She pulls her hands free, puts one on my chest. The curl of her fingers into my body is slight, like she wants more but is afraid to ask.
I lift her from the chair, bringing her flush against me. She’s soft, warm, and smells like flowers, only better. God, I can’t take it, finally letting go with her. I thrust my tongue into her mouth, my hands tightening on her arms. My instincts are racing away from my control, toward her and the need that’s building in me.
I want her and she’s here.
Take her, the darkest corner of my mind urges.
She shifts, her belly brushing against my cock, her breasts pressing into my chest. I can feel her nipples, high and tight, begging for my touch.
My teeth close on her lower lip. I want to devour her, to take what she’s offering until we’re both consumed.
She whimpers.
And I freeze.
What the fuck am I doing?
With a sharp breath, I step back and let her go. Immediately she brings a hand to her mouth, rubbing at where I’ve bitten her. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“I’m sorry.” My hands curl into fists and I drop my gaze. She’s a guest in my home, I’ve pulled her into this insane scheme, and I’m fucking mauling her here. My mother would be appalled. I’m appalled. “I don’t know—”
I swallow the rest of that lie because I know exactly what came over me. Lust, pure and simple. I know I have to keep my fantasies at bay, to keep this all professional, and when I let loose…
“It won’t happen again,” I say. “I swear.”
She doesn’t say anything, just keeps her hand over her mouth. God, I wish I knew what she was thinking. Is she revolted? Or does she wish I’d keep going?
I grit my teeth. Actually, no, I don’t want to know what she’s thinking. Because if she’s wishing I’d keep going, I’m in deep shit. We both are.
At least deeper shit than we’re already in.
“I’ll see you in the morning.” I turn for the door. “We’ll meet with Finn and Doc, start to sort this situation out.”
I’ve got my fingers on the doorknob when she finally says, “I’m not sorry.”
I close my eyes. That… that’s exactly what I wanted her to say. But what I want isn’t in this scheme. At least not what I want in the deepest, darkest part of me, the part that isn’t the dutiful son, the heir to a respectable family.
I leave without acknowledging her words.
Chapter Ten
I can’t stop running my tongue over the mark Paul left on my lower lip.
It doesn’t sting anymore, not that it really did last night either. I gasped when he bit me because it was so carnal, so unlike Paul, I was shocked. But in a good way, in a “rush of heat to my pussy” kind of way.
He didn’t react so well though. He acted like… like he was disgusted with himself. Which kind of killed my mood. I told him I wasn’t sorry to make him feel better, to let him know everything was okay, but he didn’t take it that way.
I glance up at him, sitting across the table from me. We’re in the big conference room, the one they use for partner meetings. I’ve been in here before, but it was never just the two of us. Somehow the room feels too empty although there’s not even six feet between us.
But the space is filled with fruit neither of us has touched, coffee we haven’t drunk, and all the words we won’t speak. He hasn’t said anything to me today, at least beyond what he absolutely has to, not even during the car ride over to Bastard Capital.
When he was sneaking me out of the house this morning, I could understand the need for quiet. And on the car ride over… well, maybe he still needed to wake up. But we’ve got coffee now and fresh taro buns from my favorite bakery in San Francisco, so there’s no more excuses.
I run my tongue over the mark one last time. He was so worked up he bit me. Not hard, not at all painful, but so deliciously hot and out of control.
Paul is always in control, always suave and polite. And he lost it with me.
“When will Doc and Finn get here?” I ask.
He doesn’t look up from his laptop. “Soon.” His cheeks darken, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s ashamed of his rudeness or if he’s remembering last night. Or both.
“Shouldn’t we be talking about our engagement?” I gesture to all the space between us. “Coming up with a more solid story about how we met, what we know about each other?”
That was why I had to be whisked to his house last night, and we’ve got the perfect opportunity to talk here. His mom isn’t going to come bursting in. I don’t think.
He sighs. “Some problems have just occurred to me about this… situation.”
Meaning the kiss. I pull my mouth in tight, the better to hold in my reaction.
But then Anjie comes in, all bright and happy and looking gorgeous, and I can’t tell him where he can shove his problems.
“Oh, I’m so happy for you two!” she gushes. “I knew something was up.”
Paul stares at her. “It’s fake. Just to throw off my mother. I told you that.”
“You told Anjie?” I grab the arms of the chair as I sit up. “Who else?”
I thought we were supposed to be discreet here. I didn’t even get a chance to tell January last night, thanks to Fuchs’s message and Paul’s kiss.
I wince as I imagine telling January now. Somehow, telling her it’s all fake after Paul and I kissed feels like it would be lying. Although saying it’s real would be lying too.
“I needed her help,” Paul tells me. “And I had to tell the rest of the Bastards. It’s going to look weird if they don’t know we’re engaged. Although they’ve never met my family.”
“None of them?” I ask. “Not even Mark?”
Paul and Mark were friends from college—they’ve known each other for years. Surely somehow, somewhere, Mark should have met them. These men are practically Paul’s brothers.
He shakes his head. “Of course not. Why would that ever happen?”
Wow. That’s… very regimented. I’ll definitely introduce January to my parents if I ever have the chance. I’ve certainly spoken enough about her to them.
I wonder how much of this life Paul will keep in him once he’s back in Taipei. Will he still be a Bastard? Or will he cut it all away, transforming completely into the perfect heir with no trailing ends left?
Anjie clears her throat. “I meant it mostly as a joke.”
“Right.” Paul sends her a significant look. “Mark and Logan and Finn would say the same, of course.”
I look between them, having no idea what they’re talking about. What did she do to them and not to Elliott and Dev…?
“Oh no.” I clap my hand over my mouth and send Anjie a horrified look. And yet…
Under my fingers, my tongue finds the tiny cut on my lip, sharp edged and bitter tasting. I can’t leave it alone, not even when it hurts.
This is insanity. I’m being deported and Paul is leaving too. Anjie playing matchmaker would be ludicrous.
“Oh yes,” Paul says, a warning in his tone. It’s aimed at Anjie, not me though. “So no congratulations please, not even as a joke.”
Anjie cuts a look at me, worry in her eyes. “All right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”
My hand is still over my mouth, and I force myself to drop it. “It’s fine. I’m not offended.” I smile, or try to. “It is all kind of funny, isn’t it?”
But Anjie doesn’t look amused. She still looks worried.
Before she can say anything, Finn comes bursting in. “I think it’s hilarious,” he says as he straddles a chair, the frame creaking under his weight. He looks like a professional bodybuilder, swollen with muscle. Or like a professional wrestler.
Doc is rolling her eyes as she comes in after him. “Ignore him. He thinks everything is a joke.” Her attention turns to me. “Are you okay?”
I don’t really know Doc that well; she’s friends with January and works for her, but she started at January’s
company after I was disappeared by Corvus. I didn’t get much of a chance to meet her when I was restricted to my office and my company-provided housing.
So I don’t know if she’s talking about my fake engagement, my immigration situation, or having been held hostage by a tech company. But I guess the answer is the same no matter what.
“I’m holding on.”
We share a smile, one that says we have much more in common than we might know. I’ll have to get to know Doc, at least in the few weeks I still have here.
“Good,” she says, and she means it.
Finn knocks an enormous knuckle against the table. “So, Fuchs wants us to name names.”
I set my shoulders, take a deep breath. “He knows he has a leak. If I tell him who it is, he’ll stop obstructing my visa approval.”
Doc purses her lips. “Do you actually know who it is?”
I shake my head. “Those files you were sent, the access protocol—they wouldn’t be specific to one person. I mean, not everyone has them, but it’s not like they’re individualized.”
“So like I said,” Paul cuts in irritably, “give him a likely name and be done with it. He can figure it out from there.”
My stomach shifts. I know that would be the easiest route and that Paul is right—I don’t owe this leaker anything, and it’s nothing like my great-uncle’s situation—but I can’t quite get it to settle inside my conscience.
“They helped us when they didn’t have to,” Doc points out. “I don’t want Grace to lose her visa, but are we really going to sell this person out? Or someone else who may have nothing to do with it?”
Those are my thoughts exactly. Except… this leak didn’t help when I was trapped inside Corvus, wondering how I was going to stop their spyware program. January and the Bastards were the ones who saved me.
“There are no innocent people working there,” I say. “Including me.”
It’s true. We all made the choice to work for a company doing surveillance projects. We were inside the beast, and we decided to keep going, to keep doing exactly what we were doing.
“You tried to stop him,” Paul says. “And you did. Twice now.”
He means blocking the spyware program and using a virus to destroy the police camera surveillance program. But really, January did the first, and Doc and Finn did the second. I only helped a bit.
As if he can read my mind, Paul goes on. “Nobody would have been able to do anything about those programs if you hadn’t helped. Hell, we probably still wouldn’t have known about the spyware program if you hadn’t smuggled that information out to January.”
“Wait.” Something’s just occurred to me, something that makes my skin go cold. “I’m the leak. I leaked that information to January.”
They’re all frowning at me, not understanding.
I wave my hand, indicating that I’m not done yet. “Fuchs probably knows that I passed on information about the spyware program. And he knows there’s another leak, one still going on, one I can’t be responsible for. So… we must be working together.”
It makes so much more sense now. He’s been blocking my visa not to punish me—well, yes, probably to do that too—but also to get me into this desperate situation, to give me no way out.
No way except to give up my accomplices.
I would laugh, except I have nothing to give him. Nothing except my guesses about who it could be.
“Shit,” Finn breathes.
“No fucking kidding,” Doc says.
Anjie spins on her heel, going for the door. “We’re going to need lots more coffee.”
Paul simply stares at me. There’s a hardness in his gaze, as if he’s not thinking of me personally but rather as a problem to be solved. I don’t like it.
“What?” If he’s going to keep staring like that, he can tell me what’s going on in his head.
“I’m trying to think how you might use this to your advantage. If he realizes you don’t know who it is, that you’re scrambling because of your visa situation, it gives him the upper hand. We don’t want that.”
“So I lie and say I do know and that we’re accomplices?” That’s never going to work.
Paul shakes his head. “Not lie. But let’s feel him out. See how badly he wants this name. I’m guessing he’s more desperate than he’s letting on. You don’t have to be the one begging here.”
Fuchs was my terrifying boss for so long it’s hard for me to think of him as anything else. But Paul’s right—what more can Fuchs do to me beyond what he’s already done? If I’m clever, I can do some demanding of my own. He came to me, not the other way around.
I’m reminded that Paul, even though he inherited his wealth, didn’t coast on the luck of his birth. He’s savvy, ruthless when he wants to be, and a firm ally. And an even worse enemy.
There’s just one problem—I’m not really any of those things. The thought of bluffing Fuchs is giving me cold sweats. I don’t know if I can pull it off.
Again, Paul reads my mind. “I’ll be at the meeting with you. Don’t worry, I’d never leave you alone with that monster.”
Like I said, a firm ally. “Thanks” is all I can say. I don’t lie and say I could have handled it myself.
Finn nods. “Good plan. But do you think you could at least come up with a few people it could have been?”
I blow out a breath, trying to remember the access protocol the mole sent them. “It definitely had to be someone at the division-manager level or above.”
“How many of those are there?” Paul asks.
I shrug. “Maybe a dozen? It’s hard to say because every division is so walled off from the others.”
“Is it likely to be whoever was in charge of the panopticon then?” Doc asks. “Since no one else should have had access to those files.”
“Possibly,” I say slowly. But it doesn’t entirely make sense. “The only thing is, people who get that high up at Corvus are true believers. They don’t necessarily have to be great programmers at that level—they rarely touch code—but someone superloyal is more of an asset in those positions. The head of the spyware division had a tattoo of the Corvus logo, for example. She’d never betray Fuchs or the company.”
Which of course made the idea of whistle-blowing that much more terrifying. No one at Corvus would have backed me up; instead, they’d have tried their best to tear me down.
Doc drums her fingers on the table. “What about someone above the division managers then? Someone with company-wide access to the projects.”
I shake my head. “That would just be Fuchs. And he’s…”
My tongue slows and stops as something comes to me. Someone who’s got Fuchs’s kind of access, who’s his right hand, his enforcer, his most trusted employee…
“It can’t be her,” I whisper to myself. It’s crazy. She’s been there for five years, has carried out his every evil directive with clear glee. She’s hardly even human at this point.
“Who?” Paul demands.
I can barely say her name. It’s just so inconceivable. “Minerva. She has the access, the same as Fuchs.”
There’s a moment of stone silence, then Finn starts laughing. I can’t tell if he’s amused because it’s so ridiculous or if it makes perfect, crazy sense.
“No,” Doc says. “She loves him. At least I think it’s love.”
“It has to be one of the division managers,” I say. “Or someone clever enough to steal their access codes. Minerva wouldn’t do that.”
“But if it isn’t one of the managers…,” Paul says.
Then there’s only one conclusion. “It has to be Minerva.”
Finn’s stopped laughing. Now he’s thinking, his brow crinkled up. “How long has she worked for him?”
“Five years.” She was there when I arrived, and I expect her to be there for a long time after this.
Doc nods. “I remember she was at Corvus back when I was working for that food-delivery-app start-up.”
Paul set
s his palm on the table, not forcefully, but he gets everyone’s attention anyway. “It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is getting Grace’s visa settled.” Just like that, he’s refocused all of us. “Grace, comb through the leaked files with Finn and Doc. Once you’ve done that, let’s ask Fuchs for a meeting. We’ll plan our strategy from there.”
My nerves begin to settle. Yes, I can do all that, and it feels good to have a plan, something actionable to do after all those futile job interviews. It might not work—it probably won’t since Fuchs won’t be satisfied with my guesses at who the mole might be—but I’ve got hope again.
“Sounds good,” Finn says.
“I can definitely come up with some names,” I say. “Beyond Minerva.”
I can barely believe it might be her—Fuchs is never going to buy that suggestion.
“Oh.” Paul glances upward. “I forgot—we’re meeting my mother and Archie for dinner tonight.”
The hope pooling in my chest goes cold. Right. I’m supposed to be playing his fiancée. I almost lost sight of the other massive complication in my life.
“Sure,” I say. “The clothes got delivered this morning, so I’ll be ready.”
Finn and Doc share a look. Paul sees it and frowns for a moment, just a moment. Like he’s not happy they’re judging him.
Me too, I suppose. I agreed to this charade, and I’m in it as much as he is.
“Should we get started then?” I ask brightly. “Since I’ve got a date tonight.”
Paul flashes me a smile of gratitude before heading for the door. He stops next to my chair and brushes my shoulder—the merest touch, probably unseen by Finn and Doc—but it shakes me down to my toes.
I let myself savor the lingering sensation for a moment, then I get to work on the files.
Chapter Eleven
I’ve been going through these files for hours with nothing to show for it.
Paul put me in a small, unoccupied office with a desk and a computer, several flourishing snake plants in the corners and photos of wild birds in flight that are somehow soothing and energizing all at once. For a temporary office, it’s very lovely.
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