Page 385 of Hell Hath No Fury
I reached up to grab her hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it.
“I watched you for a while before you started hacking in the big leagues,” she admitted. There was a dreamy quality to that throaty voice that I could have listened to forever. “There aren’t many red hat hackers out there who aren’t in it for the glory, but you were so quiet. Stealthy and subtle. I liked that. Then, when I decided to recruit you to my network and we started talking…I couldn’t do it.”
I thought of the orange-haired bartender with the black swan tattoo and Aaron with his. Half the brilliance of 0bs1d14n Sw4n was now explained. She had an entire flock of swans behind her.
“Why not?” I asked as I pulled into the dark parking lot beside the Port.
Only when I shut off the engine and faced her, did I notice that she’d bitten her lip so hard it was bruised. Slowly, I reached up and unhooked that plump mouth from her teeth. Her tongue followed, flicking out against my fingers in a way that made me instantly hard.
“I liked you,” she confessed as if it was some dark secret. “You seemed so…good. Pure. Not yet tainted by the sticky black tendrils of the dark web. I wanted to protect you. No, not protect.”
She thought about it, a fierce furrow between her brows. I touched it and was awed that she let me smooth the linesthere. Normally, I was more bashful, slightly uncertain or overly arrogant to hide my discomfort, but with Swan, I felt as if I’d been programmed to be with her. Tasked to touch.
“Possess,” she admitted, eyes flashing in the lights installed on the freight cranes on the docks. “I wanted to possess you. To make you mine and keep you with me wherever I went. Hidden like a secret so no one could take you from me.”
My heart was racing so hard, I lost breath to it.
“I don’t trust people. I don’t even like people. Numbers are easier. Computers are superior. But…” She reached up to tug on a lock of my red hair, examining it like it was precious copper instead of wool. “You are the exception.”
“Then catch me,” I suggested with a little smile at my bad coding humor.
She blinked, startled into giving me a tiny, lyrical laugh. “The geek returns.”
“He never left,” I admitted. “I was scared shitless most of tonight.”
Her expression softened and I noticed there was a small scar in her right eyebrow. “It’s the twenty-first century, Red, geeks are sexy.”
“Yeah?” I asked through my dopey ass grin.
“You’re sexy,” she whispered, reaching up to fiddle with my swan pendant. “And so sweet, you give me a damn toothache.”
The air in the car was sweltering and close, as if the atoms were pushing me toward her. When I spoke next, my lips were so close to hers I could feel the whisper of them against mine. “I’ll kiss it better.”
“I’ve pictured kissing you,” she admitted, even as she leaned away slightly. “It always ends in tears.”
“So, we’ll cry.” I took her face in my hands, and holding her like that felt like more than I’d ever thought to wish for. “I’d do more than that to taste you. More than that to hear you moan myreal name when I make you come for me. I’d kill and die to know what the sound of your true name tastes like on my tongue.”
“How about knowing the taste ofmeinstead?” she asked.
And that was enough.
The end of a long line of code that inevitably prompted this moment.
I kissed her then.
And yeah.
I could have cried without shame. Would have happily pledged to kill a hundred men and die a thousand deaths just to have that kiss continue on an infinite loop.
Her mouth was cool and clean, slightly sweet like fresh water from a stream. It quenched a thirst in me I hadn’t known I had been suffering without. My moan vibrated over our tangled tongues as I angled her head with a hand in her silken hair and delved deeper.
She returned the passion I felt raging at the heart of me tenfold, clutching me to her with tight hands in my hair as she climbed over the center console into my lap to straddle me. Her breasts against my chest, rubbing so hard I could feel the tight buds of her nipples. I trailed a hand down her back to the swell of her round ass in her leggings, squeezing the taut flesh until she moaned and groaned against me.
“I would love you, if you’d let me,” I whispered as I cupped her sweet face in my big hands. “If you gave me a chance, I’d do anything to keep you safe. Your body, your beautiful mind, and your heart.”
Tears pooled in the troughs of those pretty black eyes and spilled down over my fingers. “I-I can’t, I’m sorry. It’s not safe.”
“Fuck safe,” I growled. “I walked into hell today to find you, and I’d do it again and again if you needed that.”
