He licked and sucked my clit gently as his arms kept me lifted off the bed. He moved down and thrust his tongue inside me and I moaned as I clutched the blanket. He moved up again, licking me the entire way like a delicious ice cream cone he couldn’t get enough of. He kissed my clit lightly, using his lips and tongue to do things no man had ever done to me before. Just as I was about to come, he jammed his cock into me.
“Oh, my God!” I cried.
“Oh, fuck. You’re so fucking hot.”
He pulled out and flipped me onto my stomach. He pressed his chest against my back and I shivered as he kissed the back of my shoulder and lifted my leg as he slid into me from behind.
“What I said earlier,” he said, as his lips moved up my shoulder to the back of my neck. “What I meant to say is… I love you.”
I turned my head to look at him as he sank slowly in and out of me. His face was not the face of a man who expected me to say anything in return—but I did. “I love you, too.”
“How did it go? I want every fucking detail.”
Milo was dressed in the usual gray Armani suit with the usual black tie. One thing he had on Luke was his fashion sense. The man dressed better than I did. He sat across from me at La Parilla Mexican restaurant with his ankle crossed over his knee as he leaned back in his chair, completely at ease with himself. He sipped his forty-dollar glass of top-shelf tequila as I contemplated my options.
I could hand over Josh’s phone and secure my career with NeoSys. I could ensure that my parents would never go hungry and maybe I could even afford to get my mother a therapist, which she refused to do after my brother’s suicide. I could pay for the best treatment money could buy if my father did indeed have cancer. Or I could tell Milo I didn’t find anything and tomorrow I could pretend to find Josh’s phone on Luke’s boat.
“It was just a bunch of geeks sitting around, getting shit-faced, and telling jokes about binary code.”
“They didn’t say anything about Blaze?”
The waitress arrived at our table and set our plates of fajitas in front of us. I grabbed my fork and immediately began digging into my food.
“Hello, Brina? I asked you a fucking question? Did they talk about Blaze?”
“I don’t know,” I said, through a mouthful of food. “Maybe… they might have. I couldn’t really keep track of everything. It’s as if they have some kind of code of silence around this thing.”
Milo leaned over his plate, practically getting in my face. “Of course, they do! They signed a fucking nondisclosure agreement. That doesn’t mean they don’t talk about it amongst themselves.”
“Well, I’m not one of them!”
“Your job is to be one of them.”
I set my fork down and wiped my mouth with my napkin. “They never talk about it in front of me. Even when they were drunk, they were unbreakable. I didn’t find anything.”
“Are you sure you’re not getting too close to this guy?”
“What? I’m not stupid, Milo. I know what’s at stake here.”
He glared at me with his dark eyes and it took all my willpower not to look away.
“Are you going to tell Kip to take me off this assignment?”
“Is that what you want?”
I stared at my bottle of beer and my eyes followed the drop of condensation as it slid down the bottle, and the memory of Luke and I making love as the rain tapped a relentless beat on the deck above us came back to me. I didn’t know if what I had with Luke was real. I didn’t know if he was stringing me along to see if I would actually follow through with this plan. I didn’t know if he really had no idea why I was there, though I found that hard to believe.
What I did know was that I was in far too deep to destroy what Luke and I had. I would rather lose my career and have my heart broken, then throw Luke to the NeoSys wolves.
But what I wanted didn’t matter anymore.
“No. I want this assignment. I just need some more time.”
More time to figure out if I could bury this desire, this addiction long enough to put my family’s needs before my own.
“They’re announcing Blaze at the developers’ conference in six weeks. I’m going to ask Kip to give you one more week. If you don’t deliver by then, I’m going to recommend he pulls you out ASAP.”
“I understand.”
“And, Brina,” he began, his eyes softening. “I know you think you need this for your family, but I think you need it more for yourself. You won’t be able to live with yourself if you let them down.”
I stared at my plate of food and tried not to let my emotions get the best of me. “Milo, with all due respect, you don’t give a shit what I need. You’re just waiting for me to fuck this up so you can sweep in and save the day.”
He leaned back in his chair again and took another sip of his drink. “You’re right. I want your job, but you’re wrong about me not giving a shit.” He gazed at me across the table looking like a fucking high roller at a poker table: drink in hand, poker face, oozing confidence. “I know you’ll do the right thing. You always do.”
I walked into the office the following Monday determined to get this mission back on track. I couldn’t keep giving in to these urges. I had to break it off with Luke.
I set my purse on my chair behind the reception desk, Janice’s old chair, and made my way to Luke’s office. I knocked on the door and it opened on its own. I entered and found him sitting at his desk with the face of a young Asian man on his computer screen.
“Okay, just package the code and send it to me over the network. I’ll take a look at it. Thanks for the heads up, John.” He tapped the screen and John’s face disappeared. “Good morning, gorgeous. Come here.”
I wanted nothing more than to go to him, but I had to stick to my plan. “I need to talk to you.”
“Uh-oh. Sounds serious. Is this about what I said last night?”
I took a seat in one of the chairs in front of his desk and he pointed his remote at the office door to close us in.
I took a deep breath before I spoke. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“Hey, don’t let this get awkward. If you don’t feel the same way, that’s fine. We can slow it down.”
I tried to swallow the lump forming in my throat, but it only made my head ache as the pain built up in my face, stinging my eyes.
“I don’t want to slow it down,” I said, trying to keep my eyes on his, but my gaze kept darting to the computer screen every time I lost my nerve. “I… I think we should probably… just keep our relationship on a professional level from here on out.”
Our eyes met and I could feel the mixture of disappointment and anger building inside him with every breath he took. He cocked one eyebrow as he turned to look out the wall of windows on my right.
“Is this your decision or did someone else put you up to this?”
My breath caught in my chest. He knew about my meeting with Milo yesterday.
“What do you mean? Why would somebody tell me to do this?”
“I mean, your mom or your dad. Did they tell you to stop seeing me?”
The penetrating glare in his eyes did not match this innocuous insinuation and I was once again overcome with a strong sense that he knew what I was up to.
“I haven’t spoken to my parents about you.”
“You haven’t?” He appeared somewhat surprised and a bit disappointed.
“No. Should I?”
“I don’t know. I thought you would want to tell them about your new job since you are supporting them.”
“How do you know that?”
One side of his mouth curled up in a devious half-smile. “Brina, you’re working for the richest, most powerful nerd in America. Did you really think there was anything I wouldn’t find in your background check?”
My heart thumped in my ears and pulsated in my fingertips. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”
“Brina, come here.”
“Why?”
/> “Because I’m your boss and I’m asking you nicely to please come here.”
“It doesn’t sound like you’re asking me nicely.”
“Brina.”
I stood from the chair and rounded the desk. He patted his lap and I took a seat. He swung my legs over him and wrapped his arms around my waist. Just being near him changed the energy in the room and suddenly I couldn’t resist the urge to rest my head on his shoulder. He kissed my forehead then tilted my chin up so I was facing him.
“I’m not trying to manipulate you. Do you believe me?”
I nodded and he kissed me tenderly and slowly. I wanted to melt into him. I wanted everything to fade to black then wake up in a future where NeoSys didn’t exist. He pulled away and kissed the tip of my nose.
“If you want to keep our relationship professional, I can do that. It will be difficult, but I’ll do it, if that’s what you truly want.”
How could I resist him? It wasn’t fair. I had no chance at succeeding in this environment. Luke was much better at this than I was. I should get out now while I could still salvage my position at NeoSys.
He gazed down at me with those icy, aquamarine eyes and I knew I didn’t stand a chance. I might as well sign my parents up for food stamps now.
“I’m just scared of losing myself. I’m scared that the second I let my guard down, this is all going to come crashing down… like my brother and my parents. I turned my back on my brother for five minutes and now he’s gone. I moved out of the house and my dad lost his job. And now my mom is a nervous wreck and my dad might have cancer and I… I’m just really fucking scared.”
Something changed in his face and I feared I’d said too much. This was too heavy. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “I didn’t realize you were dealing with all that. Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”
“I’m telling you now. Is this too much?”
He shook his head. “No. I just want you to know you can talk to me about this stuff anytime.”
He was holding something back. There was a reason he wished I had told him this yesterday. I suddenly got the feeling that the phone I found in the restroom was not left there by accident.
“Did Josh ever find his phone?” I asked. I wanted to see the reaction on his face.
He scrunched his eyebrows together as he turned to me. “I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”
“You asked me to order him a new one. I just wanted to make sure he hadn’t found it before I do that.”
“Oh, right. No, I think it’s still missing.”
“Aren’t you going to do something about that? Isn’t there some kind of protocol when important stuff goes missing?”
“It’s just a phone, Brina. There’s nothing important on his phone that can’t be recovered by syncing a new phone with the data backup on his computer.”
I thought of the NeoSys app I’d found on there and realized Luke was either lying to me or he didn’t know that Josh had a suspiciously named app on his phone. Something told me that there was nothing Luke didn’t know about his programmers, just as there was nothing he didn’t know about me.
I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before I leaned over and whispered in his ear. “I don’t want to keep our relationship professional.” I slid off his lap and spread his legs as I knelt in front of him. I smiled at the look of uncertainty on his face as I undid his belt. “I love you, Luke.”
PART THREE: LINKED
1
The banging on the door startled me awake. I blinked at the glowing green numbers on my alarm clock: 1:13 a.m. Who the hell was at my door at this hour on a Tuesday?
I tossed the covers off and slid out of bed as the banging continued. “I’m coming!” I shouted from the bedroom, as I slipped my arms into my robe.
I couldn’t see anything. I grasped the breakfast bar that separated the living room from the kitchen and used it to guide me toward the front door.
“Who is it?” I shouted over the relentless pounding.
“It’s me, bitch! Open this door!”
I unlocked the door and my best friend Jill shoved me aside and barged into my living room. I flipped the light switch on the wall and the living room was flooded with light, revealing a secondhand sofa, an LCD television, and a laptop; the entire contents of my living room.
“What the fuck happened to you?” she shrieked, as she stood in the middle of the room, arms outstretched, mouth hanging open.
“I’m sorry I haven’t called. I’ve been busy.” I took a seat on a stool at the breakfast bar.
“Yeah, busy moving and changing your phone number without telling me.” Her round face contorted with worry. “I thought something bad happened.”
I knew what she meant by “something bad.”
After my brother’s suicide seven months ago, I disappeared from Seattle for six days. I couldn’t face anyone knowing that not only was I the one who drove Ryan to the hospital where he jumped to his death, but I was also the one who encouraged him to enlist in the Marines two years earlier. Jill was the one who finally found me in a hotel room in San Francisco: the destination of the last road trip I took with Ryan before he was shipped to Afghanistan. My eyes were swollen from crying for six days straight, my hair was in knots, and I had lost eight pounds from not having eaten for six days. She never asked what I was doing there or, rather, what I had been too afraid to do there. She knew.
She talked me down from that ledge seven months ago and this was how I repaid her. I was a horrible friend.
“What’s going on, Brina? Are you mad at me?”
“No! I’m… I changed jobs. I moved to be closer to my new office. But it was all really sudden so I didn’t get a chance to tell anyone about it.”
I hung my head in shame. I had been dreading this moment for the past week since I moved into this apartment.
“So getting a new job means you disappear off the face of the Earth? What the fuck’s going on, Brina? And I don’t want anymore of this new job bullshit.”
“I do have a new job. Well… I have two jobs: the new one and the old one. It’s complicated. I can’t really talk about it.”
Jill crossed her arms. “You always tell me about your assignments. What’s so different about this one?”
“Uh… hello, Jill? Do you not see that I was actually moved out of my old apartment for this? This is the biggest assignment of my career.”
She rolled her eyes and finally took a seat on the sofa. “How about you get us something to drink ‘cause I’m not leaving until you dish.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Even though I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone about this assignment, I desperately needed Jill’s advice. She was the sensible one in this friendship. I was the one who went to a college clear across the country. She was the one who stayed behind to run her family’s travel agency when her mother got sick. I was the one who took a job as a corporate spy. She was the one who took her mother to dialysis appointments every week. I needed her to talk some sense into me.
I poured us each a glass of Reisling and tucked the bottle of wine between the sofa cushions as I sat next to her. “I’m working for Maxwell Computers.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re spying on Maxwell Computers?”
“Well, specifically, Luke Maxwell. I’m his new executive assistant. We paid off his old assistant to retire early.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“That’s not it. Luke and I… we’re sort of….”
“No fucking way!”
“Yes, fucking many ways.”
Jill downed the whole glass of wine and held it out to me for a refill, which I promptly poured. “You’re dating Luke Maxwell.”
I held my wineglass up to my mouth to hide my huge grin as I nodded.
“How is he?”
“So sweet. You would not believe how safe I feel when I’m with him. And he’s funny and sexy and—”
“Brina? H
ow is he?”
I sank back onto the sofa and shook my head. “There are no words.”
“That good?”
“Better.”
“Wait a minute. Aren’t you supposed to be spying on him? How are you supposed to steal from him if you’re all gaga for his hot jalapeño?”
“Please don’t call it that.”
“His love sausage. Whatever.”
“You really need to stop watching so much Food Network.”
She guzzled the rest of her wine and held her glass out again.
“If I give you this, you’re staying the night,” I insisted, holding the bottle behind my back.
“Yeah, yeah. Just fill her up and fill me in. I want to know everything.”
I told her everything from the day my boss at NeoSys, Kip Singer, gave me the assignment to earlier today at the office with Luke when I got a strong suspicion he was on to me.
“What am I going to do? If I come clean to him, I’ll lose my job at NeoSys and my job at Maxwell Computers.”
“And you could lose him. I mean, that’s what’s really at stake here, right? Fuck the job. You can get another one.”
“If I screw this up, I’ll be blacklisted.”
“Brina, you’re gorgeous and you have a degree from Cornell. You will find another job, even if it’s not in the same industry.”
“And in the meantime, what about my parents? They need my help now. They can’t afford to support me while I look for a job. My dad’s pension barely covers their mortgage.”
“Your parents might have to sign up for Meals on Wheels for a while, but they’ll survive, Brina. But if you keep lying to Luke, you can kiss him goodbye. The real question isn’t if you should come clean. The real question is can you survive another broken heart?”
The silence that followed this question told us both everything we needed to know.
I strolled into the lobby at Maxwell Computers, not at all in the mood to be ignored by the receptionist or to make the trek up the stairs all the way to the twelfth floor, but there was no way I would ever get into that glass-bottomed elevator again. The entire way up, I kept trying to think of what I was going to say to Luke. I tried to imagine what he would say in return, but these things never went as planned. I’d been through enough breakups to know that.