She moaned, her eyes fluttering, as she dropped her head back against the wall. “Don’t stop.”
He leaned in, bringing his mouth close to hers, tasting the passion in the air between them. “Tell me what you want,” he ordered, nipping at her jawline.
She opened her rich, seductive eyes. “Make me come, Rowan.”
His muscles quivered at his name on her tongue. A tongue he wanted back in his mouth and then later on his cock. But it was the heady lust in the single word that drove him to give her what she wanted. He easily inserted one finger into her drenched heat and then another.
Her eyes fluttered. “Fuck yes…”
Captivated by how sensual and free she was, he tightened his fingers in her hair, seeing the swell of desire rushing across her face. Needing to get his cock where his fingers were, he didn’t drag this out. He settled his fingers in deep, played with a few different moves to learn her tells again, and then he quickly found his rhythm. He thrust his fingers fast and hard, working her pleasure until he had full control of her body.
Then he went even harder.
It didn’t take long for her to break apart around him after that. Her breath hitched, muscles tightened, and her expression pinched. For a single moment in time, she hung, suspended on the highest peak of pleasure before she screamed his name and shuddered, coming beautifully against his fingers until the only thing helping her stand was his hand in her hair and his fingers deep in her quivering sex.
Lost in her all the same, he gave her the minute she needed to recover.
When she finally reopened her eyes, giving him a sexy smile, he withdrew his hand from her panties.
“Your turn.” She pressed against his chest, sending him walking backward until she had him in the bedroom. When his legs met the bed, he sat, and she pushed harder until he was lying down. “But first, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“I don’t need a surprise.” He leaned up on one arm. “I want you.” Her cheeks flushed pink and her mouth parted. He remembered how much he liked that turned-on look on her. “Get over here.”
Her smile was pure temptation. “You’ll like the surprise. Promise.” She turned away before he could object again.
He glanced down at his painfully hard erection pressing against the zipper of his jeans while she retreated to the bathroom just off to the right. He anticipated the wet tightness of her sex, hearing those moans she gave get louder.
When the bathroom door finally clicked open again, he found her looking like an succubus in her black lingerie for all the control she wielded over him. He would have given her anything right then as long as she let him have her. She leaned against the doorframe and gave him a devilish smile. “So, Rowan, I’ve got a question for you.”
“Anything, luv.”
She stepped away from the door, and suddenly, he was staring down the barrel of the gun as she said, “What do you want from me?”
And just like that, he realized—more than a little annoyingly—he’d been expertly played. Not only was she smart enough to know he had a motive for sitting next to her in the bar, but she was smart enough to get an orgasm out of him before she called him out. “You don’t want to do this,” he warned.
She smiled again. This time, her smile was deadly.
In that very second, he lurched forward, and in the same moment, he watched her finger squeeze the trigger.
CHAPTER 2
WELL, SHIT.
Three days ago, Alex left behind her routine life in San Francisco and her boss, Ryder Blackwood, who owned Blackwood Security, one of the top private security detail companies in North America, for a well-deserved vacation. Ryder had operatives working all over the world for top government officials, diplomats, and celebrities, but Alex did all the dirty hacking back at headquarters. She worked very much in the gray space between the law. Sure, she loved running down clues, hacking into systems no one else could get into, and helping Ryder make the world a better place, but watching him get married last year reminded her that she had no personal life. All she did was work or sleep. Both the CIA and the FBI owned her. Her job owned her. There had to be more to life than working all the time, but after Lena, her younger sister, died when they were teenagers, Alex kept her nose stuck in her laptop. A therapist likely would have told her she was avoiding her emotions by keeping herself busy, but she never went to a therapist. And she didn’t want to deal with that pain.
Still, a lot of time had gone by since Lena passed away. While she missed her sister, it didn’t consume her every waking minute any longer. And as she healed more every day, Alex realized she was lacking a personal life. She needed to find that happiness she felt as a new hacker, the excitement that brought a serious high. Lately, everything just felt dull. She was bored out of her mind.
Truth was, excelling at her job had some serious drawbacks, including having everyone always want something from her. Always. Her vacation was supposed to be her time to figure out next steps for her life.
That’s precisely why after the last case she worked alongside Ryder involving a celebrity and a sex tape, Alex requested some time off. She landed in JFK airport, met one of Ryder’s team members, who gave her what Ryder called a survival kit to keep her safe when she was in New York City, which included weapons, rope, handcuffs, throwaway phones, and laptops. That kit only confirmed she needed to be a normal person for a while, whatever that even was.
She’d come to New York City for the Broadway shows, for Times Square, and for the New York-style pizza and cheesecake. The Big Apple had always been on her bucket list, and she was determined to start living life again—once she figured out how to do that—instead of sitting behind her laptop letting time whiz by. But, and this may have been the biggest but of her life, the very last thing she expected to find on her vacation was the man who had given her the hottest week of her life and made her feel things no man had ever made her feel.
Rowan Hawke.
A dirty-blond, scruffy-faced man of mystery.
And the only man that ever got close to her heart.