Page 71 of Twice the Rivalry

“Oh, you’d know if I had something sharp against his cock, boys,” Glitch announced, looking over her shoulder at them with a smug grin. “But lucky for him, I currently have uses for it.”

All three men chuckled and then backed out, shutting the door with a snick. Code looked down at a still grinning Glitch. “This going to be a problem?” he asked her. “Knowing Ink and Jax, they’re already on their phones telling everyone. Bunch of gossipy women, those two.”

Glitch chuckled. “I’m not ashamed of sex, Code. And I’m not going to hide the fact that you and I have been messing around. As long as you remember it can’t be any more than that, though. I’m leaving to rejoin my team as soon as they’re back and the coast is clear.”

He ignored the pang in his chest at her words. He blamed it on the sex, because he should not care that she would be leaving. So he nodded and said seriously, “No worries about that on my part. I don’t want a woman, and I’m happy to fuck you as much as you want while you’re here. No strings, and no hurt feelings when you leave.”

She nodded, but her eyes were cool as she stared at him. “Good. Alright, well, now that’s sorted, I say we should get up and go to bed. As hot as that was, I’m in desperate need of a shower and some sleep.” He agreed and they got to their feet. He grabbed her pants and top, smirking at her tattered underwear. He quickly pocketed them, though he gathered from the knowing look on her face that she caught that. He didn’t acknowledge it, instead he led her out of the office. He’d worry about cleaning it up later.

When they headed up the steps toward their floor, Ink, Jax, and Ice all grinned knowingly and saluted them with their beers. Apparently they were pulling a late night, Code thought, but it wouldn’t be the first time. So he followed Glitch upstairs, but before she could go into her room, he grabbed her arm and pulled her into his. She gave him a cool stare. “Is there a reason you’re manhandling me?” she asked him darkly. “Who says I want to be in here with you? Did you forget already I don’t want you near me?”

He kept pulling her until they were in his bathroom. “Just get in the shower,” he ordered. “Then we’re going to sleep, and maybe when we get up you’ll change your mind about me coming near you.”

She gave him ayeah rightlook, but didn’t fight him and stripped back down. His dick gave a twitch at the sight of her naked figure, but then gave a much bigger jerk when he saw the marks on her skin. Small bruises formed where his fingers dug into her back, hips, ass, and thighs. A few claw marks, and possibly a hickey or two if he wasn’t mistaken. A primal desire awakened in him to give her a few more, but he forced it back. One, he was too tired, and two, he really didn’t relish the idea of waking up to Glitch holding a knife to his balls. Or worse, his cock. He wouldn’t put it past her.

So he pulled off his clothes and climbed in with her. She gave him an arched brow, but merely handed him the soap once she was finished with it. The shower was big enough they could fit comfortably, but still tight enough that they were brushing against each other.

“So why the FBI and CIA?” she suddenly asked as she turned to wash the soap off her back.

“They were my only choices,” he replied honestly, switching places with her to have the spray hit his chest and wash him off.

“Yes, but I know those kinds of placements only last for a certain amount of time before they give you a choice to stay or go somewhere else. And you stayed. I want to know why.”

He looked down at her, unsure if he wanted to get into this right now. “It’s a bit of a long story,” he hedged.

“Then best get talking,” she told him simply.

He sighed. “Any chance if I say I don’t want to talk about it, that you’ll let it go and we can sleep?” he asked hopefully.

“What do you think?” she asked drily as she turned off the water and then pulled back the curtain to step out. She handed him one of the towels and started to dry off as she watched him. “You might have almost sexed me into a coma, but your brothers snapped me out of it. Now my brain is spinning and I want to know the answer.”

He sighed again, though he supposed she had shared her history with him, so it was only fair he did with her. As annoying as it was. “I stayed because of a woman I was in love with,” he admitted. “Well, I thought I was. Turned out our whole relationship was a lie, and she fabricated everything so I would let my guard down.”

Her eyes sharpened as she finished drying herself off and then laid the towel on the edge of the tub to dry. “She was another hacker you worked with?”

He nodded and stepped out of the tub, laying his towel beside hers. They left the bathroom and headed for the bed, but if he was hoping she would just let it go and go to sleep, he was sorely mistaken. She propped herself up against the headboard, pulling the sheet to her waist, and waited expectantly as he turned off the lamp he left on when they rushed downstairs. “Her name was Hallie, and she was a hacker and coder on the team I was assigned to. She was another stupid kid like me, but she was eighteen to my sixteen. Bitter that she ended up there, but she was doing her time like all of us. I got paired up with her on a few assignments almost right away, and she was the take-charge type that didn’t like to be questioned. She also came from money and she was considered to be one of the best out there.”

“I feel like there’s a point to you saying that,” Glitch said drily, and though he couldn’t see her in the dark, he had to imagine she was glaring or rolling her eyes at him.

“You do remind me of her sometimes,” he admitted. “Moreso in the beginning, the way you barged in and told me my system was shit. She used to do things like that, and at sixteen, my ego was fragile. Still, I worked hard to prove her wrong, and did everything I could to beat her. She enjoyed our little back and forth, and I didn’t realize at the time she did because she was looking for ways to make sure I fucked up so she could either take over or get me kicked off her team. See, I was a threat to her top bitch status, and she wasn’t about to have a kid come in and fuck things up for her.”

“Hmm,” Glitch hummed. “I guess I can see why you were so hostile with me at first.”

“I was an ass. And I’m sorry. I normally am better, but sometimes you remind me so much of her that I can’t stop myself from reacting. She was good at getting under my skin too, and she figured out what buttons to push to really get me going. To the point that when I was eighteen and she was twenty, they split us up because others on the team had complained to our handler. But I guess we got addicted to that energy and feeding off each other, because she would make excuses to come find me only to piss me off. Finally, one day I snapped and messed with her computer because I was seeing red. She was furious and slapped me. Next thing I knew, we were fucking against the wall of the office and all of a sudden we weren’t enemies anymore.”

“You know, I’m starting to not like where this is going,” Glitch said, a clear sour note in her voice.

He turned the lamp on again and looked at her. She was frowning, and her eyes were glittering with anger, annoyance, and regret. “My reaction to you isn’t because of her, Glitch,” he told her seriously. “Are there parallels? Sure, but with you, I knew what I was getting from the start. Hallie tricked and lied her way through life, and she loved to dangle carrots to get what she wanted. You don’t do that. You do shit that annoys me, but you don’t do it to deliberately use me or try to maneuver me so you can hurt me in some way.”

She was silent for a moment. “But I have kind of done that,” she argued quietly. “I do shit without thinking about how it will affect you, and I deliberately push your buttons and try to piss you off.”

He reached out and pulled her into his lap so they were face to face. She didn’t fight him, but she did give him a sharp look. “Glitch, you are not Hallie,” he told her again. “And you already apologized for that, and I accepted. That’s the difference between the two of you. She would never apologize. She would deflect or blame me. And the shit you’ve done, sure it’s been annoying, but it hasn’t been malicious.”

“Sending you a dick pump, magnifying glass, and tweezers doesn’t count as malicious?” she asked, her lips pulling up into a half smirk.

“No,” he replied with an eye roll. “You think you’re the first to tell me I have a small dick? That’s a woman’s go-to insult with any man. Though I will give you points for creativity.”

“Oh good,” she said drily. “Fine, I’m not as similar to her as I thought. So what’s the rest of the story?”

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