Page 41 of Cipher: Lethal Algorithm

His mouth crashes back down on mine, harder this time, completely devoid of restraint. My hands slide back into his hair, gripping tight as I drag him closer.

The kiss is a violent, consuming collision of teeth and heat, fueled by the terrifying adrenaline of the last twenty-four hours.

I spent three years relying on pure logistical calculation, actively guarding every vulnerability. I constructed an entire profile on Julian Rhodes within twenty minutes of meeting him: a dangerously competent player with a girl in every city, a man built to use people and walk away.

That profile should be a massive, glaring red flag.

Instead, it’s an accelerant. It doesn’t matter if he’s a player. Opportunities to get wrecked by a man like this—a man who matches my speed, dismantles my defenses, and actually looks at me like I am magnificent—are a statistical anomaly. I jump straight into the deep end, completely unbothered by the drop, my eyes wide open.

His hands slide under the hem of my shirt, calloused palms tearing upward over my bare skin. The touch is a branding iron. I gasp into his mouth as his thumbs catch the underwire of my bra, dragging the lace down with a bruising, desperate force.

I reach for his belt, my fingers clumsy with the aftershocks of the adrenaline still surging through my veins. I don’t want slow. I don’t want careful. I want the frantic, terrifying heat burning the air between us.

“Ivy.” The sound is a ragged edge against my skin as he drags his mouth down the line of my throat. He catches my heavy canvas shirt by the collar and rips it down, hauling it off my shoulders in one savage pull. A button snaps, ricocheting off the hardwood floor. Neither of us cares.

He tosses the ruined shirt aside and his hands immediately lock onto my hips. Through the thick denim of his jeans, the hard, thick ridge of his arousal presses against me.

“Now.” I drop my hands to the heavy buckle of his belt and yank the leather free.

Julian’s eyes are completely black, his pupils entirely blown. The federal handler mask isn’t just fractured; it is pulverized. He is completely, gloriously unhinged.

He catches my wrists, prying my hands away from his belt so that he can do it himself. The frantic zip of heavy denim tears through the quiet of the house.

I kick my boots off, shoving my jeans down in a breathless, messy scramble until absolutely nothing remains between us but the heavy, suffocating heat of the island night.

He slides his hands under my bare thighs, lifting me higher against the wall, his grip bruising and unyielding.

“Look at me.” His voice is sandpaper and smoke.

I drag my eyes up. He’s panting, his jaw tight, his broad chest rising and falling in violent, uneven surges.

“Julian.”

He thrusts into me.

The initial stretch is a brilliant, blinding shock of heat ripping a jagged cry from the back of my throat. He is thick, completely filling me in one devastating, continuous motion, driving me harder against the wall. My nails bite into his bare shoulders as I anchor myself against the overwhelming physical reality of him.

He pulls back, his mouth finding mine, swallowing my erratic gasps as he drives forward again. The rhythm is relentless. It’s frantic, clawing friction, a desperate attempt to burn the memories of the gunfire and the sirens completely out of our bloodstreams.

Every time his hips slam into mine, another tactical boundary shatters. I can’t think. The architecture of the Consortium, the threat of the Architect, the three years I spent alone—it all incinerates.

He breaks the kiss, dropping his head to drag his mouth up and down the sensitive skin of my neck. The hot, damp sweep of his tongue raises a violent rush of goosebumps across my shoulders.

I twist my fingers into his hair as his mouth trails lower, finding the heavy swell of my breast. He refuses to leave it alone. He drags the hard, aching peak between his teeth before sucking it deep into the slick heat of his mouth, the intense, agonizing pull mirroring the relentless, driving rhythm of his hips.

A ragged, breathless sound tears out of me. The devastating sensation of his mouth completely unravels me, contrasting perfectly with the harsh, tearing pleasure of him continually burying himself inside me.

Nothing remains but the sweat slicking our skin and the desperate, unvarnished hunger driving every thrust.

He shifts his grip, his hands sliding back up to frame my face, holding me captive as his hips speed up into a brutal, punishing tempo. The friction is a live wire. Every deep, driving thrust pullsthe suffocating knot of heat in my stomach tighter, dragging me right to the agonizing edge of the drop.

“Fuck... Ivy. You’re so fucking tight. So hot. So wet...” The words tear out of him in a dark, ragged groan. His calloused thumbs press hard into the hinges of my jaw, forcing my head up. “Look at me. I want to watch you break.”

I drag my gaze up, locking onto the raw, possessive hunger burning in his eyes just as the tension inside me violently snaps.

The climax hits like a lightning strike. It rips straight through my center, a blinding wave of heat bowing my spine against the wood. Rippling, overwhelming pleasure floods my bloodstream, pulling his name out of my lungs in a fractured, desperate sob. I clench around him helplessly, pushed entirely over the edge as he buries himself inside me.

Julian groans, a dark, primal sound of total surrender. He drives forward one final, brutal time, burying himself as deep as he can, his entire heavy frame shuddering as he spills inside me.