Page 26 of Puck

I bumped his knee with mine. “You never answered what you meant about Layla and the others wondering if it’ll stick between us.”

He let his head hang backward with a groaning chuckle. “You really don’t let shit go, do you?”

“Nope. I’m a bulldog about getting what I want.”

He sat up again, extending his arm along the back of the bench, behind me; his arm wasn’t touching me, so it didn’t precisely count as beingaround me, but it was close enough that my heart pitter-pattered, which was stupid and ridiculous. “Well, you see, the company I work for, Alpha One Security, or as we call it, A-One-S—we started out as six confirmed bachelors. Then Harris and Layla hooked up during that Brazil snafu and just sort of stayed together. Then Thresh went and snagged himself Lola, and now it seems Duke has somehow managed to score himself a fuckin’ celebrity girlfriend, because of course that pretty fuck would end up dating a hot famous chick. So the going theory is that by the time shit finally settles down, all of us will be paired off. And those girls are figuring I’m next, with you.”

“And what are you thinking?”

He let out a long breath and tapped his cigar to knock loose a chunk of ash. “I don’t know yet. A bit soon to be putting labels on our shit when I ain’t even kissed you yet.”

“You know what I can’t figure out?”

He eyed me. “Whassat?”

“Sometimes you talk exactly like a man with a PhD, and sometimes you talk like a foul-mouthed redneck.”

Puck’s laugh was a loud, genuine bark of amusement. “That’s ’cuz I’m one hundred percent both, sweetheart.”

“Oh. I guess that would explain it.”

He grinned at me around his cigar. “That’s me, Puck Lawson, a remarkably well-educated redneck with a potty mouth.”

“Is your given name really Puck?” I asked.

I wasn’t ready to ask him why he’d said he hadn’t kissed meyet—mostly because I knew the answer, and I wasn’t ready for him to kiss me—and I also wasn’t ready to know how he’d managed to bang a virgin, nor was I ready to share any part of my sexual history with him.

He grinned. “Colbie-baby, the answer to that is something I have never revealed to anyone. Nor will I.”

I frowned. “Why?”

A shrug. “Personal choice. Puck’s my name, and that’s all anyone needs to know.”

“Does the military know your given name?”

Puck’s grin was mischievous, his eyes twinkling. “Handy part of working with one of the world’s most skilled hackers is that he can take care of pesky things like records.”

I tilted my head. “Who do you know that’s a hacker?”

“One of the guys on the team. His name is Lear Winter.”

“And he can erase military records?”

Puck snorted. “He wanted a job with NSA when he graduated from MIT, so he hacked into the director’s private computer and left his résumé.”

“Holy shit.” I eyed Puck. “So if I wanted my vagrancy and possession arrests to go away . . .”

“Shit,Icould do that,” Puck said. “Those give you problems at work?”

I shrugged. “It has in the past, yes. I love my current job, but I would like to advance, and having a police record is troublesome, as you might imagine. I can usually explain the arrests, but it’s annoying. You live homeless as long as I did, you’re pretty much going to get arrested for vagrancy at least once.”

Puck chewed on his cigar as he eyed me. “I can take care of that for you when we get back to the States.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Easy as pie.” He smirked at me. “It’ll cost you, though.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Figures.” I gave him a sarcastic, sidelong stare. “Let me guess—you’ll want a blowjob or something.”