Suddenly, he was turning her to face him with a firm grip on her upper arms. She gasped with surprise and tried to shake off his hold.
“Is that what you really want, Alex?” he asked softly, ignoring her struggles like she was just a small child. “That puny kid?”
She looked into his face only inches from hers, and noted the hot fire burning deep in his eyes and the hard clench of his jaw.
“What can I say, Lucas. That puny kid really knows how to work his equipment.”
The dark fire burned hotter and Lucas bared his teeth. Alex felt a small amount of satisfaction.
“Tell me the truth, Alex. Is that why you want to see him? To get back together?”
“I told you the truth,” she whispered, leaning even closer so their lips almost touched. “It’s none of your business.”
Before she could take another breath, his mouth was on her in a deep, bruising kiss. His tongue delved deep and wet with dominating force as though staking claim. He wrapped his arms around her body, pulling her up tightly against his hard length. Alex couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe against the onslaught. Her head was spinning from the surprise and lack of oxygen. Yet she didn’t want it to stop.
“Damn it, Alex!” Lucas muttered when he finally took a breath. “You’re driving me insane.”
Then he was kissing her again, softer, more seductively, enticingly until she was coaxed into meeting his tongue with hers. He let out a vibrating groan and lifted her off her feet. Alex wanted to smile at the sound but was too busy tasting his lips, enjoying the stroke of his firm tongue against hers. She barely realized that he had laid her down on the bed until his lips started a trail down her neck toward her collarbone. Then he reached the edge of her towel and Alex opened her eyes to look down at the top of his head. Common sense and self-preservation were both starting to penetrate her foggy brain.
“Lucas,” she whispered as he slowly pulled the towel loose to reveal her naked breasts. “What are you doing?”
He stilled, staring fixedly at the twin globes of generous, round, chocolate-tipped flesh.
“What is this?” Alex forced out, wishing she didn’t need to know.
Lucas looked up at her with those beautiful brown eyes rimmed with silky long lashes. His sensuous mouth was pouted with desire.
“I don’t know, Alex,” he finally replied. “I just know that I want it.”
He brushed his thumb across one of her puckered nipples, sending a shock wave of intense need down to the base of her stomach.
“No matter how many times I tell myself this a really bad idea, I still want you more than I did the day before,” he continued with his gaze now fixed on her body’s reaction to his touch. “At this point, being with you has to be less of a distraction than not. That’s all I know, Lex.”
He leaned forward to lick her tight nub, sucking it into his hot mouth and swirling his tongue over it. She squirmed under the stimulation. It was like incredible torture and she just wanted more of the same.
“I should probably have something more romantic to say,” Lucas mused, looking up at her again, sheepish. “I usually do. I should tell you that you’re incredibly beautiful and I can’t stop thinking about you. All of which is true, but it doesn’t change anything. Within a few weeks, this mission will be over.”
He sucked on her nipple again while teasing the other with his fingers. Alex wanted to reply, ask questions, but she couldn’t think straight enough to do so. Nor did she want him to stop.
“I want you now, tomorrow, and for as long as I’m here to protect you. I don’t know what comes after that.”
While he cupped her breasts with his hands, Lucas continued to kiss a leisurely path down the center of her stomach, right to her mound. Then he slid easily off the bed to kneel in front of her reposed, naked body. She watched, propped up on her elbows, challenged to breathe properly as he brushed his fingers along the inside of her thighs, spreading them wider.
Lucas leaned forward again to run his lips along the seam of her lower lips and Alex let out a shuddering moan.
“God, you taste good,” he muttered, gripping her hips to pull her down to the edge of the bed.
Spreading her legs wider, he swept deep with his tongue, stroking her hidden depths and teasing the swell of her clit. It was so good that she had to bite her lips to hold back a scream. But still she watched, wanting to remember every second of the experience. He licked her again and again, then deeper, harder, delving into her wet well with relentless pressure. Alex could only gasp and shudder as he devoured her delicate flesh like a delectable dessert.
She was floating on a pleasurable plateau until Lucas adjusted her body by draping one of her legs over his shoulder. He moved the firm stroke of his tongue up to her erogenous bud before stroking into her with the long firm length of his finger.
“Oh God,” she panted with explosive need. “Lucas.”
“You like that?” he demanded breathlessly.
“Yes,” she begged. “Yes!”
He stroked his finger again with a relentless, hypnotic pace while sucking and stroking on her clit. Alex fell back on the bed, completely overwhelmed by the hot, silky need that radiated out from the center of her body. On and on it went, building with consuming ferocity until finally, she peaked, shattering her mind and body into thousands of little pieces.
CHAPTER 22
“You like this position, don’t you?” Lucas asked in a tight voice.
His was sitting in the middle of her bed with his back against the headboard. Alex was sitting astride his lap, and he was buried deep within her tight grasp.
“It might be my second favorite,” she whispered back, flexing her hips to tease him.
He hissed, gripping her shoulders and fighting the never-ceasing need to pound into her with mindless abandon. Lucas was seriously wondering if he would ever regain the easy ability to make slow, leisurely love to a woman, if not this woman.
It was Sunday night, and they had been together every night since that irritating e-mail to her ex-boyfriend, yet his greedy hunger for her still seemed insatiable.
“What’s your favorite?” he asked, though he already knew.
“There is something about the top of a hotel credenza that really does it for me,” she stated with a sexy smile.
Lucas groaned at the thought, though the image was never really far from his mind.
“I think I agree with you. But I’m not picky,” he replied while she continued to drive him crazy with small thrusts and undulations of her hips.
“Good to know,” Alex whispered, leaning forward to kiss him softly on the lips.
He took a moment to enjoy the soft, sweet feel of her touch. Until she stroked her tongue into his mouth to entangle his. His body shuddered with mounting arousal. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and began to ride him with a slow, maddening canter. Jesus, she felt amazing, like every inch of her was designed to fit into his hands and house his length in a perfect, snug, incredible grip.
“Lucas,” she gasped against the side of his neck.
“Yeah, baby?” He loved when she said his name like that.
“So good,” she whispered, slowing her pace and lengthening her stride until she was sliding along every inch of his throbbing arousal.
“Good” didn’t even begin to describe the need that was rushing through him. It took every ounce of control he had not to flip her over and drive into her soft wetness, take her, owning her so she could never forget the feel of his touch. Possessing her so completely that he’d forever be imprinted on her soul.
Lucas gritted his teeth against his primal instincts. But his wild thoughts spurred on his mounting climax until it was pounding relentlessly at the base of his spine. Whatever idea he had to allow Alex to move things at her own pace was now untenable. He took both her hips into his hands, driving up into her sheath with long, deep thrusts. She tightened the hold around his neck and relaxed into his embrace while moaning deep with his every penetration until his body finally reached the pinnacle of a staggering orgasm. Even as he shuddered with ecstasy, Lucas could feel every gripping pulse of her body as she joined him in completion.
It was long moments later before their bodies were cooling and their heart rates were back to normal. Alex was still sitting across his lap, running her hand along the back of his head with soothing strokes.
“Your new supply of wiring should arrive before noon tomorrow,” Lucas finally stated. “We can pick it up during our walk.”
“That’s good. I was starting to get worried,” she replied with a sigh.
“I know. We could have had it on Friday through the delivery company that DaCosta uses, and it probably would have been fine. But I arranged a private courier to a post office box in town to be extra safe. The last thing we need now is to tip anyone off about your work here.”
“No, that makes sense,” she conceded in a soft, lazy voice. “I got some work done on the power converter, so we’re in good shape. Marco has booked time at a racetrack near Whistler for the road tests during the week prior to the race. So, I need to have the full drivetrain completed by at least June third.”
Lucas brushed his hands along her back leisurely.
“I know. He’s given us all the details, so we’re planning to travel on the Friday or Saturday, at least a day before the Magnus team arrives in Whistler,” he explained. “Do you have enough time?”
“That’s two weeks,” she confirmed with a sigh. “Assuming nothing else goes wrong, I think I’ll be okay.”
He finally turned them so they were lying down on their sides facing each other.
“Then I should let you get some sleep, shouldn’t I,” he told her, only half teasing.
“Yeah, you should,” she replied seriously, but he could tell by the purse of her lips that she was holding back a smile.
He pushed a few stray locs off her face.
“I can do that,” he whispered. “At least until tomorrow.”
Alex grinned at that while Lucas rolled off the bed and pulled the bedcovers over her delectably naked body. Then he headed into her bathroom to shower and get dressed before doing a final security check for the night and returning to her bed to get some rest next to Alex’s warm and already sleeping form.
The next morning, Lucas was up before her as usual, working at the computer when she strolled into the living area sometime close to eight o’clock. Though Ned was out for his daily run, they only smiled at each other while Alex made a couple slices of toast and headed out to the shed with a cup of coffee.
Ned returned a short time later, then joined him at the dining table after a shower.
“So, what do you think? Is it him?” the other agent asked.
Lucas looked up at the page of hacking programming code that was at the core of Ned’s question and his own intense scrutiny for the past three weeks. It was a complicated yet very elegant script, designed to mask itself within any system or network administrator functions until it was triggered to take over by overriding all other access.
It was the code that was used to hack into the Magnus servers just days after the fire at the shop, and after Cesar Hernandez had cancelled the contract with the organization called Crow. Lucas had recognized the code within days of the hacking, but it had taken much longer to figure out why.
“Based on my contacts at the Secret Service, NSA, CIA, and Interpol, we know that this virus has been used on at least twenty-two known cases of cybercrime. Each of those cases has been a targeted attack on some kind of corporate data storage, and the hacker has never been identified.”
“Crow,” Ned stated.
“Crow,” agreed Lucas.
“But, is it Purdy?”
Lucas pulled up another file.
“This is the source code that Edgar Purdy tried to sell to Russian representatives almost eight years ago,” Lucas explained. “It’s not identical, but it’s close enough.”
“So Purdy is Crow,” Ned confirmed.
“It’s either him, or a group of people using his signature code,” added Lucas. “Either way, we’re dealing with some pretty unique skills.”
“Yeah, well Edgar Purdy is one of the fathers of twenty-first century network intrusion detection systems.”
“And he was a top expert in the Secret Service until he decided he could make a few million dollars selling virus technology on the international market.”
“You mean until you discovered he had stolen the code from the lab you both worked in,” clarified Ned. “It might explain why Pratt was using your Trojan horse. I think Purdy might have a hard-on for you, Lucas.”
Lucas looked back at this laptop screen.
“Yeah, I’m thinking he might still be holding a grudge,” he mumbled. “He always did have a massive ego.”
“What if he knew you and your private firm were on the Magnus case from the time Hernandez hired him to steal the engine design?” pondered Ned. “He might see this as a way to finally prove that he’s smarter than you.”
It was the same idea that had been swirling in Lucas’s head for the last few days. Edgar Purdy had been his supervisor and mentor in the Secret Service for about five years until Interpol began an investigation into a mole somewhere in one of the elite government network security protection departments, with the intent to sell a new, highly effective virus to the highest international bidder.
Lucas hadn’t really been paying attention to the case. He had been too wrapped up in completing his various consulting projects successfully. He certainly never suspected that Purdy was the mole. Not until several files in his own work appeared to be accessed by someone else. Lucas spent days tracking down the intrusion, until he finally discovered that the trail led right back to his supervisor. Purdy knew that Lucas had discovered the truth, and by the time Lucas handed over the evidence to Interpol, Purdy was long gone, never seen or heard from again despite his permanent presence at the top of several most wanted lists.
“He’s managed to stay completely dark for eight years, now he’s leaving trails of breadcrumbs everywhere,” Ned continued. “He may want to steal Magnus technology, but looks like he wants to beat you even more.”
“And if he’s still driven by an insatiable need to prove he’s the best hacker out there, maybe we can use his ego to our advantage,” finished Lucas.
“Any ideas?”
“Nothing specific yet. But I tell you, Ned, no one has been this close to Purdy since he disappeared off the radar. This may be the only chance to shut him down, and his Crow organization.”
There was a moment of silence until Ned cleared his throat. Lucas looked up as his friend and knew exactly where the conversation was going to go.
“You still think this thing between you and Alex is nothing?” Ned finally asked, reference their conversation from weeks ago in Toronto. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious that you haven’t slept in your bed for days.”
Lucas sat back and ran all his fingers through the short crop of hair on his head.
“Whatever it is, I have it under control,” he replied serious. “It won’t impact the mission.”
“I have no doubt about that,” Ned explained. “But that doesn’t make it an easy situation.”
Lucas didn’t reply and Ned dropped the subject. The two men went back to work through the morning. While things had been very quiet over the last few weeks since Hernandez was arrested, there was a building sense of concern that it wasn’t likely to stay that way. Every day closer to the Vancouver race increased the chances that Crow or someone else would try to take the hybrid technology.
At one thirty in the afternoon, Lucas headed outside to walk with Alex into town. She was waiting for him out near the stairs down to the pier, and they took the usual route along the boardwalk. It was a mild but cloudy day in late May, and Alex wore a light jacket over close-fitting jeans and sneakers. Lucas couldn’t help but notice how the dark denim hugged her lean limbs and soft curves.
“How are things back home?” he asked along the way to the town center. “You haven’t asked for any pictures to send to anyone.”
She laughed.
“I think that would have created more suspicion than anything else.”
Lucas grinned back.
“Everyone seems fine. They’ve asked when I’m planning to be back, so I’ve just told them it would be after the race. Shawn was the only one who seems skeptical about my story.”
“Anything we should be concerned about?”
“Nah, he just knows me really well, and is finding it hard to believe I would take off on an extended trip instead of trying to do everything possible to remake my engine.”
He smiled down at her.
“He really knows you well.”
“What about you, Lucas? How does your family deal with your long absences?”
“They’re pretty used to it by now,” he told her simply.
“You said you were from New Jersey originally? Do your parents still live there?” she asked.
“Yup. Along with my two older brothers. One is a cop and the other is a college football coach. Both are married and have a house full of kids.”
“Do you get to see them often?”
“A few times a year, at least,” he explained. “My parents come to stay with me at my house in Virginia Beach for a couple of weeks each summer.”
“Sounds like you guys are pretty close,” she stated.
“We get along pretty well, but they still don’t really understand what I do. To this day, my mom thinks I was part of the security detail for the president,” he admitted with a chuckle. “She seemed so disappointed every time I told her that wasn’t the only thing the Secret Service did.”
They walked for a while in silence.
“I have to admit I find it hard to imagine you were ever a skinny computer geek,” Alex eventually stated.
Lucas shrugged.
“I was a very late bloomer, that’s all,” he mused. “Then I met a few big, badass dudes that whipped my ass into shape.”
“Like Ned?”
“Yeah, for one. And my partners, Evan and Sam,” he added. “Those are two guys you don’t want to run into in a dark alley when they’re in a bad mood.”
“I don’t know, Lucas Johnson. I think you can handle yourself pretty well.”
He only grinned back, but felt ridiculously pleased by her comments.
Shortly after, they walked through the lakeside park at the edge of town and up to the sidewalk.
“The post office is across the street from the cafe. We’ll grab your latte on the way back.”
Over the next five minutes, the skies gradually darkened, threatening a heavy rainfall. They ducked into the small convenience store that housed the post office and rental boxes in the back just as the first few raindrops started to fall. Lucas quickly retrieved the package of copper wiring from their rented box, then stood at the front of the store with Alex to watch the downpour.
“How long do you think it will last?” she asked.
There was a bright streak of lightning in the direction of the lake followed by the loud clap of thunder.
“Hard to say,” he admitted. “Let’s make a run for the cafe, then we can wait it out over afternoon coffee. Will you be okay?”
He tucked the box under his arm, then zipped up the front of her jacket.
“Maybe we should get you an umbrella. I’m sure they sell them in here somewhere.”