by Ivy Nelson
The next day, Carrie knocked on Tom’s door and he waived her in. “Morning Tom,” she said.
“Morning Carrie. Have you found something new to work on yet?”
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Actually, I was thinking about doing that follow-up piece on the black budget. I know it was your baby, so I wondered if I could just look at your notes, see if I can come up with a new angle.”
Tom steepled his hands in front of him and with an ankle planted on his knee, he leaned back in his chair looking her up and down.
“What changed your mind?”
Carrie shrugged. “I need something to work on. If you won’t let me go after Upwood, I might as well do something that will get you off my back.” She was a terrible actress, but hopefully he bought her excuse.
He didn’t seem entirely convinced, but he leaned forward and grabbed his mouse and began clicking things on his screen. “I’ll share my notes with your work e-mail. I have some handwritten stuff too but everything you need should be in my electronic files.”
“Thanks Tom,” Carrie said, keeping her tone as friendly as she could manage.
“Of course, Carrie. I’m just glad you decided to go with this one. I think you’ll find some of it intriguing. There seems to be some extra money being funneled into and out of the black budget that shouldn’t be there.
“It’s the black budget Tom, isn’t the whole point that it’s secret? Never mind,” she said when it looked like her boss was about to launch into a long diatribe about how government budgets work. “I’ll do the research and get back to you.” She ducked out before he could trap her with a boring financial lesson.
Back at her desk, she opened the e-mail from Tom containing the link to his files. She needed to be able to cross reference Tom’s spreadsheets with everything given to her by the anonymous tipster. Picking up her phone, she dialed the IT department where she had a friend.
“Harrison, hey it’s Carrie. I have a hypothetical question for research purposes,” she said when he answered.
“I’m listening.”
“If I downloaded files from the cloud onto a flash drive and then loaded them onto an air gapped computer, would there be any way to trace the files once they were on the air gapped machine?”
“Someone has been brushing up on her techno-babble,” Harrison teased. Carrie was notorious for barely getting by when it came to computers. “To answer your question, the answer is no, not technically. It’s possible to trace that they got downloaded and even figure out the serial number of the flash drive you used, but once it’s on an air gapped machine, as long as it stays air gapped you wouldn’t have anything to worry about. Planning to steal some government secrets?”
“No honey, I’m coming for your homemade porn stash,” she fired back.
Harrison laughed. “Anything else?”
“Just one more thing. What’s the best way to make sure a machine stays air gapped? Is there a way to like rip out the internet connection capabilities?”
“You’re just so adorable sometimes. Yes, you can remove a machine’s network card. It’s a delicate process though, don’t go ripping things out of perfectly good computers or Daddy Harrison will have to spank you.”
“Gross, Harrison. They record these calls you know.” Carrie was grateful Harrison couldn’t see her because she felt her face heat. The banter between the two of them was normal, even though her friend had no idea how kinky she actually was. But today, it was just embarrassing her because all she could think about was Peter’s hand landing on her ass last night. Damn it. Now she was horny.
After hanging up with Harrison, she pulled the new laptop out along with an empty flash drive she had in her bag. When the files had been transferred to the drive, she unplugged the tower to her desktop computer and unhooked the three monitors she had set up. Then she connected them to the laptop after triple checking that the internet was disabled and the machine remained in airplane mode. Now she was ready to pull up all the files and start comparing everything to see what she could find.
First, Carrie opened up the most recent document in Tom’s files. It was the framework for his article with some stuff already filled in. This project was Tom’s baby. If he was this far into the piece, why was he handing it off to her? The fact that he was giving her his pet story, showed her just how much he didn’t want her on the Upwood story. That just made her want to pursue Upwood even more. Lucky for Tom, the two stories seemed to be intersecting for now. Because it was the black budget, Tom didn’t have account numbers or expense reports, just vague numbers and budget requests for each fiscal year. However, the spreadsheets from the mysterious R I P seemed to be much more detailed versions of what Tom had given her.
The money was being pulled from foreign aid accounts and being funneled into the black budget, specifically, an account run by the CIA. The payments being made were to cartels in Colombia and a few other places but for some reason Colombia seemed to stick out in the documentation.
After several hours and two Red Bulls, Carrie felt her eyes crossing. A break was in order. As she was closing up the laptop, it occurred to her to wonder who had passed this information on to Tom. Some of what was in his notes pointed to him being on a similar track as her. Was someone threatening Tom? That might explain the strange behavior. Or maybe Tom’s source could help her identify her own. Giving up a source was something the editor was unlikely to do unless it was a life or death situation, but it couldn’t hurt to try, so she grabbed her energy drink and jogged to his office.
When she knocked, there was no answer. She pushed open the door and found the room empty. Damn it. She went to his desk to leave him a note. The screen on his desktop was still active, and Carrie instinctively looked at it.
Her hand flew to her mouth. There on the screen, was a picture of Carla, the bartender from the Doll House. How the hell did Tom know her? Then it hit her, Carla looked exactly like Tom’s ex-wife. Was Carla Tom’s daughter? Did he know what was going on with Upwood?
When she closed Tom’s door behind her to head back to her desk, she had more questions than answers, but she felt like she had some more threads to tug on. Her heart was pounding when she sat down, and she wasn’t sure if it was from the caffeine or the rush of finding more pieces to this puzzle. It was likely the latter.
Pulling out her phone, she sent a text to Peter.
Found some interesting stuff. Working late. You can come hang out with me when you get off if you want.
Laying the phone to the side, she pulled out a legal pad and began making handwritten notes. The buzz of an incoming text sounded a few minutes later.
Lying to me will get you spanked in the future.
Lying? When had she lied to him? She called him instead of returning his text.
“What do you mean lying?” she asked when he answered. Low laughter sounded in her ear and sent warmth curling through her.
“I distinctly remember you telling me non-employees weren’t allowed beyond reception after hours the night you lied about working late and went to Gary’s house.”
She swallowed. “Oh. That. Sorry.”
There was that chuckle again.
“Relax little one. You’re not in trouble. I’m just teasing you. I’ll bring dinner when I get off.”
At eight-forty-five, Peter called to let her know he was on his way up with dinner and information of his own. Carrie was buried in her research by then and absently motioned for him to steal a chair out of the cubicle across from hers. When he bumped the chair into hers, she finally looked up and her mouth dropped. He had changed out of his work attire and was wearing a pair of dark jeans and a tight black t-shirt that showed just how much he worked out. For a brief moment she forgot about the research on her screens.
Peter leaned down until his face was mere inches from hers.
“I think you’ve got a little drool there, honey,” he said with a wink before kissing her cheek.
“God, the
y should let you wear jeans all the time. You would distract the bad guys and they would never kill any of your protectees.”
“I don’t think I like how you’re implying that any of my protectees have died to begin with,” he said with a scowl as he opened up the bags of food he had with him.
“What the hell is that?” Carrie asked as she stared at the container he set in front of her.
“I’m pretty sure we call it a salad,” he said setting into his own chair.
“This is not brain food.”
“Sure it is. Just eat it.”
Pushing the food aside, she reached for the half-empty can of Red Bull instead. He took her by surprise and plucked it out her hand, setting it on the ground by his chair. Then he produced a bottle of water and pushed the salad back in front of her.
“Humor me and eat the salad. I’ll give you your caffeine overdose back when you’re done telling me what you’ve got.
She eyed him suspiciously. The bossy thing was as hot as it was annoying. “Is this some kind of submissive test?” she asked as she stabbed at a piece of lettuce with her plastic fork.
“I wouldn’t call it a test, but I guess you might say I’m exploring your boundaries to see where we stand.”
“And what happens if I throw a fit and don’t eat the salad?” she asked, leaning back in her chair.
His dark blue gaze bored into her as he spoke. “I think it depends on what you mean by throw a fit. If the throw the salad on my head and stomp your foot, I think it just means you’re not the submissive for me. However, if you politely refuse to eat the thing I’ve asked you to eat, we’ll have a different conversation. If you tell me I can’t tell you what to eat, as in you make it a hard limit, I’ll apologize and stop pushing that boundary no matter how badly I want to see you eat a little healthier.”
She hummed as she mulled his answer over. It was a thorough response to a question she had been mostly kidding about. That was something she respected about him; he always took her concerns about their journey into power exchange seriously.
There were still a lot of questions in her mind about how it was supposed to work, and they still hadn’t agreed on anything but talking to him about it didn’t make her want to run screaming from the room so she was just going to go with the flow for now.
“I’ll eat the darn salad,” she said with a mock scowl as she jabbed at another pile of leafy greens. Then, she cracked the water and looked him directly in the eye as she downed half the bottle. He gave her a cocky grin and murmured his approval before digging into his own salad.
When her bowl was empty, he reached for a second bag that she hadn’t noticed. From it, he pulled out a large burger and set it in front of her.
“I had a backup plan in case you dumped salad on my head,” he said with a wink.
“Oh, dear God, I could kiss you right now. I don’t think I could have made it on just a salad,” she said as she unwrapped the burger and took a huge bite.
Peter sat back in his chair and laughed a gut shaking laugh. “You’re delightful, little one.”
“Stop calling me that, I’m a grown ass woman.”
“One who speaks with her mouth full of burger. Hurry and finish so we can get to work,” he said tousling her hair.
She batted his hand away and turned to face her monitors as she wiped crumbs from her mouth. Then she launched into an account of her day.
When she told him about Tom giving her the story and finding the picture of Carla on his computer, he raised an eyebrow.
“That’s pretty crazy, baby. Do you think Tom knew you would find the connection or was that just a coincidence?”
Carrie ran a hand through her hair. “Honestly, I’m not sure. I think maybe Tom is being threatened like I was and if Carla is his daughter or even just his stepdaughter, it could be personal. He’s not normally scared to chase a story like this.
Peter nodded. “I can make some calls to some old intelligence buddies. If this thing goes as high up as we think it does, people in the government could be the ones making the threats. You mess with their secret budgets and you’re going to piss off the wrong ones. Fortunately, government types are notoriously easy to track unless they specialize in clandestine operations.”
“Is that what you specialized in when you were in the CIA?”
“Can’t answer that,” he blurted.
Carrie knew the CIA was secretive, but he clammed up in a way that worried her. What had his days in the Agency been like? Did something happen that pushed him out and into the Secret Service? She made a mental note to do a little more digging but for now, she needed to outline what she had lined up regarding the budgets. As she walked Peter through it, she began to feel the rush she enjoyed when pursuing a hot story. That paired with the caffeine and she was ready to pull an all nighter.
“Do you have anyone in the service who could look at this? Somebody you trust. I know you had to spend time in the investigations unit of the Secret Service, and they trace money a lot.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, clearly not nearly as energized as she felt. “I might know some people. I’ll look into it tomorrow. It’s late. Let’s go home.” Carrie glanced at the clock on her screen. Sure enough, it was after midnight.
“You go. I want to keep working,” she said.
“Carrie, you’ve been here for sixteen hours. You need to sleep.”
“Gah. This is why I don’t do relationships. People are always trying to take care of me.”
She felt more than heard the disappointment in his sigh before his hands settled on her shoulders and squeezed. “What is so wrong with someone wanting to take care of you, baby?”
She shook her head. Not something she wanted to get into right now. Sleep was important though, so she decided not to argue with him.
“Fine. I’ll come home with you but you’re staying up long enough to bang me.”
His laughter shook her as his hands were still on her shoulders. “Am I now little one? We’ll have to see about that.”
Carrie flipped off her monitors and packed up the laptop. After Peter went to bed she could always work from home. Sex energized her. Walking out, she enjoyed the view as she followed her sexy Secret Service agent out to his SUV. When she was in the passenger seat, Peter leaned in and kissed her. As he broke away, his hand drifted under the hem of the skirt she wore.
“Take your panties off and give them to me,” he said darkly.
Carries eyes went wide. “Here? We’re parked in the street.”
“Now.” His body was blocking the door and it was unlikely anyone would see, but she was still shaking from embarrassment. The way his eyes pierced into her as he waited for a response sent shock waves of arousal through her system and straight to her clit, so she lifted her ass off the seat and hooked her thumbs into her panties. Dropping them to her knees, she settled back onto the seat and slid them the rest of the way off. When she handed them to Peter, he tapped the end of her nose with his finger as he slipped them into his pocket.
Once he was in the driver’s seat, he looked at her and asked, “How badly do you want me to fuck you?”
“Pretty fuckin’ bad now,” she said in a breathy voice that she didn’t even recognize as her own.
“Prove it. Lift your skirt up around your waist and start playing with that pretty cunt of yours. No coming, and no stopping until we get home unless I say otherwise.”
Her breathing sped up as she looked from him to the windshield and back. “It’s D.C. There are cameras,” she squeaked.
“Come on baby. Take a chance and play with me.”
She groaned because she knew she was going to say yes but stuck her tongue out at him as she hoisted her skirt up just to make herself feel better.
As the motor roared to life, his hand twisted in her hair and pulled hard enough to hurt. It was a nice hurt though as he jerked her head to face him.
“I thought we talked about you and that tongue. Stick it out at me again, an
d all you’ll get is a face fucking and a spanking when we get home.
She gasped. That was hot, she thought. But she could tell he was serious which made her even more turned on. Turned on enough that she was now fully committed to his game. His hand was still fisted in her hair, pulling, so she looked him in the eye as she whimpered, “Yes, Sir. I’m sorry.”
He grinned, the kind of grin that would have melted her panties had she been wearing any and let go of her hair. “Good girl. Now start playing with yourself. I want you soaked by the time we get home.”
***
Giggles filled the hallway of Peter’s apartment building as he hauled Carrie to his door, only setting her down long enough to unlock it. Once inside, he picked her up again and brought her to his bedroom where he dumped her on the bed.
“Clothes off. Now.” He was already busy shedding his t-shirt and jeans.
When she was naked, he flipped her onto her stomach. “On your knees, baby,” he said. “I want to see that gorgeous ass in the air.”
He hadn’t taken her from behind yet and he was going to enjoy plunging his rigid cock into her while his fingers dug into her hips. A groan escaped him just thinking about it.
Wasting no further time, he put his hands on her back and dragged her closer to the edge of the bed. Since she had spent the entire twenty-plus minute ride home fingering herself, she was fucking soaked and didn’t need any preparation, but he dragged his hands along her glistening slit anyway and shoved two fingers deep inside her. Her pussy clenched around his fingers and she let out a strangled cry. An orgasm was hovering seconds away and he knew it.
“You were a good girl today,” he said, dragging his fingers almost completely out of her. “Should I let you come, or should I just fuck you and put you to bed?” he asked and plunged his fingers deep again.
“Please,” she whimpered. “Please, please, please.”
A low rumble of a laugh shook him, and his thumb found her clit. “Since you asked so nicely, come.”
Seconds later, she collapsed flat onto the bed as the orgasm rocketed through her. With his free hand, he smacked her ass, hard. “Back in position little girl. I didn’t tell you to move.” She quickly crawled back onto her hands and knees while he continued to pump his fingers in and out of her.
