An Appetite for Blackmail

by Ravenna Tate

  “Say it again.”

  The tenderness in his eyes nearly stopped her heart. He smiled at her. “I love you, Harper.” He brushed a finger along her face. “And you’re moving in with me this weekend. I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Harper held onto Ace’s hand all the way back to his apartment. He didn’t even wait until they were inside his bedroom. He didn’t even wait until they were upstairs. He pulled a condom out of his pocket and sat down on one of the risers. “You need to go on the pill. I’m sick of these things.”

  “Okay.” Why had he been carrying it in his jeans pocket?

  He unzipped his jeans and pushed them down, taking the briefs with them, and then told her to take off her panties.

  “What if Jasper or Alena catch us?”

  “Harper, please … just do it.”

  She removed them and straddled him, right there on the stairs. “Glad I wore a skirt today.”

  “Fuck me, beautiful girl. Fuck me now.”

  She sheathed his dick with her pussy and hung onto him as he grasped her hips and moved her up and down. She liked this on the stairs, although the risers were polished wood and a bit slippery. He kissed her neck and tugged her hair back with one hand, still moving her with the other. “I love you so much. I’ve wanted to say that for a week now.”

  “Oh, God … Ace … so have I.”

  His mouth captured hers in a kiss so hot she was sure they’d blister the wood beneath them. When she came, he released the kiss and pulled her close, breathing heavily against her ear as she moaned and cried out in pleasure.

  It took him mere seconds after her orgasm to climax, and then he held her for long moments before finally rising with her. “Shower.” He zipped up his jeans and bent down to retrieve her panties, then led her into his bathroom where he turned on the water in the shower. He pulled her close again and kissed her tenderly.

  When he let go of her mouth once more, he peeled her dress off and then removed her bra. “Thank you, Harper. Thank you for saying it.”

  Her mind raced with thoughts. She couldn’t even process them all. He loves me! “I should be thanking you. And I’m sorry I was so upset before. With what you did in front of Traci.”

  He removed his clothes. “You are the woman I want. No one else. And you have nothing to apologize for.”

  Once inside the shower, he kissed her again, and then they washed each other’s bodies, sighing and moaning as their arousal built once more. By the time they left the shower and fell onto his bed, still dripping wet, he nearly slipped his cock into her pussy again before he realized he didn’t have on a condom.

  “Oh fuck it all.” He cupped her face. “Just this once can we not use one?”

  What? “And if I get pregnant?”

  “Then we’ll turn one of the rooms in this apartment into a nursery.”

  Holy shit. She sat up. “Ace, slow down. I’m dizzy.”

  He sat as well and placed a hand on each shoulder. “I don’t do anything half-assed, Harper. And I’ve never said ‘I love you’ to another woman. I want you in my life. All of you. Forever. This isn’t playtime anymore.”

  She swallowed hard. “So the arrangement is … what? Forgotten? Forgiven? Never happened? What?”

  “Fuck the arrangement. You have my heart. And I don’t give it away easily.” He studied her face carefully. “But the last thing I want to do is scare you.” He ran his hands through his hair and laughed nervously. “Guess I’m showing my gregarious side.”

  She watched him reach over and take a condom out of the box, then put it on. “We can talk about marriage and children another time. For right now, I need to be inside you again.”

  Harper rode the waves of desire as he sank his dick into her pussy. They came at the same time, and she fell asleep wrapped in his arms, her mind whirling with the events of this evening.

  ****

  Friday morning at work, Harper was in the break room, letting the memories from last night wash over her. Ace loved her! And she’d finally told him that she loved him. He hadn’t run away or ended the relationship. She could still hardly believe this was real, even though her pussy was deliciously sore from their lovemaking.

  She whirled around as a noise interrupted her thoughts, to find Rob watching her closely. Too closely. There was a nasty predatory look in his eyes that she’d seen all too often lately. She really needed to tell Ace about it.

  Harper went to brush past him, and he caught her arm. “Get your damn hands off me.” He didn’t let go, and her pulse raced but not from fear. This time she was angry. Enough was enough. She’d had to put up with shit from his cousin last night for no good reason. She no longer wanted to work down here with him.

  “You look like a woman who’s had a good fucking recently. Too bad it wasn’t from me.”

  “What?” She shook him off, outrage building inside her to the point she knew she needed to watch what she said. “You’d better be careful what you say. There’s a sexual harassment policy at this company.”

  His grin wasn’t humorous, and it sent a cold chill down her spine. “No shit. Perhaps you’re the one who should remember that, not me?”

  Harper didn’t stick around to ask him what the hell that meant. She left the department and went upstairs to the top floor, but then remembered that Ace was in meetings all day. So instead she sat in one of the restroom lounges until she’d calmed down a bit, and then texted Ace.

  He finally caught up with her after lunch, and asked her in detail what Rob had said and done. She told him, and watched his face turn angrier than she’d ever seen it. “I’m sorry. I will do something about this Monday morning. I promise you that. Right now I have to get back. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

  They were in a back hallway on the top floor, and she knew that no one would see them, so she kissed him and then leaned into his strong embrace. “Thank you. I will do exactly that.”

  ****

  That weekend she gave notice at her apartment complex and met two of Ace’s friends. They showed up with a truck to help her move, and her apartment was empty in less than two hours. Kane Bannerman had traveled all the way from NorthEast, and Emmett Radcliff had come from SouthEast because Ace asked them to. Both men told Harper that Ace had never asked a woman to move into his place, so they each had to see this for themselves.

  She’d heard of their companies. Anyone who had been born in the past one hundred years would have heard of them. Kane had inherited Bannerman Investments, and his father and grandfather still sat on the Board of Directors. Emmett was President of Radcliff Software and Web Design, which was a division of Radcliff Enterprises. His family owned that parent company.

  Both men reminded Harper so much of Ace before she’d gotten to know the real man behind the name, but she didn’t find that realization intimidating or annoying. She understood what these men were trying to do within their companies, and with their money, and she admired them for it.

  Kane’s hair was a few shades lighter than Ace’s, and his eyes were hazel. They twinkled with amusement every time he spoke, and his entire aura exuded carefree fun. Emmett had dark hair like Ace, but his eyes were a startling blue. Their color made her think of a lake she’d gone to once with her parents when she was five or six. The water had been as blue as the sky, and it had been difficult to tell where the water ended and the sky began.

  They ate dinner in Ace’s apartment after moving her things into her new rooms, and both men teased Ace about giving her a private space within his home.

  “Watch him,” said Kane. “He’ll have one woman in the front door and another out the back.”

  Emmett laughed, but Ace gave his friends a dark look. “That’s over. Harper is the only woman in my life now.”

  Emmett fished a business card out of his jeans pocket and slid it over to where Harper sat. “Take this just in case. If he gives you any trouble, I’ll give you better than your own suite. I’ll g
ive you an entire apartment.”

  “Yeah,” said Kane. “Your own apartment right next to his, with a secret door inside a closet so he can keep an eye on you.”

  She flushed and shook her head. “Stop this, you two.”

  Ace frowned. “You won’t stop them. They’re hopeless. Worse than I ever was. You two make all us sound like pond scum, preying on unsuspecting women.”

  “No,” said Emmett, a huge grin on his face. “We like women. We love them, in fact.” He winked at Harper. “All of them. Over and over and over again.”

  She couldn’t help laughing at the look on his face.

  “As often as we want to love them,” said Kane, “any place we want, any position we want.”

  This time, Ace laughed as well, but Harper hugged herself as a shiver ran down her spine. Kane’s words eerily echoed what Ace had said to her early on. “I expect to make love to you in every way I choose.”

  And he had certainly done that. But he loved her for real. He wanted her with him, and no one else. She hadn’t set out to change him, and surely he didn’t see it that way either. She’d taken him at face value. She hoped the good-natured ribbing from his friends didn’t sow the seeds of doubt in his mind.

  The conversation moved to what Harper had found between the work she now did for Ace, and the spreadsheets she used to keep as an analyst. Earlier last week, Ace had printed out all of them for her since the time she began keeping them, and she was slowly going through them, compiling a list of names that were also on the message boards and online communities she now monitored.

  “How many names have you found in both places?” asked Emmett.

  “Two dozen.”

  Kane’s eye widened. “Holy shit. And how far along on the spreadsheets are you?”

  “That’s from comparing one month only.”

  The three men exchanged a worried glance. “We should be doing the same thing at our companies,” said Emmett.

  “I told you,” said Ace. “This is huge. Harper has really stumbled onto something here.”

  “They might turn out to be harmless trolls,” said Kane.

  Emmett nodded. “That’s true. Or they might be using each other’s names to stir up trouble. But if we start with names, we can eventually compare IP addresses and other markers, and then weed out any duplicates.”

  “I just wish I had more space to work,” said Harper. “Ace doesn’t want the others to see what I’m doing, so I have to take the spreadsheets back and forth every day. It’s slowing me down.”

  Kane frowned. “I thought you were an analyst and had your own office?”

  Oops. Ace obviously had not said a word to them about their arrangement. She glanced toward Ace, waiting for him to explain, and hoping he wasn’t angry that she’d accidentally told his friends she no longer had an office on the top floor. That also meant he probably hadn’t told them how he ended up seeing her in the first place.

  “Harper moved to my hacker team about a month ago. She works on the same floor they do now.”

  “Well put her back where she was,” said Emmett. “Can’t she access the same system from anywhere?”

  Ace gave him a droll look. “Yes, she can actually.”

  “All right then.” Emmett patted his stomach, which was silly considering both men looked as cut as Ace was. All he had to pat was muscle. “I’m stuffed. That was fabulous. What’s for dessert?”

  He grinned in Harper’s direction, she blushed again, and Ace tossed a large piece of bread at him. “Down, boy. I told you she’s off limits.”

  Harper smiled at Ace. She loved this possessive streak. He was so getting a long, luxurious blowjob tonight.

  ****

  Monday morning, as they walked to work, Ace told Harper she was moving back to her old office. She stopped and stared at him. “Because of what Emmett said, or because of what happened with Rob?”

  “Both. And Emmett was right. You can access the system from anywhere in the building. And the reason I moved you down there in the first place no longer exists.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We’ll do it first thing so you don’t have to answer questions from the rest of the team.” She arrived at least an hour before any of them since she came in with Ace now, and he started work early.

  “What will you tell them?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t owe them an explanation. I’ll simply say you’ve moved on.”

  “What are you going to do about Rob?”

  He frowned. “I’m working on that. But at least you’ll never have to be cornered by him again.”

  “You didn’t say anything to your friends about how you and I ended up together, did you?”

  “No. It’s none of their business.” He kissed her, long and hard, and she wished they were back in his bed.

  ****

  Harper was so happy to be back in her old office. He hadn’t touched a thing from what she could tell. The only annoying part of the morning was when Penny kept poking her head in, asking if Harper needed anything. Harper finally told her she’d call out to the desk if she did, and Penny had given her a smug look. “I was told to check on you once an hour.”

  “By whom?”

  Penny rolled her eyes. “By our boss, of course.”

  Harper texted Ace and asked him if he’d told Penny to keep an eye on her. He texted back and said he’d asked her to make sure she had everything she needed, not to annoy her.

  “Well, take care of it, please.”

  “I will. Love you.”

  Harper smiled. “Love you, too.”

  Penny didn’t bother her the rest of the day, but she did have an odd email from Rob late in the afternoon.

  “Why did you leave? The boss finally get what he wanted? Or is this about my cousin?”

  She didn’t answer it, but neither did she delete it. Instead she texted Ace and asked if he could come to her office. When he asked why, she told him. He was there in less than two minutes.

  Ace read the email. “Did you two talk about Traci at all when you were working together?”

  “I asked him one time how she was, but that was before we ran into her last week in town. He told me he doesn’t see her much, and acted like he couldn’t care less how she was.”

  “What else has he said to you about her, or about us?”

  “Nothing you don’t already know.”

  Ace swore under his breath. “Don’t delete the email, but don’t answer him either. I’ll be back in a while. And Harper, I owe you an apology. I should have taken care of this Friday.”

  Harper watched him storm out of her office, fairly certain that Rob Marin was about to get fired.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ace loved having Harper in his apartment, but it made it difficult to work from home. Knowing she was that close kept him from being perfectly content to sit in his office and work late into the night or on weekends like he used to when he didn’t have other plans.

  After the fiasco of firing Rob earlier in the week and then having to explain why he’d done it to the rest of the team, as well as explain to them that Harper had been moved because of an HR policy, he had a migraine threatening for the first time in months. Perfect way to top off a Saturday night.

  It didn’t help that he knew no one on his hacker team believed the reason he’d given them for moving Harper. Who knew what Rob had been telling them all. They hadn’t offered him anything concrete, but the looks on their faces said it all. He didn’t give a shit. As long as they did their job, his personal life was his own business.

  He and Harper both were also busy coordinating the work she did between his PR website and the message boards with similar work at Emmett’s and Kane’s companies. The three men planned to pilot the comparison for a month or two to see what progress could be made, and then the rest of the Weathermen would institute programs of their own if this approach panned out the way Ace hoped it would.

  Harper might prove to be the person who inadvertentl
y found the link they’d all missed. And it had been right there under their noses the entire time. Ace chalked it up to having too many departments that didn’t cross over or know what the other was doing, but sometimes that was necessary.

  He knew Harper was sleeping, but the urge to wake her up and make love to her again was strong. For one thing, it would send his headache packing. To distract himself, he gave up trying to work for the night and instead went into his personal accounts.

  He’d decided to delete some of the photos he’d saved over the years. He no longer needed to remember the other women in his life. If he were being honest, he wasn’t sure why he’d kept them in the first place. Trophies, perhaps?

  Ace shook his head. How juvenile. His life was so different now. In one short month Harper had taken everything he’d always loved about women and turned it into a longing that only she could fill. How had she done that? If he really stopped to think about it, he had no clue. He only knew she was everything he’d imagined when he’d allowed himself to pretend he would find a woman who could meet his needs for longer than a few precious weeks.

  But it was more than that. She made him want to be a better person. She’d reached inside and pulled out the fear. She’d forced him to face it, and was helping him deal with it in a way that wasn’t threatening, and put absolutely no expectations on him. In fact, he’d had to talk her into moving in here with him. And he knew he’d freaked her out when he’d talked about marriage and children.

  She didn’t understand. How could she? He’d never really explained to her the depth of what she’d done for him. How could he expect her to know what this relationship meant to him if he didn’t tell her? He should do that. Now. Why wait any longer?

  Ace started to close the pages he’d brought up and then stopped, staring at the one he’d most recently accessed. His brain wouldn’t accept what was on it. This wasn’t one of the sites Harper and Traci had been on over a month ago, but clearly she’d been on this one recently because as soon as the site came up, so did the same alerts he’d seen over a month ago. Only instead of telling him this time that Harper and Traci had accessed the site, it only told him Harper had done so.