Rough and desperate.
Perfect.
So perfect that my orgasm hits me like a thunderous wave, stealing my breath and sanity. I sob his name as I come.
River follows me a heartbeat later, hips jerking, a groan torn from his chest as he comes deep inside me.
My body shivers as he works through his own orgasm until we collapse together, limbs tangled.
River’s hand finds mine, and he laces our fingers next to my temple. “I’m always coming back to you, Wren. Always. Promise me, when this is over, you won’t leave. You won’t go back to Jersey.”
“That might be the easiest yes I’ve ever said.”
He reaches between us, grabbing the condom and easing out. It takes him a moment to go to the bathroom and clean up. When he comes back to bed, I open the covers for him.
“I know you’re itching to get to those devices, but I really want to fall asleep next to you,” he says.
“Then here is where I’ll stay.”
34
WREN
The laptop whirrs to life, and I hope it’s ready and willing to give up its secrets. Because I feel a rush of adrenaline flow through me, the likes of which I’ve never known. Having something to work on, being able to contribute to the solution of my own problem makes every sense I have soar.
Lines of code and command prompts flicker across the screen, ready to be translated and interpreted into the actions they represent.
My fingers hover over the keyboard as I try to decide my next move. Maybe my brain is a little slower coming online because I’d rather be upstairs in bed with River, than down here, buried in River’s hoodie, at the kitchen counter, waiting for the coffee pot to fill.
I don’t know what, if any, equipment Mika was left with when I look at the haul of units on the kitchen counter. It might take me a while to make my way through all this. The first thing I should do is scrape everything off the hard drive, then run it through a filter to look for anything that involves my name.
Or Dorian Chase’s.
Or the Iron Outlaws.
Or Vex and Calista.
“Shit, this is going to take a while,” I mutter.
I decide to prioritize. A first search will look for me and Dorian Chase. A second search can look for everything else.
But to answer my own question, it doesn’t look as though Mika was left with any equipment. Because if any of my stuff had been taken, the very first thing I would have done would be to log in on another device and close down every external point of access. Cloud storage. Multi-device apps I had running. Passwords would have been changed.
But Mika’s digital presence went dark nearly six hours ago. There’s no backup signals. No location pings. Nothing.
It’s as if he’s been erased away.
Unless…
River told me the FBI showed up.
I wonder if Mika has been taken, or worse, killed.
Maybe Chase has erased Mika as a liability. He could have done it, too, quietly and efficiently. He could have done it in such a way that sounded like self-defense.
Mika would be no more than an administrative problem.
Poor bastard.
