by Zoe Forward
Her lips parted. Her tongue darted out to wet them.
Out of reflex, his arm went around her waist, pulling her close. She relaxed against him.
He couldn’t breathe as her perfect breasts pressed against the thin fabric of his shirt.
Her lashes fluttered shut.
She expected him to kiss her. Nope. Can’t do it.
Willpower to ignore the one thing he wanted most but had been denied for years failed. He leaned in but kept his mouth closed, chaste. His eyes stayed open.
Doing good. Brain alert. No screwing up and taking this to the next level.
One chaste kiss and then he was calling this a mistake. They weren’t going on a date. And he sure as hell wasn’t setting her up with someone else.
She tugged on his neck, pulling their mouths flush. Her tongue flicked across his bottom lip. Oh, he liked that. His hands fisted the waistband of her jeans as he fought a titanic moral battle in his brain.
Her eyelids popped open. Her gaze bore into his with a silent, I want you.
He growled. Opened his mouth. Closed his eyes. And really kissed her. It wasn’t a gentle kiss or a sweet exploration. It was years of repressed desire wrapped into a drive to taste the one woman he couldn’t have. He wanted her hard and fast on the sofa, or against the wall with both of them naked and sweating until they ended up in the tub.
Her tongue parried with his, hesitant, but then insistent. He took complete control, brushing his tongue across her teeth and over the roof of her mouth. His hand splayed against her cheek and glided down the arch of her neck.
She moaned, melting into him. His legs spread. She pressed between them and leaned against his erection. Holy hell, this woman was dangerous.
His cell’s ringtone identified the office calling. He jerked free of the kiss.
Oh, shit.
He’d kissed Becca. He’d crossed the forbidden line.
Shit, shit, shit. That’d been way more than a kiss. That had been a full-throttle foreplay assault.
“I have to answer this.” His voice came out ragged.
She nodded, uncertainty and residual arousal in her gaze.
“This is Jake,” he answered. He listened to his marketing manager’s crisis, barely registering his words. He rolled his watch. “I’ll be back in a little bit. Busy right now. It can wait.” His marketing manager started in again. “It can wait an hour. Traffic is a bitch right now.” He hung up.
He gazed at her for a few silent seconds after he ended the call while he slid his cell into his pocket. “No.”
“No to what? Finishing what we started right now, or no to being my date.”
“No to both. We can’t…”
“I need a wedding date. I’d be on board if you’re volunteering. Nothing has to happen after.”
Another minute in this room and he’d make good use of every horizontal surface. A night involving alcohol, dancing, and the stress of her brother’s wedding lent itself to way more than a friends-only drive home.
I just kissed Noah’s sister.
She pressed on when he didn’t reply. “Come on. It’d be fun.”
“Becca, be reasonable.”
Her eyes narrowed, signaling an impending fight. Her fierceness usually both irritated and entertained him, but right now he wanted to fight. It’d put back the wall he kept between them. He needed the wall to make his escape.
He cleared his throat. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“It’s almost six thirty. Isn’t your workday over?”
“It’s never over.” He pivoted to leave, but she jumped in front of him, blocking the door.
She crossed her hands over her chest. “I want an answer.”
“You’re Noah’s sister.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“You couldn’t handle what I want.” Hadn’t meant to say that.
Her eyes grew wide and dropped to his lips. “How would you know I couldn’t handle it? Don’t you want to find out?”
He wasn’t about to answer that. He wanted to. Oh, Christ, he wanted to with a resounding yes. But if she agreed, as her gaze suggested she would, then her naked in this room right now might happen. He’d live up to his bad boy press persona and not refuse her. He’d known Becca for years. She didn’t do one-nighters or flings, which is what this would have to be. Then he’d break her heart and lose the only family he’d ever known. The Harrisons meant everything to him.
Say no to all of this and get the hell out of here.
She asked, “Were you into me?”
Was she that clueless? Of course, he’d been into her. If he didn’t get out of this room right now, he was going to kiss her again. “I need to take off.”
“I’m not moving until you answer.”
He picked her up and changed positions, quickly stepping away to put a foot of air between them.
“Were you into me?” she asked again.
He yanked open the door and stepped into the safety of the doorframe. He paused to look over his shoulder. The vulnerability in her large eyes trapped him. “Yes. But I…”
“You think hard on us going together. I’ll finish what you started tonight, but if you start this again, I expect you to follow through.” She shut the door.
3
Becca blinked at the hotel room door. What just happened?
Whatever exploded between she and Jake had nothing to do with her boss’s order. Fear might’ve prompted her to push Jake to the place they’d circled for years. But the kiss had been real.
You couldn’t handle what I want.
His words circled inside her mind. Around and around.
She collapsed onto the sofa and cradled her face. Pascal’s plan led to a bad place. She’d hurt Jake and the company he’d built with her brother. Neither would forgive her. She’d never forgive herself.
She couldn’t do this.
If Pascal released the video incriminating her, the shame would destroy her family. Her brother’s company might collapse as collateral damage because of what she’d inadvertently stolen.
Survival of this weekend’s manipulations to live to next week remained her one goal. Then she could meet the elusive contact others whispered offered a viable exit option. She’d been chasing the contact to have an in-person meeting for six months—since her brother died. The moment she heard Kaleb OD’ed on heroin, she knew he’d been murdered. It’d shaken her to her core to discover Kaleb had been sucked into the same illegal eGaming hell as she—the Stadium.
Tears burned her eyes. How she missed Kaleb’s goofiness, especially his obsession with ’80s pop culture. The two of them had been close, only a year apart. Losing him had torn away a piece of her heart.
She had to get out. Few escaped once indoctrinated to the high stakes multi-player, multi-character video gaming and gambling. When videogames became a spectator sport years ago, the underworld started. As racing and other legalized gambling fell off, underworld video gaming skyrocketed into a multi-billion-dollar gambling industry. She, like other gamers, had gambled in the Stadium out of ego and lost. Debt was yet another way Symphis kept his players. According to Noah’s fiancé, Tori, who’d escaped the Stadium a mere few months ago and gone public to warn other gamers, Symphis rigged the games to make them unwinnable.
Tori almost died to get out, but she said freedom was worth it. Tori might be the one person who’d understand, but Becca didn’t see how her soon-to-become sister-in-law could help.
On her personal phone, she searched for articles on an accident involving Stuart in San Diego. Two popped up. Images of a horribly mangled car in a gulley turned her stomach. No other cars involved. Police speculated his car hydroplaned through a massive puddle caused by a faulty fire hydrant. The car ended up in a ravine.
Oh, Stuart. Sweet Stuart. She wiped her eyes.
Knock. Knock.
She jumped and stumbled toward the door.
Knock. Knock.
Maybe Jake had changed his mind.
Her heart thrashed against her ribcage. She didn’t even use the peephole before she wrenched the door open.
A twenty-something brunette with a hotel name tag engraved with Kimberly, Customer Relations held out a standard UPS mailing folder. “Special delivery.”
When Becca didn’t move to take the envelope promptly, Kimberly shook it. “You are Rebecca Harrison, aren’t you?”
Whatever the cardboard envelope contained would turn her hurting Jake and her brother from an abstract possibility into reality.
“You sure it’s for me?” Becca asked.
Kimberly rotated the envelope to read the address label. “Says ‘Rebecca Harrison’ right there. That you?”
“Yes.” With no choice, she took the envelope, closed the door, and sat on the bed staring at it. Would it be something awful like poison she was supposed to put into a drink? Murder, she wouldn’t do.
Heart pounding, she tore the easy-open tab. An entry-level smartphone in a plastic bag fell out of the envelope along with a flash drive and a cable that would enable her to hook the drive into the phone. She clicked open the phone’s home screen. It scanned her fingerprint and opened. Nothing but a bevy of standard, boring apps appeared. The “special” app—the one she’d helped code—wasn’t an icon, but she found it.
They wanted her to steal digital information. From Jake.
Her real phone rang. Pascal.
“Hello?” she answered.
“We got an alert that you opened the phone. Use the app you coded to get into Jake’s computer and past the NJ Legacy firewalls,” Pascal said.
“What are you trying to data mine out of his system?” A chill slithered down her spine.
“We need all financial information from the past two months for NJ Legacy. Put it on the flash drive.”
“Financials? That’s not going to be on his personal laptop. That’d be on the main server at the office. It means I have to get into NJ Legacy. I might not get a chance to go into the office this weekend. I’m only here three days. This is a wedding, you know. Besides, I’m not sure the app will be able to break through their firewall.” Stress rolled through her in hard waves to the point she tasted it.
“This is why you need to get close to Jake. If you hookup, give him a blowjob or whatever, then he’d probably go wherever you suggested for seconds. I’m sure you can figure it out.”
Disgusting.
It also suggested they never intended Stuart to make this trip. Why force her to go with him as a date? Distraction, perhaps. They’d lulled her into a weird sense of security at the idea of Stuart along. If Pascal had told her ahead of time they planned for her to do this to Jake, she wouldn’t have gotten on the plane, regardless if it was Noah’s wedding.
They used Stuart as a scare tactic. It worked.
Maybe Pascal knew the two of them had been working on an exit plan. They needed her in particular to do this because she could get access. Once she did, she had to assume they’d make sure she ended up dead too.
They couldn’t get this information without her.
“Why do you want financial information and not straight game code or other technology?” she asked.
“You don’t need to know. You need to do as you’re told.”
“If I agree to your plan, what do I get in return? You’re asking me to hurt my family and steal something from my brother’s company that Symphis will no doubt use to hurt him, maybe even bankrupt the company. I get that Symphis holds a grudge against Tori and Noah after they teamed up with the FBI against him, but this is insane. I’m not feeling inspired to do this just over the threat of you releasing a video that might or might not get me into trouble with the law. With a good lawyer, I can probably convince a judge of the truth. You tricked me by telling me it was a sister company.” All bluff, but it felt good—damn good—to tell the asshole his threats weren’t enough to keep her in line anymore.
When Pascal didn’t say anything, she forged on. “I want out of the gaming. Let me clarify. I do this, and if I’m successful, I want out of all gaming in the Stadium. Forever.”
Silence.
Finally, Pascal said, “I’m not authorized to approve that. I’ll have to get back to you.”
“You do that, or I’m not cooperating.” She ended the call with shaky hands.
She palmed the phone Pascal sent. Get it close enough to the target system and the program she helped write would worm its way in and could steal information or modify what was there. She’d been proud after twelve weeks to have perfected the program almost entirely on her own, but an idiot not to realize it wasn’t meant to be exclusive tech for the CIA as she’d been led to believe. Damn her pride for pushing her to beat out the other four men on the team to complete it first.
Her real cell phone rang again. Her mom’s image popped up on the screen.
“Hi, Mom. I’m planning to head over the house in just a bit.”
“Becca, oh honey, I couldn’t remember exactly what time you got in. Don’t go to the house. I would’ve called sooner…”
“What is it?”
“Your dad had an accident. He fell and bumped his head.” She rushed to say, “He’s okay. I ran him into the ER. Nothing broken and only a little concussion. They’re keeping him a few hours to monitor.”
“Oh my God. I’m on my way. Which hospital is it?”
“He’s asleep. You know how he is about things like this. He wouldn’t want you to see him this way.”
“You sure? I could bring you dinner, give you some company.”
“You aunt’s here. Noah already stopped by. I think it best you stay at the hotel and we’ll visit in the morning at the house. They plan to release him soon.”
“Has he been remembering things okay? Did this accident have to do with that?” Her dad’s early signs of dementia broke her heart. It killed all of them to see such a vibrant spirit go through bouts of utter disorientation.
“He might’ve forgotten about the step down into the den since that’s where he fell. I don’t know. Getting old is awful. I’ve got to go. Doctor just came in. Love you.” Her mom hung up.
Becca texted Noah: You already checked on Mom and Dad?
Noah dinged back almost immediately: Yeah. He’ll be ok. Jake said he gave you a ride. That your date bailed.
Becca: Yeah both our dates bailed.
Noah: Sucks. I’m meeting Michael at 6 at Shanks. You in?
Becca: Sure.
She hoped it’d only be her two brothers, not Jake. He was like another brother… Well, to the boys. Not to her. Never to her. Especially not now.
4
What had he been thinking to kiss Becca?
Oh, right. He hadn’t been thinking, at least not with anything above his waist.
Jake was having one hell of a time paying attention to whatever the Harrison brothers were discussing. Noah’s mouth moved. Jake nodded but didn’t register what he’d said, partly because Shank’s was dim and noisy, even sitting a room away from the live band. And partly because Noah would castrate him for kissing Becca. Or for imagining what she’d done to finish after he left.
Noah ran a hand through his dirty-blond hair for the umpteenth time in the past few minutes. That meant he was upset about something. Time to tune in. Jake picked up the topic: Noah’s mom mandated a no-sleeping-together-until-the-wedding decree for the three days before the wedding. The rule sounded stupid but came from a Harrison family belief doing so gave the marriage luck. The Harrison family observed all kinds of odd little good luck rituals all the time, like Noah’s mom’s insistence everyone kiss her grandmother’s locket on New Year’s Eve to ensure a year of luck, and Noah swearing by his green tie. He wore it before any business meeting when they needed things to go their way.
Noah, ever the Boy Scout, would follow his mom’s edict, but his fiancée, Tori, wouldn’t. She’d do whatever the hell she wanted. Jake should probably point that out, but Noah’s sex life wasn’t high on Jake’s list of problems he needed to sol
ve.
What topped his personal list was figuring out how to act around Becca tomorrow.
“You think I should do something special for the wedding night?” Noah asked Jake.
Jake grunted noncommittally.
“Like shave my chest or my balls or something?”
Michael, Noah’s older brother, choked on his beer before dissolving into a fit of laughter.
“I’m not having a ball-shaving discussion with you, man.” Jake glared at Noah, wondering if Noah had sucked down too much of Shank’s famous margaritas in the past twenty minutes. “Seriously not going there. Especially here. Hell, I’m not having that discussion with you anywhere.”
“Women like it, don’t they? Do you get waxed or actually use a razor?” Noah wasn’t joking. The man legit seemed to want to do right by his girl.
“You think I shave my balls?” Jake yelled to be heard over the rowdy group that had moved in next to them.
“Hey, guys,” said a far too familiar feminine voice behind them.
Maybe she hadn’t overheard.
Noah’s face pinched tight like he’d sucked an entire lime slice up the straw that came with his margarita.
Becca settled on the open barstool between Michael and Jake. The floral scent of her hair teased Jake’s nose. He could smell that all day. His thigh tingled where hers now pressed tight against his.
“You wax your balls, Jake?” Her eyes glittered with amusement.
Michael snort-laughed so hard that he sucked in air and lost the ability to make any sound.
“My balls are my business.” Jake sipped his cranberry juice and stared at the baseball game on the widescreen over the bar.
“Why’re we talking about manicuring privates?” Becca’s forehead crinkled when she glanced to Noah. She reached behind Jake, her breasts pressed into his side when she patted Noah on the back. “You swallow a piece of ice or something?”
Noah’s face blotched red. “Didn’t think you’d get here so soon, Becca.”
“You’re the one who wanted to know about…waxing?” A giggle escaped her. She leaned across Jake again, her arm balancing a whisper’s length from his straining dick. Her tone was low enough no one nearby could overhear, but Jake heard. “If Tori hasn’t said anything, then chances are she doesn’t care if you’re smooth as a baby’s butt or going au natural.”