Chapter 11
Michael
I can’t believe my good luck. Arya has actually agreed to work with me! She’s still pissed, I can tell, but she’s cooperating. With her in my corner, I can get all this done in no time, and I’ll get the chance to make it up to her for following Dad’s order to steal from her.
Now, I just have to figure out how.
I wonder if she has any idea how sexy she is. Maybe a little. She’s not the type to manipulate people with her body, but her body is amazing all on its own, and she knows how to show it off without looking too obvious.
I want to think it’s deliberate and that she has dressed like this to catch my eye. I hope so because my eye has been definitely caught. The black silk of her dress clings to her every curve, whispering against her thighs as she moves around. I can just glimpse the lacy top of her stockings or the faint gleam of a garter clip when she shifts in the right ways.
I’ve been sitting here with my cock regularly going hard from thinking about the possibilities since I first laid eyes on her an hour ago. It’s fucking with my focus. I’m enjoying it anyway.
“I’ve been gathering server-access records for my family for the date of the heist, the day after, and the days leading up to it.” I bring out my laptop and set it in front of my seat next to her. She’s at my big, heavily carved Chinese dining table, one of the few antiques in the place. She’s still on her first beer while I’m on my third. I guess she’s not much of a drinker.
I bend over the laptop and bring up the access records. “Twenty family members living at the mansion, plus all my dad’s men, plus the extended family, plus higher-level staff. It’s just a little under two hundred people. We need to find out who was online during the heists and what they were doing.”
She bends forward slightly to look at my screen as I scroll through some examples, face thoughtful. The extra glimpse of her cleavage makes me lose my breath for a moment. Does she have any idea what she’s doing to me? She seems oblivious, but the longer she stays here working with me, the more desperately I want to fuck her.
I’ll get there. I’m even more determined now to seduce her than I’ve ever been. And now, even though she might be pissed at me at the moment, I have the chance to do more than make things up to her. I have the chance to finally have her in my bed, and that is worth risking a lot for.
Right now, though, I need to help us make some actual progress on finding whoever screwed both of us over. I focus back on the documents we’re looking at while she frowns and pages through them all for a second time.
“Have you caught something?” I ask, intrigued that she’s reacting like this so quickly.
“I may have. Or rather, I’ve caught the lack of something. There are absolutely no outside logins to your family’s subnet on the night that money was taken from you.”
I frown thoughtfully. “You’re saying that whoever did this physically logged onto the family net from home? My parents’ home?”
“It was very early in the morning. No remote logins from any family members. No remote logins from anywhere. I’m double-checking everything, but you’ll need to see if someone on your system covered up a remote login.” She looks up at me as I sit beside her, her gaze a touch hot. Or is that all me?
“If they did, you have someone with admin access running around your system. If they didn’t, yes, someone physically logged in at one of your family computers, stole the money, and transferred it away.”
I shake my head. “Gorgeous, there’s no way. The guards would have caught anyone trying to sneak in.”
“Not if they are a family member or were invited in by one.” She looks at me pointedly, and I feel a cold finger of anxiety run down my back.
“I have trouble buying that. Nobody in my family that I have beef with knows one end of a computer from the other.” I give her a confident smile, but she stares back at me solemnly.
“People can surprise you. But let’s just see where the evidence goes.” She concedes easily, calmly. She has every right to be catty about now, but she’s not. It only intrigues me more.
“I understand, and you’re right.” I brush my hand against the back of hers as I coax the pointer over to a link. “The rest of the files had no external logins either for that time period?”
She sucks air lightly. I look up and see her startled expression. I wonder if it’s from me touching her or from her liking it.
“No,” she murmurs, her voice pitched a little lower and smoother now. “No. Only a few dozen were logged in. Maybe not even actively. I’ll have to check through.”
“Could one of your staff members have stolen a family login?” she adds, forcing herself to get back on track. I have to fight a grin. One little bit of contact, and she’s visibly thrown off-kilter. She must be starving for the good stuff.
I wonder if she’s ever gotten an orgasm from a man. It depresses me sometimes how few of my female lovers have before me. How do guys expect women to keep wanting to go to bed with them when they don’t even make it enjoyable? I just don’t get it.
But if that’s been her experience, it’ll be even easier for me to catch her interest... and keep her coming back for more.
The hardest part is breaking the ice. Timing it right, making sure she’s in the right mood, making sure she’s already flirting back. Those first few steps can be a little uncertain and uncomfortable, or they can feel like disarming a bomb with an unfamiliar design.
Right now, I’m still proving myself to Arya. I know it. I know her guard has to be up around me because she’s pissed. Five million dollars pissed. Horrifying levels of family drama pissed.
She’s not the type to just let that slide because I give her some good sex and make sure she gets her money back. She’s going to want something real to compensate her for all the trouble, and if I don’t give it willingly, she’s going to take it.
She stops going through the records and glances up at me. “Penny for your thoughts.”
“Just thinking about what you said about the perpetrator being a member of staff,” I lie with my dick still at attention. I am definitely going to need to stay seated for a while because, otherwise, when I get up, she’s going to get an eyeful.
“Not the only possibility. Your perp could be anyone from family to a contractor visiting the house. Maybe a friend or boyfriend of one of your siblings.”
I frown. That rings a bell in the back of my head, but I’m too distracted by the sunbeam playing in Arya’s hair to recall why. “So, you think someone may have social-engineered their way in by using one of my siblings as a one-night stand, or—”
“Or someone could have done the same thing to you.” She looks me in the eyes for just a beat too long, and I feel my throat tighten. “Have you brought any lovers home lately?”
“No, I’m single, and I don’t like dating around.”
She blinks and peers at me thoughtfully. “You’re not a womanizer? But you’ve got a hell of a reputation...”
I scoff. “Nah. One of my exes is a terrible gossip and vindictive. She spread that rumor. I think she’s the one currently telling everyone that I stole that money from the family myself.”
She winces. “That’s insane. What is her problem?”
“I didn’t want to stay with her cheating ass after I caught her.” That came out a little grimmer-sounding than I wanted. I smile ironically.
She blinks. “Why is it always the ones who are clearly in the wrong who hold the biggest grudges?”
I laugh. “Beats the hell out of me. But it’s definitely true.”
“So, I’m still not seeing anything anomalous in these logs. I’d need to have a look at any administrative changes done during that time period.” She smiles up at me almost apologetically, and I feel a tingle run down my belly and into my groin.
“That’s fine. I’ll pull all that up and see what we can find.” I don’t know which idea bothers me more: that someone social-engineered their way into our family home, that someone in the household pulled all of this, or that someone I don’t know now has admin privileges and was able to cover their tracks.
I start working, but I’m distracted by the musky scent of her perfume. She’s leaning close. It’s fucking killing me how much I want to touch her.
“So, you said you’re single,” she murmurs, her voice half-flirty and half-speculative. “Has it been a while?”
“Long enough for me to start thinking about not being single.” I smile back at her a little slyly. “Why do you ask? Taking a personal interest?”
Her smile makes my skin warm with desire. “Maybe. Though I noticed you haven’t asked if I’m single.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Are you?” She better be, after all of this. My God. My heart is pounding like I just ran a marathon.
“For a while now, yeah.” Her smile goes from sly and flirty to a little tight and forced. “Had a boyfriend. My mom meddled. She’s always scaring them off by nagging at them to propose.”
“Jesus.” I laugh in spite of myself. “I’ll need to remember to watch out for that if we ever get together.”
Both her eyebrows go up. “That’s a big ‘if.’ You’d have a lot of trust to win back to win me over.” But she’s smiling a little.
“I swear, all that work would be worth it.” I draw a steady breath that doesn’t do its job. “God, you’re beautiful,” I mutter, staring down at her.
She stops short and gives me a lopsided little smile that makes me instantly hard. “Are we working or flirting, Mr. Rossi?” she teases me softly.
My breath catches in my throat. She’s into it. She’s into me.
“Every damn time I look at you, I want to throw everything aside and make love to you,” I say honestly. “I’ve been dealing with that for a while. If I need to set that aside to get work things done and get our money back, I’ll do it. But it’s not what I want to do.”
She lifts an eyebrow slightly again, but that sexy smirk doesn’t budge. “Well, that’s a lot more honest than I expected,” she teases.
I let out a little groan and get out of my seat. She stands up as well, and I turn to her, breathing. “Do you think I’m kidding?”
She moves a little closer to me, making my breath catch again. “Oh, I know you’re not. I’ve seen how you look at me. The question is, what are we going to do about this?”
Her voice has a low, sexy growl at the bottom of it that makes my mouth go dry.
“What do you want to do about it?” I challenge, moving into her personal space. Her lips part, she draws a shaky breath, and I know I’ve got her.
Then, she kisses me, and I know she’s got me.