“Sure, but make sure the next one bites. I’m still thawing out.” He picks up his mug and holds it out to me. I reach for it. “And one more thing . . .”
As I grab his mug, he snags me by the wrist and pulls me down. With a quick tilt of his head he plants his lips against mine. The warm, soft contact and sweet, chocolatey flavor of his tongue infuses my entire body with heat.
I nearly lose my balance when he releases me, and if any part of me had still been cold, it’s gone molten now.
“Um. Wow.”
His blanket falls off his shoulders and splays open all the way to his navel, displaying even more ink. I didn’t have enough time to explore in between rounds of sex last night, and it’s all I can do not to abandon the offer of hot drinks and work on warming him up myself.
But we’re talking. And it’s getting deep, which is such a new experience for me, I don’t want it to end just yet.
Drunk with the heady flavor of his kiss, I totter off to the kitchen. Before I even register what I’m doing, there are two fresh, steaming mugs of cocoa on the counter. He said he wanted bite . . .
I stick my head back into the pantry and snag a dusty bottle of whiskey. Uncorking it, I take a sniff, then toss a healthy dollop into each mug.
I’ll give him bite.
I smile, my mind going to a special place. A place where my teeth sink softly into that succulent piece of tattooed muscle right over his hip before I lick my way in and find a tastier morsel to feast on. I can already taste him, and my mouth waters. One thing I suppose I can thank Barnaby for is his incessant need for being on the receiving end of oral sex, so I’ve gotten pretty damn good at it over the years, if I do say so myself. And after Mason’s performance last night, he deserves it.
“With bite,” I say, handing him the mug before sitting down next to him. I shift slightly to face him, leaning sideways on the back of the sofa and watching while he takes a sip of the whiskey-infused cocoa. His eyebrows draw together and his nostrils flare.
“Goddamn, this is good.”
The name tattooed on his forearm stares at me as he drinks, and my stomach churns. The whiskey in my cocoa is slow to numb the curiosity and conflict warring inside me. I desperately want to trust him, but that tattoo is making it difficult.
“Who is she?” I blurt, hating how pitiful and pleading my voice sounds.
Mason shifts his mug to his other hand and stares down at the trio of letters emblazoned on his arm. Then he looks at me, lips pressed in a thin line. “To explain her, I think I need to start at the beginning. Are you okay with a long-ass story? It isn’t a pretty one, but I think it’ll help you understand.”
I merely nod, though inside I’m rejoicing that he’s going to open up.
He starts to speak, then laughs and says, “I almost forgot. You met my dad, didn’t you?”
“Um, yeah. He’s a piece of work.”
Shaking his head, he says, “Then this story just got a lot shorter. Julian Santos has always been a mean, brutal bastard. I don’t need to explain that to you—you saw it yourself. There’s no doubt in my mind he’s the reason Mom had a stroke. Maybe he didn’t beat her last week, but he’s been hitting her for years, and that shit adds up. She always ran interference for me and my brothers, but we got our share of the man’s fists when she wasn’t there to stop him.”
I’m not sure what to say, so I just murmur, “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not your fault. But sharing a name with that bastard got to me, you know?”
Realization dawns. “He’s the reason you changed your name, isn’t he?”
“Partly. The undercover gig gave me a plausible excuse to make it permanent. I’d been using Mason Black for a few years already, so it was like slipping into a familiar pair of shoes that always fit better than the ones I’d been wearing all my life. My hatred of that asshole knows no bounds.”
“Understandable,” I agree, though I’m not sure what this has to do with a girl. Then he continues, and the pieces begin to fall into place.
“But the name is just on the outside. I can’t shed the blood tie to the bastard. The fucking devious bent, the thirst for violence. I’m not proud of it, but that’s part of who I am. Traits that no doubt came from him. He was our goddamn father. And he beat his own kids. He beat his wife bad enough she’s in a coma. I couldn’t know if that was yet another monster living inside me, waiting to wake up. So I decided it was for the best if I never had kids of my own, because there’s no fucking way I’d risk turning into him and hurting them.”
His jaw clenches hard and his knuckles are white where he grips his mug, lifting it to take a long swallow. I quietly rise and pad to the kitchen to retrieve the whiskey. When I return, he holds his mug out and I pour a healthy amount into it.
“I was all about getting the job done in Mexico. Ingratiating myself to my superiors. Getting into the inner circle. I’m good at it, so it was easy. But also not. I’m not a heartless bastard.” He spears me with a pained look as if he’s begging me to believe him. “Not all of them are mindless criminals, either. They’re real people who have lives, families. They started to mean something to me too, and every single lie I told the ones I cared about took a chunk out of me.
“But
