Chapter 39
Ethan
I’m at my desktop in my home office working on some security updates when Bonnie pops her head through the door. I steel myself against the rush of desire I feel at seeing her in my shirt.
We’ve been ravenous for each other since she showed up in my office, right until she fell asleep four hours ago. I napped for a couple of hours, then I dragged myself out of bed to do some work instead, so she could get some much-needed sleep. If I stayed in that bed, I’d still be inside her tight warmth right now. My cock twitches pleasurably. Here we go again.
“Baby, you’re up already?”
“I missed you.” She leans against the doorway, bends her knee, trailing her toe up her opposite calf.
I huff out a chuckle. Geez, I’ve fucked her half to death already, and she still wants more. Must be the pregnancy hormones.
“How far along are you?” Jordan confessed to me months ago about almost getting friction burns on his cock, and I’d told him to shut up with his whining. God help me with Bonnie.
“About ten weeks.” I’m not sure what that means in terms of libido or my balls falling off, but I’m ready to ride it out for however long.
“You need to sleep,” I tell her.
“I’m usually awake after midnight now. I think it’s the hormones.” She walks in. “What are you working on? Something new?”
She walks towards me, her gait halting, and I hide my smirk of masculine satisfaction and instead focus on the inevitable conversation. Even though what I’m working on is top secret, I don’t make a move to hide it. It's time to tell her.
“Is it Acercraft?”
“No, it’s for a client of mine,” I answer.
Her eyes go as round as saucers. “You have other clients! Jordan said I couldn’t do that.”
“Yes, well, you're his employee. I’m not.”
“So unfair!” she complains. “Anyway, what are you working on?”
I shove back my chair to give her space to see for herself.
She moves my keyboard away and sits on the gleaming table, cocking her head to peer at the screen.
I dimly register that I should be irritated. Her panties are new, from the collection I got her since I’m in the habit of tearing hers off her. She must have pulled them on when she got out of bed, but I know for a fact they’re soaking wet now. Because she’s got to be dripping my cum, possibly smearing it on my desk.
But I couldn’t care less because all I can think of is how lovely the black lace looks against her creamy skin and the smooth curve of her thigh.
Huh.
I might as well go ahead and christen every single surface with her while I’m at it.
She looks back at me, puzzled. “What is this, babe?” I direct my attention back to the screen, then give her time to take it in.
"Why is this on Tor?" She asks, referring to the router that makes my internet presence and activities impossible to track.
I watch her for a long time. “Because what I’m doing for and with my client is top secret.”
“Really? Like good top secret or bad top secret?”
“It’s both,” I say.
“Okay.” She laughs nervously, slipping off my desk and into my lap so she has a better angle to see the encryption page.
“Now, this client is a top government agency, specifically the FCB,” I explain.
“The Federal Cyberintelligence Bureau! You hack for them! Ethan!” I knew she'd get it.
“Unofficially, yes.” Her eyes have gone wide as saucers and her mouth forms an O.
“Isn’t that dangerous, babe?” she asks.
“Potentially very dangerous if they decide I’m too much of a liability, but of course, the fact that I work for them is not as well kept a secret as it should be, especially in certain circles, so eliminating me could be a tad messy.”
I’d like to believe that, anyway.
“What circles are you talking about?”
“The underworld.”
“Like criminal circles?”
“A bit more refined. The organized type.”
“The mafia! Geez, Ethan—”
I hold her down on my lap when she tries to get up.
“Don’t freak out yet. That was the good part,” I say.
“The good part! Ethan, I don’t know if I want to hear the rest because you’re scaring me right now.”
“Baby, you’re safe with me, I promise.”
I pull out a secret panel from the end of the desk, which immediately increases its width. There, another PC, a smaller laptop, is idling on the panel, and I wake up the screen. A similar page appears. “Check it out.”
She goes to that side of the desk and bends over the screen. I let her have a look while I watch her. She deserves to know everything
“Can I?” she asks before she touches anything.
“Of course.”
She plays around with some keys. “This looks familiar. I feel like I’ve done this before."
"You have." I‘d been teaching her the programs I use for Gino for weeks prior to my surgery and our separation.
She brings up a web page of a dark web chat room and sees an ongoing discussion between me and someone else, which in literal English makes absolutely no sense, not unless I explain what the code words mean.
Who is this on the other end?”
“Someone called Giovanni. A friend.”
“Hey! Wasn’t that the best man at Alex and Nora’s wedding? The big guy with the man bun that brought lots of guards?
I nod my head.
“Rough-looking and heavily armed guards,” she adds.
Again, I nod.
“And he’s the worst part of this situation because?”
I incline my head meaningfully at my desktop where I handle FCB affairs, and I see the exact moment she gets it.
“Jesus Christ on a cracker. Ethan Hawthorne, you’ve got to be absolutely shitting me!”
I shrug.
“He’s young! He was nice, making jokes all night, and he even gave a normal best-man speech—well, at least the parts I listened to. I was too busy plotting how to kill you and make it look like a freak accident.”
I shrug again. “He’s the bogeyman of New York’s underbelly. He’s nice, true, but he also can be a monster, which is why he’s feared. But as I said, we're friends, having worked together for five years. I trust him and he trusts me."
Otherwise, I wouldn't be here.
“Oh. My. God. To think it was a tie between him and Maxwell I was thinking about spending the night with at—”
“Hey, hey, what was that?” I demand.
“No, I meant at Cancun. I thought he was hot—”
“How’s your butt, I wonder? Sore enough yet?” It’ll be worse if she continues testing me.
“Geez!” She smiles, pressing her plump lips against mine. “Relax,” she whispers. “I’m just winding you up, babe. Husband. Love of my life. The only man who makes me come.” She moves against me, determined to keep pushing me.
“Siobhán…” I warn. I’m rock hard and throbbing.
“What, too much?”
“I was in the middle of showing you your side gig, but if you’d rather skip class…”
“Wait, what!” She stops her grinding and whirls to face the smaller screen. “You want me to…to do what?”
“I told you once that we're two halves of a whole. It’s infinitely more dangerous to work for the government, so I’ll do that for us. You’ll handle this one.” I point to the laptop. “Gino will protect you, baby. With his life.”
“And who’ll protect you, Ethan?” She looks incredulous, like she can’t believe I’m willing to put her safety above my own.
“Well, I was hoping you would cover my tracks. Gino can protect me physically but he lacks the digital expertise to shield me online because of how I do what I do for him."
“Oh, my.” She looks at me with new eyes. “Ethan Hawthorne, is this why you didn’t ask me to marry you before?”
“But I did ask you to marry me. And you said yes. Well, it was more like you couldn’t say no.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re so full of yourself. But, Ethan, this is the reason why, isn’t it?”
Bonnie gets me. What I need from her isn’t just marriage. It’s a partnership. It’s life and death. It’s dark, it’s dangerous. It’s a life of secrecy and a hell of a sacrifice. She might love me enough to marry me. But could she love me enough to share this aspect of my life with me?
“Yes. This is the reason why I didn’t ask. I wanted to, but I was trying to figure out a way to ask you that wouldn’t end with you pushing me into traffic.”
“Hmm. Does Jordan know this?”
I give her a pointed look. “Nobody knows—well, except Gino and the government.”
“And you’re playing both sides,” she states.
“Well, it’s more towards one side. Giovanni knows I hack for the FCB. That’s kind of why he needs me. The FCB doesn't know I do anything for Giovanni.”
“You know, my heart is actually racing right now? I cannot believe I used to think you were boring, Harvard.”
She taps her fingers against her chin thoughtfully, then something seems to occur to her. “Ethan, you know at the Cancun wedding that there was talk about Giovanni’s heavy security being there to keep paps away because it wouldn't do for the public to find out the connection between him and Alex?”
“Hm-hmm.”
“Those armed men, the drones and the helicopters, the freaking no-fly zone… they were actually there to prevent the authorities from knowing that there’s a connection between Giovanni and you , isn’t it?”
“Something like that.”
“Oh, my fucking God. Why didn’t Giovanni just say no? Did he have to be the flipping best man in that wedding? The most visible man after the groom?” she asks, fuming at the thought of the other man putting me in jeopardy.
“Alex wouldn’t have wanted anyone else as his best man. Giovanni is his brother,” I explain.
“What?”
“They’ve got some weird shit going on, it’s quite the story. I’ll tell you one day if you ask me nicely and you don’t sass me for a whole week.”
“That’ll be never!” she protests.
I shrug.
“And you! You could have declined the wedding invitation. It’s not like you and Alex are that close,” she accuses pointing her finger in my face.
“Exactly right? We agreed that it wouldn't be smart for both of us to be there. Now since Gino needed to be there for Alex, all he had to say was 'please', and I would have backed out of attending the wedding altogether. Of course, he didn’t want to. He made a bet with me instead”
“A bet?" I scoff in disbelief. "You mean Giovanni brought armed guards and pulled out all the stops, risking undue exposure because he didn’t want to say ‘please’ and lose a bet?”
I nod.
“And that’s the guy you say I’ll be working for?”
“He’s great, and a gentleman on most days. Trust me, I would never have you within sighting distance of anyone that would hurt you.”
“I see. So you lost the bet then?”
I nod again. "Fortunately."
“Why, fortunately? What were his terms?” she asks, curiosity written all over her face.
“Oh, nothing serious. I only had to do anything he wanted,” I answer.
“Anything? What did he want then?”
“Just some stupid shit. He made me throw a poker game.”
When Bonnie keeps looking at me confused, I elaborate. “We—the groomsmen, I mean,—played a game of poker in his room on the morning of Alex’s wedding. He ordered me to lose the game. Which was infinitely harder than I thought because Xavier is so fucking shit at playing poker, but yeah, eventually, I managed to lose.”
“Oh, my God, you’re talking about the garter thing! So it was you and Giovanni who started it with your betting games!”
“Well, he started it,” I clarify.
She rolls her eyes. “This is too much to deal with sober Ethan Hawthorne. I’m going to need to get drunk on a big jug of orange juice.”
I laugh. She's completely stopped drinking alcohol now. I already know she'll make a wonderful mother. She's so incredibly giving. And she knows how not to treat a child. Don't even get me started on her genes and her intelligence. Suddenly I'd like nothing more than to make a few more babies with her.
I have at least a year or two to wait before we go again. Fuck
I catch her by the shoulders when she tries to leave for her juice. "Baby," I make a sweeping gesture to both computers on the desk. “Tell me, how do you feel about all this?”
“Oh, that. I feel the same way I felt when you asked me to marry you.” She shrugs nonchalantly.
“For real, Bonnie?” I should have known that she wouldn’t give me a straight answer.
“Oh, I don’t know, Harvard. Call me Siobhán, and let's find out.”