Chapter 27
KEELY
I freeze. “Taken?”
He remains silent, his eyes still squeezed shut.
My mind tries to grapple with the many interpretations of what he’s saying. In the end, I blurt out, “How was he taken? Who took him, Mason?”
A hard swallow moves his throat. “I did some work for the government when I was in college. It was all top-secret shit… Writing code for satellites that helped win some obscure war I had zero interest in. A few years later, they came back, asking for my help again.”
His jaw is so tight, I’m surprised it hasn’t cracked, and for a moment, I’m afraid that’s as much as he can say. But then his lips part with a savage twist and he continues.
“They offered me a fuck load of money to alter one of my security algorithms, but I refused.” Again, he pauses, but this time whatever dam has held him back seems to have cracked open and the words spill from him in a flood of heat and pain I feel ripping through his rigid body.
“They waited a few years, then offered more money. Cassie and I were married by then. And Toby… God, my son would never want for anything. What the hell did I need more money for? But now I was interested in the world he would grow up in. If altering a simple code could help catch a few bad guys, then I was in.”
He sighs and it sounds like his soul is squeezing from his lungs in a tormented rasp.
“They wanted me to work in a lab somewhere in the bowels of some faceless building in the middle of nowhere. I said, Hell no . I’m Mason Sinclair the Third.
If they want my program, they have to do things my way, which includes not taking me away from my son for weeks on end. ”
I want to move, to stroke his agonized face. To kiss his tormented lips. But I’m frozen, afraid if I move it will tip the balance and he’ll stop his soul-bleeding confession. So instead, I feel the heavy beat of his heart and try to ignore the racing of my own.
“We tussled over that a bit and reached an agreeable arrangement. They would send a junior analyst to live with me and learn the code in case I became compromised.” He stops and shakes his head. “I said yes.”
He shudders and his grip shifts, releasing my frozen state. “And this analyst… he just… took your son?”
“He was great with Toby.” His voice rumbles on, an arid recounting.
“They got on like a house on fire. I never suspected a thing. Peterson was living with us for a couple of months. The day I… That day, he offered to take Toby for ice cream. He’d done it a bunch of times before.
I was in the middle of writing code. I barely looked up to say goodbye to my son.
I didn’t even realize what the time was until Cassie came home and asked me where Toby was. ”
Mason finally opens his eyes and I see the black, irredeemable despair that fills them. “It was one in the morning. My son had been missing for over eleven hours, and I had my head buried up the ass of some goddamn coding.”
Just like he asked me to stop talking when the crush of words became too much, I want the words falling from his lips to shrivel up and die.
I don’t want the image of that beautiful boy on the cinema screen in Monte Carlo to alter in any way.
But then I remember the sound Mason made when he watched his son’s image.
The sound of a defeated soul preparing itself for the seventh circle of hell.
It’s that sound, and my impossibly arrogant need to free him from it, that makes me speak now. “What did you do?”
“The usual—calls to the police, followed by calls to heads of every law enforcement department, threatening to kill each and every one of them if they didn’t dedicate every single resource to finding my son.
The less brave ones promised me jail time once Toby was found.
I threatened some more, even managed to get a few incompetent assholes fired.
” He exhales and I swear I see the flames of hell leap in his eyes when he looks at me.
“Seven days, Keely. He had Toby for seven days.”
The vice around my chest strangles my lungs. “You found him?”
His mouth compresses into a blade. “I was 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 hid his condition with medication while 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 stopped taking his meds. By the time I found him two months later?—”
My head snaps up. “You found him?”
Mason’s 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.
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’ve never had, 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 in favor of being turned on.” He puts his hand on the small of my back and pushes me into the spanking room.
“Why thirty?” I ask.
The door slams behind me, and 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 haven’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 handlebars mean the spankee will be hanging at least a foot off the floor while being spanked.
I like Mason’s hand on my ass when I’m naughty or defiant, 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 punches 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 face because he looked at you,” he breathes.