Rafa felt the water and held the base of my neck as I tipped my head back. He cupped the water as it streamed from the faucet and gently ran his fingers through my short hair.
“Holy shit, it’s blonde alright,” he said.
“Bad?” I asked him. My voice came out sounding nervous, but I felt so relaxed in his hands.
“Never bad, Fio. Only beautiful,” he said. Rafa squirted shampoo into his hand and began to massage my scalp. I closed my eyes and forgot about the FBI and the Gabrielli syndicate, forgot a bounty was set for my head and fell into the rhythmic touch of Rafa’s fingers as he cleansed me of the bleach.
I fell into a trance-like state, almost lulled to sleep by the head massage. I’d never in my life let my guard down this much, and here I was, supposedly in grave danger, yet I felt cherished and safe. Then his lips touched mine and I opened my eyes.
He cradled my head with both of his hands and brought his mouth to mine. His tongue parted my lips and I gasped, lightly. Surprise and pleasure swirled in my body as he captured my mouth, tongue diving, seeking, connecting.
“Rafa,” I said into his kiss. He lifted me up, until I was sitting, water dripping in a cascade down my back. After wrapping a towel across my shoulders, he pressed himself between my legs, cupped my jaw and took my mouth again. I kissed him back with everything inside me, this captivating man who was so much like me. I knew he struggled to connect with others, like I did, and here we were, connecting, seamlessly.
There was one encrypted code, I’d never been able to crack, and that was the one that led to my heart. It was protected and secure, with so many firewalls, no one had even tried to get to it. But this hacker, with his sharp mind, devastating looks, and caring heart, had all but obliterated it in a matter of seconds.
I felt like a new person with my platinum blonde pixie cut. Rafa ran some pomade through it and it actually looked like I could have gotten it done at some upscale salon and paid an arm and a leg for it. When we walked back to the command center, Rafa held my hand. I kept thinking in my head, is this real? Is this really happening? I’d never had an actual boyfriend before, someone to hold hands with or help cut and bleach your hair if the circumstances called for it.
“This might be two birds with one stone, Fio. The Gabrielli’s won’t recognize you on camera and doubtful they’ll recognize you in real life either.”
We sat down at the computer and I began to create a new cam-girl login. As I added bogus information, Rafa began to rake his fingers through his own dirty-blond hair like his anxiety was building. He had a hand on my thigh, but yanked it back and was literally biting his knuckles.
“What gives, Ragnar?” I asked him after I couldn’t take the tension any longer.
“Do you actually cam-girl? Do you take your clothes off and stuff?” He squirmed when he said it, like the idea made him miserable and then some.
“What do you care?” I spat back. We could both play at this game, both flow back and forth between our real vulnerable selves and our armor—our online hacker identities. Fio had always been the cam-girl, never Tatum. Never Tatum.
“I want you, Tatum. I want you like nothing I’ve ever wanted before. I don’t have to own you, or keep you from others, or tamp down any of your freedom as the person you are. But I’m already fucking jealous and I already want to reach through that screen and kill any motherfucker who even looks at you in that way.”
His admission came as a shock to me, how he relinquished his truth so candidly, but I couldn’t say I blamed him. Couldn’t say I didn’t feel the exact same way.
“I just let them think I’m going to touch myself. But by then, they’ve bitten and I can control the situation, getting details about them when they think they’re the ones stealing my information. What should we do? Call it off?”
He was working his jaw, he was cracking his knuckles and flexing his hands like he wanted to punch something—not a good sign as far as signals from men went. I could practically hear my mother’s voice in the back of my head. Red flag, Tate. Big, huge, red flag.
“Fuck, sorry. Fio, I box. I’d never fucking hit you. I hit other people who are willing to step into the ring with me when I’m angry, but never fucking ever hit a woman in my life and I don’t plan to start.”