Chapter 164

[ 1,240 words ]

Julian’s POV

Katia met me at the door at 10 AM.

She had not slept. I could see it, not in her appearance, which was immaculate, but in the quality of her attention. It was sharper than usual. She had the alertness of someone running on adrenaline and the refusal to let an attack go unanswered.

“The server room is this way,” she said.

I followed her.

We worked for eighteen hours on the first day.

My team had sent me with the full WEG security documentation, the four-year-old file on Victor’s methodology, the entry patterns we had mapped, and the vulnerabilities he looked for in systems that had scaled quickly. I sat with Sam and Chen and walked them through it layer by layer.

Sam was extraordinary. Seeing her work on her own infrastructure was different; she understood every node of IG’s architecture. She pushed back on two of my recommendations with better solutions. I told her she was right, and she moved on.

Katia was everywhere.

She moved between the server room and the operations floor and her office, always with a purpose. Her team tracked her the way people tracked someone they trusted completely. When she said something, it was done. I watched her for eighteen hours. The distance between my first assessment of her and what I was looking at now was vast.

At midnight, I found her in the corridor outside the server room with her back against the wall and her eyes closed. She had a coffee going cold in her hand. I stopped in front of her.

She opened her eyes. “Don’t,” she said.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” I said.

“You were going to tell me to go home p>

“I was going to ask if that coffee was any good p>

She looked at the cup. “It was. An hour ago p>

I took it from her hand and put it on the windowsill. I stood in front of her. We were both tired enough that neither of us had the energy to perform anything. I looked at her mouth, then back to her eyes. The tension was a heavy, physical weight.

“You should sleep,” I said. “A few hours. The architecture isn’t going anywhere p>

“Victor might be p>

“Victor is not moving tonight,” I said. “He made his point. He’s waiting to see what you do next p>

She looked at me for a moment. “How do you know how he thinks p>

“Because I spent four years watching him dismantle things,” I said. “He is patient. He does not rush. He makes a move and then he waits.” I paused. “He is waiting right now p>

She was quiet.

“Go sleep,” I said. “I’ll stay on the floor p>

“You don’t have to p>

“Katia.” I held her gaze. “Go sleep. I have it p>

She went.

The second night was quieter.

Most of the team had rotated through rest shifts. By two AM, it was just me and Katia in the server room; she had come back at midnight after four hours of sleep. She had settled into the chair at the secondary workstation with a fresh coffee.

We worked in silence for an hour. I looked up and she was asleep.

Her head dropped to one side. Her hands were loose in her lap. I put down my tablet and walked over to her. I looked at her for a long time. She looked younger. The composure she carried like armor was gone.

I thought about Las Vegas. I thought about the night six years ago. I thought about waking up alone with the ring I had given to a stranger I married. I looked at her hands; she had no ring. If Katia were the woman from 6 years ago. I would know; I just want her to wear her ring. Then I thought about Aiden. The jaw, the hands, the way he tilted his head. It was all right there.

This is the woman I married, I thought. And she has no idea.

She woke up twenty minutes later. She looked at me immediately.

“How long?” she said.

“Twenty minutes,” I said.

I didn’t move back. I was standing right over her. She looked at my mouth, and the air in the room changed. The “eye fucking” that had been happening for forty-eight hours reached a breaking point. I reached out, my hand closing around the back of her neck, and pulled her up from the chair.

I kissed her. It was hard and desperate. I tasted the coffee and the lack of sleep. I hauled her up onto the workstation, my hand sweeping a keyboard and a secondary monitor onto the floor. They hit the ground with a loud clatter. I shoved her skirt up and forced her legs apart with my body.

I unbuckled my belt, my cock springing free — hard, pulsing, and aching for her. I didn’t go all the way in. I shoved just the head of my cock into her, teasing the entrance. I watched her eyes roll back as I started a slow, shallow rhythm. I rubbed the head of my cock against her clit with every movement, focusing all the friction on her nerves.

“Julian,” she choked out, her fingers digging into my shoulders.

“You’ve been watching me all day,” I growled against her ear. “Thinking about this p>

“Yes,” she whispered.

I kept the thrusts shallow and precise. I wasn’t giving her the full length. I wanted her to feel the weight of me without the relief of the depth. I reached up and gripped her breast through her blouse, my thumb rubbing the nipple until it was a hard peak. She was wet, soaking the head of my cock, her internal muscles clamping down on me.

“Please,” she sobbed, her back arching off the desk.

“No,” I said. “Not yet p>

I increased the speed of the shallow thrusts. The friction was relentless. I watched her face go flush, her breath coming in short, ragged hitches. She reached the limit and broke, her body tensing as she came hard around the head of my cock, her thighs shaking against my hips.

I didn’t stop. I kept the rhythm steady until I felt my own release hit. I groaned and pulled out just as I peaked, my seeds spilling hot and thick across her thighs and the edge of the workstation.

We stayed like that for a long time, breathing each other’s air. I took a handkerchief and cleaned her up, then myself. I adjusted her skirt and helped her down. She looked at the screen, then back at me. Her eyes were still glazed.

“We need to talk,” she said quietly.

“I know,” I said.

“Not tonight p>

“No,” I agreed. “Not tonight p>

“But why won’t you fuck me? You always do this; if it’s not this, it’s the dry humping.” She complained.

“I will,” I said, looking at her, but I could tell she was not happy. But I want to know if she was the woman from 6 years ago first.

We went back to work. I sat at my station and she sat at hers. We didn’t look at each other for the rest of the night, but the energy in the room had shifted into something heavy and permanent.

Three hours later, the sun came up over the Brooklyn warehouses. We had secured the servers, but the truth was still waiting for us.

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