Page 46 of Lights Out

“That’s it?” Aly asked. “You just put it in there, and the program does it all for you?”

“I wish it were that easy, but no,” I said. “This is just to figure out what IP address he used to create his account.”

From there, I went into detail about how much work it would realistically take to track someone down. Her face fell as I talked. Good. Hopefully, she was second-guessing her harebrained idea.

“So you’re not going to have an answer for me by the time I have to leave,” she checked her watch, “in twenty minutes?”

“Nope. Sorry,” I said. “What’s it like being a trauma nurse?” I tacked on. Because I couldn’t help myself. This was the first time I’d spoken to Aly, and despite how often I watched her, I was still ravenous for information. There was only so much knowledge you could gain through a camera. I had memorized her expressions and learned how to read her moods, but I didn’t know what made her tick, didn’t know how she truly felt about all the things I’d seen her go through.

“Oh,” she said, looking slightly taken aback by the sudden topic shift. “It’s…I don’t exactly know how to describe it. Good isn’t the right word. Rewarding might be better.”

I glanced down at her lips, unable to help myself. Less than a day ago, they had parted around my cock. Less than a day ago, I had come inside that sweet mouth.

I jerked my gaze up and refocused on her words before I did something stupid.

“It’s incredibly challenging at times,” she said. “The lows are really low, but the highs are equally high. Nothing compares to the thrill of saving someone’s life.”

I nodded. “I bet. What made you want to get into it?”

She met my eyes before shifting to watch the letters flashing over my screen. “My mom, but I don’t want to talk about it. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I said. Shit, I’d touched a nerve. I needed to get us back on safer ground. “More coffee?” She drank at least a pot a night, and her cup looked like it needed to be topped off.

She held it out to me. “Yes, please.”

I went to the kitchen and poured us more. Aly was typing on her phone when I turned back around, and I watched as she hit a final button and then looked toward my phone, which sat next to my laptop, as if waiting for something. Did she just text me? The masked me?

If so, she would get a vague, slightly teasing response in three, two, one…

Her phone chimed, and she looked disappointed for half a second until she read the text and grinned, shaking her head like she was amused and didn’t want to be. I knew the expression well. She’d worn it almost constantly last night.

She fired off another text as I returned to the living room with our cups, grinning even wider when the next reply came through.

The auto-response program I’d loaded onto my burner was pretty sophisticated. It could carry on an entire smartass/flirtatious conversation with her in my absence, though I hoped she didn’t keep this up for long. The program was good, but it wasn’t perfect, and she looked like she had finally stopped suspecting me. Josh me. After all, I couldn’t be her masked admirer if he was texting her back, could I?

“Thank you,” she said, setting her phone down to take her coffee. She looked more relaxed than a moment ago, like her back was no longer up now that she didn’t suspect me.

Mwah ha ha ha ha.

My evil plan was working. Step one: get Aly to drop her guard. Step two: fuck her on this couch.

Oh, wait, no. I’d skipped a few steps somewhere.

But, god, the temptation was strong. Relaxed Aly was almost as hot as feisty Aly, and I had to stop myself from staring at her instead of pretending I was watching my fake hacking program work its magic.

Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to suffer such compunction, and I could feel her gaze like a physical touch as she watched me watch the screen. I’d been worried earlier that my need for her might be tied to our shared kink, and without a mask between us, the excitement would dull. I should have known better. I wanted her just as much now as last night, and from the way she stared at me so intently, I was beginning to think it went both ways.

Keep it up, baby,I thought,and see if I don’t out myself right now just so I can give into this driving need to yank your scrub pants down and –

“What’s it like being a computer programmer?” she asked.

I cleared my throat and shifted my hips, trying to ease my erection sideways so it wasn’t digging straight into my fly. Was she making small talk, or did she really want to know?

I took a sip of coffee and sat back, risking a glance at her. She looked genuinely interested.

“It’s a little like how you described nursing. Challenging but rewarding, if in different ways.”

“What made you want to get into it?”

---