Reckless Kiss (The Reckless Duet Book 1)

by Alexis Anne

  “You are aware that Dr. Brown is capable of cracking passwords, correct?” That was Capp again.

  I set my jaw. “I am aware that Esme is brilliant and it does not surprise me in the least she would be able to hack my computer if she so desired. But to answer your next question, because I can already see it on the tip of your tongue, I know she hasn’t hacked my computer because we employ the best cyber security in the business. We have to in order to protect our clients. My laptop requires two passwords and a fingerprint to access. Also, our security team monitors every single piece of electronics from our cell phones to our desktops. She hasn’t accessed my data, but that isn’t how I really know for certain.”

  Dixon’s head snapped up. I had both men’s full attention. “How do you know for certain?”

  If I was reading their line of questioning correctly, they were under the impression Esme was using me to obtain sensitive information. My Esme. The anthropologist who loved her students and her lab. The delicate woman I’d been learning moan by moan. If she was using me I’d eat my own hand.

  “Two reasons.” My mind was a wreck. It collected and discarded possibilities with each heartbeat. “One, I’m not an idiot. I have eyes and the ability to reason. I’ve never once seen her act in a manner that would cause me to question her behavior.”

  She was protective of herself, closed off but not a liar. If anything, she’d given me information, not the other way around.

  “And what’s the second reason? Mr. Hancock?”

  I had to force myself to focus on Capp’s ugly face as he repeated the question.

  “Because.” I ran my hand over my chin. I wondered what these two were going to think about my answer. I wondered how I was going to feel about it later. “She simply could have asked me for it.”

  Dixon blinked. “You would have given it to her? Are you admitting to this?”

  I still didn’t know what this was. “No. I’m simply stating a fact. She hasn’t asked for anything, but she knows she could.” She could ask me to jump off the Skyway to prove my love and I’d do it.

  “So you’re admitting to what exactly?” Capp scratched his temple.

  Jesus, these guys were dumber than rocks. “I’m telling you that whatever you’re thinking, it’s wrong.” It was as if they thought she was a spy or something.

  Fuck, she wasn’t a spy, was she? No. Maybe a corporate spy? No, still no.

  But then again, she did tell me she wasn’t a victim. She was exactly where she wanted to be . . .

  “So if there are no more questions.” I needed these men to leave because something terrible and brilliant had just occurred to me and I needed to talk to Esme now.

  “We have literally dozens of questions,” Dixon frowned.

  “Yes, well. I have a meeting. Why don’t you give me the address of where you’d like to interview me? I’ll meet you there at five.”

  “Five?” Capp repeated.

  “Yes. At the end of the workday. Are you aware you don’t need to haul people off? That you can make appointments?”

  Chapter 22

  I waited all of five minutes before I left. They were probably following me but I couldn’t find it in me to care. I tried the lab first. One of her graduate assistants pointed me to her office. She was having her weekly office hours.

  Luckily two students were leaving as I arrived and no one was waiting.

  “Leo.” She smiled. “What are you doing here?” That smile was one of the reasons I was struggling with my realization. It lit me up. She smiled every time she saw me. That kind of reaction is addictive and real.

  I closed the door.

  “Can you leave that open? My office hours aren’t technically over for another five minutes.”

  “Why?”

  She frowned. “Because all professors have set office hours. You went to college, you should know this.”

  “Not that.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. I could be naked with this woman, why couldn’t I ask her a simple question?

  Because it would change everything, that’s why.

  “Are you working for your father?”

  She reared back. “Excuse me?”

  That wasn’t the answer I was looking for. So I moved to stand directly in front of her, to look into her eyes as she answered. “Are you still working for your father? Is that why you moved in with me so quickly?” I meant what I said to Dixon and Capp. I knew Esme hadn’t secretly obtained information from my files . . . but that didn’t mean she hadn’t thought about it.

  Or, the even uglier truth I didn’t want to think about—that her initial interest in dating me was for that access.

  To my great relief she went white as a sheet and shook her head vehemently. “No. God no. Leo, I do not work for my father. Where would you get an idea like that?”

  “Capp and Dixon visited me at work today.”

  Her shock turned to rage. “What? Those bastards promised—wait . . . you think I moved in with you to get information?” Then she laughed and I didn’t know whether to be upset or happy. “Leo. No. I moved in with you because I sleep better when I’m with. I like your house. It feels like a home. I went all-in on your six month proposal because,” her voice drifted away and her gaze fell to the floor, “because if it was the only six months I got with you I wanted to make the most of every moment.”

  Somehow we wound up tangled together. My hands in her hair, my tongue gliding along hers, her hands gripping my back. She kept talking between kisses. “When I want information I get it. I don’t need to fake relationships.”

  “Please tell me what’s going on. Stop keeping me in the dark.” Despite my request she couldn’t say anything else. How could she when I was consuming her mouth and lifting her onto her desk?

  She grabbed a fistful of my hair and broke free of my kiss. “Tell me why.”

  “Why? Why what?”

  She tugged again, forced me to look her in the eyes. “Why do you want to know? Curiosity? Your male ego?”

  “I’m in love with you.” The confession came so easily I wondered how long it had been true. It was the only answer, after all. If I were just curious I wouldn’t care. Things like this didn’t eat at me. I either got answers or I didn’t. “I love you and I want to protect you. I need to know because I need to love you and I can’t love you if you keep pushing me away.”

  “Leo, no. No, no, no, no.” She tried to wrestle free.

  I held her tighter. “You can’t change how I feel so stop trying.”

  “Please no.” She stared at my chest. “Please don’t love me.”

  My chest hurt. As if the force of her stare could somehow pierce the bone. “Is it really so bad to be loved by someone like me?” I knew I wasn’t exactly traditional lover material but fuck.

  “You deserve better than me,” she whispered. “You’ve always deserved better. Ask anyone. We can go outside and take an informal poll of passing students. I guarantee they’ll all say the same thing.”

  Fuck polls, fuck deserving, fuck logic. “Do you love me?” I took her beautiful face in my hands and tilted it up until she met my gaze. “That’s my key, Esme. The answer to every clue, the formula that sets my world to order. If you love me then I can figure anything out.”

  In that moment Esme was as vulnerable as I’d ever seen her. She forgot to hide her feelings and instead put all her emotions on full display. The force of it damn near blew me away. It didn’t matter what she said next because I already had my answer.

  She loved me.

  She loved me as desperately as I loved her.

  “I’ve never been in love before,” she whispered, her hands curling around my forearms. “But I want to keep you safe. Every time I leave you I want to hold on tighter.”

  “Jesus, Esme.” My fingers tightened in her hair, pulling her to me. I kissed her as if I might die without her lips. “I want the same thing. Every time you leave I want to go with you. I worry constantly about whether you’re safe. I keep ho
ping you’ll let me protect you because I no longer know how to live without you.” I never thought I’d be in a relationship let alone fall in love one day, but every fiber of my being felt incomplete without her. I swear my entire life was guided so I could be with her right now.

  “I kept hoping everything would disappear,” she whispered. “That if I worked faster I could make it all go away so I could live my life with you.”

  Those feelings of dread seized me again. There was a darkness to her words I didn’t like. “It doesn’t matter how hard you work if you’re hiding it in the shadows.” I knew with certainty now that if she ran, I’d follow her. I’d help her fix her problems even if it meant burying some bodies.

  “Things are different in the shadows.” Her eyes unfocused. “Everything is gray and lines blur. What you thought was evil is actually good and what you thought was good can really be a monster you never saw coming. The rules are different.”

  She was right of course. I spent part of my life in the very same gray areas. I redirected stories, hid affairs, buried arrests. I think she forgot sometimes that my world wasn’t squeaky clean. I worked with angels and monsters, and I knew for sure I was neither end of the spectrum, much to my dismay. “I wanted to be a hero once upon a time.” I tucked her hair behind her ear, took my time studying all the lines of stress on her face as I kissed them away. “But I walk the line too. I’m not nearly as good as you think I am.”

  Her gaze snapped back into focus. “You’re not really a hero if you can’t walk down the darkest allies to save the people who need it most. Perfect people can’t be heroes.” She chewed her lower lip, squeezed my arms. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to escape.”

  She would escape. I’d burn the place to the ground; obliterate the shadows with fire before I left her behind. “You can’t stay there, Esme. Monsters only grow in the dark. Things will get worse, not better.”

  “But what if,” she whispered, her eyes so haunted and round, “what if I’m the monster?”

  Chapter 23

  Esme

  Revenge.

  That’s all it is. Plain and simple revenge.

  I may look like a sweet, quiet, young academic. People may prefer casting me in the role of innocent, but they’d be wrong. At my core I’m the exact opposite. My true nature is one of deviant. Rebel. Manipulator.

  It took me approximately two seconds to decide I was in love with Leo. It was the night I ran into him at the party my father threw at the stadium. The night I pretended I didn’t know him. Most men were assholes so behaving as bizarrely as I was that night would have typically sent them packing. Or, what I really expected, for him to call me a bitch.

  But he didn’t.

  Instead he was hurt. And worried. It was the look in his eyes I fell in love with that night. I was addicted to him the instant I met him but in that moment I knew I’d never be the same.

  Doing nothing about it nearly broke me. But letting him in? That was a thousand times worse. Every damn day I fell harder and lost more of myself. Who was I without his love? I didn’t know anymore. The thought I might lose him terrified me but the idea he was in love with me without actually knowing everything was worse.

  He needed to know.

  So I showed him. I showed him everything. What I’d done and the monster I seemingly created from it. How the more I tried to fix it the bigger it got. I swear I was living in Pandora’s Box.

  The only way out was to tell him (and I wasn’t so sure that was going to work either.)

  He stood in the middle of the room with his hand over his handsome mouth. I loved Leo’s mouth. It did wicked things to my body and said the sweetest words.

  “This is what they want?” He cocked an eyebrow as he glanced at me from the corner of his eye.

  “They don’t even know they want this.” No one really knew everything. They had bits and pieces. I was the only one who had the full picture because I was the one who painted it.

  One wall was covered from top to bottom in information. File cabinets full of papers stood against a different wall. In the middle of the room stood two giant white boards covered in marks. It was my secret bunker. I bought it in cash. No one knew it existed. It was where I kept all the data.

  “So you’re not a spy.”

  What? “No.”

  He shrugged. “It was one of many possibilities.” He moved with such grace across the room, studying—really studying—the information. “I have to be honest . . . this exact scenario never crossed my mind.”

  “I told you I rebelled.”

  His eyes drifted and he cocked his head. “This isn’t rebellion, Esme. It’s war.”

  I wanted to shrink inside myself. The level of shame I felt for my actions was bone deep. I didn’t have good motives when I started. I was blind to the consequences of my decisions. All I saw was red. A desperate need to hurt the man who wouldn’t let me go. I was young and stupid.

  “Now you know the truth.” I couldn’t read him. I had no idea if he was going to walk out the door, turn me in, or hate me.

  Those really were the only three possibilities.

  He stared at the board some more then slowly turned. It was the slowest turn in all eternity. Yes, I’m being dramatic but seriously. Could he turn any slower?

  He trained his unreadable eyes on me. They wandered over my body and up to my face, stopping on my lips and hair before finally landing on my eyes. “Yes, now I know the truth. This is everything?”

  I nodded. All of it. Every sordid detail. I was mortified and relieved.

  He strode closer. “I have one last question.”

  “Shoot.” I made ridiculous guns with my fingers then, realizing it was incredibly awkward, put my hands behind my back.

  Could he just tell me which level of hate he was feeling so I could spend the night crying? Tomorrow I’d get my stuff back from his place and eat a lot of brownies. Like, epic amounts of brownies. Then, and only then, I could get back to work on unfucking my fuckup.

  Yes, I just lost ten points for overuse of the word fuck.

  He followed my flailing hands with his eyes but kept his distance. He was a good ten feet away with his gorgeous hands on his hips, his blazer pushed back behind them. Have I mentioned how much I loved this suit? It was one of the bright blue ones that made his eyes pop.

  “If none of this happened would you still be in love with me?”

  I tried to respond—really I did—but my jaw was on the floor and I couldn’t seem to pick it back up.

  He stepped closer (much to my terror) and kept talking. “Because I’d definitely still be in love with you, of that I’m sure. So I guess what I’m really wondering is if we fix this—make it all go away—do you think we can be happy?”

  How—what? Why? Why were we talking about our relationship (and why did he keep saying love!) when there was clearly a much bigger problem to deal with first.

  Much. Bigger. Problem.

  “Leo, you can’t be serious.” I pointed back at the pictures (why did I torture myself with those?)

  “I’m completely serious.” He kept advancing and he had his sex eyes going. Dark, hooded, glowing, and intent on my body. When we left my office I couldn’t stop twisting my hair (because nerves) so now it was piled up on my head in a terrible bun. I was in my normal teaching clothes of a white t-shirt, jeans, a black sweater, and today I wore my glasses.

  And yet Leo seemed more attracted to me than ever.

  And that made zero sense because I just confessed to him that I had committed several felonies.

  Maybe he preferred bad girls?

  That would be a problem if that were the case because despite my propensity to break the law and engage in risqué sexual activities, I was at my core a very quiet, very nerdy woman. A good girl, if I’d been allowed to be.

  But I wasn’t allowed to be. Or maybe “allowed” was stretching the truth. I was allowed to be a good girl—in fact it would have been preferred—but my default underl
ying personality trait was one of individuality, and thus, when told I had no choice but to comply, I had a tendency to do the exact opposite.

  So technically I was allowed to be anything. Instead I chose a different path.

  “If—and let’s be clear, it’s a pretty big if—I fix this, why would you want to be with me?”

  I’d been trying to figure out who’d taken my formula and used it for themselves. I also couldn’t fathom why this mysterious person was so intent on implicating my father. I wasn’t upset about it as that was my initial intention, but what possible reason did someone else have to take up my revenge?

  I was missing key pieces of data.

  “Esmeralda.” Leo rarely said my full name but when he did it had an impact. His deep silky voice and that accent, it made the syllables roll off his tongue in a way that made my panties wet. To add to the effect he took my jaw in his hand. “I love you. This,” he waved at the room, “doesn’t change that.”

  “It should. I’m basically a stranger to you.”

  “Nope.” He shook his head. “You are my Esme and you always will be. You’re needy.” Somehow I was in his arms being plopped onto one of the file cabinets. “You’re sexy as fuck. And if I thought you were brilliant before this I was wrong. I now need a brand new word to describe your intelligence and how attracted I am to it.” He discarded my sweater and reached for my shirt.

  I stopped his hands. “I don’t understand. Please explain.”

  “First your shirt.”

  I may have growled. “First explain, then we’ll discuss my shirt.”

  He lifted a brow then ran his index finger along the skin of my hip. “Esme, we both think better when we’re calm. Your skin calms me. Please give me your shirt.”

  I melted. Every single time he asked politely for my clothes they somehow came off. I’m not sure how as I have no recollection of peeling them off in record time and throwing them across the room, never to be seen again.