Night's Honor (Elder Races #7)(17)

Maybe she could get lucky. The quickest way to bypass firewall security was from the inside, through a client-side attack. If she could hack his email, she could send a rough, simple malware program to exploit the breach. He said he wanted her to “break through” the firewall. He didn’t say how, or what she should do when she did, or that it had to be an elegant job.

“Six minutes.”

“Shut up,” she hissed. Her fingers flew across the keyboard.

She hadn’t hacked in a while. It felt good, running hot against the clock. It felt crazy, and she wanted to laugh like a lunatic, except she had already sworn at one of the scariest men she had ever met, and she thought she should keep her mouth shut for a few minutes.

He said, “Time.”

She sat back. “You’ve got mail.”

Sleek as a panther, he moved up behind her. She was intensely aware of his closeness as he leaned over to look at the screen. As he did so, the cell phone he held in one hand buzzed. He thumbed it on. “Yes, Gavin?”

On the other end, she could clearly hear a strange male voice demanding, “Did you leave your email program running while you set her to hack into the network?”

“Of course I didn’t,” said Xavier. “I locked it down.”

“Well, I want to f*cking know how she f*cking sent a blast email to f*cking everybody from your email address.”

She pulled back so Xavier could take control of the desktop, open his email account and click on his new mail.

In big red letters, the body of the email said:

YOU SUCK.

“This went out to everybody,” Xavier said.

“Fucking yes. All six hundred and thirty f*cking people in the f*cking network.”

Xavier told the man on the other end of the line, “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”

“You’d better.”

After that, silence filled the room. Angling her head away, Tess slowly slid the chair a few inches farther away from him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his hand come toward her. He took hold of the back of the chair, and as he pulled her closer again, he swiveled her around to face him.

When she lifted her eyes to his face, they felt as heavy as a ton of bricks.

His gaze was rapier-sharp.

She felt one of her shoulders creep up toward her ear. In a quiet, shaky voice, she said, “You didn’t give me any time to finesse.”

“No, I didn’t, did I?” he said. “You just tied Evenfall’s IT administrator into gibbering knots.”

His voice had turned gentle again. While she suspected that gentleness of his was not always a safe or good thing to hear, this time he didn’t appear to be angry with her. Not quite angry. She didn’t think.

When the silence became too prolonged, she said, “So . . . Did I pass your test? Am I still staying?”

“Oh, indeed you are,” he told her. Finally he looked away, and only then did she realize how intense his gaze had been, like a spotlight, and how much the pressure eased from her chest when she was released from it. “Tomorrow you can explain to Gavin just how you did what you did, but for now, I believe I’ve asked quite enough from you for one evening. That will be all for tonight. Raoul has seen to your needs?”

Relief tried to turn her legs to noodles. She swallowed and said, “I— Yes.”

“Then I’ll say good night.”

As he stood back, she rose to her feet and almost turned to go, but then paused to look at him again. “Xavier?”

He looked at her, slim eyebrows raised, looking as surprised as she was that she chose to linger in his presence. “Yes?”

A Vampyre’s gaze was supposed to be mesmerizing, but he hadn’t used it to force her into doing anything. According to his promise, he never would. Until she had reason to do otherwise, she might as well take him at his word.

She met his gaze. “Thank you for this opportunity. I really mean it. I’ll work hard and do everything you or Raoul ask of me.”

He smiled again, and it must have been her imagination that said there was something slightly wistful about it. “Very good, Tess.”

Awkwardly, she returned his nod, and she left the room with a huge sense of relief and an equal amount of disquiet.

Outside in the hall, Raoul waited. When she appeared, he escorted her to the attendants’ house without saying a word. If he had heard anything of what had happened in the study, it didn’t show in his bland expression.

The tension from the last fifteen minutes faded and exhaustion rolled over her, as inescapable as the tide. Light-headed and shaky, she could have sworn she could still feel where Xavier’s lips had rested on the thin skin of her wrist.

If she hadn’t been so afraid of him, so tensed for the bite, it might have been . . . pleasurable.

If he weren’t a Vampyre intent on feeding from her, his actions could have been construed as . . . caring.

She rubbed the area with a scowl.

She was grateful he had refrained from taking blood, and she was still frightened of him, but mostly he just confused her. He prompted her to think of things she didn’t want to consider. While she had caught glimpses of his sharp, powerful personality, overall, he had shown her a depth of courtesy, thoughtfulness and feeling that she simply had no idea what to do with, even when she had been challenging or downright rude.