Frank referred to his engineers and designers, the twenty-something and early-thirties hotshots, as “the kids”. Awake, Neil didn’t seem as youthful as the awkward young geniuses she’d met through Frank. But as he dozed, she could see Neil’s true age, or lack thereof, more clearly.
Frank could have been Neil’s father. She literally couldn’t be his mom—Suzanne had been adventurous as a teen, but she’d clung to her virginity by a technicality until a few years after Neil was born—but someone her age could, assuming a birth-control failure during a high-school romance.
She might called Neil sir and even Master while they played, but that was a sex-game, a bit of fun she’d desperately needed after coming home to a destroyed house and realizing Frank had been deceptive in far more complicated ways than she’d known. That Neil had probably needed almost as much after a day that started with dealing with a fellow police officer as a witness, not a colleague.
Best not to make this more than it was: an adventure for both of them, one that might have happened anyway, but was sped up, first by the kind of car that made you feel wild and free, and then by bizarre circumstances that forced a first not-officially-a-date into something intense and intimate and scary.
Their connection might be fever hot, but like a fever, it would pass, leaving them with delirious memories.
Hopefully before any lasting damage was done.
Chapter Fifteen
Suzanne’s sensible resolves faded when Neil woke in the dim, cool hour just before sunrise and began to caress her. She didn’t even think of saying no, though she’d been asleep when he first touched her. It felt too good waking up to a man’s passion. It had been far too long.
And never like this, with her hands stretched above her head and tied with a quick loop of rope to the headboard and evil, wonderful little clamps on her nipples.
When it was over, and she snuggled against him, Neil said, “I want to put tracking software on your new phone before I head out today.”
Her brain still felt sodden and slow from pleasure, but she wasn’t so far gone not to exclaim, “What? I’m not even planning to go to any appointments this week, just doing phone and Skype consults.”
He ran his hand down her back to her ass. Grasped it hard enough for her to feel the bruises. “Humor me.”
“You’re paranoid.” For some reason, it wasn’t easy to form the sentence.
“I’m a cop.” He rolled her onto her back, started kissing his way down her body.
“Might be the same thing.”
“Not when someone really is out to get you.” He took a nipple, still tender from the clips she’d worn earlier, into his mouth and suckled. Sensation surged through her, a heady mixture of pleasure and a hint of pain. When that nipple was so sensitive she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, he turned his attentions to the other one.
Her hips began to roll, fucking the air.
He worked his way down between her legs, gave her two delicious, disorienting licks. “Besides,” he added, raising his head, “what makes you think I’m giving you a choice? If you give in gracefully, though, I’ll keep licking you. If you argue, you’ll have to wait.”
“Fine!” she conceded.
She still thought he was being paranoid.
But someone might be out to get her, so a little paranoia was healthy. And more importantly, she didn’t want to stop what he was doing.
* * * * *
Janice lived in Charlestown in a converted industrial space. She had only a few rooms, but they were all large. Perfect for swinging a whip, Janice always claimed, even in front of vanilla friends. She’d say it like it was a joke, but Suzanne knew it was the simple truth. And those high ceilings with exposed steel beams must be great for suspension bondage. Funny how Suzanne had never thought about that before, just envied the space’s clean lines and great light. Janice made no secret of her proclivities and she’d been at Janice’s place often but her experiments with Neil, mild as they probably were in comparison to Janice’s activities, had pushed BDSM to the front of her brain. There was no avoiding how well those exposed beams would work as anchor points, or how that spare “modern sculpture” might be a frame for flogging or bondage. It wasn’t a St. Andrew’s cross or something else that a sheltered Sunday-school teacher might guess had naughty applications, but now that she was more clued in, Suzanne couldn’t believe she hadn’t figured it out before. It made her want to giggle. Not laugh in a mature, womanly way but giggle like an eight-year-old girl who’d just figured out a dirty joke.
Until she saw Janice’s face, drawn with worry.
Janice drew her into a hug and said, “Frank was a different flavor of SOB than we thought. Who knew he’d be up to his eyebrows in spies and top-secret stuff? Geeks, even good-looking geeks with fun cars, don’t seem like spy-thriller material.”
Suzanne stiffened. She hadn’t given Janice any details about what was going on, just that she was finally ready to face Frank’s phone and what it might contain. It was too surreal and trying to explain it, instead bringing it into sense and order, just underscored how little information they had. She thought it would make more sense if she explained in person.
Or maybe when it was all over, when the bad guys were safely behind bars and she actually knew what she was explaining.
But someone had told Janice. And she knew who that someone had to be.
Part of Suzanne wanted to cling to Janice and accept her acerbic version of comfort. Instead, she pulled back a little and glared at Neil. “You told her!”
He shrugged. “She’s my friend too.”
“When I didn’t hear back from you with salacious stories and you didn’t return my texts, I pinged Neil. Figured you guys had crashed and burned before you really got started and you were both pretending you didn’t know I’d set you up until you figured out exactly how to rip me a new one. But Neil’s the type to answer a direct question and I was dying of curiosity, so I just asked. And boy did I get an earful. Wouldn’t have believed that story from most people, but Neil got all LEO on me, so I knew he was serious. We had terrorists in Boston not too long ago, so it’s not as weird as it might seem.” Janice sounded concerned but also fascinated, which was par for the course. The woman was curious about everything. She’d have a million questions, and they’d have no answers for ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety of them.
Which was exactly why Suzanne hadn’t wanted to say anything until things were clearer. Preferably until the mysteries were solved, the bad guys were out of the picture, and Suzanne and Neil could both get back to their lives, separately or together. No point in pulling Janice into this mess too. She couldn’t do much to help except be moral support, and even that might be dangerous.
Too late for that now. The cat was out of the bag, and like any self-respecting cat that had escaped from a bag, it was going to zip around leaving a trail of destruction behind it and wouldn’t take kindly to being shoved back in.
“It’s a wild story all right,” Neil said coolly, oblivious to her glare. “I guess it’s even stranger if you knew the guy. I didn’t get the full impact, not knowing Mr. Anal-Retentive-Nerd.”
“It was my story to tell or not to tell. Not yours.” She was half sick with fury and she couldn’t figure out why. Annoyance, sure. That would make sense. But she was choking on rage. What was the reason?
Janice waved a hand in front of her face. “Earth to Suzanne. He’s not Frank, or Frank’s sexier mirror-image, or whatever you’re worrying about.”
Oh yeah, that was why: Frank’s terrible habit of making unilateral decisions about what to share and not to share. Some of it made more sense now. As a defense contractor dealing with highly sensitive information, he’d needed to develop a habit of secrecy; playing things close to the vest would seem reasonable even if it wasn’t really necessary. Even if he ended up cutting himself off from
his wife and friends.
Janice was right: Neil talking when she would prefer to keep something quiet had seemed like another guy controlling the flow of information in ways that affected her life, and she was over that.
But it wasn’t really the same thing, was it? At least this time, it was obviously early enough to talk it out before things got ugly. “You should have asked me. I didn’t want her caught up in my fucked-up mess.”
Janice squeezed her hard then let her go. “I’d call it Frank’s fucked-up mess. Don’t go taking responsibility for something you knew nothing about until it blew up in your face. I suppose he couldn’t explain exactly what he was working on, but you’d think he could have figured out a way to give you a heads-up that he was doing something defense-related or that weirdos might be after his work.”
Neil raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I’m prepared to dislike a guy I never met because he didn’t appreciate you, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. He literally might not have been allowed to say anything. Or maybe he figured it was better you didn’t know, that you could be all honestly ‘What? You must be mistaken,’ if someone asked. I’m sure he assumed any problems that arose would land in his lap where they belonged. No one expects to die young.”
“Especially since we were talking divorce. No need to get me in the loop on his latest super-clandestine project and maybe complicate both our lives when I’d be getting the hell out of Dodge soon. We were only sharing the house still because it’s so huge we could have separate rooms and pretty much ignore each other.”
“I guess you’re right.” To Suzanne’s surprise, Janice seemed almost appeased. Suzanne had been angry with Frank, hurt by him and in the end so distant from him that both the anger and the pain were like old injuries that occasionally twinged in the rain, but she’d never hated him. Disliked sometimes, but never hated. Janice had, with the fierce, sharp loathing of a best friend who had no memories of love to soften her feelings.
Well, that was settled, anyway. “As for you, I still don’t get why you took the liberty of telling her. Maybe I was going to spill the whole insanity in person.”
“Think, Suzanne.” Damn traitor body. Most of her wanted to slug him, but the part of her that responded to his orders, to his dominance, kind of liked that. Even if his tone could be read as condescending, she could imagine it working into a scene somehow. “You’re up to your eyebrows in alligators, and the only reason I’m not is because I’m taller than you, so my eyebrows are higher up. Like you, I didn’t want Janice to get caught up in this clusterfuck, but she’s already involved. I don’t think anyone’s realized you’re hiding out at my house, and I don’t think anyone followed us here, but I’m not sure because no one knows how many players are involved and what resources they have. There are a lot of unknowns, so there’s a risk to anyone who looks like they might know something about Frank’s business.”
Shit. She’d managed to implicate Janice in Frank’s mess months before she even knew there was a mess. “You’ve been holding on to his Batphone all this time, and the bad guys wouldn’t know it was because I thought it was his booty phone. For that matter, neither would the good guys, and the good guys aren’t necessarily nice if they think someone may have gotten their hands on top-secret technology. They may apologize later, but they’ll make your life miserable first.”
Janice snorted. “Like I’d be able to make heads or tails of Frank’s documentation even if I had it. You both know I dropped out of college to tie men up for fun and profit, and when I went back, it was for writing.”
“You wouldn’t need to understand the tech to sell it,” Neil argued. “Before you use your bullwhip on me, I know you wouldn’t, but the alphabet agencies are paid to suspect everyone.”
Janice added blithely, “I didn’t exactly keep it a secret that if Frank was on fire, I’d get out the marshmallows. That might give me an extra motive if someone was looking for one. So I appreciated the heads-up. But it took about two seconds to decide I wasn’t going to FedEx you the phone or anything like that. You’re my bestie. The bad guys can get to know my little friends if they try to mess with me.” She gestured toward the room where Suzanne knew she kept her toys.
“Two seconds is an exaggeration,” Neil added. “More like half a second. And there were a few ‘screw them’s’ involved.”
Suzanne couldn’t help laughing at that. “No lube, right?”
“Right. Definitely no lube. And any beatings would be of the non-fun, nonconsensual variety.”
The tension that had filled the big room like a poison gas dissipated. Suzanne crossed to Neil, looked up at him, unsure whether she should touch him or not. “I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
She thought about elaborating, about explaining why she’d reacted so badly to a decision which she’d have been totally behind if he’d explained his thought processes. It was the not trusting her with the thought processes that she’d had an issue with.
Then she decided the trusting her with them was her assumption based on Frank and didn’t apply to Neil. Hell, it might not have actually applied to Frank, based on what she’d learned in the past day. My God, had it really only been a little over twenty-four hours since I learned about the drones, a little over forty-eight since I met Neil? She’d explain later, after she’d had a chance to detangle her thoughts and emotions.
Luckily, Neil didn’t demand details. He just nodded. “You’re stressed. I’m used to making decisions to keep civilians safe; it’s a habit, and I didn’t even think about it when Janice was on the phone and I had an opportunity to warn her.”
“Makes sense.” It did, too. Wait and see. Try to trust. He’s helping you.
Neil was super-hot. That made trusting Neil harder in some ways because she’d been fooled by a pretty face before. She probably ought to accept his judgment, at least where issues involving crime were concerned. But the way her brain melted into her panties made her both overly accepting and extra wary. Parts of her wanted to trust him completely, accept his judgment in all things, but that was because it had felt right to do so in bed. Other, probably wiser, parts questioned every interaction with him because of that brain-melt issue.
She’d only been attracted to one person this thoroughly, this quickly. She’d met both men at times when her life was in flux. She knew, in retrospect, that she’d fallen so hard for Frank because he represented maturity and stability at a time when she was having a hard time finding those qualities in herself. And for all he had the fun qualities of a fantasy bad-boy Dom, a fantasy she’d craved, Neil was also the living embodiment of the law, safety at a dangerous and confusing time.
Which made the emotional and erotic side of this whole situation almost as dangerous as the criminal aspect.
Suzanne couldn’t spend too much time brooding about intangibles, though, because Janice handed her Frank’s phone.
It rested heavy in her hand, heavier than a sleek, high-end phone had any reason to be. She imagined it was ticking like a bomb. With a touch in the right place, it lit up—Janice had obviously been keeping it charged—showing a login screen. She took a deep breath. “Here goes nothing. Any suggestions for the password?”
Janice suggested, “Try I’mAnAsshole, all one word?” When they both glared her way, she added, “Hey, you asked!” Then she gestured toward a couch and chair. “This is going to take a while; we might as well be comfortable. Anyone want a drink?”
Suzanne chuckled drily under her breath. Thank God for Janice’s snark. “I’d love a drink,” she said, settling on the sofa, “but I’d better stick to coffee. I’m still pretty crunchy.”
“Coffee’s good.” Neil sat beside her. Without any conscious thought on her part, Suzanne snuggled against him, grateful for his sturdy, protective warmth. He slid an arm along the back of the couch behind her. He wasn’t quite cuddling her, as if he knew she couldn’t concen
trate with too much contact, but she felt his heat and his protection enfolding her and was grateful.
And as scared by her own gratitude as by the notion of what she might unlock on the innocuous-looking phone.
Fueled with Janice’s dark-roast coffee, its harsh edges subdued but not tamed with a splash of cream, Suzanne started with the more obvious password choices. Frank’s birthday. The date he was granted his first patent, which had been on the Stingray’s vanity plate. DAISY, because whatever you could say about him, even Jan grudgingly conceded he loved that cat. After three tries, the phone warned them it would erase all data on the tenth failed attempt then refused to let them try again for an hour.
Janice snorted. “Trust Frank to be annoying even months after he’s dead. This seems like a great time for dinner.”
“You offering to cook?” The way Neil said it made it clear he knew Janice could burn water.
“You have your choice of the finest takeout Charlestown has to offer. Let me grab some menus out of the fridge.” Neil raised an eyebrow. “They’re food-related, right? I might as well have something in there besides beer, wine, and cream for my coffee.”
As Janice wandered off in search of the takeout menus, Suzanne tossed the phone to the far end of the couch, sighed in frustration, and leaned back against Neil. “What was I thinking? Frank was a geek, a brilliant one, and he was apparently doing something defense-related. He probably had a randomly generated 27-character alphanumeric password that he changed every six weeks.”
“In that case, we’ll need to turn it over to the police, have a specialist with the right tools deal with it.”
“But what if this is just the phone he used to contact his girlfriend and store his favorite smut? I’d rather see if it’s anything that might be important instead of just embarrassing before I waste police time.”
“They say even people who know better usually use passwords they can remember and we’ve found that to be true. Let’s try a few more times once it lets us.” Neil wrapped his arm around her, pulled her closer. It wasn’t sexual, not in any way Suzanne could define, more friendly and comforting, but it still made her want to purr like a contented cat. Still kindled a slow fire deep inside her, something that wasn’t arousal yet, but wanted to be when it grew up.
Drive: Cougars, Cars and Kink, Book 1 Page 13
