The Hacker by Renee Rose

9

Dima

It’s pitch black out. I’m in the woods outside the cabin being chased by the Feds. I’ve hidden Nikolai in the Land Rover, and I’m leading them away from him, but I’ve lost Natasha. Do they have her? Is she with them?

Fuck, I don’t know!

I run into a clearing and someone throws floodlights on. I skid to a halt, blinded. Out of the glare walks Alex, a gun in his hand pointed at me.

“Where’s Natasha?” I demand.

“Natasha?” he gives a cruel laugh. “She’s dead. Just like Alyona. You shouldn’t have brought her here.”

I throwmyself out of bed, trying to throw off the damn dream.

An hour later, I dump the plastic bags filled with every single piece of chocolate the convenience store had out on the kitchen counter. I left at dawn to drive out to the highway and get it, spurred by this inexplicable need to make sure Natasha’s cravings are met.

Natasha’s needs.

Holy. Mother. Of God.

Watching her come and come and come last night went beyond any of my wildest fantasies, all of which prominently feature her.

Who would’ve known? She doesn’t come off as overtly sexual. She doesn’t dress sexy. She dresses like an American teenager or college student. I guess I do, too, so maybe that means nothing. But her seeming lack of awareness of how goddamn beautiful she is has always been part of the appeal. It makes her seem young, innocent.

Makes me want to protect her with every gun I have—and I’m not usually the guy holding a weapon unless you count my computer. Which may be one of the most dangerous weapons Ravil wields, honestly.

And she still seems innocent to me, even after watching her string of sexy-as-fuck orgasms. She still seems untouched, even though I touched her.

Her soul is pure—maybe that’s it.

She reminds me of Alyona, and I hate myself for mingling the two in my mind.

I shouldn’t let Natasha overtake my memories of Alyona. Of how we lost our virginity together. Both of us fumbling in the back of the Lada in the crisp autumn air. Fogging up the windows until we had all the privacy we could desire. She let me take her clothes off. Laid across my back seat. I kissed her soft skin until she begged me to do more.

I wasn’t rough or demanding like I was last night.

Gospodi,Natasha. Guilt crowds my chest. I was a monster to her last night. I’ve been a monster ever since Nikolai got shot. No, if I’m honest, I was a dick even before that. From the moment she entered my bedroom with that massage table, I couldn’t stop thinking of all the things I wanted to do with nothing but massage oil and bare skin between us.

I’ve pretended it’s her fault—that she’s the wicked temptation, luring me from the vows I made to Alyona on her deathbed, but in fact, the truth is the fault is only mine.

She’s not wicked. She’s sweet, even when she’s purposely being a temptation. And she doesn’t know about those vows.

Part of me wants to tell her—to explain why I can’t. To admit my attraction, which has to be obvious at this point, and be honest with her. Tell her it can’t ever happen. We can’t ever happen.

But even that conversation feels like a betrayal to Alyona.

Like, the moment I bring her up to Natasha, I’ve forever sullied her memory. I’ve made her the other woman. The one I left behind for this new, shiny, alive one.

And I can’t do that to Alyona.

She gave me everything. Her vulnerability. Her whole heart. I loved the person I was when I was with her because she loved me. I’m lucky—I’ve always had Nikolai. Twins are never lonely. But until Alyona, I was Nikolai’s twin. He’s the more social one. The funny one. He has charisma. I always let him do the talking for the two of us. Alyona made me feel like I was the special one. The one worth talking to. Spending time with. Planning a future with.

And then the cancer came.

She was so damn brave. I still remember how thin and cold and bony her hand felt in mine when we sat together waiting for her chemo treatments. How she’d let me distract her and make her smile to pretend none of it was happening. The way she trembled when we finally talked about the end.

That was when I promised her I’d never love another. Never replace her. She was my first, and she’d be my last.

She had to face death at seventeen—seventeen! It’s not too much for me to keep the promise I made to her.

I hear movement upstairs. Natasha is awake.

I washed my clothes last night, and now I leave my clean boxer shorts on the kitchen counter with the chocolate. I won’t survive Natasha running around bare-assed, and so help me, if she lets Nikolai see her that way, I will have to kill him.

Or something.

I head into the office to return to the only thing that has ever made sense to me—cyber-stalking and hacking.

Behind a screen, I am still God. Even if I don’t know my head from ass in this cabin.

I listen to Natasha. I hear her speaking softly to Nikolai, the sweet healer, checking in on her patient first. Then I hear sounds from the kitchen. The pop of the toaster oven. The opening and closing of the refrigerator.

I try not to picture the way she looked last night, standing on her tiptoes, that short shirt pulled up above her waist showing me the full moon of her pale ass.

That pale ass I turned red.

Fuck. Did I force her? There was something harsh and punitive to what went down, but it was consensual…. Wasn’t it? I was sure last night, but after barely sleeping because I couldn’t stop replaying what happened, it all feels fuzzy now.

She’s overly agreeable. The type you could easily take advantage of.

I mean, I know I got her off. She was sopping wet. She came around my fingers over and over again.

But is she sorry today? Does she feel used? Taken advantage of? Forced?

For once, the screen holds no answers for me. I can’t cyberstalk her to get an answer to this question. To make sure she’s okay.

Dammit.

I push back from my chair and get up.

I find her sitting at the long farm table. She’s still in the fishing t-shirt—braless, of course, because heaven holds no mercy on me. I can’t tell whether she’s wearing my boxers or not, but a quick glance at the counter shows me they’re gone.

“Thanks for the chocolates.” Her gaze is warm and soft on me.

I shrug, not taking a seat. “I didn’t know what kind you like, so I bought them all.”

Her lips twitch in amusement. “That was good thinking. I would’ve hit anything last night, but I’ll start with the Heath bar. I’ll eat them all, for sure. The Hershey bar will probably be low on my list. I’m actually a chocolate snob. I go for the gourmet eighty-five percent dark chocolate kind of bars.”

“Gourmet bars first, then Heath. Got it.” Dammit, what am I doing? I’m not her boyfriend. I won’t be buying her more chocolates. “I didn’t know you had a thing for chocolate.”

“You don’t know a lot of things about me.”

Not true.

At least, I probably know far more than she thinks. But I hadn’t gone so far as to stalk her grocery choices.

“It’s my stress go-to, and, um, this is stressful.” She lifts her hands with a wry scrunch of her nose. It’s adorable.

For some reason, my heart beats like it’s pumping blood for two people right now. “Natasha, I just, ah…”

She lays her slice of buttered toast down on her plate and looks up at me expectantly.

“Are you okay? After last night? I mean…” Blyad’. I plow a hand through my hair. “Did you feel forced?”

“Well, I think that was kind of the game we were playing, right?”

Bozhe moi,this girl. So calm and cool about it. So freaking mature.

Relief washes over me. Then my brain goes into overdrive. Is that a game she knows? One she’s played before? Fuck, I don’t even want to know the answer because I want to kill any guy who got rough with her in the past. And I was rough. I probably left marks on her ass spanking her with that spoon.

“Yeah. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Her gaze drops, and she starts scraping at the polish on her fingernail—her nervous tell.

My stomach bottoms out like I’m on the dip of a rollercoaster. I will karate chop my own throat if I traumatized this girl.

“I’m good. I mean, I liked it.” My relief is short-lived because she goes on, “I’m less okay with you calling it a mistake every time. That makes me kind of queasy.”

Queasy. Dammit. That sounds like shame. Or humiliation. Nothing she deserves. I have to fix this fuck-up.

I stride over to her and pull the chair beside her out. She makes eye contact when I sink into it. “Natasha…”

I don’t know what to say. How do I explain without betraying Alyona?

“I, uh, I liked it, too. I like you… a lot. But I can’t be in a relationship. So I don’t want to lead you on that way. That’s the only reason I said it was a mistake.”

She nods slowly, studying me like she’s examining my story for cracks.

“I may think it was a mistake, but I’m also not sorry,” I admit.

She works to swallow and turns her face back to her plate, picking up her toast.

I take the hint and get up. As I walk toward the office, I hear her say softly, “I’m not sorry, either.”

Her words fall over my head and shoulders like one of those nets that drops from the trees. It’s light, seemingly harmless, but when it closes around me, it traps me into new thoughts.

Thoughts of more.

Wondering if it could happen again without the giant ship of my entire identity sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

Natasha

He bought me chocolates.

Not just a few pieces. The guy literally must’ve bought out the whole store.

Maybe it was out of guilt—it sounds like he was worried I’d felt forced. As if I hadn’t been the one to drop to my knees and unbutton his jeans.

He revealed so much about himself this morning. Not just the conversation saying he couldn’t have a relationship. I already surmised that much. And yes, I’m kicking myself for not asking why. I didn’t want to show any disappointment or hurt, so I just swallowed the statement and let it sit in the pit of my stomach, making it impossible to finish my breakfast.

But the purchase of the chocolates, the checking in with me—those actions prove that he is the guy I thought he was. He may be acting like a grumpy bastard right now, but he’s safe. He’s kind.

And I still want him.

Am I an idiot for setting my targets on a guy who tells me he’s unavailable?

Most certainly.

But he’s also admitted he likes me a lot.

And I like him a lot.

And none of that is even about the off-the-charts sex we’ve had. Last night was life-changing for me. I found out things about myself I never knew, and I will never be able to approach sex the same way again. To think, we haven’t even gone all the way yet! If we’re this good in an office and a kitchen, I can’t imagine how explosive we could be in a bedroom.

But the best thing is that I don’t even need that.

Dima feels right to me.

When I’m with him, I feel like I can be myself. I suppose that’s why I could give myself over sexually—I didn’t hold back or edit myself. I let go, and the entire world exploded.

Dima feels like mine. Like we belong together. There’s an ease between us—like we’re an energetic match. That’s what I’d felt with him from the first day we met. I’d made a note to myself that if I ever was in trouble, he was the bratva member I’d go to for help. He was the one I knew I could trust.

Then things got weird, but now, I know what that was about.

He recognizes what we have, too. And for some reason that I need to discover, he thinks we can’t be together.

Well, I’m not going to stop pushing. Or tempting. And if he wants to punish me—well, we both know how that will end.

With a whole lot of sexual satisfaction on both our parts.

I’m not giving up. I’m seeing this thing through.

Dima is worth fighting for.