ash
"The mission has changed."
"But I never said I?—"
"Do not mistake yourself for someone who has any autonomy here," the Viper says, his tone low, dark, and threatening. He doesn’t even have to make a move for me, sitting across from me in the limousine. He already has me, trapped in a vice. He knows my soft spots, all of them, Sam included, every single person who lives in our building. I’m a hacker and a coder, not a super-spy, and I haven’t covered my tracks as well as I could’ve.
The moment Luca Greco put his hands on me, it was all over. The Viper got wind of it, somehow, and days later demanded to know what I was going to do with this new intimate connection I had with the head of the Greco family.
"He isn’t interested in me," I protest, "I— didn’t even want it. He hasn’t been back."
"You think he stays away for your benefit or his? Are you stupid? Or were you so blinded at being touched by a man of his status, Ash," he says, and his voice is mocking, using my nick-name in a way that almost hurts. "Right? It must’ve been so overwhelming for you. But now you must see sense. Seduce him. The key-logger is paltry, a mere token. Having you in his bed? I will own him." His hand closes, into a tight fist, like he wants to wrap it around Luca Greco’s throat.
That meeting with the Viper had been days ago. Days prior to that, I’d... been with, in some way, Luca Greco. He’d stormed out of Cascade, and then Heather had sent me home, with another thick envelope of cash, and a look that said I should never come back, but without her explicitly firing me, what could she do? I was back the next day, trying to keep an eye on my key-logger but not able to organize any kind of reason to be up in her office. The Viper didn’t seem to care about that anymore.
He was now singularly obsessed with the idea of me wrapping Luca Greco around my fingers and pulling at his heart strings. Which is why I cobbled together the prettiest dress I would allow myself to buy with some of the cash in those envelopes, and used more of it to bribe one of the guards at the club, who bribed someone else, who bribed someone else, to get me an idea of where to go looking for one criminal overlord.
I guess I should be proud of myself, but all I can do is not be sick as I take the elevator up, a hand-written note carefully copied from Heather’s handwriting, and the guard at the penthouse lets me in, and I’m standing in front of him.
He’s so angry. The guard disappears, apparently trusting either me, Heather, or Luca to handle business.
Luca Greco.
He’s silhouetted by the city behind him, a black shape, a predator, and he looks every bit the part. He’s wearing a white shirt, no jacket, a tie slung around his neck, his collar open, the look of a man who had been interrupted while deep in thought, and he isn’t sure if he should kill me...
My throat tightens and I want to take a step back, my whole body tingling in fear. That look in his eyes.
Or devour me.
My thighs clench at the thought, the memory of his hands on my body, the way he held me so tightly, so close. It had felt safe, somehow, and even now, standing in front of him, a small part of me, the most reckless, impulsive, stupid part of me, wishes he’d grab me again, and take me.
I don’t want this.
I’m not ready for this.
"I’ve been waiting for you," he says, and my cheeks burn at the double-entendre. Waiting? All this time? He’d been so hard when he held me down and finger-fucked me to gasping and writhing. I want to look away, and I feel every inch of my dress, far less revealing than stripping for him, and yet, right now, I feel even more naked than I did on that private stage.
It’s the way he’s looking at me. Like he wants to strip the dress off of me, and consume me, like a fire, burning me right where i stand.
"Are you okay?" he asks, and his voice has a strange quality to it, almost gentle. The question is unexpected, and I shake my head, the motion involuntary. How do I even begin? I’m supposed to seduce him. Out there in the city behind him, the Viper lays in wait, anxious for a phonecall from me declaring victory.
But I’m not a spy. I’m a hacker, and I’m not very good at this, this sort of seduction... business. Especially when I’m standing in the middle of this rich, opulent penthouse who’s value could, several times over, buy the building I live in. It’s hard to be distracted and not distracted at the same time, because he is so close, and my body remembers.
It yearns. My cheeks flood with fresh heat, and so does my pussy, and I try to clamp down on it as best I can, invisibly. I don’t want him to know how just being in his presence has me on the edge of something I can’t even put a name to.
"What do you need?" he asks, and there’s a note of command to his tone.
"Heather wanted me to give you this," I say, my voice shaking, and I hold out the envelope. "I— it’s just a message, nothing?—"
"Do you have your phone?" He demands, and I swallow, before nodding. "Give it to me," he demands, and with shaking hands I pull it out of my purse. "The purse." He takes both from me, his fingers, rough and textured, grazing mine.
Our eyes meet.
My breath catches in the back of my throat. Those fingers have done terrible, beautiful things to me, made me feel things that I’ve never thought a man could evoke in me. And the way he’s looking at me right now, he’s thinking about how he had me laid out under him, arching in his hands, and I can see his jaw flexing, his teeth grinding together, the tension in his body so obvious.
A jolt of arousal goes straight to my clit, and a hot rush of wetness dampens the fabric between my legs. My hand lifts to my mouth, fingers trembling, to keep the soft noise that wants to escape me, in.
"These will be returned to you when we’re done here," he murmurs, and my lips part, in shock that he would be so bold as to assume— A smirk flickers across his face. "If you want to leave, leave," he adds, jerking his chin toward the door that’s behind me. The challenge is clear, and I’m frozen.