Intrusion (22 page)

He diverted his attention to his laptop afraid he’d lean forward and kiss her serious mouth if he didn’t stop watching her, but he still managed to catch the parting of her generous lips out of the corner of his eye.

“You cloned someone’s ID card in the bathroom?”

He looked back at her and grinned. He couldn’t help himself. He wanted to see her reaction when he delivered his latest coup. “Not just someone’s. Coburn’s.”

The creases of unease smoothed from her forehead, her eyes widened on him and a burst of incredulous laughter huffed from between her lips. “Oh, my God, Cam. Is there anything you can’t do?”

Besides convincing her to take a chance on him?

“So that’s it then?” she asked. “We’re in?”

“In the building, yes. Coburn’s lab, however, employs one additional measure to safeguard his research which will make access a little trickier there.”

“Tricky is fast becoming one of my least favorite words.”

“Passive Infrared sensors.” Cam clicked through the electronic drawings until he found the sketch of the lab. “PIR’s are designed to detect changes in infrared-energy.”

She groaned. “Body heat?”

He loved how he didn’t have to explain terminology to her. “The sensors record ambient temperature, so it will notice any sudden changes produced by the human body, such as walking across a room.”

“Can’t you just disable it?”

What would be the fun in that? “Their lenses are tamper-proof and trying to temporarily rig them is too risky.”

“So the only way to get past it is to raise the temperature.” Audra leaned forward in her chair and rested her elbows on the table, her scientific curiosity overriding her reservations. “The sensor’s accuracy will decrease rapidly if the temperature difference between the room and the human body is minimal.”

He fought back his grin, but lost the battle. “You got it. And the beauty of it is, all of CI’s functions are automated from one central control.”

She returned his grin. “Which means with remote access you can raise the temperature without having to be inside the building.”

“Yes, but it must be done gradually. Too fast and the PIR sensors will go off. As soon as employees start leaving around five-o’clock tomorrow I’ll start raising the temperature in increments. Six hours from that point, we should be ready to slip into the lab undetected.”

Hell, nothing turned him on like an intelligent woman. He enjoyed batting around ideas with Audra. She was smart and quick-witted. And sexy. He shifted in his seat, trying to calm his sudden raging erection.

“You’ll have to get the temperature close to one hundred degrees.” She rubbed her brow. “Is their thermostat that efficient?”

“I guess we’ll see tomorrow night, won’t we.”

She frowned, obviously unhappy with that answer, but nothing was ever one hundred percent.

“Look, it doesn’t have to be exact,” he stressed. “Wearing an insulated body suit will help deflect some of our thermal energy, and as long as we move slow to allow the ambient temperature to adjust accordingly we’ll beat it without setting off the alarm.”

She shook her head. “An insulated body suit in a one hundred degree room? Great. That lab is going to be hotter than Phoenix in July.”

Then he’d have absolutely no trouble acclimating because just looking at Audra made Cam ten times hotter than the Sonoran Desert.

***

Cam blinked his bleary eyes and squeezed a small amount of superglue into a bottle cap. The cuckoo clock hanging high on the cabin’s outdated knotty wood paneling went off, its tattered red bird popping out to shriek out the hour. He grimaced, the urge to smash the damn clock almost getting the better of him.

Three a.m. Audra had retreated to bed somewhere around eleven, but he couldn’t even think about crashing until he put together a set of latex prints they could use against the biometric reader.

Careful not to smudge the unique whorls on the surface of the letter opener, he set it next to the bottle cap and a bowl of water and covered all three objects with a plastic bucket. He waited while the Cyanoacrylate gasses in the superglue vaporized and reacted with the fat and oil residue left behind on the letter opener, causing a solid white fingerprint to appear.

He picked up his camera and zoomed the lens on the largest print, taking several shots of it at different angles in order to cast a number of latex fingerprint variations. Once he digitalized the prints in his computer imaging software, he hooked up his portable printer and output the images to a transparency slide. The black ink created a raised relief of the fingerprint’s dips and ridges on the plastic, and when a thin layer of wood glue mixed with glycerin was smeared over the image, the lines of the fingerprint would create an impression in the dried glue. An impression that would hopefully fool the biometric readers.

The first sharp blades of worry skated through his gut. What if it didn’t work?

“Why didn’t you tell me you had hours of work left to do? I could’ve helped.”

Cam looked up at the sound of Audra’s voice. She hovered in the short hallway, a welcome presence that revived his weary body. “What are you doing up?”

She stepped in front of the table, the thin strap of her camisole slipping off her shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep. Again.”

If he were to slide his hands beneath her top, would her skin feel silkier than the fabric that barely covered her?

His groin tightened. “Bad dreams?”

She shook her head, her tousled hair brushing her bare shoulders.

He swallowed. “Good dreams?”

Her skin flushed, but she stepped closer. “You and your sexual innuendos.”

He grinned. “I’m sorry, do they make you uncomfortable?”

“Yeah, you look real sorry.” She set her hands on his shoulders and leaned over him to peer at the slide he’d laid out on the table. “How do you know this will work?”

“I don’t. Nothing’s one hundred percent. I’m going on gut faith.”

“I really don’t know how you do it. Keep calm when so many things could go wrong.”

Her hands squeezed his shoulders. Whether she did it consciously or not, the action had him coming out of his seat. She took a step back, but before she could retreat further, he captured her waist and held her in place.

“You want to know the secret?” He tugged her closer. “I don’t let anything get in the way of what I really want.

“Cam—?” Her breath hitched, her eyes slid closed. When she opened them, they were fixed on his mouth.

His pulse fired, heat rushed to his groin, but he didn’t move a muscle. This was her call. And he was going to force her to make it. “Yeah?”

Her gaze flicked to his and held. She splayed a hand against his chest. “I went to St. Francis High School. Hated every minute of it, you know.” Her hand slid lower, reaching for the hem of his t-shirt. “It was a small school and everyone knew I came from a foster home. One of the eight homeless, parentless children who lived with the Willoughby’s. I was persona non grata. I used to hide in the chem. lab just so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone.”

Her cool fingers slipped beneath his shirt, trailing over his abdomen.

He sucked in a breath. “That must’ve been rough.”

He could barely get the words out. Her touch lit him up like a thousand watts of undiluted raw power, and it took every ounce of his self-control to let her yield in her own way.

She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his throat. No warning. No time to prepare for the feel of her lips on his skin.

“My scar? Courtesy of a dog at the homeless shelter. Just because it looks cute and cuddly doesn’t mean it’s harmless.” She nipped his skin. “Kind of like you.”

“I’ll give you cute and cuddly.” He thrust his erection against her.

Hell, he couldn’t stand it any longer; he slid his hands up her arms to toy with the straps of her camisole then dipped a finger beneath it to touch her creamy skin.

Well, that answered his earlier question. Her skin was, hands down, silkier than her tank top.

Her lips trailed upwards until they covered his mouth. Shock and sweet desire raced through him. He submitted to her, letting her tongue sweep inside his mouth. She tasted of…perfection. How else could he describe the ecstasy of her hot mouth mingling with his?

His heart hurt from beating so fast. He backed her into the nearest wall without lifting his lips from hers. She moaned into his mouth and sent his desire skyrocketing.

He didn’t want to stop kissing her, didn’t want to stop his fingers from caressing her. He’d waited an eternity for her surrender, but now he could feel it in the way she arched against him instead of pulling back.

“I’ve played it safe my entire life,” she whispered against his mouth. “Science is predictable. It’s either positive or negative. There’s no in between, no doubt, no risk. It’s all calculated. This is who I am. I don’t know how to be anything else.”

She captured his hand and dragged him down the hallway.

Chapter Sixteen

Audra had tried so hard to fight it—whatever was growing between them—she’d pushed Cam away, insisted she preferred being alone, but somehow he always drew her back. His eyes, his hands, his smile…he made her want more when she’d always been content with little.

“I like you exactly as you are,” Cam said. “I like every damn thing about you.”

He cupped his hands around her face and titled her head, backing her into the bedroom.

Covering her mouth with his, he parted her lips with his tongue. So warm, so gentle. She squeezed her eyes shut, unsure of how to deal with all the emotion swirling inside of her. Her heart swelled with longing, and yet, it also ached with foreshadowed heartbreak.

Cam was a go-getter. Nothing was more important to him than his success, and though she loved his drive and determination, she didn’t think he would ever learn that success wasn’t always about winning. He’d continue to do whatever it took to take himself to the next level—even if it meant leaving her behind. And when he did, she’d simply shatter.

She shivered and Cam broke the kiss, his gray eyes shining like quicksilver. “Turn around.”

His husky voice sent warmth pooling through her, her camisole suddenly scratching against her skin as he turned her in his embrace. His fingers grazed her bare shoulders. He lifted her hair aside then touched his mouth to the nape of her neck.

She arched her spine and tried to spin back around.

He held her in place. “Not yet.”

“Not yet? Come on, I just want to—” She sucked in a breath when his fingers caught the hem of her camisole and inched it upward. “—kiss you.”

“Ah, so now the truth comes out. You do like to kiss me.” He tugged her shirt over her head and tossed it to the ground. “Just for that, I’ll let you in on another little secret.”

“You’ve sure got a lot of those, don’t you?”

He chuckled. “Don’t be a smart ass. Secrets keep life interesting.” He ran a finger up her spine. “I find your back extremely sexy. Maybe that’s because you’ve spent so much time walking away from me. Now that I’ve got you here, I’m almost afraid to believe you’re not going to cut and run on me.”

God, he almost made her believe they could have something real and lasting together. Her throat throbbed and she wanted to tell him she wasn’t going anywhere, but she’d been a victim of empty promises all her life and she refused to give one to Cam without knowing she could keep it.

She twisted in his arms and he blinked, blowing out a breath that had her nipples hardening.

“Whoa, I wasn’t ready for that.” His hand skimmed over her ribcage to cup one of her breasts.

She shook her head. “My turn.” She pushed his t-shirt up over his abs, loving the way they contracted under her touch.

He yanked the shirt up the rest of the way and pulled it over his head with one hand.

She splayed her hand over his chest and tipped her head back to look into his eyes. “You know one of the first things I noticed about you?”

He grinned. “The size of my—”

She pressed her fingers to his lips. “No.”

“Nose,” he said, forming the words underneath her fingertips. “I was going to say nose.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s not it.” She released his lips to run a finger down the bridge of his nose. “Though it is rather impressive in an I’m-not-a-man-until-I’ve-broken-my-nose sort of way. No. It’s your eyes. The way you look at me as if you
see
me—”

He leaned forward and captured her mouth with his. “No more.” The gruff words were muffled against her lips. “Don’t talk.”

He took her hand and pressed it against the hard ridge beneath the fly of his jeans. She batted his hand away to tug at the button on his pants, and suddenly, they were both wrestling each other’s pants off. With his jeans around his knees, he scooped her in his arms and dumped her on the bed.

Her sweats caught around her ankles; he knelt to the floor and pulled them free. His eyes flared. He nudged her lacy black underwear aside to plant a kiss against her bare hipbone. His teeth teased the sensitive spot, dragging a moan from deep in her chest.

She wriggled beneath his mouth in an unspoken command, and he complied, edging her panties down her legs. He tossed them aside, sweeping her naked body with a slow, appreciative gaze. His hands fell to the bed. Warm tingles of anticipation shot through her and she braced herself for the onslaught of his touch, but he just stared.

“Cam?”

He lifted his hand. “Hang on. I’m indulging in a moment of Audra worship.”

His eyes caressed her breasts; her nipples tightened even further and sent an echoing ripple of desire through her womb.

“Cam?”

“Shh.” His gaze fell to the juncture at her thighs. The palm of his hand skated from ankle to inner thigh. “I’m trying to meditate here.”

She sucked in a shaky breath, pleasure spiraling through her. “I’m aching here, Cam. If you don’t get up here and—”

“Hey.” He shrugged. “Meditation’s overrated anyway.”

He flashed her a crooked grin and yanked his pants off the rest of the way along with his boxers. And then he was standing before her naked, all lean muscle and confidence. She let herself enjoy a slow perusal of his body, hesitating briefly on the railroad of scars crisscrossing his left knee, before meeting his eyes again.