I’ve overslept.
When I open my eyes and immediately go to check my phone, I realize that January is in my arms.
And then I realize that the bedside clock reads 8:34. I haven’t slept this late since college.
My heart gives a kick, then January snuffles and wriggles closer to me. Everything becomes still and quiet, me most of all.
Peace. That’s what this sensation is, I realize. January brings me peace.
She also makes me laugh, makes my blood sing, and I trust her. I’d say I’ve forgotten what that’s like, but no woman has ever made me feel this way. Except her. Always her.
I could blame it on Napa, on being secreted away together in the winery, but I know that’s a lie. Because as wonderful as it’s been, I don’t want to stay here forever with her.
I want to bring her back to my house, my bed, and make it ours.
Christ, I’ve fallen in love.
I think she has too.
She wakes up then, and her smile is just radiant. My mood instantly lightens at the sight.
And then she stretches and I remember last night, which was anything but light and bright. It was dark and intense and the best sex I’ve ever had. I frame her face and kiss her good morning, putting some of those memories into it. But before long I have to pull away even though both of us are panting. Sadly, we still have work to get to.
January moans in protest. “We have time for a quickie.”
I’m not going to argue with that, especially not when she’s straddling me, her gorgeous breasts swaying as she settles into place. I grab a condom from the sleeve on the bedside table, and in two seconds I’m inside her, exactly where I’m meant to be.
I was wrong about last night. This is the best sex of my life, with January riding me hard and quick, her cheeks flushed with sleep and her hair a wild tangle. This is how I want to wake up every morning, first with her in my arms and then with the two of us entangled together.
I’m chanting her name as I come, and she’s chanting mine. I’ve never had a moment more perfect in my life.
Once we release Ultra and defeat Fuchs, I’m keeping her by my side. Forever.
But first we’ve got to finish the damn system.
An hour later, we’re hard at work in the workspace we’ve set up in one of the guest rooms. January’s decided it’s time to do a test run of Ultra. We’ve got Fuchs’s spyware running on a phone we’ve taken apart, and I’m installing the chip in it. The idea is we’ll use Fuchs’s spyware to activate the phone’s camera and see if Ultra can encrypt the images.
At least that’s the idea. She’s put me in charge of installing the chip, and it’s not going so smoothly. Not that I’m going to ask her for help. I used to do stuff like this in my sleep, and in a few minutes, it will all come back to me—
“Wow, you’ve gotten so terrible at soldering,” January says as she looks over my shoulder. “It’s actually cute.”
Besides the Bastards, there’s no one in my life who’d dare talk to me like that. And I love her for it. “It’s not terrible.” The connections are sound, if not exactly pretty. “You’re the one who wanted me to get back to my roots.”
Which she’s right about. I’d forgotten how satisfying it is to wire up circuits, to get my hands dirty with hardware.
“I guess you just need some practice,” January says, plugging our jerry-rigged phone into her laptop. “Maybe I could get you one of those my-first-electronics kits from a toy store.”
I roll my eyes, which makes her giggle. “I know you remember that I always had the highest score on our electronics lab assignments.”
She shakes her head as her fingers fly over the keyboard. “Nope, we tied for first. It seems that your mind is slipping.”
I nip at the spot where her neck meets her shoulder, soft and succulent. When all this is done, I’m flying her to some private island for a month of nothing but relaxation and sex. “We tied in algorithms. And you kicked my ass in compilers.”
Her fingers slow as she leans into me. “Yes, I did.” She turns her head and gives me a long, drugging kiss. “But you still need to brush up on your soldering.”
I’m still laughing when she announces, “It’s ready.”
The atmosphere in the room is suddenly heavy. I can tell she’s nervous, but I’m not at all. I know Ultra will work because she designed it.
I set my hands on her shoulders and squeeze. “It will work. You know it will.”
She takes an unsteady breath. “I’ll test the spyware first. I definitely know that works.”
Seeing the images and sounds being recorded from a phone that was supposed to be powered down, its screen completely black, has haunted me since she demo’d it for me.
I haven’t told January because she doesn’t need to worry, but the Bastards and I have sworn to bring Fuchs down. He’s not getting away with this. And it’s personal for me since he went after January.
Soon enough, the entire valley will know she’s mine and completely untouchable.
The spyware window pops up then, the screen blank because the camera isn’t active. My skin tingles anyway, as if there are eyes on the back of my neck.
January’s fingers began to tremble slightly. I kiss her hair, reminding her that she’s safe with me.
“Okay,” she says softly and hits the Enter key.
The screen splutters with white noise for a few moments, trying to acquire the feed from the phone camera.
But the image steadies and footage of the office ceiling appears on the screen, pulled out of the phone’s camera by Fuchs’s spyware. The phone itself is quiet and dark, giving no indication that it’s doing anything at all.
Seeing the spyware in action once again gives me the chills. Who is Fuchs spying on right now? Someone I know?
“Son of a bitch,” I mutter. Fuchs’s going to pay for this.
“Exactly,” January says. “Now let’s see if I’ve managed to make something that can stop him.”
“You did.”
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she opens a new command window, the one that controls Ultra. A few lines of code to tell it to go to work, and then she hits the Enter key again.
Her shoulders are rigid with tension, so I knead some of it out as we wait. The feed from the phone camera remains crisp and clear.
Come on, I tell her program. Do your damn job.
It doesn’t listen.
January sighs, the sound filled with infinite sadness and defeat.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I can’t say if I’m more disappointed for her or for missing the chance to nail Fuchs’s balls to the wall.
And then the camera feed splinters. It goes clear again, briefly, and then it’s nothing but white noise.
January snaps into action, calling up the window that controls the spyware program. It’s still running, still trying to pull images off the camera’s phone… but it can’t decode what it’s getting anymore. Ultra has encrypted the data.
“You did it.” Elation fills me. “January, this is—”
She shakes her head. “It’s encrypting fine, but I need to make sure I can decode it. Nobody wants their pictures turned into white noise permanently.”
She calls up the Ultra command window and routes the encrypted images into it, telling Ultra to unscramble them.
This time the program doesn’t tease us with more sputters and white noise. The second January hits Enter, the video feed is there, crisp and bright as if we were looking on the phone screen itself.
“You’re amazing.” I press another kiss to her hair. “Completely and totally amazing.”
She sags under my hands as if she can’t quite believe what’s happened. “It worked. I mean, it’s only the first test—”
I spin her chair around and crouch before her. “No. We can take this to Pixio right now. This is more than enough to convince them.”
Her brow furrows. “Are you sure?”
“Trust me.” I slip my hands into hers and hold tight. “I’ll do the selling. You just bring the hardware.”
For a moment the uncertainty holds on to her. She doesn’t want to believe. But then everything about her goes light, as if I’ve taken a weight from her.
“Okay. You’re in charge of the deal making then. I trust you.”
I feel that in every inch of myself. This project is everything to her. She’s got everything riding on this.
And she trusts me with it.
“I love you.” I hadn’t meant to say that, but it feels like the only right thing to say here.
Her expression freezes. She’s stunned, and I can’t tell if it’s in a good way. My heart freezes too.
I’m vulnerable all over again with her, worse than I was in college though, because this isn’t a crush.
It’s love.
I can have anything in the world I want, but all I want is her to love me in return.
January swallows, slow and deliberate. “You… you love me?” Then she pulls her hands from mine and covers her face.
My entire body sinks. It’s happening all over again. I’d thought…
She takes a shuddering breath, then another. “I never believed…” Her hands drop, and the light shining from her eyes gives me hope. “I love you too.”
I never thought I could feel this much. There’s nothing in my life to compare to the sensations flooding through me. I stand up, pull her out of the chair and into my arms.
“I’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted,” I promise her. “The entire world. You just have to ask.”
She laughs into my chest. “How about your heart? Can I have that?”
“It was always yours.” It’s true; she’s been carrying it since college, and I’ve only just realized it. “But I’d like to make a deal. Can I have yours in return?”
January lifts her face to mine. “Done,” she says, right before we seal our bargain with a kiss.