Ella shifts slightly in my arms, her soft scent pricking my instincts wide awake and centering them fully on her.
“Have you always been drawn to computers? To code?” I want to hear her voice again.
She tilts her head. “Since I was eight. I broke into aprivate school server to change a grade and was caught, but they couldn’t kick me out since I wasn’t on scholarship.”
Her voice hits differently this time. Lower register. Light sarcasm, like warm electricity winding through nerves already frayed raw. The softness sparks something in me I can’t control. Not anymore.
I grit my teeth.
The thing crawling inside me that makes simple voices somehow physically injure me, that’s coiled under my skin and burrowed deep in my veins, calms when she talks. I don’t know why or how. It’s like she’s figured out how to hack me, and a part of me wonders if she has. If she can hack into crystals and cause chaos that can infect people, why not in a direct line to men? Her voice cuts through my usual pain with an erotic slide of heat. Not perfectly, but enough to take the edge off. This is the closest we’ve ever talked, and my cock is brick solid, taking me out of my pain for a moment.
No one knows the mess that has descended upon me. Not Thorn. Not anyone in our organization. I tried to save my brother and ended up screwing myself. I’m good with computers; not as good as Thorn, but I should be able to figure it out. The static in my vision is one thing, but voices hurting me worse than before, as bad as bullets, is pissing me off. There’s a heat in my spine that never cools down, and it’s Ella’s fault. Completely. But now she’s making me feel better.
She doesn’t know what she’s done, I’m fairly certain. No way has she hacked me—that was a fanciful thought now discarded. So she has no clue that she’s harmed me. That’s the dangerous part. If I ask for her help, she’ll know my weakness. Know she’s more powerful than she thinks.
So I don’t ask.
Not yet.
But if this illness gets worse, and it probably will, I may not have a choice. I might have to kidnap her, which would solve two of my problems, really. It’d take her out of commission when it comes to harming Thorn, and I could make her heal me once I have her locked down. Yeah, I want her under my control. Completely.
She looks up at me like she’s about to say something else. I pray she does and brace for it. For her voice. For the tone that heals my pain and also fires my body alive in a primitive way that’s new.
God, I want her to talk again.
Even if it ruins us both.
Ella
I want to stomp on his foot. I really do. Except his foot is huge, and his leg is between mine. In fact, his entire body is too close, too hot, too steady. It would be like trying to kick over a statue. One with excellent posture and a superiority complex. What did he mean about my moaning on the dance floor? Can he tell how my body reacts to him?
Hopefully he can see how my brain does—with a plan to destroy.
Then his hand shifts at my back in just a small movement, with light pressure guiding my next step. His touch feels invasive, controlling. Like he knows where we’re going even when I don’t. My nipples harden, and I hate how much I respond to him.
My breath escapes in this ridiculous, involuntary little sigh that I want to shove back into my lungs and set on fire. “I’m totally innocent here.”
“Ha. Baby, you left innocent behind several firewalls ago.” His eyes flick to mine. He sees me. Of course he does. But he doesn’t smirk, doesn’t comment, and just watches me like he’s logging my every move, my every weakness. Like this is all part of some mental file he’s building in case he has to put me down later.
It probably is.
Justice Beathach knows I’m the enemy. I know it, too. I’ve tried to kill people he’s sworn to protect, and I’ve breached systems he was ordered to keep locked. If we weren’t wearing formal wear, we’d be armed and bloody by now.
“You really think I’m that dangerous?” I ask, even though I know the answer. I want to hear him say it.
“I know you are.” He says it like a fact. No heat, no praise. Just truth.
The heat that pulses low in my body is unwelcome and completely infuriating. I feel my knees start to betray me again, so I pivot to cover it. Clean step. Controlled. Almost elegant. I’m proud of it until his hand adjusts with me, just enough to keep me from actually falling. Like he anticipated the slip before I did.
I hate how easily he can hold me like this. I hate how warm he is. I hate the smell of his cologne. Expensive, complex, a little sharp. Like black pepper and sin. “There’s a running theme in my head about you. It’s called hate.” I might as well give him the truth.
“Really?” He slides one hard thigh between my thighs and presses up.
Electricity arcs between my legs and through my body. I gasp, my clit pulsing. What is he doing? “Stop.”
“No.” His hand flattens across the small of my back, and he pulls me toward him, pulsing up with his leg. His very strong, muscled, unrelenting thigh.
Oh, God. Tremors begin to shake inside me. “Justice.”
