Reckless (World of Danger Book 3) Read online

  "You like that?" he asked softly when he reached her ear. His tongue swiped over the shell. She withered beneath him, pushing her ass into his groin.

  “You know I do,” she said.

  “You’re a naughty girl, teasing me with your body.” He smacked her ass cheek again, a little harder than before, and she jumped. “Naughty girls need to be taught a lesson.”

  She wiggled her butt. “I’m your naughty girl.”

  He smacked the other ass cheek. “Are you wet for me, naughty girl?”

  “Yes,” she gasped. “Always, baby.”

  He massaged the two areas where his faint handprint lingered before nudging her thighs open with a knee. Her pretty pink asshole and pussy were on display. Wanting to make sure she was as aroused as he was, he slipped a finger inside her cunt to find the nexus that always made her orgasm almost immediately. Her hips bucked when he found it, and she panted like a cat in heat.

  As he continued to rub that spot inside her, he reached over to the nightstand and grabbed a bottle of lube from the drawer. He brought it back and flipped open the top with his thumbnail before dribbling it onto his cock and into her crack. Then he leaned over and placed his dick at her entrance, before removing his finger and sliding in. Heat enveloped him as he buried himself to the hilt.

  “Oh, yes!” she cried out. “Fuck me!”

  Glad to oblige, he surged forward. With each thrust he made sure he hit her sweet spot. Leaning up some to gain leverage, he pulled her hips more firmly into his and placed his thumb at her back entrance, teasing the rosette by pressing inward. He fucked both holes, driving her wild. He loved that she trusted him with such an intimate part of her body.

  The sex was down and dirty as he pumped her pussy with his cock and his thumb into her ass. He loved it. Loved her. He wanted to come so bad, but he waited until she went first. Their furious pace had him practically fucking her across the bed. Her body convulsed as she came hard, all over his cock, screaming out his name. Quickly he pulled out and removed his thumb from her ass before lining up his cock and pushing into her tight back hole. Fucking her ass was different than fucking her pussy. Exhilarating. Sublime. There was no way to contain his own release and followed her a second later, climaxing so hard stars popped behind his eyelids. He collapsed on her, flattening her out which caused his cock to slide out of her ass, so he quickly flopped over onto his side. She turned her head, panting, and gave him a sexy, sated smile.

  “I needed that,” she murmured.

  “Yeah, me, too,” he replied. “Love you.”

  “Love you back.” She rolled onto her side and propped her head up on her hand. “I guess you’re going to say we need to shower and get back.”

  “Yeah, although I hate to leave this bed right now.”

  She ran a finger down the bridge of his nose and tapped the end. “We’ll have sex in JD’s office and then every time you have a meeting in there you can snicker at what we did.”

  He chuckled and patted her thigh. “I love your devious mind. Okay. I’ll shower first.”

  He washed up quickly and turned it over to her, before dressing. He grabbed his backpack and hers and took them out to the car. It wasn’t until he’d loaded everything up that he noticed something on the windshield, stuck under the wiper blade. As he got closer, he realized it was a feather.

  Time stood still. Everything froze. All that he’d once been, all that he was now, stripped away. He didn’t have to pick it up to know what it meant, or who had left it, and the past he’d tried so hard to forget came roaring back to life. He forced the paralysis to go away and stepped closer, slowly reaching out to pluck the feather from its resting place.

  “What is that?”

  He turned. Carrie came forward, long wet hair hanging down her back. He wanted to tell her to hide her eyes, to turn away so he could lie and say the feather meant absolutely nothing. But this was Carrie and not only could he not lie to her, she was too smart to fall for any passive aggressive bullshit he could peddle.

  “We need to go,” he said. “Now.”

  It seemed she recognized the urgency in his tone. With a small nod, she went back to the house, closing the door and locking up. Gripping the feather, he got behind the wheel and she slid into the passenger side. They didn’t talk as he drove them back to the office. He was too busy glancing in the rearview mirror to see if they were being followed.

  “There’s no one behind us,” she murmured, reading his mind.

  He gripped the steering wheel so tight, his knuckles turned white. “There was someone.”

  She reached into the console and picked up the feather. He had no memory of tossing it there.

  “What does this mean?” she asked.

  “Damn it, don’t ask me.”

  “I’m asking, Mason.”

  He didn’t want to answer because then she’d find out exactly what kind of man he was. A killer. Someone who’d do anything to escape the fate that had been dealt. When he stopped at a red light, he looked over to her to see soft understanding shining in her big blue eyes.

  “It’s an eagle feather,” he said, all his defenses crumbling into dust. “Eagles are a sacred bird to the Apache.”

  “Apache,” she said thoughtfully. “I often wondered what tribe you were from.”

  “No tribe, just genetics.”

  “Where did the feather come from?”

  “It was on the windshield. Left there so I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “A calling card.” The feather twirled in between her fingers. “So your past, whatever it is, has come to collect. You were right.”

  He banged the steering wheel. “I didn’t want to be right.”

  “What happened, Mason?”

  “If I tell you … you may not love me anymore.”

  She snorted. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily. Would you love me less if I told you I had been to prison?”

  “No. Wait, you were in prison?”

  “It’s green,” she said, pointing to the traffic light. A car honked behind them and he continued the drive. “Yes, I was in prison. Hacker, remember? Didn’t have much choice when Harlan senior came and offered me a different life, but I suspect that part of the story you know well.”

  “Yes. Harlan was good at making bargains you couldn’t say no to. Is Carrie your real name?”

  “Yes,” she said, sounding surprised. “Why? Mason isn’t yours?”

  “I have an Apache birth name. Lise. It means salmon in the water.”

  “Tell me about Lise.”

  He didn’t speak right away as he tried to organize his life, and then realized it wasn’t much of a task. “Lise was born on the reservation in Arizona. My dad was a soldier, knocked up my mom, and married her before splitting. She couldn’t deal and left me with my granddad, who raised me. That’s about it.”

  “Nothing about that explains the feather.”

  “I wasn’t quite Apache enough, but I wasn’t white enough either, so I kinda listed between the two worlds. When you grow up stuck in the middle, you either follow the straight and narrow path or you go wild. I went the former way. I couldn’t afford to act up, but kids can be cruel, especially Native kids. There was a group I didn’t like and who didn’t like me.”

  He turned into the company parking garage and pulled into his designated spot before turning off the engine. They both sat there in the dark interior.

  “I joined the marines to get out of the squalor of the reservation,” he said, losing himself in the memories. “The government gave us the land, but not the means to help us. Kids go without food, without medicine. No education. There’s no future there. I had to get out, had to make something of myself. My granddad was proud of me, but he never saw me in my uniform. He died, alone in his trailer, surrounded by the superstition and lore he believed in.”

  Mason didn’t know how to articulate the feeling of loss that had consumed him when his granddad had died. Carrie took hold of his hand and squeezed, and t
he gesture comforted him.

  “I went back the first chance I had to get his belongings,” he continued. “And that’s when my life ended. All my careful plans. All my hopes and dreams of what I wanted in my future. The kids who tormented me then had returned. Looking for a fight. And I… One reckless, alcohol fueled moment destroyed everything.”

  “What happened?”

  The memories he’d suppressed flashed to the surface. “There was a fight. A gun was pulled out and I knocked it away as it fired. The bullet hit his girlfriend, killing her. I was arrested. That’s when Harlan senior showed up, offering me a proposition I couldn’t refuse, and I didn’t want to spend my life behind bars.”

  “I know that feeling all too well,” she said patting his hand. “Sounds to me you were defending yourself.”

  He nodded. “I was, but the military tribunal didn’t see it that way. They saw a breech in honor. I had no choice but to accept Harlan’s offer. So Lise Mason died and in his place rose Mason Lake. That’s it. That’s the horror I can never outrun.”

  “Look at me,” she said. He turned and stared into her luminous gaze. “That was not your fault. You are a victim, much like the woman who died. Wrong place, wrong time. That sin isn’t yours, Mason. It’s an aberration in the justice of this world. The feather is from him, isn’t it? This tormentor of yours.”

  “Yes. His name is Latorre. Like Lee’s past that came to hunt him down, mine is here as well.”

  “Well, this Latorre can go fuck himself because we’re going to mess up his plan all to hell,” she said firmly. “We’ll hang out at the office, we’re going to find JD, and we’re going to deal with this asshole so we can get on with our lives.”

  Some weight eased off his shoulders. He’d always been afraid to tell her the truth, intent on ignoring the burden he couldn’t shake free. In just a few minutes she’d taken that anvil and smashed it to pieces. He cupped her face and kissed her on the lips.

  “How’d I get so fucking lucky?” he asked, although he really didn’t need an answer. It was more of a rhetorical question.

  “Good things come to good people,” she replied.

  “You believe that?”

  “Yes, Mason. I really do.”

  Chapter Six

  To err on the side of caution, Mason decided to cancel all the upcoming meetings with new clients. The current clientele mostly had in-home installation needs and office spyware, all things that his tech agents could handle, but the more personal stuff, the safeguarding that Lee took care of, he had to turn away. Lee had been the gun-for-hire, able to protect someone without letting his conscience or morals get in the way. Those jobs were word-of-mouth only, without any paper trail, and the transactions were paid in cash.

  The days blended together as he and Carrie lived at the office. Knowing he had to maintain the status quo, he worked hard to not think about the potential target centered on his back. Paranoia, however, had a way of burrowing into one’s mind, spreading like a cancer, but he tried hard not to let it get to him.

  Above all, he had to maintain control.

  The loss of control led to innocent people getting hurt. It was a lesson he learned long ago, and every day he made the commitment to never let his anger get the best of him. At night, he had Carrie to hold on to. She soothed his soul and made him believe that he was worthy to find happiness, and he basked in her light.

  Policy changed as well. No more outside contractors. No more hiring from temp agencies, even as something as mundane as data entry. Loyalty was his top priority and as such, he gave all current employees a bonus. Money had a way of maintaining absolute faith in staff. It was a gamble, but one he felt was the right way to go.

  Along the third week of JD being gone, Mason sat trying to do his own research about Bimi Latorre when his phone rang. He glanced at it to see it was an internal call. Scooping it up, he closed his browser.

  “Lake,” he all but growled into the mouthpiece.

  “Get in here,” Carrie said. “I’ve got something.”

  She hung up.

  The abruptness of her call had him practically sprinting to her cold office, where all three computers were running with code.

  “I found him,” she said without looking at him. She hit a few buttons on her keyboard and an image of a man Mason didn’t know came up. “This was the man who went after Lee. His autopsy results were finally posted.”

  “What does he have to do with JD?”

  “He was part of the group that killed Lee’s father in Tennessee twenty some-odd years ago.”

  “That group was after Harlan senior, about the death of Paddy O’Connor.”

  “That wasn’t what it was about at all,” she said sharply, throwing him a glare. “I get the fact there are secrets you want to hide about the operations that this place used to conduct, but it would’ve helped a lot to let me know what the hell I was searching for.”

  “Continue,” he ordered, ignoring her retort.

  “I suppose the name Denton Slidell doesn’t ring a bell?”

  “Oh, it’s ringing lots and lots of them.”

  “God damn it! You’re going to make me spell this out, aren’t you?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Slidell was arrested and put to death for the murder of O’Connor when the NRA leader wanted to negotiate a peace treaty. I never knew the real reason why Lee’s dad quit, but after I found the tape exonerating Slidell, I suspected it was because of the betrayal.”

  “Harlan senior did it, didn’t he? He killed O’Connor.”

  Mason nodded.

  “Well, I spent the past two weeks diving into that and learned some interesting things. First, Slidell had a daughter and all the financial transactions lead back to her. She recruited all the men from the past, including your own Bimi Latorre. He’s on the terrorist hotlist, by the way.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  She held up a finger. “But would it surprise you to know he has two lackeys who have frequented the same Starbucks on Wilshire and Santa Monica for the past few weeks?”

  He blinked. “Would their names be Jimuta and Delshaw?”

  “Pull those names out of thin air?” She snorted. “The pharmacy next to the coffeehouse has our facial recognition software, and it tracked them.”

  “Wherever they are, Latorre has to be close by. They’ve been with him since we were kids.”

  “Everywhere that Mary went the lambs were sure to go,” she murmured. “Slidell’s daughter recruited him when he got out of prison for manslaughter.”

  “He should’ve rotted to hell in there.”

  “I find it interesting she targeted him, just as she was able to recruit Lee’s bad guy. I can’t imagine who she got to go after JD, but his life is a like a puzzle. Harlan senior certainly had his secrets.”

  “She’s the one who took JD?”

  “The coffins that were flown back to England were picked up by one of her dummy corporations. She’s very good at leading false trails, but I’m better at unearthing them.”

  “That would narrow it down to Ireland, wouldn’t it? Her father was Irish.”

  “So it would seem, but we can’t be a hundred percent. He’s still untraceable, and until she does something where I can find her.”

  He sat down heavily in a chair and wiped a tired hand over his face. He hadn’t realized just how tired he was until that moment.

  “One last thing,” she said, pulling up a picture of Renee Hammond, their internal spy. “She’s Slidell’s daughter and she’s been planning this for quite some time.”

  He stared at the picture and recognized the woman immediately. It brought a sickening feel to his stomach knowing she’d been the fox in their henhouse. “Her background check revealed nothing.”

  “Because she’s really good at this.”

  He rose from the chair and kicked at it in frustration, sending it skidding across the tiled floor. “God damn it!”

  Carrie rose and hurried toward him,
wrapping her arms around him from behind. She rested her cheek against his back. “It’s going to be okay. We know the who and we know the why. We’ll find JD.”

  He drew in a ragged breath. “And then where do we go? How do we get past this?”

  “One day at a time,” she murmured. “We’ll figure it all out.”

  ****

  Later that day Carrie rose and stretched. She needed a break from poring over code. Her eyes itched and she made a mental bet that if she looked in the mirror, a pair of blood-shot orbs would be staring back. Heading into the bathroom adjoining JD’s office, she discovered she was right. Bending over the sink, she splashed water on her face, trying to ease the strain that reflected back.

  Her gaze landed on her birth-control pills. The pack was almost done, which meant she needed to grab another one since they served more than just preventing an unwanted pregnancy. She struggled with endometriosis and couldn’t afford to skip a dose. She would have to go back home and get another pack.

  Carrie left the bathroom and went searching for Mason. She found him in the meeting room with the tech crew and decided not to bother him. Besides, she’d only be gone for half an hour. He probably wouldn’t even notice she was gone. Making up her mind, she went back to his office and grabbed his keys before making her way out of the office and into the parking garage. The sun was bright, and she blinked against the glare, not having been outside in a few weeks. She hadn’t realized just how stir-crazy being indoors had made her.

  Leaving the garage, she drove back to their house which wasn’t that far away. When they had house hunted together, they had agreed it was worth settling for something smaller but closer to work. Los Angeles traffic was notoriously horrendous. Moments later she pulled into the parking lot and hurried inside. The house was still locked up, nothing was disturbed, and it made her wonder if their paranoia had gotten the best of them. Carrie grabbed her birth-control and a few other toiletries before leaving, once more locking up the house. She set everything on the passenger seat and backed out of the drive to retrace her journey. As she approached the first light, a large black SUV pulled up rather close behind her. All Carrie could see in the rearview mirror were the vehicle’s headlights.