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  I nodded, unsure of what to make of his statement. “We have other things in common aside from our dislike of Bill?”

  He took a sip of the champagne he was holding and I watched his Adam’s apple bob as the liquid slid down his throat. His chin was square, and closely shaven, but it was his full lips that drew my gaze once more when he moved the glass away. As if aware of my bizarre fascination with him, he slowly turned his head until he was staring right at me. His eyes dropped to my mouth and his tongue swept across his lips, collecting the champagne that coated them. “I’m sure we can find something, Miss Davids.”

  My bones shivered, and I was horrified that I couldn’t hide my reaction to his deep voice.

  Taking a much needed sip of my own drink, I forced it down and smiled. “So, Mr Carter…”

  “Just Carter,” he offered with a slight raise of his eyebrow.

  “So, Carter,” I rectified. “What is it that I can do for you?”

  His lips twitched and I wasn’t sure if he was amused or irritated. Placing his glass down on the table, he leaned forwards and rested his elbows on his knees. He was so close to me that I could feel the gentle fan of his warm breath on my cheek and I shivered impulsively. “We have two choices, Miss Davids.”

  I tipped my head. “We do?”

  “Hmm.” He swept a long finger over his bottom lip and my eyes dropped as if magnetised to watch the hypnotic movement. His gaze lifted and fixed on mine, the deep swirl of green crashing with the soft glint of blue. “We can either go around the back of your impressive gallery and fuck in the alley, or we can fuck right here, in front of all these egotistical cunts.”

  My eyes grew wider and wider with every one of his words, until they watered with dryness and shock.

  “But I have to say,” he continued, his gaze piercing through me to gage my reaction. “I’m not so sure the rats will take kindly to you panting and writhing in their usually quiet neighbourhood.”

  “What the…?”

  He smirked, clearing his throat with nothing but arrogance, and leaned back into his chair once again. “And I’m quite positive Bill will appreciate the sight of your tight little ass when I bend you right over this table and slide down those silky black knickers I know you’re wearing.”

  As if expecting my assault, he didn’t flinch when my palm connected with his right cheek. His head barely moved although I knew I’d hit him hard, and his skin reddened instantly.

  Unable to find the words, I huffed and stood on jelly legs.

  “You’ll grow to love me, Miss Davids,” he laughed as I strode away.

  “You have no idea who I am, do you, Carter?” I muttered to myself, feeling his eyes on me until I rounded the corner.

  My teeth were clenched with indignation, even if every single one of my nerve endings was buzzing with stimulation. I had never been so openly propositioned, and never in such a blunt manner. The glint of desire in his eyes, the raw sex that he exhumed and the straightforward way he had spoken should have turned my stomach with disgust, yet there was a rage in my blood that I hadn’t felt for a very long time.

  Evan rushed over to me and I sighed. The look on his face had me stiffening and soon forgetting the way my treacherous body had reacted to Carter’s ‘offer’.

  “Benny,” Evan growled, the concern in his eyes as he thrust his phone at me making my heartbeat stutter.

  Evan, proficiently, directed Bill back into the throng of the other guests when he spotted him making a beeline for me.

  “Ben.” I lowered my voice as I turned my back on the room and manoeuvred around the thick red ropes that cordoned off a section of the gallery.

  “Shit creek, Harl, and the paddle is well and truly fucking adrift!” Ben spluttered into the phone.

  “Bring me up to date.”

  “Fuck!” he mumbled over the clicking of the keyboard. “I dunno, something is blocking me.”

  Frowning, I licked at my dry lips. “Have you merged the sequence?”

  “It won’t fucking let me!”

  “Okay, calm down,” I urged, drumming my fingers against my thigh as I subconsciously tapped at my own keyboard and mentally worked through the problem. “Are you sure you don’t have a leech?”

  “Well if I do he’s fucking veiled. Shit, Harley. I have six hundred and forty-eight seconds to burrow. I’m fucked.”

  Closing my eyes, I dug my fingernails into my palm. “Link me in. Give me four.”

  “What? You’re at the gallery.”

  “Well-” I cut myself short with a squeal as I ran through the building to the office at the back, the stupid heels that were already killing my feet making me slide on the polished floor. “I’ll have to enter through here and pray I don’t get a chaser.”

  “It’s too risky, Harl. You can’t!”

  “I have to! It’s a six point five, Ben. Are you willing to lose that?”

  His huff said everything. “I’m sorry…”

  “Don’t. I’ll fix it. Have you tied IPs?”

  “Yeah, you should already be in.”

  The office was cool when I entered, the air-con that had been on full all night to accommodate for the full house making the empty room chilly, and I shivered as I hit the lights and powered up the PC.

  “Five hundred and twenty-four, Harl,” Ben muttered, the anxiety in his voice evident as I switched to speakerphone and placed the phone on the desk. “Where are you?”

  Pulling up my chair, and silently thanking Evan for having me buy a new top-grade kit for the gallery when it powered up in seconds, I cracked my knuckles. I worked my way through the network, logged in and was chasing Ben’s tail within ninety seconds. “I’m with you.”

  Four minutes later, we both let out a sigh of relief.

  “Shit, what the fuck happened?” Ben asked.

  Dropping back into my chair I wiped the sweat off my palms on my dress and blew out a breath. “Looked like a vortex. You had to twist it the other way.”

  “I tried, nothing worked.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.” I sighed, shaking my head in puzzlement. “It was a simple doorway; it should have opened easily.”

  “Hmm. Beats me. I got nothin’.” I heard his chair creak as I listened to my own heartrate settle. “Listen, I’ll clean up. Get back to the party.”

  Already shutting everything off, I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “Okay. Breakfast?”

  “Sure thing. I owe you a waffle or two.”

  “Make it three and coffee, and I’ll think about giving you your split.”

  He scoffed then ended the call.

  “Nicely done.”

  I jumped at the low but rough voice behind me, spinning in the chair.

  A cold sheet of anxiety washed over me when I saw Carter leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest and a smirk on his lips.

  “What the hell?” My arm flung across the desk to shut off the PC screen. “What are you doing here?”

  He unpeeled his arms and pushed off the door. His eyes never left mine as he stalked across the room to me. My brain wouldn’t work, the panic in my chest making my bones seize with the fear of how long he had been stood there and how much he’d seen.

  “I’d heard how good you were, Harley, but I just thought it was exaggeration due to the fact that most of your clients want to screw you.”

  My mouth fell open and my neck creaked when I stared up at him looming over me. The darkness in his eyes transfixed me once again, the hypnotic way he held me hostage leaving me vulnerable and completely numb to the rage that should have been coming to the surface by now.

  I flinched when he brought his hand to my face and trailed the tip of his finger across my cheekbone. “Quite the fiddler, aren’t you?”

  “What if I am?” I asked stupidly, my mind void of any coherent thought.

  My instincts were lagging behind, the panic that was overwhelming me clashing with the way this strange man appeared to compel me so effortlessly.
I was trying to figure out how much of a threat he posed, but all I could wonder was if he’d followed me here with the intent to seduce me, and found himself slamming into an entirely different hole. I prayed he had no understanding, that he was clueless and I was safe.

  Slowly, he lowered to a crouch before me. His eyes left my gaze to watch his finger trail over the shell of my ear, and I gasped when he pinched the lobe. “Then I would say things could get real interesting.”

  Fear trickled through me and finally kick-started the adrenaline I needed to function. I tried to bolt but it was already impossible with him directly in front of me.

  His hand shot from my ear and closed around my throat as he pinned me to the back of the chair.

  “Now, now, no need to rush off so quickly.”

  “What do you want?” I hissed through the restriction on my windpipe.

  His gaze lowered to my mouth when I spoke and then moved back to my eyes. “Hmm, there’s an open question. What do I want, Harley Davids?” He smirked. “Cool name by the way. It’s…amusing.”

  I glared at him, squirming beneath his hold as I tried to free myself from the severe grip he had on me. My pulse was thumping in my ears as my heart thudded against my ribcage, the perfect symmetry making the air pulsate around me. “I’m glad I can entertain you.”

  He chuckled. “Oh I’m sure we can find something more than your name to entertain us.”

  Every part of me froze when he slid his hand down my neck and pressed it to the centre of my breastbone, right above the swell of my breasts. His eyes glinted and he licked his lips when he saw my fear. My throat ached from his strict hold and I gulped for air.

  “Now, here’s my dilemma, Harley. I have a job to do, but what I really want to do is slide up your dress, tear off those pretty little knickers and find out if you’re as tight as I imagine.”

  I shook my head, gulping at the lingering tightness in my throat and the phantom fingers still curled around it. “Please don’t.”

  He blinked, his brow creasing slightly. “Oh, don’t worry, I won’t take you until you offer it. And believe me, you will offer yourself to me. In fact, I have no doubt that you’ll be fucking begging for it.”

  His arrogance made me fight but he was too strong, pressing me to the chair and refusing me the chance to flee.

  Then, unexpectedly, he stood upright and his menacing closeness disappeared. His smile was cold and the heat in his eyes did nothing to warm the chill radiating from him as he took another step back.

  “Until next time, babe.”

  And with a wink he was gone, leaving me staring in shock at the doorway he disappeared through.

  I took one deep breath after another, trying to sedate my erratic breathing. The chaos had returned, buzzing in my mind until colour became black and white and sounds became white noise against a new sensation.

  Craving.

  Longing.

  Needing.

  “Harley.”

  I looked up to see Evan standing where Carter had been just moments ago. Evan knew everything, and Carter knew too much. My best friend, the man I’d known since we were kids, when I would run around shooting the bad guys from the back of my motorbike, and he would follow behind me waiting for the game to end, knew every time I took a breath…and yet, he’d never been under my skin, not like…

  “What happened?”

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “I’m fine,” I repeated, before releasing a defeated breath and dropping my chin to my chest. Shame overwhelmed me when I muttered, “Cloud.”

  I heard Evan sigh with the single word, but his fingers slipped in mine and he smiled softly at me as I looked up at him. “Come on, let’s get you sorted.”

  Tears blurred his face when I nodded, and I tightened my grip on him as he tugged me off the chair. His lips pressed to my forehead, his complete love for me reflected in that simple action. “Love you, Harl.”

  “Forever,” I whispered as he led me out of the building and once again cared for me like no other ever could.

  Two

  Women. I’d never much needed one before. Sure, I fucked as often as the next single dude with charm and a smile, but that was where my respect for women ended. If they jumped in my bed, they could have me for a few hours and then they’d become irrelevant. No pillow talk, no breakfast, and no kiss goodbye when I sent them on their way.

  I’d never killed a woman before, either. Seems like a weird observation to make, right? Not for me. I had as many kills under my belt as I did notches on my bedpost. When I’d received the order, and payment, to take out one Harley Davids, I’d sniggered at the name imagining it was a MC douchebag from bumfuck USA who had pissed off a rich guy by breaking bottles on his precisely clipped lawn. Never in a million years had I expected to stumble upon female Harley Davids, of Alconbury, Cambridgeshire. She was no bumfuck, although one look at her and I’d imagined fucking her delectable arse, and now, hours later, I was still imagining fucking her, while trying to figure out why her death had earned a price tag. I didn’t usually care about the why. I stormed in, fired one shot, and got the fuck out a few grand better off. I didn’t kill for sport. I didn’t even kill for a living. I killed because I had an insatiable desire to do it, and that was reason enough for me. I’d given myself a solid alibi that would be sure to have my back for decades to come. I owned Chimera, a four-story club that had been nothing but a childhood dream, and now it stood proud against the most well-respected establishments in the country, and had planted my name at the top of nightclub-moguls’ hit-lists nationwide. If only they knew I had access to every hitman’s archive on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.

  Harley Davids…the name left a sour taste on my tongue, and created an aggressive stir in my pants. This was why I didn’t involve myself with women beyond a quick suck, a quicker fuck and shoving them out the door before my cum had even dried on their thighs. This was why I didn’t kill women. Because, somehow, the two confused themselves, the very fibres of my being and everything that moulded me into the man I was, collided until I didn’t know if I was a thirty-three-year-old man who had made it, or a young boy who wondered if he ever would.

  Dragging my hands through my hair, I switched the light on in the apartment I lived in at the top of Chimera and stared out at the city in the distance. Then with a sigh, I slammed my fist into the console beside the door and watched as the shutters blocked the world out. I could smell her on me; lemons, cherries and vanilla that made my mouth water like a diabetic in a bakery. My tongue flexed against the roof of my mouth when I remembered wanting to suck on the flesh of her neck, lick the vein that had pulsed in fear when her instincts told her to run. She’d been right to be afraid of me. I’d been there to kill her…but I couldn’t do it.

  Why couldn’t I fucking do it?

  Stripping out of the jacket and folding it onto the back of the sofa as I crossed the living space, I tried to find a reason for why I’d let her live when I’d found—created—the opportunity to end her swiftly. I grabbed a bottle of beer from the fridge and popped the cap, leaning against the counter and taking a mouthful, while my free hand unbuttoned my shirt and untucked it from my trousers. Brown eyes that reminded me of the chocolate ice cream I wasn’t allowed as a kid filled my vision. Harley’s fucking eyes. The way they’d widened in shock when I seized her throat. The way they’d filled with tears when I told her we’d be fucking, and she’d be damn well begging for it.

  “Fucking hell,” I groaned, closing my eyes and tipping my head back.

  I should have fucked her tonight. I knew if I had, if she had let me, I would have been able to kill her. I always lost interest after I’d won the fight. If there was no challenge, if I’d won the game I’d created without disclosing the rules, the object of my need to dominate became boring. Redundant. She would have become insignificant and I would have been able to do the job I’d been paid in advance to carry out.

  Had my employer seen this? Had he foreseen the effect Harley
would have on me? Did she have this effect on everyone around her?

  And why was I fucking angry about it? Why did the thought of another man taking her life, when it was my job to do so, make me so angry that the neck of the bottle snapped in my savage grip? I needed to get a grip. I needed to get over this, and I needed to try again tomorrow.

  I wouldn’t fail. I never failed.

  Slamming what was left of my beer on the counter, I stormed through the apartment to take a shower, pulling on a fresh suit when I was done, ignoring the hard-on that had turned into a desperate horny teenager vying for some attention. I headed out of the apartment, taking the private lift downstairs to where Saturday night in Chimera was buzzing. Bodies writhed against each other, sweat mixed with alcohol and adrenaline from the heavy bass pounding from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. The DJ stood at his decks, bouncing his arms up and down to the beat of the music and the strobe lighting that burst from every inch of the club. It was an epileptic’s biggest nightmare, and everything junkies craved from a high. The crowd chanted, waitresses dressed in little black dresses with belts of liquor and stacks of shot glasses hanging around their hips fluttered their eyelashes and tempted punters into spending more money, and the bouncers stood in the corners watching for pricks behaving badly, and women trying to earn more than a free drink.

  “Boss,” Tim said, shaking my hand across the bar and shouting over the music. “The usual?”

  I nodded, leaning my forearms on the bar top as he grabbed a glass and reached for the bottle of Johnnie Walker, pouring a healthy double-measure and then some, over ice.

  “Busy night? I haven’t seen you much tonight.”

  “Ah, I was upstairs for most of it,” I lied.

  “It’s been good.”

  He didn’t need to tell me; I knew our new plans would roll out successfully. This was my forte, my speciality, the only thing I lived for when I wasn’t balls deep in a warm cunt or drowning blissfully in blood. I treated my staff well; I treated every single person in this club with respect, as if I were their equal. All in the name of keeping the mask in place. So when I decided to try different music, when I planned themed nights and replenished the alcohol stock with new brands and fresh labels, people flocked to offer their support; they brought their friends with them and if someone were to say, “hey, did you know Carter is an assassin?” I’d have hundreds of people to turn to for a character defence guaranteed to clear my name before I even made it to the station. That’s not to say I wasn’t careful; I was an obsessive son of a bitch, a germaphobe, a clean-freak. There was a way to do things, and that way was to leave not a single breadcrumb or shred of DNA.