“Aren’t you ever tempted to test out your hacking skills?” he asked, casual as he could be.
She sighed. “I’ll admit, it’s a temptation.”
“I can imagine. I mean, honestly, I used to play around, trying to break into systems, but I sucked. I’d make a terrible hacker,” he lied.
“Yeah, well, it’s not exactly a skill to be proud of.”
“Sure it is. I mean, assuming you were doing it for the right reasons.” His stomach clenched. This was the point where he could ruin everything if he wasn’t careful.
“Now there’s a daring idea.”
“What?”
“That it’s okay to do something wrong if you’ve got a good reason.”
“Sort of like Robin Hood. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor.”
“You really believe Robin Hood was a good guy?” she asked, and Alex’s heartbeat quickened.
He knew he was close. So damn close.
“Yeah, doesn’t everybody?”
“Not the rich people he stole from.”
He glanced over at her and caught her smiling. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Promise you can keep a secret?”
“Sure,” he said as evenly as he could.
“Remember that story in the news a while back, about the hackers who were attacking terrorist Web sites?”
“Yeah,” he said, a weird sense of anticipation settling over him. “That was great—why?”
She smiled, all mock innocence. “Well…”
“That was you?”
“Me and some friends. It was a blast.”
Alex felt as if someone had clubbed him in the head. It made sense now. She had been hacking again, but perhaps not in the way he or any of his fellow agents had thought. At least in this case, not for any nefarious purpose.
Holy shit.
“You’re kidding!”
“No, I’m not. But please keep it quiet, okay? I’ve never told anyone, and…given my history, I don’t want word getting out.”
“My lips are sealed. But that’s awesome. I mean, how many Web sites did you take down?”
“Between me and my friends, probably about twenty hits over a two-month period. That’s counting repeats—when they got their sites back online, we took them out again.” She smiled, and he could tell she was proud of herself even if she didn’t want to admit it.
“What made you stop?”
“Guilt, and a weird feeling, like this sense I had that I was going to get caught again. I started feeling like I was being watched.”
“Who would prosecute you for hindering terrorists?”
“I guess I’m just paranoid. I know it sounds crazy.”
“Not at all.” His chest filled with an odd sense of pride in her. In her own way, she’d been helping to defend her country.
“I’ve always felt—I mean, since the first time I got in trouble—like I had to walk the straight-and-narrow path or else. I just had this little impulse to do something rebellious, but then I got scared.”
“Is that what this weekend with me is about? Being a little rebellious?”
“No,” she said too quickly. “I mean…maybe, a little.”
“I see,” he said, smiling.
And now he understood his appeal to her. She was a rebel without an outlet for her urges, and he was her way to rebel. He was dangerous, but not too dangerous. It wasn’t the way he’d intended to gain her trust, but it had worked nonetheless.
“You’re not offended, are you?”
“Let’s see—a beautiful, intelligent woman wants to spend the weekend with me. Which part should I be offended by?”
Yasmine shrugged and looked ahead as they walked. There was some shift in her mood then that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
And the question remained—had she engaged in any other system intrusions? Was she only telling him part of the truth? Was her daring to hack into terrorist Web sites just a hint of her secret activities?
Alex glanced at Yasmine again, her perfect features aglow in the streetlights. He couldn’t fathom her, this rebellious beauty who’d captivated him from the moment he first saw her. And he hoped like hell that she was innocent.
But then what? What if she really was innocent? Did he think he could just tell her the truth and that they could continue as they’d started this weekend? No, he knew there would be repercussions, and no matter what he learned from his investigation, both of them were going to get hurt.
ALEX HAD SET HIS WRISTWATCH alarm to sound at two in the morning, and as soon as he heard it go off, he pressed the button to stop the tinkling alarm. Beside him, Yasmine slept soundly, her steady breathing marked by the occasional pauses of deep sleep.
He allowed his eyes to adjust to the dark, then lay in bed biding his time. He could get up right now and search her computer, search her apartment, look for any and all answers to the question of her involvement in illegal activities.
Part of him couldn’t wait to know the truth, was eager to prove that she was innocent. And another part of him dreaded the other possibility—the chance that she really was still a hacker. If his attraction to her had clouded his judgment that badly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know that, either.
But he’d come this far. He’d concocted a false identity for himself, lied his way into Yasmine’s life, and he couldn’t back down now.
One more glance in her direction to confirm she was sleeping, and he slipped out of the bed, silent and easy. Grabbing his boxers from the floor, he slid them on and eased his way out of the room and into the living room, where the lights on the tree still twinkled.
Alex sat at the computer desk and with a nudge of the mouse, took the monitor out of low-power mode. Yasmine’s flat-panel screen came to life, bright blue in the near darkness, inviting him to explore whatever secrets the hard drive held.
The type of people who spent their free time invading other people’s systems tended to be a paranoid sort when it came to their own computer’s security. Passwords and firewalls abounded, but Yasmine’s system came to life without a single password request.
Without that hurdle to jump, he easily started exploring. Through folders hidden and not so hidden, he looked for clues about her Internet activities. That everything was so easily accessible was a good sign, a sign that she didn’t think like a hacker anymore.
And after a half hour of poking around her hard drive, he’d have to say, if she had any secrets, they were hidden extremely well. On the Internet, she seemed to have a penchant for Ebay and online shopping sites, a couple of news sites and blogs, and that was it. Nothing nefarious. She didn’t haunt any of the sites attractive to hackers, didn’t even go to sites that suggested she might have an interest in system security anymore.
He breathed a sigh of relief.
His eyes glazed and his body telling him what he needed most was sleep right now, he glanced at the dark hallway that led to the bedroom.
No sound came from that direction, but something made his hackles rise. He went totally still and listened.
Nothing. Maybe it had just been the cat. But his muscles remained tense, his senses on alert, so he turned back to the monitor and set it to low power again.
When he was about to rise from the desk chair, an almost imperceptible sound caught his attention. He turned and saw Yasmine standing in the living room doorway squinting in the soft light, her long hair tousled, falling over her shoulders and breasts.
The fear of nearly getting caught shot through him, seized his chest, sent his brain scrambling for an explanation of his late-night visit to her computer desk. It occurred to him now how horrified he was at the thought of Yasmine finding out the truth about his deception. He didn’t want her to know, regardless of her guilt or innocence. He didn’t want her to hate him.
She was still naked, and if it weren’t for the cold spike of adrenaline that now had him on edge, he would have gotten hard at the sight of her. Shielding her eyes from twinkl
ing lights on the tree with one hand, she frowned at him.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “I heard a noise and thought Santa had come.”
He forced himself to breathe. “I’m kind of an insomniac. Couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d get up and check the news on the Internet.”
A slow smile spread across her lips as she closed the distance between them. “I thought I’d properly tired you out tonight.”
Alex stood and took her in his arms, relaxed into the warmth of her body. Thank God she’d bought his story.
“Mmm.” He dipped his head down and kissed her. “I may need a little more exercise before I’ll be ready to sleep.”
“Exercise? Is that what we’re calling it now?” she asked, and then she placed a kiss on his neck that he felt all the way to his groin.
“Call it what you want,” he said. “Whatever it is, it’s addictive.”
The swiveling computer chair was behind him now, and she molded her body tighter to his. He brushed her hair back off her shoulders to give him unobstructed access to her breasts, and his cock went hard, while his balls tightened.
“Do you think Santa will still come if we’re awake and…exercising?”
He silenced her with a long, hungry kiss, forcing his tongue into her mouth, overwhelming any doubts she might have had about his intentions. She was what he wanted more than air, more than food, more than water. She had to know that by now—and yet she was the last thing he should have wanted.
“I guess you could say Santa’s already here and about to give you his own special kind of holiday cheer.”
“Ohh, bad Santa,” she purred. “I can’t wait to see what you’ve got for me.”
“It’s something every girl can use,” he said as he urged her toward the bedroom.
But she held her ground. “No, let’s do it here,” she said.
“On the desk?”
“It’s sturdy.” She tugged him toward the side of the desk, pushed aside a stack of papers and sat, while he grabbed a condom from the stash they’d left on the coffee table earlier.
Alex wedged himself between her bare legs as she tugged down his boxers. Then he slid on the condom. His attention, torn between his guilt over snooping on her computer and Yasmine’s irresistible body, found its focus where their bodies met and generated maximum heat.
Alex pinned her on the desk, pressing his body into her, finding the point of least resistance and sliding in. She had such a sweet, hot pussy, and an incomprehensible ache built inside him as he began moving inside her, probing as deep as he could go, then withdrawing and probing again.
He rested his weight on his elbows and looked into her eyes, wanting to see what was really there. Some hint of the truth about Yasmine. But all he saw was their dark depths. She was, as always, secret, hidden away, unfathomable except when it came to her sexual desires.
And then he saw something else. She looked at him with such vulnerability, it transformed her into a girl instead of a woman.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
He stilled. “You tell me.”
She tightened herself around him. “You just seem kind of intense right now.”
“This…” he said, easing deeper into her. “What we’ve been doing…it’s getting intense.”
No other way to describe the crazy, hot, burning, aching need that kept pushing them into each other’s arms. It was intense like nothing else he’d ever known.
9
YASMINE PEERED out the kitchen window at the gray Christmas morning while she heated water for instant cocoa in the microwave. She recalled the feeling of being watched that she’d had in the past few months, and realized that having Kyle here with her had eliminated that paranoia. For the first time in a long time, she felt completely safe and at ease.
She mixed the cocoa in steaming hot water, poured it into two coffee mugs and was about to carry them into the bedroom to wake up Kyle with when a hand slipped around her waist, and she felt herself pulled back against the firm warmth of a large male body.
“Ho-ho-ho, Merry Christmas,” Kyle said.
“Hey,” she said, her heart racing at the surprise. “I almost spilled your cocoa.”
“Sorry, I woke up and felt lonely to find myself in an empty bed.”
“Ready to open presents?”
“Before breakfast?”
“It’s Christmas morning!”
After returning home from the party, they’d wrapped up the cheap souvenirs they’d bought at Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39 and put them all under the tree to keep things looking festive.
“Oh, right. And Santa might have brought me that new surfboard I told him about.”
“Not if you’ve been bad.” She elbowed him in the ribs, and he held her tighter, splaying his fingers across her belly.
“I don’t know why he got so freaked when I sat on his lap,” he said, and Yasmine smiled at the image of Kyle balancing on a disgruntled Santa’s knees.
“Santas these days have too much attitude.”
“That’s not what you said last night.”
“True, and now that you mention it, I happen to know for a fact that Santa was way too busy last night to be hauling a surfboard down my chimney.”
“You don’t even have a chimney.”
“Santa’s a nasty boy, always looking for some tight space to get into.”
“I think you’re the nasty one,” he said as he swatted her on the backside.
“So I’ve been told. Now grab your coffee and get your ass over to the Christmas tree.” She swatted him back as he turned toward the tree.
Chilly as it was in her drafty apartment, Yasmine couldn’t very well let Kyle sit around in his boxers—today’s pair covered with snowmen. They were festive, but they wouldn’t do much to keep the chill out. She grabbed a couple of blankets from the closet and gave him one before wrapping the other around herself and settling in next to the tree.
“I call elf duty,” she said as she grabbed the nearest gift.
“It’s all yours, babe.” He leaned back against the couch and sipped his coca, clearly enjoying himself more than he wanted to let on.
Yasmine had to admit, this was turning into the most fun weekend she’d had in a long time, Christmas or not. A few nights of great sex clearly had a positive effect on her mood, and she was just about as jolly as she could get.
She knew the gift she’d grabbed was for Kyle, but she made a show of examining the tag anyway. It was the box of See’s Candies she’d gotten him before she knew anything about him but what a great ass he had. Only a few days ago, but it felt like a lifetime.
“For you,” she said.
He unwrapped the package and withdrew the box of chocolates, then pried off the box lid.
“There’s a companion gift for that.”
He picked up a chocolate and bit into it. “Mmm, raspberry,” he said. “My favorite.”
Yasmine’s grin must have been huge. “They’re almost as good as sex, aren’t they?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t know about that. I mean, they’re tasty and all—”
“I’ve always wondered if eating them during sex would heighten both experiences.”
“We can test the theory out,” he said.
“All in the name of science, of course.”
“Because that must be the kind of thing scientific minds puzzle over.”
“Of course.” She handed him the box containing the furry handcuffs. “When they’re not inventing life-saving gadgets like this.”
“I get to open two in a row?”
“It’s the companion gift.”
He tore into the paper, then opened the white box and pulled out the leopard-print handcuffs. “Ah, of course. Chocolates and handcuffs.”
“I’ll let you solve the riddle. Major bonus points if you do.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Let me get this straight, you bought this stuff before you even knew we’d end up sleeping toge
ther….”
“To declare my intentions, of course.”
“You planned to take advantage of me all along!” He was doing a really bad job of acting offended.
“Give it up, Bad Santa. It’s not like I’ve stolen your virtue.”
He twirled the handcuffs on one finger. “I’ll need a demonstration of how these work later. Your turn to open something.”
Yasmine recognized most of the boxes as things they’d wrapped last night, but one small box caught her eye. “What’s this?” she said.
“Open it and find out.”
It was unmistakably Kyle’s wrapping job, with too much tape and uneven paper alignment. She tore off the packaging and found a box filled with a little stack of computer-generated coupons.
The top coupon read, “Good for one free sensual massage.” She flipped to the next one, which read, “Good for doughnuts in bed.” And the next one, “Good for unlimited fantasies fulfilled.”
“Wow, I get to redeem these whenever I want?”
“Maybe not whenever. I mean, in the middle of the workday would be bad timing for most of them.”
She smiled, touched that he’d taken the time to create a homemade gift. “Is this why you got up in the middle of the night?”
He shrugged. “Well, I couldn’t sleep, and I felt bad for having woken you up.”
“Didn’t you ever see the episode of Friends when Joey gives coupons as gifts?”
“No, why?”
“Oh, nothing. Thank you,” she said, and she meant it. “This is the sweetest gift anyone has given me in a long time.”
She handed him his next gift.
“Is this one mine?” He made a big show of acting as if he had no idea what was in the package, even though he knew it was only the dumb key chain they’d bought yesterday.
“Wow,” he said, holding it up for her to see. “It’s in the shape of a cable car. Get it? Cable cars represent San Francisco.”
She laughed. “You’re such a dork. A cute dork, but still a dork.”
They finished unwrapping their assortment of goofy little gifts and sat on the floor beside each other, drinking cocoa and playing with their stuff. Yasmine shook up her San Francisco snow globe and watched the glitter fall on the city.
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