Freeze Frame Read online

  “Nope.”

  Dill hooked his thumb, gesturing toward the sidewalk. Mason followed.

  “Got a place in mind?” Mason asked.

  “Hotel.”

  “Cool.”

  He’d been expecting a motel with rickety doors, the kind you find in Mason’s neighborhood, but Dill turned the corner, led him a few more blocks and walked up the front steps of a glittering, carpeted entry.

  “Uh, Dill?”

  “I’m tired. On the off chance they know I’m helping you and discover where I live, this is the safest place for a long sleep.”

  Mason shrugged. Made sense to him. The doorman wasn’t amused and shot an encompassing glare over Mason’s person. He, in turn, ignored the little man and hung back while Dill secured a room.

  Back with a keycard, they went to the bank of elevators where Dill pushed the top floor. Mason looked at him askance. Dill hadn’t said anything about the room, but then Dill often didn’t say a lot unless he thought someone was frozen. The memory made him smile.

  He wants me, Mason recalled. That light feeling tickled in his chest again. God, that was a great feeling. Maybe if he let the myth do its thing, Mason could just live in the moment for the night, before reality popped his light-filled bubble.

  For one night. Yeah, for one night he could let himself love Dill and pretend that Dill might actually love him back. It would suck later. He still thought it sounded like a good trade.

  The elevator doors opened and they moved down the hallway to a door with a brass plate on it, inscribed with the words Presidential Suite. He’d never been in one of those. Those had lots of bedrooms, right? Had Dill chosen a suite because it would be big enough to have two bedrooms?

  Mason prepared to squash his disappointment. What he wanted was that picture of perfection where they curled together in sleep. What would Dill say if Mason asked to share his bed?

  Inside, the spacious quarters had a kitchenette and a living room. His spirits lifted when he saw only one bed, visible through an opening beyond the social area.

  “Hope you don’t mind. I only got the suite with one room,” Dill informed him casually.

  “I can take the couch,” Mason offered, wishing he could grab the words out of the air and shove them back down his throat.

  Dill studied him. He shook his head slowly. “It’s a king. I’ll keep my hands off you.”

  I hope not. Mason gave an acknowledging nod and a tight smile, nerves having got the better of him.

  “Oh,” Dill added, leaving for the bedroom. “You’ll have to strip off your clothes. I’ll put a laundry bag on the bed for you. The hotel will pick them up for cleaning.”

  Cuddling in a king sized bed, naked, with Dill? How the fuck am I supposed to stay platonic? How the fuck can he? Jesus, I’ll never get any sleep.

  From his vantage point, he saw Dill’s clothes fly through the air and land on the bed. The sound of running water indicated he’d turned on the shower. Mason groaned. His cock strained at the ready.

  “He’s trying to kill me,” Mason muttered.

  He’d quit playing the victim a long time ago. He wasn’t going to renew that arrangement now. Nope. He wanted a night with Dill. Dill had offered no strings. Dill had also said Mason was his for the duration of the case. So, yeah, for one night, he’d be Dill’s. If that was platonic—he bit off some impressive cuss words—then so be it.

  “What the hell. Why not?” Mason stripped out of his clothes. Grabbing Dill’s he stuffed them all into the plastic hotel laundry bag, tied the drawstrings and looped them over the outside doorknob. Then, because Dill was still cleaning up, and Mason wouldn’t admit to being too chicken shit to join him, he dialed room service for the pickup.

  Water still running, Dill stepped out and wound a towel around his waist. “I left it going for you.”

  “Cool. I took out the clothes.”

  “See you in bed.”

  Fuck if that wasn’t a loaded statement.

  “Yep. Every naked inch,” Mason threw back as he stepped under the punishing spray.

  The lights were off when he got out and walked back to the bedroom. The heavy, light-blocking curtains had been drawn. Dill’s body lumped under the covers on the one side of the king. Mason dropped the towel and climbed in.

  The temptation to reach across the short distance made his fingers twitch. Instead, he rolled to his side and blinked into the darkness as he waited for his eyes to adjust.

  “You’re looking at me,” Dill mumbled.

  “Can’t see you, yet.”

  “Trust me. You’re looking at me, and it’s creepy,” Dill informed him.

  “Go to sleep.”

  “I would, but you’re looking at me.”

  Mason sighed, scrambled closer and turned his back against Dill’s warm, welcome chest. Grabbing Dill’s arm, he draped it over his ribcage. “Now I’m not looking at you.”

  Dill scooted closer, aligning his body snugly to Mason’s. “Nope. You fixed it.”

  His hot breath fanned over Mason’s scalp, raising goose flesh as Dill’s breaths came heavier and deeper. Dill’s swollen cock pressed between Mason’s ass cheeks. Equally as hard, he nevertheless resisted the urge to move Dill’s hand south, choosing to link their fingers. He thought he’d never get to sleep.

  He was wrong.

  Warmth permeated his back, the light embrace of Dill’s arm around him, the lullaby of Dill’s breathing, the sexual satisfaction of knowing he did it for Dill, and the anonymity of sleeping together apart from the rest of the world drugged him with security and peace. The world fell away in the face of belonging, and the last thing he remembered before slipping into unconscious slumber was that he was smiling.

  Chapter Nine

  Mason awoke to someone running fingers up and down his arm in a ticklish path. The fingers traced along his shoulder, up the back of his neck, and became a large, hot hand cupping his scalp where the claw tattoo was. Then they stroked their way down his spine to just between his shoulder blades.

  The innocent examination had his cock throbbing and his nipples anxious for play. Mason stayed still for him, not letting on that he had awoken.

  Soft lips pressed the center back of his skull. The inquisitive hand smoothed from shoulder blade to side to hip, and stopped. Dill’s rock hard erection pushed against his cheeks, seeming to need pressure the way Mason wanted pressure on his cock.

  “I wasn’t going to touch you,” Dill murmured by Mason’s ear.

  He didn’t know if that meant Dill knew he was awake, or talking freely because he thought he wasn’t. Mason kept still. He didn’t want the stroking to stop. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him. There were men in and out of his bed over the past years, but they’d been nameless fucks and touched for the purpose of getting off as fast as possible.

  This didn’t have any purpose for sex, but turned him on more than any rough grope and pointed proposition ever had. This felt comforting, tender, and Mason could almost believe that Dill cared.

  Mason closed his eyes, willing to let the dream continue, and ignoring the way his eyes got hot. Just one night, he reminded himself. Pretend it’s real for just one night.

  Dill released his hip to trace the whorl of Mason’s ear. Dill’s lips brushed his shoulder and Mason couldn’t hide the way his breath caught. Dill’s arms came around him and held him tightly. He hooked his chin over Mason’s shoulder and rested his cheek on his.

  “I like you touching me,” Mason confessed, finally admitting he was awake.

  Dill didn’t react, and Mason suspected he’d known the minute Mason had woken up. He’d known and still he hadn’t been afraid to tell Mason that he wanted him. That light, happy feeling Dill created in him seemed bigger this time. Dill made it so easy to believe.

  He rubbed his palm over Mason’s chest before tucking his arms around him again. “Good. I like touching.”

  Mason tentatively reached back with his one free arm. The na
tural catching point was Dill’s buttocks and Dill murmured his approval into his ear before catching the lobe and gently suckling it.

  Mason’s breath hissed sharply. His stomach tumbled. “No one’s ever done that. Feels incredible.”

  “Suckling your earlobe?” Dill asked, incredulously. At his nod, Dill did it again, his tongue tracing, tasting, driving Mason crazy as each pull mirrored the draw in his balls.

  Unable to stand not reciprocating, he maneuvered onto his back and pulled Dill down for a lingering kiss. He tried to imitate the sensations Dill created in him, by lightly taking his fingers across Dill’s cheekbone then down to his jaw. He felt nervous and scared, which was stupid because it was just a touch. So why did this touch feel a thousand times more intimate than fucking?

  He liked it though. He liked the way Dill’s skin felt when he barely skimmed his hand from jaw to throat to collarbone. The tips of his fingers seemed to come alive as though they’d never noticed something as simple as touch before.

  Mason had a memory of sitting in a tub too long as a child and his fingers crinkling from the water. This felt like that. The same sensitivity and curiosity overcame him. He ran them over Dill’s chest, bumping his tight nipples and earning himself a pleased groan from Dill’s throat, which blossomed on their tongues inside the hidden confines of their mouths. He dragged them further, enjoying the rippling of Dill’s muscles and the way they reflexively clenched when he found a ticklish spot or a spot that made Dill’s breath shudder.

  He moved them around Dill’s body, flattened his hand on Dill’s lower spine and pulled it up his back with increasing pressure. Dill caught Mason’s lip in his teeth, when they broke for air.

  Dill’s eyes looked smoky-gray in the dark room. Like everything else, they were draped in shadows, yet Dill’s heated gaze communicated so much promise.

  Believe.

  Dill released his lip, moved over him, and dipped for a soft plucking kiss only to retreat. He settled on top of Mason, took another softly melded kiss, and released.

  “I found you,” Dill said, quietly, wonderingly.

  Mason didn’t understand.

  Dill’s half smile seemed to recognize that while declining to explain.

  Mason wanted him so bad his skin burned. He caught Dill behind the head, trying to bring him down for a kiss.

  Dill shook his head free. “Don’t rush. Stay with me.”

  Mason let go.

  “Tell me what you want,” Dill told him.

  “Your cock in my ass.”

  Dill chuckled through a rewarded kiss. “That’s direct.”

  “Dill, can we cut to the chase?”

  “Is that what you want, or are you just getting gun-shy?”

  “Does it matter?” he said, stealing Dill’s phrase.

  “It matters,” Dill confirmed. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “I don’t want to. Sex is simple. This feely shit isn’t something I’m good at.”

  “You’re great at it.” Dill rocked his hips on Mason’s. They both groaned.

  “Okay, I’m a fucking genius at it. Can you screw me now?”

  “Nope.”

  “Goddamn fucking please?” Mason hated that his voice cracked with telltale desperation.

  Dill pushed up. “Roll over.”

  “It’s about time.”

  Dill just laughed like he knew something Mason didn’t. Well the joke was on Dill because Mason was finally going to get cocked. He rolled to his knees.

  Dill knocked his knees out and pushed him to the bed. “Not yet.”

  “What?” he bellowed.

  “I want to lick every inch of your ridiculously sexy body, so stay the fuck still,” Dill commanded.

  “Oh, God.” Mason thought his cock was going to explode.

  With wet, sucking nips and kisses, Dill mapped his spine. His hands stroked what his mouth didn’t and by the time Dill reached his tailbone, Mason had buried his face in a pillow to muffle the whimpers of pleasure he couldn’t hold back.

  Then Dill took light, scraping bites on his ass cheeks, spread them apart and probed the unexplored crease with tickling, wet precision.

  Mason moaned, lifted his hips, and was rewarded when Dill stroked the underside of Mason’s balls.

  “You clean up pretty,” Dill said, wickedly. The tip of his tongue flickered across Mason’s hole and Mason had to bite down on his wrist to keep from crying out and sobbing for more. He’d been reduced to a quivering mass of arousal, completely dependent on Dill to satisfy him. And he hoped he fucking hurried before he shot his wad on the bed.

  “Dill,” His strangled cry said it all.

  Dill dropped below the desperate rosette and licked Mason’s balls. This time there was no stopping the hungry cry. Sweat broke out along Mason’s spine. Did he say only one night? What the fuck had he been thinking? A week. Yeah. A week with Dill. If he could pretend to love for a day, then a week wouldn’t be too much different, right?

  Pleasure swirled around his balls, and suddenly, hot and moist, they were tugged in sensuous sucking pleasure. Mason bellowed, scrambled to get his knees up higher, out of the way for whatever it took to keep him doing that. Dill chuckled, the vibrations working through the thin skin. Mason’s balls pulled up tight and achy. Still the suction came and so did the burn of unreleased pleasure.

  It felt like Dill dragged the flat of his tongue up, over Mason’s hole. He rubbed it in, and now pulling Mason’s ass further open, exposing the hidden flesh to cool air, Dill drilled the rosette with his tongue.

  Mason’s ass felt slick, and he welcomed the minute discomfort of Dill’s finger probing inside, loosening the muscles. Just as suddenly, Dill stopped. He rose up behind Mason, hooked his arm around Mason’s waist and hauled his ass into the air. Giving him a sharp, stinging slap, Dill positioned his cockhead at Mason’s hole and shoved forward in one burning, agonizing, fantastic thrust.

  Mason reached for his own cock, unable to stand not having it stimulated any longer.

  Dill smacked his hand away. “That’s mine. For later.”

  “Not gonna be able to stop from coming.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Dill warned. To back up his order, he squeezed the base of Mason’s cock, then pulled out and plunged forward, making sure to hit every nerve he knew Mason had.

  “Aw, goddamn it, Dill.” His cock felt painfully full, his balls, hard knots of agony yet every thrust, every grinding possession seemed to demand he fall over the precipice of orgasm while Dill made sure he didn’t.

  It was harrowing, mind fogging, nerve searing, torturous bliss. All he could do was hold on, and even then his body shook with restricted need, and pinpoints of light exploded in his vision, Dill kept his cock in a vice. Mason felt everything. Every goddamn, blessed, excruciating detail of what it was like to be well-fucked with every sense alive and screaming.

  Dill came, branding Mason on the inside, and Mason tried to hold onto his cock, squeeze every last bit out of Dill. He wanted all of it. All of him, even if he couldn’t say the words.

  Dill grunted, gasping as he emptied himself and withdrew reluctantly. Still holding Mason’s cock, he nudged him to roll over then snuggled alongside him.

  “Don’t leave me like this,” Mason pleaded.

  “I won’t.”

  “Please.”

  “I won’t.”

  Mason tried to loosen his hold. Dill bit his shoulder.

  “Patience. You’ll come too fast if I let go right now,” Dill murmured.

  “That’s okay with me.”

  “I want to enjoy you.”

  “My turn to enjoy,” Mason muttered.

  “You have the sexiest looking hole.”

  The words sent a spiral of bubbly pleasure straight to his middle. What did a sexy hole look like? Who the fuck knew, but Dill liked his and that’s all the praise he needed.

  “Tight. Hot. Sweet. I could tongue you all night.”

  Mason groaned. “You’re not helpin
g.”

  “Would you rather I slap your dick around? Maybe use my teeth on your cockhead?”

  Mason tried to grab himself again. The urge to jack-off overwhelmed him with the sharp arousal and sexy, sleep coated words drifting huskily across his ear.

  “If you jack yourself off, I guess you don’t want what I’ll do to you.”

  That stayed Mason’s hand, fast.

  Dill released his captive cock. Straddling Mason, he pinned his hands beside his head. “Did you like that?” he asked.

  This close, there was no eye averting. Mason wasn’t one to back down from a confrontation anyway, but this intimate space dialogue made building a defensive emotional wall between them nearly impossible.

  You’re letting yourself love him, today. Seemed he had to keep reminding himself that it was alright to relax, let Dill in. Just this once.

  “Yeah,” he admitted, when he’d calmed down.

  “How much?”

  “A helluva lot.”

  “How thorough and descriptive you are,” Dill teased.

  Mason steeled himself for rejection. If he was going to allow himself this freedom for one day, then he intended to experience it. “I want it back in there. Or in my mouth. I keep thinking of what you look like when you come, and it makes me hot as hell. Sometimes, I think I can’t breathe when I look at you. I want what you want to give me, but I’m afraid that if I claim it, you’ll snatch it away. It’s happened too many times with people who say they care only to run off or send me away. I don’t think I could handle it if you did.”

  Dill’s eyes widened, dilated. His lips slackened and he looked like he would devour Mason with the hunger he saw etched on the man’s face. He liked that look. That look said he’d made the right choice in coming clean.

  “Whoa,” Dill breathed, clearly impressed.

  He lowered himself on Mason’s body, thrilling him with light kisses. Their tongues touched, noses brushed. Dill rubbed his cheek with his own in a tender caress. The kisses began holding longer, still sweet, but equally mesmerizing in their full-lipped expression.

  “You approve?” Mason asked between interruptions.