She smiled. “It’s home.” She set her laptop down on her kitchen table and felt the sudden tug to glance up. Rowan stood in the center of the room, his stare wholly locked onto hers. She felt the intensity surge between them, the heat swirling within until it landed firmly between her thighs, making her needy and desperate all at once. “We’ve got fifteen minutes, tops, and that includes washing ourselves,” she reminded him.
“Then let’s not waste those minutes.” In a few long strides, he was there and had her in his arms, her taut breasts pressing against his hard chest. She wanted the weight of his body against her, the feel of his fullness inside her. “Where?” he asked against his mouth.
“To my right.”
He carried her through the open-concept factory floor into the small bathroom and set her down. This was the only room that had walls, but those were original and stone. The shower had been added later. She ripped at his clothing, and he ripped at hers until they were both naked. Only then did he turn on the shower and test the water before he pulled them both underneath the stream. His mouth was everywhere, as were his hands, until those purposeful fi
ngers moved to her nipple, pinching the bud. She arched her back into the pleasure. His tongue licked at the heat he’d created there and then moved lower as he stroked her bundle of nerves. She withered beneath him, loving that touch, and yet needed more still.
This wasn’t about lovemaking. This was a release. A much-needed one that they wanted to find in each other.
“Rowan,” she said, sliding her hands up his wet back, pulling him closer.
He turned her around, pressing her against the cool, tiled wall, and then he entered her in one powerful stroke. God, she was ready. So ready for him as he began to move, and she moved with him. Every long and slow thrust made her more desperate to take all of him. Especially when he gathered her damp hair in his hands then turned her head to access her neck. She unabashedly widened her legs, wanting him deeper. As deep as he could go.
She felt his restraint. The quiver of his body behind her. The control he desperately wanted to keep.
“Take what you need,” she breathed, while the warm water rained down on them.
And he did.
Unleashed, he bit her neck, pulling a scream from deep in his throat as he pounded into her. She met him thrust for thrust. They moved together in sync, where everything made sense. And when his cock went rock hard, bringing tears of pleasure to her eyes, she screamed and fell over the edge, and he followed her.
CHAPTER 6
It had taken twenty minutes, instead of fifteen, for Rowan and Alex to walk into Blackwood Security’s command center, but Ryder never mentioned it, giving them a welcoming nod as they entered. If Rowan didn’t know better, he’d have thought he’d walked right into the CIA. Monitors lined the walls with chairs and desks set out in front. Alex took a seat at one of those desks, while a lean, baby-faced thirty-something guy sat in the desk next to her.
“Hey, I’m Jeff, Alex’s assistant,” the guy said to Rowan.
Alex barked a laugh, hooking up her laptop to the three monitors. “Please. What Jeff is, is a smart-ass.”
“I learned from the very best,” he purred at her.
Alex snorted at him then looked over her shoulder at Rowan and explained what he was obviously missing. “Jeff is the other hacker on the team that always goes with Ryder on scene.”
“Our Alex here has got shaky knees when it comes to the dangerous stuff,” Jeff said, then swirled back to his monitor.
Rowan hesitated at that, and Alex quickly looked away to her monitor, obviously aware of what Jeff’s statement suggested. Rowan hadn’t realized that she never went out on assignments with Ryder because she chose it that way. He simply assumed Ryder didn’t need her, but he did. A hot intensity rolled through Rowan that she’d done something for him that she didn’t do for anyone else.
Ryder settled into place between the two of them. “Focus,” he reprimanded. “What have we got?”
Rowan took the spot behind Alex, leaning against the table and folding his arms. He’d seen many teams work together, but there was a level of comfort in the room he hadn’t seen before. Maybe because Ryder himself had built his own team, and from what Rowan had seen, including what Ryder did for Mia, he was a wise and kind leader, and that had solidified strong relationships within his team.
Rowan had always worked alone. Sometimes he was paired with another CIA agent, or in Alex’s case, a hacker, but otherwise, he only knew this type of closeness in the military. He missed that time in his life. That bond.
Which only drew his eye to Alex. When Mia went missing, and the CIA refused to let Rowan join the case, Rowan began questioning his loyalty to the people who clearly did not have his back. Of course, he understood why. There was protocol, red tape, and everything in between, but Rowan realized after almost losing Mia, loyalty mattered. If he had anything, he thought he should have that.
The only reason he had any involvement in Mia’s case was because Wes worked for the FBI and gave him access to his files. They both knew the risks, and Wes overlooked them. Now, after all that had happened, Rowan had a hard time wanting to remain loyal to an organization that refused to help him find his sister, giving the FBI full control. Which in turn gave a killer—or suspected killer at this point—an easy way to divert attention on the case, keeping himself above suspicion, and Mia in the grips of his sadistic whims.
Rowan couldn’t forgive that. Not ever.
“I’ve got a clone here,” Alex said to Jeff, dragging Rowan from his thoughts. She hooked up the hard drive to her laptop.
“Lewis’s hard drive?” Jeff asked, then swirled in his swivel chair to face his line-up of monitors.
“Not quite sure of that yet, but I suspect so,” Alex said, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “Let me just get us in there, and then we can have a look at what he’s got on here.”
All three of her monitors were lit up, all running different programs as she typed code Rowan did not understand. He leaned in to have a closer look, when chuckling came around him.