Chapter Twenty-Two

Sami

Harvard drove up a bumpy dirt road that dead-ended deep out in the woods. It made me think of the night we met and how anxious I’d been about getting into a car with him. Funny how much things had changed. Now I trusted him to take me anywhere.

Although it was midafternoon, the sun hovered over the tip of the snowcapped mountains. The days were getting shorter. Before much longer, the sun would fall behind the trees, and night would slam down like a curtain.

“We have to walk from here,” Harvard said and climbed out of the driver’s seat. He opened the back door and gathered the drone’s case and the backpack he’d packed before leaving his cabin.

I eyed the lodgepole pines clawing toward the pale blue sky overhead and remembered the way Lawgiver had sliced off the tops of the trees as it fell last night.

No. Dammit. I didn’t want to think about it. It was all any of my classmates talked about today. They were lauding me as some kind of hero, but I’m sure that wasn’t the case with the HORNET commanders. Judging by Harvard’s mood when I found him, I’m guessing they had chewed him out.

Harvard set a hand on my shoulder, and I realized I’d been staring blankly out into the woods.

“You okay?” he asked softly.

He’d been reprimanded, and he was asking if I was okay? “I just…nothing. It’s nothing. I’ve been up in my head all day, too.” I tried to shake off the creeping dread. Didn’t work, but I’d pretend for him. We both needed the break. He looked frazzled and beyond exhausted. If I could take the weight of the world off his shoulders for one evening, I would. I owed him at least that.

The aspens had passed their peak color and steadily shed their leaves, leaving more branches bare than covered. The leaves crunched under my boots as I followed him around the car. “We had to come all the way out here to test the drone?”

He secured the backpack on his shoulders. “It’s a classified prototype. Can’t risk someone seeing it, especially after last night. C’mon, it’s not much farther.” He held out his hand.

I hesitated only a second. I was a city girl, born and bred, used to the conveniences and excesses of Silicon Valley. Until joining Class Alpha, I’d never even seen a horse up close, and white-topped mountains only existed in paintings at the dentist’s office.

I set my hand in his and let him lead me down a leaf-covered path. Snowpack that hadn’t melted during the summer dotted the landscape. The light was muted here, a soft dappling that matched the silence around us.

Only, I realized as we explored deeper, it wasn’t silent. Not really. Birds chirped at each other. Wind whispered through the treetops. Water bubbled happily somewhere nearby. There was life here—it was just slower and softer than life in San Jose or even at the training facility, where there was always someone moving or talking, where there were truck engines and bursts of male laughter and the clang of weights.

“It’s beautiful here,” I said, my voice full of the wonder I felt.

“It is,” Harvard agreed. “Jesse talks about this place all the time, but I haven’t been up here before. I figured now was as good a time as any to come see it for ourselves.”

The path crossed over a chattering creek, and then the earth abruptly dropped away and the creek tumbled into a lake the color of a turquoise gem.

I ground to a halt and gasped. I’d never seen anything so lovely in all my life. I didn’t know water existed in that color. It glittered in the sun, a multifaceted jewel that would fetch an astronomical price if it were located on a necklace instead of way up here in the mountains.

Harvard set down his backpack and slid an arm around my waist. “It’s called Demon Lake.”

I leaned into him, enjoying the heaviness of his arm, the heat of him radiating through my sweatshirt. “An ugly name for such a gorgeous place.”

“Jesse said when his ancestors settled this land and discovered it hidden up here, they didn’t want anyone to know how gorgeous it is. They didn’t want its beauty spoiled, so they called it Demon in hopes people would stay away.”

“Looks like it worked.” Up here, standing on top of this cliff overlooking the lake, it felt like we were the only two people in existence.

“It’s owned by the National Park Service now. It gets more traffic than it used to, but it’s still a mostly hidden treasure.”

We stood together for several more minutes, admiring the view, and then he turned me toward him and pressed a kiss to my lips. Gentle, asking. So different than the desperate demand of him the other night in his car.

“What was that for?” I whispered.

He backed away only enough to press his forehead to mine. “I’ve wanted to kiss you again, but I couldn’t back at HQ. Too many eyes. Too many reasons we shouldn’t be together. But up here, it’s just us. We can be together. Is that okay?”

“Yes.” I stood on my toes, intending to catch his mouth again, but he laughed softly and took a step back.

“Later,” he said. “We start that now and you won’t get a chance to fly the drone before dark.”

I groaned. Because I wanted more now. And, dammit, I also wanted to see what the drone could do. “You promise we’ll continue this later?”

A wicked glint entered his eyes, and his dimple appeared. “I didn’t bring you up here just to play with my drone.”

Heat flooded my body, chasing away the nipping October chill. “That’s good. Your drone’s not the only thing I want to play with.”

Oh my God, had I just said that out loud? Where had this naughty, sassy Sami come from?

Harvard made a sound deep in his throat and reached for me, but stopped short. He closed his eyes and seemed to wage an internal battle. “No, I’m doing this right.”

I watched him open the drone’s case and set it up. “What do you mean, right? Plan to woo me with technology first? It’s not needed. Honest.”

He left the drone sitting on a rock and opened his backpack and pulled out a thick fleece blanket. He spread it out on the rock. We sat down, and he produced a wine bottle and two stainless steel coffee mugs. The bottle opened with a soft pop, and he poured some into each mug.

He handed me a mug, then clinked his rim to mine. “I want to stun you with my extensive repertoire of technology, wine, and my witty banter.”

I snorted into the mug before taking a drink. It tasted like fruity gasoline. I gagged and forced myself to swallow. “Oh, shit. What is this?”

The look on his face was priceless as he picked up the bottle and squinted at the label. “I don’t know. I don’t actually drink wine. Someone gave me this bottle for my birthday this year.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a gag gift?” I dumped the rest of my mug out.

He sighed and also dumped his out, then followed it with the rest of the bottle. “So much for my repertoire.”

“You certainly stunned me.”

Grumbling, he reached for the drone. “Let’s fly this thing before I do anything else embarrassing.”

I laughed and followed him to the edge of the cliff. He set the drone down on an outcropping and manipulated the controller, which looked like a modified video game controller. He commanded the drone into the air, made it hover, then zip back and forth in front of us.

“Wow. It does move like a real hornet.”

“That was the plan when I started building it. I want the enemy to mistake it for a bug. If I can get the camera problem sorted, it will be the smallest nano-drone in existence. It’s two inches smaller than the current smallest combat drone in use.” He landed it back on the rock and handed me the controller. “Want to give it a spin?”

My fingers all but itched with anticipation while he gave me a quick tutorial on how to work it. Then it was my turn. A thrill of pure joy sung through me as the drone lifted into the air. It was light and quick and so much freaking fun to fly. I made it swoop and loop and dive down the cliff to skim along the surface of the lake. The whole time, I giggled like a little girl.

“Do you want to name her?” he asked.

“Can I?”

“Go ahead.”

“Well.” I considered the hornet drone, watched it zip around, and grinned. “She’s Tinkerbell, of course.”

“Of course,” he said like he understood. He lasted a full minute before he cracked and asked, “Why?”

“She’s a spy drone, and Tink was always spying.”

He laughed softly. “I love that brain of yours.”

“Oh, c’mon. It’s nothing like yours.” I realized he had stopped watching the drone and was instead staring at me. The longer he stared, the warmer I got. I could feel him undressing me with his gaze, and my nipples hardened, rubbing almost painfully against the fabric of my bra. A tremor of anticipation raced through me. I decided to bring the hornet back because I couldn’t concentrate, and I didn’t want to dump it in the lake.

“No,” he said softly and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “It’s better. I don’t have your imagination.”

“Mm.” I tilted my head to the side, giving him access to my neck. “I’m imagining lots of things right now.”

He skimmed his lips along the side of my neck and nibbled at my earlobe. “Any of those things involve us getting naked as quickly as possible?”

“All of them.” As soon as I set the drone down, we came together in a clash of bodies and mouths. I dropped the controller and wrapped myself around him. This was what I’d wanted since the other night in his car. I’d dreamed of his smell, the feel of him between my legs, and had woken up so hot and horny that my vibrator barely took the edge off.

Harvard knelt and laid me down on the blanket. He pulled off his shirt in that one-handed way men did, a calculated gesture meant to make ovaries explode.

It worked. I shook with excitement and nerves as I fought with the clasp of my jeans.

He stilled my hands and leaned forward to nuzzle the bit of skin just above my waistband. “Let me undress you. I’ve been fantasizing about this for too long.”

I nodded and sat up so he could pull my sweater off over my head. He fumbled a bit with the hook of my bra, but he was kissing his way up my shoulder and neck as he worked it, so I didn’t care to help him.

Finally, the bra fell away.

My nipples were already excited, but they hardened to tight peaks at the blast of cool evening air. Like the other night, Harvard seemed fascinated by them. He closed his lips around one and rolled the other between his fingers. I cried out, dropping my head back to give him better access. It was almost too much…and yet also somehow not enough.

I reached for his waistband. I also fumbled, my hands shaking, my fingers clumsy, but I got the button free and slid his zipper down. His erection swelled out of the opening, pointing straight at me, still covered with the cotton of his boxer briefs.

I wanted to see him, feel him in my hand. Maybe, if I was bold enough, even taste him.

He stopped me before I uncovered him. His hand was shaking, too. “You first. The moment you touch me, I’m done. I’ll need to be inside you, but I don’t want to hurt you. I want you ready so you’ll enjoy this.”

Oh, God. This was really happening. Harvard and I were really going to have sex up here on this rock overlooking this gem of a lake.

Suddenly nervous, I nodded. He smiled and cupped my cheeks in his hands, lifting my face and bringing my lips to his. He took his time with the kiss, and the nervousness dissipated, replaced instead with a growing sense of expectation. He laid me down again and kissed his way from my mouth to my breasts, where he paused to flick his tongue over each nipple before moving lower, to the waistband of my jeans.

One minute, I was still partially dressed; then I blinked and was somehow splayed out naked in front of him. I wondered where my clothes had gone, but then he was between my legs, his breath hot on my inner thigh, and I no longer cared about my clothes. My whole body lit up at the first rough circle of his tongue over my clit. I gripped his hair and bucked against his mouth, both wanting more and wanting to back away because the sensations were too bright, too sharp, too intense.

Ugh. My body was so confused.

Harvard laughed and gripped my butt, holding me still so he could continue to torture me in the best possible way.

I thrashed and moaned and made all kinds of needy, desperate noises I would be embarrassed about later. And still he didn’t let up. Just when I thought I couldn’t take him sucking my clit for a second longer, he slid a finger inside me and worked it in and out. I flew apart. I left my body and soared out over the lake, the mountains. It was the most exquisite thing I’d ever felt.

And he was still there, still working to stretch me with his fingers. Almost as soon as I came back to myself, he sent me flying again.

“Jesus,” he groaned, sounding as if he was in real pain. He left me lying there, spinning and trying to figure out if I was still flesh and bone or if I’d died and become a being of light and sensation.

He was back in seconds and shucked off his jeans. I saw his cock pop free, watched in fascination as he rolled on a condom. I’d never seen a man touch himself before. He handled his cock so carelessly, almost roughly. I wondered how he’d like it if I touched him like that.

He settled over me, his hips in between my thighs. His head nudged at my entrance and then pushed inside, stretching me.

Reality came back in a rush.

This was going to hurt. I’d always heard losing your virginity hurt.

I tensed up, and he froze. For a moment, neither of us moved. We stared at each other, our heated breath mingling in a cloud between us.

Harvard’s arms started to shake. His voice sounded like he’d swallowed glass. “Do you want to stop?”

I kinda did. But also didn’t.

I drew a breath and shook my head.

“I’ll go slow. If you want to stop, I’ll stop. You’re in control here, Sami.” He lowered to his elbows and cupped my head between his hands. His kiss was soft, gentle, coaxing me to forget my fear and remember how good he had made me feel. It helped. I still felt him pressing deeper and felt a burning sensation as my body stretched to fit him.

Oh, c’mon, body. This is Harvard. He isn’t going to hurt me.

I focused on relaxing, breathed in and out, and when I did, he slid all the way inside. He gasped and dropped his head to my shoulder. I felt invaded but also like he’d filled an emptiness in me I hadn’t known existed.

An ache bloomed low in my belly again, and suddenly having him inside me wasn’t enough to fill that void anymore. I needed…something more. I lifted my hips experimentally. He hissed out a breath and surged forward in a way that seemed involuntary. The friction sent heat spiraling out to my fingers and toes, making them tingle.

“Do that again. Move.” My voice was low and breathless, a sexy film noir femme fatale that no man could resist. That Harvard couldn’t resist, and I reveled in the power. He’d said I was in control. I didn’t fully believe it until then, but he’d do anything I asked right now.

“Move,” I commanded again, more certain of myself and what I needed from him.

He sat up on his knees and scooped his arms under each of my knees, holding my legs open. He moved slowly at first, and I watched with heated fascination as his length slid in and out of me. He was trying to be gentle, take it easy, and I could tell it was killing him. He shook with the effort of it.

I didn’t know how to tell him I was okay, that he hadn’t hurt me and he didn’t need to hold back. Simple words, but I couldn’t find them. Funny how you could be so intimately connected to someone and still not know how to talk to them.

Instead I sat up, breaking our connection.

His eyes widened. “Jesus, Sami. Did I hurt you? I’m sorry. I was trying to—”

I shushed him with a kiss and acted on pure instinct. I pushed a hand against his chest until he leaned back. He said I was in control, and I wanted him to stop worrying about me and feel good. I straddled him.

He reached down with one hand to keep his cock upright while I sank down on him. It didn’t hurt this time, but it hadn’t dawned on me that changing the position would change the way he felt inside me.

Hah, I thought I’d felt invaded before? That was nothing. He was huge between my legs and so deep inside me he rubbed against something that made me gasp.

Experimentally, I rolled my hips, and the tingling returned to my fingertips and toes. My entire body buzzed and crackled with pleasure. I could see how people got addicted to this.

Below me, Harvard’s corrugated abs clenched, and he grabbed fistfuls of the blanket under us. His breath came in ragged pants.

“Sami.” He all but choked on my name.

I was breathing hard, too. I ran my hands up his stomach to his chest. “What do you want me to do? What do you want to do to me? Whatever it is, I trust you. You aren’t hurting me. You feel too good to hurt me.” The words tumbled from my mouth. I wasn’t even sure if they made sense, but they did the trick.

“Oh, fuck.” Harvard surged up, and once again, I was tucked under him, my legs clamped around his hips.

He thrust hard and fast, and for a fleeting moment I thought, he’s claiming me. This wasn’t just sex anymore. It was something even more primal, more elemental. He was making me his, and I was making him mine.

Then I couldn’t think anymore. I orgasmed again, but it wasn’t like the last time, the quick burst that sent me flying. This was gentler, a long, slow wave rolling over me from head to toe. I felt Harvard tense up, felt his cock kick inside me. He let out a shuddering breath and collapsed to his elbows. His mouth found mine, and the kiss was soft and sweet, such a difference from the maelstrom that had come before it.

Sweat slicked our bodies. When Harvard rolled to lay beside me, I shivered. The cool fall day had started edging toward a cold night, but we’d been too busy discovering each other to notice. He gathered me into his side and pulled the blanket around to cocoon us. We didn’t speak, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. We lay there, curled into each other under the blanket, and watched the sky deepen to navy.

He pressed his lips to my temple. “We should get back.”

When he made a move to get up, I tightened my arms around him. “Just a little longer. I want to see the stars.”

He settled down beside me again and pointed up at the first star to appear just above the tip of the mountain. “Which one is that?”

“Mm. Jupiter.”

“I always thought Venus is the brightest planet in the sky.”

“It is, but this time of year, it’s right on the horizon. It would be right about…” I held out an arm flat, approximating where the horizon was. “There. We can’t see it because of the mountains.”

I felt his lips curl into a smile as he pressed a kiss to the back of my head. “You know your stars.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time looking up.”

“Why didn’t you go into astronomy?”

“I did, and it sucked the joy out of it for me.” I winced. “My parents put a lot of pressure on me. Science, technology, math. They expected me to go to an Ivy League school, create a start-up, and become a millionaire by my mid-twenties, like they did. But I was always more interested in science fiction than science. I wanted to create, write, draw.” I swept my arm up at the sky over our heads. “I’d rather stare at the stars and imagine the gods and goddesses who put them there than know they’re just burning balls of gas millions of light-years away.”

“You’re a dreamer.”

“Much to my parents’ dismay. When I discovered coding and hacking, they were thrilled with my interest in technology, and I thought I’d found my niche. A place I could belong…but you know how that turned out.”

“I do know,” he said so softly I wondered for a moment if I’d imagined it. Then he added, “I lived it, too.”

I rolled over and propped myself up on one arm to look down at him. “Oh, c’mon, you’re exactly what my parents wanted me to be. Insanely smart, Ivy League educated. I mean, you worked for the CIA! How many twenty-somethings can say that? And now you’re firmly settled into a career, all before your twenty-sixth birthday.”

He closed his eyes as if my words pained him, and I realized I’d said something wrong. I set a hand on his chest, felt his heart thundering too hard under my palm. “Harvard?”

He winced but didn’t open his eyes.

I waited several long moments until he looked at me again. “What’s wrong?”

The moonlight made him pale, made his eyes darker, unreadable. He lifted my hand off his chest and cradled it in his own as he sat up. “Can you…call me Eric?”

A weird mix of happiness and dread bubbled inside my chest. Happiness that he wanted me to call him something nobody else did, and dread because he seemed so damn sad about it. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to put distance between us again or draw me in closer. “Uh, sure. Eric.”

He drew in a breath, and his shoulders slumped. “I’m not Harvard.”

“Okay.” I said it slowly, drawing the word out. Where was he going with this?

“I never went to college.”

Pretty sure my jaw dropped open. “But all of your degrees…?”

“Lies. I hacked and social engineered my way into those degrees. They’re not real.”

The drawer in his desk suddenly made a lot of sense. “That’s why you don’t display them.”

He nodded. “I was so young when the CIA scooped me up, and not many of my colleagues took me seriously, so I started telling people I was a child prodigy and Harvard graduate. I mean, it could’ve been true if I’d made different choices. I was accepted to Harvard at age twelve. I just never went.”

He still hadn’t let go of my hand and now rubbed his thumb in a soothing caress across the back of it. His touch sent a blizzard of sensation through all of my nerve endings. Made it hard to focus. “But if you didn’t graduate from Harvard, how did you end up in the CIA?”

“Our stories are a lot more alike than you think, Sami. Hats don’t get much blacker than mine. I’d hack my way into classified information and put it out there for everyone to see. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I was an idealistic sixteen-year-old, and I thought, yeah, I was doing wrong, but it was to make the world a better place. I stole credit card numbers, sold intel and anything else I could find. I was eighteen when the CIA caught me. They knew how dangerous my skills would be if I went to work for any of the country’s enemies, so they gave me a choice. I could work for them for an indeterminate amount of time, or I could be tried for treason. It was a no-brainer. They gave me a new identity, a new backstory, and I became Harvard.”

I stared at this man I had just made love with. If he was caught at eighteen, then it didn’t take a math genius to know that was the same year I was arrested. Was it possible he’d been involved with A.K.A., too? “What was your old identity?”

His lips twisted into something that resembled a smile. “Hacker or real?”

I hesitated. I wanted to say “hacker,” but that was the old Sami in her black hat, desperate for knowledge she shouldn’t have access to. I wasn’t her anymore. Yes, his past lined up with my own, and that couldn’t be coincidence, but A.K.A.’s leaders were still in prison. I’d know if one of them had gotten out. Maybe Eric had been low-level, like me. Though I didn’t know how a hacker of his caliber could be low-level.

But, really, did it matter to me if he had been part of A.K.A.?

“Real,” I said at last. I didn’t want to live solely in the digital world anymore.

He released a long, slow breath, and the brackets of tension around his mouth eased into a real smile. “My name is Eric. That’s why I want you to use it. I don’t want to be a lie to you when this…” He lifted our joined hands and pressed a kiss to my knuckles. “Feels so real.”