to hers. Had she not already been plastered against the window at her back, she’d have staggered back a step from the utter emptiness in his eyes. Where had her Alex gone? This man was...dead.
Remorse and fear roared through her and she fell to her knees and flung her arms around his neck. She hung on to him like a tornado was trying to tear them apart. At first, he did not respond at all. But eventually, his arms came up around her waist. He pulled her into his lap. They sat like that for a long time. Long enough for the city to grow quiet below them and the streets to empty of cars.
Without warning, he commenced tearing her clothes off her. Some he tore off figuratively. Others that didn’t give way easily enough, he literally tore off her. And when she was naked, he surged to his feet and shoved her face-first against the glass. She heard a zipper rip down, and then he was slamming into her from behind. No foreplay. No words of endearment. No kisses or caresses. Just his hard, hot body invading hers.
Her breasts and right cheek mashed against the cold window. Rain struck it hard enough on the other side for her to feel the tiny impacts. The drops came so close but didn’t touch her. Sort of like her trying to reach Alex’s soul. An invisible but impenetrable barrier blocked her way.
If someone happened to look up at this building and zero in on this particular room, they were getting quite a show. And yet, she couldn’t spare the mental energy to care. Her attention was entirely focused on the agonized man behind her. She wasn’t fooled for a second by his angry outburst. This was pain, not punishment. Anguish, not rage. And if he needed to dump it into her body, she was fine with absorbing it from him.
He was being rough with her, but as always, some part of him held back just enough not to actually hurt her. Relieved that whatever barriers held the beast at bay had worked one more time, she did her best to open her body to him. To relax and not fight the aggressive invasion. To convey an unspoken sense of welcome and acceptance to him.
By arching her back and thrusting back toward him, their bodies fit perfectly. He grasped her hips to pull her back harder, and she groaned her pleasure. He growled under his breath, probably irritated that she was enjoying this. But the harder and deeper he drove, the better it felt.
Finally, as she moaned with too much pleasure to bear, he collapsed against her back, panting in her ear, crushing her against the window. His hands came up to cover hers where they pressed into the glass by her head.
“Come to bed,” he eventually murmured. “You’re cold.”
She was frozen with fear for his soul. Did that count as cold? He tucked her under the covers gently enough, though, and then pulled on jeans and a sweater in the dark.
“You’re not coming to bed?” she asked from her cocoon of warmth.
“In a while, maybe.”
Translation: I’m going to be up all night, brooding. She sighed, rolled onto her side and drifted to sleep wondering what it would take to get him to shed the darkness in his soul and choose to be happy.
OVERNIGHT, HURRICANE GISELLE slammed into Cuba with a vengeance. It tore the island to bits from east to west. Even in a region accustomed to tropical storms, Giselle was a monster. Death tolls were unknown, but television commentators speculated that thousands had perished. Always secretive, the Cuban government declined to share details or let any foreign journalists into the immediate aftermath to report on it. What little news did leak out painted a grim picture, however.
Alex turned off the TV. Katie was still asleep, so he used the time to get on his laptop to see if any of the feelers he’d put out on Operation Cold Intent had come back to him yet.
Bingo. An encrypted email from C¥berE¥e, perhaps the top hacker he’d ever seen operate and his anonymous mentor since his first attempts to start hacking.
Alex ran their usual decryption protocol and got gibberish. He stared at the letters and symbols in surprise. He would suspect a failed message transmission were this not from C¥berE¥e. And then it hit him. He ran a secondary decryption protocol the hacker sometimes used.
Sure enough, a short message resolved itself on his screen. He stared at it in dismay.
Blondie and ThrεεWolvεs dead. Looks like murder. What the fuck did you get them into?
He knew the forces behind Cold Intent had killed Blondie. But they’d killed her boyfriend, too? Jesus. Who was doing this? And what in the hell was Cold Intent? Why was someone killing to cover its tracks?
He messaged C¥berE¥e back, asking if the guy had any idea what Blondie and her boyfriend were killed over. Hackers had lots of enemies if they were any good, right?
The reply made him feel ill. It said that Blondie must have been looking into something within the past few days that had triggered the real-world attack. No matter how he tried to rationalize it away, Alex couldn’t escape arriving at the same conclusion C¥berE¥e had. He was responsible for the hackers’ deaths. He sent an email back.
Any idea if someone got their files?
The reply was immediate.
An ABC agency was making a run at them. I snagged everything and wiped the drives before the Man could get in. Some interesting shit here. Who’s Cold Intent?
Aww, crap. He didn’t need dead hackers all over the planet on his account. Alex typed hard, as if he could transmit his emphatic warning through the keys themselves.
Be. Careful. They’ll kill you, too. And no, I don’t know who “they” are. You need to leave it alone.
C¥yberE¥e’s reply was succinct.
I’ll find ’em. You kill ’em.
He stared at the message speculatively. He’d long suspected that C¥berE¥e was some sort of intelligence agent or at least a former one. More than once, the hacker had sent Alex timely warnings about various government agencies being close to catching up with him and some of his more adventurous online activities as a teen.
What was fascinating about that short statement was that this guy seemed to think Alex was capable of killing someone. Hackers were criminals but rarely violent ones. Who was C¥berE¥e, really? Not that it mattered at the end of the day if the guy found Cold Intent for him. Slowly, one letter at a time, Alex typed his response.
Done.
“Whatcha doin?” Katie asked from right behind him.
Alex jumped about a foot straight up in the air.
“Wow. I managed to startle the great spy, Alex Peters?” she crowed. “I win!”
He scowled at her as he stood up, sweeping her into his arms. “We’ll see about that.”
She laughed as he carried her back to the bed. “You always have to win, don’t you?”
“Yup.”
For once, their lovemaking was simple and uncomplicated, just sex. No strings attached. No deep emotional conflicts. No struggles to push past emotional blocks or physical boundaries. It felt good to him, and he was fairly certain it felt good to her.
It was nearly an hour later, and Katie had unequivocally declared him the winner in all things...loudly and passionately...before he finally collapsed to the mattress beside her. His soul felt lighter, somehow.
And that was when fear came calling, deep in his gut. This time, she had blasted past his emotional defenses so easily and smoothly he hadn’t even realized she’d done it.
How she managed to take him out of his head and into a place of pure feeling and emotion, he had no idea. But he had no power to resist whatever it was she did to him. God knew, he wanted to. He hated the loss of control. His entire life was based around the concept of supreme self-discipline. Success rested upon it. Hell, survival rested upon it.
He died a