Fascination Read Free

was concerned it made no difference—work and sex never mixed. All he cared about was how good she was at her job.
    He was curious about her, though. Using the online name TigerLily, she had a reputation as a major computer junkie—a hacker in the most positive sense of the term. Not all hackers were criminals. In fact, the major proportion of people who called themselves hackers were upstanding citizens. Criminal hackers took otherwise creative and essential computer skills and used them recklessly to do harm or for their own gain.
    Then there were hackers, like Sage and her friend Locke, who called themselves “hacktivists”—hackers who used destructive hacking methods as a form of social protest, attacking the computer systems of multinational corporations and major polluters and the like.
    Unfortunately the attacks these groups waged often ended up hurting a wider spectrum of people than the organizations they targeted. Hacktivists were still oftencriminal hackers, as Ian saw it—you couldn’t start letting politics be an excuse for committing crimes.
    Sarah was an example of a legal hacker, someone who was just damned talented with a computer and who had no intention of breaking the law. She had become a self-appointed informant for the feds, tracking down Internet porn rings in her spare time, sending Ian what she found. It was a weird hobby, but the info she’d shared had led to several busts.
    Ian knew that Sarah had an incomplete college degree and no formal police training, but those things could be dealt with. She had several part-time jobs, lived in a low-cost apartment in the city. He was willing to bet she probably spent more money on computer equipment than food. But she knew her stuff and stayed on the right side of the law, and that’s what he was looking for. He trusted his gut about people more than he trusted pieces of paper anyway. He just had a feeling about her.
    Taking a deep breath, Ian furrowed his brow in irritation as he detected the slightly spicy fragrance Sage had worn earlier today still lingering in the otherwise musty air of his office. His hand clenched tightly around the plastic bottle as he felt the familiar wave of desire hit, followed by the dulling sense of frustration.
    Sage was a criminal hacker, someone off-limits to him even if only for the next few days. She was the last connection to his old life, and when this gig was over he would cut her loose and forget about her.
    Yeah, right. Even though he’d carefully guarded against it, Sage had become more than just another case. He replayed the moment her hand moved over the skin of his arm and felt a flash of heat—he could still feel it, her soft skin on his. Her long fingers touching him just for that short moment. Her nails, ragged and bitten to the quick, were painted with red polish, and he found that was amazingly sexy, because it was on her. That she would wear such a bold color on her short nails was also indicative of Sage—she just didn’t accept limitations. Not easily anyway. And she tempted him every chance she got.
    He was tempted, no doubt about that. What red-blooded man could have Sage in front of him for years, issuing invitations left and right, and not at least think about it? But red-blooded as he might be, Ian’s sense of self-discipline was fierce.
    It also helped that he knew the come-ons and flirting were just her way of punishing him, of exacting some small bit of revenge for how he’d invaded her life. She didn’t really want him, she just wanted to get back at him. He was just doing his job and he reminded himself of that every time he let himself think how good she smelled.
    There was just something about her that he’d known from the start was going to be trouble. One look into those stubborn green eyes when they’d first met, and a part of him knew she could cause trouble for him as no other woman had. Her wildly curly red hair cinched it.She was like a flame, dancing around him, always