“Do your worst.” He liked her edge.
“Okay, let’s warm you up.” She pointed to an empty treadmill. “We’ll talk while you walk.” She narrowed her eyes and scanned him up and down with purely professional interest. He caught himself wishing her gaze held a different kind of appreciation, more like the yoga woman’s.
Her fingers danced over the control panel of the treadmill and it began to move at a pace he considered a saunter. “I mentioned that your initial session is ninety minutes and that the first thirty minutes are free. We’ll use the free time to warm up and discuss your fitness goals. On your next visit, you can warm up yourself before your session begins if you’d like to get the maximum benefit from it.”
Her tone was pleasant but, again, all work and no play. He missed the snappy teasing of her email messages.
“I’ll get my tablet to input your program. And some water for you. Be right back.” She took off toward a glass-fronted refrigerator so he could savor her distinctive stride, which somehow combined propulsion and seduction.
As he strolled, he redirected his thoughts to his phone, now tucked away in the locker, sucking in data from all over the gym. Would it confirm his working theory?
“Here you go.” Dawn slotted a water bottle into the treadmill’s console. “Hydration is important.” She tapped a button on the tablet. “Let’s talk goals. You don’t need to lose weight, so we can cross that goal off.”
“I appreciate it.” His tone was dry.
One corner of her lips twitched. “You’re welcome. Muscle mass looks pretty good too.”
“I’m resisting the urge to flex in confirmation.”
She hummed at that. “I guess I shouldn’t write down ‘figure out why cell data usage is so high at the gym.’”
“Probably not wise.” The treadmill suddenly accelerated as it followed Dawn’s programming.
“How about increasing your flexibility?” she asked.
“I like to think that I’m quite flexible already, but go right ahead.”
She ignored his comment and tapped at the tablet.
The treadmill quickened to running speed and tilted to a high incline. He increased his pace to accommodate it. “Did you add ‘run up Mount Everest’ to my goals?”
She chuckled and hit a button on the control panel, causing the track to slow and flatten. “I was just messing with you.”
So the teasing was still there. A blip of pleasure twanged at his chest.
She asked him a few basic questions about his general health, raising her eyebrows when he told her he swam every day for an hour or more. “So we don’t need to work on lung capacity or stamina either, it sounds like.” She made a note.
The treadmill slowed and stopped. Dawn tucked the tablet under her arm and gave him a full-on grin. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”
The next fifty-five minutes were a challenge. She pushed him to see where his strengths, weaknesses, and limitations were. By the end he was breathing hard and his glasses had fogged up enough to require wiping off.
Then the real torture began. She had him lie down on a mat before she knelt beside him. “As your reward for working so hard, I’m going to stretch you. Bend your left knee and put your foot flat on the floor. Good. Turn your head to the left.”
She circled his left wrist with her fingers in a firm, warm grasp and pulled his arm out straight on the floor so it lay a mere inch from her folded legs. Releasing his wrist, she shifted one hand to his left shoulder and put the other on the outside of his bent knee. She pressed his shoulder down and his knee to the right, ever so slowly but inexorably.
He barely noticed the pleasant pull in his back muscles because he was enveloped in Dawn. A faint scent of something lemony emanated from her body. With his head turned sideways, he had a close-up view of the black fabric of her leggings stretched over her deliciously rounded hip and strong thigh. The warmth of her palms seemed to soak through his T-shirt and running pants, creating pools of sensation on his skin that migrated straight to his groin. He closed his eyes and began mentally coding the most boring program he could think of.
“Tell me when it becomes uncomfortable.” Her voice was so close, almost by his ear, which made him think of lying in bed beside her. Both of them naked.
“Stop there.” His command was more abrupt than he intended.
“Sorry. Did I hurt you?” She sounded contrite.
“Not at all, but as you said, I need to work on flexibility.” He rolled his head back to center. A mistake. Her face with its elegant angles hovered over his, a look of concern darkening her brown eyes. If he pushed up on his elbows, he could just reach that lush mouth of hers to see if it was as soft as it appeared.
He would not allow himself more than a passing glance at her breasts, their tempting curves suspended above his chest. However, when her ponytail fell over her shoulder so that its silk nearly brushed his cheek, he considered winding it around his fingers to bring her down to him. The thought of those lush breasts pressing into his chest made him stifle a groan.
“Let’s try the other direction. Stop me the moment you feel any discomfort.” She stood and skirted the mat to his other side.
He almost laughed since he was already feeling plenty of discomfort. He started on the computer code again the moment she touched his wrist.
You are a professional and this is just another client, Dawn repeated to herself for the fifteenth time. She forced herself to ignore how Leland’s pulse beat against her palm as she positioned his arm. She kept her eyes fixed resolutely on the mat somewhere to the side of his shoulder as she eased his knee across his body, testing for the kind of resistance that indicated pain. It had been a mistake to look down into his eyes the first time she’d touched him, because she’d seen a flare of something that had sent heat rippling through her own body.
God knows she’d trained good-looking men before. Some of them had even hit on her. She’d never felt any desire to take them up on their offers.
So why the hell was she hoping that Leland would say something inappropriate?
“Stop there,” he said.
“You have excellent flexibility on this side,” she said, lifting his knee back into neutral position. She took a deep breath and reminded herself again that this was just a body that needed stretching.
Then she pushed his bent knee gently toward his chest. There was no way to avoid looking into his eyes now. She needed to gauge his reaction to the stretch so she didn’t overdo it. Not to mention that she would appear distracted if she gazed off into the distance when her position put her face-to-face with him. Maybe he would close his eyes the way some of her clients did.
No such luck. As she carefully shifted some of her weight onto his shin to deepen the stretch, the blue of Leland’s eyes blazed up at her, sending little flickers of sensation dancing over her skin. She had the strangest desire to taste the sheen of sweat that glazed his forehead. Or to brush back the strand of his brown hair that clung to it.
And his mouth. Oh dear God, she wanted to trace the sculpted lines of it with her lips and her tongue and maybe even her teeth.
“I think that’s far enough,” Leland said, his voice strained.
Dawn eased off quickly. She’d been so caught up in her fantasy that she’d forgotten to check for signs of tension. “Okay, I’m going to straighten your leg upward now.”
Leland nodded. Dawn wrapped one hand around his ankle and placed the other flat on the back of his thigh. As she pushed his leg toward his head, she tried to ignore the press of his tendons and bones against her fingers. This time she kept her mind on the task, helped by the fact that Leland had transferred his gaze to the ceiling, although his attention seemed inward.
He even smelled good. There was a faint aroma of laundry detergent emanating from his gray T-shirt that blended with his own scent of clean, healthy male, made stronger by his exertions. She wanted to bury her nose in the crook of his neck and inhale him.
She couldn’t decide whether to cut the stretching short so she could regain her sanity or whether she preferred to prolong the exquisite torture of touching him and being allowed to manipulate his big, toned body in any direction she felt like.
She would have the same decision to make tomorrow . . . and the next day.
But she had a job to do and she intended to do it right. After the final stretch, she settled him back into a neutral position on his back, her pulse speeding up as she let her gaze skim down the impressive length of his body. “Okay, good work,” she said, standing up to put a little more distance between herself and his magnetic pull. “I’ll walk you to the locker room.”
His chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath with his eyes closed. “I can’t decide if I’m grateful or in pain. I’m afraid to find out by standing up.”
“Coward.” She reached downward, palm open. Touching him again was a bad idea if she wanted to maintain her professional composure. But she couldn’t stop herself. “I’ll give you a hand up.”
Those intense eyes opened again and his long fingers wrapped around hers, his grip sending a sensation of warmth and strength vibrating up her arm. He bent his legs and rose to his feet with barely a tug for support. He didn’t release her hand until she forced the issue by pivoting toward the exit door.
“Give me a minute to check the status of all my body parts,” he said, rolling his head and shaking out his arms. “All right, I think I can move.”
“It wasn’t that bad, was it?” She gave him a sidelong glance when he fell into step beside her. It felt good to know that she had challenged him with her program. But he challenged her peace of mind with those intelligent eyes watching her through his nerdy glasses and the athlete’s body trying to hide under a geek’s clothing. It was like unwrapping a package to find a surprising gift within. A really hot gift.
“I’m used to swimming, where I am in control of my own fate. I’d forgotten how useful it is to have someone push you in new directions.”
Pleasure surged through her but she brushed it aside and lowered her voice. “Are you going to check your phone before you swim?”
“I’ll take a quick glance at it, but I need my office computers to dive deep.” His honeyed drawl sounded close by her ear as he bent to keep their conversation private. It seemed to flow downward to pool in her belly.
“You’ll email me?”
“Don’t I always?” There was an undertone that heated the honey as it poured through her.
She managed a nod and lengthened her stride. She needed to get away from this madness. “Make sure to drink plenty of water,” she said as they reached the hallway leading to the locker rooms.
“I figured on absorbing it through my pores while swimming.”
She couldn’t stop herself from glancing up. His lips curved in a teasing smile, but his eyes glinted with something hotter.
“I’m pretty sure that won’t work.” Her voice came out all wrong, like she’d been on the treadmill running hard.
“Another urban legend shot down.” He flicked the end of her ponytail so that it flipped over her shoulder. “I’ll find you after my swim.”
The playful intimacy of his gesture sent a shiver of heat spreading through her. She had to swallow hard before she croaked, “I’m tied up with a client for the next hour.”
“Then it will be a long swim.” He pulled open the locker-room door and left her with an accelerated heart rate.
She needed to make sure she trained her next client far away from the windows that offered a view of the pool. In her experience, work was the best antidote to the kind of insanity Leland evoked in her brain and other parts of her body.
After the final stretches with her client, she checked the email that had come in fifteen minutes before. Leland was waiting at the juice bar, staring at the glass in front of him with a dubious expression. His longish brown hair was still damp and showed more curl than usual. He was dressed in jeans and a clean dark-blue sweatshirt that somehow made the blue of his eyes behind his glasses all the more vivid.
Dawn tried to quash her reaction as she slid onto the bamboo stool next to his. “Not a fan of protein shakes?”
“It tastes like suntan lotion and trail mix combined in an appalling way.”
“Must be the Caribbean Zen. Let me get you a Jamaican Karma. You’ll like it better.” She signaled the bartender.
Leland pushed the half-empty glass away. “That’s enough healthy intake for today. Just water for me.”
“Didn’t swallow enough in the pool?” If she kept sparring, she wouldn’t think about the texture of his skin where it stretched over his sharp jawline. Much.
He ignored her jab as the server produced a glass of water with lemon slices floating on top. “What would you like to drink?”
“I’m good. I’ve got all the bottles of water I want back in the gym.”
Leland picked up his glass. “In that case, let’s sit over in the corner, where we can speak without being overheard.” He cut his eyes toward the server and the two other customers sitting at the juice bar.
He offered his hand to Dawn to help her off the stool. How could she refuse to take it? When his warm, solid palm met hers, sensation sizzled through her arm, and she let go as soon as she could without being obvious. She turned her back to him and headed for the wooden café table in the corner.
This was the one room where Vicky had taken a break from turquoise, going for a rain-forest effect with potted palm trees and the piped-in twittering of birds. It was supposed to be soothing to go with the names of the drinks on the menu. Or maybe it was the other way around.
Leland had chosen the location well. The only other occupied table held two women having what looked like an intense gossip session, but it was on the other side of the space.
Dawn took the chair that allowed her to see anyone approaching and kept Leland’s back to the room.
He sat down across the small tabletop from her. His wide swimmer’s shoulders dominated her view, but out of the corner of her eye, she could still see his long, powerful legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. All his exertions seemed to make him radiate strong, male pheromones. At least her receptors were picking up the signals.
“The data usage is off the charts again, as it was when you had the Wi-Fi issue,” he said, his voice low. “This time, however, someone is harnessing all the phones in the gym to handle the massive stream of traffic.”
She jerked her wandering mind back into business mode. “What kind of traffic? Is it some kind of illegal activity?”
“I won’t know until I get back to my office. My phone can collect the data but it doesn’t have the capacity to analyze it.” He put his elbows on the table and touched all his fingertips together, his gaze fixed on her above them. She’d only ever seen people do that in old movies, but somehow it worked for him. “I have a theory that someone is utilizing the phones as a deep web or dark web node.”
A frisson of nervous excitement tingled through her. “The dark web sounds like something Darth Vader would use. Is it illegal?”
“Not necessarily. The deep web, which encompasses the dark web, is used by legitimate businesses who want very secure information transfer, since deep websites are all encrypted and don’t show up on search engines. Some regular folks simply believe they have the right to be anonymous on the internet. Even more important, since its users cannot be tracked, citizens living under totalitarian governments use the deep web to communicate with the uncensored outside world. Which is why the New York Times has a deep website. I personally use the dark web to track possible data sales if a client gets hacked.”
“So it’s a good thing?”
“Sometimes. But it was also home to the infamous Silk Road website, which dealt—and in fact might still deal—in very illicit goods and services.”
“How illicit?”
“Guns, drugs.” Leland’s expression of distaste was even stronger than when he had been sippi
ng his protein drink. “Child pornography, sex-slave trading. Truly horrible things. Unfortunately, others have picked up where the Silk Road left off. Supposedly, you can even hire an assassin, but most of those websites have turned out to be scams.”
“So what exactly does being a node for the deep, dark web mean?”
He smiled briefly at her feeble joke. “The deep and dark webs are based on anonymity. In the simplest terms, users obtain that anonymity by having their internet access randomly bounced through multiple servers called nodes. That makes it virtually impossible to trace activity back to the end user.”
Dawn frowned. “Would someone at the gym have to know about being a node?” She just couldn’t picture Ramón aiding and abetting an assassin or a child pornographer.
“I would think so. Some router has to be feeding the traffic through the phones. It’s an interesting hack. I’m wondering if it’s related to your earlier Wi-Fi issues.” His face was lit with interest, his eyes practically glowing. His drawl had melted away as he talked. “Using the phones would probably make the users even harder to track because the IP addresses are bouncing through multiple devices. But why? What are they trying to hide?”
His gaze still seemed aimed at her, but his attention had turned to the problem. He was talking to himself. “Money laundering of some kind? Data theft?”
“The secret recipe for Jamaican Karma?”
His lips quirked in a half smile and he laid his hands palm down on the table. “Sorry. Puzzles enthrall me.”
“No apology necessary. I just wondered how far away your mind had gone.”
“I should get to the office to find out what’s really going on.”
She felt hollow at the prospect of his departure. Even potential assassins couldn’t dampen the pleasure of basking in his company. “At least you got your exercise done for the day.”
“So I will glow with virtue for the next twenty-four hours.” He pushed his chair back.
Dawn tried to delay his departure. “Did you get a lot of thinking done in the pool?”
The Hacker Page 4