“Don’t be careful.” Vivienne pushed the heels of her hands deeper into the mattress, anchoring herself to increase the force of his thrusts. “I want you to punish me.”
His hips stuttered at the plea, and Vivienne looked over her shoulder again. “Spank me.”
His fingers loosened on her hip, and after a moment of hesitation, he gave her a light swat.
It wasn’t enough. Not even close.
“Don’t tease. Make me feel it.”
The vehemence in her voice surprised her, but not as much as the sudden, sharp smack of his palm against her flesh. The resulting sting made her muscles clench, igniting a ripple of pleasure deep in her core.
“Is this what you want?” Wes’s voice was rough. Hoarse.
Jesus. “Yes.”
She’d never felt anything like it.
She stole another look at him as their bodies slammed together. God, he was gorgeous. Intense. There was something so erotic about having all that focus on her. Wes always made her feel like the one, the only, and it was a potent sensation, to feel like someone’s whole world.
Too soft. Now she was being too soft.
“Harder.”
The command made Wes groan. His hand came down again with more force.
The sting spread, like a crackle of electricity across her skin, and the burn of it focused her back in her body. No regrets. No past mistakes. Just Wes. Just her.
“Yes.” The cry came from somewhere deep inside her, a place she’d sealed over long ago.
She could feel the way her blood raced to the surface to meet his hand, knew that he was marking her, turning her skin pink.
“Again,” she begged.
This time, the smack landed on the other cheek, and she bit her lip as something dark and hot throbbed to life within her.
“Tell me you’re with me. Tell me you want this.”
Her voice was almost a sob. “I need this. I need you.”
Wes’s large hand landed between her shoulder blades, pushing her upper body into the mattress before tangling in her hair and pinning her there. The sting brought a smile to her face. She turned her head to draw in a shuddering breath. The comforter pressed into her cheek as he held her in place and drove deep inside her. She reveled in the way he dug his fingers into her hip as he sped the cadence of his thrusts.
Vivienne pushed back against him, chasing the rush that was building so quickly, afraid to lose the promise of benediction that was coursing through her.
The sound of them, the slap of flesh against flesh filled her ears, set her blood on fire. She was drowning in sybaritic delight as Wes took her to the brink of pain-edged pleasure.
And then his cock hit her G-spot and his palm came down on her ass, and Viv was consumed as her body erupted in a sensation so intense, she wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t blacked out.
For a split second, everything was perfect. But perfect never lasted.
As the pleasure receded, it left a gaping emptiness behind, and in the resulting void, there was nothing holding her together anymore. It hurt. It hurt so goddamn bad, like her heart had burst.
She tried to get it back. To concentrate on Wes’s rhythmic thrusts. To stay grounded in the physical.
There was nothing titillating about the anguish burrowing in her chest. It wasn’t muddled with pleasure, like before.
This was a dark chasm that threatened to swallow her whole from the inside.
“I need you.”
It wasn’t what she’d meant to say. It had been far too romantic for the moment.
But in the middle of the most darkly desperate fuck of her life, those were the words that had spilled out of her.
Brutal in their honesty, leaving her flayed to her emotional core.
The physical marks he’d left would disappear, she knew that, but the emotional marks were forever. Not even the six years between then and now had faded them. She’d just buried them deep enough to fool herself for a little while.
And now everything she’d pushed down, refused to feel, came rushing out to fill the empty space in her.
The tears caught her by surprise, dripping onto the comforter before she’d realized she was crying. It was impossible to breathe through the violent sobs that racked her body.
She cried for the lost pieces of her heart.
The piece she’d surgically carved out so her mother’s death and her father’s disinterest had no hold on her.
The piece she’d salted and burned so that her time with Wes would stop haunting her.
The piece that had been ripped from her when the promise of life inside her was extinguished without her permission.
What was left of her heart ached.
Behind her, Wes went dead still.
“Viv?”
His voice sounded distorted and far away, as if she were submerged in her tears, as if they were trying to drown her and steal what was left of her tenuous physical connection to Wes.
“Jesus, Vivienne.” He pulled out of her, leaving her empty on every possible level.
Viv shook her head, lamenting the loss of his body. Trying to reassure him through her sobs, but she couldn’t stop.
Suddenly, Wes was beside her, his arms tight around her, pulling her close. “What’s wrong, baby? Did I hurt you?”
She hated him for comforting her even as she buried her face against his chest and let him rock her.
“I’m sorry. I’m so goddamn sorry. Please don’t cry. Tell me what you need.”
She didn’t want solace. That wasn’t why she’d gone after him, pushed him to the brink. Why couldn’t he understand that?
He wasn’t the one who should be apologizing. She had to tell him that. He had to know.
“I’ve done such awful things.” The words burst from her, desperate and soaked in self-recrimination. “Things you should hate me for.”
He didn’t push her away though. He just kept soothing her, whispering her name against her hair, and it hurt so badly because she didn’t deserve any of it.
“Why don’t you hate me?” The question was physically painful, like it had been ripped from her throat.
In answer, he pulled her closer still, and she couldn’t fight him anymore. Because in that instant, his arms, the strength of him, were the only things holding her together.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WES WOKE UP alone in Viv’s bed. He wasn’t sure if it had been minutes or hours since the most intense sexual experience of his life, and its emotional fallout.
All he knew was that when Viv had finally cried herself out, she’d fallen asleep in his arms as he stroked her hair. And it had changed something monumental between them.
He shoved himself up on his elbows, wondering where she was. The faint sound of the shower flipping on in the en suite answered his question.
Wes rolled out of bed, padding to the end of the mattress to grab his discarded sweatpants, but he paused with them in his hand, and his gaze wandered back toward the bathroom door. He spent a pleasurable minute indulging in visions of joining her in the shower, of having Vivienne, slick and soapy, beneath his hands. Despite the pleasant throb in his groin at the prospect, he decided against it, stepping into his sweatpants instead.
She’d been through the wringer earlier, and the fact that she’d snuck out of bed without waking him was probably a sign that she could use a little time alone to sort through all the same stuff that was swirling in his own head.
His stomach rumbled, and he decided he’d see what she had in the fridge that wasn’t takeout. He could whip them up a little something and they could talk over food. Figure out what came next, now that...well, now that things had changed between them.
Wes headed into the living room, following along in the Roomba’s wake until it veered right and whirred back to its spot by the
couch, while he continued on to the kitchen.
One o’clock in the afternoon, according to the digital screen on the convection oven. The perfect time for the culinary masterpiece that was the grilled cheese sandwich. Wes rooted around the kitchen for the ingredients, relieved and strangely touched that she’d set it up almost exactly the way he’d stored things in their old place.
He’d just flipped the first sandwich when the sound of her heels on the hardwood brought his head up.
She was fastening an earring in her left lobe as she came around the corner all buttoned-up in another of the tailored dresses she favored for the office...and stopped dead.
“What’s all this?”
“Lunch.” He thumbed toward the pan. “Fair warning, you only have one kind of cheese, so if it’s not as good as you remember, that’s probably why.”
There was a moment of awkward silence. And then: “I’m actually not that hungry. But thank you. That was...”
Shit. Wes’s shoulders tightened, bracing for impact. Whatever she was about to say, he didn’t want to hear it.
“Nice.”
Nice. Wes set the spatula on the counter with a lot less force than he would have liked to use. She thought he was being nice.
“My fault,” he said, as she placed her purse on the edge of the counter. “I should have asked if you had plans.” He didn’t bother to mask the sarcasm in his voice. “You going somewhere specific? Or will anywhere do?”
The verbal swipe got her attention.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You tell me. I’m the one making you lunch so we can talk about whatever the hell just happened between us. You’re the one bailing.”
“I’m not bailing.” Her attempt at blasé failed miserably as her entire body went rigid. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Really? Because I’ve got a list going. Screwing. Spanking. Sobbing.” He held up a finger for each verb. “And that’s just the S’s.”
“I knew this would happen,” she muttered, digging through her purse for something that never materialized.
Now it was his turn to play defense. “And exactly what do you think is happening here?”
“You’re turning this into something it never was. Assuming too much.” She gestured at the kitchen in general. “Trying to make things better by staging this trite, Dickensian tableau!”
You can’t make things better, so stop trying!
The paraphrase of his mother’s favorite refrain caught him where he lived, but he took the hit without staggering. Much.
“I can never remember, is the doggy-style spanking scene in A Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations?”
Her eyes told him to fuck right off, and there was poison in her voice. “You’re the one out here making grilled cheese sandwiches. Because that’s what we used to do. But this isn’t a Ghost of Christmas Future kind of situation.”
She inflicted the cut with surgical precision.
“I’m not your girlfriend. I’m your lawyer. I’m trying to keep you from going to jail. You are here because the court ordered it. This is not some magical glimpse into the future we could have had if we’d stayed together.” That desperate little laugh of hers made his fists clench, even before she added, “I knew you’d read too much into this.”
“Okay. Right. That’s all this is. Me, reading too much into things. I guess I missed the memo on which rule book you’re using today.”
She crossed her arms, like she was above the fray, but he wasn’t the only one with white knuckles right now.
“So to recap, when you shove me up against the wall and fuck my brains out in the elevator, that doesn’t mean anything. But when you seek comfort in my arms while you cry your heart out, and then beg me to forgive you before you fall asleep on my chest, that also doesn’t mean anything. Got it.” His nod was curt as he shoved the pan off the burner and killed the flame with a turn of the dial. “I don’t know how I could have screwed that up when it’s so obvious to me now.”
“Wes.”
There was a softness in the way she said his name, a note of pleading, that caught him off guard after their heated exchange. It took him a second to realize her hand was on his bicep. When had she moved so close?
“Please. Don’t be mad. We’re—”
Her phone buzzed in her purse, and he used the interruption to steel himself against her touch.
“You should get that.”
The phone vibrated again, and her hand dropped away as she turned to retrieve it, bringing it to her ear.
“This is Vivienne Grant. Yes. That’s correct.” Her forehead creased slightly with concentration. “So what does this mean for my client?”
Her client.
That’s what he’d been relegated to. All he was to her.
“Okay. That’s great news. We can definitely make it there in an hour.” Vivienne nodded. “I’ll tell him. Thank you so much.”
“Tell me what?” he asked as she disconnected the call.
Vivienne dropped the phone back in her purse. “You’re free.”
“What?”
“The charges have been dropped.”
Wes frowned at the sudden reversal. “Max changed his mind?”
“Not Max. New evidence exonerating you has come to their attention, and they are pursuing other leads,” she told him, obviously quoting whoever had been on the other end of the call.
Wes’s brain scrambled to keep up with what she was saying. “But how...that’s not... It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense. When the result you want comes up, you take it.”
A soft whirring drew both of their attentions down to the floor, as the Roomba made its scheduled appearance in the kitchen, just like he’d programmed it to.
“Guess you’d better put that ankle monitor back on so you can get rid of it for good, huh?”
He leveled his gaze at her, felt the jolt of connection when her eyes met his. “So that’s it?”
He wasn’t talking about his case.
Her shrug was barely discernible, even with all his attention focused on her. “That was the plan from the start, right?”
Wes didn’t have an answer for that. Right now, “the start” felt like a million years ago, and he couldn’t remember it with any clarity.
Vivienne glanced at the clock on the microwave and cleared her throat. “You’d better eat fast, so you have time to change. This judge is a stickler for punctuality.”
Wes grabbed the pan and tipped the contents into the trash, before dumping the Le Creuset in the sink with a loud clatter.
“I’m actually not that hungry either,” he mocked, before heading off to don his freshly dry-cleaned suit.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IT HAD BEEN a week since his ankle monitor had been removed. Well, in an official capacity and not just as a Roomba attachment, anyway. A week of being haunted by memories of Vivienne, of having her in his arms again, of feeling her beneath him.
He’d tried to drive all that shit from his mind by going through every bit of the evidence AJ had used to bring him down in the first place.
He pored through his own notes and analysis of the hack on Whitfield Industries that had set the entire chain of events in motion. Compared them to AJ’s take on how the hack had derailed SecurePay, Max Whitfield’s digital crypto-currency app.
He wasn’t surprised to find they both thought it reeked of an inside job.
Then he dug into AJ’s discovery that the phone that Wes had given to Whitfield’s little sister and PR guru, Kaylee Whitfield, after she’d broken hers had been bugged. Wes hadn’t done it, obviously, but sifting through AJ’s timeline of events, he understood that if he had orchestrated the whole thing, a prebugged phone would have been the way to go.
The f
law in the plan, of course, being that there would have been no way for him to ensure Kaylee had shown up that day with a broken phone, eager to make an exchange for the one that had been doctored.
Wes filed that discrepancy away in the back of his brain and kept going.
Next up was the knock-off version of The Shield, Liam Kearney’s competing entry in the digital crypto-currency market. Instead of an app, Kearney’s company, Cybercore, had opted to create a status symbol, embedding his payment system in a wearable piece of hardware that doubled as a fashion accessory. The specs for which, inconveniently, had been leaked shortly after Cybercore had started testing Soteria’s commercial antivirus product for installation on some of their products.
AJ had found a version of the program on Kearney’s laptop with a back door installed, which would have made accessing the top-secret plans the digital equivalent of taking proverbial candy from proverbial babies.
All together, it looked bad. Really bad.
And most damning of all, every piece of infected tech had the exact same code in it, a garbage string of eight digits that marked them all as related. And every single one of them could be traced back to him and Soteria Security.
AJ’s notes suggested she’d started off thinking it was a date, but like her, he couldn’t find any significance. May 10, six years earlier yielded nothing of consequence when plugged into a search engine.
The fact that the code had infected every avenue of her investigation had led her to the working theory it must be some kind of signature. The hypothesis remained theoretical though, since it didn’t match the calling cards of any of the well-known, or less well-known, hackers that either he or AJ were familiar with.
By the end of the analysis, Wes was half-convinced he’d done it.
He pushed back from his desk and scrubbed his hands over his face. The only piece of the puzzle he could bring to the case was the knowledge that Vivienne had been blackmailed into installing that original program. And that was just one more link that pointed directly at him.
What he couldn’t figure out was who had the talent, and the motive, to have set this up. What he needed was to unleash the full force of Soteria Security on this case, but in order to do that, he needed his impossible-to-get-ahold-of partner to push his reinstatement papers through.
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