by Chloe Barlow
“Good to know you have at least one reasonable bone in your miniature body, because I have another condition for you.”
Claudia couldn’t hold back an exasperated sigh, but she did manage to ask, “What?”
“You need to take care of yourself. I do think Jenna was right to be concerned about you, and now I am, too.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think you do…” Trey touched her elbow lightly, shooting electric shocks throughout her body. “How are you feeling today?”
Claudia wasn’t sure if she could form words, with how frazzled each of the neurons in her brain had become.
“I feel fine. Thank you for bringing me home.”
“You scared the shit out of me. I didn’t like it. You hear me? Plus, I’m fucking exhausted after staying up all night figuring out what happened to you. I’m not a fan of that feeling, you understand?”
“I do,” she whispered, almost choking on her tongue when he leaned down, bringing his face closer to hers.
“Then you agree with my conditions?” he asked quietly, his breath just barely touching the skin of her forehead.
The warm scent coming off of his skin was at once soothing and unsettling. Claudia closed her eyes for a second, searching inside herself for the ability to understand why this man made every muscle in her body tighten and her breath stall in her throat. It didn’t work, because when she opened her eyes again, all those feelings had simply amplified in power.
“Why do I feel like I’m making a deal with the devil?” she asked quietly, conceding enough to allow her eyes to lock with his.
“It seems your instincts really are good. But it doesn’t change how few options you have.”
“Okay. I’ll do what you tell me.”
“Good. That’s what I like to hear. Now grab your laptop and have some coffee. It’s time for me to…debrief you.”
Trey moved the bag of food he was holding to his left hand and rang the doorbell to Claudia’s home. It had been a week since she’d started working with him on the Taylor case, and he worried she was spending every waking minute on it, potentially putting her health second to her career — again.
He also was getting used to seeing her at the office several times every day, and was surprised to discover he had no interest in breaking that streak. Seeing as it was a Saturday evening, this meant he found himself appearing at her front door uninvited for a second time.
With each new day, Claudia was opening up to him more and more, revealing she had a wickedly-sharp mind to go along with the bluster and sass, which had greeted him when he’d first met her.
Trey only knew a few other people who could work the kind of magic with a computer that Claudia did with such ease — himself, his father, and the other…well, she was gone. It seemed like Claudia just needed someone to believe in her. Then, before he knew it, the floodgates opened, and her abilities quickly poured out of her. Trey felt simultaneously excited and terrified to be a part of her progression.
Being around her beautiful face and tight body was also making it very difficult to remember why he’d promised Jenna he wouldn’t sleep with Claudia McCoy. Though, he could probably keep that precise commitment, since he’d been fantasizing about her constantly over the last few days — and sleeping was not involved in any of those flights of his imagination.
“Hi, Trey,” she greeted cheerily, as she opened the door in a pair of pajama bottoms and a tightly-fitting matching tank top, which showed just enough of the tops of her breasts to make it hard for him to recall the reason he had for showing up there in the first place. “Are you working over the weekend, too. Can’t get enough of me, can you?” she teased.
Even though her words were light, he caught her eyeing him up and down — in the end, resting her gaze on his mouth in a doe-eyed stare. Every time she looked at him that way, it sent a powerful shot of desire through his body, straight to his bones. Trey’s awareness of her desire for him only managed to drive him more nuts.
And unfortunately, his craving was getting stronger with each of her innocent glances, as well as the way she’d unknowingly lick and gently suck on her plump lower lip whenever their eyes met.
“I guess not,” he answered eventually, having to clear his throat a bit to force the words out of his mouth. “Can I come in?”
“Oh, of course. Jeez, I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t leave you at my front porch all night, huh?” she said quickly, the words stumbling over each other, as she stepped aside to let him enter.
“Thanks, little one,” he answered, and winked. “Aren’t you cold in that?” he asked, nodding at her chest and raising an eyebrow. He tried his damnedest not to look at her hard nipples poking into the thin fabric, and begging him to give them a proper hello.
Perhaps she sensed his own interest in them, because she immediately crossed her arms over her chest, which made the agonizing view of her cleavage just another reason he regretted not wearing looser jeans before heading over to her place.
“I’m okay. I can get a sweater if it will make you more comfortable,” she teased.
“Don’t cover up on my account. Just looking out for you is all.”
“Thank you,” she said slowly, letting her disobedient eyes wander all over him again. If their seemingly endless path made their way to his crotch, he might be the one needing to cover up, in case those quick glances of hers turned less sweet. He almost exhaled in relief when they landed on the bag still dangling from his left hand like a white flag of surrender to his own resistance of actually liking the sexy package in front of him.
“Trey?”
“What?”
“Did you hear me? I asked you what’s in the bag,” she clarified over a sweet, yet nervous, laugh that matched those big eyes of hers, too well.
Trey felt like a horny kid with a crush all of a sudden. Desperate to shake off the sensation, he barreled into her kitchen and placed the bag on the small part of her table left unoccupied by papers, scribbled notes, and her laptop.
He turned to look at her, comforted by the effect his stern look had on her.
“Why do you look mad?”
“I’m not,” he said, and the little smile she gave him almost pushed him right back into eager puppy category. Standing straight, he crossed his arms to ward off the temptation to pick up her supple body, push her back up against her kitchen wall and lick every inch of tantalizing skin he could get to — immediately.
“I brought you dinner,” he said, adjusting his stance to give his dick some room in his suffocating pants.
“Oh, thanks. What is it?”
“Grilled salmon and asparagus, with steamed herbed brown rice pilaf,” he responded.
“Wow, I didn’t know you were a chef for the American Diabetes Association. I think that’s on the cover of one of their cookbooks,” she joked.
“It is,” he answered seriously, glancing around the kitchen to see empty coffee mugs on the counter and one dirty bowl in the sink. “That’s how I found it. I gave the recipes to the chef at Viola. He’s now got a list of meals from me he’ll make for you whenever I have a request,” he said, letting his mouth curl up in a cocky smirk.
“Viola, why does that sound so familiar? Is it…”
“Jack Taylor’s family’s restaurant? Yes. They feed me regularly. It’s a benefit of the case, trust me. Now I’m making sure they feed you, too.”
“Wow, what a nice gesture. You didn’t have to do that for me, though. I have food.”
“Having food doesn’t matter if don’t pause long enough to eat it. I need to be sure you use this kitchen table for more than just nonstop work. And besides, you promised to follow my rules,” he said, clenching his teeth slightly.
Her forehead crinkled. “Are you okay, Trey?”
“I’m fine,” he grunted, throwing his jacket over a chair.
“You sound like me,” she teased, revealing hints of her softer side, which had been coming through more and more through
out the week. “I’m always ‘fine,’” she said with a grumble, intended to copy his, “even when I’m not.”
“You won’t be fine if you don’t make sure to eat and take care of yourself.”
Claudia let out a sigh. “I get it, okay? You’ve already won. I’ve been eating and looking after myself, I swear. But enough of that, I really want to show you what I’ve started today. Have you gotten any results from the remnants you collected from the steel mill blast? I’d like to include them with my analysis.”
“Not yet.”
“It feels like it’s taking forever,” she lamented, almost petulant in her impatience.
“I know. Being patient is a bitch,” Trey mumbled.
“Have we at least been able to confirm whether it was a sophisticated incendiary device?”
“All evidence is pointing to that. I’ve been more concerned about making sure my story about why you went to the steel mill sticks.”
“Oh yeah, thanks,” she murmured.
“Luckily it was small enough and in a sufficiently remote location not to spark too much interest in the noise.”
“Was someone trying to kill me? Another fed?”
“I can’t be sure. It seemed to be deliberately contained, at least from the blast pattern.”
“So it was either meant to harm or send a message — but what?”
“Hopefully the tests help us there, too.”
“So, back to being patient, damn,” she grumbled. “Oh well, I still have plenty to keep me busy. Come on.”
She confidently walked to her chair and turned the screen of her laptop toward him. Her quick fingers moved feverishly, and she only paused to take a sip of water and look up at him, as he towered over her.
“I used a virus to manipulate the email I received leading me to the steel mill. I call it the ‘Tongue Louse.’ It’s one of the first tools I made back when I was thirteen.”
“And you called it ‘Tongue Louse’?”
“Yes. I named it after a parasite who eats the tongue of the host and remains there, so it can hijack all the food the host eats.”
“Pretty gross, Claudia.”
She laughed, snorting a little. “Yeah, I know. I was kind of weird… Every good hack should have a cool name though, right? Even if it’s being done for enforcing the law instead of breaking it… This virus does the same thing. Once I determined the email’s source server, I implanted the virus. Right now, it’s absorbing all the information going into it, as though it were the server itself.”
Each of her passionate words were sending chills along Trey’s flesh. His fingers twitched from the urge to protect Claudia from the dangerous thrill of this chase. The twinkle in her eye was only intensifying the power of his tormented memories. She continued speaking, rapidly turning back and forth from the computer to him with each motivated sentence.
“We’ve been thinking too small, Trey… Everyone so far has assumed the group who paid Taylor’s former boss, for the CMU robotics secrets had to have been Chinese military or someone in the government, but that’s gotten us nowhere.” Her brows furrowed as she blew a few stray hairs away from her face. “I think it’s because that’s not the answer,” she continued. “There are numerous new companies in China — Shanghai, especially — making billions of dollars using the kind of technology and data David was paid to get. David still claims to have no clue who was behind it. Maybe that’s because he actually doesn’t know. There are also underground groups for hire who could easily have the firepower and wherewithal to be the go-between on a theft of this magnitude. If we could figure out which one was used, and work backward, then infiltrate it…”
The determined look in her eyes filled his brain with uneasiness. Just her complying with his terms wouldn’t be enough. He knew she had a point, but he needed more control — to pull her back from the ledge he saw her teetering on right before his eyes. Knowing firsthand how quickly a small scheme like this could go terribly wrong, he knew he had to put a stop to her inquisitiveness. Letting her fall was not an option.
“That could work, but you’re not doing it,” he stated firmly.
She gaped at him for a second, before jumping out of her seat and throwing her arms up in frustration.
“You’ve got to be kidding me, Trey! I thought we were past this stuff.”
“We’ll never be past it, so just deal with it.”
Her face turned a deep shade of angry red, “You’re invested in this case, and damn it, so am I. This is my best shot at proving everyone wrong about me. Why can’t you understand that?”
Her words cut into his chest like a hot dagger. Before he knew what he was doing, Trey grabbed her shoulders and blurted out, “You’ll never be satisfied if all you care about is making the world take you seriously.”
As soon as his fingers touched her bare flesh, she lowered her voice and allowed her breaths to become more measured. Fire entered her eyes, but from a very different source — molten lava bubbling up from the same fault line fueling Trey’s intense response to her.
“That’s easy for you to say,” she whispered. “You break every rule there is, and you’re still alive and kicking.”
“So you were able to figure out something about me?” Trey unpeeled his hands from her shoulders, and Claudia heaved out a deep, disappointed sigh in response. “You promised to follow my rules, and that means you help me keep you safe.”
Her tank top strap had slid down her shoulder, leaving Trey transfixed with the soft curve of that small piece of completely exposed skin.
“But I am being good. I’m complying with your requests. I’ve connected my glucose monitor. It hurts like hell, but I use it anyway. Plus, I keep the alarms turned on these days, because it’s the best way to keep a close watch on my glucose levels. Look!” she exclaimed. Trey’s eyes jerked back to her face. Claudia lifted up her tank top, revealing her taut abs, her insulin pump tucked into the waistband of her pajama bottoms, a plastic knob secured into her flesh, and a thin cord completing the complicated circuitry of her life.
Trey couldn’t look away from the juxtaposition of her young, athletic form next to so much machinery working to keep her alive.
Unsure how all this equipment even connected to her lithe body, Trey found himself touching the area gently with his fingertips before he could stop himself. Her sharp intake of air and stuttering breaths shocked him, causing him to jerk back his fingers quickly, but Claudia didn’t pull down her top.
Staring at him again, her chest rose and fell with each deep breath she took. Trey tentatively touched the cotton of her shirt, smoothing it back into place lightly, all the while hating to cover that smooth, olive skin and mechanized evidence of how many challenges she faced just existing day-to-day, let alone trying to make something great of her life.
Trey couldn’t take her silence any longer. With a sure hand, he grabbed her chin and asked, “Cat got your tongue?”
She shook her head, allowing her soft, pink tongue to peek out and lick her lips.
“I thought you said you were being good?” he asked her, squeezing her chin slightly. Trey slid his thumb across her swollen, bare lower lip. On a shaky breath, she let her mouth fall slightly open.
“What am I doing that’s bad?” she finally responded, her eyes large and filled with confusion.
“You are being you. And that’s making me want to be bad…and to do bad things.”
Trey slowly moved his hand from her chin, and gripped the back of her slim neck. Claudia perched on the balls of her feet, head thrown back, her face trained on his. Trey kept her eyes locked to his, leaning down to allow their breaths to mingle with each other’s, becoming one warm burst of arousal between them.
His lips were tingling with the urge to touch her full mouth. His tongue was eager to stroke hers. But, more than that, he needed to taste some part of her perfect skin.
He bit her chin — a little harder than he’d intended. Then licked across the brief red mark it left from
his teeth and the pressure of his lip ring, and ran his tongue along her jawline, causing her to release a shocked exclamation, and then a distressed moan.
Trey released her neck, slid the errant strap of her tank top back onto her shoulder, and backed away from her. After a deep breath of his own, Trey said, “That’s better. Now sit down with me and eat.”
Claudia’s eyes were swimming with lust and confusion, but she grabbed the bag with a shaky hand and nodded.
With that gentle motion of her head, Trey finally felt the fist of worry, which had been squeezing around his throat start to loosen.
CHAPTER FOUR
An imposing twenty-foot-high wrought iron gate had been flung open at an entry way nestled along an especially fancy portion of Pittsburgh’s lovely Shady Avenue. Its powerful gray rods loomed against the dusky sky, competing for dominance with the elegant trees just beyond them.
Once Claudia coasted her car through the opening, the residential urban pageantry continued into a broad Governor’s driveway, already dotted with numerous cars. Behind them stood Tea and Griffen’s new home together — a three-story red brick Victorian palace — and the site of their housewarming party.
It was nestled in the east end of Pittsburgh, a part of the city still so visually heavy with the weight of its own past, Claudia wouldn’t have been surprised if she looked in her side-view mirror to spy a turn-of-the-century steel magnate pulling up in a chauffeured Model T. Maybe he’d be sipping grumpily from a monogrammed flask, while his valet apprised him on the latest mill production numbers, or warned him of rumblings of an uprising from his hundreds of oppressed workers.
Claudia actually had to give her head a physical shake to rid it of the effects of her overactive imagination. The ghost world she’d temporarily conjured disappeared from her mind, revealing the clear image of present day, and her eager anticipation for an impending confrontation with Trey.
For days, she’d been planning precisely what she’d say to him, when she finally got to corner him outside of the FBI offices. It had been a week since Trey Adler, of the We-Invented-The-World-of-Computers-That-Claudia-McCoy-Loves-So-Much Adlers, had bitten her — yes, he had taken an actual nibble of her.
