I held her by the shoulders and pulled her back so that we were looking into each other’s eyes. “I don’t care about your job or whether Charlotte was really a lion tamer. I won’t look for the worst. Not anymore. I promise.”

Hannah’s eyes were wet. Why was she crying? I had thought she’d be happy with that.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

She didn’t answer. Instead she kissed me. Softly. Deeply. She moaned low in the back of her throat. It sounded as if she were in pain.

“Hannah,” I murmured against her mouth. She kissed me harder. Her tongue tangled with mine.

We fell to our knees in the middle of her hallway. I pushed off her coat. Her fingers fumbled with the buttons of my shirt. I grabbed hold of her hand, stilling her for a moment. She looked up at me with glazed eyes. I ran my fingers along her cheek.

“I’m sorry, Hannah. I really am. This thing between us scares me a little because it’s become so damn important to me.” I kissed her carefully. “You’re important to me.”

“You’re important to me too. More than you could ever know,” she said in an agonized whisper, as if she couldn’t bear to admit it.

Then we weren’t talking anymore. In a matter of seconds we shed our clothing and ended up in a writhing heap of skin and heat on the floor. The hardwood was uncomfortable underneath us but we didn’t care.

Hannah gripped my cock, pumping it in her hand. I pressed my fingers inside her, spreading her wide. In and out. Deeper and deeper.

We didn’t speak. The only sounds were breaths and groans. When I was ready to come, she dropped her hand and wrapped her legs around my waist, angling her hips to take all of me.

And I fucked her hard. I fucked her tender.

I fucked her until she cried and cried.

And when she screamed, it was with my name on her lips.

Mine.

Hannah was mine. I was Hannah’s.

The worst would have to wait, because I wouldn’t look for it anymore.

Chapter 24

Hannah

I was like a mouse in a maze. Running and running, yet always ending up back where I had started.

Mason’s questions after seeing Charlotte had rattled me. He seemed to be closing in, whether he realized it or not. My lies were starting to come undone. I was losing the threads and they were dangling in the wind. I couldn’t hold on to them.

And the guilt was starting to consume me. I couldn’t play with his heart anymore.

I was inflicting damage and he had no idea.

I was using him. It wasn’t fair.

Toxicwrath had been right. I was in too deep.

And that hurt most of all.

Because he could never know the real Hannah Whelan. If he did know her, he’d never forgive me.

He’d be forced to arrest me.

And every day he was getting closer to doing just that. Because Mason Kohler was a good FBI agent.

The information from his laptop came flooding into my computer. His emails. His passwords. His browser history. The root kit had given me an all-access pass to his working life.

I saw that he was working on breaking the code of my signature.

He knew they represented dates. He was looking up birth certificates for May twelfth. Important events. He was narrowing the field.

And he knew that Freedom Overdrive was playing with him. My breadcrumbs weren’t fooling him anymore. He had followed up with Bradfield Financial and knew that it was a dead end. He watched our chat, he went after the leads, and he knew.

He started looking for me again. Searching the IRC chat rooms. He’d find me. He was tenacious. He wouldn’t give up. And he was too damn close.

06:45 <T0x1cwrath> Tonight’s the night. All is ready.

06:46 <Freed0m0v3rdr1v3> All is ready.

The Virtuant exploit was finally coming to fruition. All of the hard work would pay off. The corrupt CEO and his corporation of lies were going down.

It was the middle of the day. Kyle wasn’t at work again, which was just as well because I wasn’t in the frame of mind to handle his weirdness. He had been avoiding me anyway, which would have bothered me, had I spent time thinking about it.

But my head was full of other things.

My mother had called after meeting Mason, just as I had known she would.

“He’s such a nice man, Hannah. Charlotte likes him too. I hope you bring him to see her again. It did her a lot of good,” Mom had gushed.

“Maybe” was all I had said.

Mom hadn’t liked that answer.

“Don’t ruin something good, Hannah. You do that with all your relationships. It’s like you think you don’t deserve to be happy,” my mother had chided me.

“Don’t try to psychoanalyze me, Mom. I just said maybe I’d bring Mason by. Don’t read anything into it.”

“I know you and I know when you’re creating distance. Don’t do that to Mason. He’s right for you,” Mom had implored.

“And you can tell that from meeting him once?” I had scoffed.

“I can tell by the way you look at him and the way he looks at you,” she had said, and I hated how happy that made me.

He was searching and searching for the real thing. He’d never find it with me.

Never.

I had to shut it down.

Mason had been calling and texting for days. Aside from a few brief texts, I hadn’t responded. I knew it was only a matter of time until he tracked me down. He was relentless in all things. Matters of the heart included.

“I can’t see you tonight, Mason,” I told him when I finally answered his call. I had just gotten home. I had to start preparing for the exploit. But I had to do one more thing first.

Something I should have done weeks ago.

My heart began to break slowly. Painfully.

“Okay, that’s fine. Maybe later in the week.” He was at work. His computer continued to dump information. I could see that he was looking up weekend getaways in the mountains. He was planning. I couldn’t let him do that.

Not anymore.

“No, Mason. Not later in the week.”

I could barely breathe.

I couldn’t do this.

I needed him.

He needed me.

That was the problem.

“What’s wrong? Is Charlotte okay?” Mason asked, instantly sounding concerned. I loved how that was the first thing he asked. I loved that he accepted Charlotte as an integral part of my life.