Tempted & Taken (Men of Haven #4)(70)

She dipped her head, keeping her gaze on him.

“Good, then you won’t mind if I push my luck while I’m at it.”

Her lips pursed in a cute little mew. “You always push your luck.”

Hell, yeah he did. Especially with the physical aspects to their relationship. He might be hesitant to voice the depth of everything he felt for her, but he had zero problem expressing it sexually. In the weeks since they’d settled into a routine bouncing back and forth between her place and his, he’d not only put her meager toy collection to good use, but had built a more sizable arsenal at his place. “Then you know you’d be wise to give in now. I’ll get my way in the long run anyway.”

“Give in to what?”

He swallowed hard, the magnitude of what he was about to propose the biggest step he’d taken to date. If she said yes, postponing a deeper conversation with his brothers wouldn’t be an option anymore—whether she’d opted to share her past with him or not. “Move in with me.”

For long, gut-wrenching seconds she sat motionless in his lap, so still it was hard to tell if her lungs were even working.

“We spend half our time at my place anyway,” he said. “We can’t do anything without your neighbors hearing and I don’t have nearly the room I need to work you in the shower. Not to mention the place is a security nightmare.”

“But what about Beckett?”

“What about him? He adores you. And outside of him inhaling the food before either of us can get to it and hogging the late-night television, we never see him.” Except maybe that was the kicker. Maybe she wasn’t big on the idea of co-habitating with another guy besides him. “Unless you want a place of our own,” he tacked on. “We can leave him that floor and take on another one for us. I own half the building so we can do whatever we want. Or I can buy something—”

“Shhh.” She pressed two fingers over his lips and smiled that soft smile that always made him wonder if she wasn’t more angel than human. “I don’t mind being with Beckett. I like your place. I just don’t want to do something that would make him uncomfortable.”

“You’re kidding right? Most of my better memories come from making Beckett uncomfortable. I’d just have a partner in crime this time.” He cupped the side of her face and pulled her in for a kiss. “Seriously. Just think about it. No pressure.”

She pulled away from his lips and cast an incredulous expression on him. “No pressure? From you?”

“Okay, maybe a little pressure. In fact, I vote we spend the night at your place tonight so I can spend adequate time pointing out everything that’s wrong with it.”

God, her smile was beautiful. Just as powerful and blazing as the August sunshine outside his window, but tinted with the cooler hues of a full moon. “Okay. My place tonight. And before I give you an answer, you have to promise me you’ll talk with Beckett.”

Oh, he’d talk to Beckett all right. Along with all the rest of his brothers. “I’ll talk, but he’ll be on board.” He patted her hip and straightened in his chair. “Now, hop up and get your butt to work. I want us out of here before the sun goes down this time, and I haven’t got half the shit done I need to.”

She swiveled in his lap, but paused before she stood to lean in and study his screen. “You’re working on something new?”

“No, combing through log files.”

“That doesn’t look like anything out of an application log file. Those look like websites and IP addresses.”

He chuckled at the confused frown scrunching her face. “They’re login hack attempts against one of our mail servers. I set up honeypots to draw nosier types away from the real stuff. When they try to access the data, it fires an auto-blocking trigger for their IP. Reviewing them is about as exciting as overnight infomercials, but I like to keep an eye out for persistent attempts.”

She reached for the mouse, but paused just before wrapping her hand around it and glanced back. “Can I look?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

Eyes back to the screen, she scrolled from the top of the screen. “What’s a honeypot?”

He couldn’t help it. Not with her lobbing up such an easy one for him to swing at. He slipped his hands between her thighs and rubbed his finger along the center seam of her jeans. Looking back, talking her out of wearing those prim skirts and the easy access they provided was a serious misstep. “Well, this is one of my favorite ones.”

She giggled, squirmed in his lap and batted his hand away. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

Sighing, he sat back and let her refocus on the long stream of text on the screen. “It’s exactly what it sounds like. A diversion. A lure. I set out fake data and draw the people interested in nosing into our business there instead of to the good stuff. When they bite, I block ’em.”

She nodded, but the motion seemed distracted. Her finger stilled on the mouse wheel and a subtle but very real tension held the rest of her locked in place.

Knox sat up and looked at the screen. “Something wrong?”

Releasing the mouse, she stood and took two shaky steps away from his desk. “No, I just...” She smoothed her hands against her hips and cleared her throat, stopping just short of meeting his gaze. Her smile was about as empty as they came. “I just don’t know what any of it means.”