CHAPTER TWENTY
“I’m really not in the mood to be stuck on an island with you right now, Blake.”
We were at the ferry station and Blake was begging me to not to leave. He’d locked the doors and driven us onto the big boat, and now he was doing everything in his power to keep me there.
“I promise, we can turn around and take the next ferry back if you don’t like what I have to say.”
“You’re being insane right now, you know that? This is like kidnapping.”
“Promise me you won’t get off.”
I groaned. “I promise, now let me out.”
He released the locks, and I walked up the ramp to the upper level of the ferry where we’d spend the rest of the ride to Martha’s Vineyard. If Blake thought he could romance his way out of the doghouse, he was dead wrong.
I walked through to the front of the boat, stepping out onto the deck. I picked a table for two near the end, knowing Blake was on my heels. I sat, and he joined me a second later. I finally met his stare. His eyes glittered from the setting sun reflecting against the water. God help me, he was as beautiful as he was maddening. We sat in silence for a few moments while a few of the other tables filled around us.
“Are you going to tell me how you found me? You don’t have a tracking device planted in my stuff do you?” If I was going to be subjected to this odyssey, he needed to start filling in the gaps quick.
“Sid told me you were going to visit with your father.”
“You asked, and he just told you?” I sincerely hoped Blake hadn’t horrified Sid the way he had a habit of doing with almost everyone else I came into contact with lately.
“Actually, yes. He wasn’t wild about you staying with a complete stranger either.”
“What about Mark? How did you know he’d be there?”
“I dug up every possible affiliation he had when I tracked down his identity, His step-father and employer were notable. When I found out where you were staying, I figured there was a very real chance Mark would be there too.”
Of course he would. He’d known Mark’s identity for a couple weeks now, so heaven knows what else he’d cooked up. If he’d meddled at all though, Mark didn’t seem the wiser.
“And you managed to track down his house on the Cape.”
“Erica, don’t insult me, please.” He drummed his fingers on the table.
“How did you learn how to do all this?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a hacker. It seems like a strange descriptor for someone with as much money and resources as you have, but clearly you still do it.”
“I only use my powers for good.” He flashed me a wicked smile.
“Has that always been the case?”
His smile slipped. “Listen, let’s talk about the deal with Max. I need to explain some things.”
“We’ll get there. Tell me how you became a hacker.”
“Countless hours on the computer and a propensity for math. Satisfied?”
“Listen, if you’re not going to be honest with me, I don’t need to be here.” I stood to leave.
He caught my hand. “Please, don’t leave.”
The look he gave me made my chest ache, but I was determined to hold my ground.
“Talk.” I sat back down.
He sighed. “I was a bored antisocial adolescent. I begrudged society. Hacking became a creative outlet, gave me options, made life seem a little less insignificant.”
I tried to imagine the beautiful man in front of me as angry teenager, shaking his fists at the world for whatever reason. “How had society wronged you so horribly? Weren’t your parents teachers?”
“Yes, and they were grossly underpaid. Anyway, they had nothing to do with me being that way, trust me. They tried like hell to get me out of the house, to be normal, I guess. I think I was just too...intellectual, maybe, for my own good. The news, politics, the economy. Basically everything that’s still wrong with the world today felt overwhelmingly wrong to me at that age. I had a hard time justifying living a normal, happy life and sticking my head in the sand while atrocities were happening everywhere.”
“So you thought you could save the world from your computer.”
“Not really. I don’t know…”
“How did you end up working with Max’s father?”
He blew out a slow breath. I glanced over my shoulder. They were just beginning to untie the ropes from the dock. I still had time.
“Now or never, Blake.”
“F*ck, fine.” He leaned in on the table, lowering his voice so only I could hear him. “I hooked up with a hacker group called M89. A handful of other pissed off kids like me. We came up with a plan to deplete the bank accounts of some top executives on Wall Street.”
“Why?”
“They were getting rich off some Ponzi scheme and trying to take down the whistle blowers who threatened to expose them.”
“So what happened?”
“We got caught,” he said. “I narrowly avoided jail time, and in the process somehow I caught Michael’s attention. He took me under his wing, figured out how to get through to me. I guess it took a hard-nosed capitalist to paint a view of the world that made sense.”
Wow. Blake was so measured, so in control of every area of his life now. To think of him being so reckless frightened me. How we’d both made our way to this point in our lives could not have been more different.
“We both wanted to do something big, so I pulled all-nighters to graduate with honors and you hacked people’s bank accounts.”
“And here we are, together.” He pressed his lips to my knuckles, barely grazing them with his tongue.
My belly quickened, but I forced myself to focus on the matter at hand. “How did you avoid jail for what you did?”
He leaned back, his lips lifting mischievously.
“What?”
“Time’s up.”
I turned in my seat and saw that we were already several feet away from the dock, fully on our way.
* * *
Blake drove us across the island, out of one neighborhood into the next until we sped past a barren landscape where the houses were sparse. I gripped the seat, certain we’d be pulled over at any moment, which would be the perfect finish to this unbelievable day. Then again, the island probably only had a handful of cops, and we seemed to be getting farther away from civilization, if that were even possible.
We pulled up to a large single family home, distinguishable from any of the other cedar-shingled homes only by its sheer size and that it appeared to be the last home on this point of the island. We stepped onto the wraparound porch, and instead of taking us inside, Blake led me around and down to the beach. We passed through the dunes to where two whitewashed Adirondack chairs were perched on the sandy beach facing the soft waves of the ocean.
I kicked off my shoes and sat in one of them. After a mostly sleepless night and everything that had gone down today, I could barely hold myself up. Blake pulled out a bottle of chilled white wine from a bucket of ice nestled in the sand.
“How do you plan these things, Blake, honestly?”
He smirked. “Don’t think I’m telling you all my secrets tonight.”
“I could make you,” I threatened. I had an increasingly keen sense of his weaknesses lately.
His eyes darkened. “That’s a tempting thought,” he said, missing the glass he was pouring into.
He corrected his aim and handed me the glass. I took a welcome taste of the cool, fruity liquid.
“Don’t be so sure. I’m still angry with you. Like, super, extremely angry.”
“The proverbial doghouse?”
“The literal doghouse, and that doesn’t even begin to capture how much making up you have to do.”
“I like making up. Where shall I start?”
He settled at my feet, tracing tiny circles over my knee and up my thigh, pressing warm, soft kisses in their wake. I tried in vain to suppress the physical reaction that his touch elicited.
“You can’t fix this with sex,” I said, and damn it, I meant it.
“No? Tell me then. How can I fix this?” He kept up his feather-light touches.
“I honestly don’t know. I thought you had a plan for that when I agreed to come out here with you.” I wasn’t going to make this easy for him. I was beyond drained, but I had just enough fire left to make this point.
He slowed his caresses and settled back on his knees. “I love you, Erica.”
Shit, I thought. He had to lead with that? I swallowed back tears. “That doesn’t change what you did to me today.”
“I know it probably doesn’t mean much, but I didn’t want to. You didn’t leave me many options.”
“Well that’s not enough of a reason,” I said, staring past him.
“Taking on investors is like getting into bed with someone, Erica. It doesn’t always work, and to be honest, you’re not really the type for this kind of partnership. I completely understand how you feel about the business. One of the reasons why I didn’t bid right away is because you’re strong-willed as hell. I knew working with you wouldn’t be easy, and you’d fight me every step of the way. I didn’t fully appreciate the consequences of you working with Max until recently, and I couldn’t bear losing you to him.”
“He doesn’t want me that way,” I insisted, only half believing it. Max, like so many others, didn’t entirely respect my personal space but he hadn’t made any overt comments leading me to believe that he wanted me sexually. Even if he did, I could hold my own.
“He does, trust me. Whether or not you want to believe it, he’d stop at nothing to have you if it meant getting back at me. After seeing what you went through with Isaac, I couldn’t take that risk again.”
I shook my head. Isaac had caught me off guard, but if Blake had given me a minute longer, I could have gotten him to back off without help.
“I can’t say exactly how or when Max would make his play, but I can promise you he would. He’d make you do things you’d never do just to keep the business, knowing how much it meant to you, knowing how much you mean to me.”
“How can you know that?”
“Jesus, Erica, I’d walk through fire to make sure you were safe. Can you just believe me, that I could see this coming, that I wouldn’t let anything happen to you?”
I closed my eyes. The waves crashed on the beach, and a soft breeze blew over us. I sensed Blake, his magnetic pull willing me closer to him. He was the only man I’d ever loved, and here he was, professing his love for me, promising to protect me from harm, almost too chivalric to be taken seriously, but when I opened my eyes and looked into his, there was no doubt about his intentions.
Everything had become too much. My eyes misted, but I refused to surrender. I wrapped my arms across my chest, holding myself together.
“You’re killing me, Blake.”
“Do you know how many women have pitched me in that boardroom?” he asked.
“How many?”
“One.”
The word lingered in the air, an unbelievable truth that pronounced how perilous my position in this industry could be. If that was true, coming this far was nothing short of a miracle. It also explained why their receptionist looked at me like I had three heads every time I showed up for a meeting.
“Wow.” I shook my head.
“Max and I both wanted you that day, for different reasons. I wasn’t about to let you go without a fight.”
Even with the risks that came with working with Blake, my business was probably safer than it had ever been. Now we just had to figure out how to work together without driving each other completely crazy.
“So now what?” I said, hoping he had some insights.
“Whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t involve Max. Or Isaac.”
“So we’re partners.”
He nodded.
“I’m in charge, Blake. You start telling me how to run my business, and we’re finished.” I meant it. I wouldn’t relent on this point, and fortunately he wasn’t in much of a position to argue since he had funded the project with no legal claim to it.
He rose on his knees and took my glass from me, sinking his and mine into the sand beside us. “You’re the boss, baby.”
He tugged me down on the chair, bunching up my dress and pressing hot kisses up my inner thigh. He removed my panties with expert ease and covered my p-ssy with his mouth.
“Oh, God.” I gripped the chair at the sensation.
He parted me with his fingers and his velvet tongue followed. The dueling pressures had me clenching uncontrollably. He slid his slender finger into me and sucked hard, flicking his tongue just so. My head fell back. Yes.
I arched, pressing into his mouth, and he delivered the final blow, stretching me with a second finger. His teeth grazed my *, taunting me with perfect amount of restraint and just enough pressure to push me over the edge.
“Blake...” I cried out into the dusky air and fought to catch my breath. The breeze cooled my skin, washing over the fine mist of sweat that covered me, but Blake kept on. I came again and again, clenching against his fingers until I was boneless and out of my mind with the hunger to have his cock pounding inside me.
I whimpered his name and begged him to stop, unsure how much more I could take.
He stood, and I clamored for him at the sight of the hard outline of his jeans. He pulled me up and into his embrace before I could unfasten his fly.
“Let’s go in,” he whispered.
I tasted myself on his kiss, his erection pressed into my belly. Always too much and yet never enough, the fierceness of my craving for him still took my breath away.
I followed Blake into the house and he led us to the bedroom, an enormous room with vaulted ceilings and whitewashed walls. The house put the Fitzgerald summer home to shame in size and elegance. They were old money, but the reality was that Blake could probably buy and sell Daniel.
The bed, covered with a fluffy white down comforter, was the centerpiece of the room, and became my sole focus as I counted the seconds until we could be naked on it. Blake unzipped my dress slowly, taking his time and taunting me with light touches. I slipped out of my dress and walked to the bed. I climbed up and sat on my knees, waiting patiently as Blake stripped down. He crawled onto the bed with the lithe grace of a predator stalking his prey, and I was in just the mood to be hunted.
He shifted me until I was under him, spread around his legs as they parted me. Taking my breast into his mouth with a hard suck, he teased the tip with his tongue. I arched into him and hooked my leg around his in a feeble attempt to urge him closer. He didn’t move an inch.
“You are a squirmy little thing,” he teased, trailing his hands along my inner thigh, inches from where I throbbed and craved his touch so much more.
“Touch me, please, Blake.”
His lips curled slightly. “Put your arms up.”
Eager to please if it meant he’d stop taunting me, I obeyed. He stretched them higher and unclasped one of my bracelets, hooking it onto my other wrist and linking them together, creating a rather expensive pair of handcuffs.
“Blake, no, you’ll break them.”
“Not if you don’t move.”
“How am I supposed to do that? You’re driving me crazy.” Controlling myself when he held me was one thing, but I had no idea how I was going to behave myself without any help.
“Self control,” he said simply. “Hold on here.”
He guided my hands to the headboard. I swallowed hard and circled my fingers around the metal rails, my mind hyper aware of every sensation stirring through my body and the physical reactions that I now had to keep in check so as not to ruin Blake’s beautiful gift. He was barely touching me as it was, and I was already writhing with anticipation.
He started low, nipping at the tip of my toe. A jolt of desire arrowed right to my sex. Jesus, he knew every trick in the book. I tightened, knowing he was miles from being there at this rate. He trailed wet kisses up my thigh, over my stomach, diving into the cleft of my belly button with his tongue, languishing over my breasts and my collarbone, blowing warm breaths onto my neck that gave me gooseflesh in a very good way.
“How do you feel?” He grazed my lips with his, a knowing smile lifting them slightly.
Every nerve stood at attention, every cell in my body lurched toward his, as far as these constraints would allow. “Alive,” I whispered, holding on by a mere thread.
“Good.”
He held his cock, lubricating me with my own moisture, sliding between my folds. I tightened my hold on the headboard at the friction over my *. Then he was inside me in one swift motion. I cried out, fisting my hands around the rail, not wanting to struggle against the metal of my bounds.
His lips were on mine then, kissing me frantically. I moaned into his mouth as he drove into me again and again, with a depth that had me spasming around him uncontrollably. I could barely breathe in anticipation of the promised release. I dug my heels into his thighs, urging him deeper.
My emotions were raw and I was desperate for him. Blake reached up and replaced the second bracelet to its rightful place. Freed from my restraints, I fisted my hands in his hair and kissed him hard. I needed more, the rest of him. Whether he knew it or not, I wasn’t about to let him go.
I pulled away slightly to meet his dark gaze. I needed him to know, after everything we’d been through. “I love you,” I whispered.
He pulled away a fraction to meet my eyes, his own dark and pained, as if those three little words cut him to the core.
“Make love to me. Please, Blake, I don’t want to feel anything else but you right now.”
And for the rest of the night, he did. He loved me with every masterful thrust, reminding me that our bodies were made for this and for each other. We were wasted, physically and emotionally, but Blake never tired. When we slowed, my lazy caresses turned into hungry demands, and he took me again, each time no less earth shattering than the last, until we both collapsed in each other’s arms.
* * *
I woke in the morning to the sound of the ocean. Seagulls sailed through the air just beyond our bedroom window. I crept out of bed quietly to let Blake sleep.
Dressed in his T-shirt, I let his scent wash over me. I padded through the house and helped myself to a banana from the bowl of fruit in the kitchen. I took out my laptop and set up at the dining room table overlooking the water. I started an email to Professor Quinlan, addressing him as such. No matter how much time went by, I’d probably never be able to call him Brendan.
I struggled for the right words to describe the current situation. He knew Max’s history better than most, but I hoped this turn of events wouldn’t reflect poorly on him. I felt compelled to bring him up to speed in case it would. I drafted the message and reread it, feeling overwhelmed anew by the breakneck pace my life had taken over the past forty-eight hours.
And I’d thought college was stressful.
I hit send and clicked around a few sites, landing on Clozpin. The browser’s loading graphic spin infinitely. The site was down again.
Shit. I called Sid. No answer. I called again and he didn’t pick up. I hurried back into the bedroom, hating to wake Blake, but I couldn’t shake the worry.
I sidled up next to him, draped my leg over his, and peppered him with tiny soft kisses. If I was going to wake him up, at least I’d do it pleasantly. He finally stirred, rousing with a smile and a fantastic case of morning wood. As tempting as that was, I needed him for something else right now.
“Baby, the site’s down again. I can’t get hold of Sid.”
He got up, slipped on his jeans, and followed me out to the dining room. He glanced at my screen and fished out his own laptop from his overnight bag, settled on the couch, and powered on.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“Please.”
Already he looked incredibly focused, though barely awake, his hair an adorable mess. I figured out the coffee, and while I waited for it to brew, I refreshed the site again. This time it came up instantly, with a large singular logo overlaying the site beneath it. The logo text read clear. M89.
Blake was typing furiously. I didn’t dare ask, but I had a sinking feeling that being targeted wasn’t random anymore. I shuffled back to the coffee maker, filled a mug, and took it to him. He took it wordlessly, working as if I wasn’t there. I stared patiently waiting for him to come back to me.
“Can you tell me what’s going on? For real this time?” I said, my voice quiet.
He looked up at me, his eyes tired.
“The photo of us at the conference. It went viral. You probably saw a spike in traffic. Most of that was legit, but they took notice.”
“They?”
He hesitated.
“So this isn’t random.”
“Not anymore,” he said, his eyes dark with regret.
“Why are they after you, Blake?”
He shook his head and raked his hands through his hair. “I’m sorry, Erica, but I’m going to fix this. I promise.”
I nodded, trusting he would.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The process of rediscovering myself as a writer through this book has been a powerful one. I am forever in debt to those who have made the experience possible.
Hardwired could have never come to fruition without the steadfast and fanatical support of my husband. Thank you for cheering me on every step of the way and for letting me disappear for hours and sometimes days at a time in order to tell this story.
Special thanks to my spectacular editor, Helen Hardt, for whipping my dangling participles into shape and for pushing me to create a sexy and emotional story that I could be proud to share with the world.
Thanks to the writing community on Twitter. This book was written one #1k1hr and #5hourenergy at a time and having writing buddies has made a remarkable difference.
Thanks to K. and L., for your friendship, loyalty, and wicked programming skills. May your eyes only ever grace this page of the book.
Last, but certainly not least, many thanks to all the fans who have expressed their enthusiasm and support for Hardwired. You gave crossing the finish line new meaning. I can’t wait to share the next part of Blake and Erica’s journey with you!