Free Mason: Fallen Angels MC by Laura Day Page B

do this my way, Caro. I’m going to go now, and if I can, I’ll come back to you. I’ll always come for you.”
     
    “You know, in the movies? That didn’t work out so well for the guy.”
     
    He shrugged, and her heart stilled. “You’ll just have to find the six-fingered man, then.”
     
    “Now who’s mixing metaphors?”
     
    He kissed her, hard and fast, and she could feel the good-bye in it, knew that he didn’t think he’d ever see her again. She kissed him back just as hard, opening his mouth with his tongue, giving him her urgency, her desperation, begging him to come back to her. Begging him to survive.
     
    And then he stepped back, pressed one more delicate, close-mouthed kiss to her lips, and was gone.
     
    After that, everything kind of stopped for a while.
     

 
     
    CHAPTER FIFTEEN
     
    When Caroline lifted her head from her hands, it was getting dark outside. Her eyes ached from crying, and she was nauseated from the intensity of emotion, the surety that he was gone, and that she had never been willing to say she was starting to fall in love with him. She called herself every crappy name she could think of, coward and chicken and wuss and baby. She still couldn’t get up off the edge of the bed.
     
    He was right. What was she really going to do? The cops weren’t going to look past the illegal doings of the club long enough to call him a soft drug dealer instead of a hard one. That wasn’t the cops’ job. And even if he somehow cut a deal, if that worked like it did on TV, he was still going to lose all the contacts and trust he had in the community, probably even the legitimate ones. There’d be nothing left for him, nothing at all.
     
    Except for her. But what did they have, really? A couple of red-hot encounters, and a fondness for the same books. What else? Nothing proven; nothing but instinct that they got along well. It wasn’t enough to base a life on. Not enough to give up everything he’d worked for in his life. He needed more than that. And she couldn’t give it to him. Not at all.
     
    He’d left everything in the kitchen, all of the check stubs, the books, the bills she’d carefully gone through. It confused her at first, but she suspected that he felt that there was no evidence that would convince these guys of anything. No matter what, it was going to be his word against Declan’s. Still, she tried to consider it a positive sign. He was going to come back. He’d left everything here. She was going to get the chance to figure out if this thing was a thing worth investigating.
     
    The bell for her front door rang, followed quickly by fast, hard knock. Her heart raced—had Mason come back? Already? She forced herself to walk to the door, even though her feet wanted to run, more than anything. She didn’t look through the peephole before opening the door.
     
    It took a second for her brain to recognize that it wasn’t him. She saw the leather jacket and smiled before she saw him. His dark hair was shorn close to his head. His eyes were dark as well, but cold, colder than a January deep freeze. She could see tattoos climbing up his neck from the collar of his white t-shirt, and the patches on his leather jacket seemed darker, bloodier, and more menacing. “Hi there,” he said. “You have something of mine. And I’d like it back now.”
     
    She tried to run, but he was fast, catching her arm in his hand and yanking her against his body, even as he slammed the door and covered her mouth. She threw her head back, trying to catch his nose with her head, but he dodged. She was barefoot, and he was wearing motorcycle boots; she wasn’t going to do any damage to his feet or legs. His grip was rock hard. There was no way she was going to pull away from him. His hand was tight on her mouth, but she managed to get her teeth open and bite down hard on the fleshy part of his hand.
     
    He grunted, pulled his hand away, and his grip relaxed enough that she was able to get