Page 23 of Hot Intent

Without warning, he commenced tearing her clothes off of her. Some he tore off figuratively. Others that didn’t give way easily enough, he literally tore off. And when she was naked, he surged to his feet and shoved her face first against the glass. She heard a zipper rip down, and then he was slamming into her from behind. No foreplay. No words of endearment. No kisses or caresses. Just his hard, hot body invading hers.

Her breasts mashed against the cold window. Rain struck the glass hard enough for her to feel the tiny impacts. The drops came so close but didn’t touch her. Sort of like her trying to reach Alex’s soul. An invisible but impenetrable barrier blocked her.

If someone happened to look up at this building and zero in on this particular room, they were getting quite a show. And yet, she couldn’t spare the mental energy to care. Her attention was entirely focused on the agonized man behind her. She wasn’t fooled for a second by his angry outburst. This was pain, not punishment. Anguish, not rage. And if he needed to dump it into her body, she was fine with absorbing it from him.

He was being rough with her, but as always, some part of him held back just enough not to actually hurt her. Relieved that whatever barriers held the beast at bay had worked one more time, she did her best to open her body to him. To convey an unspoken sense of welcome and acceptance.

By arching her back and thrusting back toward him, their bodies fit perfectly. He grasped her hips to pull her back harder, and she groaned her pleasure. He growled under his breath, probably irritated that she was enjoying this. But the harder and deeper he drove, the better it felt.

Finally, as she moaned with too much pleasure to bear, he collapsed against her, panting in her ear, crushing her against the window. His hands came up to cover hers where they pressed into the glass by her head.

“Come to bed,” he murmured. “You’re cold.”

She was frozen with fear for his soul. Did that count as cold? He tucked her under the covers gently enough but then pulled on jeans and a sweater in the dark.

“You’re not coming to bed?” she asked from her cocoon of warmth.

“In a while.”

Translation: I’m going to be up all night, brooding. She sighed, rolled onto her side and drifted to sleep wondering what it would take to get him to shed the darkness in his soul and be happy.

5

Overnight, Hurricane Giselle slammed into Cuba with a vengeance. It tore the island to bits from east to west. Even in a region accustomed to tropical storms, Giselle was a monster. Death tolls were unknown, but television commentators speculated that hundreds or even thousands had perished. The Cuban government declined to share details or let any foreign journalists into the immediate aftermath to report on it. What little news did leak out painted a grim picture, however.

Alex turned off the TV. Katie was still asleep, so he used the time to get on his laptop to see if any of the feelers he’d put out on Operation Cold Intent had come back to him, yet.

Bingo. An encrypted email from C¥berE¥e, perhaps the top hacker he’d ever seen operate and his anonymous mentor since his first attempts to start hacking.

Alex ran their usual decryption protocol and got gibberish. He stared at the letters and symbols in surprise. He would suspect a failed message transmission were this not from C¥berE¥e. And then it hit him. He ran a secondary decryption protocol the hacker sometimes used.

Sure enough, a short message resolved itself on his screen. He stared at it in dismay.

Blondie and ThrεεWolvεs dead. Looks like murder. What the fuck did you get them into?

He knew the forces behind Cold Intent had killed Blondie. But they’d killed her boyfriend, too? Jesus. Who was doing this? And what in the bloody hell was Cold Intent? Why was someone killing to cover its tracks?

He messaged C¥berE¥e back, asking if the hacker had any specific idea why Blondie and her boyfriend were killed. Granted, hackers had lots of enemies if they were any good.

C¥berE¥e’s reply made him feel ill. Blondie must have been looking into something that had triggered the real-world attack.

Dammit. Blondie had been trying to figure out what Cold Intent was.

For him.

No matter how he tried to rationalize it away, Alex couldn’t escape arriving at the same conclusion C¥berE¥e had. Her investigation was responsible for the couple’s deaths. Which meanthewas responsible for their deaths.

It was one thing to kill a stranger in the heat of battle. It was another to get a friend killed.

He sent a message back to C¥berE¥e.

Any idea if someone got their files?

The reply was immediate.

An ABC agency made a run at them. I downloaded everything and wiped their drives before the Man could get in. Some interesting shit, here. Who’s Cold Intent?

Aww, crap. He didn’t need dead hackers all over the planet on his account. Alex typed hard, as if he could transmit his emphatic warning through the keys, themselves.

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