Hostile Attractions Read online

  Elliot crosses his arms and stares at me. “I don’t believe you. I can’t tell what you and Fuchs are trying to do here, but it’s nothing good. The hard drive as a prop”—he jerks his chin at it, and how can a chin look hot like that?—“was smart though, I’ll give you that.”

  “So why invite me in?”

  He sighs heavily. “Because I didn’t want you to drown. I’m going to call a car for you; you can go anywhere you want. As long as it’s not here.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “You’re breathing, which means you are.”

  That’s not fair. While I might have done some evil shit in the service of Fuchs, I never lied. I fired people, destroyed their careers, even their lives, but I never lied. At least not to him.

  My breathing goes shallow. It sounds so small, my truthfulness next to everything else I’ve done.

  I wet my lips, shift my grip on the hard drive. “I stole all this from Corvus. It exposes… everything. I know you don’t trust me, but I promise it’s legitimate.”

  “You’re right,” he says slowly. “I don’t trust you. So what the hell are you doing here?”

  I don’t even know how to begin to answer that. Should I begin five years ago, when I decided to go undercover at Corvus and assumed the identity of Minerva to do it?

  Or should I start five months ago, when I realized that Fuchs was closing in on me and I should make my escape plan?

  Or should I begin a few weeks ago, when I realized that Elliot’s hatred would make the perfect cover for when I did flee?

  “No one will look for me here.” It’s the truth, because I’ve never lied to him.

  His eyes narrow. “Did you steal money?”

  As if. Money is nothing compared to what I have. Fuchs has paid me very, very well in the years I’ve been with him. I spent none of it, so I’ve several million stashed in a bank account. I can’t touch it of course because Fuchs will be able to trace me that way.

  “No,” I say. “Just documents, programs, internal memos.”

  “Which you won’t let me see.” He raises one eyebrow in challenge.

  “I didn’t steal it for you.”

  “Then who did you steal it for?”

  Humanity. The future. Anyone who could be hurt or even killed by these programs, which is everyone.

  It’s so stupidly naive that I’d never dare say it to him. “I need to contact some people and hand it over to them.”

  “So you stole it for another company.” Does he sound almost disappointed in me? “I hope they’re paying you a shit ton of money because you’re going to need it when Fuchs comes after you.”

  “It’s not another company. Please, just let me use a computer or a phone. I’ll contact my friends and then be out of here.”

  “Okay, let’s play this game.” He crosses his arms. “So, I believe that you’ve stolen documents from Corvus for… some reason. You stay here, where he won’t look, contact these mysterious friends, and then disappear. Do I have that right?”

  That’s exactly my plan, but when he says it like that, I deflate. He must have been a terror in the courtroom, smashing his opposition with that sneer of his. It’s the neutron bomb of sneers.

  And yet he still looks remarkably handsome. What an asshole.

  “Yes,” I say, as firmly as I can. My hair is soaked, my clothes are dripping, and I’m covered in goose bumps, so I can’t summon that much resolve.

  He shakes his head. “Wow, Fuchs must be having a psychotic break or something. Is this really the plan he came up with to infiltrate the Bastards? And how did you agree to it?”

  I close my eyes tight. I’m not crazy, although it felt like I was losing my mind in the beginning, trying to remember that I was Minerva now and not—

  “It’s not a trick.” My voice is as cold as my skin.

  “Then show me.” His gaze lingers on the hard drive, clutched close to my breasts.

  “I can’t trust you with this,” I whisper.

  He laughs, a rusty, hollow sound. “Exactly.” He reaches for his phone sitting on a kitchen counter. Most things are only an arm’s length away in this place. “I’ll call the Uber then.”

  “Wait.” I step so quickly toward him he rears back, as if he instinctively can’t stand to be even that close to me.

  He’s right. I’m expecting him to take me in, trust me, but I can’t return the favor. I’ll have to show him what’s on the drive to buy his trust. To buy some shelter until I can find some real friends, the ones I have from my old life.

  I hope what I’ve stolen is enough to buy his silence too. That he doesn’t take what I’ve gathered and use it for his own ends.

  “It doesn’t belong to you,” I say, slow and deliberate. “You have to understand that.” My grip on the drive relaxes slightly.

  His gaze is locked on the drive, or maybe my arms around it. My skin sizzles and pops uncomfortably. He nods, once, the slightest inclination of his head.

  I swallow, my heart speeding. I have to give the drive to him, let him crack it open, expose all its secrets. I’ve done a million things harder than this in the past five years. So many things that turned my stomach.

  Or at least they would have if I hadn’t been too busy being Minerva.

  I loosen my arms, inch by inch. The drive slips down, settling against my stomach. If I let go any more, it will fall to the floor. I have to take it in my hand, give it over to him. He’s only an arm’s length away, like everything else here.

  Minerva would shove it right into his chest, which is what I do.

  He catches it without surprise, which infuriates me. He should have the decency to be caught off guard by me. His big hands close around the drive, gentle as if it were a kitten.

  I’m left with nothing but my wet clothes and my shivers, which are stealing my breath while my fingers, toes, and ears go numb. There’s a faint drip, drip, drip at my feet, muddy water making its way from the hem of my coat to the rug.

  I want to cry. Minerva would never cry, not for anything, but me…

  “Go ahead.” I say it as defiantly as I could ever hope for, my courage rushing back. “Go look. I know you want to.”

  He turns the drive this way and that, like he could see inside it if he just looked hard enough. My chest—he was looking at it exactly like that.

  I fold my arms over my breasts, hug myself hard. Partly to get warm—although it feels like that will never happen again, I’m so wet and cold and partly to hide from him, even a little. Without my armor of being Minerva Dyne, enforcer for one of the most powerful men in the world, I’m realizing how big, how suspicious Elliot is.

  The drive turns and turns in his hands. I’ll have to sit here, cold and wet, humiliated, ignored, while he looks through it. It will be on purpose too, to show me just how unwanted I am. To bring me as low as he thinks I deserve.

  Elliot looks at the drive, then looks at me. Then once more at the drive and back at me, as if weighing what I’m worth compared to the information on the drive.

  The drive hits the kitchen counter with a thunk that makes me jump. Elliot is staring at me, not the drive. “You need fresh clothes. A warm shower. Come on.”

  It’s not kindness, not when it comes so grudgingly. But I have to take it.

  “What about the data?” I stay right where I am, wanting to grab the drive and take it with me. But I get the sense that if I do that, this tentative peace will be shattered.

  Cease-fire. That’s what this is. It’s way too tense to be a peace.

  “I’ll look while you’re upstairs. Come on.”

  He starts up the steps, the set of his shoulders telling me I’m not going to get another chance.

  Chapter 3

  I have no clothes that will fit her.

  I don’t stop rummaging through my drawers though, searching in vain for what I know won’t be there. The houseboat doesn’t have storage for anything besides my clothes, and I don’t keep things for guests. My one-night stands a
re just that—one night, nothing permanent, not even a toothbrush for them to use once and toss.

  She can’t stay in my home, in spite of all her talk about how no one will look for her here. When I touched her elbow, there was a flare of… Fuck, I don’t know. Heat and sparks, equal parts anger and attraction. If I hadn’t let go of her immediately, I don’t know what would have happened.

  My hand is still tingling.

  Minerva Dyne is not a woman I can trust. I don’t believe her about being the mole or stealing incriminating documents from Corvus or being safe here. If she knew what she inspires in me, she’d run right back into the storm.

  She’s harmed the women my brothers love. Which means she’s harmed my brothers. Which means I hate her.

  But I also want to fuck her. Wanted to from the very first moment I saw her.

  I grab a T-shirt and some pajama pants. They’re much too big for her, but she’ll have to deal with it. I’ll dry her clothes in the small dryer next to the kitchen, then put her in an Uber and wave goodbye. Let someone else deal with her lies.

  When I turn to face her, she jerks upright, like I’ve scared her awake. But it’s an act. Minerva would never fall asleep unwillingly. She might not sleep at all.

  She pushes her hair out of her eyes, her fingers red with cold. Christ, she really needs a hot shower.

  I don’t want her here, in my most private space. But I also don’t want her to freeze to death.

  “Come here.” The brusqueness of my tone has her jumping. “You need a shower. You’ll never warm up otherwise.”

  She grabs her shirt front as if she’s a virgin maiden and I’m a medieval warrior bent on ravishing her. Again, it’s an act. Minerva eats men for breakfast, not the other way around.

  “I… I know.” But she doesn’t move toward the bathroom door.

  I cross my arms. “Look, why come to me if you’re”—I swallow hard, my conscience pricking me even though this woman doesn’t even have one—“afraid of me? Isn’t there anyone else you could go to?”

  She shrugs, a sharp, dismissive gesture. “I know how his mind works.”

  When she does that, her shirt gapes, revealing a long triangle of smooth skin. I’ve never allowed her skin—or any other part of her—to feature in my fantasies, but that glimpse is going to haunt me.

  She goes on. “He knows you hate me—all the Bastards do, but you personally, especially—so this will be the last place he’ll look.”

  This is the point where I should be polite, should tell her that of course I don’t hate her. That it’s wrong to hate anyone. It’s what my mother would always say, even when my father was doing his worst to bring our family into ruin. I don’t hate him. It’s wrong to hate.

  Well, I hated my father. I understand that I don’t interact with people the way others do, that I don’t always see the need for the rules that govern social interactions, but I still understand the rules.

  The rule about hating I’ve never really understood though. My father spent us into poverty, put the gray in my mother’s hair, and added to the stress that stripped the flesh from her bones. Shouldn’t she have hated him? I certainly did.

  I don’t say anything to Minerva. I don’t owe her any polite lies. “Get in the shower.”

  Her head snaps up at my curt offer. She opens her mouth on a weak, polite refusal.

  “Don’t argue.”

  For a moment the defiant, arrogant light in her eyes is very much like the old Minerva. And then it dies. “Fine.”

  That’s not acceptance—that’s defeat. I feel like an asshole suddenly, more than I usually do. But goddamn it, she can’t appear here in the middle of a rainstorm with supposedly stolen data and expect me to believe her. Even if she did give me the drive to look over.

  “This way.” I open the bathroom door, move aside so she can enter. My body hits high-alert status when she comes close to the bed. She’s my enemy, and I’ve let her into my den.

  She’s also my fantasy, my dark and twisted one, and I’ve got her within inches of my bed.

  I don’t worry that I’ll do something stupid—I’ve never in my life done anything impulsive—but I do take a moment to tamp down my response. Bury, bury, bury—it’s the best way to handle any unwanted thoughts.

  I set the clothes on the bed. “There are towels in the cabinet.”

  She’s looking very carefully at the floor, tensed as if I’m going to grab her. Or worse. “Thank you.”

  I say nothing as I go down the stairs. I don’t want her thanks. I don’t want her here at all.

  I make myself a cup of coffee, listening to her upstairs. The walls are thin, so I hear every rustle, every gentle thunk. I don’t imagine her naked. Bury, bury, bury every single hint of those thoughts.

  When the shower starts, I reach for my laptop. Finn would have a fit if he saw what I’m about to do, but he’s not here. And I can’t resist my curiosity.

  I plug the hard drive into my laptop. The drive whirs into life, an icon popping up on my laptop screen. Finn would tell me not to open the drive on my machine in case Minerva’s loaded this thing with some virus.

  But if there is a virus that’s going to smoke my computer, I can always get a new one. And I’ll know that Minerva’s been bullshitting me and I can throw her out with a clean conscience.

  I double-click the icon, and a folder pops up on my screen. The file names make no sense to me, not that I’ve got the programming knowledge to understand them. I’m a lawyer—my brother is the coder.

  But my computer hasn’t melted down. So probably no viruses.

  There are some PDFs and text files there. I open those since they ought to be in English, which I do understand.

  The first few are software schematics, describing things I don’t understand or care about. The rest of the Bastards will go crazy for this—assuming Minerva isn’t giving us fake shit—but it means nothing to me.

  The next few are much more interesting. One’s on NSA letterhead, another is plain text but is clearly written by someone working for a government intelligence agency. And the other one…

  I read it once quickly, then again slowly. I understand it—of course I do, it’s signed by the attorney general of the United States himself—but I can’t quite believe it.

  If this is real… If this is real, Minerva is in danger from more than just Corvus. Way more danger.

  Chapter 4

  The clothes don’t fit, but I never expected them to.

  When I slip the shirt over my head, it falls to midthigh, the collar sagging perilously close to my nipples. I tug the collar up, but there’s still too much of my chest on display, the swell of my breasts way too prominent for my peace of mind.

  And then there’re my nipples—without my bra, they’re hard and full, the cotton agonizingly soft as it rubs against them. But I left my bra hanging to dry in the bathroom; it’s too wet to put back on.

  The pants are a little better—everything that should be hidden by them is—but the excess fabric pools around my feet, waiting for me to trip over it.

  I push my wet hair back from my face. There was a comb sitting on the sink, but I didn’t dare use it. It’s his comb, and it’s bad enough that I’m in his house, using his shower, wearing his clothes; I want to limit my contact with his things as much as possible.

  He hates me. I wrap my arms around myself to hold in my shiver. He’s made it very, very clear that he doesn’t buy my story. That he’ll take any excuse to kick me out.

  I wasn’t expecting him to believe me right away, but being this close to him and feeling that hate in such a visceral way is affecting me more than I expected. It’s one thing to face down that cold look of his across a boardroom. It’s something much sharper, more deadly, to face it in this tiny houseboat.

  I tug the pants up, but the second I let go, they slip back down. There’s nothing much more I can do to make myself presentable. So now I have to go face the lion in his den.

  I move slowly down t
he stairs, my limbs achy with the cold. The shower warmed me up some, but not quite enough. I wonder if I’ll ever get warm again.

  The steps are of some dark hardwood, gleaming and waxed and smooth and cool beneath my feet. It’s almost as luxurious as the carpet.

  He’s sitting at the small dining table, his laptop out and the hard drive plugged into it. He doesn’t see me as I come in, giving me a moment to study him.

  I can tell from the intense focus on his face he’s going through the files. That’s exactly what I hoped he would do—see the proof and finally believe me—but I still feel a surge of possessiveness, of sour jealousy. I gave my life for those files, spent five years collecting and hiding all of them, and he’s just scrolling through them, obscenely available to him. Easy.

  I have to get used to the sensation. If all goes to plan, the entire world will read those files. My life will probably be ruined in the process, but after five years undercover, I don’t have much of a life to go back to.

  I wrap my arms around myself, slipping into Minerva mode to hold back my sadness.

  Elliot still hasn’t noticed me. His expression is stern, focused, but not angry. He looks almost… well, almost inviting. I realize that’s because this is the very first time I’ve seen him not angry. He still looks like he’s no picnic, but definitely more manageable.

  I could get used to the way he looks now.

  He lifts his head, catches me watching. “How did you manage to get yourself caught in a turf war between the CIA and the NSA?”

  So he went right to the juicy bits. He’s smart, deadly smart, so of course he would.

  “Elements of each,” I say, correcting him. “I don’t think the entire agency on either side is behind this. Only certain factions want the Corvus plan.”

  Elliot rubs a hand over his face. “This is pretty explosive stuff.”

  He’s struggling with it, I can tell. But then it’s a lot to wrestle with.