25. Mason

Mason

“ Y ou want me. To get on there .”

It’s not a question.

“Scared, little doe?”

Hannah looks distraught.

“No,” she lies, swallowing past a lump in her throat. “I just don’t like the thought of my head hitting the sweltering pavement.”

“Sounds like an excuse.”

Pretty green eyes narrow on me and she takes that as a challenge. It’s almost too easy at this point. Determination flashes through her gaze and she steps up beside the bike.

“It’s just a motorcycle, Hannah. I ride it every day.”

She stares at the back seat and I know she’s trying to determine a way to get on without touching me.

Funnily enough, it’s the same reason I decided to drive it. Because she’d have to.

“I don’t know how to get on.” Her voice is small, as if admitting defeat doesn’t come easy.

“Place your hand on my shoulder and your foot on the peg, there.”

Begrudgingly, she does as I tell her, her cheeks flaming as she climbs up on the back. I’ve had a passenger before, that’s not the problem. The problem stems from having my little obsession on the back.

And now my dick’s painfully hard.

“Put this on.” I hand her a helmet. I don’t always wear one, but Hannah will if she’s going to be on the back of my bike.

“How many heads have been in this helmet?” she grumbles, wincing when she slips it over her hair.

“None,” I murmur, cranking the engine and she pauses. “I bought it today.”

“You . . . bought me a helmet?”

Jesus Christ.

“Tighten the strap,” I answer, twisting around to make sure the damned thing is secure. “When I move, you move. We lean into the corners together and your hands don’t leave me. Understood?”

She blinks back at me.

“Like, you want me to touch you?”

Unfortunately, in more ways than this.

“Yes.”

I reach down, taking each of her knees and fastening them securely around my hips.

Fuck me.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

Hannah clears her throat heavily from behind me. “Now what?”

“Wrap your arms around me.” I’m pissed off at the huskiness in my own voice.

“Like . . .”

“Around my stomach, Hannah.”

Carefully, she wraps her arms around me, doing this uncomfortable dance behind me to not get too close, but still follow directions.

“All the way, Hannah.”

“I think you’re just doing this because you’re yearning for a hug, but you’re too afraid to ask,” she murmurs under her breath, finally pressing against me.

My cock presses painfully against the zipper of my jeans. This shit’s working out to be foreplay.

I grip her wrists, making sure they’re wrapped tightly around me before I put the bike in gear.

“Remember what I said. Lean with me. On the bike, we’re one. You go where I go.”

“Sounds a little like a Hallmark movie,” she breathes in my ear.

“Little doe, nothing about what I’m going to do to you would be in a Hallmark movie. Now, hold on.”

We take off and the second the bike moves, Hannah’s arms are tightening around me. I chuckle under my breath. We’re not going that fast, but to Hannah, we’re flying.

I remember my first time on a bike. I was eight on a dirt bike Dad used to own. There was no one with me, just Dad from the sidewalk, urging me to try again when I dumped the fucking thing over.

So, I got back up and rode for the rest of the day until I figured it out.

Now, taking Hannah out feels like Dad’s still here, urging me to keep trying.

We pull to a stop at a red light and I reach down, running my fingers over Hannah’s thigh and smirking under my helmet when she stiffens.

Her hand tightens on my stomach, just as a car pulls up beside us.

A couple girls sit in the front seat, giggling and waving at me. I don’t pay any attention to them, but I can feel Hannah stiffen under my fingers.

So . . . I reach up, take her hand on my stomach and slide it down to my cock. Hannah doesn’t move, save for a tremor that slips through her. I, on the other hand, chuckle behind the tinted shield of my helmet and take off as soon as the light hits green.

By the time we reach the gun range, Hannah’s a fucking natural on the back of the bike. Not that I thought she wouldn’t be. She picks shit up quicker than most, but by the time we pull to a stop, her body’s molding with mine like it was fucking made to.

Perfection.

Her hands are shaking when she places them on my shoulder to climb down and I stifle a laugh.

“What was that?” she challenges as soon as I slip the helmet over her head.

For the first time in my life, I’m finding something adorable. From the disturbed hair to the flush in her cheeks.

I shrug. “They insulted you.”

She rolls her eyes and my hand snaps out, catching under her jaw. She tenses, a quiet gasp leaving her lips when I gently pull her to me and press my lips to hers. Not kissing, just breathing her air.

“You’re on the back of my bike. Not them.”

I nip her lip, but I don’t kiss her. Pulling away when it’s not enough because I want her as starved for me as I am for her.

A delicate tremor rolls through her, but, again, she doesn’t argue.

“Come on,” I murmur, tightening the helmets on top of the bike. “Time for your first lesson.”

Hannah jumps the moment a gun goes off near us, her eyes going wide as she searches around the gun range.

I’ve got guns. Plenty, but we can’t shoot in Inglewood, so I brought her to a range.

I need to be sure she can handle herself if I’m not there and this is the best way to do that. Giving her some of the power back that her mother stole from her for all those years.

“Insert the mag.”

“What?” she asks, jumping again when another shot rings off.

“Little doe, the mag. Inset it into the pistol.” I take my own gun—a .9mm that I carry every day—and slide the mag up in place with a metallic click, showing her.

She stares at my hands, repeating the motion.

“Now—now what?” she stammers, her gaze slipping over the room.

“Hannah, am I going to have to make you pay attention to me?” I cock a brow.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “It’s loud.”

“It is. But there’s nothing to worry about if you know what you’re doing.”

“But, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Yet; you will. Now, pull the slide back.”

“What’s the slide?”

“The piece on top,” I demonstrate.

She does and then I motion for her to punch it forward.

“You’re loaded, so don’t point it at anything you don’t want to kill.”

“What if I don’t want to kill anything?”

Jesus, this girl’s going to make me go gray.

“Point it at the target.” I nod down the range. “Ignore everyone else here and focus on that mark in the center.”

She swallows, following my gaze to the bright pink target down at the other end of the room.

“Lift your arms and point exactly where you want to shoot. Keep your fingers off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot.”

She swallows, a flush rising in her cheeks when she lifts the gun.

“Straighten your arms.”

“Am I going to hit myself in the face?”

“No.”

“Feels like it,” she murmurs, voice tight with anxiety. She pauses, sucking in a deep breath.

Then, her shoulders drop.

“I can’t do this.”

“Are you helpless?”

She gawks at me, her brows quickly furrowing together.

“What?”

I shrug. “You want to be helpless, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

“You can’t force me to be okay with guns.”

She purses her lips, cheeks flaming to match her lips. I step behind her and take her round hips in my hands, jerking her until she’s facing straight down the line toward the target.

“Are you afraid of them? Or what you can do with them?”

Her mouth snaps shut, breath hitching from my lips at her ear. I run my nose up the column of her throat and though she’d deny it, a shiver rolls through her.

“I . . . I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she breathes, voice soft just like her skin when I slip my hand under her shirt.

I brush my thumb over her belly button, then higher until the cotton falls over to cover my hand. Hannah jerks in my grasp when I run my hands over the underside of her bra, her body molding perfectly against mine when I tug her back to me.

“You know how it feels on the bike?” I ask, voice low and dark in her ear, her heartbeat racing under my fingertips. Goosebumps pebble on the flesh under my lips, but she doesn’t move away.

“Someone might see us,” she whispers when my other hand slips lower, grazing over the smooth planes of her stomach to slip beneath the waistband of her jeans.

“If I slip my fingers in your panties right now, will you be wet?”

“Mason,” she growls under her breath, but she fails to realize, there are no cameras here. Not in the range, or at least, none that can see us beyond the divider separating us from the other shooters. It’s why I come here. I don’t need anyone else in my way.

“Answer me, Hannah.” I nip the shell of her ear and her eyes close of their own volition.

“Yes,” she bites and I almost chuckle at the bitterness in her tone.

I can relate.

If I thought having her in my space would be a problem before I moved her in, I was wrong.

It’s a goddamn nightmare.

She’s everywhere and she did it all in less than twenty-four hours. Not that I’m surprised. She’s always been a walking hard-on waiting to happen and having her scent around me constantly is like dangling a steak in front of a hungry lion.

Now she can see what it feels like.

“Does holding the power to protect yourself in your hands feel good, little doe?”

Her reply catches in her throat when I work the button of her jeans loose and very carefully slip my hand inside.

Fucking soaked.

I press my face into her neck, slipping her arousal around her clit.

Fuck, she’s going to drive me insane.

“Hannah?”

“Yes.” Even through the earplugs in my ears, I can hear the desire in her voice, carefully muted under a guise of sweetness.

I smirk, my fingers finding her clit, and withdraw my hand from under her shirt to lift her arm.

“Arms up.”

She does as I say, letting me hold her arm up until her fingers are underneath mine on the gun. I hold her steady, growling softly in her ear when I let her choose the mark on our target.

“Let go of everything, little doe. Breathe and pull.”

“Pretty hard to do that with your hand in my pants,” she whispers, so quiet, no one else could hear her over the sound of other shooters firing down the range.

“You have until that mag’s empty to come. If you don’t, I’ll spank your ass when we get home.”

That gets her going, and her pussy blooms under my fingers, her arousal leaking down my palm. I bite back a groan, circling her, and when the first shot rings off, she lets out a shaky breath, her thighs clenching on either side of my hand.

“That’s my good girl,” I murmur, low in her ear and she almost forgets what she’s doing. “Nine left. Make them count.”

She takes aim, again, and this time, she doesn’t jump when she fires, instead biting her lip to silence a moan that threatens to claw its way from her lips.

She fires another, this time managing to hit the target off to the left.

“Does it make you wet that anyone could catch us right now?” I tease in her ear, and she nods softly, her ass pressing into my cock. I clench my eyes shut as heat builds at the base of my spine and she fires another shot.

If the bike was foreplay, this may as well be fucking.

She fires another, and then another after that until only a few remain. Her eyes pinch shut and I still my hand until they open.

“Always keep your eye on your attacker, little doe.”

She growls under her breath, but listens, firing two more while her pussy clenches under my fingers.

“Fuck,” I bite in her ear and a tremor rolls through her. “You going to come in my hand?”

She nods but doesn’t speak while I circle her clit faster.

“Mason,” she breathes unsteadily, pulse thrumming from where I reach up to take her tiny throat in my hands. I know she’s right on the cusp of breaking, shattering under my fingers, and fuck do I want to hear her moans right now.

I also don’t want to have to shoot anyone else who hears them, either.

“Come for me, Hannah. Now.”

I strum my fingers across her and she shudders in my grasp, her knees nearly buckling until I have to hold her up. She places the gun down on the counter in front of us, her eyes screwing shut and I force her lips back to mine to swallow her moans.

Fucking hell.

“Good girl,” I murmur, reaching around her and taking the gun before emptying the last two rounds into the target.

They hit right of center, by about an inch and I know it’s from the fucking shake in my hands.

“Someone could have seen us,” she bites, voice quiet, despite the gunfire around us and I chuckle, placing the empty gun on the table again.

“You’re under the impression I would allow anyone else to see you come for me, little doe.”

Her lips part, her cheeks flushed, but before she can say anything, I hand her the box I picked up this morning.

Can’t have anyone finding her, so I took the liberty of getting something for her myself.

“You . . .”

I cut her off with a finger to her lips and she falls silent.

“That stays with you at all times.” I step closer, pressing into her until her ass is resting against the table.

“What happens if someone finds out?”

I shrug and just because I feel like I need to, I nip the flesh of her jaw in my teeth.

“Don’t get caught.”

“Wow, these are really good,” Hannah says, surprised as she takes her first-ever bite of cheeseburger.

I cock a brow at her, and she flushes.

“Are you sure you’re an American?”

“Very funny,” she deadpans and I stifle a laugh. “Mom preferred . . . extravagant dinners over simple ones and by the time I got to college, I guess I just forgot to try this. I’ve never had a hot dog before, either.”

She pauses, mid-bite. “What’s your favorite food?”

“Lasagna.” I wait and she looks afraid to admit it. “You’ve never had it, either.”

“Yes, I’ve had lasagna,” she rolls her eyes. “Just . . . probably not the way you have.”

“We’re going to need to broaden your horizons if we’re going to be working together, little doe.”

“Hey, I’ve done three new things today. Four if you count the getting fingered in public part.”

My eyes flash wickedly and she blushes, looking anywhere but at me.

“It’s not the first time I’ve had my fingers inside you in public.”

“Okay, we are not going there.” She bites into a homemade fry. “Tell me about tonight.”

I smirk, letting her change the subject, because as much as I love making her blush—and come—we have a job to do as soon as night falls.

“We go, park the truck a few blocks away and sneak in.”

“Do you even know where we’re going?”

“Do you?” I challenge and she purses her lips. “It’s downtown. A few blocks from the Inner Sanctum. We’ll park the truck there.”

“What if someone sees us and follows?”

“Drew?”

She nods her head warily.

“Drew Marshall won’t be a problem anymore.”

“One down, fifteen to go,” she murmurs. “And what about once we get there?”

I shrug. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

“I don’t like this plan.”

“Do you have a better one?”

“No,” she admits. “What about the Nightstalker wannabe? Heard anything about him?”

“Nothing that would interest you.”

In fact, I haven’t heard jack shit. Logan’s been MIA all day and I’d rather chop my dick off than reach out to my sister right now. Especially with her looming threat that we need to speak about Hannah.

“I keep thinking about it,” Hannah murmurs, shaking her head. “I haven’t told anyone I was here. How did Michael know where to look for me?”

I lean back in my chair, pushing my empty plate away from me.

It’s almost easy to forget she’s the governor’s daughter when she’s sitting in my little kitchen, eating a cheeseburger for the first time in her life. It’s . . . normal. Comfortable. And that’s why it’s a problem.

I’m happy to see that since she’s been working with me, she doesn’t cover the freckles on her cheeks and nose anymore. In fact, she’s forgone most of her makeup, the expensive clothes, the taming of the wild waves in her hair. The late evening sun shines through the window over the sink in front of her, painting her in shades of gold and orange and, for a second, my chest aches. She looks like a fucking angel.

Temptation never looked so fucking sweet.

Then, I shove that shit down.

“I’ve always wondered if they have a tracker in my phone or something.” She rolls her eyes as if this violation of her privacy is something all parents do. My mother did it. Yeah, it saved Savannah’s life when she was kidnapped last year, but my sisters are all still wary of gifts from her for that reason.

“He shows up at my shop threatening you again, it’ll be the last thing he ever does. Mark my words, Hannah.”

Fucking prick. I should have gotten rid of him when I had the chance. The first time I had Hannah’s sweet mouth on mine and caught him watching us from the shadows should have been the last. Now, he knows where she is, so it’s only a matter of time before they show up next.

Truth be told, his involvement now pisses me off. Showing up at my garage to play hero after the job was done. He had his chance to put an end to this when Melissa first went off the deep end. He did nothing, in lieu of staying in good with Mommy dearest.

There was something more to his visit today than what I’ve told Hannah. He’s planning something and while she may think he’s only looking out for her, I could see through that shit. She wants to believe everyone’s good and that a little evil doesn’t lurk in all of us. I know better.

Especially with that fucking smirk he shot me over Hannah’s shoulder when he had his arms around her.

“You two. Why do you hate him so much?” She’s not accusing. Merely asking, but I don’t like her defending him. He doesn’t deserve it.

I eye her for a moment, taking a drink of my beer.

“Because he wants to fuck you.”

Her eyes widen and I almost laugh, but then I remember the way he tried to wrap his arms around her today, as if he could hide her from me, and I’m pissed off all over again.

“And . . . why doesn’t Michael like you?”

Because you’re mine.

“Because you want me to fuck you.”

Her cheeks flame and she looks anywhere in the room but at me. It’s . . . cute and I can’t believe that word is something I would ever use. Cute and me sounds like a fucking joke.

“You’re awfully presumptuous,” she says, clearing her throat before swallowing half her sweet tea in one go.

“Am I wrong?” I know I’m not.

She cocks a brow, studying me for a moment.

“I think you’re attractive,” she concedes. “But . . . you and I can barely get along unless some part of me is touching some part of you. Or if someone’s trying to kill me.”

“We’re getting along right now.”

Her lips purse. Got her with that one.

“You make it sound like this is one-sided. We both know it’s not.”

I shrug. “It’s not. I’m also not holding my dick, hoping you’ll choose me. You want to go with Michael, I won’t stop you.”

Something about my answer doesn’t sit well with her. The amusement in her eyes drifts away and it’s replaced with the same melancholy distrust I saw when I first met her.

Something about it . . . makes me feel like I’ve swallowed battery acid.

“Right,” she says as if she’s trying to solidify it for herself. Abruptly, she stands, taking both our plates over to the sink.

Instinctively, I reach for her because that stupid fucking voice in the back of my head panics at the thought of her leaving.

Jesus Christ. Who knew my life would hinge on a little five-foot, four-inch firecracker?

Certainly not fucking I.

I manage to catch her hand and I can see the way she purses her lips.

“Hannah—” I start, but she cuts me off.

“We have a job to do,” she says quietly, tugging her hand away from me and going to the sink to clean up.

Men like me ruin pretty little girls like you, little doe .

If I had known that night almost three years ago how everything would change, would I have done something differently? Driven right past her before I got too sucked in? Before she became the focal point of my world, even if she isn’t a part of it?

I know the answer. I’m not a fucking idiot. I also know dwelling on the problem at hand won’t change the outcome.

I’ll help her find her sister, make sure she’s safe, and then send her on her way. She can go back to her mother if that’s what she wants and I’ll go back to pretending she’s not mine.

“You’re upset.”

“I’m not,” she grits, though she and I both know that’s a lie. “I don’t fit into your world. You’ve said it a thousand times.”

Yet, I’d burn the fucking world to the ground if it means she’d stay.

And then I shake myself.

It’s better she realizes now that this thing between us is volatile. It’ll only end one of two ways, neither of which ends with me and her riding off into the sunset together.

I want her.

It’s dangerous, but . . . I can’t tell her that.

Hannah places the plates in the dishwasher and dries her hands before turning back to me. Her expression is guarded, closed off and that fucking fake smile I’ve always hated threatens to tug on the corners of her lips.

“I’m going to go get ready for tonight. Thank you for dinner.”