by Desiree Holt
Her laugh was soft and sexy. Of course, Liam thought everything about Sydney Alfiore was sexy.
“I think it’s time for me to get my hands on your body.” She nudged him. “Come on.”
The water was soft and warm as it sluiced over their bodies. Liam reached for the bottle of body wash but Sydney took it from his fingers, smiling and shaking her head.
“Let me.”
She poured some in the palm of one hand, rubbed her hands together to create a sudsy lather and began to stroke the foam over his body. The touch of her hands was magical. Erotic. Exciting, as they followed every contour of his body until every speck of skin was covered with the scented foam. Sliding one hand between his thighs, she cupped his balls in her palm and began a gentle squeezing motion.
Holy shit!
His cock, already swollen and needy from all the touching and licking of her body he’d done and from watching her epic climax, became painfully hard and an ache consumed his balls. He started to take the bottle to lather up his own hands, but she took it from him and put it back on the little built-in shelf.
“Uh-uh. This one’s all mine.”
She closed her slim fingers around his raging hard-on and began to stroke him with a slow, gentle rhythm. Liam propped himself up with one hand against the wall and closed his eyes, giving himself over to the magic of her fingers and the ribbons of heat and hunger unwinding and curling through his body.
Up and down her fingers worked his shaft, her other hand cradling and fondling his balls in a matching rhythm. His body was one big ache as the orgasm began to grow deep within him. Up and down she moved her hand, fingers working their magic between his thigh.
“Feel good?” she asked in a low voice.
“Fucking damn good,” he growled. “But I want to be inside you.”
“Next time,” she promised. “This time I want to see you spill all over my hand.”
His words were like a trigger, his body responding by rocking back and forth into her grip. The muscles low in his back tightened and his balls tingled as the orgasm began its climb from low in his system.
Then it was there, exploding, his cock jerking as it pulsed over and over again, until he was completely drained. Her fingers squeezed his shaft in a slow, rhythmic motion, milking the last drop from him.
“Don’t let go,” he murmured as he waited for his breathing to even out.
“Never,” she promised.
“Come here.” He reached out with his other arm to tug her closer to him, shocked when all he touched was air. He opened his eyes and—
Fuck!
It had all been a dream. And instead of Sydney’s slim fingers, it was his own thick ones wrapped around his cock. Traces of cum still adhered to the skin of his hand even as droplets of water ran over it. His body felt as depleted as if he’d had real sex, not solo sex, and the image of a naked, water-drenched Sydney was stuck in his brain.
He sure as hell hoped this whole thing got reconciled soon and the real killer found, so he and Sydney could get on with their lives. Then he remembered that Eric was dead and he, Liam, was about to be arraigned for the murder. He tucked the memories of his fantasy in a corner of his brain, in a place where he could pull them out if he needed them.
Then he shut off the shower and went to get dressed, hoping his freedom wasn’t about to be shot down.
Sydney was waiting for him at the dining room table. She and Vega were already holding mugs of coffee and one filled with the steaming liquid sat by an empty seat.
“Yours,” Sydney acknowledged. “And help yourself to something to eat.”
Liam lowered himself into the chair, lifted the mug and inhaled the fragrant steam before taking a reviving swallow. He was almost afraid to look at Sydney after his hand job in the shower but he managed to pull himself together. He plucked a flaky pastry from the plate in the center of the table, took a bite and tried not to moan with pleasure.
“Okay,” he said at last. “I’m ready for whatever you need.”
“Good.” She placed a small recorder on the table between them. “I’ve asked Jim to sit in with us. He knows the drill and the more he understands the situation, the better he’ll be able to prevent anything from happening to you.”
Liam didn’t want to ask her what that would be.
Sydney refilled her mug and topped off Liam’s.
“Drink it. It will keep you going.” She sipped the hot liquid. “Just to let you know, Noah has just landed. He texted me to let me know he’s here and off on his mission.”
“I know he’s great and all that. He’d have to be to run that company with Taylor. But exactly what kind of mission is this? What can he do?”
“Let me give you a little background. Noah Cantrell started with Arroyo as Josiah Gaines’ personal bodyguard. He worked his way up to chief then vice president of security for headquarters. Now he’s the head man for security for the entire conglomerate. He created an agency that’s based here but now has operatives all over the world. Part of what they do is train security agents for other companies that need it, so every unit of Arroyo is always well-protected.”
“Bodyguards,” he pointed out.
“That’s only part of it. They have staff trained in every form of detection and investigation. Even as we speak, Noah himself has arrived in Tampa and is meeting with the top guys at the agency.”
Liam’s brows rose to his hairline. “And why is he doing this for me?”
Sydney leaned forward. “You’re an important part of the company, Liam. Taylor has plans to help you expand so eventually you can write your special programs for every unit of Arroyo. You know that, right?”
He nodded, slightly dazed. “I guess I’m still trying to absorb the whole thing.”
“He and Taylor believe, as do I, that whatever is going on has its genesis right here, with Software By Design. He’ll be assigning men to dig into this entire situation. Among other things that means turning the lives of your staff inside out. Because, Liam? I’m sorry to say this, but it has to be one of them. There’s just no other answer. No one else could have gotten into the software to do anything to it.”
“Yeah, I know.” And didn’t that just suck. “But why? I pay them very well, they have a lot of creative freedom, and they know big bonuses are coming.”
Sydney shrugged. “Many reasons. A financial hole that the bonuses won’t fill. A weakness that someone’s discovered and is using it for pressure. Could be any number of things.”
“You know how hard that is for me to accept?”
“I do. And I’m sorry it’s come to this. But your life—your future—is at stake here so we’re turning over every rock.”
“What do you look for in a situation like this?”
“Easiest case? Someone who’s in a huge financial jam. All right.” She pulled over both her tablet and her miniature recorder that she had sitting on the table. “We’re going to go back to square one here. Then I’m going to walk you through what to expect this afternoon and what our schedule will be after that.”
His mouth curved in a rueful grin. “Good thing we’ve got a lot of coffee.”
By eleven o’clock, his brain was fried and he felt as if he’d been ‘rode hard and put away wet’. If he was this dragged out already, how was he going to withstand a trial, assuming there was one?
Sydney leaned back in her chair and rolled her head to relax her neck.
“Why don’t you take a shower? Then we’ll have some lunch and give you a chance to get yourself together before we leave for the courthouse and the arraignment.”
“The courthouse,” he repeated. “The arraignment. Yeah. Right.” He scraped his hand over his chin. “This ought to be a lot of fun.”
“This will be fine,” she assured him. “You won’t have to do much except enter your plea. We’ll ask that bail be continued and the judge will set a date for trial.”
“I’ve heard it can take weeks before a case comes to trial. Will the
y continue bail for all that time?”
Sydney nodded. “I promise you, today is just a formality. I already have people looking into everything. And Noah Cantrell is pulling out all the stops. He’s putting a full team on this. Don’t you worry. It’s going to be just fine.”
Fine. Right. But it’s my ass in jail if it isn’t.
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“Fine. Now let’s hear it all from the beginning. Right back to the night you told me you thought someone was following you. Maybe even trying to kill you. And don’t leave out a single thing.”
Liam took one more swallow of coffee and set the mug down. He rolled his head, trying to loosen the tension gripping him, and thought back to the beginning of all this. And what a shitshow it was turning out to be.
Chapter Seventeen
Eight was caught between clashing feelings of anger and fear. How had life become so complicated? And why had the solution to a gigantic problem seemed so simple at first and now had become so fucking complicated?
Shit, shit, shit.
Now that asshole, Shan, was sitting once again across a table in a restaurant looking pissed beyond belief at the news about Eric. As if there’d been a choice. Who needed this crap?
I do, because I’ve been so fucking stupid.
When Shan finally spoke, it was in an uninflected tone all the deadlier because of that. “I hear what you are saying but I still cannot believe you were so stupid. What did you think you were doing?”
Through clenched teeth, Eight said, “I was getting rid of someone who could blow the whistle on me and screw up this whole deal.”
“And you didn’t think to call me? That’s what your burner phones are for.”
Ah, yes, the infamous burner phones, with only one number programmed into them, and blanked so it could not be seen.
“I had no idea where you were,” Eight pointed out.
“I did not have to be the one to handle it. We have had people in the area all the time.”
“Oh, yeah.” Eight snorted. A derisive sound. “Like the idiot who pushed him into a gigantic traffic accident. That was real smart.”
“We were looking for opportunities to incapacitate him so you would have free rein with the software.”
“And how well did that work out for you?” Eight swallowed the rest of the liquor in the rocks glass and signaled the waiter for another. “Besides, it wasn’t necessary. I flipped the program without him being any the wiser.”
Shan leaned forward, dark eyes blazing with rage. “If you are so fucking smart, how is it you did not know Benedict had put a digital tripwire in the program to signal him when someone was trying to hack in?”
What? What the hell? When had he done that? Oh, hell. Oh, fucking hell.
Fear raced through Eight’s blood and not even fiddling with the rocks glass could hide that. Not when the hands holding it were shaking so badly.
“How do you know that?”
Shan sneered. “Because I have very clever people working for me who knew exactly what had happened because they’ve used the same thing before.”
Eight just sat there, staring across the table. “I was just…
“Don’t make excuses. It’s bad enough that you took this on yourself, to kill this way. But to use Benedict’s knife and put it back for the police to find? Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
“I knew they’d come to the office,” Eight protested. “I wanted to throw suspicion on him.”
“So now we have the police all over everything. Did you not think it would be better to use your brains, divorce yourself from this and let us clean up the mess?”
Eight shrugged. “I thought I could take care of it myself. And by the way, all the clues point toward Liam Benedict. By the time they figure out it’s not him, I will have my money from you and be long gone. Right?” When Shan said nothing, Eight leaned forward and repeated, “Right?”
For an unending moment Shan said nothing. Nausea surged in Eight’s throat. What the fuck?
“Right?”
Shan stared into the damn teacup, taking a long time before answering.
“We do not yet have all the drawings and specs of the design. We must be sure that what you have directed us to really works.”
“Wait just a damn minute.” Eight wanted to strangle the other person. “Our arrangement was half on delivery of the software, the other half when the design was tested. What the fuck is going on here? I’ve got my offshore accounts all set up. You can’t weasel out of this. It’s my ass on the line and I need to get the hell out of here as soon as possible.”
For a long moment, Shan said nothing. When the answer came at last, Eight was torn between committing murder and running like hell.
“This has not gone as smoothly as you promised.” Each word fell like a heavy stone in water. “We did not bargain for all these problems. Now we must make sure we have all the files and that no one has tracked them back to us. Then we must verify that they are the correct drawings.”
“But that could take months!” Shit, shit, shit. “I have to be long gone by then.”
“If you must leave the area, as long as I have your new address and phone number, the deal will still be consummated.”
“Leave the area?” Eight sat back, stunned. “With what? I need that money.”
“And we need to know that you kept your part of the bargain and nothing will trace back to us.”
Eight wanted to yell and scream. Beat the walls. Beat the shit out of the weasel across the table. This was not the way it was supposed to go.
Fuck. Just fuck.
“Fine.” Deep breath. “But time is running out on my end. How long do you think your so-called verification will take?”
Shan shrugged. “Not long. We want to have a working model up before Hoffman. I will call you in one week.”
Eight forced an outward calm. “Fine. You’d better hope I’m not arrested by then.”
The look in Shan’s eyes was positively lethal. “If that should happen, I can assure you, death would be your most beneficial option.”
Eight struggled to stay composed walking through the parking lot to the waiting vehicle. This had turned into a disaster. A true, fucking disaster. Getting this finished was now at the top of the priority list. No, getting it finished and staying alive was the goal.
Then disappearing off the face of the earth.
* * * *
As Noah Cantrell headed down the multilane highway from the airport to Tampa’s West Shore district, he had a sixth sense that someone was on his tail. No real reason except that little tickle that always signaled him something wasn’t quite kosher. Being half Comanche, he’d discovered, had great benefits in situations like this.
He had no reason to believe anyone even knew he was arriving in Tampa. He hadn’t exactly advertised it and he knew Liam had just learned about it. But too many broken eggs, as his mother used to say, made for a mess, not an omelet. As far as he was aware, only Rosalie at SBD knew about his trip, but she could have been overheard on the phone. Any number of things could have happened to light someone’s fuse. In this screwed-up situation anything was possible.
It had to be the same people who’d caused Liam’s accident, the people obviously woven somehow into this clusterfuck. He decided to do a little zigging and zagging to see what he could shake loose. And sure enough, there it was, an innocuous gray car keeping up with him, although doing its best not to be obvious.
All right, he thought. But two can play at this game. He wanted a look at the license plate, so he pulled abruptly onto the shoulder and got out as if checking his front tire. Sure enough, the gray sedan zipped past him, even moving one lane over. But Noah had taken out his cell phone and as the car went by, from his bent position he snapped three quick shots.
He climbed back into the car and headed back toward Kennedy Boulevard. He was pretty sure whoever was driving wouldn’t be stupid enough to be waiting for him where SR 60 hit Kennedy. He mi
ght have called someone else to take his place, but then again. Maybe not. Whatever. He didn’t really care. He had a license plate to trace and that was a start.
Let them follow him to Charley Graham’s office and worry if he was onto them. Or soon would be.
The entire floor of the office building was occupied by a company with the innocuous name of Graham & Associates. To the unknowing it could be a law firm, an insurance agency, a financial firm or any of a number of other entities. In reality it was a high-powered confidential investigations firm, wholly owned by Arroyo. Noah had put it together shortly after he and Taylor were married and he became vice president of security for the entire conglomerate.
It was based in Tampa because the man research had identified as the best person to head the agency lived in that city. And John Martino had concurred. Taylor saw no reason to uproot him and his family. Noah had scoped out the best place to locate the offices and Noah had led the team, with Charley Graham, to recruit the very best people. There was very little the agency didn’t have the resources to do.
Jolene Moore, the receptionist, greeted him as he got off the elevator. Noah had always been impressed by the fact that she looked like she should be presiding at a board meeting, could score one hundred percent on the gun range and knew at least six ways to kill someone without a gun. Charley told him when he hired her she had many skills that bubbled beneath the surface. When he asked the man why she was wasted as a receptionist, Charley just grinned at him.
“Jolene vets every single person who steps off that elevator,” he said. “She has a sixth sense about people and is my first line of defense.”
Noah nodded at her now. “Good to see you again, Jolene.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Cantrell. I’ll let Mr. Graham know you’re here, but he said to go right on down to his office.”
“Thanks, Jolene.”
Charley was already out from behind his desk with his hand outstretched to greet Noah when he reached the office.
“Not that we aren’t always glad to see you,” he told Noah, “but it must be pretty damn important for you to hotfoot here from San Antonio and tell me to get four of my top agents together.”
