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11

STAR

Once I’d told Katina she could have the kittens and had listened to her squeal with joy amid promises I knew she’d break about looking after the admittedly cute tiny beasts, I watched Conor as he worked.

Though I was busy with a massive to-do list of my own, I couldn’t help myself.

I’d already breached The Bird’s Nest LLC’s management firm and had uncovered the location of the AG’s brothel.

I was supposed to be hacking their security so that I could snoop around for blackmail material to feed to the press once Foundry and Smythe were missing. Conor, however, wasn’t helping matters.

My concentration was shot because he was a distraction— the best kind.

His focus on breaking through the security to the AG’s office was absolute, unlike mine.

I knew the plan as well as he did and knew that most of the hacking would be on him while Troy, Dead To Me, and I would be handling the infiltration and evacuation of our marks. I could feel time ticking away as we waited for tomorrow to come.

Maybe that was what made me antsy.

Maybe that was what made me study him more.

You are mine, Star.

He’d said those words so easily, so fiercely .

My thumb ran over the cameo ring I wore and I wondered how he had claimed me so utterly while I was undeserving of him and his devotion.

I thought about the candy and the ring and the way he’d flown several times though he hated it and how he’d emptied this desk—for me. My mind skipped over his patience in bed and the way he cherished me even though I’d run away from him, even though I’d hurt him by ghosting him.

No, I didn’t deserve him, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t walk toward it in the future.

“Yes.”

The word tripped off my tongue despite there being no context.

He cast me a quick look before his attention reverted to his monitor. “Yes, what? To a steak? God, with those shoestring fries. I’d fucking kill?—”

“No.”

He stilled. “No to the shoestring fries?”

God, could I screw this up anymore?

I cleared my throat. “No. I mean. Um.” I held up my hand. “Yes, to this.”

His eyes danced off my expression and onto the ring on my hand. He rocked back in his seat and his grin was dopey as he asked, “Really?”

“I-I don’t know when?—”

He wafted a hand. “‘When’ doesn’t matter. But an answer is nice.”

Speechless, I licked my lips because I knew he meant that. I was coming to learn that he always meant what he said.

Heartburn—this fucking heartburn needed to stop.

Then, he scowled at me. “You’re not doing this because you think you’re going to get caught tomorrow, are you?”

“No. I mean, it’s a possibility, but I know you’ve got everything under control.”

Conor nodded. “Whether or not I was set up at Langley, which makes sense because that code was child’s play, my work is better than ever thanks to you.”

Thanks to you .

His words from earlier rammed their way home again— we don’t compete because there is no competition.

I had been dealing with boys my whole life, just waiting for this man to show up.

The thought settled deep in my being, straight in my soul, and I rasped, “Yeah, we’ve pushed each other to greater heights.”

That made him smile. “We have.”

“And if you think I didn’t know that, you’re nuts because I’d have been all over what you’re working on, and instead, I’m just watching you do it.”

“You trust me.”

I swallowed. “I do.”

The smile lit up his eyes this time. “How hard was that to say on a scale of one—the Erymanthian Boar—to five—the Kalydonian Boar?”

Snorting, I told him, “You’re such a nerd.”

“This shouldn’t come as a surprise by now,” he retorted.

“It was as easy as killing the Erymanthian Boar in Assassin’s Creed ,” I mumbled.

“Easy? Hmm. That’s what I like to hear.” His chair squeaked as he rocked. “I’m almost done if you want to order some food for us?”

“My hero wants steak, then he can have steak. With shoestring fries.” He chuckled as I got to my feet. “Did you check your security logs, by the way?”

“I did. I don’t have to get Denny fired.”

“No break-ins?”

“None.”

“So how the fuck did they get your code?”

“I used the bathroom when I was there. It had to be then.” He frowned at me. “I pulled the kill switch, though, so it should have deactivated their devices.

“You’re the best hacker I’ve ever met, and I don’t think you’d have been able to tear apart the code on Nimue in the amount of time they’ve had.

“They’ll only have been able to duplicate and replicate, not mess around with the inner workings of it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I wrote it in Velato.”

My brows lifted at the reference to the obliquely esoteric coding language that was nigh-on impossible to hack unless you knew the key. A key that was personal to each coder.

“That must have been boring as fuck.”

“It was but you weren’t in my life back then and I was in desperate need of a challenge.”

“Fuck, Conor, that’s the goofiest coding language—” I groaned. “You wrote it with noxxious songs in mind, didn’t you?”

I'd just bet one of my dad's songs was the key to decoding it!

“I love that you know I would.” He grinned at me. “Hey, the joys of esoteric languages is that few people ever give that much of a fuck about them.”

“True.”

“Have you heard of an emo kid who’s a hacker?”

I pulled a face. “Narrow it down.”

“Barely twenty. Her roots were auburn but she dyed her hair black.”

“Who is she?” I asked after I shook my head.

“She was the chick who was supposed to replace me as the NSA’s go-to cracker.”

“You’ll always be crackers to me, Conor,” I teased when it registered that he was pouting.

“Har-har-har,” he groused.

Amused, I just said, “You know that IDs are handles and not faces in our world.”

“It was a long shot.”

“I’m assuming you think she had something to do with all this?”

He hummed. “Would make sense.”

“If they found that, what else could they have uncovered?”

“Nothing major. I always keep that computer clean just in case they haul my ass in. It had the worm on there because I thought I might need to use it, but I had that better secured than Nimue.”

“How am I just learning this program’s name now?”

“Because I named her today.”

“Years later?”

“Better now than never,” was his pious retort.

“Why was Nimue on there?”

“Because I always run it when I’m with the NSA. Just in case shit is being said around me that I want to—” His eyes lit up. “I’m a moron, Star. You officially made me a moron.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“It’s to counteract the heartburn I give you,” he retorted, hurling his wheeled desk chair over to another desk where he started pounding on the keyboard like he was playing it with the intent to make music.

Unable to stop myself, I smiled. Then, when I realized I was smiling, I stopped. Then, when I realized I was allowed to smile around him because he wouldn’t view it as a weakness, I went back to it.

Wandering over to him, I watched the streams of code on his monitor but found myself unable to read it because it was in goddamn Velato. Still, he was at ease with it, and then, out of nowhere, a recording played:

“Fuck, what kind of language even is this?”

Conor looked at me over his shoulder.

“Can you open the program or not?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re running out of time. Do something!”

“I am doing something.” A couple moments later, the first woman rasped, “I’ll have to wade through this and see if I can make anything work.”

“Just find something usable on there. I doubt he’ll live past tonight so whatever you can find on there is the last of what he’ll be able to come up with .”

“Bitch,” Conor snarled under his breath.

“You recognize the voices?”

“Not the first one, but the second is my handler—Riggs. She knew I was in danger.”

I squeezed his shoulder in commiseration but admitted, “She was just doing her job, Conor. I’ve been in her shoes. It sucks but we don’t get a say in any of that.”

He didn’t answer, but those fingers of his got to working again.

I stood behind him, trying to be supportive even though I was entirely in the dark, then his computer screen changed and a file folder popped up.

My brows lifted at the number of files on there, absentmindedly taking note of how they were arranged in an odd manner.

“This is your storage system?” I asked.

He hummed. “I tried to stop thinking in binary and channeled quantum mechanics instead. I turned files into layers and—” He turned to me. “I can explain another day. My mind isn’t on this problem, but the one we’re trying to fix right now.”

I hummed back, not wanting to disrupt his train of thought, but at least that made sense as to why the file folder was arranged so unusually. It went deeper than files being layers…

As I watched him work, actually watched him, not from a distance, not through a webcam, in the flesh and within touching distance, I could feel my heart start to race.

It was in direct response to his intelligence.

Damn, I was in over my head here.

It wasn’t in me to make shit. I destroyed it. I waded in and rammed through it. Conor was the opposite. It was probably why he felt he’d improved since coming to know me—what he built, I tried to destroy, and he had to get better at building or faster at repairing around me.

But that his mind veered down these channels, that he’d created something so clever and with such little fanfare, impressed me like nothing else could.

And my whole being responded to it.

I could feel my pulse start to throb in different areas of my body that shouldn’t be reacting right now, not when we had other things to do. But I just knew—I needed him in me.

I needed all that genius inside me.

Filling me.

With no ado, I unfastened my pants and started shoving them down my legs. Toeing out of my boots, I gently nudged them aside then dragged my skinny jeans off so I was standing there in a jacket and tank.

When I dragged his chair away from the desk mid-keystroke, he groused, “Hey! I’m bus?—”

I knew his mind was not on topic when his eyes flared at the sight of me. I moved around him, put one knee on either side of his on the seat, then straddled him. His gaze dropped down to my pussy, then he reached forward and grabbed the hem of my tank once I’d shrugged out of my jacket.

Within seconds, I was bare and he was not.

Within seconds, I faced a brutal truth—I’d often been naked around dressed men. But this was Conor. And I refused to bring those bastards into this.

So, like I’d classified myself as being earlier, I rammed through those thoughts and instead, I urged myself to find pleasure in his expression, in his eyes, in the curve of his lips, in the feel of his hands.

He was a kid in a candy store.

His fingers dipped here and there, gaze tripping from my breasts and down to my spread pussy lips. Hunger made his jaw clench, and when he ran his fingertips through my slit and I groaned, his feral expression had me arching back and shoving my tits in his face.

His lips found my nipple, and they tugged on it, sucking and licking and nipping it, all while his fingers continued to stroke my clit.

When the digits slipped down to circle my entrance, I focused on how the butt of his wrist put pressure on the nub. I concentrated on the soft groans he made, on the scent of oranges that permeated the space between us. I focused on him rather than on me because I was broken in some parts and Conor was my glue.

I shuddered when his slick fingers retreated and the slippery tips danced around my clit.

My hips started rocking of their own volition and I didn’t even care that the chair was starting to creak—shit like that normally took me out of my headspace. No, instead, I could feel the welter of pleasure beginning to form in my core.

It was there, making me wetter, starting to burn, turning my veins molten hot.

When I knew I was wet enough, I jerked away from him and stood in front of his chair. He blinked at me, scowling at my retreat, but the scowl soon disappeared as I reached down and grabbed his zipper. He angled his hips up to facilitate me, and within moments, his dick was in my hand and the mess he made was on my palm, the pre-cum lubing him up as I turned around, presenting him with my ass. He seemed to know what I was doing because he helped me as I leaned back, settling on his lap in reverse.

When his dick was sandwiched between my thighs, I pressed the head against my clit and started working myself on it.

“Go back to what you were doing,” I told him around a gasp.

“Are you freakin’ kidding me?” he retorted, groaning as his pre-cum lubed his path, making this doubly torturous.

“No, I’m not,” I breathed. “You work or I stop.”

He stilled. “You can’t be serious.”

Not a question.

I grunted. “I am.”

“Fuck’s sake,” he mumbled under his breath as he wheeled us closer to his desk and dragged his keyboard nearer to the edge so that he could work around me.

As Velato made an appearance in front of me, the abstract language that he’d learned and the many weird and wonderful ways he’d adapted it for his own use, I registered it was my version of porn.

The lines of code were the theme, the letters and digits were the stars, and the tap of his fingers were the moans of the entertainers.

I rocked my hips from side to side, feeling the hiccup in my breathing as the ride toward pleasure moved faster than usual.

For once, it didn’t feel so out of reach. I could sense it. So close. So fucking close.

My pussy leaked onto him, making the whole thing so messy I knew he’d have to change afterward, but I didn’t give a fuck.

This was fun .

My mind was on my pleasure.

I was watching him work.

He surrounded me, his scent, his heat.

His cock provided me with the slippery lube that kept my clit reeling as it pushed me ever higher toward the peak.

When I thought I’d go mad from it, I wriggled so that his tip was against my slit. As he pierced me, the thick fullness accepted into my channel, his groan was the best sound I’d ever heard as my pussy swallowed him down inch by inch.

As I sat there, stuffed with him, his fingers moved faster on the keyboard, whereas mine clung to the armrests of his seat, nails digging into the soft leather as I breathed through the solid presence inside me.

He was thick—thicker than average, I thought. It meant when I stared down, my labia were spread apart, my clit peeping out of its hood.

For a few moments, I just studied us.

My eyes locked on our union.

But as I looked, my pussy responded in turn, and I clamped around him which made the vein at the base of his dick throb in reaction and his balls draw up.

Reaching down, I ran my fingers over the taut flesh, enjoying his second groan which morphed into a, “If you keep on doing that, I’m going to come.”

“Who said that wasn’t my end goal?” I breathed, not bothering to ride him just rubbing my clit and letting the clenching of my inner muscles torment him as he worked.

When a shockwave of pleasure rushed through me at my fast-paced fingers, he stunned the hell out of me.

One second, I was on his lap, and the next, he was snapping, "Done," and I was facedown against the desk, my elbows on the glass surface.

His first thrust, he took slow, as if waiting for me to freak out, but I squeezed him tight in greeting, which broke the reins he had on his control and had him bucking into me.

One hand against my stomach, the other he used to shove my fingers away.

As he rubbed my clit, he fucked me.

Hard enough for his monitors to shake, fast enough for his thickness to pound into parts of me that felt untouched.

I screamed again, releasing a sob as he pinched my clit, which had me surging onto my tiptoes and changing the angle entirely.

With each thrust, I felt like he was touching the hand he’d pressed to my stomach, and I writhed beneath him as he carried on.

Over and over.

Hitting that spot that made me want to scream.

His pace quickened even more, and in my ear, his harsh grunting breaths were replaced with, “Come for me, Star. My beautiful, beautiful naughty girl. So fucking tight, so fucking wet. You were born to bring me to my knees, Star. So fucking bad, so fucking good.”

A mewling cry keened from me, long and high as I shuddered through an orgasm that almost had me face-planting into the desk—that was how unawares it took me by.

I caught myself, just, as he carried on pounding that same goddamn spot, and I sagged into the desk, the cold chill of the glass sending more shockwaves through me, my feet losing purchase as I allowed my upper body to take my weight.

The next time I screamed, I knew I was going to shut down.

The darkness loomed in my vision and it was speckled red as if the tiny veins at the backs of my eyes were sparking with the electricity generated by my nerves.

When he came, his low, long groan ricocheting in my ears, I swore I could feel him fill me up. I swore that it triggered that endless darkness that had me losing all sensation, that stole me of my very self, only for it to be delivered back to me in a cascade of pleasure that was beyond anything I’d ever known before.

I didn’t black out. I was awake but not aware as he somehow arranged me so that we were back in his seat and he was softening deep inside me.

My nervous system was still sparking as if on overload, so I let him do what he wanted and just rested against him.

Just trusted him.

Just accepted that he was deserving of my faith in him.

Just loved him.

And after a few minutes, when he had his breath under control, he got back to work while I sat on his knee and he proved, yet again, that he did beat the best armchair on the market—I never wanted to leave this spot.

Ever.