Zero Hour

by Megan Erickson

  Her hackles went up. “Oh, so this is where you tell me what to do again—”

  Her back hit the wall, and his chest bumped hers. “You have a crew now, an entire crew at your back.” He clenched his jaw as his gaze dipped to her lips. His warm hand cupped her neck, thumb brushing along her jaw line, a heated touch that shot hot flares through her body like lightning. “And you have me. You’ve always had me.”

  This was the same position she’d been in less than an hour ago with Franklin. But how she felt now as compared to then was night and day. Roarke’s body molded against hers, the desire that sparked in his dark eyes stoking the flames of arousal in her veins.

  She turned her head slightly so her mouth brushed his palm. His breath caught in his throat as she opened her lips and placed a damp kiss on the heel of his hand. With a moan, he tilted her chin up and took her mouth, his lips opening immediately to sweep inside. Her pulse raced as she clutched his face to draw him closer, needing more. She kicked her leg out of the slit in her dress and hooked it over his thigh, wanting maximum contact as all the emotions of the night culminated into must lose myself in Roarke.

  He tore away from the kiss on a frustrated growl and buried his face in her neck. His warm hand gripped her thigh, digging into the skin, as he spoke tersely. “How come I can’t stop touching you? I tell myself to stay away—”

  “Don’t want you to stay away.” She thrust her chest against his, grinding against the hard length in his pants. “You’re so mad at me? Take it out on me then. Fuck the secrets out of me.”

  He jerked his head back and held it inches from her face. “That a dare?”

  Maybe it was. Maybe she was bluffing. All she knew for certain was that she was going to combust if Roarke didn’t make her forget this whole night. She bit her lip and looked at him from under her lashes. “Maybe.”

  With a snarl, he hoisted her up in the air so she had to wrap her arms and legs around him. She crashed their mouths together, and he stumbled backward until he hit something solid with a curse. He spun them around, making her dizzy, before laying her on a hard surface. She had a moment to realize it was his kitchen table before he was hiking her dress up to her waist.

  She rolled her hips as he stared down at the small scrap of fabric covering her. His nostrils flared as his thumbs rubbed the skin above the waistband of her underwear, dipping lower and lower at a maddeningly slow pace.

  She was about to tell him to hurry the fuck up when he slipped the thong down her legs and tossed it behind him. Then his fingers were on her, rubbing over the heated, wet flesh, circling her clit.

  “Yesss,” her voice broke on a hiss, and she closed her eyes as he kept up the stroking and the swirling with those talented fingers. “Those fingers can penetrate a fire wall and make me come.” She opened her eyes and grinned a filthy smile. “Got me a man who can do both.”

  With a bark of laughter he kissed her again as he fumbled with his belt and jeans. “Fuck,Wren,” he said. “Wanted to take this slow, draw it out—”

  “Tonight’s not the night for that,” she murmured.

  He pulled back, his hair in his eyes, tongue snaking out to taste her on his lips. He turned up his mouth into a smirk as he pulled his hard dick out of his pants. She reached down, wanting to get her hands on that hot, hard length. She rubbed her thumb over the head, wet with pre-come, while Roarke stood with his hands at his sides, letting her play. She stroked him and rubbed the tip over her wet folds. He was so hot, and her body ached from being empty.

  Roarke’s head was back, eyes closed. “Let me get a condom,” he mumbled.

  “It’s fine. I’m on the pill,” she assured him. He met her gaze steadily, and she added, “I don’t make it a habit, but I know you wouldn’t put me at risk.”

  “Never,” he said through gritted teeth. He fisted his cock and entered her in a smooth thrust. She was wet, but his size was still a shock, so she squirmed as he fell onto his hands over her. His eyes were squeezed shut, lips parted. Once he was fully inside her, he froze. She did, too, the sensation so overwhelming, so much. Too much.

  Oh fuck, was she going to cry? How many times had she dreamed of this moment, when Roarke wanted her so bad that he fucked her on the first available surface? When he would open up those dark eyes with the depth of infinity and stare into hers? “Wren,” he said on a choked whisper.

  “Roarke,” she answered.

  Then his hips snapped back, and he rocked into her. Once. Twice, then a steady pace that shoved her higher on the table, that caused the entire thing to squeak on loose screws. That had her crying out with her back arched as he gripped her hips and pounded into her.

  This. This was what she’d been missing all her adult life.

  She lifted her hands and gripped his wrists and met every thrust with one of her own. Soon they were in sync, the apartment filled with the sounds of flesh hitting flesh, Roarke’s grunts and her high-pitched cries.

  Roarke placed a hand on her lower stomach, his thumb right over her clit, which he began to swirl and press and rub. She could feel her orgasm building, that tell-tale prickle in her toes. She slapped a hand on the table, the sensations so overwhelming that her first instinct was to get away. But Roarke growled again as he changed his angle, and that was it. The big bang. Lights flashed behind her eyes, and her body jerked as she screamed out the orgasm currently sweeping through her body like wildfire.

  She vaguely heard Roarke say, “Aw fuck,” before his hips stuttered and his cock pulsed inside her.

  When his thrusts stopped, she didn’t move for a moment, unsure if her eyes were open or closed because she wasn’t seeing anything anyway. Then she blinked them open just as Roarke’s head thunked down onto her chest.

  She lifted a weak hand and ran it through his hair as he clung to her, his back heaving. He was still inside her, and at this point, she wasn’t too eager to change their positions. It took a minute or two for the postorgasmic bliss to dissipate, and she began to feel the hard wood at her back, the ache of her thighs. “Baby,” she said softly.

  He lifted his head slowly, and there was a brief moment when he let every guard drop. When those eyes weren’t full of secrets, and everything he was feeling was right there, floating to the surface for her to see.

  * * *

  That wasn’t supposed to happen. This entire night had gone right to shit. He stared at the crack between the bathroom door and the floor, watching the shadows shift as Wren moved about inside.

  She was here, in his apartment, and he hadn’t thought this through, hadn’t planned this out. Nothing was black and white, and it was killing him. Why couldn’t all of life be in binary?

  He wasn’t used to involving himself physically in missions this much. There was less control this way, more room for error. He preferred the logical lines of code, the clicking of a keyboard that dictated how things would go.

  Hell, he preferred that in his personal life, too. Which is why he’d defaulted to quick Tinder hookups or, lately, porn. Porn was always a safe standby.

  But Wren wasn’t safe, and he couldn’t control how things went anymore with a little extra programming. This was real, and the entire thing was making his chest tight. He retreated to his kitchen counter, where he poured a glass of water. He chugged the entire thing immediately. The door to the bathroom opened just as he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and turned around.

  Wren stood barefoot in front of him. “Um, could you unzip the back for me?”

  He set the glass down on the counter a little harder than he meant to. The sound made Wren flinch, and he forced a smile to cover it up. “Sure.”

  On the way to her, he grabbed the backpack with her spare clothes and dropped it at her feet. He made the sign for her to turn around, and she did. He flexed his fingers, telling himself not to maul her, before he swept her hair to the side to reveal the zipper of her dress.

  Her pale shoulders trembled slightly as he pulled the zipper down to where it st
opped at her lower back. When she glanced at him over her shoulder, all dark, smoky cat eyes, he lost the battle with himself and leaned down to press a kiss to the top of her shoulder.

  “Roarke,” she whispered, as his lips moved their way up her neck. “Let me wipe off this tattoo cover-up, then we’ll talk, okay?”

  He closed his eyes and pulled away from her skin, even though every part of him wanted to devour her again. “Yeah.” His voice was hoarse. Where was this going? What were they doing? How much was this going to hurt when it got even more fucked up than it already was?

  She retreated to the bathroom. After he chugged another glass of water and proceeded to spill it all over himself, he took his shirt off with a frustrated grunt. He stripped down to his boxers and was rummaging around for a pair of sweats when Wren emerged from the bathroom. She wore a pair of leggings and an oversized shirt, her tattoos once again visible, her skin pink from where she’d rubbed off the cover-up. She stood just in the doorway of the bathroom, watching him as he stepped into his sweatpants.

  She placed one foot on top of the other, leaning against the frame as she fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. Her hair was pulled up on top of her head, and her lips trembled slightly before she took a sharp intake of breath. “I was a freshman in college when I asked my roommate to go to this event at a local club. She didn’t want to go. She was tired because she’d been studying for a test, but I was in the mood to drink and dance. So she agreed.”

  He wasn’t sure where this was going, but he crossed his arms over his chest and settled in to listen.

  “So we went, and it was really fun. These guys were paying attention to us, and they were hot, and so we went with it until…” Wren bit her lip. “Until I stopped remembering.”

  His heart slammed against his ribs, and he clenched his jaw to keep from roaring at the image flashing through his mind of a vulnerable Wren. “What do you mean you stopped remembering?”

  “I mean I blacked out. I woke up to my friend screaming. We were in a house, and they were dragging her into a room, where I could see a dirty mattress on the floor and a”—she swallowed—“a camera set up in front of it, on a tripod.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Roarke spat.

  “I couldn’t do anything. My limbs weren’t working right. My head was pounding. One guy was watching me, and I asked to go to the bathroom. He let me, and I managed to crawl out the window and run away. I called the police immediately, but when they went to the house, it was empty.”

  Roarke stared at her, unable to contain his horror or stuff down the bile rising in his throat. “Your friend—”

  “She came back,” Wren said. “A month later. She was addicted to drugs, weighed about twenty pounds less and…” Her voice failed as tears fell down her cheeks. “She went to rehab and therapy and got clean. She fakes being okay, but she’s not okay. I found out they still terrorize her and send her the videos they made of her and threaten her if she talks. She has no family, no one really.” She swallowed. “Except me.”

  Wren wiped vigorously at her face. “That’s when I started learning to code. I’m determined to get back at these assholes and shut down this shit. I want revenge for her. And I have guilt on top of it because I made her go to that club.”

  Roarke didn’t bother telling her it wasn’t her fault. He knew all about guilt, and how someone telling you it wasn’t your fault did jack shit. “What does this have to do with Darren?”

  Her chin lifted. “It took a long time to follow the tracks, but they lead to him. Or at least, he’s as far up as I’ve gotten at this point. He uses his clubs to find girls.”

  Roarke’s stomach roiled. He couldn’t get the image of Wren’s unconscious body out of his head. “Did they…did you…?”

  She shook her head. “No. I went and got checked. Just drugged.”

  He was going to implode as his brain raced through everything he’d done over the last ten years, all the small clicks he’d made to help Wren be nothing but safe and successful. “How did I not know about this?” His voice was hoarse.

  She tilted her head. “How could you know? I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Hospital records?”

  “I gave them a different name. Said I was insured and paid in cash.”

  “B-but you…No!” At his shout, she jerked, even as the volume of his voice surprised him, too. “But I watched you. I knew when you got a sinus infection; I knew when you went to Planned Parenthood for free birth control. Fuck, I even knew when your profs entered your grades…everything. I knew goddamn everything, so how the fuck could I not know about this!”

  She stared at him, frozen with wide eyes before her face screwed up, and she stalked toward him. “What did you say? What do you mean you knew all of that?”

  He wasn’t thinking of self-preservation. He just wanted to know how he missed this, what he could have done to prevent it, to make it better. “You haven’t been alone for ten years,” he said. “Because I was always one click away.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I oversaw it. Sometimes interfered.”

  Her face went from disbelief to rage in about two seconds. “You hacked my life?”

  “I was trying to help you.”

  “By spying on me!” She trembled, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes as she stamped her bare foot. “What kind of interference?”

  Why had he confessed? Because I love her. “Small things.”

  She spoke through gritted teeth. “What kind of small things?”

  “A raise here and there at your campus jobs.” Her eyes bugged out, but his confession was on a roll. “And that one time you entered to win free gas for a year.”

  Her face was thunder. “You mean you made me win that?”

  He held his ground. He hadn’t done anything really wrong, had he? “Gas was expensive that summer.”

  “Oh my God, Roarke!” She spun around, her hands in her hair as she stalked over to the backpack and shoved her feet in her boots. With a huff, she slung the bag over her shoulder and clomped back over in her unlaced boots. Her finger was out, pointing right at his chest, and he knew he’d fucked up. How did he explain it’d grown into an addiction? He had no excuse. He’d wanted the best for her, and somewhere along the line, it’d all gone awry. “Wren,” he said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t take it back now—”

  “Fuck you, Roarke.” She stalked past him on the way to the front door.

  “Wren—”

  She whirled around. “I’ll finish out this mission for Flynn, but you need to promise me you’ll stop. You’ll get out of my life. It’s not your life, Roarke! How could you do this?”

  Tears streamed down her cheeks now, black, mascara-tinted rivers, and with them his dreams of ever holding on to Wren. “I’m sorry.”

  A sob burst from her lips before she covered her mouth with the back of her hand. “What am I to you?” she whispered. “An avatar or a real person?”

  His heart cracked open like a split coconut. “You’re—”

  “Never mind,” she said, straightening her shoulders. “I don’t give a fuck.” She opened his front door and stalked out to her bike.

  He knew she was beyond reason, but he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “At least tie your damn boots before you get on your bike.”

  She froze with her helmet halfway to her head and turned a glare on him that he felt on his face like a rattlesnake bite. “Sorry, Roarke. Guess you didn’t enter the right coding for me to lace my boots. Error five-oh-five,” she said in a robot voice.

  Then she shoved the helmet on her head, straddled her bike, and roared away.

  He watched the taillights of her bike as they grew smaller and smaller until she turned a street corner and vanished. He somehow managed to drag himself into his place and shut the door behind him before he slid to the floor with his back against the wall.

  This place still smelled like her, and when he glanced into the open door of
the bathroom, he saw her dress lying in a crimson and beaded puddle on the floor.

  He wasn’t perfect, he’d never claimed to be. Flynn always said Roarke needed to quit living life through the Web and actually dialogue with people. Be relatable, Flynn always said. That was the problem though, because Roarke didn’t know how to be. During all the crucial years in his life when he maybe could have developed some sort of damn social skills, he’d been behind a computer.

  He’d intended to check on Wren only to make sure she wasn’t getting screwed by people and to double check inaccuracies that would harm her. He’d never actually meant to…affect her life. Until he’d done it that first time, then another time, until he was making tiny changes all over the place.

  Love was watching over people. And if that meant from behind a computer, then that was what he did. That was love, right?

  He wasn’t sure how much time passed with him sitting on the floor when his phone buzzed with a text from Erick. Wren’s here, where are you? Got news.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When Roarke strode into the basement, the room was full of quiet murmurs and the click of keys.

  In the corner, he spotted Wren and Marisol. Wren didn’t even look at him, but as he approached, her body went tight. Fuck, the memory of them together was still vivid. He could still taste her skin on his tongue, and now he had to pretend like nothing had happened.

  He could do this. He had to.

  He clapped Marisol on the shoulder, and she elbowed him affectionately. “Hey boss.”

  “Glad to see you back safe. You killed it in there.”

  “I know.” She’d taken off her wig and already changed her clothes, slipping back into herself effortlessly. “Wren here smashed it, too.”

  Roarke forced himself to look at her, and when her brown eyes lifted to his, there was hurt there. Maybe a little regret, too? Regret about what they’d done? She might as well have punched him—it would probably hurt less. He steeled himself and said, “Yes, she did.”