Bound and Determined (13 page)

He used his feet to spread her legs farther apart, opening her more fully to him. “You’re going to come for me, aren’t you?”

Whimpering in answer, Kerry lifted her hips toward his magic fingers, praying he didn’t stop. Sensation built, spiraling into need, into something she would have begged for if she could find the words.

When he pressed his fingers inside her, she gasped in shock, in pleasure.

“You’re so incredibly tight,” he whispered. “I can only imagine what it would be like to be inside you, thrusting with long, slow strokes that constantly drag my cock over this spot right here.” He found the bundle of nerves, and his fingers imitated his words. In seconds, he had her trembling and gritting her teeth against the monster orgasm mounting just out of reach. “I’d love to be inside you,” he continued. “You’d be all tight and hot, pulsing around me when you come. Just like . . . now.”

The building dam of sensations inside Kerry burst. Vaguely, she heard herself cry out. But mostly she felt Rafe all around her—his fingers inside her clenching vagina, the hot slabs of his chest rasping against her nipples, so heavy and swollen.

Rafe planted warm lips on her neck as she began to come down. “You look beautiful in pleasure. I can’t wait to see you come again.”

He kissed her mouth gently, lingeringly. Kerry returned the kiss tiredly, then lay her head against his shoulder, her body slumped against his.

She could hardly deny that she felt sated. Orgasms so intense they caused black spots in her vision weren’t an everyday occurrence in her admittedly short years of masturbation. But somehow, it was more. It was Rafe, who for all his big, bad words and whispered demands made her feel safe and desired.

And she’d bet that beat nice sex with a nice guy any day of the week.

B
y 1:18
A
.
M
., Rafe was forced to admit two things: Kerry looked both amazingly sweet and touchable while curled on her side sleeping naked, and there was a very real chance she’d been telling the truth about her brother.

Heaving a tired sigh, he sank to the edge of the bed and removed his socks. He couldn’t resist looking over his shoulder at his temporary love slave. Moonlight glowed on her oval face, illuminated the enticing curve of her lush rosy mouth. At the sight, his dick stood due north, as it did anytime she was near. He’d had a stiff johnson for lots of women in his life, so that was nothing new.

The gooey sweet feeling in his chest felt totally unfamiliar. She was getting under his skin, and he wasn’t sure why. On the surface, she was a waitress with a half-finished college education, without a complete grasp of common sense, and had a family member who might soon be spending hard time in prison. But Kerry wasn’t the kind of woman he could see merely at a surface level. The lengths she’d gone to in order to help Mark still astounded him. The fact she’d plotted and flawlessly executed his abduction amazed him. Then she, the woman with next to zero sexual experience, had nearly seduced him . . . more than once.

Rafe saw in Kerry a loyal, warm-hearted beauty where he’d only assumed to find a ditz. He glanced at the time on his cell phone: 1:20
A
.
M
. Kerry was his to touch and explore at will for roughly the next forty-two hours.

If he held her to the bargain.

His conscience warred with his libido. He wished he could tell them both to pound sand.

He almost regretted persuading her to strip earlier. Almost. But seeing her reaction had been too important. He had to know, could Kerry handle a sexual relationship under these odd circumstances? To her credit, she hadn’t cried or pleaded or passed out. Not Kerry. Instead, she’d toyed with him, teased—and responded beyond his wildest expectations. Rafe couldn’t shake the memory of her flying apart with his fingers deep inside her, her cry resounding in his ears. Still, he wasn’t sure about her readiness to have a two-day fling. Her body was ripe, no doubt, but emotionally . . .

Emotionally?
Rafe frowned. When had he ever worried
much about a lover’s emotions? Sex was recreation. It was like eating ice cream—great for the short while it lasted. When you got tired of one flavor, you moved on to the next. Ice cream never cared whether you wanted it now or later, or even at all. It never wanted to get to know you, hear your feelings. It never demanded that you “share yourself.” So why should he worry overmuch about a woman he wouldn’t be with in two days’ time?

Without an answer to that question, he cursed softly and stood. None too gently, he tugged at the fastenings of his slacks and shucked them, kicking them aside, along with his boxer-briefs.

“Rafe?” Kerry whispered in the dark.

His entire body tensed at her voice. Lust, anger, more complex feelings he couldn’t name all swirled in his gut.

“Sorry to disturb you. Go back to sleep.”

Instead, she sat up and pushed a curly lock of pale hair from her face. Her green eyes shone soft, sleepy in the moonlight. He read trust in that expression. Amazing.

“What did you find?” she whispered.

Might as well get this discussion over with now. “If you’re telling me the truth, that Mark is a smart guy who knows only a little about computers, there’s no way he did this.”

Sleep left Kerry’s face, to be replaced by a luminous smile and a deepening of the trust in her expression that seemed to blow a hole in his chest. “Thank God.” She took his hand. “Thank
you
. What made you decide he’s innocent?”

“I didn’t say he was, exactly. But . . .”

Kerry snatched her hand away and crossed her arms over those beautiful naked breasts. “What does that mean?”

Shaking his head, Rafe urged her to sit back against the headboard, then handed her the bedsheet. If she wanted to discuss e-security and the transactions in question, looking at the enticing curve of her breasts and her soft sex—while seeing all the trust in her eyes—would not help him to be coherent. She cuddled up with the luxurious Egyptian cotton without comment.

Willing his stiff cock to stand down, he sat beside her. “Let me start at the beginning. In a case like this, one of the first questions I have to answer is, was the job done from the inside
or the outside? In this case, the bank’s software at the time of the theft looks fairly up to date and most of the key security patches had been installed. Their software wasn’t configured very well, and I’ll fix that, since that’s part of my job. But it would still take someone with a fair amount of skill to hack into that system, and even then, they couldn’t frame an employee in this way without having some inside information.”

“Okay.”

“Since I didn’t find any evidence of firewall tampering around these transactions, I’m ruling out external theft. I agree with the FBI here. That makes this an inside job.

“Different questions arise when you’re dealing with an insider. How did it happen? Did the criminals trick an employee into giving away vital information? It’s one of the easiest ways to steal because companies don’t train their employees to spot cons. Someone slick can call an employee, claim they’re from IT, and ask for sensitive information. A lot of well-meaning people don’t think twice about a request like that.”

“Oh, that makes sense. Do you think that happened here?”

“Hard to say. It’s always a possibility that someone unwittingly assisted a criminal, and since we only know from Swift Codes that the money went to Grand Cayman after it left Standard National, we can’t follow that lead. Another possibility is that someone on the inside performed the transactions via an unauthorized access point.”

“Huh?”

Against his will, Rafe smiled. “It’s not uncommon for an employee to get fed up with the amount of time it takes their company’s IT department to obtain and install the equipment they feel is necessary to do their job. This means they circumvent the process by bringing their own from home or buying new equipment from their department budget. They install it themselves and hook it up to the network.”

“People know how to do this?”

Rafe sneered. “Yeah, there’s always one wise guy wherever you go.”

“And the people monitoring the network for the company don’t know the new equipment is there?”

“If they aren’t paying real close attention, no. I’m not
ruling this out as a possibility; it goes hand in hand with weak electronic transfer controls.”

She frowned. “You’re losing me with the Techese, Spock. Could we have this discussion in English?”

Rafe grinned. “When businesses began doing more things via computers and e-mail to eliminate paperwork, they unwittingly circumvented a lot of the approval processes, as well as the paper trail. They frequently lose track of all the people approving transactions. That may not have happened here, but I suspect it may have played a role in the reason money was stolen on multiple occasions with Mark’s ID before anyone discovered it missing.”

“Oh. That fits. Mark said that half the time Smikins had no idea what was going on. He often delegated things that he was supposed to do himself.”

“Peachy.” Rafe’s voice rang with sarcasm. “Another common issue is crappy password policies.”

“Like an e-mail password?”

He nodded. “But think larger. Passwords are required for most every system. There’s one required to log on to the funds transfer system used at Standard National Bank. That’s how they pointed the finger at Mark. Whoever did this used his ID. They had to have his password to do that. Unless you’re so mentally challenged you make Jessica Simpson look like a genius, anyone seriously trying to embezzle money doesn’t leave this obvious an electronic trail. A neon sign is more subtle.”

“But someone framing Mark would want it to be obvious.”

“Exactly. Who had access to his passwords? Do you know?”

“Mr. Smikins for sure. Mark used to complain that he insisted on keeping a current list of everyone’s passwords, even though it was against company policy to share passwords with anyone. That’s why I’ve suspected him all along. He hated Mark with a massive purple passion.”

“Because . . . ?”

“Smikins is an autocrat with short man’s disease and all the sex appeal of a kumquat. And he wanted Tiffany bad. But Mark, who could pass for a Viking in the right clothes, landed her.”

“That could be a motive, I guess. Who else had access to Mark’s passwords?”

“I’m guessing that Tiffany, his wife, might have his passwords. She works at the bank, too. That’s where they met, in fact.”

“Any motive there?”

Kerry hesitated. “How can I say this nicely? It seems like you’d have to be really sharp to carry off a plan like this. That isn’t Tiff. Sweet, yes, and caring. She’s a Hallmark Movie of the Week fan. She collects Precious Moments figurines. Master thief seems like a big stretch.”

“She could be helping someone on the outside.”

“I can’t think who. She doesn’t have any family. Her girlfriends seem as sweet and nonthreatening as she is. Truly, when I look at the lot of them, I think shoe fiends and Build-a-Bear lovers way before I think greedy criminals.”

“It could be an act.” Rafe sighed. “Or maybe she was duped by someone on the outside into revealing Mark’s passwords.”

“That’s totally possible. Like I said, sweet . . . just not the brightest star in the sky. If you’re a model-thin redhead, you don’t have to be.”

“I prefer blondes with dimples,” he murmured hotly.

Kerry flushed a pretty pink. “You’re saying that to make me feel better.”

“No, I’m not,” he vowed, pressing a soft kiss to her mouth. Lord, he wanted to jump her. “The first time I saw you smile, I wondered if whoever sent you had been reading my fantasies.”

She sent him a supernova smile in reward.

Rafe cleared his throat. Best to finish this discussion before an alluring smile and a great pair of bare breasts derailed him. Besides, as tired as he was, he needed sleep before having any sort of sex.

“Anyone else who might have Mark’s passwords?”

She hesitated. “Jason.”

“Ah.” Rafe sent her a brittle smile. “Your esteemed, purely platonic friend.”

Kerry rolled her eyes. “He is! He has been so there for me since Mark’s arrest.”

“I’ll bet. No chance he knew that Mark was your champion
and support system and decided to eliminate him, while gaining a bunch of money—and you—in the process?”

“No. Jason has had hundreds of opportunities to hit on me and he never has.”

“I find that hard to believe. Maybe you’re just not picking up on his cues.”

“Maybe you’re just delusional.”

Or maybe she shared Stevie Wonder’s visual capabilities, Rafe thought, but he let it go—for now. But good ol’ Jason, no doubt, warranted a lot of further investigation. No red-blooded man could look at Kerry without sex crossing his mind at some point. And getting closer to Kerry seemed like plenty of motive to Rafe.

A
n overwhelming wave of heat awoke Kerry a few hours later. She tried to kick off the offending blankets, only to find she had none.

At her movement, a hand around her waist tightened. Heat flowed from that hand onto her bare skin, exuded from the arm slung over her, radiated from the equally naked body pressed against her back. The granite erection pressing against her butt scorched her.

Rafe.

She swallowed. After their half-English, half-Techese discussion, he’d claimed exhaustion and settled down beside her. Besides the whole sex thing, she’d never literally slept with a man. Especially not a naked one. It was a sensual experience in itself, heated skin, soft breaths, human comfort.

Kerry sighed and curled against Rafe. His hard chest, his textured palm, his lightly hair-roughened legs tangled with hers. His breath teased her neck. He represented danger, a man who had bargained with her for sex . . . yet with him she felt safe. A luxurious feeling she’d rarely had the opportunity to embrace during her chaotic life.

Get a grip!
Her imagination was way out of hand. Rafe was no safer than your average lion prowling the savannah.

Usually, a safe man didn’t make a girl tingle in all the right places with one glance. Rafe did that. Kisses from a safe man had never inspired immediate thoughts of lying on her back
and spreading her legs. Rafe did that, too. Something about him not only called to her and ruled her sexuality, but connected with her on a lot of unexpected levels. He was scary and exhilarating at once.