Chapter 11 #2
I groan and drop my head to the counter, thankfully having the presence of mind to push my bowl out of the way first. Because that’s really the only way this could get any worse, right? If I landed face-first in a bowl of stew?
“Uh,” Alistair says, and part of me notes with vicious satisfaction that he sounds completely flustered. “I thought you were going to the office?”
Really, Al? You can’t come up with anything better than that? For a desperate moment, I hope really hard that he didn’t hear anything incriminating. How long was he standing there? Maybe he just came in at the end and thinks we were talking about someone else.
“Percy called. Since Sam’s awake, he wanted to know if we could set up operations here. He didn’t say much, but I think there might have been a security breach.”
I sit up so fast, my head spins. “A security breach?” I whirl around to face him. “At the office? By who? What did they get?”
“I don’t know yet,” he replies patiently. “Percy was brief, which could mean he was in a hurry, or it could mean that our cell phone encryption has been compromised. I won’t know more until I can talk to him in person.”
The rest of his words sink in. “He wants to set up operations here?” I look around. “It’s not exactly spacious. I mean, it is for me to live in, but if the whole team plus equipment is here…” It’ll be really crowded.
“Sam,” he says, “I’ve told you exactly what I know.
Percy wants everyone to meet here in two hours, and he specifically said I shouldn’t come back to the office before then, which is a pretty big indicator of a security breach of some kind.
So all we can do is wait to see what he tells us in two hours. ”
I’m still processing that when Alistair’s phone chimes. He pulls it out of his pocket, and his face goes grim when he sees the screen. “Jim,” he says, then looks at me. “He wants to know if I’ll go fishing with him after work.”
I gasp.
“What?” Gideon asks, crossing the room toward us.
“It’s code,” Alistair explains. “One time, we all got insanely drunk and decided we should have a team code in case we were infiltrated by body snatching aliens.”
“What?” Gideon asks again, and this time he sounds a little incredulous.
“It’s better not to know,” I tell him. “But I think this is a pretty clear sign that things aren’t right at the office.” I shake my head. “What the fuck could have happened between this morning and now?”
“I’ll meet up with Jim and find out,” Alistair offers. He holds his phone out to me. “Unlock it, please.”
I take it and punch in the code.
Try again.
Crap. “What was the passcode again?” I must have gotten it wrong.
“498… ohhhh.”
I look up. “What?”
“Uh… 498652.” There’s a half-amused, half-pitying expression on his face that concerns me, because who knows what’s going on in his head?
Shaking my head, I punch the digits in. I could have sworn those were the ones I put in before, but—
Try again .
I stare at the screen. What the—
Oh.
Oh, fuck .
Tossing Alistair his phone, I look around frantically for mine and spot it on the coffee table. I practically shove Gideon out of the way to get to it.
And yep, sure enough, my code doesn’t work. Nor does my fingerprint. And since I don’t have the latest phone, facial recognition is not an option. “Fuck!”
“Yeah. Sucks, right?” Alistair commiserates, holding his own phone up to his face.
I glare at him. Before facial recognition, shifters were forced to rely on old-school cell phones rather than smartphones.
A lot of shifters still have to, since the latest generation smartphones aren’t exactly cheap.
I’m lucky, because I need a smartphone for work purposes, so I can claim the cost back, but that still leaves me unable to access my phone without help until I can get my hands on the latest model.
“What’s wrong?” Gideon asks, coming to stand by me. I shove my phone in his direction and recite the code.
“Could you unlock that for me, please?” I’ll disable the passcode until I can upgrade.
Comprehension crosses his face, and he bites back a smile as he unlocks the device and hands it back. “Ask Andrew to grab you a new one,” he suggests. “He’s out at the latest site and probably needs to pass a mall on his way here.”
“I couldn’t ask him to do that,” I protest, quickly turning off the phone’s security. “These things are expensive.”
Gideon shrugs. “I’ll ask him then. Don’t worry, Andrew can afford it, and it’s not like he’s not going to get the money back.”
Alistair interrupts before I can reply, holding up his phone so I can see a text string. “I’m going to meet Jim,” he says. “I’ll keep you in the loop.”
“Be careful,” I warn, following him to the door.
“I will,” he promises. “You too. Don’t open the door to strangers.”
I roll my eyes, because come on. I’m not an idiot. “Gideon’s here,” I remind him, and he nods.
“That’s the only reason I’m willing to leave.” He walks out and shuts the door before I can retort, and I glare at it.
“I’m not incompetent,” I declare… to the door. “I’m nearly forty years old. I’ve been looking after myself since I was fourteen.”
“Nobody doubts your competence,” Gideon says from behind me, and I jump and whirl around, despite knowing that he was there.
“But until we know more, we have to assume that our enemies would do anything to get you back. You’re valuable, and that means you get protected.
” He lifts a hand and clasps the back of my neck.
“You also underwent a traumatic experience this morning. The people who care about you are allowed to be worried.”
And just like that, I’m hard.
Seriously.
He said people care about me and put his hand on my neck, and my dick took that to mean “let’s party!”
This whole second puberty thing is getting old fast.
Worse… my face is getting hot. I’m blushing . And there’s no way Gideon can miss that. Which reminds me that he walked in while I was telling Alistair how much I wanted to do him.
He must be able to read my mind, because he smiles at me, and it’s a wicked, knowing kind of smile, the kind of smile that promises sex and sin and makes my dick so hard, it could pound nails into concrete.
I swallow hard. “Uh, listen—”
“What you were saying before,” he interrupts, “about hot sex being doable?”
So he definitely heard, then. Great. Does that mean he also heard the part about me wanting us to be boyfriends, and if so, can I just die of embarrassment now?
Or, judging by the way my heartbeat is speeding up as he leans in, I might pass out due to arrythmia.
His mouth is on mine in the next breath, before I fully realize what he intends, and then I don’t care.
This isn’t our first kiss, but it’s a fuck of a lot hotter than the last one.
Before I know it, I’ve got my legs wrapped around his waist and I’m being pressed against the door while we devour each other’s mouths.
An odd sense of déjà vu comes over me. We did this last time too—me against the door with my hands all over him and his mouth on mine. I go harder than concrete just remembering, and he makes a sound in his throat and undulates his hips slowly.
I go off like a firecracker.
As reality seeps back in, I hide my face against his neck. Holy shit. I’m thirty-nine years old, not thirteen. I haven’t come that quickly since… puberty.
You know. The human one.
I’m stewing in my embarrassment and wondering how I’m going to disentangle myself and then avoid ever having to look Gideon in the eye again when I feel his breath against my ear and he murmurs, “It’s so fucking hot watching you come.”
And just like that, I’m hard again.
“Mmm.” He moves his hips again, the friction of his dick alongside mine amazing even through our clothes.
“Shifter stamina is much better than human. Although…” He slides a hand up to the back of my neck and pulls my head up so I have to look at him.
“…even shifter stamina isn’t quite as good as demon. ”
I swear, it’s only immense self-control and the knowledge that I’ve embarrassed myself enough for one day that keeps me from coming right this second— again . Instead, I close the scant inches between us and bite his lower lip.
“I need to get out of these pants. Wanna help?”
That wicked smile is back. He eases away from me, and I let my feet drop to the floor.
Within seconds, we’re both naked, and although it’s a relief to get my sticky pants off, it’s even better to be skin-to-skin with all of him.
We’re kissing again, not quite as urgently as before, but it’s still arousing.
I love touching him—all that glorious smooth skin—and I slide my hands up his body and into his hair.
At the first brush of my fingers over his horns, he jerks and breaks the kiss, gasping.
“What?” I ask. Did I hurt him somehow?
“Sensitive.” He sucks in a deep breath and stares up at the ceiling for a second.
Sensitive? What—
I grin. “Wait… are you telling me that your horns are an erogenous zone?”
He clears his throat. “Not exactly. They’re a point of sensory input—their purpose is to allow us to teleport safely. Sometimes that makes them sensitive to touch.”
“Sensitive good? Or does it hurt?” I don’t want to hurt him. Well, not right now, anyway.
Color flares along his cheekbones. “It… doesn’t hurt.”
“So, if I was to do this…” I reach up and lightly stroke a single fingertip along one horn from base to tip. “…that doesn’t hurt?”
He shudders hard. “No.” The word seems to get stuck in his throat.
“What about this?” I do the same thing to the other horn. He’s panting now and visibly breaks out in a sweat.
“It… doesn’t hurt.”
“And this?” I close a hand tightly around each horn, covering as much surface area as I can. Gideon makes a sound halfway between a groan and a yell, and the next thing I know, I’m on my back on the floor with his mouth devouring mine.