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  Determined, Dane ignored Alex’s caution and stepped between his spread legs. He skirted a hand under Alex’s chin, senses firing at the midday scruff tickling his palm. He ignored the shot of desire and lifted Alex’s face, forcing his gaze. “I brought this fight to you. It’s our fight. You don’t have to do everything on your own.” He glided his hand up to cradle Alex’s face. “You shouldn’t have to. Please let me help you. I think we can win this.”

  Alex nuzzled into his palm, sending a surge of warmth racing to Dane’s heart, expanding his chest, and making the collapse that came with his next words almost unbearable. “How do I know you’re not going to leave?” Alex said, barely a whisper, eyes downcast. “That you won’t change your mind again tomorrow?”

  Hand lowering to curl around Alex’s neck, Dane lowered himself too, kneeling between Alex’s legs. He wasn’t sure his legs would hold him after that last deserved blow, but more than his own potential humiliation, he didn’t want to stand over Alex. He didn’t have the right to, not when he was the one begging for forgiveness and another chance he didn’t deserve.

  “You don’t know,” Dane said. “And that’s my fault. I’ve never given you a reason to think otherwise. But I’m here now.”

  He squeezed Alex’s neck, drawing his gaze. Eyes locked, Dane stretched up slowly, lifting his other hand to Alex’s cheek, thumb skating over his bottom lip, making his intention clear, and giving Alex the out he’d given him on the dance floor. He didn’t take it, and Dane brought their lips together, gently, despite the blinding desire bubbling just below the surface. Instead, he gave Alex a slow, thorough kiss, full of all the promises he’d only just found the courage to make, delivered in the sincerest gesture of his life.

  He pulled back and waited for Alex to open his eyes, pleased to see them darkened. “Let me prove it to you. Please.”

  Alex held his stare, and Dane held his breath, praying he’d done enough to make his case. He needed to do this for Alex, who’d never compromised himself, who’d shown him what it was like to live honestly. Dane would be damned if he allowed his parents’ lies to bring this good man low, not when he could do something about it.

  Alex blinked. “How can we win?”

  Dane blew out a huge, relieved breath, and Alex laughed, the sound music to Dane’s ears. “Hard part’s done.” He shifted back on his haunches and dropped his hands, landing atop Alex’s on his knees, squeezing. “There’s this thing I can do with computers.”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “I can find things.”

  Alex tilted his head, a grin playing at the corners of his mouth. “You’re a hacker?”

  “A passably good one.”

  “Like your cooking?”

  Dane smiled, eager to show Alex another of his secret skills. “Better.”

  Alex’s grin widened, but only for a second, before it dimmed. “You can’t just change the results. That’s no better than what was done to me.”

  He patted his knee. “I wasn’t going to. I need to get into USOC’s system, here at headquarters so I’m behind their air gap firewall. Once I’m in, I can search for a ghost of the original record.”

  “A ghost?”

  “A lingering copy. If I can find that, it’ll establish a record of the original test results, before the negative was changed to positive. I may also be able find the user who made the change.”

  “Then what?”

  Dane pushed to his feet and held out a hand to Alex, hauling him up. “Then we confront the culprit and convince them to tell the Committee my parents paid for the switch.”

  Alex’s hand spasmed in his. “You’ll be implicating your parents.”

  “It’s no worse than they deserve. And maybe it’ll be enough to get their hands off my trust fund and contracts so I can live my life the way I want to.” Using Alex’s hand in his, Dane pulled him closer, chest to chest. He ran his other hand up Alex’s arm, entranced by the motion, across his collarbone, pinpricks rising in its wake, and down over Alex’s chest, landing on his pounding heart. Alex shivered, and Dane lifted his eyes, meeting warm dark brown around blown-wide pupils. The slide into his future was so very sweet. “With you.”

  “I don’t want to be the one who turns your life upside down.”

  “Too late. You did that ten years ago.” Dane closed the scant distance between them, skimming his lips along Alex’s strong jaw, tasting the lingering tang of sweat. Desire roared back to life. “For the better, even if I’m just now figuring that out.” He traced a path up to Alex’s ear, those dark curls, that smell he couldn’t get enough of, tickling his nose as they stood cheek to cheek. “Now I’ve turned yours upside down, and not for the better. I need to do right by you, Alejandro. Let me, please.”

  Alex’s warm breath painted the side of his face, then lips brushed the corner of his, returning the earlier tease. “Yes.”

  Dane didn’t have to ask if Alex’s answer was to more than just his question. Alex angled his face in and captured his mouth in a kiss filled with so much need, mirroring Dane’s own, that Dane staggered backward. A stall door broke their fall, providing the surface they needed to stay upright while devouring each other.

  Mouths connected, tongues tangling, Dane reached for the other parts of Alex he craved. Fingers creeping under the rough cotton tee, he clawed at the smooth, hot skin beneath. Abs, ribs, pecs, all of it defined, hard, undeniably masculine. Undeniably Alex.

  What—who—Dane wanted.

  Groaning into his mouth, Alex clutched his ass and jerked Dane’s lower body flush against his, rocking their hips together. Cocks hardening as fast as they had on the dance floor, friction and release were the only imperative.

  Dane wanted, plain and simple, and everything he wanted was in his arms.

  “Alex! Dane!” Maria’s shout jolted them apart. “Come inside now and help me with these empanadas.” She was calling from a slight distance away, the porch likely, but still too close for the comfort they’d been about to engage in.

  “Fuck.” Alex threw out a hand, bracing it next to Dane’s head against the stall door. “I can’t believe she can still do that.”

  Dane lifted a brow.

  “Four kids,” Alex explained. “She knows exactly how long to leave one in the barn with a boy or girl before the good stuff starts to happen. Which is when she always hollers and interrupts. It’s like fucking ESP or some shit.”

  Dane reached down, palming Alex’s erection through his jeans. “Right on time.”

  Alex’s arm gave way, and he sagged back against Dane, the weight on top of him heavy, wonderful and perfect. And relaxed, which Dane counted as a win. If nothing else went as planned today—if they didn’t get the evidence they needed to clear Alex, or if Dane didn’t get what he needed to break free of his parents—at least he’d given Alex this moment of peace.

  He nipped and pecked at Alex’s lips, knowing they had to wind this down, for now.

  Alex pushed back with his arm, trailing hand lingering on Dane’s face. “Thank you,” he said, smiling softly and caressing Dane’s cheek.

  Dane turned into the touch, kissing his palm. “For what?”

  “For also being right on time.”

  Another win. Dane was racking up the medals.

  Now, he just had to make sure Alex got his too.

  Alex parked his truck at the shadowed end of the sparsely populated USOC lot. Early evening, with half the staff already on their way to Madrid, it was a ghost town compared to usual.

  Glancing right, Alex stared at his unexpected passenger and partner-in-almost-crime. Dane was typing furiously on his laptop, a crease between his brows and his too-white teeth digging into his bottom lip. Ginger nerd masquerading as poster boy jock. Alex still couldn’t wrap his brain around it.

  “When did this start?” he asked.

  “This?” Dane replied, not looking up.

  “The hacking. I remember you gaming a lot at camp.” Almost every morning, Alex would wake
up in his bed or Dane’s, and there’d be a laptop open on Dane’s chest. Alex had written it off as a rich kid with too many toys and too much free time. But this wasn’t idle time and idle games anymore. “This is more than World of Warcraft, isn’t it?”

  Dane paused briefly, seemed to consider his answer, then resumed typing. “After I got home from camp. There were certain things I wanted to protect.”

  “You mean a porn stash?”

  “Not exactly.” Before Alex could ask what exactly had turned those freckled cheeks so red, Dane went on. “Then it continued as a sort of rebellion. It was one thing I could keep to myself. And I had to major in something in college.”

  “CompSci?”

  Dane nodded. “I’m glad I can put it to use, for you.”

  For him. Because Dane had come to Colorado, for him.

  Colossal mind-fuck, right there.

  Dane had come up with this plan to clear him, convinced the team to cover for him while he snuck out, and hadn’t told his parents about any of it, if his incessantly vibrating phone was any indication. Dane had silenced it earlier, before getting to work on empanadas with his mom. The rest of Alex’s family had wandered in and out of the kitchen through the afternoon, making small talk, and Dane had followed the Spanglish exchanges with ease, deploying the genuine charisma that lay beneath the act. He’d been polite, gracious, and even a bit self-deprecating, making fun of his sunburn and his accent, which Alex noticed he wasn’t holding back as much. By the time they had finished cleaning up, he’d won them all over and promised a return visit.

  Which they might be making sooner rather than later. Because as they sat in the USOC parking lot, Alex realized Dane’s plan had made a critical, possibly fatal, assumption.

  “I’m not sure we can get in,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m suspended and also probably fired.” He lifted a hip, pulled out his wallet, and withdrew the key card from the outer pocket where it’d left an impression in the worn leather. “This thing may not work anymore.”

  “Good thing I have one too.”

  “Yours doesn’t get us into the admin offices.”

  A couple more keystrokes and the flash drive lit up, whirring to life. “I didn’t mean mine. Here, hold this,” Dane said, extending the computer to Alex.

  Alex took the laptop from him, and Dane retrieved his bag from behind the seats. He dug around inside and yanked out a card on a lanyard.

  “Trade ya.” He took back the computer and tossed the card in Alex’s lap.

  Alex flipped it over and gasped at the picture staring up at him. “How the hell did you get Coach’s card?”

  “Pup’s got all kinds of skills. Filched it from Coach’s things last night.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.” Ejecting and palming the flash drive, Dane powered down the computer and shoved it in his bag. “All right, I’m good to go here.” He looked back up at Alex, blue eyes bright and eager.

  Alex’s stomach flipped, and not in the good way. Was he really going to risk both their futures? The team’s? He wanted his spot back on the squad, wanted to be vindicated, but he worried they were skating the edge of breaking and entering, and worried even more so what they might find. Or might not. A wild goose chase with no bird in the end, and so much at risk in the process. “Dane, are you sure? You could get kicked off the team for this too. It’s too much to lose, for you and them.”

  Dane stretched across the console, curled a hand around his neck, and hauled him into another one of those kisses like he’d given Alex in the barn. Not the second one, which was more like their kisses at the club, fueled by desire and a need to rip each other’s clothes off. No, this was like the first kiss Dane had given him, on his knees. So full of promise and all the things he hadn’t said yet. All the things he was making Alex feel in return, against his better judgment and against everything in their rocky past together.

  “I know what I’m doing,” Dane said, once they parted, both of them breathing heavy. “Maybe for the first time in my life. I should be the one asking if you want to do this. This could put you in even hotter water, and I’ve already put you in enough of it. I wanted to see you first, make sure you still wanted this—” he held up the flash drive “—and me, but I can take it from here.”

  “But it’s an easier job with two? I can look out while you do your hacking thing?”

  Dane grinned. “Is that a yes?”

  Alex nodded, and Dane didn’t give him time to take it back. He dropped another quick kiss on his lips and shoved open the truck door. They were really doing this. Excitement and anxiety battled in a race up Alex’s spine.

  “Come on, Cap,” Dane said, smiling face looking out from the hoodie he’d pulled down over his head.

  That smile got Alex moving. He wanted more of it, and more of Dane enthusiastically calling him Cap too. “So, that flash drive is going to do all the work?” he asked, as they crossed the lot to the side entry door.

  “You have to get me in front of a computer directly wired to the mainframe, one with the data we need on it, preferably in the lab, but then yeah, the program on the drive will do the work.”

  Alex palmed his own key card. He had Coach’s in his back pocket, just in case, but his card registering here would cause less of a stir. It made sense that he would be here; Coach, not so much. He held his breath and swiped his card over the reader outside the door.

  The light turned green, and the lock disengaged.

  Dane held the door open for him. “See, worrying for nothing.”

  Oh, there was plenty to worry about, but at least the first battle was won.

  Inside, Alex kept his head down and led them to the lab, careful not to look directly into any security cameras. Dressed as they were, in the track pants and hoodies they’d changed into at the house, they’d appear to the guards watching like any other athletes meandering about the facility. Being after-hours, with limited staff present, they also managed to avoid anyone in the hallways.

  Once outside the main lab, Alex peeked through the glass panel in the door. “Clear here,” he whispered low.

  “Here too,” Dane said from two doors down, outside the adjacent offices. “And this is where we need to be.”

  He slipped inside, and Alex rushed to catch up, quietly closing the door behind him. He walked down one aisle and Dane the other, both of them checking desks and monitors. “This one’s on,” Alex said, waving Dane over to the computer with the generic screensaver running. “And it’s plugged directly in,” he added, jiggling the Ethernet cable running to the wall.

  Dane nudged the mouse and the computer woke, displaying a desktop background and password log-in prompt. “Look around,” he said. “For any sort of password clues or reminders.”

  Alex lifted knickknacks on the desk—mug, pen holder, picture frame, inbox—hoping maybe there was a post-it with a password on the back or bottom. He was running his hand along the bottom of the screen when the picture displayed behind the password box caught his eye.

  Woman, midthirties, blonde. Robin Meyers, Alex recalled, and at her side was a giant King Shepherd. Dangling from his wide navy-and-orange Broncos collar was a shiny silver tag.

  Shepherd Book.

  Alex patted Dane’s shoulder.

  Dane shoved closed a drawer. “What’d you find?”

  Alex tapped the dog tag on the screen. “Try Shepherd Book as the password.”

  “Someone’s a Firefly fan.” Smiling, Dane typed in the password.

  And it didn’t work.

  “Dammit,” Alex cursed. “I thought we had it.”

  “Hold on a sec,” Dane said. “She’s also got a Firefly mug.” He flicked a finger against the black-and-white mug with the theme song lyrics on it. “And an eraser in the shape of the Serenity.” He toggled the gray spaceship-shaped eraser. “She’s a fangirl. Let’s try a few other references.”

  Dane slid into the chair, typing, and on his th
ird try, it worked. His fingers had moved too fast for Alex to register the winning combination.

  “What was it?” he asked.

  “DerrialHaven2005.”

  “How did you get that?”

  Dane grinned up at him. “Derrial was Shepherd Book’s first name. He was killed, at Haven, in the 2005 movie.”

  Alex couldn’t help laughing or ruffling Dane’s hair. “Oh my god, you’re a total nerd.”

  Blushing, Dane inserted the flash drive, and a black box appeared on screen. “I’m not nearly as social as the press makes me out to be. I give my Netflix account a workout.”

  Alex leaned forward and kissed his temple, soothing any insult he might have inadvertently made. “Nerd Dane is kinda hot,” he whispered.

  Dane turned his face up for a kiss, and Alex gave him one, before moving over to the door to play lookout.

  “Can you tell anything yet?” he asked.

  “No, I’m just copying encrypted files over. I’m downloading all the test activity from the last week onto here.” He tapped the flash drive. “I’ll decrypt it on my computer after we’re out of here.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Couple of minutes.”

  Noise outside in the hallway tripped Alex’s ears, and he whipped his head back around, peeking out the glass pane. His breath caught. Down the hall, a group was rounding the corner, including Robin Meyers.

  “Better make that thirty seconds,” Alex said. “Book’s owner is on her way back.”

  “Crap. I thought they were gone.”

  “Me too.” Alex rushed to his side. “Anything I can do?”

  “Stop asking me questions.” Dane typed faster, and Alex ran back to the door, heart racing, watching as Robin drew closer and closer.

  They were going to get caught. The Committee would think they were tampering with the results. He’d be done for. So would Dane. Then what would Dane’s parents do? To Dane, to him, maybe even to Alex’s family? Dane had said they’d made threats against him. Alex wouldn’t put it past the Ellises to exact retribution.

  “Dane, we have to go, now!” he exclaimed low.