Page 40

Chapter 40

Ethan

Maybe it was a bad idea to have Ava sit in my lap.

We’re both focused on working together in my home office, trying to find out who this spy is. We’ve been talking about it, and decided that trying to find evidence wasn’t going anywhere.

All of us have been working on it, of course, but Ava especially has been searching everything with a fine-toothed comb. I feel like we have to drag her away from the papers so she’ll eat and sleep. I’m not complaining about distracting her with sex. Far from it. But I’ve worried about her being so fueled by her guilt.

Once we determined that just searching for information wasn’t going to work, we decided that we’re going to try a new method.

We’ll set a trap.

Ava’s worked with me and we’ve set up a sting operation. I sent a company-wide announcement that we’re making a slight change to the heart-monitoring system in the watch due to an internal error.

What nobody in the company knows is that they’ve all gotten a slightly different pathway to access this new schematic.

It’s only a minor difference in the meaningless numbers in the code at the top of the new schematic. It looks like it means something, but it’s really just window dressing. We then set up an alarm system for any time someone accesses the schematics, and we’re monitoring Marcus’s own company announcements.

We’ll know, from the difference in that coding at the top of the schematic, who exactly the mole in our company is. Marcus will include that specific sequence of numbers in his announcement, and we’ll have a ping from whoever accessed the schematic.

It’s a classic espionage trick the government has used a few times, usually to catch someone leaking information to the press by giving multiple people each a slightly different document. As soon as this spy makes a move, we’ll know who it was.

Unfortunately, I’ve made the decision to have Ava in my lap while we do all this, and she’s proving to be a hell of a distraction.

I’m really not looking forward to the day I’ll have to be in the office all the time again. I know that Ava is going to have her own life in the shelter as well. But I love being able to have her with us all the time, getting to cuddle her and touch her constantly.

Right now, she’s perched in my lap, the touching soothing both her and me. She’s definitely past her heat now, but we’ve all gotten used to being able to be physical with her, not even in a sexual way, just in the constant touching.

Of course, there is the sexual aspect to it, as well.

Ava is perched on my lap so that she can see the laptop screen as well, while she works on her tablet. I try to focus on monitoring the schematics for pings, but every time she shifts, her ass presses against my cock.

It’s maddening.

I want to grab her hips and grind against that sweet ass of hers until I bite her shoulder and come in my pants. I can feel myself getting hard as she shifts unconsciously on my lap, the natural minute movements of her body turning into a terrible tease.

Focus, Ethan, come on. Sex is fun, but it isn’t as important as finding out who’s doing this to our company. Someone has betrayed us and is threatening all of our work and all that we stand for, and I can’t allow it.

But it just. Keeps. Happening.

I wrap my arm around her waist and haul her closer to me, kissing slowly along her neck. Nothing too obscene. Just light, feathery kisses up and down her sweet-smelling skin.

At first, she tries to ignore me and keep concentrating. I can feel how hard she’s working to not let me win this little game we’ve entered into. But her fingers tremble as she tries to hold the tablet, as she tries to use the touch screen to scroll through documents. Tiny gasps escape from between her plush lips before she can stop them.

“Ethan,” she whispers, and that’s when I know I’ve got her. “W-we need to concentrate. It could be any minute.”

“You’re absolutely right,” I agree graciously.

I stop and rest my hand high up on her thigh. She’s taken to wearing these lovely short skirts and dresses that I picked out for her. I hoped she’d like them, since they do such a great job of showing off her body.

I’ve noticed she started getting into them more as her heat subsided. I think that she needed the confidence boost that came from us showing her just how attractive we find her. After so long hiding who she is, including her body, now she gets to revel in it and celebrate herself.

I’m really proud of her and how far she’s come. Watching Ava become more and more confident is the greatest reward I could hope for. We all want our Omega to be happy with who she is and confident in herself. She’s an amazing person, and she should know it.

Of course, now the downside to this is that she’s damn distracting all the time. She’s cute as hell in her yellow skirt and pale blue blouse. She looks like she stepped off the cover of a magazine. But it’s a bit less cute, and hell of a lot more tempting, when she’s on my lap and I can push my hand up under her skirt to rest it on her bare thigh.

Ava shudders, but I focus back on the laptop. I just stay like that, letting her grow increasingly desperate from the tease of my hand so close to where she wants it.

Finally, she cracks. “Ethan… please…”

“Please what?” I ask, making myself sound as confused as possible. “I’m focusing on work like you said.”

Ava deliberately grinds her ass back against me, and my cock pulses with need. Fuck I want her so fucking badly.

“Oh?” I stroke her thigh. “Is my little Omega desperate for that nice, thick Alpha knot? Is that what you want?”

Ava squirms. “Y-yes.”

“Is that why you’re being so naughty and distracting me during work?” I kiss her neck again. “You know it’s your fault distracting me. You with that sweet ass right up against my cock. You knew exactly what you were doing to me, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Ava admits in a whisper.

“What do you want, baby? I want to hear you say it.”

“I—I want your cock.”

“Just my cock?” I kiss up her neck to her ear, scraping my teeth over the lobe. “You don’t want my nice thick knot, too? You don’t want me to bend you over this desk? Or, even better—I can just keep you on my lap and bounce you up and down on my cock until my knot is nice and snug inside you.”

Ava moans, writhing. “Yes, yes, yes, Ethan—Ethan please—”

“I want you to say what you want. Go on, gorgeous.”

“I want you to f…” Ava’s voice trails off as we both jolt, my laptop and her tablet ringing with an alarm.

“Christ, who knew it would be so loud,” I mutter, quickly silencing the alarm as Ava fumbles to turn hers off.

As much as I hate to be interrupted when I’m about to dirty talk my Omega to a sweet orgasm before I fuck her, all the energy I just had for lust is now immediately diverted into adrenaline as I open up the ping that just went off.

My heart is no longer racing because of desire, but for a completely different reason.

Ava and I peer together at the information. “Looks like it was someone from research and development,” she notes. “They went to access fake schematic number seven.”

I pull up the employee ID to see who it is. Ah, crap. “That’s Tracy. Why would she do this?”

Ava looks at the photo of Tracy. Tracy’s been with us for a few years. She’s a Beta with delicate features and light red hair. I’ve always thought her a bit timid, but I liked her. She’s done great work with the team.

Now she’s turned around and become a spy for Marcus. For at least a few weeks, if not longer.

Ava sighs and settles back against my chest, but not like she’s relaxing. More like she’s seeking comfort. She feels stiff in my arms.

I wrap my arms around her and squeeze. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

She gestures at the screen. “I just feel like I should’ve guessed it would be a woman.”

Ah . “Ava…”

She sets her tablet aside on the table. “He’s good at manipulating people and making you think he’s wonderful. She’s probably told him everything while they were in bed together and he just made her feel like she was the most special person in the world.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” I take her chin in my fingers and turn her so that she’s now sideways on my lap, facing me. “You know that we would do anything to erase him from your life, even your memories if we could.”

Ava smiles. “You’re so sweet.” She kisses me gently. “I hope you know how much I appreciate you. All of you.”

I squeeze her tightly, kissing her cheek. It is tragic, the idea that Marcus seduced and controlled another woman and convinced her to spy for him. But that’s not our problem. Tracy can sort out her own life. She still committed corporate espionage, still stole from us and spied on us. She still broke our trust.

“Look, gorgeous.” I point at the screen. “You did it. We did it. We found the mole. And now we’re going to make that bastard pay for it.”

Ava looks at me, her eyes luminous, and an almost disbelieving smile on her face.

“You’re right,” she whispers. “We did. We found the mole. We got our proof!”

I kiss her and rock her back and forth, the two of us smiling as we rest our foreheads together.

Marcus is going down .