Exploited (Zero Day #1) Read online

  My chest felt tight.

  This was wrong. So wrong.

  How could I deceive him like this?

  But I had come too far. I was in too deep. I couldn’t stop now. And looking up into his beautiful blue eyes, I didn’t want to.

  Even with all the lies, I couldn’t walk away from him.

  Because I cared about him.

  So much.

  He was more than the agent trying to find me.

  He was my boyfriend.

  And that mattered.

  I wrapped my arms around his waist. “I’ll be your safe place, Mason. Or at least I’ll try to be. Will you be mine?”

  I was having a hard time breathing.

  Because I wasn’t feeding him a line. I wanted all of it. Every single, complicated piece of it.

  And that was seriously messing with my evil Mata Hari side.

  “If you want me to be,” Mason whispered, his voice cracking with emotion that surprised me.

  I will destroy him.

  The thought hurt.

  And it thrilled me.

  Without another word I led him through the house and back to the bedroom. He didn’t protest. He followed me without hesitation.

  There were times to think about exploits and plans. Now wasn’t one of them.

  This was about Mason.

  About allowing something for myself. Even if it was a dream. Even if it was only for a little while.

  I didn’t turn on the lights. We stood in the darkness. The blinds were drawn, so not even the light from the street penetrated the shadows.

  I could hear him breathing. I could smell his musky scent. I could feel the tattoo of my heart against my rib cage.

  Then his hands were on me. Pulling me close. So close.

  “I still feel like there are words unsaid,” he murmured. I could barely see him. Only an outline. And his eyes.

  “Maybe now isn’t the time for words.” I kissed him. Hard and rough. I was terrified of gentle. Right now that would be my undoing.

  He pulled back slightly, already panting. Already ready and wanting. “Don’t hide things from me, Hannah. Promise me,” he growled almost aggressively. The deep emotion I had seen just minutes earlier had been transformed.

  I licked the salt from the skin at the base of his throat. His pulse fluttered beneath my tongue. He shuddered. I trembled.

  He was still feeling edgy. I could tell. Maybe even slightly angry. He didn’t exactly know why. There was something about me that enticed him. Infuriated him. Excited him.

  “Everyone has secrets, Mason,” I whispered, pulling away from him, still trying to hold on to the deception. The role of the temptress. But she was breaking apart. Shattering. Tattered and fading.

  I couldn’t play coy with Mason. Not anymore. We had stepped into something else.

  Something scarily real.

  I started to undress. Slowly. Carefully. I felt his hands caress my skin as I did so, helping me with the buttons. Unzipping my skirt.

  His eyes shone bright in the darkened room. His hands were shaking with the need to touch me.

  “I’ll share a few of mine with you, Mason. That I can promise.”

  Was I lying?

  Was I finally giving him some truth?

  I didn’t think any more because his lips silenced me and there was no more talking.

  Chapter 20

  Mason

  I wanted to believe her.

  God, did I want to believe her.

  She seemed genuine.

  Sincerity is easy to fake.

  I thought about the letter I had received just a day ago.

  Do you see the truth? She does a good job of hiding it from you.

  It was a little too appropriate.

  Hannah had been hiding the truth from me.

  But was it a deal breaker?

  So she had been fired. I understood her not wanting to tell me that when we had just met.

  But why keep up the lie after we got to know each other?

  Why not tell me she was going to see her sister?

  Her reasons all made sense.

  I listened to her excuses and I wished them to be true. They had to be. Hannah cared about me. I knew it.

  Right?

  So why couldn’t I let it go?

  Where there’s one lie, there are more.

  Experience had taught me that.

  After discovering that Hannah didn’t work for Western Railways, I had done something I’d told myself I wouldn’t do. Not with her.

  I did a background check on my girlfriend.

  I started to dig.

  I learned details that she had yet to tell me.

  And the things she had purposefully kept secret.

  Like where she worked now.

  At Holt IT Solutions, a cybersecurity firm located in downtown Richmond. At least she had been honest about that.

  A little more digging gave me her job title. Network security engineer.

  I knew exactly what that entailed, given my history in IT.

  Why would she lie about that?

  I did a cursory criminal history check and came up with nothing, which was a relief.

  Did I really think she was a criminal? Had we gotten to that point?

  I didn’t know where to stop. How far down the hole should I go?

  I stopped short of checking her tax returns. That felt like a step too far.

  I already felt strangely guilty about looking into her to begin with.

  But she lied.

  And she hadn’t given me much of an explanation as to why.

  Do I get over it?

  Do I give in to the temptation to forget about all the doubts that are screaming in my brain?

  Here we were, in her bedroom, my mouth on her skin, her hand wrapped tight around my throbbing cock, and I was trying to remember all the reasons I shouldn’t trust this woman.

  Because every part of my body wanted her.

  But…

  “Mason,” Hannah moaned, arching her back as my lips latched around her nipple, pulling it between my teeth.

  She had lied to me.

  Over and over again.

  About simple, silly things.

  What bigger things is she not being honest about?

  The thought jarred me. It brought me slamming back down to earth, parting through the lust-fueled haze.

  I loomed over her in the dark, staring down at her on the bed. Her dark hair fanned out around her. Her chest rose and fell rapidly.

  I had thought Hannah was everything I had been waiting for. She had fallen into my life so damn perfectly. She was easy to talk to. I found myself comfortable with her.

  Now I couldn’t tell how much of it was real.

  But I wanted to believe her. I was going through the steps of justification in my head.

  She was simply embarrassed.

  No one is completely honest with people they don’t know.

  She would have told me eventually.

  Don’t self-destruct now that you’re so close to being happy.

  But I couldn’t forget how foolish I had felt finding out that she had deceived me.

  Was that what this was about?

  My pride?

  No.

  It was more than that.

  Hannah ran her fingers down my chest, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake.

  She made it hard to think.

  Perhaps that was the real problem here.

  I was hurt. Because I was starting to fall for this beautiful, not entirely truthful woman.

  “Will you always tell me the truth? From here on out?” I found myself asking as she pushed my jeans down past my thighs. I kicked them off before pulling my shirt over my head.

  Hannah pressed her hand over my heart. I gave myself time to look at her. Every tiny, lovely part of her. My dick was hard and aching. I wanted nothing more than to bury myself deep inside of her. I knew she wanted that too.

  But I couldn’t to
uch her. Not the way I wanted to.

  Not yet.

  She had lied to me. For weeks. Details crafted to paint a picture of a life she didn’t lead.

  I couldn’t quite let that go. No matter the reasons.

  Don’t trust the person who has broken faith once.

  “Mason,” Hannah groaned, reaching out for me, but I evaded her grasp.

  I was laying myself bare for her. She had no idea how hard it was for me to do that. I needed her to understand what this was costing. I worried I would make a mistake. I had made so many of them. With Dillon. With Madison.

  I thought Hannah was right.

  Had she made me a chump?

  Why couldn’t I leave, if that was what I thought? Why wasn’t I out the door?

  Because she had asked me to be her safe place.

  Because she wanted me to meet her sister.

  That had to count for something.

  I kissed her. Still rough. Yet with a trace of tenderness. She weakened me.

  Did she know that?

  I wrapped my hands around her wrists, pinning her down on the mattress. I made sure not to hurt her, but I wouldn’t let her go. My face felt hot. My blood pumped wildly. I felt a little out of control.

  Hannah had always made me feel that way. I enjoyed it.

  Now it felt like chaos.

  “Promise me, Hannah,” I demanded. I positioned myself between her thighs. The tip of my cock brushed against her wet warmth. She wriggled and squirmed, spreading her legs wider, pushing against my ass with her heels.

  “Promise me, damn it!” I all but yelled.

  I was getting angry. I tried to rein it in. I let go of her wrists.

  I was at war with myself. I cared for Hannah.

  I wanted to trust her.

  I stared down into her wide eyes. She looked confused. Then worried.

  “Mason, I promise.” Her eyes begged me to believe her.

  She slowly pulled my face down, her hands cupping my cheeks. “I promise,” she murmured, kissing me softly. “I promise.”

  I pressed my lips against hers. Not tender. Rough. Crazed. Tongues. Teeth. I bit down on her lip and tasted her blood in my mouth. “I promise,” she said again, more firmly.

  I rubbed my cock against her. Not penetrating. Only a taste. A tease.

  “I promise,” she shouted, digging her fingers into my ass as I ground against her.

  “Don’t fucking lie to me ever again, Hannah,” I snarled, lifting one of her legs and dropping it over my hip. I quickly unwrapped a condom and put it on.

  “I promise,” she growled through clenched teeth.

  “You’d better mean it,” I groaned just as I pushed inside her.

  We cried out in unison as I plunged forward. We were a mass of hot, sticky skin. I thrust into her, going as deep as I possibly could. My anger and fear ignited something inside of me. Something primal and unfettered. I wanted to fuck the truth out of her.

  I flipped Hannah over onto her stomach and entered her from behind. “Oh God,” she screamed as I slammed into her over and over again.

  This wasn’t gentle.

  This wasn’t romantic and sweet.

  This was rutting. Pure and simple.

  I couldn’t slow down and Hannah wouldn’t let me. She pushed back against my cock, swallowing me up.

  I let out a guttural roar as I pumped into her, our flesh slapping together.

  “I need to…I can’t…” I don’t know what I was trying to say. The words strung together without coherence.

  I gripped Hannah’s hip and thrust one more time. Deep. To the core. I came with a violence I had never experienced. Hannah followed a few seconds later.

  We collapsed onto the bed, trying to get our breathing under control.

  Neither of us said anything. I wasn’t sure what words could ever suffice at that moment.

  I had thought about the first time we would sleep together many times. I had imagined it hot and heavy.

  I hadn’t pictured the almost animalistic encounter we had just experienced.

  And it was, bar none, the most intense sexual encounter of my life.

  I just didn’t know what to do now. Hannah was my girlfriend. Sleeping together was natural. Expected.

  It shouldn’t be tangled with anger and mistrust.

  “Can you turn on a light?” I asked, my voice rough.

  “Sure.” Hannah rolled over and turned on the lamp. I winced in the sudden brightness.

  Hannah covered herself with a blanket, pulling it up around her breasts. Her hair was disheveled, her skin splotched red. I could see the marks from my mouth on her collarbone. Her lips were raw and bruised, the soft skin still bleeding sluggishly from where I bit it.

  She tried smiling. It seemed to take a lot of effort.

  I pulled the condom off and tied a knot at the end. “What can I do with this?” I asked.

  Hannah pointed to the far wall. “There’s a trash can over there.”

  I got up and tossed the condom, grabbed my boxers and jeans from the floor, and pulled them back on before sitting down on the edge of the bed, my back to Hannah.

  “Are you leaving?” she asked quietly.

  I let out a breath, weighted with questions. “I don’t know,” I told her.

  “I thought that would have been different,” she said, sounding sad. Maybe a little angry too.

  I looked at her over my shoulder. She was staring at the ceiling, her fists clenched in the blanket. “What do you mean?”

  She glanced at me, her expression conflicted. “Do you want to be here, Mason?”

  “Yes. But…” I ran a hand over my face in agitation.

  “I thought you wanted me to be your safe place.” Her words sounded like an accusation.

  “I want you to be.”

  “How can I be if you’re now expecting the worst? I want to make this work. Do you?” A tear fell down her cheek, and that was my undoing.

  I couldn’t bear to see her cry.

  I crawled across the bed, bracing myself over her. “I want this to work, Hannah, but I’m conditioned to look for the worst in people. It’s what I’m paid to do. I’m wary by nature. And you not telling me the truth—”

  “I get it. But please stop looking for the worst in me. I’m terrified that you’ll find it,” she pleaded, the tears falling harder.

  I wiped them away with the pad of my thumb. “Please don’t cry,” I murmured, kissing her cheeks, feeling like an ass. “If that’s the worst, I think I can deal with it. And I’m the one who should be terrified.”

  Hannah sniffled, her eyes now bloodshot. “Why?”

  “Maybe you’ll see the worst in me,” I rasped, my voice cracking, my cheeks wet with my own tears.

  Our lips met and this time it wasn’t angry. It wasn’t rough and wild.

  When I took my jeans off again, it was slow. Deliberate.

  And when I entered her a second time I wasn’t filled with doubt and rage.

  I was full of something sweeter.

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah whispered against my skin.

  “I’m sorry too,” I whispered back.

  Hannah was right.

  The voice be damned.

  —

  It felt like hours before we came up for air again. Hannah was tucked into my side. We were both aching and tired but not willing to move anytime soon.

  I ran my fingers through her hair while Hannah traced circles on my chest. “Do you want to come see Charlotte with me tomorrow?” she asked, peering up at me through her lashes.

  I kissed the top of her head. “Yeah, that sounds great.” And then I remembered. “Shit, I won’t be able to leave the office until after six tomorrow. I’ve got a late meeting. Maybe—”

  “I can come to your office, meet you there, and we can ride over to the care center together,” Hannah suggested before I could finish my sentence.

  “You want to meet me at my office?” I wasn’t so sure about that idea. Yes, Hannah k
new I was an agent, but it crossed boundaries. After the mess with Madison, it was important to keep personal and professional separate.

  Hannah giggled. “I won’t go snooping, Agent Kohler.” She poked me in the side, making me laugh. “I’ll just come and get you and we can go see Charlotte. We could take her something to eat. She loves pizza but hardly ever gets to eat it. Maybe we could take her some.”

  The voice was blissfully silent. I was glad, because I was enjoying the moment.

  This one perfect, normal, happy moment.

  “That sounds nice. Sure, come by the office. I’ll have to let security know that I’m expecting you and you’ll need to bring ID to get in the building,” I told her.

  “That sounds hardcore.” She smirked.

  I took her hand and slid it under the covers, wrapping her fingers around my hardening dick. “It’s very hardcore,” I assured her, groaning as she began to stroke me.

  I leaned in to kiss her, ready for round four. Or was it five?

  She pulled back and I frowned. “What is it?”

  “Stay with me tonight. Don’t go home,” she said.

  “Are you sure? After everything earlier—”

  “I’m sure.” She smiled, kissing me. “I’m so damn sure.”

  In one swift movement she was straddling me, and I reached up to cup her breasts. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Promise?” She lifted up slightly and then came down, taking me deep.

  “I promise,” I swore as she made me hers.

  Chapter 21

  Hannah

  I was exhausted. It was almost four in the morning and I was at my computer in the kitchen, trying to type as quietly as possible, hoping I wouldn’t wake Mason.

  It was risky working while he was in the house, but I had no choice.

  Tomorrow was my chance to gain deeper access to the FBI database. I would be in his office. I didn’t want to squander the opportunity.

  I could hear his soft snores from the bedroom and knew that, for the time being, I was safe.

  Tonight had been emotional. Scary and almost devastating. For a few moments I had been sure my plan was over. That Mason would leave.