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Chapter Five

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Spencer’s hips rolled, and Josie dug her fingers into his shoulders. Oh, God. She hadn’t expected that she’d feel like this.

He pulled back to look at her, his puppy-dog eyes searching. “All right?”

He squeezed her hip, holding her in place.

“Yes,” she said with a sigh.

He moved again, pushing into her enough to lift her on his lap. He watched her steadily the entire time, and it made their connection even more intimate. She clenched her thighs against his hips and let out a moan.

It was so, so much better than she’d imagined.

His sweetness had attracted her, and he was cute beyond measure, but oh

He’d suddenly become sexy.

She began to move with him, dropping down as his hips swung up. He was tall everywhere. The head of his cock pushed deep into her, deeper than she’d ever taken a man. It sent a delicious energy sizzling through her body. Her nipples beaded tight, and her bottom clenched.

She began to move faster, pumping up and down, riding him. Her skirt flowed out over them both, hiding what was going on beneath it. Somehow that made everything seem secretive, but from the waist up, there was nothing but skin. Her breasts bounced, her tender nipples dragging against his chest. Beneath her skirt, he caught the curves of her bottom and squeezed.

Pleasure speared through her, and she dropped her head back.

His lips settled against her neck. “I’ve wanted you like this since the moment I walked into your office.”

So that was where all the blood meant for his brain had gone. “Is that the reason why you held your Mac in front of your zipper the entire time?”

He pinched her butt and thrust hard at the same time. Josie let out a yelp, even as she creamed around him. She looked at him in astonishment.

He soothed the pinch with a sexy pet. “Don’t think you’ve got me figured out, Strawberry.”

She didn’t.

He caught her again in a hot kiss. Their tongues tangled, and their breaths meshed.

She so didn’t.

He began to thrust faster, and soon, Josie wasn’t thinking anything at all. His hands had moved to her breasts. He took their weight as his thrusts became more jagged. More urgent and primitive. Her thigh muscles burned. He was hitting deep inside her, stroking against virginal places that weren’t used to being stimulated. He filled her with every stroke, and every time they ground together, he was right against her clit.

Firelight flickered throughout the darkened room, and she could see their shadows making love against the drawn shades. It was so erotic to watch the figures move and feel it at the same time that her pussy began to flutter.

“Oh, God. Spencer.”

He pushed his hand under her skirt and between her legs. When he settled his thumb on her oversensitized clit and began to rub, her entire body jolted.

She let out a cry, and then she was coming.

And coming hard.

She milked his long cock even as he continued to shaft her in short, firm thrusts. Her thigh muscles gave out, and she sat down hard on his lap, submitting to the bumpy ride he took her on.

When the world spun, she wasn’t surprised, but when she opened her eyes, she found herself on her back. The ceiling fan overhead juddered as Spencer pushed the coffee table she was lying upon further away from the sofa. Then he was kneeling between her spread legs and fucking her in a whole different way. His hips were free to move, and he used every inch of that long cock in deep, arcing thrusts.

“Ahhh,” Josie cried, her body bowing.

He flipped up her skirt until it was around her waist, exposing every naughty inch of what they were doing. He came up over her, and her vision glazed as she looked at him. He was muscled, focused, and breathing hard. His hair was mussed, and color slashed high along his cheekbones. All the while, he kept up those long, devastating thrusts.

He spread his hands wide across her belly and stroked them upward. They paused briefly over her breasts before continuing onward to wrap around the other side of the coffee table. Josie squirmed underneath him, but he locked them both into place as his thrusts became more frantic.

He fucked her fast as his chest rubbed against her aching nipples.

“You feel so good,” he said roughly.

Her eyelids were so heavy. The pleasure was almost too much, but she forced them open and their gazes locked. His eyes weren’t so puppy-dog now. They were guard-dog intense and hungry.

Spencer’s harsh breaths mingled with her husky moans. Their bodies slapped together, and desperate curses left his lips. One last thrust had the coffee table tilting dangerously. He caught her from sliding off, and then his orgasm joined hers.

“Gahhh, Jooosssseee.”

His hips kicked one last time. He held himself, buried deep inside her, and then his body sagged. Josie lay limp against the wooden table, while Spencer braced himself on his elbows above her. He stared at her with the muscles in his face slack and his chest working hard.

He looked as shell-shocked as she felt.

“Wow,” he said, panting. “That was— Was that okay?”

Josie was so surprised by the question, she laughed. “Okay?” She lifted herself high enough to kiss him. “That was incredible.”

His grin was crooked and maybe a little cocky when she lay back down.

Josie’s thoughts were dazed. What had she just found? How had she not torn his clothes off before now?

“You look surprised,” he said.

She blinked, but then pressed her hands against his chest. “No.”

She was dumbfounded. She’d never had sex like that before, where her brain turned off and her body went flying. Who would have expected her computer geek to turn into a love stud? “Okay, maybe a little.”

He dropped his head to nibble at her collarbone. “You know how they say that those who can’t, teach?”

She didn’t know why she blushed at that, but she did.

He slid his hand up the back of her leg to cup her bottom. “Well, those who can’t practice, study. A lot. Like cramming for finals.”

The intimate stroke made her tremble, but still, she giggled. “You retained the information well.”

“Did I?”

“Oh, yes.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck when he kissed her again. She liked being able to touch him almost as much as she liked being able to tease him like this. That hadn’t been a part of any of her relationships before, especially not when making love. With him, though, it felt natural, and it turned her on more than she could say.

“Thank you for rescuing me, Spencer.”

“I can do it again.”

She laughed harder.

He finally pushed himself up off her. Kneeling as he was, their intimate connection became even more apparent. The fire in the fireplace lit them in golden light, and, suddenly, the intimacy became a bit too sharp for Josie. She remembered where they were, and pushed her skirt down to cover them. Spencer caught her hips, and he held her still as he pulled out of her.

Even soft, she felt every last inch of him.

He held out a hand to her and helped her up to a seated position. She put an arm over her breasts and looked for her clothes. “I can’t believe we did this here, at work. What if someone had walked in?”

“Maybe I need to code a warning signal into the smart building system or something.”

“For sex?”

He shrugged, and she batted at him.

He zipped up and stretched out to the end table to get her bra. She tried to be discreet as she put it on. She watched him in the firelight as he went on the hunt for the rest of their clothes. With his jeans riding low on his hips, she got a good look at him—not that she hadn’t before—but what she saw made her belly squeeze all over again.

“It’s not fair,” she whispered.

His mop of hair bounced as he looked at her quickly. “What isn’t fair?”

Josie bit the side of her cheek. He looked like he was counting how many times she’d orgasmed compared to him. “You,” she said. “Your body is ripped already.”

He was so surprised, he stopped behind the sofa with his T-shirt in one hand and her sweater in the other. He looked down at his chest. “Who? Me?”

She wasn’t teasing him. “You’ve worked out with Luke for what? A couple of weeks? Maybe a month?”

“Five weeks.”

He didn’t notice the change? She certainly did. Even Kylie had waggled her eyebrows behind his back the other day.

And didn’t that put a rush of jealousy right through Josie now?

“Guys have it so easy.”

He let out a snort. “You think working out with Luke is easy?”

“I could work out for months and not see results like that,” she said.

His smile was crooked. “So you think I look good?”

He circled the couch and plopped down in front of her. Josie couldn’t help but reach out and touch. She let her fingers do the walking across his chest. His pecs were hard and defined, and his abs were flat.

“Spencer,” she said. “You’re hot.”

His grin nearly split his face in two, but he dropped his gaze shyly. He raked a hand through his shaggy hair. “Yeah, well, you don’t need to improve.”

When his gaze swung back to her, it sizzled. Josie flushed. They’d just been intimate. Why did the words seem just as personal? “I try.”

She was down in that gym regularly, not only to keep fit but to keep her stress level in check.

She sat up straight when he reached out and cupped her breast. Even through her bra, her nipple tightened with pleasure at his touch.

“You’re perfect,” he said.

The compliment was nice, but it jarred her. It was what one viewer on Say Cheese had commented about her picture. That one had been tame compared to the raunchy things others had posted.

She reached for her sweater. “Thanks again for helping me with that website. I don’t know what I would have done if others around here had found out.”

It was hard enough being a woman in the software industry. She would have lost all the respect she’d worked so hard to gain if the naked pictures of her had gotten around work.

Or rumors of this.

She glanced nervously toward the doorways and windows. How had she gotten so caught up that she’d forgotten where they were?

Because it had felt good, that was why.

Spencer tugged his Angry Nerds T-shirt over his head, which sent his hair into even more disarray. Reaching out, he tugged at the hem of her sweater so it covered her stomach.

He braced his elbows against his knees. They were face to face, only inches apart.

“So you want me for my body, huh?”

The question surprised a sharp laugh out of her. She wanted him for a lot of reasons, and the list was growing every day. She smiled at him. “Yeah, I do.”

His smirk was one for the ages. “Josie, do you want to go grab a pizza with me?”

* * *

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The next day, Spencer sat in a security team meeting at Afire with his head floating and his body superhero strong. Last night had been... Wow. Just wow. It had been a great night. A perfect night: mind-blowing sex with the woman who’d been consuming his thoughts for weeks, followed by pizza and craft beer. Could it get any better than that?

Maybe, if he’d asked her to stay over.

Should he have asked her to his place? Or would that have been too much? He’d already felt like he was pushing his luck.

“Let’s hear from the building security team first,” Luke said as he led the meeting.

Door entries and camera feeds? Spencer’s thoughts kept bouncing along.

He felt like he’d drunk a six-pack of Mountain Dew Code Red. Amazing what a little sex could do. A little? They’d gone for the gold back there. He’d never felt anything so good, and he was pretty sure she’d been right there with him. After all, she was the one who’d crawled right onto his lap and kissed him.

He shifted in his chair, scooting it in under the table a bit.

He just hadn’t seen it coming. Even with as much information as he’d been able to hack from Luke and Kylie’s relationship, he still wasn’t good at reading women. Was anyone good at that?

“We discovered a door that wasn’t latching,” one of the building security guys reported. “Northeast side of the building. It looked like it was closed, but if anyone had tried it, they could have walked right in. Our entry numbers match the exit numbers, though, so we got lucky. We don’t think we need to double-check the camera feeds, Luke, but we wanted to run that by you.”

Spencer’s eyes glazed over. Badge swipes and closed-circuit video feeds... If he had to monitor that type of activity all day, he just might have to hit himself over the head with a hammer.

“We haven’t had any reports of unauthorized persons in the building.” Luke rubbed his chin. “The customer success team is closest to that door. Why don’t you ask around to see if they noticed anything out of the ordinary and make sure that door latch is fixed? The camera footage will be there if we get any reports.”

Camera footage... Watching hours of that could put a man to—

Camera footage?

All the energy inside Spencer suddenly turned on him like a lightning bolt. There were security cameras all over Afire, internally and externally. The upside-down little domes could be spotted on ceilings throughout the building. They were near the doorways, in the gym, and in other places where people convened. They weren’t used to watch over employees’ shoulders as they worked, but they were vital for collecting video evidence of things like potential break-ins, theft, or altercations. They were so unobtrusive that people forgot they were there.

Including him and Josie.

Cold sweat broke out on his brow. Start ’er Up was on the same monitoring system. He’d paid enough attention in previous meetings to learn that. Had he and Josie been caught last night? Had their smoking-hot interlude been recorded?

He looked from one building security guy to the next, praying he didn’t find anyone smiling at him like a cat who’d eaten the canary. Nobody was paying attention to him. Well, until he’d started staring at them...

He dropped his gaze and tried to think.

Oh, crap on a cracker.

His knee bounced up and down, and the tic under his eye began jumping. What was he going to do? How could he fix this? If he asked questions, it would draw everyone’s attention right to where he didn’t want it to go.

“Spencer?”

He jerked his chin up. Luke was looking right at him.

“Wh-what?”

“Start ’er Up?”

Spencer froze. Had they just said something about the cameras at Start ’er Up? He’d gone blind, deaf, and dumb to everything that was going on around him.

Luke lifted his eyebrows. “I asked you how things are going over at the accelerator.”

Was he insinuating something?

Spencer started to get defensive—Josie deserved her privacy, even if Luke was the boss—but then he caught on that everyone was waiting for his status report.

Oh, hell. He was messing up all around.

“Fine,” he said. “I finished a dashboard to monitor the load on their network, and I made some tweaks to the building’s controls. Not the doors or cameras—the smart system.”

Hell, why had he gone and said that?

“Things are looking good there. Not looking... I mean going... Everything’s A-okay.”

Why couldn’t he shut up?

He sank away from the table and closed his big yap. Luke’s eyebrows were lifted halfway up his forehead, but he moved on to talk to Christopher. Who was looking at Spencer strangely, too...

Spencer rubbed the throbbing muscle at his temple and stared straight ahead.

What was he going to do? He and Josie had been recorded, he was sure of it. They’d just gotten lucky that nobody must have been monitoring the video feeds at the time. The internal feeds weren’t watched as closely as the doors. He would have heard about it if they were. Everyone would have heard about it.

He couldn’t let that happen. What they’d done yesterday had been private. It was for the two of them alone.

But that evidence was still there, waiting for anyone to stumble across. All those recordings were stored for future reference.

Oh, hell. Talk about a nightmare.

His mind raced as the meeting slowed down to a crawl. Spencer knew he was self-conscious, but Luke seemed to keep giving him the side eye. Finally, he called the meeting to an end. Spencer jumped out of his seat and made a beeline to the door.

“Spencer?”

Oh, sweet Juicy Fruit.

He swung around and tried to put on a poker face. “Yeah, boss?”

Luke watched as more people left. “Could you hang back for a second?”

Spencer really didn’t want to.

The door finally clicked shut behind the last security team member. Luke turned and folded his arms over his chest. Spencer took a step back. He might be getting some muscles, but Luke still had him beat when it came to the proverbial “guns.”

“What is up with you?” Luke asked.

Spencer felt the color wash out of his face. “Uh... What do you mean?”

He felt trapped, but what could he do? He hadn’t come up with a way to fix any of this. He wasn’t good enough friends with anyone on the building security side of the team to ask for favors, but he couldn’t leave that recording out there for anyone to find. For anyone to watch...

His stomach ached.

“First you act like you’re on some sort of mental holiday, but then halfway through the meeting, you obviously took a bad trip. Do you have somewhere to be? Are these meetings boring for you?”

Spencer winced. That was the last thing he needed, to put his job in danger—which it might be if anyone discovered what he’d done on company property. Or what he’d done to help Josie... The cold sweat came back, even as his mouth went dry. He was cornered. Fight or flight wasn’t an option; he might as well fess up. “I... uh... I have a problem.”

Luke frowned. “Related to Start ’er Up?”

“In a way.”

Luke waited. “So are you going to tell me?”

Spencer wavered. Luke was the only friend he had who could help, but he was the boss. The boss over everything security-related, and Spencer had broken so many rules...

“Spencer, spill it.”

Spencer jammed his hand in his back pocket as he held his Mac by his side. “I need the memory card from last night’s video feed from Start ’er Up.”

Luke’s biceps bulged. “Why?”

Oh, that was a scary voice.

Spencer watched the ball of his foot grind against the conference room carpeting. “Uh... Josie and I kind of... skipped over the dating part too.”

Luke frowned. It took a moment before he understood. When he did, his mouth dropped open as if unhinged. “You two...”

“Uh huh.”

“Last night at Start ’er Up?”

“Well, it was early evening, to be precise, but yes.”

“You finally made a move?”

Spencer glanced up. Okay, his boss didn’t seem to be that mad. “She did.”

But gentlemen didn’t discuss those things.

“That’s all I have to say about that,” he said.

Luke seemed to realize he was staring. He rubbed a hand over his face and walked in a small circle. “And you’re wanting me to do what now?”

“Help me make sure nobody sees the video recording. We forgot there’s a camera in the room.”

Luke looked up at the ceiling for almost a count of ten.

“We can’t destroy it, Spencer. Afire has a retention policy. That recording needs to be kept for a specified amount of time, and I don’t want to have a hole in our historical footage in case we need to go back to it for anything.”

Spencer was pretty sure that nothing more significant had happened in that building than what had happened between him and Josie.

“We can’t just once—”

“No.”

When it came to security policies, Luke was hard-core. Spencer’s stomach turned. “But Luke, it’s Josie.”

Luke sighed. He ran a hand through his hair. “We might be able to store it separately, if that other location was locked down and protected.”

Spencer got the hint fast and latched on to the offer. “Like Fort Knox, I swear.”

“You’d be listed in our files as the person who checked it out.”

Spencer nodded like a bobblehead.

Luke swore under his breath as he grabbed his laptop. “Come with me.”

Spencer followed, half a step behind, when all he wanted to do was run. He knew what he was asking for was big. Huge, especially for a guy like Luke. He didn’t want to do or say anything that might change Luke’s mind.

They entered the security room, and Spencer’s gaze quickly swept all the screens that filled the walls. Oh, good. There wasn’t one running constant play by play from— Damn. There it was, Start ’er Up’s feed, down on the monitor in the bottom corner.

Luke cleared the room and sat down in the chair in front of the control console. He pointed at the chair next to him. Spencer sat.

“I need to verify that what’s on the video is what you’re saying.” Luke suddenly didn’t sound like a chief security officer anymore so much as a former Secret Service guy.

“It is.”

“And that the act was consensual.”

Spencer sucked in a breath as if gut-punched. “It was, I swear. I’d never hurt her like that—or any other way.”

Luke held up a hand. “I know. If it hadn’t been mutual, Josie would have told me or Kylie, and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, because your jaw would be wired shut by now.”

Spencer nodded mutely.

“Okay.” Luke ground the balls of his hands against his eye sockets, as if preparing himself for what he was going to see. “What time did this happen?”

Time? Spencer started thinking back. He needed to get this right, or things could get really embarrassing fast. Wait, she’d called him. He pulled out his phone and went back through his call log. He added on the time it would have taken him to drive back. “Six fifteen-ish.”

He held his breath as Luke navigated to the right camera feed and time setting. The guy knew his way around the building security system. “Are you sure?” he asked.

Spencer nodded.

Luke pushed play, and the video started. The footage was black and white, without sound. Spencer watched, sitting on the edge of his seat. His tension cranked down a notch when he realized he’d gotten the timing right. There he was, walking into the fireplace room at Start ’er Up. Josie was on the sofa, her skirt draped over the cushions. Even without color, he could see the firelight flickering. In the dimmed lighting, she looked soft and beautiful.

He became mesmerized as he watched himself sit down beside her. He knew it all by heart. He’d played through it in his head a hundred times last night, but seeing it in vivid black and white was something else.

He saw the shock on his face when she’d obviously asked him if he was Guard Dog. His gaze flicked to Luke. Thank goodness for the silent-screen era. His boss had no knowledge of that, and Spencer wanted to keep it that way.

Movement caught the corner of his eye, and Spencer’s attention snapped back to his and Josie’s private movie. And there it was, the moment when the rating turned PG.

“All right. That looks more than consensual to me.” Luke hit the stop button.

Videoed Spencer and Josie froze in place, locked at the lips. Spencer couldn’t look away. She was straddling him. Her hands cupped his face, while his fingers curled into her skirt. Sitting five feet away from the tiny monitor, he still felt the impact of that kiss. The memory caught him straight in the groin. It had really happened, and here was the proof.

Luke turned in his chair. “Although I should be asking you if you were all right with that move she put on you.”

Spencer shifted uncomfortably. She’d made the first move, but he’d definitely made the last one. “It was consensual.”

Luke shook his head, but popped the SD memory card out of the DVR. “We’re just lucky Afire hasn’t converted over to solid state drives yet.”

“We?”

“You, I mean.” Luke cleared his throat. He made some notes in a logging program on the security room’s desktop computer. “I’m entrusting this to you to protect, Spencer, as an employee of Afire. If at any time there comes a reason that the company needs the video documentation, you must return it. You can’t destroy it until the retention time period is up.”

“I promise.” Spencer reached for the memory card, but Luke held it back.

“Good luck with Josie. You treat her right.”

“I will,” Spencer promised. He still wasn’t sure where things were going with her, but if she gave him a chance, he’d treat her like gold.

Spencer’s shoulders relaxed when Luke finally turned over the video card. He’d protected her from this getting out, hadn’t he?

His phone rang, and he glanced at the screen. A thrill went through him when he saw the caller ID. “It’s her.”

Luke turned back to the security system to finish logging in the checkout.

Spencer dropped his voice. “Hey, Josie.”

“Spencer?”

He frowned. She didn’t sound right. “What’s wrong?”

“Could you come down here? Now? Nolan did it again.”