Chapter 23
Nick hadn’t slept so wellin weeks. So much time spent chasing Charlie, and now here she was sound asleep next to him. Not going anywhere. He wanted to stay up to savor that fact—as well as her confession that she was “into him”—but he was just as exhausted as Charlie was.
He surfaced from sleep sometime in the middle of the night—though daylight already shone in slivers past the curtains’ edges. A cold reality set in. Charlie had admitted to being an outlaw. He was a law—well, not exactly a law enforcer. But he was certainly law-enforcement adjacent. Where did that leave him and Charlie? Where did he want it to leave them?
The light filtering through the shades made her skin look luminous. He took his time, feature by feature, cataloging sadness in the corners of her mouth, determination in the set of her jaw, and sheer sass in the tilt of her eyebrows.
“You could say I’m into you, too,” he murmured to her sleeping form. “You could say a lot more than that. But I have no clue what to do about it.”
He reached for his phone to check the time, and saw that a text had come in from Mark Jones.
Glad you reached out. We have some work for C. Can you set up a call?
What the hell did “some work” mean?
Explain, he texted back. But wherever Mark was, he wasn’t in the right time zone for answering. After a few minutes of unsettled waiting, he rolled back to his previous position, only to find that Charlie had filled that space.
“Sorry,” he muttered, worried that he’d nearly crushed her, but she reached for him and shifted her body so her front pressed against him, shoulders to knees, and all the good parts in between.
Instant hard-on. Goddamn. He gritted his teeth, trying to force it down. The woman was injured, after all. She had an arrow wound in her thigh. And he had hot fantasies of her naked body running through his mind.
But she seemed to have forgotten all about her thigh, except to throw it over him and pull his body closer. He was wearing his boxers, but nothing else, and they provided zero cover for his raging erection.
“What are you doing?” he murmured into her neck. The slight taste of salt-sweat against his lips made this even more real.
“What I want. I’m doing what I want.”
“But your stitches…”
“They’re fine. Can’t feel a thing. I’m all hopped up on painkillers, we’re alone in a bed together, what better time?”
She had a point there.
“Besides, there’s this.” She stroked his erection through the fabric of his shorts. “Erections don’t lie.”
He ground his back teeth together to keep ahold of himself—a nearly impossible task, especially when she slid her hand inside his fly and touched his bare flesh.
The job got even harder when he gave in and ran his hands under her shirt, along her side, tracing the long slope of her torso, the dip of her waist, and the rise of her hip. There, he changed direction and slid his fingers between her legs, reaching under her panties to find heat and wetness. He delved through slippery softness, hissing in a breath at the delicious juicy feel of her.
She pressed against him, muscles quivering, as he found the hard nub where her need was centered. Adrenaline, aftershock, crisis survival…whatever it was, it had made her wild for release. He could give that to her. He couldn’t do more because neither of them had a condom, so far as he knew. But he could certainly make her come.
He caught her wince, and realized that she was lying on her injured side.
“Let’s turn you over,” he suggested gruffly. “Nice and slow. Leave it to me, sweetheart.”
She blinked at his endearment, and allowed her body to follow his lead, rolling over to her other side, so her ass was nestled against his crotch, and her entire front was available for his exploration. He slid his hand under her ribbed tank top, finding no bra. A soft breast filled his hand, a tweaked nipple hardened under his fingers, smooth skin turned to goosebumps under his stroking.
“But Nick…” she said weakly, before sighing when he placed his hand back where it was, firmly between her legs. “I wanted to hold your?—”
“Another time,” he interrupted before she could say any word that would make him more turned on. “When we have protection.”
She nodded; he felt the movement against his chin. She was so tall that they were nearly the same height, and she fit perfectly inside the crook of his body. His arm was just the right length to reach her sex, and his hand felt right at home there, deep in her satiny folds, stroking, rubbing, finding that rhythm that had her bucking against him.
When the orgasm hit her, it seemed to roll through her body in waves. She luxuriated in it, lost herself in it, surrendered completely to the sensations seizing her…and all he could think was, Just wait until I’m inside you.
Eventually, her body went limp in his arms. Neither said a word, but he pressed a kiss into the damp skin of her neck. After a moment, her breathing slowed and he realized that she’d fallen asleep, leaving him alone with his still-throbbing erection. It was his own fault. His own decision. But damn. He’d be counting the microseconds until they could do this again.
He too fell asleep, only to be woken up by the sound of his phone receiving a text. Charlie sat bolt upright. Her blond hair tumbled across her shoulders, making her look like Venus rising from a nap in a clamshell. “Phone.” She shook her hair away from her face. “Want me to grab it for you?”
Before he could say no, she reached for his phone and handed it to him. As soon as Face ID caught a glimpse of his face, the text appeared on the screen, quickly read by Charlie.
Get C and call asap.
“C,” she said. “Is that me? Who is that? Is it?—”
He cut her off. “My contact at Hobbs says they have work for you.”
Her expression shifted. All traces of sleepiness, satisfaction, softness—all gone. “Why would I work for them? Did you already talk to them, like we planned?”
“I reached out, and that was their answer.”
“It doesn’t make sense…Oh my God. It does.” Her face lost all its color. “That’s what they wanted all along.”
He struggled into a sitting position, already reaching for his shirt. It made sense to him too. That was why Hobbs had wanted him to locate her.
“They went through my father because…well, as a threat. Because they know I care about him the most. I don’t know how they know that, but they do. Text them back. No. Call. He said to call.”
“Let me handle it, okay? Let me find out what exactly they want.” He pulled up the number, but she grabbed his hand before he could call it.
“Wait. You need to know what you’re getting into.”
His stomach roiled. He was already in deep with this woman; what if it turned out that she was involved in some really bad shit, something he couldn’t live with? Something he wouldn’t want his daughter around? Before Hailey, that wouldn’t have been a consideration. Now, it had to be.
“Yeah, I can be more help to you if I know.”
She nodded, closed her eyes, then nodded again, almost as if she was arguing with herself. This must be so hard for her, breaking her habit of secrecy. Gingerly, she pushed herself out of the bed. Probably to put some separation between them before she spilled her guts.
Once she’d pulled on a loose sweater over her ribbed tank, she faced him again. “I’m a hacker. A good one. For years now, I’ve been selecting the worst corporations I can find, ones that are doing damage or ripping people off, even breaking laws themselves, which isn’t really that hard to do. I hack into their financial systems and set up recurring micro-donations to certain carefully selected nonprofits. The amounts are so small that no one notices, but they add up over time. Before anyone can catch on, I go back in and change the code back. It’s just a little wealth redistribution, you know?”
“Take from the rich, give to the poor?”
She flashed a ghost of a smile at his Robin Hood reference. “Sort of. More like, take from those who damage and give to those who heal. Many times, I know that even if I got busted, they’d never turn me in because I’m diverting dirty money anyway. They wouldn’t want to risk it.”
Good intentions. Risky actions. But all in all, he couldn’t find it in his heart to judge her. Fear for her, yes.
“And Hobbs?”
“With Hobbs, it was different. I wanted revenge because they’re the ones who screwed over my father.” Passion choked her voice, made her turn away for a moment. When she went on, he could barely hear her. “And I needed money to get my dad out of prison so he could get treatment. I took too much, maybe I got sloppy. I figured that’s why they sent you after me, and I returned that money. But I think I was wrong.
Nick thought it over, and agreed. Hobbs could have reported Charlie to the FBI, who investigated cybercrimes. But they hadn’t. They’d called him in instead.
They’d wanted her to hack something for them. They still did. And to make sure she did it, they’d paid a visit to her father to scare her.
This was his fault. He was the one who’d told them how important her father was to her.
“You’re not doing it,” he said flatly.
“Doing what?”
He’d lost her in his thought process. “This so-called job. Not happening. They probably want you to do something illegal. They think they have you cornered because of what you did to them. And as extra incentive, they visited your father. You can’t do it, Charlie. If you do, they’ll have you forever.”
She started toward him, wincing as her bandaged thigh flexed. She must have forgotten she was hurt. Something told him she forgot all about herself when it came to protecting her father.
“I don’t care. I’ll figure it out. Call them. Let’s find out what exactly they want.”
He gripped her by the shoulders. “Call your father first. Make sure he’s okay, that they’re not still around.”
She nodded and searched through her clothes for her phone, hands trembling.
But she got no answer to her call.
“I did this. I should have stayed away from Hobbs. I was thinking with my anger, not my head. I have to fix this.” Her voice was so shaken that he barely recognized his brave Charlie.
He put a hand on her shoulder but she shook him off. “Call them. Tell them I’ll do whatever they want so long as they stay away from my dad.” She swung around, her gaze dark and desperate. “I just don’t want him to get hurt.”
His heart ached for her. “What about you, sweetheart? Who’s going to make sure you don’t get hurt?”
Her eyes flickered as she caught his endearment. “That’s my problem. Not yours. Make the call.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?” Her voice rose, shaking, furious. “I hired you. You’re supposed to do what I say.”
“If you said push you off a cliff, I wouldn’t do that either. This is the same thing.”
“It’s my decision! I can jump off a cliff if I want!” She tried to grab his phone again, but he dodged her grasp.
“Would your father want you to jump off a cliff for him?”
“My father…he doesn’t understand. He just sees the good. Even in me, he sees someone good and wonderful and…” She put a hand to her throat as her words clogged there. Tears sprang to her eyes. She tried to speak again, but couldn’t.
“Listen,” he said gently, placing his phone in his back pocket, out of her reach, then taking her hands into his. “Can you trust me with this? Let me handle it.”
“How?”
“Do you need details? It’s better if you don’t know.”
Slowly the panic left her eyes and her expression calmed. She passed the back of her hand across her forehead. “Twenty-four hours. No more. And you have to promise me that if you need my help, you’ll ask for it. I can do a lot. I have skills.”
He nodded in agreement. “Twenty-four hours.”
“You can do it in one day?”
“I’m the best.” He winked at her, and was happy to see a slight smile flit across her face.
“I never doubted it. Only the best could nearly catch up with me.”
He didn’t bother pointing out that she was nearly naked, barely six inches from him. No need to rub it in.
Now to work some magic with that bastard Mark Jones.