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Only this time, it wasn’t because of nerves about the op. It was because I was suddenly in an even more dangerous situation than that.
I wanted to lose my virginity at long last, not with my online boyfriend, but with the man who hated me most in the world…
10
HUX
The following hour was nerve-racking, even for me. Yolanda and Sasha barely made it to the location on time, and Camila almost decided to take her Horn with her to the school “just in case.”
Thankfully, Kev was a master at using the game to get people to do what he wanted. He sweet-talked her into leaving it on the front porch by making a kind of joke. “Unless you live in a neighborhood like mine where someone else might take off with it.”
He lived in a mansion on a gated estate with a professional ex-military security expert armed to the teeth on a normal day. No one in his neighborhood would have dared take a Horn from the front porch.
Except for me.
Kev had left his Horn out by the hot tub several days earlier, and I’d brought it inside to keep it safe, not realizing that Kev had only run into the pool house bathroom for a quick minute. He’d thrown a hissy fit when he’d returned to the hot tub and found it missing.
When Yolanda and Sasha pulled into the neighborhood and realized it was a gated community, I thought Champ was going to lose his mind. He hovered behind Kev and paced back and forth like a caged lion, which only served to make Kev more of a nervous wreck than he already was.
“Hux,” Champ said in his commanding voice. “Hack into their systems and put Yolanda and Sasha on the approved-entry list.”
Kev’s eyes widened behind his glasses, but I spoke before he could respond. “It doesn’t work like that,” I said softly, even though my gaming comms were muted. “There’s no time. Give them a chance. They’re good at this shit.”
They passed the turn to the gatehouse, pulled down the road to another turnoff, and parked before coming back into the neighborhood as a pair of runners.
Kev’s face went pale. “Camila’s house is a mile and a half away from the gatehouse!”
I reached over to squeeze his arm. “They’re fast. They run PT sprints for breakfast.”
It was excruciating to watch, but they made it in under ten minutes. We’d discovered the school run would take a total of fifteen minutes if Cam didn’t have to wait around for her kid. That left them less than five minutes to steal the data and get the hell off the Dacostas’ front porch.
Stupid fucking Anomaly’s voice came over comms. “Huxley, are you trying to lose us this quest?”
I blinked at the game monitor and noticed my character was being held over the side of the bridge by a very large Squall Orc.
“Shit,” I blurted, quickly throwing a wind hand counter spell at him and deploying a mystic bubble chute. “Sorry,” I muttered when I finally landed safely back on the bridge next to Kev.
Kev met my eyes with a soft smile. Nerves were still clear in his expression, but I could see his relief that I’d saved myself. “You did good.”
We continued across the next section of the bridge without too many additional challenges, but I could tell the stress of the op was seriously affecting Kev’s equilibrium. He was low-key trembling, and his voice was shaky. I wasn’t sure others would be able to tell, but I could.
I wanted to pull him into my lap and wrap my arms around him. I wanted to end the op and close everyone out of his lair while I distracted his big brain from the stress of the day.
Who was I kidding? I simply wanted him.
Any way I could get him.
Champ’s low voice behind me, talking to Yolanda on the op comms, wasn’t helping lower the tension in the room. The surveillance camera pointed at the Dacostas’ front porch showed Yolanda’s scramble to get the device connected to the cable and USB drive while Sasha pretended to stretch out an injured ankle.
I muted my game comms and switched to the op comms to walk them through it as calmly as I could. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Kev’s pointer finger tapping the side of his thumb again, so I reached over and squeezed his hand without thinking.
“Take a breath,” I said softly. He hesitated a beat before nodding, and I felt another thread of connection grow between us, one that tied us together every bit as firmly as Cam’s avatar had enchanted herself to Kev’s in the game.
And one that was probably just as imaginary, I reminded myself.
This was still Kev. Rich, gorgeous, brilliant Kev. And in reality, Kev needed a guy like me about as much as he needed—
