life as Mason sometimes felt in his? There were days when he needed an escape so badly that he considered changing his name and finding a jungle somewhere to disappear into.

He felt her shrug against him. “The same way I felt about it then, I guess. Like I have no choice but to keep going. Keep proving myself. Beat my dad at his own game.”

Mason knew all about that. He'd been trying to prove a point to his dad for fifteen years. Hell, longer. “You'll never live up to his standards.” He had plenty of experience in that department. “So why even try?”

Charlie drew in a slow breath. “Because if I'm not the best, then my entire life has been wasted. If I don't have any bragging rights at all, when I look back at all of the years I spent on
his
dream, I'll realize what I've lost, and it'll break me.”

“Life is what
you
make it, Charlie. Not what other people make for us.”

“Is that why you're doing this now?” she asked. “To prove that your father and Kieran have absolutely no influence on your life?”

Okay, so he was a bit of a hypocrite. Sure, Chief Deputy Carrera had come to Mason specifically because of his connection to Kieran. He'd been maneuvered. Leveraged. And maybe at the end of the day none of them were more upstanding or righteous than his dad, Kieran, or any of the people they associated with. Mason had been living in his dad's—and Kieran's—shadow for most of his life. The stigma of his family had kept him from moving up the ranks with the San Francisco PD. It had nixed his chances at being accepted into the U.S. Marshals. It had landed him a job with Customs and Border Patrol and he'd spent nearly a decade pretending to live the criminal life, setting up smugglers and thieves in order to bring people just like Kieran to justice. Rather than allowing him to escape his upbringing, everyone in Mason's life had used his past to benefit them. Just like now.

“Maybe I should take some of my own advice once in a while.”

“Why did you take this job, Mason?” Charlie brought her head up as though she could read the truth in his expression through the dark. “I read your file. You got screwed.”

At least someone besides him was willing to admit it. “For the same reason you work so hard to win every single case that comes across your desk,” Mason said. “I want to prove my dad and Kieran wrong. I want them to know that they didn't win.”

Charlie reached up and cupped his cheek. “Win what?”

Mason let out a bark of disdainful laughter. “I don't know.”

“Everything is black and white for us,” Charlie said softly. Her voice was like a caress, reaching out through the dark to tickle Mason's senses. “Right or wrong. There's no in-between. We can't be compromising because there's no room for compromise. Guys like Kieran, like your dad, and even Katarina, they live in the gray. They have the sort of freedom that we don't. They can be as compromising as they want because they make the rules as they go. That's why we fight back, Mason. Not necessarily because it's the right thing to do, but because it's not fair that they get all of the leeway and we get none.”

“You're beginning to think like a criminal.”

“Not beginning,” Charlie said. “I've always felt this way. It's not fair that I have to follow the rules and they don't. That's why I fight so hard to put them away. Because I'm jealous of that freedom. I've never had it easy, so why should they? It's childish and petty, I know. I've never told anyone that. But it's the truth.”

Her trust in him caused Mason's chest to swell with emotion. “It was my dad's lack of conscience that got to me.” Kieran had always teased Mason for being a bleeding heart. “He didn't care who he hurt, who he swindled or stole from. He always found a way to justify what he did.
They have insurance
, or
The guy's got millions, what does it matter if I free him of a few hundred thousand?
or
It's not my fault if they're too stupid not to know they're getting a forgery
.” Mason filled his lungs with air and held his breath for a moment before letting it all rush out. “I don't think getting ahead is a good enough excuse. People struggle all the time. They grow up disadvantaged. And not all of them are out there running cons.”

Charlie pushed herself up until her face was inches from him. “You're a good man, Mason. Probably the best I've ever known.”

* * *

Charlie had known early on that there was so much more to Mason than the stern-faced, cranky, take-no-shit persona he let everyone see. They had more in common than she ever would have guessed, and yet she knew that at the end of the day, Mason was the better person. His standards were so high Charlie could only aspire to reach them.

“I want to be,” Mason said. The deep timbre of his voice rumbled through her, and Charlie shivered. “But I'm just as selfish as Kieran and my dad are. I made a promise to Kieran that what I did would never come between us. I should have walked away from Carrera's offer. Instead, I'm using Kieran so I can get what I want.”

“It's for the greater good,” Charlie assured him.

Mason snorted. “Is it?”

“Yes.” She believed that. It's why she was so damned passionate about this task force. “Honestly, I don't know why or how Kieran got involved with Faction Five, but they're bad news, Mason. It doesn't matter that they're white-collar criminals. That they're educated and sophisticated. They're hiding behind positions of power and abusing that power for monetary gain. And who's that going to hurt? Everyone. It's a tear in the very fabric of the law. It's the worst sort of entitlement and it shows people like Kieran that their disdain for the system is justified. It'll open the door for terrorists and political usurpers to join their ranks and enjoy the same sort of autonomy. This group has to be stopped before they amass any sort of legitimate power. So what if you benefit from it? Stopping them isn't selfish. It's
necessary
.”

“This isn't like Kieran.” It was the first time Charlie had ever heard Mason speak of him with honest affection. “He's always worked alone. Syndicates aren't his thing. Especially if it means giving them any power over him. He's a free spirit. He doesn't take anything seriously.”

“Maybe he's tired of gaming the system on his own.” Charlie didn't know much about Kieran, but she agreed with Mason. Answering to a syndicate didn't seem like something he'd enjoy. “Faction Five could offer him a layer of protection that he's never had before.”

“Could be.” Mason didn't sound convinced. “He doesn't do anything without first having a good reason. But this syndicate . . .” He blew out a breath. “It doesn't make any sense. It's not Kieran's style. I just don't understand how he got mixed up with them.”

Charlie settled herself against Mason's chest. “Do you think he's under duress?”

“No one forces Kieran to do anything,” Mason said. “It's part of his charm.”

She laughed. “Are you going to be able to go through with this?” Charlie had been concerned from the start, but now that she knew Kieran, had seen him and Mason together, she wondered if he'd be able to continue to manipulate the man who was as close to him as a brother.

“Yes.” There wasn't an ounce of doubt in Mason's response. “He knows what he is and he knows who I am. I think we both realized it would come down to this someday. We couldn't keep our lives separate forever. Whatever happens, I'm ready for it.”

Charlie hadn't thought twice about using Mason to gain Kieran's trust and infiltrate Faction Five. Her only concern had been the win. Now, though, guilt pulled at her chest when she thought of what she and the U.S. Marshals office had asked him to do. What they'd held over his head in order to get his cooperation. In the end, were they any better than Kieran? Mason seemed to be the only innocent person in all of this.

“If anyone deserves to get something good out of this, it's you.”

“I'm not a saint, Charlie.”

She smiled at the humor in his tone. Somehow, she doubted it. “Tell me one thing you've ever done that was bad.”

“Okay. When I was thirteen, I painted a reproduction of one of Van Gogh's
Irises
. My dad sold it to a collector for a quarter million dollars.”

Charlie nearly choked on her intake of breath. “You're kidding me?”

“Nope. I did a damn good job.”

Jensen Decker was a well-known forger. Charlie had never suspected that his son had inherited his artistic talent. “Did you know he was going to sell the painting?”

“Of course. He told me the money was going into my
college fund
.”