Hero Undercover: 25 Breathtaking Bad Boys Read online

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  Black Stallion Trilogy

  (With Alta Hensley)

  Maddox, Book 1

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  Homecoming, Book 2

  Reunion, Book 3

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  A Submissive's Dream, Book 2

  Haven’s Promise, Book 3

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  The Red Petticoat Saloon series

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  Diamond in the Rough

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  Willamette Wives series

  His Passionate Pioneer, Book One

  My Sassy Settler, Book Two

  His Errant Educator, Book Three

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  Corbin’s Bend series

  An Author’s Angst

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  Masters of the Castle series

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  Anthologies and Box Sets

  Hero Undercover

  The Dark Forest

  Little Victorian Ladies

  When the Gavel Falls (Masters of the Castle box set)

  12 Naughty Days of Christmas Anthology

  Hunter’s Ridge Box Set

  Hero to Obey

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  Her Protector

  By

  Annabel Joseph

  ©2017 by Blushing Books® and Annabel Joseph

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Blushing Books®,

  a subsidiary of

  ABCD Graphics and Design

  977 Seminole Trail #233

  Charlottesville, VA 22901

  The trademark Blushing Books®

  is registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office.

  Annabel Joseph

  Her Protector

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

  7pm

  Rowan Park tossed her black hair, then looked at her black-polished fingertips in disdain. The hacker in black was such a stereotype, and she was a white hat, a good guy. She couldn’t do much with her hair since she’d been born with it—aside from adding a few indigo stripes to her long, feathered bangs. But she’d choose a brighter nail color the next time she went to her salon. That, or she’d ask for some rhinestones or moons to break up the black.

  At least her clothes weren’t black. She’d dressed up today, since she was having drinks with friends later. She definitely hadn’t dressed to impress because of the hot custodian who chatted with her every day when he came to empty her trash can.

  Okay. Yes, she had.

  She waited for his visits, which weren’t really visits, just forays into her office space to do his job. Some days he stayed to vacuum, a real thrill because of his ridiculous arms. She was into hands and arms, and strength. And, well, being spanked, which went with all of it. She wondered if he’d ever spanked any of his girlfriends. He wasn’t married—she’d checked on the first day for a ring.

  She shook her head and looked back at her computer screen. She needed to stop fantasizing and focus. National security was at stake, and if she’d worn this particularly flirty pale blue dress and matching cropped sweater to impress Chad, as well as her friends, well, who cared? If she’d been thinking about his opinion when she pulled on her best leather boots, it didn’t matter, because she was having drinks after work with Blake and Serena, not Chad.

  Chad. What a perfect fucking name for a hunky custodian.

  She looked back at her computer screen, scanning the latest hack attempt via a server in Indonesia. Each hacker had a recognizable style, a signature that gave them away. When hackers breached systems with criminal intent, they were called “crackers.” When the target was government secrets, well, that was where she stepped in.

  “Why, hello there, Team Cicada,” she murmured, picking up a stylus to isolate and enlarge the lines of code in the breach alert. “Are you alone? Having your way with the Pentagon networks? Not anymore.”

  She recognized her adversaries by now, knew their style of attack and their most-used strategies. Team Cicada worked for North Korea, and while they were great at hacking into systems, they were awful at covering their tracks, even more awful than the Russians, who were notoriously terrible.

  She leaned forward, tapping the stylus on her desk, then on her keyboard’s left-arrow key, so the cursor blinked across the low-glare screen. She scanned through lines of Korean computer language—backwards, so she wouldn’t miss anything—and returned to a troubling line of code. “What are you looking for?” She tsked. “Nope. You can’t have that information, my friends.”

  She added a few neutral characters, scrolled down, and added a few more for good measure. That would keep him and his team busy for a while, and when they found the errors, she hoped they would understand the message she’d left. You suck.

  Rowan sighed with satisfaction, leaned back, and cast a glance around her “Technical Assistance C” workspace, a nondescript hangar at a small airport on the outskirts of Portland. The people who worked for this division had long since shortened the name to “Tech-C.” The “C” stood for Classified, but that was classified, so no one here understood the nature of each other’s jobs, or what they might be monitoring from month to month.

  Secrecy and security were paramount. It wasn’t unusual to come in to work and learn that the office was moving across the country for some classified reason. Since she’d been hired, she’d worked at a high-rise office in Florida, then a strip-mall sublet in upstate New York.

  This empty hangar echoed, even after the addition of sound-dampening walls and cubicles. The ceiling rose far above their offices, shielded by radar-defeating lead panels and fluffy insulation. Within these hallowed halls, the nation’s best hackers were paid ungodly amounts of money to protect the government’s most vulnerable secrets, from agent identities to economic and military servers to active nuclear codes.

  Of course, not everyone here was a techno geek. A quiver passed through her as she heard Chad move into her office.

  “Good evening, Miss Park. How are things in the cyberworld today?”

  She turned at his deep, friendly voice. “Hi, Chad. Thing
s are pretty okay.”

  He took the time to chat with her every day, to her delight. By now, she’d learned to keep her eyes on his face, rather than raking them over his delicious physique, but it wasn’t easy. He sported the worn-jeans-and-work-shirt look—he was a custodian, after all—but damn if his clothes didn’t fit him to a fucking tee. When he moved, when he walked, when he pushed a broom across the floor…

  He was six broad feet of muscle, and if that wasn’t enough, he was handsome too. Square jawed, with thick, tousled dirty blond hair, and eyes that were both strikingly blue and dauntingly direct. Whenever he turned his stare on her, she thought he must know how she lusted after him, but if he did, he still treated her with friendly professionalism, so she tried to do the same in return.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “I’m good. How about that wind yesterday?”

  “I know, right? It was blowing like crazy. And the rain today…”

  Ugh. Leave it to her to work the word “blowing” into a casual conversation. She turned away, pretending to check her mail, but saw him glance at her computer screen, just at the angle to see past the security shading applied to all classified equipment.

  She tensed for a moment, then realized it didn’t matter. This man wasn’t a hacker. He definitely couldn’t read the pidgin Pan-Asian code she specialized in. Just by looking at him, she could tell he was more physical than mental… in a good way.

  “Any plans tonight?” he asked.

  “The usual Thursday night mayhem. Drinks with friends.” She tried not to react to his closeness, to behave in some way that might reveal her attraction.

  “What kind of friends?”

  She raised a brow at his overly casual query. Was he trying to figure out if she was dating someone? If so, she wanted to make sure he knew the answer was no. He was a little older than her, but definitely in her horny hookup range.

  “Just some goofball friends,” she said with a shrug. “I knew them at Berkeley, before I dropped out.”

  He picked up her trash can and fed the contents into a high-powered shredder attached to his work cart. “You’ve known them a while, then. Have they changed much over the years?”

  She shrugged, secretly thrilling in his raspy Midwestern drawl. “No, they’re still nerds. I worked with them on tech projects in our courses. They were into… computer stuff too.” She’d been about to say they were into hacking too, before she edited herself. She didn’t share her true career with many people, didn’t publicize the fact that she manipulated computer languages, decoded and subverted them in order to hack or be hacked. Not that she was ashamed of her work.

  There was just a certain amount of secrecy necessary when you spent your days—and nights—fucking with angry Russian and Asian cyberspies.

  Hacking had started as a creative endeavor, a way to fuck with friends or pad college transcripts with courses she hadn’t completed. From there, she’d moved on to politically meaningful hacks, like reprogramming bigoted politicians’ websites to display the names and photos of their mistresses. She’d been found, chewed out by the Department of Defense, and offered a job.

  “Oh my God.” She gave a huge yawn that ended in laughter. “Why am I still here?”

  He replaced her trash can, leaning close enough that she could smell him. Soap and shaving cologne. No hair gel, which was a good thing. She worked with so many men who primped and curated their appearance. This one was all-natural beef.

  “Maybe you ought to go home,” he said. “Forget the drinks this week.”

  “Boring.” She checked her phone, aware of his scrutiny. “My friends are waiting for me at Livermore’s. I just have to finish this one thing.”

  That was a lie. She’d finished everything that needed to be done for the moment. She was just hanging around to watch Chad’s arms in motion, to daydream about how he looked without a shirt. Or pants. If the size of his hands were any indication of the size of his…

  Jesus, Rowan, you’re thirty years old. Grow up.

  Since she’d met Chad a couple months ago, he’d become the highlight of her work day here at the Tech-C hangar. It wasn’t just his hyper-fine body. It was his easy personality, the way he moved, the way his eyes followed her when he was in the office. The way he looked at her, like he wanted to know more, but was far too polite to trespass into her personal life.

  “Anything else I can do for you?” he asked.

  You can take off your clothes and let me see if your cock is as impressive as those huge hands you drag around, big boy.

  She was being a pig, wasn’t she? So many fantasies based on dirty, uncomplicated, blue-collar men, with their insouciant sexual energy. She imagined Chad throwing her down on her desk and overpowering her, taking her with a triumphant grin on his face and a few smacks to her bottom cheeks before he hiked up her legs and—

  Okay. Totally being a pig. He was a nice man, and a hard worker. He’d never asked to be part of her depraved fantasies.

  “I’m good,” she said. “I’ll finish this up and log off. Thanks. Have a great evening.”

  “You too. See you tomorrow.”

  He left her cubicle and rolled his cart down the hall, whistling to himself. Whistling normally set her teeth on edge, but with him, somehow, she found it as attractive as everything else.

  Phew. She needed a drink, and to update Blake and Serena on the dreamiest custodian on the West Coast. They enjoyed her horny ravings, and teased her for her waning restraint. She e-signed her daily report, logged off her secure connection, and slid the hard drive into the fire- and tamper-proof safe behind her desk. She made a quick trip to the bathroom to touch up her makeup, then headed to the elevator.

  Working in a classified building meant secure, underground parking, which she appreciated on rainy days like today. No raincoat or umbrella to juggle as she dug in her bag to find her keys. The only bad part about parking underground was that the rain wasn’t able to wash off her filthy little hatchback. Sigh. So much for letting nature do its work.

  She opened her door and threw her bag on the opposite seat. Her car’s engine turned over but wouldn’t start. Shit. She tried again, cranking the ignition, hearing the click of a dead battery. Shit, shit, shit.

  A knock at the window made her jump sideways in her seat. A big hand, then Chad’s face appeared in her line of vision. “Need some help?” he asked.

  Once she could breathe again, she opened the door, since her window wasn’t working. “God, you scared me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, my car won’t seem to start.”

  “Want me to look under the hood?”

  For once, Rowan was more concerned with her damn car than Chad’s blue eyes. “I don’t know what it could be,” she said. “I just put in a new battery a couple months ago.”

  “Stay there. Pop the hood for me.”

  His air of capability calmed her down. She unlocked the hood and allowed herself to enjoy the spectacle of his muscular arms pushing it up. She couldn’t see him as he worked behind the hood, but imagined him scanning her car’s innards with a practiced eye, fiddling with the battery connections.

  “Try cranking it again,” he said.

  She did. Nothing. “Damn it.” She covered her eyes with her fingers.

  “You’re going to miss your friends.” He closed the hood with a bang. “Hey, tell them you’ll be a little late. I’ll drive you into the city and call my buddy to help fix your battery. You can take a cab back here when you’re ready to go home.”

  “What? No. What a hassle for you. I wouldn’t dream of asking you to—”

  “It’s nothing. My friend’s shop is right around the corner. He’ll charge way less than the dealership.” He took out his phone, his fingers flying over the buttons.

  “But—”

  “I was on my way home anyway.”

  She thought about calling Blake or Serena to come help her, but remembering the way they drank at Berkeley, they were
probably already too buzzed to drive. In the end, a chance to drive downtown with hot Chad beat out her natural aversion to inconveniencing others. She grabbed her bag and followed him to his car, a burly black Mustang with tinted windows.

  Yes, perfect for him.

  He held the door for her—swoon—ushering her into the immaculately clean cabin. “Jesus, why is your car so spotless?” she said when he eased into the driver’s seat.

  “I’m a custodian.” He spread his hands with a grin. “I like keeping things clean.” He turned his key and, unlike hers, his engine roared to life. She could feel the rumble in her stomach, the kinetic power her eco-conscious compact car didn’t have. “Buckle up,” he prompted her.

  She turned to pull the belt across her body. Her heart thump-thumped at the thrill of being so close to him. He pulled out of the hangar parking lot onto the exit loop.

  “Livermore’s is east,” she said, as he passed her usual gate. “You can hang a left up there and turn around.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, just accelerated toward the west exit. He flicked on the radio, classic rock pouring from four-point speakers. It sounded awesome enough to distract her for a moment, but he seemed to have no intention of turning around.

  “Do you know where Livermore’s is?” she asked. “It’s downtown.”

  “I know where it is. Unfortunately, we can’t go there.”

  “What do you mean, we can’t go there?”

  He flicked a glance at her. His face looked different from Chad’s face now. Harder, sharper. He narrowed his eyes. “It’s not safe for you there, not tonight.”

  Holy shit. What did he mean by that? Was this a kidnapping? She looked out the window, trying to formulate an escape plan, but they were already on the main road out of the airport, and picking up speed.

  Was the door locked? Should she jump? The music blared in her ears, or maybe it was the whoosh of panic drowning out her thoughts. By the time she turned back to confront Chad, he had a syringe poised over her thigh. As she fumbled to undo her seatbelt, his thumb pressed the plunger in a practiced movement, the needle piercing her skin before she could react.