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“Asshole,” he agrees. “I decided I was going to teach him a lesson. I worked in web security, but I also did some unpaid work on the side. I like…testing systems. Finding their weaknesses. I’d send companies the information so they could make sure they were protected. They called me—”
“Robin Hood?” I interrupt, getting excited.
He laughs. “No. The Reaper.”
“Wow, that’s way cooler. So you fucked with Safe-T Net’s system.”
“I did,” he says. “They were down for almost a week. Then I posted about what I’d done online so everyone would know what a joke Jarrod was. What I did was illegal, obviously. Jarrod said he was going to press charges at first, and my little sister had to watch me be walked away in handcuffs.”
“Shit.”
“Shit,” he repeats, his mouth in a flat line. “Shane wasn’t a lawyer back then, obviously, so I had to go with a public defender. Nice guy, but he was overworked and in over his head. He wasn’t going to do shit for me, especially not against Jarrod’s lawyers. I was looking at five to ten years in jail. Millions of dollars in fines.”
I feel like my mouth’s going to drop open like some cartoon character’s. I’ve learned that Danny is a thoughtful, introspective, cinnamon roll of a man, but all this time, he’s secretly been a badass too. He’s so complicated, and every new layer I uncover makes him more appealing to me. “What’d you do?”
“Jarrod offered me a deal,” he says tightly. “To work for him and help fix the safety flaws so I could pay off my debt. I’m paid what they pay their other techs, but I have to reimburse them $35,000 a year for fifteen years in restitution. That comes out of my salary, but if I leave, I need to pay it out of my pocket. I also had to agree not to work anywhere else in web security for fifteen years. I wouldn’t have taken the deal,” he adds, his jaw working again. “I would have risked it. But Ruthie begged me not to leave her alone. The only reason I was in that mess was because I hadn’t listened to her when she’d asked me to stand down, so I couldn’t say no. It’s been ten years, so I’ve got five left.”
“So he took away the main way you can earn money because he wants you to stay.”
“Heneedsme to stay,” he says, “but it also gives him satisfaction to know that I fucking hate him, and I have to contribute to his success. There’s nothing he loves better. I work remotely, but he makes me meet with him four times a year, just so he can look me in the face and tell me what to do. The next time is coming up this week. Thursday. And I already feel the rage pounding in my gut. It’s like he’s daring me to do something—to punch him or…” He sighs and runs a hand over his hair. “That’s why I’ve spent so much time working on the game. It has nothing to do with web security, so it’s an out. If it does well, I can pay him off in a lump sum. I can be done with him.”
He still won’t be able to do what he likes doing, what he does best, but he won’t be trapped anymore. I’ve only been trapped by my physical limitations for a couple of weeks, and it already has me convinced that every paranoid theory I’ve ever had has merit. What would it be like to be trapped for ten years? Fifteen?
“Do the guys all know?” I ask, shocked. His hand is still wrapped around mine, and he turns it over and traces my palm.
“They know the general story. It’s why Burke invited me to live with him. I’d been staying with my parents, because Ruthie was still there, but neither of us wanted to stay after…”
I lift my fingers to his face and trace the scar. His pupils dilate as he watches me, his face serious, and then I tip my head up and kiss where my fingers just traced. “You’re nothing like I thought you’d be.”
“Basic?”
“Of course you seek out comfortable things. No one ever gave you the chance to be comfortable or safe. You’ve given all your safety up for other people.”
“I wantyouto be safe,” he says, serious again. “I think—”
I lift a finger to his lips, like silencing someone in a library. He’s about to tell me that I should leave the apartment, and I’m going to refuse, of course, and then we’ll have to have an argument about it. It’s going to happen, inevitably, but I don’t want it to happen right now.
I trace his lips with my finger while he watches me, his eyes dark as coal and as deep as the center of the earth—molten inside, because there’s always heat between us, banked or burning. Then I lean in and kiss him, softly this time, my way of showing him that I see him now—all of him—and I very much like what I see. He kisses me back the same way—gently, like he’s worried I’m going to break, which simply won’t do. So I take his lower lip between my teeth and nip him. The groan I get in return feels like a reward I didn’t know I needed. Leaning in, he weaves his hand through my hair and pulls me closer, kissing me hard now, like he knows I’m not going to break—or if I do, it’ll be because we broke each other.
I pull back and say a truth that’s been growing inside of me, a truth that doesn’t much care how fast it’s been, or that my life has been turned upside down and topsy turvy. “I think I’m in serious danger of falling for you.”
“Good,” he says. There’s a spark of humor in his eyes—and plenty of heat. “Does this mean I get to touch you again, or does the Wednesday Rule still hold?”
“Dear God, Danny,” I say. “This is no time to be a gentleman.”
ChapterNineteen
Danny
Every thought in my head has been obliterated. Every thought except that I want her. I want hernow. Each day, it’s been building—this molten need, and now I’m more need than man. My brain certainly isn’t firing the way it should be, because I should be panicked, I should be pissed, I should be scraping over every inch of the apartment to see if Mike or the mystery woman planted a bug to watch me. To watchus. I should be hiding Mira somewhere she’ll be safe from their notice. But the only thing I can think about is Mira, and how she just told me she’s in danger of falling for me. I’d told myself not to hope for it, but I did, of course. And now that she’s opened the door, I never want it closed. I’m hungry for the slope of her neck, the press of her breasts against her shirt, and the way she quaked when she came on the elevator. I’d like her to quake that way around my cock—I’d like to feel her fall apart with my name on her lips, so we could help put each other back together.
It’s been so long, so miserably fucking long. And even longer since going through the motions of sex was anything but the expression of a physical need.
I want her right here, tucked into the trees with the scent of autumn all around us, the red and gold and green and the mountains that have always calmed me.
This is no time to be a gentleman.
I lift her up on my lap, feeling only a slight twinge in my wrist, careful not to jar her cast. She gives a little breathy sigh that I breathe in because I want her sighs. I want her exhalations. I want everything she’s willing to offer me.
