Untouched by Maisey Yates Page A

it.
    Nothing but finish the job. And she would do it really, really well so he would have nothing to complain about. When she thought about it, he’d probably expected her to pitch a hissy fit when she found out who he was. Which she had. And he’d probably really like her to quit so he could do his broody, nasty bad-guy thing and come collect money from Cade.
    Or at the very least, he’d probably love to find her in breach of contract due to her behavior.
    Too bad. He wasn’t going to get the chance. Nope.
    She might have made a mistake signing the contract, but he’d made a mistake thinking that she would be the easy way to get to Cade. There was a vague woman-in-the-refrigerator air about it all. Too bad for him, she wasn’t a passive, two-dimensional comic book woman. She was a real woman, and she was going to hold her ground.
    She turned back to her computer and clicked into the map, adjusting the scope of her virtual gun and training the site onto a passing zombie.
    Oh, yes. Quinn Parker had underestimated her. She squeezed the virtual trigger and leaned back in her chair.
    She wasn’t weak. And she would prove it.

Chapter Four
    When Lark showed up at work the next morning, she was dressed more casually than she’d been the day before. Dark blue jeans and a button-up top that looked like she’d bought it up at the general store.
    Plaid with little silver-rimmed, pearl-centered snaps. Interesting. He couldn’t help but wonder how easy buttons like that would be to pop open.
    Quinn redirected his thoughts and walked over to where Lark was standing, about to go into the computer room.
    “Morning.”
    “Good morning,” she said, her eyes dropping to just below his belt, her cheeks turning pink.
    Remembering their exchange from last night, no doubt. She was a sharp woman, that was for sure, with an even sharper tongue. He kind of liked it. He was used to women who didn’t try to challenge him. Women who were a little tipsy and into feeling his muscles, and then some, back at the hotel. Women who got all breathless and wanted him to be rough and dirty and everything they imagined having a bad boy in their bed would be.
    He had a feeling Lark would gut-punch him if he tried anything. And for some reason that made her buttons, and the thought of undoing them, more interesting.
    There was something wrong with that. Something wrong with him. Well, that wasn’t new news. He’d known there was something wrong with him from day one. So had everyone in his family.
    “Yeah, it is. Do you know what you’re doing today?”
    “Getting everything online and building a porn fence those little bastards won’t be able to scale no matter how hot the boob-lust burns.”
    “Good luck. Teenage boys are highly motivated by topless women. If ever one of them was going to become a hacker, that would be why.”
    His eyes flickered down to those buttons again. It wasn’t only teenage boys who were motivated by breasts.
    “It might lead to a job opportunity, because trust me, if they can bypass my security measures, then the future is bright in the computer industry for them.”
    “You’re that good?”
    “I’m going to build the Great Firewall. You’ll be able to see that sumbitch from space.”
    “No alcohol. No naked women.” He paused. “We really are bringing them into hell for a reboot.”
    “They need it, don’t they?” she asked.
    Quinn nodded, trying to get his mind off of those buttons. “Yeah. They do. I wish I’d had a place like this. I might have got my head on straight a little sooner.”
    “What was it that made you get your head on straight?”
    “Jail sucks,” he said. “That and I wanted a career in the rodeo, which you can’t do from behind bars. You have to be around to ride. You have to be willing to bust your ass, and when you’re busy working hard, you’re too tired to get into trouble.”
    “Oh.”
    “Yeah, I’ve made some mistakes in my life, but trust me when I say most of them