Zero Day Exploit (Bayou’s End #1.5) (2 page)

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” He grinned. “You going to tell me why you’re sucking down lemon drops like it’s the zombie apocalypse and you’re out of chainsaws?”

She couldn’t help laughing again, before trailing into a sigh. “It’s bullshit, really. The company I work for used to be great. Huge, creative team culture. It wasn’t polished, but we got shit
done
. But there was a huge IPO, and then a merger. Now it’s all about corporate policy. People get screwed.”
I got screwed
. “Everything gets buried in corporate bureaucracy until we’re hopelessly behind the competition. Plus? I got written up for a dress code violation this morning by my underqualified jerk of a team lead.”

His gaze dipped to her half-zipped hoodie, and the plunging V neck of the t-shirt underneath. “Was that the shirt you were wearing?”

“Yeah.” She glanced down. Invader Zim looked back up at her, middle finger in the air.

He hid a smile behind his tumbler. “I can see how it would be distracting.”

“If you want to cheer me up, you’re not supposed to take their side,” she muttered. “Rules didn’t roll out until this afternoon. Writing me up was bullshit. Plus we all have to go to a mandatory seminar with a motivational speaker, or we’re fired.”

“Sounds pretty rough,” he said mildly.

“Shut up, smartass.” She groaned and dragged a hand through her hair, then pulled a lock forward. Black faded down to a deep, bloody red. She should pick up some black dye in the morning. “I know—I know it’s not much. I just…don’t do well in corporate environments. Maybe I’m being childish.”

“Maybe.” He looked into his tumbler. “Some people are just too independent to work under someone else’s thumb. Human nature is different for everyone. That’s what it means to
be
human.”

“Yeah. Guess so. But in this economy, I’m lucky to have a job. So…” She raised her drink in a toast. “Ugly pants suits, here I come.”

“Hear hear.” He clinked his drink against hers, before they both tossed theirs back. Zero was tempted to order another, but four was enough. She still had to work in the morning—and bizarrely entertaining as he might be, she was too smart to get wasted in a bar with a strange guy.

The bartender swung by, and she raised her hand. “Coffee, please? Mocha, no cream, two sugars.”

“Same for me, no sugar,” Evan said.

The bartender stalked away, muttering
this isn’t a fucking Starbucks
. Zero glanced up to find Evan watching her, his pale green eyes shrewd.

“Ever thought of striking out on your own?” he asked. “You’re a programmer, right? I’ve heard every corporate programmer is the legacy of a failed dot-com.”

“I think about it every day, but I have rent to pay. Ideas don’t pay rent.” She shrugged. “Never had a dot-com. Just finished grad school two years ago. Wasn’t even in the market when the bubble burst.”

“And that would make you…how old?”

“Twenty-six.”

He whistled softly with a wicked smile. “Barely legal.”

“You say that like it’s a selling point. How old are you?”

“Thirty-four.”

“Perv,” she teased. “Creeping on barely-legal girls in bars.” Thirty-four shouldn’t look so damned good, but she liked it on him. Made him look more settled than most of the twenty-something recovering frat boys who usually hit on her, or the metro-geek guys who were sweet enough until they called her a bitch for friend-zoning them.

“You don’t have to be in your thirties to be sexy and smart.” A lingering gaze swept over her. “Both of which I’d say you are.”

A slow smile crept across her lips. “More selling points?”

“Definitely,” he murmured, holding her eyes, his own dark and heated. Something about the way he looked at her—the confidence in it, the promise, the easy, casual certainty in himself—made her shiver. Definitely not her usual. And if he kept looking at her that way, she’d probably do something reckless she’d definitely never tell her friends about. She didn’t need to listen to pointless slut-shaming over a little harmless fun.

…she wasn’t actually considering this, was she?

Thank God, the bartender was back with her coffee. She didn’t need to be thinking about making those kinds of mistakes with some overconfident weirdo she’d barely met.

She turned away from him and toyed with the handle of her coffee mug; its warmth soaked into her fingers. “You,” she said, “are definitely doing a better job of distracting me.”

“How about flirting?” he asked. His jeans rasped against the barstool’s cracked vinyl as he shifted closer. The scent of his leather jacket blended with a crisp hint of aftershave and a certain primal male musk. “How am I doing at that?”

Deep breaths. “I’ll let you know after you buy me my next coffee.”

“So flattery and a mocha latte are the way to a woman’s heart.”

“Not necessarily my heart, but you’re talking your way into my good graces.”

He laughed, picked up his mug, and slid off the stool. “C’mon.” He tossed his head toward a booth. “I don’t know about you, but these barstools are chapping my ass.”

Zero rolled her eyes, but rose and followed him to the booth. Still an asshole, she thought. He draped his coat over the back of the seat; she tucked her hoodie and messenger bag into the booth and slid in across from him. “So what do you do, hm?”

“The usual. Suit and tie. I’m more interested in honing my flirting skills than talking about work.”

“Great. Now I’m practice.” She snorted, trailing into a laugh.

She was still laughing hours later, when she glanced down at her watch. Her stomach dropped out. She couldn’t believe how late it had gotten; Evan had completely distracted her. She’d thought he’d stop being funny once the lemon drops were out of her system, but three hours and five coffees later, here she was. He’d teased. She’d rebuffed. He’d flirted. She’d avoided. But she kept finding her gaze returning to that sinful mouth, her thoughts drifting until he dragged them back with another question or smartass comment.

But smartass comments wouldn’t keep her going in the morning. She slid to her feet and into her hoodie. “It’s midnight. I should be in bed. I still have to go listen to that douchenozzle tomorrow.”

“Douchenozzle? Creative.” He rose with her, shrugging broad, powerful shoulders into his leather jacket. “Come on. I’ll walk you home.” At her skeptical look, he laughed. “Seriously, I just want to make sure you get home safe.”

“I stopped being tipsy four coffees ago.”

“I know. But it’s after midnight, and this is New York.”

“For all you know, I live a two-hour train ride away.”

“Then we’d better find something to talk about,” he said, and gestured toward the door with a bow. “After you.”

Zero eyed him, then groaned, shouldered her bag, and headed for the door. “You’re not getting off the train with me,” she said.

“Of course not.”

He got off the train with her.

They took the twenty-minute ride in easy silence, pressed close on the narrow subway seats, the hard heat of his thigh sandwiched against hers, their bodies brushing together each time the train jolted. God, he smelled good. She was way too sober for what she was thinking right now. Especially when every time he caught her eye—caught her
watching
him—he gave her that slow, sensuous smile that said he knew exactly what was on her mind.

When the train let off at her stop he rose with her, but stopped at the door of the subway car, looking down at her. She had fifteen seconds to make up her mind before the train whisked him off and she never saw him again. She looked up into pale green eyes, dark with the question he wouldn’t ask.

She took a deep breath. To hell with it. Not like she hadn’t done the walk of shame before.

“Walk me to my door?” she asked, and he smiled with those sinful damned lips that made something so simple look so dirty.

“Of course,” he said, and stepped off the train. The door whooshed shut behind him. “I’d hate for anything to happen to you.”

In the twenty steps from the transit exit to my front door
, she thought, but said nothing.

They stepped out into the crunch of snow on the sidewalk, breaths tasting of the crisp, clean scent of fresh snowfall on each cold bright inhalation, pluming into smoke as they rushed out. Street lights gleamed golden, stars bottled in glass, lighting their way as she led him up the sidewalk to her building, their arms brushing with every step. She dug out her keys, then glanced at him, biting her lip.

“This is me.”

“I had guessed.” He reached up to coil a lock of her hair around his finger, then brushed its tip against her cheek in a ticklish trail as he stepped closer. Deliciously close, oppressively close, the tall bulk of him caging her against the door of the building. “I won’t ask, Zero. It’s your choice.”

“Okay,” she said with a shaky breath. “Okay. Well you can come up if you want. Or not.”

“You have to unlock the door first.”

“That too.”

Somehow she fumbled her key into the lock, and nearly ran up the stairs. He was a dark shadow on her heels, stalking her to the front door of her third-floor shoebox studio. She felt hunted, and a delicious shiver went through her when, as she unlocked her door, his hands curled against her waist, burning hot and rough through her hoodie and shirt. He leaned into her, his body hard against her back, and dipped his head. His lips hovered over her throat, and with a husky sound he simply
inhaled
.

“You smell like green apples,” he whispered, and caught her earlobe between his teeth. The sharp pleasurable sting of a bite bolted straight to every pleasure point in her body before he soothed it with the soft tracery of his tongue. She trembled, and made herself pull away long enough to step inside and drag him through the door.

He backed her up against the wall just past the entryway, trapping her against the hard brick. She wasn’t that short—five foot five—but he towered over her, until he nearly enveloped her. His knuckles grazed down her throat, rough callused texture teasing her skin into prickles as he traced a path down to the zipper of her hoodie.

“Changing your mind?” he breathed, eyes simmering hot as he slowly dragged the zipper down, teeth popping apart with a loud rasp.

“No,” she whispered, and swallowed hard. “But let’s get one thing straight. You are definitely the mistake I’ll regret in the morning. You won’t call me, I won’t call you.”

“I can deal with that,” he said, then drew her close and kissed her.

D
IZZY HEAT CRASHED OVER
Z
ERO
, leaving her gasping. Evan laid claim to her mouth with a wildness that bordered on madness, scouring her lips with his heat, shocking her senses with every titillating flick of his tongue. He delved deep, invading her intimately and inescapably. He tasted like wildfire, a flashfire burn that consumed everything in his path—including her. She’d never have thought, from his lazy smiles and lingering glances, that this slept under his skin.

She should tell him to slow down. She should do…something. Something other than clinging to him as he stripped her raw with a searing kiss, mating his tongue to hers until every liquid stroke turned her blood to molten gold.

Fuck.
Fuck
. He destroyed her ability to think; the hard heat of his body caged her, the heavy weight of massive hands stroking over her hips, the heady flavors of coffee still clinging to his lips and mingling with that flashburn taste until she could spend hours drinking in every drop of him.

He tore his mouth from hers and looked down at her, heat paling his eyes to a crackling green-white lightning strike that blazed right through her. “Fuck, Zoraya,” he breathed, the needy growl in his voice shivering down her spine to pool in a hot little knot just below the pit of her stomach. He released her hips to slide long, rough fingers up her arms to her shoulders, then drifted down once more to the zipper of her hoodie.

Her mouth went dry as he dragged the zipper’s tongue all the way down, one agonizing inch at a time. Thick knuckles brushed the underside of her breast, just enough to tease with a grazing touch that made her suck in her breath. As the hoodie parted he slid his hands inside, framing her waist. His fingers encircled her almost fully, scorching. He dragged her close, tight against him, until the hard ridge of his need pressed between them.

She swallowed roughly, fingering his shirt. She wasn’t used to this. To the silent intensity of his regard, to the way he went for what he wanted with single-minded focus. She was more accustomed to the mouth-breathers of the world, smarmy assholes who thought sensuality was about lame one-liners and saying
you like this, baby? Yeah, you like it
while smacking her ass.

Still he said nothing, only watching her with simmering question in his eyes, demanding an answer. Giving her a chance to say no. A chance to not do something reckless and pointless just because she’d had a bad day and wanted to take it out on him. A chance to put him out on her front doorstep and forget about him. Even as he leaned into her, his breath harsh and heavy between them…he was giving her a choice. Asking if she wanted to be horribly, wonderfully, painfully carefree for one delicious moment, and just let this happen.

She curled her fingers against his neck, stroking the strong, tanned slope of muscle, and dragged his mouth down to hers.

They crashed together, his mouth slanting hard against hers, the rough scrape of his beard teasing her skin to tingling sensitivity. She pushed his jacket down his shoulders and tore at the hem of his t-shirt, dragging it up. She needed the hard play of muscle under her hands, the fire of taut skin stretching over the sleek, toned muscle of a titan. The sound of skin to skin as she explored him made her shudder, mixing with the cadence of their rushed breaths in a whispered symphony of desire. The low growl building in his chest thrummed under her hands, trembled against her mouth, tore a gasp from her as she bit at the succulent firmness of his lower lip.

He pulled back with a low snarl, licking his reddened lips and fixing her with a searing, fierce look—then descended on her like a ravenous beast, hot and wild as he blazed a path of nipping, stinging kisses down her jaw, her throat, stubble teasing and dragging, heightening each point of sweet pain to delicious agony. She let her head fall back against the wall, struggling for breath, her thoughts so clouded she could think of nothing but the fire nudging against her belly, the subtle movements of his hips that said he wanted her with a need he couldn’t restrain.