Hitman's Secret Baby: A Bad Boy Romance (5 page)

I pushed her skirt all the way up, ducking my head to bite at the elastic of her panties, pulling back and letting go with a sharp
snap
.

“You’re a damn tease,” Taryn huffed.

She was already so wet, her underwear dark where it’d dampened, and I opened my mouth over the cotton, stroking my tongue roughly against it to the sound of her gasps.

“I swear to god, Mason!”

I pressed my amusement into the soft inside of her thigh and she scratched her hands into my hair impatiently in reaction. I could’ve gone all day winding her up to frustration, but I took pity on her, hooking my fingers into her underwear and pulling it down.

The first stroke of my tongue over her made her hips buck upwards. I pressed one forearm across the width of her stomach to hold her down and flicked my tongue again and again, lightly teasing her some more just to make her whine.

That, too, was addictive. So was hearing her beg.

“Please, Mason,” she pleaded, and my cock throbbed in my jeans at the sound. I could wait, though. This moment was all about her.

I parted her folds and fastened my mouth around her clit, sucking gently. I pressed two fingers slick up inside her to give her something to grip onto.

It was exactly what she wanted, and her hands in my hair tightened, her breath hitching erratically.

I sucked and licked her, fucking her slow and deep with my fingers, until her thighs spasmed around my shoulders. Even though she was desperate to come, I drew it out as long as I could, bringing her to the edge and then pulling her back again and again until she was whimpering.

I was enjoying myself far too much.

“You wanna come, huh?” I asked her softly, biting into her thigh again.

She fisted her hands in the sheets, and then against my shoulders, and then back again. “Yes.”

I grinned up at her, feeling a rush of power so easily equal to that of holding a man’s life in my hands. “You’re beautiful,” I told her helplessly, unable to stop the words flowing out of my mouth.

I didn’t just mean on the outside, or needy on edge like she was. I meant in every way a person could be beautiful.

“Mason,” she sobbed, and I gave her back my mouth.

She came in moments. Her fluids gushed against my hand, she arched helplessly against my arm, and she came trembling, her stomach muscles tensing.

She called my name and my cock ached. The tight slickness of her around my fingers was unbelievable and I couldn’t wait to push inside her.

I kissed my way up her gasping body, undressing her properly as I went. I pulled off my own shirt and threw it to the floor as she watched me intently, her pupils completely dilated and her mouth parted.

I stood at the foot of the bed, unzipping my jeans and pushing them down, letting her take all of me in with her eager eyes.

“You’re so fucking hot, Mason,” she said breathily, still recovering from her orgasm. I grabbed my swollen cock and stroked it a few times for her benefit. My body, at least, I knew she was comfortable wanting. “Get down here.”

I grinned and climbed back onto the bed, leaning over her and making a place for myself between her thighs.

I kissed her slowly, making sure to painstakingly ravish her mouth, and then I knelt up, holding my cock and guiding it into her.

She sighed, tipping her head back. The push home was so slick, so hot, and I had to bite my lip to keep from groaning too loud.

Taryn flexed her muscles around me, and then I did groan, long and helpless. I couldn’t hold off anymore, and I gripped her hips and fucked her, my strokes hard and lengthy.

Her back arched off the bed, her heels digging into my back. Her hands were fisted back in the sheets, twisting up the pretty floral pattern.

Watching her was as good as fucking her, I thought deliriously. Never in my life had I been so visually aroused, my focus so pulled towards every reaction from my partner.

Every time she moaned, I matched the angle and strength of my thrusts. I wanted to make her come again, one last time if it had to be that way, and I paid close attention to every clench of her pussy and every ripple of her stomach

She was close.

I leaned down over her, taking her mouth again, and then we both toppled over the edge, Taryn’s legs wrapping tight around me and holding me deep inside her.

We trembled together, swallowing up each other’s moans. I felt so fucking close to her, melted together with fire and history. I wrapped my arms around her body, under her arched spine, and gasped against her until I was drained and spent, every muscle in my body going slack.

When my vision cleared, the intense euphoria easing and my thoughts coming back down to Earth, Taryn was half-smiling.

I kissed her lazily, but mostly we just inhaled each other’s breaths, soaking up the moment. I pushed the damp hair off her forehead and framed her face with my hands, in so much awe over how stunning she was.

I didn’t have the words to say, not without making myself even more vulnerable than I already had today, and so I nuzzled her nose with a small smile.

“It happened again,” she said, dryly amused.

“We can’t be trusted around each other,” I quipped and Taryn chuckled. “At least you weren’t mad at me this time.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

I conceded to that point, leaning in to kiss her again but not quite getting there when my phone rang.

Taryn groaned. “Okay now I’m mad. Do you have to answer it?”

“If it’s who I think it is, yes.” I felt around the floor for my jeans, wrestling my phone out of the pocket. The screen flashed
Ian
and I turned to Taryn, kissing her briefly. “I’ll be right back.”

I rolled out of bed, grabbing up my underwear and hopping into it as I headed out into the hall and down the stairs.

“Ian?”

His voice down the line sounded muffled by people and music, the sound of some busy bar. “I got your info about that Ethan Foster guy. I know who wants him dead.”

“Where the hell are you?”

“Monroe’s,” Ian told me, trying to keep his voice hushed even under the ruckus.

“Holy shit.” That couldn’t mean what I thought it meant. “What did you find out?”

“You’re not gonna like it…”

No, I didn’t think I was.

Chapter Five
Taryn

Mason hustled me out of bed, handing me my bathrobe and urging me into the living room.

Still walking around in his underwear, the bright light of day continually reminding me what a damn fine body he had, he sat me down on the sofa.

His movements were taut and unhappy and I knew it couldn’t be good news.

“Seriously, Mason, you’re freaking me out.”

“It’s about Ethan,” he said, standing in the center of the room, arms folded tightly over his bare chest. I tensed everywhere, waiting for him to deliver the worst. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Well,” I said slowly, frowning, “that’s good, isn’t it?”

“You’d think, but the person who wants him dead is the problem.” Mason dragged a hand through his hair. “His name is Carl Monroe.” He paused for a long time, and I felt myself leaning over my knees, my heart somewhere in my throat. “He’s the leader of a criminal organization, a pretty fucking serious one.”

“How serious?”

“Drugs, kidnapping, murder, money laundering—”

“He’s the
mob
?” I spluttered.

“Basically, yes.”

“Oh my God.”

How—how could this have happened? How did Ethan end up wanted by the fucking mob?

“Apparently, Ethan’s father raped and murdered Carl Monroe’s daughter,” Mason explained roughly, staring beyond me—a place I couldn’t reach, a past that still haunted him. I didn’t blame him; I couldn’t believe what I was hearing either. “She probably dared to say no to him like my mother did,” he spat, a sneer on his face.

That monster. I stood, ready to comfort Mason, his name soft on my lips.

But he whirled around before I could get close, his fist connecting with my drywall with an awful, resounding crack. “That piece of fucking shit!”

“Jesus!” I darted forwards, gripping his shoulders and hauling him back. “Mason, goddammit, look at me.”

He was breathing hard, his muscles stood out tense against my hands, but he did, he looked at me, an unquenchable fire in his stare that I’d never seen before. It spoke of violence, of blood, of deeds I had no understanding of.

“His death was too quick,” he muttered feverishly. “I should’ve made him scream.”

“Mason!” I yelled, digging my fingernails into his skin—anything to bring him back to me. “He’s gone. You rid the world of that evil man and that’s all that matters.”

I understood perfectly, now, why he did what he did. Mason’s eyes were a door to the past, all the pain William Foster had spread in this world right there for me to see. That man deserved to pay for his crimes, and yesterday the police had laughed me out of the station over this whole mess. It didn’t take a genius to see that Mason had had few choices.

Did I wish he’d told me a decade ago?
Yes
, I thought genuinely. I’d have carried that weight for him. Better than losing him like I did, carrying a child for nine months whose father was little more than a ghost.

I couldn’t change the past, though; neither of us could. We could only deal with what was in front of us.

“It was justice,” I told him firmly, and he blinked, finally seeing me properly. “What you did was justice.”

“And revenge,” he breathed. “Murder.”

“He deserved it,” I said intently. “But you didn’t. You didn’t deserve to be the person that had to do that.”

Mason laughed humorlessly. “I did more. Worse.”

“Is that it, then?” I snapped. “This is your lot in life and you’re just gonna accept it? Keep killing forever? Live a life in the dark, full of death and loneliness?”

“I don’t know.”

He didn’t—I took a deep, steadying breath and tried not to get angry again. It wasn’t going to help either of us if we devolved into another shouting match.

“How can you say that?” I asked calmly, clinging to my temper.

“Killing is all I’m good for, Taryn.”

“That cannot
possibly
be true.”

“Men like William Foster leave a legacy,” Mason said flatly. “Me, Monroe, Ethan. It goes around and around and it never ends, we never get to break out of it.”

I raised my voice. “Ethan can’t die.”

Mason looked at me, startled. He blinked, the glassy look in his eyes fading. He was coming back to me in pieces but I realized I might never see a whole man here again.

I was already preparing myself to lose him again.

I pulled away, slumping back down into the sofa cushions, needing some space. “What a mess we’re in.”

“We?”

“I’m in this, Mason,” I said fiercely. “For Ethan, and for you. I’m mad as hell at you but I get it now, the terrible thing you did.”

Mason stared at me, his vulnerabilities tucked safely away now and his gaze inscrutable. I was glad; I’d had enough emotional ups and downs for one day.

“Okay,” he simply said. “Anything I find out, you’ll know too.”

“Thank you.” I nodded. “You know what, though? I’m actually kinda glad.” I looked up at the photograph on my mantle: Anna, Ethan, Daisy, and me at the beach last summer. I saw Mason frowning at me in my peripheral vision. “It means that at least Anna married a good man. We weren’t wrong about him.”

“Things are still fucked, Taryn.”

I tossed him a tired smile; it cost me what little remained of my energy. “Yeah, well, I’m a glass-half-full kinda gal.”

Mason glared, and I thought for a second he’d start ranting again, but his expression cracked into a fond, exasperated smile. “You’re nuts.”

I scoffed, so relieved that he’d finally found some humor in the situation. “Look who’s talking.”

This frankness between us was refreshing and I felt lighter for it. Mason had let me see a glimpse of his struggle, had shared the darkest part of his life with me, and I appreciated his honesty, however belated. He’d seen my love for Anna and Ethan and hadn’t shut me out of the hard reality we were all facing.

Yes, the situation was still
fucked
, as Mason so succinctly put it, but Ethan wasn’t his father, and that mattered.

“So, what now?” he asked, looking to me for input.

I hesitated, wary of the responsibility. “I think you need to explain all this to Ethan. He deserves to know.”

“And to my sister.”

“And to your sister, yes.”

“She’s going to hate me.”

“A few days ago I hated you,” I pointed out. “She’ll get over it.”

“Oh,
you’re
over it, are you?” Mason drawled, too dry and self-loathing for my liking. I had to rectify that.

“Maybe not over it,” I said honestly—he’d showed me some and now it was my turn. “But I think, maybe, I could get there.”

He seemed surprised, raising his eyebrows. Other than that, I didn’t know what he was thinking, if he believed me, if he even cared.

No, he definitely cared. I knew that much.

“I told you you were nuts,” he sighed. “Let’s just hope my sister still is.”

For everyone’s sake, I sincerely did.