“See,” she said a little while later. “Look how he looks at her.”
“He has a mask on,” I pointed out.
She sighed, a little longingly, as she stared at the screen. “Even with the mask you can tell.”
I grinned and shook my head. She was so different than I expected. And I fucking liked that about her. I leaned back and draped my arm over her shoulder, ignoring the way she stiffened a little. Then she relaxed and scooted a bit closer, leaning my way.
Abandoning the movie, I reached over, cupping her chin and turned her face toward me. I didn’t move slowly, the way I probably should have. There was no chance for her to move away as I lowered my mouth to hers. I needed to touch her. To kiss her. Wanted it more than my next damn breath.
Her mouth opened on a small inhale and I took the opportunity to press my advantage. My tongue brushed against hers. She’d turned to face me and was gripping my biceps as I kissed her. Our mouths moved together, I wasn’t sure for how long, until I got tired of craning my neck in her direction.
Turning my upper body, I grabbed her by the hips and pulled her up and over until she was straddling my thighs on the couch. The little yelp she made as she went airborne was adorable. I vowed to myself I was going to see what kind of sounds I could drag out of her.
I raked my hands through her dark hair, grabbing two fistfuls as I kissed her again. She’d been about to say something, but whatever it was dissolved into a moan. We were making out to the sounds of people screaming as they died, and honestly? That was kind of fitting considering the reputations we both had.
After a couple of minutes of making out, she put her hands on my chest and applied the slightest amount of pressure. Ripping my mouth away, I stared at her as I tried to catch my damn breath. She had me huffing like I’d just run a few miles trying to beat my personal best.
“Pyre.”
My eyes dropped to her lips. She didn’t have any make-up on, that I could tell, but her lips were red from my kisses.
“I-I like you.”
One side of my mouth kicked up into a smirk. “I like you, too.” I didn’t mind admitting it. And if she tried to run, well, she wasn’t going far with my hands on her hips. I’d been about to let them start wandering when she’d stopped me. My dick was fucking throbbing and now I was kicking myself for trying to ease her into this.
She tucked her hair behind her ears to keep it out of her face. “I…um…I’m not quite ready to…”
Damn it.
I had myself a classy lady here. And I was glad that she wasn’t going to just jump into bed with me, no matter how much I wanted to. She was going to make me prove my intentions in no uncertain terms before she was going to let me in. Not just to her body, but into her life. Her world. I didn’t mind.
Leaning forward, I brushed a kiss over her lips. “No problem. Why don’t you catch me up on what I missed of this movie and we’ll finish it?”
“Okay,” she said, giving me a bright smile as she scrambled off my lap and settled in next to me. She laid her head on my shoulder as she pointed at the screen and started talking.
I counted the fact that she was comfortable enough to lean on me as a win. Hell, I’d count all of tonight a win. And I was going to need to figure out how to talk my way into her home. I needed to make sure Warrant didn’t follow through on his threat—assuming he hadn’t already—to put cameras in her house. He wouldn’t dare fucking put one in her shower, but that didn’t mean the rest of the place was off limits, and I didn’t want to have to kill him for ‘helping’.
The irony here was that I would have to put my own cameras up in her place just to make sure that Warrant didn’t.
CHAPTER 17
Pyre
“Why the fuck does death chick have an air-gapped system?” Glitch mumbled, looking around in aggravation as Warrant picked the lock at Rae’s funeral home.
I looked at him in exasperation. She’d just left my house an hour ago and here I was breaking into her business with my dipshit brothers. It needed to be done, but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel guilty as fuck. She could never know or she’d be pissed. And I had a feeling that her anger wasn’t something I wanted to face. “I don’t even know what the fuck you just said. How am I supposed to answer you?”
He rolled his eyes. “It means her network is physically isolated from the internet and other networks. It’s commonly used in high-security environments. We have an air-gapped system for Sentry Securities, and the club.”
“Dude, he just said not to speak nerd. You sound like a dictionary with an asshole’s voice,” Jury told him as he brushed past Warrant and shoved open the door, wanting to be the first inside.
Glitch threw up his hands, fed up with all of us. “And that’s why I had to fucking come out tonight even though I had plans. Can’t trust the three of you to know shit about shit.”
“What plans?” I scoffed.
“Yeah, jerking off to porn doesn’t count,” Warrant told him, putting his lock pick set away, following the rest of us into the building.
“Don’t fucking touch that,” I snapped at Jury as he poked at some of Rae’s equipment.
