Page 25 of Hard Wired

“Then tell me the real version.” Who are you, Sylvie? He was dying to know.

“It’s so much more boring than any of that, I promise.”

He gestured around him. “I’m short on entertainment these days.”

Her smile vanished. Shit, he’d said the wrong thing.

“I’m not here to entertain you.” Sylvie walked toward the door. “I should take a look at the system now.”

“Wait.”

She opened the door and strode out to the hall. Dominic trailed after her. In the kitchen, Sylvie picked up her equipment bag. Maureen wasn’t here.

“I wasn’t trying to offend you.”

“So you’re just naturally talented? Because you’re awfully good at it.”

Sylvie went over near the front door. She pulled a laptop from her bag and plugged it into a port on the side of the alarm panel. “Could you tell me again what the system’s been doing?”

“Sylvie, can we just go back to—”

“I’m here to do a job. Either you help me with that, or I can leave. Those are the two options.”

He didn’t want her to go. “It’s been switching itself on and off. Either Maureen or I keep the alarm set pretty much at all times. But at night, I’ll walk by and see it go to ‘unarmed.’ Then it flips back again, even though she and I haven’t touched it.”

“Huh. And does it make any noises? Any sirens?”

“Nothing like that. I only noticed it in the first place because the light was flashing from red to green.”

“Does it happen during the day, too?”

“Sometimes? I think. But mostly at night. I’m up a lot.”

Her eyes slid toward him, then away again. “Let me see what the code looks like.”

A window appeared on her laptop screen, filled with seemingly random gibberish. “You know what that stuff means?”

“I should hope so. I wrote it.”

He hovered behind her. She was quiet for a long time, scrolling through the window of code. He should’ve been bored, but he wasn’t. Her very presence—her scent, the sound of her breathing, the little unconscious hums she made—were fascinating to him.

It took effort not to run a finger down the vertebrae at her neck. Her skin looked soft. Kissable.

“My code looks just as it should be. I’ll run a debugger just in case, but I don’t see the problem. And I haven’t seen this glitch myself.”

“You don’t believe me? You think I made this up?”

“No, I believe you. I’m not done yet. I’ll check your network next. Maybe you picked up some malware? I would’ve thought our software could withstand the average virus. But I don’t know what kind of weird porn you download.”

He scoffed. “I only subscribe to high-end adult entertainment sites.” Though he doubted he could pay those monthly fees much longer.

She scowled at him over her shoulder. “Ew. I don’t need to know that.”

“You were the one who brought it up.”

And now he was having some vividly dirty thoughts about Sylvie stripping down and touching herself as he watched. He’d watch her do pretty much anything.

In fact, just watching her work was doing it for him. Dominic braced one arm against the wall, angling his body toward her.

“What are you doing?” she asked, not looking up.

“Looking at you. Is it bothering you? Should I stop?”

Normally, he wouldn’t be creeping on some random woman who’d arrived at his house to do a job. But Sylvie wasn’t just anyone. She’d shown definite interest before. Her verbal jabs at him were just another form of flirting. And she’d obviously been trying to impress him with the violin thing. Damn, it had worked.

“You don’t have to stop,” she murmured, so low he almost couldn’t hear her.

Desire flooded his veins. He wanted this woman. Every minute he spent near her, he wanted her even more.

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