The Hacker and his Heart's Desire

by James, Rebecca;

  “Like you?” Tony asked, reaching for a hand towel.

  I was glad he couldn’t see the surprise I quickly wiped from my face. “Like you.”

  Tony sighed. “Exactly how is he going to use me? We have a contract.”

  Unease rolled through me. Damn. “Did you read it before you signed it?”

  Tony’s eyes sparked with anger. “Of course I goddamn read it!”

  “And he didn’t include any sneaky little clauses?” I pressed.

  Tony glared. “Look, I didn’t just roll off the hay truck or whatever the fuck. I read the contract and signed it. I’m working on the website. I’ll probably never talk to the guy again afterward. End of story.”

  “What if he offers you more work?”

  Tony sat up, the curve of his full lips hardening. That wasn’t the only thing hardening: my briefs were suddenly way too tight. Something about the way he looked all fired up really turned me on. I wanted to push him down onto the mat and fuck him.

  “What’s this about, really?” Tony asked.

  I didn’t notice he’d stood until his abs were suddenly level with my face. I could smell his clean sweat and was sure if I leaned forward just a little, I could trace the fine blond hairs of his happy trail with my tongue. My mouth watered thinking about it. Slowly, I raised my eyes to his.

  Tony’s nostrils flared. “Don’t fuck with me, Cane.”

  I drew in a sharp breath as I imagined pulling his cock from his shorts and wrapping my mouth around it.

  “I’m not fucking with you,” I said hoarsely, amazed that I could speak at all with that image in my head. “It’s a bad idea for you to have anything to do with my cousin, but since you signed a contract, I can only ask that you get the work done quickly and then walk away.”

  “What the fuck else would I do?” Tony asked, throwing his wrapped hands in the air.

  Mindful of my painful erection, I carefully rose from the chair and set it back in its place before heading for the stairs. I knew how I must look to him. I’d rejected his overtures, and instead of giving him space when he’d returned from his trip, I’d tried to force a truce, not that he’d let me get that far. Then I’d practically begged him to let things be normal again, and now here I was trying to dictate who he worked for.

  But I didn’t fucking trust Karl, and if it took Tony resenting me even more than he already did to keep him safe, so be it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Tony

  “What’s Cane’s cousin like?” Jeovanni sat on his bed, bare feet crossed and a beer bottle in his hand.

  “Rich as fuck,” I said. I lay on my bed rubbing my temples with my fingers. I’d taken several pain relievers trying to ward off the migraine I’d felt coming on all day, but they hadn’t managed to dull the sharp jabs to my eyeballs.

  “Want me to get you a cold cloth?” Jeo asked after a moment.

  I looked at him pitifully. “Would you?”

  Closing my eyes, I listened to Jeo pad into the bathroom and turn on the water. A moment later, chilled terry cloth draped my brow.

  “Mm, thanks,” I murmured.

  The bed dipped, and Jeo said, “You’ve been staring too long at the computer. All day yesterday and today with hardly a break.”

  I smiled. “Yes, Nanny. I had a lot of work to do. I finished Dallas Spencer’s website, and now I need to concentrate on Karl Bruder’s. I have a meeting with him Monday. If I could just get this fucking headache to go away, I could get started.”

  “You want something to drink? I’m gonna have another beer.”

  My stomach rolled. “Naw. Just gonna sleep, thanks.”

  I felt him move off the bed, and as the pills finally began taking effect, I fell into a light doze, basically aware of things going on around me but unsure of the amount of time passing between them.

  “Tony sick?” I was till annoyed with Cane for interfering in my business, but that didn’t stop my heart from revving up when I heard his voice nearby.

  “Migraine,” Jeo answered. Jeo had covered me with a light blanket,and I felt cared for and comfortable. My chest moved rhythmically with my breathing, and my mind swirled with hazy thoughts until a dream formed.

  I stand naked in a dark room. Cane is in front of me, fully clothed. He runs a finger down my chest. I step closer so that our mouths are an inch apart.

  Loud arguing filtering through the wall behind my bed dissolved the dream, and I opened my eyes and removed the cloth from my head.

  “I don’t want you working there.” Blaze sounded both angry and frustrated.

  “What makes you think you can tell me what I can and can’t do?” Lake demanded.

  “I’m not telling you what to do, I’m letting you know how I feel. There’s a difference. Axel says he thinks the servers are being prostituted. Fuck, Lake!”

  “And I said I don’t know anything about that. No one’s approached me. I like working, and I’m not going to live off you.”

  My headache, which had settled into a dull throb as I’d slept, flared, and I moaned.

  “What the fuck are they yelling about?” I asked Jeo, who was sitting on his bed. “Who’s prostituting who where?”

  “Ax came by while you were sleeping,” Jeo said. “He mentioned to Blaze that he’d caught wind some of the servers at The Yellow Banana were being hired out as sex workers.”

  I rolled onto my side. “What time is it?”

  “Just after nine. If you’re ready to eat, we saved you some tuna casserole. How’s the headache?”

  I moaned and sat up. “Still hurts.” My stomach both rolled at the thought of food and growled with hunger. I knew from experience that if I threw up, my headache would likely subside, but I hated throwing up. Still, hunger won out, and I headed for the kitchen. Maybe Skitz’s tuna casserole would save me from having to stick my finger down my throat.

  Lake stood by the counter drinking orange juice and looking furious.

  “Hey,” I said, reaching for a plate in the cabinet.

  “Hi.”

  I peeled back the foil on the casserole dish on the stove. Cheddar cheese coated the top. It didn’t look half bad and actually smelled pretty good. I spooned some out.

  “Everything okay?”

  Lake flicked his gaze at me. “Blaze is being a protective ass.”

  I laughed. “He loves you.”

  Lake’s features softened a little. “I know that. But I’m not quitting my job.”

  I took my plate to the table and got a bottle of water from the fridge before sitting down. I tested a small forkful of the casserole. Not bad.

  “Skitz’s cooking’s getting better,” I murmured before taking a bigger bite. Down the hall, my phone buzzed with a notification. I opened my mouth to call to Jeo to bring it to me but aborted the action when my head violently protested. I’d look at it after I’d eaten.

  Blaze wandered in, and I heard his and Lake’s murmuring behind me followed by wet sounds of kissing with lots of tongue.

  “Take it to the bedroom,” I said without turning around. Blaze messed up my hair, which brought a groan from my lips as pain throbbed behind my forehead and temples.

  “Sorry,” Blaze said. “Forgot about your migraine.”

  “S’okay,” I said. I finished my food and rinsed off the dish. Blaze and Lake had resumed making out. My eyes were drawn to Blaze’s hand on Lake’s hip, his thumb caressing the skin between Lake’s shirt and sleep pants. I headed for the bathroom, feeling inexplicably lonely.

  After a long shower, I closed the door to my bedroom. The food had been so good I doubted I’d throw up, and my head continued to pound. Jeo had turned out the light but was still scrolling through his phone. I pulled the towel from my waist and ran it over my head before reaching for my own phone on the bed.

  I smiled. Dallas had texted to say he loved what I’d done with the website.

  He’d also invited me to dinner.

  “What’s the matter?” Jeo asked, and I turned to se
e him looking at me in the light of his phone.

  “What? Nothing.”

  “You’re standing there naked looking at the phone like you can’t figure it out.”

  I crossed the room to my dresser and pulled out a pair of underwear. “The guy whose website I worked on asked me out.”

  “Cane’s cousin?” Jeo asked, looking confused.

  “No. The other guy. The one Nick introduced me to.”

  “Oh.”

  I pulled on the underwear and a T-shirt and looked at Jeo. “Think I should go?”

  He was back to scrolling through his phone. “I dunno. You like him?”

  I shrugged. “He’s okay. Nice-looking. Friendly. We chatted some at Royce’s apartment after talking about work, and we have a few things in common.”

  “What’s that guy like? Royce, I mean.”

  A little surprised at the question, I answered carefully. “He’s nice. Lives in a fancy apartment in Midtown West.”

  Jeo was silent a few moments, and I pulled on the underwear and shirt.

  “If you really want my opinion, I think you getting laid would make a world of difference. Not just laid, but pounded into the mattress.”

  “You would say that,” I said, flopping down on my bed.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jeo put his phone aside. I could barely see his expression without the light of his phone, but he sounded annoyed, which didn’t make sense.

  “You always think sex solves everything,” I said honestly.

  Jeo took so long to reply, I figured he was giving me the silent treatment, and when he finally spoke, it startled me.

  “I know it doesn’t,” he said. “But sometimes an endorphin rush can do wonders for your mood. If you don’t wanna fuck, you could always take up bungee jumping.”

  I chuckled. “No way.” I sighed. “Maybe I should go out with him.” I picked up my phone and texted Dallas back. He answered almost immediately, and we made plans for Saturday night.

  “T,” Hung said after a few minutes.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry I pushed you into dancing with that jerk at the Banana that night we went together. Cane said he’s the one who went after you in the bathroom.”

  “Neither you nor Cane is responsible for me, Jeo.”

  “I know you can take care of yourself, but you were drunk off your ass that night, and I feel responsible.”

  “For Christ’s sake, it’s not like you gave me an IV of vodka. I drank because I wanted to, and if I really hadn’t wanted to dance with that guy, I wouldn’t have. End of discussion.”

  I heard Hung snort softly before I closed my eyes and slowly drifted off, more comfortable there in the clubhouse with my friends surrounding me than I’d ever been anywhere in my life.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Cane

  Tony had a date. He smelled really good and looked even better. I’d been lying on the couch flipping channels and almost swallowed my tongue when he walked in the room wearing a pair of dark slacks and a shirt that matched his eyes. When he turned to the hall tree to get his leather jacket, I let my gaze wander to his round, pert ass.

  Was another man going to touch that ass—or worse, fuck it—tonight? Fury boiled beneath the surface of my skin, an all-too-familiar feeling lately.

  “Going out?” Obviously, idiot.

  “Yeah,” was all Tony had time to say before the sound of tires in the driveway had him hurrying out the front door with a wave. Heavy duty chains couldn’t have kept me from catapulting myself off the couch and to the window in time to see a man climb out of a vintage yellow Corvette and open the passenger door for Tony.

  “Douche,” I muttered.

  I was glad no one was there to see me seething. I hated the rich fuckhead on sight—even more when I realized it was the same guy Tony had been with at Lux. That made this a second date. The thought that Tony might end the night in bed with that asshat had me wanting to hit something. I headed down to the basement where, ignoring my own advice to Tony about the importance of wrapping your hands, I punched the fuck out of the bag until I collapsed onto the mat, exhausted and dripping sweat, knowing I was going to jerk myself off in the shower to the image of the way Tony had looked before he’d walked out the door to be with another man.

  ****

  I’d gone to bed around two a.m., but over an hour later I was still awake staring at the ceiling. Tony hadn’t come home and was probably in Corvette-guy’s bed. Naked. Moaning.

  I groaned and rolled onto my side. When I’d moved out of the small room in the warehouse and into this one, I’d taken the posters of half-naked women off the walls and replaced them with photos of vintage bikes. I stared at one of them—a Norton Commando 850—and in an attempt to keep my mind off Tony, mentally took it apart piece by piece before putting it back together again.

  It didn’t work. My mind kept drifting to Tony having dinner with that guy. The guy kissing him. Fucking him.

  Hell, I knew I had no right to not want Tony to sleep with anyone else. I’d rejected him, and I hadn’t exactly been a monk myself since then. But none of those hurried encounters had gotten under my skin the way being with Tony had, and I just fucking didn’t understand it. If circumstances had been different, and I’d slept with him as much as I’d wanted to, would we have burned out by now? Somehow, I doubted it, and that’s really what scared me. It’s also what drove me to want to keep Tony away from Karl.

  Karl wasn’t happy I had a private life outside the business. If he had his way, I’d be living in my suite of rooms a few floors down from him, spending every spare moment at his beck and call. The fact that I wasn’t doing that was undoubtedly why he’d set his sights on Tony. He wanted control over me. I could only hope he had no idea just how hot under the collar it made me that he’d hired Tony, that he had no idea how much I cared. Karl was testing me, and I had to keep the upper hand. I knew from experience that my cousin would use any weakness he saw in me to his advantage and would punish me by hurting those I cared about.

  An arc of headlights across my wall alerted me to a car pulling into the driveway. I’d left the curtains open for just that reason. I slipped from under the bedcovers and over to the window, standing to the side so I could peer out without being seen. The yellow Corvette sat in the driveway, lights on and motor running. I couldn’t see inside it.

  I waited, growing cold in only my underwear, and after what seemed like forever, both the passenger and the driver’s doors opened. Corvette-guy hurried around the car, giving me a glimpse of broad shoulders and long legs, before he crowded Tony against the car and kissed him, hard and long.

  A sound startled me, and I realized it had come from me—I was growling like a junkyard dog.

  Tony’s arms encircled the guy’s shoulders, and they kissed for so long I considered hitting the window to bring them apart. Finally they broke away, and Tony started toward the house. The guy seemed reluctant to let go of Tony’s wrist, and before I knew it, he was kissing Tony again. I clenched my teeth, waiting for Tony to pull away, which took altogether too long, in my opinion.

  I slipped back into bed and breathed slowly, seething at having watched that man touch…my mind fought it but finally shouted out what’s mine. I lay breathing hard from the pure jealousy coursing through me.

  I’d left my bedroom door partially open and soon after hearing Tony’s key in the front door lock, I heard him walk down the hallway and shut the bathroom door. Seconds later, the shower came on.

  I lay in bed, imagining Tony naked under the spray of water, washing the sex off his body, and silently counted backward from one hundred.

  The shower cut off when I hit thirty-nine, and a moment later, soft light illuminated the hall.

  Only when I heard the springs in Tony’s bed creak, indicating he’d settled down for the night, did I close my eyes and relax enough to sleep.

  But I dreamed of him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Tony

/>   Monday morning, I walked into the same boardroom I’d been in a week before. The city outside the glass window was shrouded in gray from the thunderous, dark clouds gathering overhead.

  Bruder wore another sharp-looking suit that screamed money. As I sat down beside him, this time at the long table in the center of the room, I couldn’t get Cane’s warnings out of my head. How dare he try to tell me who and who not to work for? He said Bruder used people, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Cane just didn’t want me having anything to do with his life outside the club. The thought hurt.

  I opened my laptop and brought up the website I’d worked hard on finishing for Bruder. As he looked over what I’d created, my eyes wandered around the room. The first time I’d been there the lights had been low, probably to show off the magnificent view of the city at night. Now, under bright florescent lights, I took in the cream-colored walls lined with artfully arranged black and white photographs of New York City in the eighteen and 1900s and the tasteful and obviously expensive furniture.

  “This is just what I’d had in mind.” Bruder’s voice brought my attention to the computer screen. “I’m very pleased with your work, Tony.”

  “Take your time looking it over. If there are any tweaks you want me to make, please say so.”

  Bruder began clicking through the links again, this time with me pointing out the changes I could make if he wanted me to. In the end, he insisted I’d given him the best to begin with.

  “I’m impressed you seem to know exactly what I want,” he said as I packed up my laptop and stood.

  “If you change your mind about any of it, just give me a call.”

  Bruder followed me out of the boardroom. “I’ll wire the payment directly to your account. If I didn’t have an appointment, I’d suggest lunch. I’d like to talk to you about another job.”

  I paused at the elevators and turned to him.

  “Oh?”

  Bruder smiled. “Yes. One of my employees recently suffered the tragic loss of his wife. While he takes some time off to grieve, I find myself in need of someone to do some analytical work for me, along with some additions to the After Hours website.”