by Ivy Nelson
He shook his head. "I don't think so. I mean not really. We already suspected that Nicholas Sutton was a player in all of this."
"And now we have our suspicions confirmed."
"We still don't know the why or the how, though."
"We're going to figure that out," she assured him.
"I'm sure we will. Moving on. What prompted you to keep things from me? Solitaire is paying you to do a job. I should have known everything you did when we walked in there today."
Marissa nodded. "I'll grant you that one. I think I was still a little apprehensive when I discovered it. That's why I wanted to set up the prison visit though. I knew if I could impress him, he would talk to me, but I thought it would play better if you were genuinely irritated with me over it."
"What do you mean apprehensive?"
"I mean I was trying to keep my job safe. There was a part of me that thought if I gave you everything you would just decide you didn't need me anymore and I wouldn't get my full payment. I'm serious about not going back to my old job. The money I'm making on this job, combined with what I've saved, is going to make that possible."
"Damn it, Marissa. How do we get past our obvious trust issues with each other?"
She shook her head. "Time. Patience. I don't know. But I think we owe it to ourselves to try. Feels like the universe is trying to tell us that much."
He nodded.
"So, are you still pissed at me?"
He nodded again and she laughed. "Fair enough. Wanna have angry sex?"
Another nod, followed by a slow grin as he reached forward and tugged her hand, pulling her onto the bed with him.
"I believe your membership in the mile-high club has lapsed, Miss Sullivan. Allow me to reinstate you," he murmured as he rolled so she was under him and pressed his lips to hers.
14
When Lance and Marissa arrived back at Solitaire that night, they went straight to work on rebuilding the club website. Lance used his considerable wealth to have all new servers, computers, and other hardware brought in to replace the old equipment. There would be no chance of any malware or trackers staying behind on the new setup.
Marissa really wanted to run with a new form of encryption she’d been playing with, so he let her. They were paying her for her expertise, and he needed to prove to her that he wanted her on his team as an equal and not just another of his employees.
The next morning, he got on the phone with Elijah and Patrick to discuss whether or not to hold parties the following weekend.
"Here's the problem with canceling," Elijah said. "We've got two of our European members flying in. They'll be in the country for two weeks and were planning to attend both weekends of parties in between business. They're some of our elite members who pay a lot of money. I know we don't offer a ton of special treatment, but if we can find a way to feel safe enough to host these parties, I think we should."
Lance agreed.
"I’m not sure safe is the word I would use, but I feel OK about hosting the parties this weekend," he said before giving them the full rundown of their visit to the prison.
"So, it is my father?" Patrick said, disgust evident in his voice.
"It seems that way."
"Holly wants to go visit him," Elijah said with obvious displeasure.
"So, tell her no," Patrick said.
Elijah sighed. "I can't."
Lance had a feeling he was stepping in some family drama that he didn't exactly want to hear, but he waited patiently for his turn to speak.
"Why the hell not? Your collar is around her neck, your ring is on her finger. She doesn't need to be around him," Patrick said.
"You know that's not how this works. Can you tell Austin what kind of cases she takes, or not to see her father?"
Patrick blew out a breath. "No. But you know she'll listen to you."
"Yeah. She will. But she'll also be pissed at me, and I would be a shit Dom for violating the agreement we have. After I stopped her from going to the trial and she went anyway—no thanks to you—we had an extensive discussion and I agreed not to stop her from seeing him if she really wanted to. She hasn't tried to. I think because she really doesn't want to. But now she does, because she knows it would be good for someone to get into his head and figure out what’s going on. I would go with her if I could, but I know she’ll get him to open up more if she goes alone."
"God damn it. I can go with her,” Patrick said.
Lance cleared his throat so the two men wouldn't forget about him.
"Sorry, Lance," Eli said. "And Patrick, you're welcome to ask, but I won't force her to take you."
Patrick sighed. "OK. I guess that's all I can ask."
"Can we get back to this weekend, please?" Lance asked.
"Yes. If you feel safe, I say we go ahead with it. We've got the e-mail out to our members, and so far, we've only got one vote to cancel, and everyone is in your corner."
Lance had purposely stayed away from the e-mail account, unsure if his ego could take the hit if the membership rejected him or wanted him ousted. It was good to hear that their members had faith in the leadership of Solitaire.
"David is coming and bringing a few friends."
"Are they members? I know he's our founder but dang, we really don't want to let a bunch of strangers in."
"Relax, buddy. They're all members. Emily and Dr. Malincoat. He's even convinced Jasmine Darlington to take a weekend off and show up with Simon."
Lance smiled at that. Simon was a fixture at the club, but his partner and Mistress was a fashion designer who split her time between New York and Los Angeles where she dressed a lot of famous people. They technically lived two hours from Solitaire, but Jasmine rarely attended parties and allowed Simon to see other people at the club.
Lance was far too possessive to ever let his submissive see other people, but he was glad the couple had an arrangement that worked for them.
"Sounds good. So, the consensus is that we'll be having the parties and things will continue as normal for now. When is Holly going to see her dad?"
"Probably Thursday, why?" Eli asked.
"I want to get her to ask a couple of questions if she can find a way to work them in. Sebastian said something that has me on edge."
"I'll pass it along and have her call you. She's in Canada overnight and will be back in the morning."
Lance whistled. "Do you two ever see each other beyond the weekends?"
Elijah laughed. "Not as much as we want to. But we make it work."
Lance couldn't imagine traveling as much as they did. He flew to Colorado on the weekends and once or twice a year he went to major tech conventions but otherwise he stayed in Chicago. Elijah and Holly practically lived on planes and they were rarely going in the same direction.
When he ended his call with Elijah and Patrick, he went to the conference room which had become their command center and found Marissa cursing and hurling a sheet of paper.
He snagged it out of the air and strode to her. Standing behind her chair, he tossed the paper into a nearby trashcan and pressed his palms into her shoulders.
"What's wrong, Riss?"
"I can't make this work. No matter how many ways I write it, I'm still throwing error codes. It's pissing me off."
"Let me take a look," he said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
Sitting in the chair next to her, he pulled the laptop away from her and looked at what she was working on. It was an intricate piece of code that was beautifully developed, but he spotted her issue in ten seconds.
His fingers flew as he corrected the mistake. As he finished and pushed the machine back to her, she punched him in the shoulder.
"What was that for?" he asked, rubbing the sore spot.
"This is why we can't work together."
He lifted an eyebrow. "You're in a fine mood this morning. I was just trying to help."
"No. You were just taking over. That's your fucking problem. You think you have to cont
rol everything."
"Whoa, Riss. Calm down. I'm sorry, OK? I spotted your mistake and I just wanted to help."
Marissa sighed and stood. "Helping would have been pointing out my mistake and letting me fix it myself. You do understand that's what ultimately led to our breakup, right?"
He furrowed his brow. "I'm not sure I follow."
“The initial problem that had you taking over the project you thought I stole. It started out as a coding error I made. Instead of fucking pointing it out, you just fixed it and took over."
She shoved her chair away from the table and stood, sending the chair flying into the wall.
"I'm going upstairs. Don't follow me."
♦♦♦♦
Marissa scrubbed at her face in the shower. She'd retreated there after blowing up at Lance. Maybe her explosion hadn't been fair, but they still hadn't really talked about their relationship yet, and all of her emotions were bubbling beneath the surface.
How could she trust him again if he wouldn't talk and he wouldn't listen?
Turning off the water, she pulled a towel from the rack and dried herself off before flipping her hair over and wrapping it up.
She wrapped a second towel around herself and went into the bedroom.
Lance was waiting for her.
"I told you not to follow me."
"And I decided to go with my gut and come apologize in person this time," he said.
Marissa stalked to the closet where she'd stashed her clothes and pulled on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, not bothering with underwear.
"I'm sorry, Riss. For everything."
"I just want to get through this job, Lance. I want to talk about us. I want to figure things out. I want a lot of things that it feels like I can't have."
"Baby, please. I'm sorry I've been putting off talking about us. I guess I'm worried. I want to get through this job too. But not because I'm ready for you to leave. Because I want to address our problems. It just seems like that would be easier when we're not working on a big project together."
She laughed. "That was always our problem wasn't it? We always made promises to talk things out after the next big project, but instead we wound up in bed or in the dungeon working our frustrations out through sex. Not that I don't enjoy that, but it doesn't exactly solve problems."
Lance gave her a half grin. "I think you're wrong about sex not solving problems, but I get what you're saying."
"Do you?"
Marissa wasn't sure he got it at all, but she was going to do her best to give him the benefit of the doubt for now.
"I do, Riss. Our relationship was problematic before I fucked everything up. We have to address that. I'm just not sure why we have to address it right this moment."
She sighed. "It's OK. Just forget it."
Lance stood and gripped her wrists, pulling her to him. "No. It's not OK. Talk to me. Help me understand where your head is so I don't fuck up again. Do we need to stop having sex? Do we need to have more sex? Do we need to reintroduce a real D/s dynamic? Should we just stay vanilla? What do you need, Kitten? I just want to get this right."
She smiled and pulled one wrist free to lay her palm against his cheek.
"I appreciate it. I think I still need to figure all that out. Definitely more sex though," she teased. "I think it's the kink that I'm getting hung up on. I'm sitting here in a kink club, practically living here and it should be my wildest dream come true but it's not. I'm only pretending to be your sub, and last weekend I had to watch you Dom some other chick—who I wanted to punch in the vagina all night by the way."
Lance threw his head back and laughed. "Is that what this is about? You're jealous of my trainee? You know I'm not fucking her right?"
Marissa nodded, then shook her head. "I was hoping you weren't fucking her, but no, I didn't know that."
Lance smiled and pulled her into a hug. "I'm not fucking her, Riss. And if I had been, I would have told you and I would have put an end to it before I let you back into my bed. I'm an asshole for a lot of reasons but that's not one of them."
She nodded. "OK. I trust you. I still don't know what to do about us and kink, though. And I don't want to take anything away from you regarding that. So just give me some time to figure this shit out. Maybe if I work through my issues by Friday, I won't have to pretend to be your submissive anymore?" she questioned with a shy smile.
He dipped his head and gave her a tender kiss. "You amaze me, Riss. Take all the time you need. There are plenty more weekends ahead of us even if you don't sort yourself out by Friday."
She nodded and stepped away. "I guess we should get back to it if we want to unveil the new website by Friday and put everyone's minds at ease."
Lance kissed her one more time and together they walked back downstairs.
Sometime around midnight, Lance tapped out and tried to pull her to bed, but she waved him off and poured another cup of coffee. "I want to keep working. You go ahead. I'll meet you up there."
He sighed but kissed her deeply and went upstairs.
When he was gone, she put her headphones on and got back to work. At first, she focused on rebuilding the website, but she couldn't get Sebastian's words out of her head. "My part of the job is done."
What did he mean by that? Using what she knew of him, she began scrolling through forums on the dark web looking for any chatter among underground hackers that might give her clues, striking up conversations where she thought it felt safe.
At first, she came up empty and almost went back to her work on the website. As she was scrolling through one more list of search results, someone sent her a ping and opened a chat box, so she said hello.
"If you're asking about Sebastian, you might be interested in this."
She eyed the link suspiciously but after implementing a few safety measures, she clicked it.
When she did, her heart dropped. The entire forum was dedicated to the take down of Lance Moss. Hackers were working together to try and break his firewalls at Moss Tech.
All of it seemed to link back to the messages Sebastian liked to leave in his code. If a hacker could decipher one, they got brought into the fold and were able to work on the job. A lot of them were social justice warriors convinced that big tech needed to be broken up. A lot of hackers didn't like big tech companies like Moss Tech, or Facebook, or Google. Marissa once belonged to that category of hacker, but she'd since learned the value of big companies with a lot of capital. That didn't mean there weren't a lot of bad apples and greedy bastards at the top of these companies though. That's one thing Marissa wanted to battle with her own company.
Her heart hurt as she read the awful things they were saying about a man they'd never met. Granted she'd said a lot worse about him in the aftermath of their breakup.
Now she had to figure out how or if she wanted to bring this to his attention. Some of what they were saying was fairly generic threats they made to every big name in tech, but a few bits and pieces seemed personal. Definitely things only their hacker could have fed them. None of it seemed to be associated with Solitaire so she decided not to say anything to Lance until she'd done more digging to see just how much damage these people had done.
If what she was reading was right, though, this had been set into motion by Sebastian. Was it part of what Nicholas Sutton had asked him to do or was it something he'd done on his own as revenge on Lance for taking him down. He seemed like the type that would be after that extra bit of revenge, so he probably did it for no extra charge. She spent another hour reading through the forum and copying anything she thought could be useful into a document on her laptop.
When she saw what time it was, she willed herself to leave it behind for now. She saved the link and went back to work on the job she was being paid for. Two hours later, the sun was coming up and she went upstairs and crept into bed with Lance.
"Hey, Kitten. What time is it? he mumbled as he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to his warm, naked chest.
&
nbsp; "Just after six," she whispered, letting her eyes drift closed. In the moment, she made a decision that he was a risk she wanted to take. "I'll be yours this weekend, but not until then," she said, as she floated closer to sleep.
15
Lance woke to the incessant sound of his ringing cellphone. It was the ringtone set only for his assistant, so he knew he had to wake up and answer it. As he did, Marissa's words returned. Had she really agreed to be his submissive this weekend? Or was it all a dream? He looked at the sleeping beauty next to him and prayed it hadn't been his imagination.
When he had tugged on a pair of pants, he stepped into the hallway so he wouldn't wake her. There, he answered the phone that was still ringing.
"Good morning, Kimberly. What's the emergency?"
"Sorry to wake you, Mr. Moss but we have a problem with the app you wrote for Mr. Kenneth."
Shit. That was a high-profile client. "I'm listening. What's happening?" He was already jogging downstairs.
"It seems to be umm..." she trailed off and Lance didn't need her to finish the sentence. His face went furious as he looked at his screen. Someone had loaded bondage porn into his app, and it was being sent to all of the app users at a high-speed rate.
"Fuck. Shut it down," he bit out. "Get the development team on it and shut it down. Get the client in my office in five hours and get my pilot on the phone. I need to leave here in an hour tops."
"Yes, Sir. Will it just be you flying, or will Miss Sullivan be accompanying you?"
"Let's assume she's coming with me and I'll text you if that changes." He didn't wait for a response as he quickly began packing up their tech. When it was all in their bags, he ran back up the stairs and into his suite.
"Riss, baby. Wake up. I need to talk to you."
"What is it?" she mumbled, her eyes blinking rapidly.
"It's a client in Chicago. One of our apps suffered a major hack and I have to get back and deal with this. I want you to come with me. You can work out of my office for a few days, maybe grab some fresh clothes before we come back here for the weekend."
