Wire (Pierce Securities Book 2) (21 page)

Paige laughed. “It’s a dimple. Are you jealous of him?”

Evan laughed. “Not in the least. He’s a douche. I just don’t understand his obsession. He’s been watching you in your house, and I’m going to figure out why just as soon as I find Patton. He’s my priority right now, although I gotta say, Koen as a peeping tom is really starting to piss me off.”

Paige was silent, he assumed processing the information, while he opened her door for her and grabbed her hand, leading her into the quiet offices. They waved to Simon in his office as they went into Evan’s. He looked at his laptop to see the program he’d been running for the last few days had finally stopped. It took some time to crawl around every bit of info on the web, and it would take some time to comb through the results. He slammed it shut and shoved it into a bag, opening a drawer and grabbing some flash drives to throw in there with it. Rummaging around for the end to the power cord, Simon came in silently, startling him and Paige both.

“I saw the press conference. Are you guys close to figuring out who this is?”

Evan stood, wrapping up the power cord. “I know exactly who it is. I’m going to be sending you a full report tonight, but it’s Patton. I’m going to look through the results of the web crawler and see if there are some answers here, otherwise, I’m going to have to flush him out somehow.”

Simon nodded silently, his eyes jumping between Evan and Paige, full of accusation. To his credit, he didn’t say anything, but Evan knew exactly what was running through his mind. He was in deep shit when this was over.

Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he grasped Paige’s elbow. “Let’s go.” Over his shoulder, he saw Simon’s raised eyebrow, and mouthed, “Email, tonight.”

Back in the car, he expelled a deep breath as he started it and drove to Paige’s house.

“Do you think he knows?” Paige finally asked. “Are you in trouble?”

“Yeah, and yeah, and I don’t really care.” Reaching across the console, he entwined her fingers with his, resting them on his lap. “I’ve been thinking about you, Paige.”

“I’ve been thinking about you, too,” she answered quietly.

She didn’t understand. He’d been thinking about her since the first night he’d seen her. He’d known then that she wasn’t some casual fuck. And now that he knew her better, he was fascinated. Intellectually, she astounded him. She was focused and driven. She was compassionate. And loving. Incredibly generous. And holy hell, was she hot in bed.

He moved her hand over to his erection straining against his zipper. “I’m not sure you understand just how much I think of you.” Her harsh intake of air coupled with her releasing his hand and cupping his erection did everything to take the remaining breathable oxygen out of his car. He lowered the window to get more while grabbing her wrist to stop her movements.

He suddenly didn’t care if he could breathe or not. He needed Paige more than he needed air.

His foot pressed down on the accelerator, a sudden desire to be at Paige’s house killing all resolve.

A nervous giggle from the passenger seat arrested his attention. “In a hurry?”

He glanced over to see her lips parted and eyes twinkling with excitement. “Yeah,” he grunted out like a caveman. “You’re mine, Paige Lawson. No one else’s. You get that, right?”

“Yeah, I get it,” she breathed at him with wide eyes and a beaming smile, and something swelled inside him to know she was affected the same way he was.

“Nobody else gets to see you come. Ever.” He wasn’t sure she was understanding the subtext of his words, because he meant them. He wanted Paige. Forever. But he wasn’t sure how to put it into words in his current horny state. All he could think about was sinking in between her thighs once again.

At her house, they raced in the door, and once it was shut, locked, and alarmed behind them, Evan scooped Paige up over his shoulder and marched toward the stairs.

He knew where her bedroom was; he’d heard her banging around in it the last time he’d been here, when he’d foolishly decided to not have sex with her until this was all over. His mind had said she’d be safer that way. Every cell in his body was telling him he’d been wrong. Utterly wrong. He needed to be with her. If he wasn’t, he’d only be a withered up husk of himself. That’s what his heart told him, anyway.

“Evan!” she squealed with a giggle, but he ignored her protest.

“Sorry, Paige. Feeling cave-manny,” he gritted out. The need within him was so strong he wasn’t sure he could control it. It was more powerful than the conference room, which he almost regretted. She deserved more than being laid out on a conference room table. Paige deserved more than animalistic rutting, but Evan wasn’t sure he was capable of much more right now. She sparked something inside him he couldn’t control.

Tossing her on the bed, he watched as she bounced, arms and legs akimbo, her elegant skirt rising up her legs. Evan took a step back and breathed deeply, desperately seeking control. Silently, he walked to the windows, shutting the curtains while he tried desperately to regain sanity. As his hands worked at the buttons on his own suit, he wolfishly grinned at Paige, who was working on removing her own clothes. He shed layers while she exposed her body to his hungry eyes.

Paige’s eyes never left his as he shucked his clothing. When they were both naked, Evan lowered himself onto her body, feeling her warm, smooth skin as he blanketed her.

He made love to her with his mouth and tongue, forcing himself to go slow, kissing every inch of her skin, listening to her moans, feeling her undulations. He wrung a climax from her before he sank himself into her slick heat, and hanging onto frail tendrils of control, he sat against the headboard of her bed as she straddled him and set the pace of their encounter. Evan suckled her breasts and kneaded her ass, stroking her until she climaxed around him, gripping him from the inside like a vise he was happy to surrender to.

Yanking her head to his, Evan kissed Paige as he emptied his own seed inside her, swallowing her pleasure in a kiss promising forever.

Because that’s what he wanted with her. He knew it was too soon to say the words, but Evan knew in his heart that he loved her. He’d loved her for months, since he’d first met her and couldn’t get her out of his mind.

“Evan?” He’d hugged her against his body and was refusing to let her go. She felt too good. She was right where she belonged as he felt himself wilt inside her.

“Hmm?” Evan hummed into the top of her head.

“Is it always like this with you?” Her voice was tinged with something foreign to Evan, something he couldn’t name, but it was familiar in that he felt it, too.

“Nope. It’s never been like this with anyone else. Just you.” He kissed her temple because her face was buried in his neck, and he inhaled her scent as he did so. She smelled so damn good. No perfumes, just Paige. Sweet Paige.

“Yeah,” she mumbled contentedly. Evan felt her body continue to relax on his, running his fingers through her hair. He knew something major had happened between them today. It wasn’t just about them finally giving in to their carnal desires with each other. They had broached a turning point in whatever relationship they were going to have. It was scary—not something he’d ever done with a woman—but it felt absolutely right.

When Paige’s breathing evened out, and he knew she slept, he tucked her into his arms and rolled over, placing her on her side next to him without waking her. Then he gently eased himself out of bed and went to the bathroom.

Paige’s bathroom was clearly a well-loved room. It had been remodeled recently, made obvious by the modern fixtures in comparison to the rest of the house. It had a shower and a deep, claw-foot tub, and the entire room was decorated in a comfortable, intimate manner. He could see beauty products lining the shower, and in the bathtub area, there was a shelf full of different scented bath oils and bubble mixes. When his eyes fell on the picture over the shelf, he froze, astounded.

It was one of those collage photo frames, with several different sizes and orientations of photos, like he’d seen all over her house. But this was filled with photos of him.

Evan had a surreal moment, looking at himself in Paige’s bathroom, knowing in his heart these photos had been there a while. They were from his ill-fated
TEKNIX Magazine
exclusive, the one he’d thought would push his research on Artificial Intelligence to the forefront of popular thinking, but had instead turned into a not-so-subtle tongue-in-cheek article making fun of the pretty boy who thought he could change the world. It had been humiliating to Evan, and his publicist had acted like it was no big deal. Evan had promptly found the nearest rock and hidden under it for years. Until he’d met Quinten in a bar and gotten the job at Pierce Securities.

But Paige had always believed in him. That much was clear. But the pictures in this intimate setting—over her bathtub, where she could lay there, her naked body covered in mounds of bubbles, and look at him, posing nearly nude—added another layer to her.

Another layer to
them.

It was almost like hero-worship. Like his teen-beat poster hung in her bedroom. That was when it dawned on him. She was just as big of a geek as he was. They were made for each other. And he needed to do whatever he could to protect her. To keep her.

Evan tiptoed back into the bedroom and slid under the sheets next to Paige. She mumbled something incoherent in her sleep and sidled up next to him, wrapping a slender arm around his waist as he sat up against the headboard. Leaning over to grab his laptop bag, he pulled it out and powered it up. He had data to go through, and he wasn’t going to leave her side for anything. Not now.

It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for and when he saw it, Evan’s muscles tensed, and he let out a muttered, “Holy fuck.”

“Wha—?” Paige looked up at him with sleepy eyes as his muttered curse awoke her.

He didn’t want to tell her. He knew the betrayal would hurt, and he didn’t want to see the pain in her deep green eyes. But he respected her, and knew if she found out from anyone else, it would hurt worse.

“Stygman’s mother’s maiden name was Koen.”

She sat up and rubbed her face while she stretched out her legs. Then, it was as if the information hit her in the face as she stiffened and looked over at him, eyes wide and mouth agape.

“What does that mean?”

“It means Stygman is better at re-inventing himself than Michael Jackson.”

“Why would he do that, though? I never did anything to him, Evan. I don’t understand…”

He tried not to give her the look he knew his face wanted to make, but he couldn’t see how she didn’t understand it. Instead, he grazed her cheek with his knuckle, feeling the smooth skin of her face as her wide eyes sucked him in.

His voice came out harsher than he intended it to, but he had to make her understand the danger she kept putting herself in by denying the truth. “He’s in love with you, Paige. Probably always has been. Didn’t you ever see it?”

She shook her head, crossing her arms across her chest. “It was an adolescent thing, nothing more than that.”

He read into the subtext of her words and the body language accompanying it. “Did you have a relationship with him?”

“We tried, once, after we’d been living together for months, to see what would happen if we were ‘together’ but it didn’t work out. At all.”

“What happened?” His jaw was ticking; he was pissed beyond belief. First, that she didn’t think this was important enough to share, and second, that it had happened at all. Fuck. Koen actually touched his Paige.

“Well, we were best friends and decided to see what would happen if we went that extra step. We kissed one night, and one thing led to another, but it didn’t work out.”

He stifled the jealous rage knowing Stygman/Koen had actually sunk his dick inside her sweetness. Instead, he schooled his features and repeated, “What happened?”

“We had sex and decided it wasn’t the right thing for us, so we promised we wouldn’t speak of it again. And we didn’t. After that, we had a relatively successful business relationship, Dale met and married Peggy, and it was forgotten.” She shrugged matter-of-factly.

“Whose idea was it to stay friends?”

She chewed on the inside of her mouth in thought. Finally, she relented, “I guess it was mine.”

“See?” He kept his voice gentle, even though he wanted to shout triumphantly, ‘I told you so.’

She nodded, and Evan went back to his laptop.

“So, what’s next?”

“I’m hacking into the FBI case docs. I haven’t checked in since the last incident with the prostitute, but this makes everything more urgent. If Koen is Stygman is The Crimson Lady is Red_Dawn, I’ve got to find him tonight. You’re in some serious danger, Paige.”

“Who’s Red_Dawn?”

“I thought it was just a guy I played
Realm of Worlds
with, but now I think he’s Stygman, trying to weasel inside information out of me during our playtimes. Or just fucking with me, I’m still not sure. It took me a while to figure it out, though, but I don’t think I really told him anything.”

She looked over his shoulder as he clacked on the laptop keys. “Wow. I never thought to do that,” she whispered in awe at one point. “You hack into the FBI often?”

He chuckled. “Yeah. It’s a perk of the job. I have a buddy on the inside who overlooks it for me, as long as I don’t do anything stupid.”

The FBI had confiscated the computer belonging to the youth who had killed the prostitute in the latest incident, and the chat he’d had with The Crimson Lady in the site he’d visited was there in transcript form.

He skimmed the notes of the conversation the youth had with The Crimson Lady while Paige read over his shoulder. “Oh my God… I just can’t believe Dale would be doing all of this to get back at me. I can’t wrap my head around him being Neil. I mean, these are innocent people, for God’s sake. How can he do that?” Her voice was quiet, but laced with pain, and Evan struggled with the sound.

“Mental disease takes all sorts of forms.”

“But he never was really mentally ill.”