Page 26 of Playing with Fire

His hips bucked involuntarily at my words, his breathing growing more ragged. "Yes. Please, Xavier."

I leaned in to capture his mouth again, the kiss slower but no less intense. When I pulled back, his eyes remained closed for a moment, as if savoring the sensation.

"Tonight," I promised, the word hovering between command and vow. "After dinner. I'll show you exactly how to please me."

A knock at the bedroom door made us both freeze. "Xavier?" My mother's voice filtered through the wood. "Dinner in twenty. Is Leo staying?"

Leo's eyes opened, challenge glinting through the haze of arousal. "Better ask me this time."

I found myself smiling, a genuine one that so few people ever saw. "Leo," I said, my voice deliberately formal despite my hand still wrapped around his throat, "would you like to stay for dinner? And after?"

"Yes," he replied, reaching up to brush his thumb across my lower lip. "To both."

I caught his thumb between my teeth, biting down just hard enough to make him gasp. "Good," I said, releasing him. "Because after dinner, I'm going to take you apart piece by piece. Make you beg. Make you mine."

His eyes darkened, pupils almost swallowing the iris. "I already am."

Mom pushed the door open slightly and I quickly dropped my hand from around Leo's throat, taking a step back. She looked between us. "I'll set an extra place. Don't stay up here working all night."

Leo nodded respectfully. "Thank you, Ms. Laskin."

"Annie, honey. Just Annie." She smiled warmly at him before closing the door.

After she left, we stood in silence for a moment, the interruption having broken the intensity of our encounter. I took a deep breath, trying to regain some semblance of control over my racing thoughts and the unfamiliar desire still coursing through my veins.

"We should probably finish checking the security footage," Leo suggested, though the hunger in his eyes hadn't diminished. "At least see if there's anything useful before dinner."

I nodded, appreciating his ability to shift focus despite the tension still crackling between us. This was part of what made us work so well together—the ability to balance the personal and the professional, to collaborate on multiple levels.

"Let's see what we've got," I agreed, returning to my desk.

Leo settled beside me, close enough that I could feel his warmth, but not so close that we'd be too distracted to work. My tracing program had found something while we were otherwise occupied—not a location, but a pattern in their network traffic. They were using a distinctive routing technique, one that suggested specialized training.

"Look at this." I showed Leo the pattern. "Whoever they are, they've had professional training. This isn't some amateur with a grudge."

Leo studied the data, his brow furrowed in concentration. "You're right. This looks like something I saw during my Army days. Reminds me of how certain intelligence agencies structure their network traffic."

An interesting development. Someone with intelligence training targeting Leo specifically, using methods designed to provoke me rather than simply eliminate him. The pieces didn't quite fit together yet, but they would. I always solved my puzzles, eventually. And this one had stakes higher than most.

I glanced at Leo, watching as he lost himself in the code again. The intensity of my need to protect him, to keep him safe at all costs, was almost frightening in its depth. This wasn't just about possession anymore. This was something else, something I was still learning to name.

"We should warn Wattson," Leo said, the concern in his voice revealing where his thoughts had gone. "If they targeted me to get to you, they might go after him, too."

"Already handled." I pulled up a satellite view of the Junkyard Dogs compound on my third monitor. Red dots indicated the new security measures I'd implemented without consulting Boone. "I sent Ragnar over with some equipment upgrades. No one's getting within a hundred yards of the compound without us knowing."

The tension in Leo's shoulders eased slightly. He trusted me to protect what mattered to him, just as I trusted him to understand what I needed to do to ensure that protection. A perfect symbiosis of needs and abilities.

"They'll try again," I said, scrolling through more data. "They've studied us. Know our patterns. They'll have contingency plans."

"What makes you so sure?" There was no fear in his voice, just curiosity. Clinical interest in the psychology of our adversary.

"Because it's what I would do." The admission came easily. Leo already knew what I was, had seen glimpses of the predator beneath my carefully constructed facade. "They want to be understood almost as much as they want to win. They've planned this too carefully for it to be a single attempt."

My phone buzzed with an incoming text. Boone.Found something in the wreckage. Not sure what it means, but it looks deliberate. Sending pics.

The images loaded slowly, revealing a partially melted piece of metal among the ashes of Leo's trailer. It had been shaped before the fire, twisted into a recognizable form despite the heat damage.

A phoenix rising from flames.

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