No hesitation. No bashfulness. Just a man showing her exactly what he wanted.
She was thwarted by the denim of his jeans and the cotton of his boxer briefs. Even still, she could feel how hard he was. How large he was. How much she pleased him because he pulsed and flexed beneath her palm.
When she gave him a squeeze, he hissed. When she lightly raked her nails over his length, he moaned her name. And then, to her annoyance, he pulled her hand away so he could snag the phone from his hip pocket.
“The only people who have this number are the Black Knights.” She was pleased to note how rough his voice had become. “If they’re calling, it’s important.”
Blowing out a shuddering breath, she allowed lust to make way for reason and the real world. The shitty, awful, uglyrealworld where someone in the government was a spy for the Russians. Where she was accused of murdering her partner.Poor Stewart!And where an assassin sent by the Kremlin was hellbent on seeing her six feet under.
“Okay.” She pushed up on her elbows and nodded for him to proceed. “But don’t forget where we left off.”
He glanced down at his partially undone fly. “Believe me when I tell you that willneverhappen.”
She chuckled and followed his gaze. Her laughter died in her throat when she saw his erection was pushed up tight against the hem of his black boxer briefs. Right at the tip of the briefs was a damp circle of fabric.
Moreproof of what she did to him. Of how badly he wanted her.
The urge to pull his underwear down and lick the salty moisture beading on the head of his cock had blood rushing to her cheeks—and somewhere decidedlysouthof there. She might’ve said to hell with the call from BKI and launched herself on top of him had she not glanced up to find him smiling at her.
Smiling.
The expression turned him from handsome into drop-dead, butter-my-butt-and-call-me-a-biscuitgorgeous.“You should do that more often.” She pointed. “You have an amazing smile.”
He nodded. “Having you here makes me happy.”
Liquid warmth surprised her by gathering behind her eyes. Then, as if he hadn’t just given her an unbelievably beautiful gift, he flipped open the phone and answered without preamble, “What do you know?”
The voice on the other end was low and tinny-sounding. She watched his expression go hard before he abruptly interrupted whoever was talking. “Hang on. Grace will want to hear this.”
He hit a button on the side of the phone, said, “Okay, you’re on speaker. Go,” and Sam’s Chicago accent filled the room.
“Like I was saying,” Sam said, “we found out who sent Grace the text message about Orpheus. It’s a group called Kerberos.”
Just that easily, her heated blood went ice-cold. The tears that’d gathered behind her eyes dried up like they’d been hit by a desert wind. And she didn’t recognize her own voice when she wheezed, “No way.”
“Yes way.” A sweet-sounding female voice, presumably Sam’s DOD contact, came over the airwaves. “Oh, I’m Hannah Blue, by the way. Nice to informally meet you both.” Before Hunter or Grace could return her introduction, Hannah pushed ahead, “And I get your incredulity, Agent Beacham. I live and breathe online conspiracies and chicanery, and evenIwasn’t certain Kerberos was real.”
“Wait,” Hunter frowned. “I’m missing something. Who’s Kerberos?”
As Hannah waxed poetic about the online vigilante/white-hat hacker group, Grace listened with only half an ear. Her mind was numbed by the surreality of the situation she was in.
Thirty-six hours ago, she’d been 50/50 on whether Orpheus was real. Same for Kerberos.
And now look at me! Neck deep in international intrigue complete with shadowy figures and code names that could be the plot of a James Bond novel!
She tuned back into the conversation when Hannah said, “Kerberos gave me a backdoor into the FBI’s servers and told me to follow the emails.”
“So like us, Kerberos suspects the double agent is the director.” Grace felt sick to her stomach at the thought of her boss siccing Orpheus on his own agents. “Or whomever he was sharing his information with.”
“It would seem so,” Hannah confirmed.
“Have you tried the backdoor?” Hunter asked.
“Working on it now,” Hannah said and Grace thought she could hear theclick-clackof a keyboard in the background. “Not sure how much I’m going to need to sift through. So hold tight. I’ll have Sam get you an update in a few hours unless I find something before then.”
When Hunter signed off, Grace flopped back onto the mattress, and then immediately regretted the move when it made the muscles in her lower back—muscles unused to spending hours clinging to a man on a motorcycle—spasm.
“Oh!” She rolled onto her side so she could press a hand to the knot that’d formed to the right of her tailbone.
