Long Way Down (Fallen Angels MC) (4 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Everything inside of her clenched at his tone, and she found herself whimpering.

Somehow it seemed like he maneuvered both their shirts off without letting go of her hands for more than a moment, and then he was in motion again, his mouth and teeth and fingers everywhere on her body. When he slid his fingers down her well-trimmed mound and traced the lightest circle she could imagine around her clit, she bit down on her own lip, choking on a scream.

“Oh, really?” he said. “You that eager?”

“Yes,” she gasped. “God, yes.”

“You want me inside you?” His fingers moved down farther, teasing at her entrance. She was moaning, rocking her hips, trying to buck him inside of her, but he evaded her every movement.

“Please.” She didn’t have enough air to do more than whisper. “God, please. Yes. Please.”

“Tough,” he said, and dropped to his knees, spreading her thighs into a wider stance and softly blowing air over her swollen and heated entrance. She cried out, her hands pressing wide, searching for something to give her balance; without giving her time to recover at all, he separated her folds with his tongue, drawing her clit into his mouth and suckling it.

She screamed, her hips moving against him frantically. It was too intense to make her orgasm, too much entirely, but she was desperate, urgent, so full of need and want and he was filling her up with his tongue, then teasing her clit again as his fingers penetrated her, opening her up as she cried out against his rhythm.

One hand braced on the doorjamb, the other resting on her bureau, and she let him guide one leg over his shoulder—let him take her weight as he knelt before her, fingers, tongue, body entirely given over to him and his quest for her pleasure.

When she came, her eyes flew wide, and she didn’t make a sound. All she could do was inhale, more and more, as her body rocked with him and stars burst behind her eyes. Distantly, she was aware that she was all but riding his face, that he was crying out, the vibrations of his sound driving her to higher peaks, that his tongue was filling her body and that his finger had opened her ass, and she was more full and swollen and amazing than she’d ever been before.

She didn’t scream until the aftershocks started, and then she collapsed entirely, thrusting and convulsing, her belly rippling as he dragged wave after wave after wave of pleasure out of her. When she thought she was done, he’d drag his tongue over her one more time, thrust into her ass just a little bit deeper, and she’d discover there was more yet to give.

When she was so worn that all she could do was gasp, he finally released her, laughing to himself as he eased her down on the bed. “Feel good?”

She managed to swallow and get her throat wet enough for a raspy laugh. “All right, I guess? I mean, if that was your best effort.”

The low, rumbling growl from his throat woke her body up all over again. She reached down the front of his boxers and cupped him in her hand. He thrust against her palm for a moment, his head on her shoulder, his hair falling around his face, and then he pinned her hands up above her head again. “Condom,” he murmured into her ear, bucking his body up against hers.

“In the nightstand.”

He nodded. “Move your hands one inch, and I will slap your ass until you bruise.”

In the corner of her mind that wasn’t utterly consumed with lust, she spared a moment to be irritated with the fact that he could spank her if he wanted to, but she seriously doubted she was strong enough to bend him down without his consent. The rest of her responded with a flush of interest, with a surprised splash of wet that made her wriggle and squirm for him.

“You like that?” The pressure on her hands increased just a little more, and she sighed up against him. This sensation, this giving over of control—it was fine. It was good.

“I don’t know,” she said, honestly. “I’ve never… done that before? But I… don’t think I would object out of the gate.”

He nodded. “Noted.”

He reached into the nightstand drawer and found a condom. Mason was subtle as he glanced at the expiration date, but she still saw it, and she liked it. She didn’t move an inch as he smoothed the latex in place, and then he was between her thighs, holding her hands down with one of his own as he teased her clit with the other, pressing into her.

She angled her hips up, welcoming the sense of fullness as he buried himself to the hilt in her, and she watched him sigh in quiet ecstasy before his eyes opened all the way again.

He locked his gaze onto Caroline’s as he started to rock into her. The intense eye contact was incredibly erotic. He was leaning far down over her, his weight bearing her down into the mattress as his rhythm started to pick up.

She wrapped her legs around him, high around his back, letting him enter her more deeply and pulling him into the angle she wanted. His motions vibrated up through her clit, and she moaned with the warmth building up in her body again.

She didn’t think she could come again, didn’t think she had the energy left in her. But as his pleasure built, and his thrusts grew ragged, desperate, he got louder, groaning and grunting as drilled deeply inside of her, touching spaces that had been left dark for so long that she didn’t even know what was contained within.

He bit at the top of her breast and then cried out, his hand going to her hips and lifting them just enough to give him total access to her depths, locking them together as he spasmed within her, again and again and again. She cried out, not with a physical orgasm, but with an emotional intensity, a sense of shared purpose, and a sense of connection she’d only ever read about in books.

Afterwards, he lay beside her, holding her and tracing his fingers through her hair.

“Thank you,” he said, after a while. “I’m—I didn’t mean to use you quite that much. You seemed to enjoy yourself, though?”

“I wish everyone who used me did it so well,” she said, only realizing after the words were out how they said so much more than she meant them to.

He rolled up onto his elbow and she lay back, blinking to clear the moisture that had shown up in her eyes, utterly uninvited. His hand came to her belly, incredibly soft and gentle. She still couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For whatever happened.”

“It’s not your fault—” It was almost a reflex, now, wasn’t it? But he cut her off right back.

“Clearly it’s not, because I’ve known you for a day and haven’t done anything that I need to apologize for.” He paused. “At least, not that you’ve told me about. But I’m sorry that it’s something you even have to think about. I’m sorry that there are dudes out there who would treat a lady like that.”

She shrugged, keeping herself together by the skin of her teeth. “It’s not just dudes. I’ve used people, too.”

“You using me right now?”

Caroline looked him in the eyes, finally. She didn’t see any judgment in his gaze, just an honest question. “Maybe a little? The itch needed scratching, but— there’s more there. At least, I think there is. The potential for more, anyway.”

God, she was acting like an idiot. This guy was not the settling down type, and she was being an idiot to even imagine a world where there was more to this than her helping this guy figure out who was using him to steal money from his motorcycle club and then watching him ride off into the distance. Getting incredibly well laid was just a nice perk that she’d be a fool not to take advantage of.

He nodded quietly and didn’t say much of anything in return. He lay down again and was silent. After a few minutes, she heard him start to snore gently. She took the chance of kissing him lightly on the lips, then got dressed again and went back out to the kitchen.

CHAPTER EIGHT

While Mason slept, Caroline stared at the numbers, trying to make sense of how someone could have done this. She’d told Mason the truth—she was much more of a financial advisor than an actual accountant, and she was definitely not a forensic accountant, one of those pros who went into mobster’s accounts and figured out how they were laundering money or skimming the funds.

But what she needed to figure out what how someone had done this. From there, she could figure out who had access to the information that was needed to frae him, and then it was just a matter of narrowing down the list of people with access to the person who was guilty. At least, that was how it worked on CSI.

The odds were good that the only thing she should do from here was to tell Mason to take this all to the police. The problem was that she might as well tell him to shove the ledger up his ass and wait to see how long it took for someone to start blackmailing him to steal bigger and bigger sums from the club.

He’d said that she wouldn’t find proof of illegal activities in the paperwork he’d brought her. That was a far cry from saying the cops wouldn’t be able to find proof. Even in Vermont, there were a couple of forensic accountants in the police department. She’d had to talk to them on occasion when clients from Second Chances turned out to be doing things more nefarious than she’d been told about.

Setting up a bank account took fake ID at least, and if he was writing checks, he had to be depositing them somewhere. One of those check cashing joints took a hefty percentage, and someone who’d stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars wasn’t going to be sharing that money if they didn’t have to. Most of the local banks wouldn’t open an account online, but some of the online companies would. With a smartphone that let you do mobile depositing, someone could pull that off.

But thinking it through, Caroline felt her guts twisting with nervousness. This wasn’t the act of someone who’d seen an opportunity, grabbed a bunch of cash, and made a run for it. This was deliberate and careful.

She had no doubts that drug dealers, no matter how “soft” their dealings, had the connections to buy whatever fake paperwork was necessary to open a bank account. Someone who had the foresight to cover their tracks, to set someone else up as the obvious fall-guy—that was someone who was dangerous.

“We should go out to lunch,” Mason said from right behind her, and she jumped nearly a foot in the air, choking back a scream. “And then I’ll take this mess off your hands. Call it a good day’s work. I know Munch said that you usually charge a consulting fee for stuff like this, and I’ll get that to you as soon as I get everything sorted out.”

She waved a hand. “You came to me at work. It’s covered by my salary.”

“Which must be pretty pathetic. Do-gooders usually get paid crap.”

“Not all rewards are monetary.” Holy crap, did she always sound like this much of a prissy brat? She at least managed to stop herself from pursing her lips and giving him a superior little glare across the bridge of her nose.

“Of course they’re not,” he said, laughing. “A person could be motivated by a sense of community, or a higher purpose. They might even feel like they’re making a positive difference in the world, doing what they do.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Yeah, I get it. I wear the leather, I wear the patches, I’ve got the ink. I look like the bad guy on TV. But I’m not, you know? Not any more than I think you’re the stuck up accountant image that you try to project.”

He shrugged, but she was seeing more tension in him than she liked. “Some philosopher said a thing once about how if you stay in society and reap its benefits, you have to live by the rules of society. I think that’s a bunch of crap. If you’re not comfortable with that, then we should part ways, no harm, no foul.” 

“I—” His shoulders and face were relaxed, but his hands were bunched into fists, his knuckles ice white. She had no idea what to say, and her mouth took over. “You’re in my house.”

His eyes narrowed. “That can be fixed.”

“No—” It wasn’t just the sex that made her call out to him, made her reach out for his hand and take it, even though it was still a tight fist. “You’re right. That was a priggish thing to say, and I’m sorry. I— Teddy’s never been willing to talk to me about why he spends so much time with his ‘brothers and sisters.’ We were close, when we were kids, but then something happened, and we weren’t close any more. And I tried to talk to him about why, and got a whole lot of ‘you wouldn’t understand.’”

Mason’s hand was slowly relaxing in hers. “If it’s what I think—you
wouldn’t
understand.”

“Well that’s just fine, Mason, but I would try. Even if I didn’t understand, I would try. And right now, no one’s giving me the chance.”

She watched his eyes close, saw him take a long deep breath, and then another, and finally his fingers opened up, twining around hers. “As a breed, we tend to have trust issues. Makes it hard to find a place to stick. Makes us sensitive to— to guessing that people are thinking a certain way about us.”

“I get that,” she said. “When I said that you’re in my house? What I meant to say was that if I thought you were all that stuff, I wouldn’t have let you in the front door. I don’t know all that much about you, but I believe that I can trust you. And I don’t— I don’t trust all that easily either. So I’m sorry for punching your buttons, and I’ll try not to do it again. Okay?”

He pulled her to her feet, kissing her hard, as if they hadn’t just fucked until she was aching. She whimpered against him, and his hands tightened in her hair. “Damn, woman,” he said into her neck. “Are you trying to make me hard again already?”

He tilted her head back, the better to expose her throat, and she sighed. “Call it a pleasant side effect?”

“Pleasant for you,” he growled, and she laughed. He hugged her close, then, and there was an intensity to it that she hadn’t felt in all their sex. And then he stepped away, kissing her lightly on the corner of her mouth, and smiled. “I do mean it, though. You’ve shown me what’s going on. It’s up to me to sort it out from here.”

“I’m going to make a suggestion you’re going to hate,” she said.

He nodded. “The cops?”

“Yeah.”

“I was thinking about it. Weighing the risks.” Mason sat down on the couch in the living room, and Caroline followed him. He was relaxed against the arm of the couch, staring off into the distance. She wanted to curl up into his shoulder, relax against him, but that was something she’d never permitted herself to do before. To be supported by someone else.

She didn’t know if he saw the desire in her eyes, but he put his arm up on the back of the couch and shifted to make himself more comfortable for her. She took the invitation for what it was and let him draw her in, snuggling close to him.
Just for now
, she thought. Just for today. She could enjoy this while it lasted, and then let it go when she needed to.

“If I got to the cops,” he said, his arm tightening around her, “There’s a lot of possibilities. They could take my word that someone’s setting me up and investigate. Or they might not look past it. Someone who thought this far might have put other things in place. Made it look like I was the one who got her social security number to set up a bank account. And if they don’t do that, if they do investigate, and they do see through whatever smoke is in place, then a lot of good men and women who are just doing what they can to get by are going to be in trouble. I don’t want to do that. Not just because they’re my brothers and sisters, but because they’re good people.” He pressed his lips to her hair, and she almost purred. “I have to do my best to deal with this on my own. Going to the police is the last possible option.”

“That makes sense.”

“Does it really?”

She took a deep breath and told the truth. “I don’t know if I’d be strong enough to do it, in your shoes. But yeah, it does make sense. I get why you’d do it that way. So how are you going to find out who’s doing all this?”

Another kiss on her hair, and her eyes were closing. “That’s why we’re going to lunch, and then I’m leaving. Whatever I do, it’s going to be dangerous, and I don’t want anyone involved in it who doesn’t have to be.”