X
Page 7
by J. D. Glass
She’d shut him down. She could have, and maybe she should have, fired him on the spot—but Charli was more than just one of the guys, she was one of them, soul surfer and techno tribe, not a mere corporate drone.
Ben knew in a way that he couldn’t explain that she thought the way he did, felt the way he did. There was something in the way she’d laugh at things he thought were funny, the sharp glances, the glimpses of fury quickly hidden. He even liked the way she moved, though he was careful, or so he thought, not to get caught watching. There was a fluidity in even her most economical motions, a flow that coupled with the curves of her body made her represent—to him anyway—something essentially feminine, despite the dark hair that angled short in the back and gradually lengthened to her chin in the front.
Of course he found her attractive—all the guys did, though they were careful not to talk too much about the boss. But what had cemented it for him was the day he cracked her code, the code he now knew for dead certain had won them the corporate position they had and her role as Second VP-Ops. Well, all right, he admitted, he hadn’t actually cracked her code, per se, but he had administrator rights on the server, so he’d merely bypassed the securities and read it outright.
She was damned brilliant, that’s all there was to it. Charli took a process—aggregating non-transactable dividends across thousands of accounts, dipping them into, and then back out of, the Fedwire for interest purposes, and then distributing the funds back to the source accounts—that would have taken more time and money in man-hours to accomplish than was worth actually doing, then automated it so that the only cost involved was the actual coding of it in the first place. Then she’d made it scalable, portable, and secure. It was sheer technical poetry.
He and John had been discussing via IM how to obtain the funds necessary to build the school, the army, that would save the nation, maybe even the world, from its excesses. Ben had mentioned in passing their then-new contract with Whitestone, and their connection to the massive exchange of currency on the Fedwire.
What had started out as speculation became a plan, then had become an accomplishment: using his permissions as server admin, Ben had taken Charli’s code, and thanks to the many systems that had to dump data into the one main one that connected to the Fed, he was able to insert his own bit of code at the gate itself. It took a percentage of the returning interest, sent it back into the wire where it would once again gain interest, then took the new earnings and funneled them to an account John had set up with his own contacts.
No muss, no fuss, and in essence, no loss. The investors got all the money they’d earned, he and John simply piggybacked off it. The only one who lost anything was the Treas, and that loss was more theoretical than real, since they wouldn’t know that he and John had transferred funds to and from the wire without paying the mandated fees.
It was a beautiful irony, Ben thought: they were using the earnings of the greedy rich who were destroying the planet and the tools of the government that was aiding the process to fund their liberation effort.
They weren’t some crazy right-wing militia, they weren’t terrorists, they were informed, concerned citizens who’d had their country stolen from them—and now they had a way to get it back.
Ben Cooper knew things. He knew he wasn’t some creep who wanted to go back to the stone age, or live a feudal life. He respected the planet, he was multicultural, he ate Thai food for chrissakes, and he respected individuals, men and women. He was pro-technology, pro-choice, and pro-equality.
Shit, he figured, while he couldn’t fully understand what in the world one guy could see in another, it didn’t really bother him, and he was certain he could at least understand dykes, and the occasional threesome featuring girl-on-girl bisexuality. After all, some girls were just so pretty, so soft and perfect—how could anyone really resist that completely?
And Charli, to his mind, was like that: too pretty to really be a total dyke. Yeah, sure, she’d lived with that Raven chick for what, one year? Not quite two? What did that prove? What it showed, he was certain, was that one woman couldn’t hold her interest for that long. But a man like him—he was smart, he was conscientious about the things that mattered, like the environment, the economy, third-world nations, he was sensitive, or so his last two girlfriends had told him before they’d left him because, as they said, he was “just too good” for them, what with his political causes and all.
And he wasn’t all that bad looking, either. Since the acquisition, he’d taken to tying his hair back, trimmed his beard—Charli had even noticed, commented on it. All right, he considered, maybe he wasn’t as pretty as that boy who had walked past his door that morning to interview, but Cooper was a man, not a boy, and he knew that Charli could tell the difference.
She was smart, different. She was perfect, and while he felt guilty for the way the plans he’d set in motion with John had been originally laid, everything was going to be fine. John had been convinced of Charli’s value, and he promised they’d get her out.
Ben knew he could count on that, count on John’s word. John was a good man, a man like his father, or what his father could have been if Vietnam hadn’t left him with a piece of itself in his spine, leaving him able to only do odd jobs here and there when the pain and the memories didn’t overwhelm him, a man who’d loved and served his country, and then been left with nothing but the scars in his body and the jungle in his head. And on the day Ben left for college, his father finally took it out by the roots, just one shot nice and clean—sniper perfect, he would have called it—through his skull.
Ben shook his head. His father would have liked Charli. Charli had that spark his father had told him his mother had had, before the war, before the Veterans Administation, the VA bullshit and the medications, before they’d moved and he’d been too small to remember, but it was then, his father told him, then that the world, the government, and big business and their lies, they’d stolen his mom from them.
He couldn’t let that happen to Charli.
They’d save her, him and John, they would. Once they did, got her out of the corporate hell that was destroying the soul of their once-great nation, of the world, all they had to do was explain: about the violations of the sacred pr
ivacy guaranteed by their betrayed constitution, the economic and ecological damage being perpetuated on a mass scale, the creeping global enslavement. She’d understand, she’d willingly join them.
When she did, Ben thought, she’d not only be free, eyes wide open, she’d also see that he was right and had been right all along. Charli would then see, would finally know he was a real man, a true hero and, well, the math from there as he figured it was pretty easy.
That, he concluded with a grim satisfaction that settled and then erased the buzz that had grabbed his very bones, made—the word betrayal whizzed through his mind, but he quickly shut it out—getting rid of Anna Pendleton completely worthwhile.
*
* * *
To: CRiven@zenchat.com
Babe:
Step. Away. From. The. Keyboard. Coming over now with bribes: Brazilian fusion, a venti caramel macchiato, and enough double shots to keep us both up all night—not that you need it J (!!!)
Yes, let’s talk. Have some thoughts. See you in about 15.
A
* * *
She blew her breath out in frustration as she got into the cab. She’d played this badly, because the perfect alibi, the almost ironclad proof of innocence could have been had, and she herself could have backed it, guaranteeing her the further time she needed to draw the delicate net around the rogue agent. But she’d failed to push the opportunity.
Dammit. Charli, with her façade of openness and sudden withdrawals, a depth that she had only briefly glimpsed that could become a remote freeze that brought down entire room temperatures, would have been a great agent. Certainly better than she herself was.
Logically, she knew that she could explain to the Company that what she was doing made sense, that it would protect her cover in the Treas and prevent an injustice. It made objective sense, it made ethical sense in a larger, abstract way, but had she really been concerned about those things, she would have put herself aside, her personal knowledge and concerns away, and made it happen. With an unshakeable alibi in place, none of this would be necessary.
Wrapped in her red-white-and-blue lie to the world, she told herself the truth. She could say she’d been objective, keeping a neutral distance, but that wasn’t reality, not her reality. She hadn’t been objective at all. And where Charli was concerned, she hadn’t been for a while.
She grimaced to herself as she tipped the driver. She was an agent, and if she was a stupid one, she’d let them take Charli, which in turn would tip off both the inside guy and Romello that their days of free-feeding were over, just as they were sniffing at the surface, a search for sustenance as it were. And like other nocturnal, hidden creatures, revelation of any sort would force them further underground once more, to plot and plan in darkness until they were ready to move again. From there, there was no knowing where anything would surface, or what form it would take.
She shook her head as she walked to the elevator in the Chelsea apartment building. She absolutely could not let Charli go back to the office, hands-on with the server codes, or to even hit them remotely from home. The Treas would use that as evidence confirming Charli was erasing her own tracks, and she needed any shred of evidence she could get to prove it wasn’t her. She needed to be allowed to continue the surface investigation while she got that last bit of proof on Cooper, that final thread connecting him to the inside job and Romello. Let them remain complacent.
But first things first: she’d allowed personal considerations, personal knowledge, to get in the way last night. This time, no matter what she thought the consequences might be—
Something twisted under her skin, tensing the muscles in her neck. Duty and desire, lies and loyalty. What she wanted and what she had to do ran across lines that were crossing, blurring, disappearing, and she had to keep a grip. Okay, they intersected, there was nothing really wrong with that, and if the investigation went the way it should, if she maintained her cover and assignment, there was no reason why—she resolutely stopped herself there.
The Treas tracked her, she knew that. No matter what else they might think, after tonight she would be able to at least prove, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that at the very least, Charli had been nowhere near—physically or electronically—the Fedwire. It would at the very least remove some of the suspicion from Charli, if not completely remove her from their crosshairs.
If there was fallout, she’d handle it after—if there was an “after” to even discuss. What had she been thinking? That somehow, after all was said and done, she could breach those walls, take her to a safe house and explain everything, then make it all better? And then, what, they’d date? Have something even resembling an actual relationship?
Yes, that was exactly what she’d been half daydreaming in some unsanctioned-by-the-Company way. She would have smacked some sense into herself if she thought it would really help, but none of that mattered at the moment, she reasoned as she balanced her packages and entered the elevator. Her mission right now was to keep Charli out of the office and off the system.
*
“I need to do this more often,” Charli said as she took her focus away from the screen and glanced about the living room from her spot next to Anna on the sofa. “You really know how to deliver a bribe,” she added, friendly admiration in her voice as she observed the profile focused on one of three screens—one from the tower system, and two laptops.
Between the latte, the food, and the cans of chilled espresso, they had wine, and together they’d run through not only Charli’s code, but Anna’s as well.
“And we’re done.” Anna grinned at the screen, then faced Charli as the last testing window was shut.
“I need to check what’s going on with the server itself,” Charli told her as she reached for the system to key the connection. “See what the differences might be.”
“Franko’s there right now, you know he’s working on that,” Anna reminded her, “and you’ve got that thing”—she pointed to the PDA on the coffee table—“programmed to buzz you with alerts.” She gently but forcibly took Charlie’s hands away from the keyboard. “Leave it for now, babe. You know you’ve got a great team,” Anna told her and smiled, still holding her hands. “Take a break.”
Anna’s hazy green eyes stared intently back at Charli’s, telling her something more than what was spoken. She dropped her gaze to her mouth, to lips that had stopped moving, a sensuous curve that lifted lightly, lips she knew were tender, soft, devourable really, and suddenly she realized just how much she’d wanted to all along.
There was nothing to stop her, to stop them, really. It was one of those funny things, Charli observed, that she could literally feel Anna’s intent through her touch. She could do that with a lot of people, actually. It wasn’t something she could explain, it was simply that while she knew—it was obvious to her in that same inexpressible way—that there was something Anna wasn’t saying, her hands, her skin, the way her fingers gripped, sent her an easily decoded message: Anna cared.
Certainly, too, there was desire in that touch, but it was different somehow, warmer, giving almost, in a way she didn’t know how to fully describe. There was no sense of…avarice was the only word she could think of, as memories flew through her mind, of people she’d—
She shook her head and carefully withdrew her hands. She stared and wondered at the strange feeling of them, the surprise and shocking emptiness of her skin.
“Anna. I owe you an apology,” Charli began quietly. She raised her eyes to Anna’s and searched them.
“Why? I mean, what for?” she asked in return, her voice almost equally low.
That gaze seemed closer and Charli felt the sudden start in her chest, the sharp painful lump that traveled up, became a pulse in her neck. She had, she realized, a choice. She could tell the complete truth, or a partial one. There was a sense of something—maybe it was the expression Anna wore, or maybe it was as simple as that touch, the one that had held her hands, the fingertip that now brushed he
r hair off her cheek, tucked it carefully behind an ear.
“Last night…” Charli hesitated. She wasn’t ready to explain, wasn’t sure if she could, if she really understood or had the words for herself. “The breach and all…definitely no fun. And tonight,” she gave Anna a smile, “tonight you could be getting all sorts of laid and ready to rip this weekend, and you’re here, reviewing code with me instead. Not that I don’t appreciate it,” Charli added, still smiling as she waved to indicate the detritus of their meal. “I mean, it’s been great and all, but—”
Charli was surprised only after it happened. “And who says I won’t?” Anna murmured against her lips, a breath away from where they’d just been. “Make it up to me. Fuck the job tonight, Char.” Once again green eyes bored into hers, a message she couldn’t fully comprehend, but the touch, the sincerity that flowed from it, the emotion that rode beneath it… It was nice, no, it was more than that, Charli thought, to have someone be simply honest. Tone and touch matched, and that she understood. Completely.
She’d already wanted, had admitted that to herself, was aware of the mutually acknowledged attraction that still flowed between them, but it was Anna’s honest and blatant declaration that took want to need, a need that flew with an almost dizzying rush to her head, a thrill of power and arousal that sent sparks tingling under her skin, each one a rein, a string, a thread she could collect, gather, control. She knew what to do with that, too.
Charli let her wait while she studied her, the high rise of her cheeks, the curve of her lips, the exquisite line of her neck, the pulse in it a revelation of the emotions that drove it under her fingertips as she traced what she saw until her finger rested just above the V of Anna’s blouse. “Fine, then,” she answered, the words almost a purr as she thumbed the shell button through the silk and traced the warm skin beneath it, across the edge of the curve that silk still covered, along the fine defined lines of muscle and bone, the jut of her collar, and up the line of the neck she’d just admired, until she curled her fingers through gold and satin strands and around Anna’s neck, her thumb outlining her jaw. The kiss she gave began as something delicate, sensual, and quickly evolved into a primal demonstration of intent as Charli covered Anna’s body with hers. “I can do that.”
The cool stare Anna had thrown his way as the meeting broke up posthaste, amid a rush of pushed chairs that scraped against the floor and muttered excuses from his fellows as they beat a hasty retreat, had made a blush of shame, then a flare of defiant anger blaze under his skin even as he followed Charli out of the conference room and back to her office. Anna’s cold jade glance, though, the superior “you’re such a loser and I am so much better than you—she- likes me better than you” shine of it, had stayed embedded in his mind, had kept him mute while he rehearsed silent rebuttals and didn’t really listen, even while Charli explained that although she agreed in principle that some clients really were a pain in the ass, it was not only completely improper to call the program “FuckDaMan,” it was also equally wrong to create a live code that read such as he’d displayed it.
SELECT D.IDIOT_ID, D.IDIOT_NAME,
B.BULLSHIT_ID,
M.MORESHIT_ID
A.ASSHOLE_REALNAME
FROM D.IDIOT A, B.BULLSHIT O, Y.WE_R_FUKD, N.U_R_FUKD
and D.IDIOT_ID = L.ASSHOLE_REALNAME
and B.BULLSHIT_ID and M.MORESHIT_ID
order by D.IDIOT_ID, B. BULLSHIT_ID, Y.WE_R_FUKD
She’d shut him down. She could have, and maybe she should have, fired him on the spot—but Charli was more than just one of the guys, she was one of them, soul surfer and techno tribe, not a mere corporate drone.
Ben knew in a way that he couldn’t explain that she thought the way he did, felt the way he did. There was something in the way she’d laugh at things he thought were funny, the sharp glances, the glimpses of fury quickly hidden. He even liked the way she moved, though he was careful, or so he thought, not to get caught watching. There was a fluidity in even her most economical motions, a flow that coupled with the curves of her body made her represent—to him anyway—something essentially feminine, despite the dark hair that angled short in the back and gradually lengthened to her chin in the front.
Of course he found her attractive—all the guys did, though they were careful not to talk too much about the boss. But what had cemented it for him was the day he cracked her code, the code he now knew for dead certain had won them the corporate position they had and her role as Second VP-Ops. Well, all right, he admitted, he hadn’t actually cracked her code, per se, but he had administrator rights on the server, so he’d merely bypassed the securities and read it outright.
She was damned brilliant, that’s all there was to it. Charli took a process—aggregating non-transactable dividends across thousands of accounts, dipping them into, and then back out of, the Fedwire for interest purposes, and then distributing the funds back to the source accounts—that would have taken more time and money in man-hours to accomplish than was worth actually doing, then automated it so that the only cost involved was the actual coding of it in the first place. Then she’d made it scalable, portable, and secure. It was sheer technical poetry.
He and John had been discussing via IM how to obtain the funds necessary to build the school, the army, that would save the nation, maybe even the world, from its excesses. Ben had mentioned in passing their then-new contract with Whitestone, and their connection to the massive exchange of currency on the Fedwire.
What had started out as speculation became a plan, then had become an accomplishment: using his permissions as server admin, Ben had taken Charli’s code, and thanks to the many systems that had to dump data into the one main one that connected to the Fed, he was able to insert his own bit of code at the gate itself. It took a percentage of the returning interest, sent it back into the wire where it would once again gain interest, then took the new earnings and funneled them to an account John had set up with his own contacts.
No muss, no fuss, and in essence, no loss. The investors got all the money they’d earned, he and John simply piggybacked off it. The only one who lost anything was the Treas, and that loss was more theoretical than real, since they wouldn’t know that he and John had transferred funds to and from the wire without paying the mandated fees.
It was a beautiful irony, Ben thought: they were using the earnings of the greedy rich who were destroying the planet and the tools of the government that was aiding the process to fund their liberation effort.
They weren’t some crazy right-wing militia, they weren’t terrorists, they were informed, concerned citizens who’d had their country stolen from them—and now they had a way to get it back.
Ben Cooper knew things. He knew he wasn’t some creep who wanted to go back to the stone age, or live a feudal life. He respected the planet, he was multicultural, he ate Thai food for chrissakes, and he respected individuals, men and women. He was pro-technology, pro-choice, and pro-equality.
Shit, he figured, while he couldn’t fully understand what in the world one guy could see in another, it didn’t really bother him, and he was certain he could at least understand dykes, and the occasional threesome featuring girl-on-girl bisexuality. After all, some girls were just so pretty, so soft and perfect—how could anyone really resist that completely?
And Charli, to his mind, was like that: too pretty to really be a total dyke. Yeah, sure, she’d lived with that Raven chick for what, one year? Not quite two? What did that prove? What it showed, he was certain, was that one woman couldn’t hold her interest for that long. But a man like him—he was smart, he was conscientious about the things that mattered, like the environment, the economy, third-world nations, he was sensitive, or so his last two girlfriends had told him before they’d left him because, as they said, he was “just too good” for them, what with his political causes and all.
And he wasn’t all that bad looking, either. Since the acquisition, he’d taken to tying his hair back, trimmed his beard—Charli had even noticed, commented on it. All right, he considered, maybe he wasn’t as pretty as that boy who had walked past his door that morning to interview, but Cooper was a man, not a boy, and he knew that Charli could tell the difference.
She was smart, different. She was perfect, and while he felt guilty for the way the plans he’d set in motion with John had been originally laid, everything was going to be fine. John had been convinced of Charli’s value, and he promised they’d get her out.
Ben knew he could count on that, count on John’s word. John was a good man, a man like his father, or what his father could have been if Vietnam hadn’t left him with a piece of itself in his spine, leaving him able to only do odd jobs here and there when the pain and the memories didn’t overwhelm him, a man who’d loved and served his country, and then been left with nothing but the scars in his body and the jungle in his head. And on the day Ben left for college, his father finally took it out by the roots, just one shot nice and clean—sniper perfect, he would have called it—through his skull.
Ben shook his head. His father would have liked Charli. Charli had that spark his father had told him his mother had had, before the war, before the Veterans Administation, the VA bullshit and the medications, before they’d moved and he’d been too small to remember, but it was then, his father told him, then that the world, the government, and big business and their lies, they’d stolen his mom from them.
He couldn’t let that happen to Charli.
They’d save her, him and John, they would. Once they did, got her out of the corporate hell that was destroying the soul of their once-great nation, of the world, all they had to do was explain: about the violations of the sacred pr
ivacy guaranteed by their betrayed constitution, the economic and ecological damage being perpetuated on a mass scale, the creeping global enslavement. She’d understand, she’d willingly join them.
When she did, Ben thought, she’d not only be free, eyes wide open, she’d also see that he was right and had been right all along. Charli would then see, would finally know he was a real man, a true hero and, well, the math from there as he figured it was pretty easy.
That, he concluded with a grim satisfaction that settled and then erased the buzz that had grabbed his very bones, made—the word betrayal whizzed through his mind, but he quickly shut it out—getting rid of Anna Pendleton completely worthwhile.
*
* * *
To: CRiven@zenchat.com
Babe:
Step. Away. From. The. Keyboard. Coming over now with bribes: Brazilian fusion, a venti caramel macchiato, and enough double shots to keep us both up all night—not that you need it J (!!!)
Yes, let’s talk. Have some thoughts. See you in about 15.
A
* * *
She blew her breath out in frustration as she got into the cab. She’d played this badly, because the perfect alibi, the almost ironclad proof of innocence could have been had, and she herself could have backed it, guaranteeing her the further time she needed to draw the delicate net around the rogue agent. But she’d failed to push the opportunity.
Dammit. Charli, with her façade of openness and sudden withdrawals, a depth that she had only briefly glimpsed that could become a remote freeze that brought down entire room temperatures, would have been a great agent. Certainly better than she herself was.
Logically, she knew that she could explain to the Company that what she was doing made sense, that it would protect her cover in the Treas and prevent an injustice. It made objective sense, it made ethical sense in a larger, abstract way, but had she really been concerned about those things, she would have put herself aside, her personal knowledge and concerns away, and made it happen. With an unshakeable alibi in place, none of this would be necessary.
Wrapped in her red-white-and-blue lie to the world, she told herself the truth. She could say she’d been objective, keeping a neutral distance, but that wasn’t reality, not her reality. She hadn’t been objective at all. And where Charli was concerned, she hadn’t been for a while.
She grimaced to herself as she tipped the driver. She was an agent, and if she was a stupid one, she’d let them take Charli, which in turn would tip off both the inside guy and Romello that their days of free-feeding were over, just as they were sniffing at the surface, a search for sustenance as it were. And like other nocturnal, hidden creatures, revelation of any sort would force them further underground once more, to plot and plan in darkness until they were ready to move again. From there, there was no knowing where anything would surface, or what form it would take.
She shook her head as she walked to the elevator in the Chelsea apartment building. She absolutely could not let Charli go back to the office, hands-on with the server codes, or to even hit them remotely from home. The Treas would use that as evidence confirming Charli was erasing her own tracks, and she needed any shred of evidence she could get to prove it wasn’t her. She needed to be allowed to continue the surface investigation while she got that last bit of proof on Cooper, that final thread connecting him to the inside job and Romello. Let them remain complacent.
But first things first: she’d allowed personal considerations, personal knowledge, to get in the way last night. This time, no matter what she thought the consequences might be—
Something twisted under her skin, tensing the muscles in her neck. Duty and desire, lies and loyalty. What she wanted and what she had to do ran across lines that were crossing, blurring, disappearing, and she had to keep a grip. Okay, they intersected, there was nothing really wrong with that, and if the investigation went the way it should, if she maintained her cover and assignment, there was no reason why—she resolutely stopped herself there.
The Treas tracked her, she knew that. No matter what else they might think, after tonight she would be able to at least prove, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that at the very least, Charli had been nowhere near—physically or electronically—the Fedwire. It would at the very least remove some of the suspicion from Charli, if not completely remove her from their crosshairs.
If there was fallout, she’d handle it after—if there was an “after” to even discuss. What had she been thinking? That somehow, after all was said and done, she could breach those walls, take her to a safe house and explain everything, then make it all better? And then, what, they’d date? Have something even resembling an actual relationship?
Yes, that was exactly what she’d been half daydreaming in some unsanctioned-by-the-Company way. She would have smacked some sense into herself if she thought it would really help, but none of that mattered at the moment, she reasoned as she balanced her packages and entered the elevator. Her mission right now was to keep Charli out of the office and off the system.
*
“I need to do this more often,” Charli said as she took her focus away from the screen and glanced about the living room from her spot next to Anna on the sofa. “You really know how to deliver a bribe,” she added, friendly admiration in her voice as she observed the profile focused on one of three screens—one from the tower system, and two laptops.
Between the latte, the food, and the cans of chilled espresso, they had wine, and together they’d run through not only Charli’s code, but Anna’s as well.
“And we’re done.” Anna grinned at the screen, then faced Charli as the last testing window was shut.
“I need to check what’s going on with the server itself,” Charli told her as she reached for the system to key the connection. “See what the differences might be.”
“Franko’s there right now, you know he’s working on that,” Anna reminded her, “and you’ve got that thing”—she pointed to the PDA on the coffee table—“programmed to buzz you with alerts.” She gently but forcibly took Charlie’s hands away from the keyboard. “Leave it for now, babe. You know you’ve got a great team,” Anna told her and smiled, still holding her hands. “Take a break.”
Anna’s hazy green eyes stared intently back at Charli’s, telling her something more than what was spoken. She dropped her gaze to her mouth, to lips that had stopped moving, a sensuous curve that lifted lightly, lips she knew were tender, soft, devourable really, and suddenly she realized just how much she’d wanted to all along.
There was nothing to stop her, to stop them, really. It was one of those funny things, Charli observed, that she could literally feel Anna’s intent through her touch. She could do that with a lot of people, actually. It wasn’t something she could explain, it was simply that while she knew—it was obvious to her in that same inexpressible way—that there was something Anna wasn’t saying, her hands, her skin, the way her fingers gripped, sent her an easily decoded message: Anna cared.
Certainly, too, there was desire in that touch, but it was different somehow, warmer, giving almost, in a way she didn’t know how to fully describe. There was no sense of…avarice was the only word she could think of, as memories flew through her mind, of people she’d—
She shook her head and carefully withdrew her hands. She stared and wondered at the strange feeling of them, the surprise and shocking emptiness of her skin.
“Anna. I owe you an apology,” Charli began quietly. She raised her eyes to Anna’s and searched them.
“Why? I mean, what for?” she asked in return, her voice almost equally low.
That gaze seemed closer and Charli felt the sudden start in her chest, the sharp painful lump that traveled up, became a pulse in her neck. She had, she realized, a choice. She could tell the complete truth, or a partial one. There was a sense of something—maybe it was the expression Anna wore, or maybe it was as simple as that touch, the one that had held her hands, the fingertip that now brushed he
r hair off her cheek, tucked it carefully behind an ear.
“Last night…” Charli hesitated. She wasn’t ready to explain, wasn’t sure if she could, if she really understood or had the words for herself. “The breach and all…definitely no fun. And tonight,” she gave Anna a smile, “tonight you could be getting all sorts of laid and ready to rip this weekend, and you’re here, reviewing code with me instead. Not that I don’t appreciate it,” Charli added, still smiling as she waved to indicate the detritus of their meal. “I mean, it’s been great and all, but—”
Charli was surprised only after it happened. “And who says I won’t?” Anna murmured against her lips, a breath away from where they’d just been. “Make it up to me. Fuck the job tonight, Char.” Once again green eyes bored into hers, a message she couldn’t fully comprehend, but the touch, the sincerity that flowed from it, the emotion that rode beneath it… It was nice, no, it was more than that, Charli thought, to have someone be simply honest. Tone and touch matched, and that she understood. Completely.
She’d already wanted, had admitted that to herself, was aware of the mutually acknowledged attraction that still flowed between them, but it was Anna’s honest and blatant declaration that took want to need, a need that flew with an almost dizzying rush to her head, a thrill of power and arousal that sent sparks tingling under her skin, each one a rein, a string, a thread she could collect, gather, control. She knew what to do with that, too.
Charli let her wait while she studied her, the high rise of her cheeks, the curve of her lips, the exquisite line of her neck, the pulse in it a revelation of the emotions that drove it under her fingertips as she traced what she saw until her finger rested just above the V of Anna’s blouse. “Fine, then,” she answered, the words almost a purr as she thumbed the shell button through the silk and traced the warm skin beneath it, across the edge of the curve that silk still covered, along the fine defined lines of muscle and bone, the jut of her collar, and up the line of the neck she’d just admired, until she curled her fingers through gold and satin strands and around Anna’s neck, her thumb outlining her jaw. The kiss she gave began as something delicate, sensual, and quickly evolved into a primal demonstration of intent as Charli covered Anna’s body with hers. “I can do that.”