LUKE: Complete Series by Cassia Leo Page A

chin up so I was facing him.
    “I’m not trying to manipulate you. Do you believe me?”
    I nodded and he kissed me tenderly and slowly. I wanted to melt into him. I wanted everything to fade to black then wake up in a future where NeoSys didn’t exist. He pulled away and kissed the tip of my nose.
    “If you want to keep our relationship professional, I can do that. It will be difficult, but I’ll do it, if that’s what you truly want.”
    How could I resist him? It wasn’t fair. I had no chance at succeeding in this environment. Luke was much better at this than I was. I should get out now while I could still salvage my position at NeoSys.
    He gazed down at me with those icy, aquamarine eyes and I knew I didn’t stand a chance. I might as well sign my parents up for food stamps now.
    “I’m just scared of losing myself. I’m scared that the second I let my guard down, this is all going to come crashing down… like my brother and my parents. I turned my back on my brother for five minutes and now he’s gone. I moved out of the house and my dad lost his job. And now my mom is a nervous wreck and my dad might have cancer and I… I’m just really fucking scared.”
    Something changed in his face and I feared I’d said too much. This was too heavy. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
    “Fuck,” he whispered. “I didn’t realize you were dealing with all that. Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”
    “I’m telling you now. Is this too much?”
    He shook his head. “No. I just want you to know you can talk to me about this stuff anytime.”
    He was holding something back. There was a reason he wished I had told him this yesterday. I suddenly got the feeling that the phone I found in the restroom was not left there by accident.
    “Did Josh ever find his phone?” I asked. I wanted to see the reaction on his face.
    He scrunched his eyebrows together as he turned to me. “I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”
    “You asked me to order him a new one. I just wanted to make sure he hadn’t found it before I do that.”
    “Oh, right. No, I think it’s still missing.”
    “Aren’t you going to do something about that? Isn’t there some kind of protocol when important stuff goes missing?”
    “It’s just a phone, Brina. There’s nothing important on his phone that can’t be recovered by syncing a new phone with the data backup on his computer.”
    I thought of the NeoSys app I’d found on there and realized Luke was either lying to me or he didn’t know that Josh had a suspiciously named app on his phone. Something told me that there was nothing Luke didn’t know about his programmers, just as there was nothing he didn’t know about me.
    I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before I leaned over and whispered in his ear. “I don’t want to keep our relationship professional.” I slid off his lap and spread his legs as I knelt in front of him. I smiled at the look of uncertainty on his face as I undid his belt. “I love you, Luke.”
     

PART THREE: LINKED

1
    The banging on the door startled me awake. I blinked at the glowing green numbers on my alarm clock: 1:13 a.m. Who the hell was at my door at this hour on a Tuesday?
    I tossed the covers off and slid out of bed as the banging continued. “I’m coming!” I shouted from the bedroom, as I slipped my arms into my robe.
    I couldn’t see anything. I grasped the breakfast bar that separated the living room from the kitchen and used it to guide me toward the front door.
    “Who is it?” I shouted over the relentless pounding.
    “It’s me, bitch! Open this door!”
    I unlocked the door and my best friend Jill shoved me aside and barged into my living room. I flipped the light switch on the wall and the living room was flooded with light, revealing a secondhand sofa, an LCD television, and a laptop; the entire contents of my living room.
    “What the fuck happened to you?” she shrieked, as she stood in the middle of the room, arms