Page 62 of Rise of the King (Checkmate 5)

12

Escape

Sophia

It bothers me that I shave my legs specially for Jay. That I lather on sweet-scented soaps and wash my long hair because I want him to look at me the way he does. I want him to adore me, to want me, to continue thinking I hung the moon and the stars.

He’s the guy who gets attached to so few. His world revolves around one or two people, and for them, he’d walk toward bullets if they needed him to. He’d do whatever it takes to make their worlds better, to take away their pain, or to make them laugh. But for anyone else, he can shrug it off and walk away like they’re not a big deal.

I want to be one of the few.

I guess I kind of already am, but now that I’ve had a taste, I want more. Ironically, Jay Bishop is my cocaine, and I’m addicted.

Stepping out of the shower and snagging a towel from the rack, I slide it over my sensitive skin and smile while I think of the overprotective bear. Like he thinks I’ll pack up and leave just because he snapped his fingers and told me to.

I mean, I will, but he doesn’t have to know the power he has over me.

For men like Jay to have that power andknowit would only lead me down a path of exasperation and wanting to smack him down a peg on a daily basis. So I let my heart sigh for him, but I don’t tell him so, or my life would be full ofI told you so’s, and I’m just not sure I’m ready for all that.

Drying off and whipping my hair up into the towel to absorb the water, I step out of the bathroom and stop by my bed to collect fresh clothes for the day.

I don’t intend to move my ass from my desk chair while I search Trenton Neal’s data and work my way up another step of CAB’s empire, so I pull on clean panties and a pair of sweatpants, then I snag a bra and shrug into one of Jay’s sweatshirts he’s soconvenientlyleft around in the last week or so.

I think, without getting my permission, he moved in and made himself at home.

That’s just who he is, right? He’s a bull. Or a bear. He barges in and makes his presence known.

Snagging a protein bar from my bedside drawer, I rip the foil open when my stomach protests the lack of food, then I make my way toward my desk and pick up the phone we took from Trenton last night.

The phone we subsequently broke during our escape.

A broken screen won’t hinder me in the least, but a broken hard drive will piss me off.

Dropping the phone onto my desk, I open the heavy bottom drawer and take out my laptop bag. I work on the desktop when I’m home, and have all of my files saved to clouds I created and maintain all on my own. These clouds aren’t accessible by Google, or Mac, or anyone else who wants to stick their fingers into my pies. These clouds are invisible to everyone but me, accessible to no one but me, and remotely destroyable by me if I hit a panic button and need my files wiped.

I have backups of my backups, and firewalls shielding firewalls.

The Feds think their security is impenetrable, but my folks never sent me to fancy schools just because I had a unique brain. I wanted to dance, so they let me dance, but they knew I had skills beyond that of a typical person.

I was coding websites when I was five and designing software when I was seven. I was creating macros in my spare time and playing games I created when I was ten and sprained my ankle.

I had a whole summer off dance, and too much going on in my brain to sit still and do nothing, so I created software that would help my public school with their administration, but I let my daddy add his name to the licensing so I wouldn’t have to answer questions I didn’t want to answer.

A forty-year-old man creates software? Cool, thanks.

A child creates that software? They’re going to put it in the local papers. And that was the last thing I wanted. I was the ghost, the creator, and my daddy was my protector and shield so I could do what I enjoyed without people getting weird and throwing words like genius and eidetic memory around.

Dropping my bag onto my desk and unzipping it, my elbow bumps the mouse of my desktop and fires up the sleeping screens. Jay’s apartment comes up and makes me smile. He knows I’ve been watching him, but instead of getting mad at the clear invasion of privacy, he asked if I watched him touch himself.

Yes, the answer is yes.

I watched him talk to me through the ceiling. I watched him shower while his eyes remained on the ceiling. And I watched him touch his cock and murmur my name.

My fight against the pull that is Jay Bishop was over the day he sat next to me in Ginnie’s and introduced himself.

Bastard.

Glancing back to my bag, I pull my laptop halfway out, only to freeze when something catches my attention in my peripherals. Looking back to my screen, I narrow my eyes and study the squares of footage that make up almost every nook of his apartment. The far corners are protected, but most of the apartment is in front of me right now, and though it all looks normal, something still makes my stomach jump.

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