Page 79 of Pressure

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Marissa sat on Lance's jet Monday morning, feeling sore and satisfied. He had his headset on and murmured to his assistant about his schedule for the upcoming week, so she slipped her own headphones on and closed her eyes as the plane soared through the air, headed for Chicago.

When he touched her arm, she shifted her headphones to rest on her neck and smiled at him.

"Thanks for coming home with me," he murmured before bending to kiss her. "Will you stay with me until we come back to Colorado on Thursday?"

She bit her lip, enjoying the lingering tingle his lips left on hers. "I can probably do that. I'm technically on a six-week vacation from my job and I don't think I'll go back since I'll have enough to live on and get my own business up and running."

Lance squeezed her thigh in approval. "Thanks for agreeing to put in time at Moss Tech."

"It sounds like you could use the help. I've been monitoring that chatroom we found. Things have been quiet the last few days but this morning there was an uptick in activity, so I really want to make sure you're protected from attacks."

Lance laid his head against the seat. "Thanks. I've upped my security on everything and we're adding more layers of encryption but that may not be enough. I really just need this to be over, so I stop losing contracts."

Back in Chicago, they went straight to his apartment where he stripped her down and pushed her into his shower where he took his time tormenting her body. They would go to the office tomorrow, he declared as he carried her wet and shaking from the shower and laid her on the bed where he revved her up again.

After a nap, he'd woken her with his head between her thighs.

She tangled her fingers in his hair as he devoured her.

It was well past dinnertime before they left the bedroom. Lance gave her a robe to wear and nothing else while he slipped on a pair of boxers and together, they walked down to the kitchen. His housekeeper had come in during their flight and prepped a few meals for them, so he pulled one out and followed the simple reheating instructions.

As they ate, her phone sounded an alert. That's odd, she thought as she went to pick it up. That alert had been set for a few notifications only and none of them were good.

"Well fuck me running," she muttered as she read the alert on her screen.

"What is it?" Lance asked. His rigid abs nearly distracted as he walked toward her.

She blinked and shook her head. "It's Sebastian Forcythe. The bastard got out of prison early. They turned him loose yesterday."

She handed him the phone so he could read the notice.

"Son of a bitch. You think that's why there was an uptick in chatter in that forum?"

Her head bobbed up and down. "I would almost guarantee it. From the looks of his release, it wasn't conditional on anything and he's not on parole or probation so he would have typical access to computers."

Lance swore. "OK. I guess we need to be on hyper alert then."

He pressed a kiss to her cheek. "I need to go make some phone calls. Will you be OK on your own?"

She stood on her tip toes and wrapped both arms around his neck. "I'll be fine. Let me know if you need me to do anything tonight."

He gave her a thumbs up and jogged up the stairs to his bedroom to get dressed. A few minutes later, she heard him shut himself in his home office.

She showed herself around the place to see if anything had changed in the five years since she'd last been here. Lance had tried to get her to make changes to the decor, but she insisted it was fine the way it was. To be honest, she'd never understood decorations and would be happy to let a professional handle it when she opened her own company.

As she walked into his library, she smiled as she remembered a particularly... educational evening she'd shared with Lance in this room.

It had started with an argument about encryption and ended with him proving her wrong while he fucked her from behind and she read aloud from the book that settled their argument.

She hated being wrong, but she loved the consequences.

Despite the fact that they'd spent the entire day—hell, the entire weekend—making love, desire still filled her as she relived the sequence.

♦♦♦♦

Lance sat in his office and tried to breathe as he dialed the next number. He couldn't shake the feeling that something was desperately wrong. He just wasn't sure how to address it.

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