Page 136 of What We Become

Then his mouth closes over me.

My brain shorts out like a server hit with a power surge, every coherent thought vaporizing the second Holden’s tongue slides along the underside of me. I grip the desk edge, my knuckles going white, and try to remember how words work. Packet trace. Marina. Right. He’s serious about this multitasking bullshit, isn’t he?

“The, uh—” I swallow a groan as he takes me deeper, heat and suction pulling a curse from my throat. “The marina footage shows a private yacht departing at oh-two-hundred. No manifest, like Odin said. Owner’s a shell corp out of the Caymans. I traced it back to—fuck, Holden, slower or I’m not gonna last—a holding company with ties to some low-level smuggling ops, but nothing that screams ‘asshole killer on board.’”

He hums around me, the vibration shooting straight up my spine, and I buck involuntarily, one hand dropping to his hair before I remember I need it to type, even though he’s the one breaking all the rules here, on his knees in my sanctum, looking up with those heated eyes like he’s daring me to keep talking.

I do, because apparently my mouth runs on autopilot even when the rest of me is melting. “Trail goes cold after that. Satellite imaging from the Coast Guard shows the boat heading southeast, but it vanishes in open water. Could’ve rendezvoused with another vessel, or—” His hand joins in, stroking what his mouth can’t reach, and I choke on the next word. “Or maybe it’s a decoy. Stephen’s smart enough to plant false flags.”

Holden pulls back just enough to speak, his breath hot against my skin. “Keep going.” Then he’s right back at it, relentless, like he’s interrogating me with pleasure instead of questions.

I laugh, breathless and wrecked, my head falling back against the chair. “You’re a sadist. Fine. I cross-referenced port logs in the Caribbean—Bermuda, Bahamas—come on, pretty mama.” Holden’s eyes flash as my voice pitches, and I quickly clear my throat. Focus. Focus. “Uh, I even went as far as Curaçao. No matches on the yacht’s profile. If he’s there, he’s gone dark. No financial hits, no digital fingerprints. Man’s a ghost.”

The words come out staggered, punctuated by gasps as he works me over, building that tight coil in my gut faster than I can process. My hips twitch forward, chasing the heat, and he lets me, one hand pinning my thigh to keep me spread. God, the sight of him—Detective Hardass on his knees, focused and filthy—it’s going to ruin me for every future server room crisis.

“Almost there,” he murmurs against me, and I don’t know if he means the trace or the orgasm, but both feel inevitable. I grip his shoulder, fingers digging in, and force out the last bit. “Odin’s team is still saying the immediate threat’s dissolved. But they’ve been wrong before.” I hiss through my teeth. “I agree with your summation. Men like that don’t vanish—they reposition.”

Holden takes me deep one last time, sucking hard, and that’s it. I shatter with a string of curses, the whole room dropping to static as I spill into his mouth. He swallows everything, methodical as ever, and only pulls back when I’m spent, trembling in the chair like I’ve been rebooted.

He stands, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and adjusts himself like this was a casual detour. “Good work,” he says, voice rough but steady. “Now run it again.”

I stare at him, chest heaving, brain still offline. “You absolute bastard.”

His mouth quirks, not quite a smile. “You love it.”

Tragically, I do. But before I can formulate a retort, something snags.

“What the⁠—”

It’s small. A packet echo in the traffic log from twelve days ago. An external ping hitting my network at 3:47 a.m., bouncing off the firewall, and disappearing. No payload. No follow-up. Just a knock on the door that nobody answered.

Could be a bot. Could be a crawler. Could be absolutely nothing—the internet is full of automated noise, scripts probing random IPs like salesmen trying door handles in a parking lot.

But the timestamp nags at me. Twelve days ago. That’s three days after we got back from the cabin.

I flag the entry. Tag it for monitoring. Set up an alert if the same signature appears again.

Probably nothing.

Except my gut doesn’t think it’s nothing. The routing has the same shape as the Kennel traffic I’ve seen—the careful, patient probing, the knock-and-walk-away. Testing whether anyone’s home before you try the window.

“Find something?” Holden asks, standing in front of me, his hard-on tenting his jeans.

“Maybe.” I minimize the log and reach for his belt, my mouth watering. “Right now, it’s just a weird ping. I’ll keep an eye on it.”

I don’t mention my concern to Holden. The man is a certified Knight of the Stressed Round Table. I don’t want to worry him until I have to.

He reaches out and brushes his fingers along my jaw, tilting my face to look at him. “You’ll tell me if it turns into something.”

“Of course.”

He nods. His thumb lingers on my chin, and he uses his other hand to yank down his fly and pull his cock out. “Open for me.”

“If you insist.”

THIRTY-TWO

SAGE