“Yes,” he says. “They could turn your phone into a bug if they get in far enough.”
My hands clench. “How do I stop it?”
His arm tightens once around me. “That’s what I’m here for,” he murmurs. “Do you trust me to do that?”
I barely know him.
I feel so safe in his arms.
“Yes,” I whisper.
The word feels like a confession. A sin I don’t want to stop committing.
I feel his chest move as he breathes, slow and comforting, against my back.
“Okay,” he says, quietly. “Then let’s take care of this email, okay? I’m going to send a failure-to-deliver mailer-daemonemail and attach a counter program to it. That way, we can see what they’re up to.”
As much as I don’t want to, I stop leaning against him and straighten in his arms. He takes the hint and releases me from his embrace. I miss it already.
I step away and turn to face him.
“Won’t they be able to detect it the same way you did?” I ask.
He steps back to the table and the laptops. “Maybe,” he says and sends me a smirk that makes my heart flip-flop in my chest. “If they’re twice as good as I am.”
ChapterTwenty Seven
Antonio
I sell the idea to her as a cooking lesson because I need her mind anywhere but on that inbox.
Bellandi. Payloads. Cameras. Microphones. Her voice going thin and panicked while I held her against me and helped her breathe through her panic attack.
I stepped on a couple of her rules.
I told myself it didn’t count.
It was a panic attack. It was triage. It was necessary.
But my body doesn’t care about technicalities. My body remembers exactly what she feels like with her back against my chest, the way she went still when my mouth brushed her hair.
So I did what I always do when I’m cornered by something I can’t control.
I made aplan.
After I took care of the email, I stood back up and pretended like it was any other night.
“First cooking lesson,” I said casually. “Tonight.”
Then I showered fast—too fast, because if I lingered in there, I’d end up with my hand around my cock thinking about how she felt in my arms, and the heat of her eyes when she watched me on the floor earlier.
The glute bridges.
Yeah. I did those on purpose.
I felt her eyes drift. I felt it the way you feel a spotlight heat your skin. And I wanted her to crack. I wanted her to break her own rules. I don’t mind being the bad guy, but I made her a promise that I wouldn’t be the one to break them.
So I decided to tempt her into breaking them. I wanted her to straddle my hips, slide her hand into my pants, and whisper something reckless in my ear so we could throw her list of rules straight into the trash and fuck right there on the floor until we were out of breath and boneless.