by Marla Monroe
“One more thing,” Turk said.
“What?”
“Any chance me or Irish can take the ladies on their outing on Saturday?”
Dom grinned. “Sorry, guys, Reese is going with Vernon. You’re too late.”
“Fuck.”
“I’m beginning to think you have a thing for Piper. Am I right?”
“Yeah. Irish and I both like her. We want to see where it leads.”
“Be sure you aren’t using her for the websites as just a way to charm her. It’s business. Don’t mix business and pleasure, guys.” Dom nodded for Turk to go.
“Thanks, Pres.”
Turk grinned as he walked back to his office. Irish looked up when he walked back into the room.
“Any luck?”
“Some. We can try Piper with the websites, but it’s a no-go on the Dallas trip. Vernon and Reese are going.”
“Fuck.” Irish shook his head. “At least we’ll get her over here to work on the sites and can spend some time with her that way.”
“I bet she’s going to want to work on it from home.” Turk plopped down in his chair.
“We can tell her that initially she has to work where we can monitor what she’s doing. Then she can work from home.”
“When she starts working from home, I’ll be able to hack into her computer to find out what all she’s doing through it. We might find out more about more about that Isis Entertainment group she’s working for.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll print out some forms for her to sign on not blabbing about what she works on for us.”
“Good idea.” Turk pulled his cell out of his back pocket.
“Going to call her now?” Irish asked.
“No time like the present.”
* * * *
Piper closed the project she’d been working on and stretched. She was satisfied with how it had turned out and hoped her customer would be equally pleased. She’d scan over it one more time the next day before forwarding it to them.
She checked her email to see if she’d received any queries concerning jobs, but other than junk mail, her inbox remained empty of possible jobs. She sighed. Piper knew it was going to take time for her business to take off, but having landed three jobs all at one time had boosted her confidence that she would have more work as she needed it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going as she’d hoped.
It meant she would need her other job for another few months. As much as she enjoyed the steady paycheck from her work as a phone sex operator, Piper would be satisfied with a steady modest income as a website designer or webmaster. The phone sex just didn’t hold the appeal it had in the beginning.
When she’d first begun, Piper had felt awkward, but the longer she’d worked at it, the more confident she’d grown at her ability to satisfy a man to the point he could come with just her voice.
Well, maybe not just her voice. The right words at the right time helped, and so did her props like the squishy sound of a bottle of correction fluid and the tap, tap, tap of heels on a piece of plyboard. She even had a whip and a flogger that made the right noises the men she talked to enjoyed.
Piper sighed and pulled her props out to lie out on the bed as she settled down on the mattress to get comfortable. She didn’t get herself off when she was “working,” but she liked to be comfortable, and talking while lying down or propped up against her pillows made everything seem more real to the men.
She pulled up her work site to log herself in as being available for calls. Before she could click on the button that would alert potential customers that she was in, her personal cell rang.
She figured it was Ginger or Jessie. They’d been talking about the upcoming Dallas trip for the last two days. She’d been pleased that they’d included her in the planning stages. It felt good to have friends again. She didn’t feel quite so lonely in her little apartment knowing they were out there.
“Hello.”
“Hey, Piper, this is Turk. You remember me from the barbecue, right?”
“Um, yeah. What’s up?” Piper hoped Jessie was okay. It was still early in her pregnancy.
“Remember how I told you we were having trouble with our webmaster keeping our websites updated?”
“Yeah, you were looking for a new company.”
“We still are. Would you be interested in helping us?”
“Helping you find a good company? I can do that.” Piper thought through the list of people she knew who did that sort of thing.
“No. We want to see if you’d be a good fit to handle all our web-based businesses. It would help to have you in the same town in case we need to talk about anything. Are you interested?
“Oh, wow. Yeah. I’d love to handle them for you. How many do you have and are they all linked together or completely separate?”
“We can talk about it when you come over. We want you to work from here at first until we know if you’ll work out for us. The sites are important, so we have to treat this as business. I’m sure you understand.”
“Absolutely. When did you want me to start?”
“Can you come over tonight?” Turk asked.
“Um, can it be tomorrow morning? I’ve got something I’m working on tonight,” she told him.
Piper hated putting it off, but she really needed to log some hours to keep her revenue coming in while she built up her web design business.
The other end of the phone was silent for a second. “Do you work on a lot of things at night?”
“It depends on the client,” she told him.
Again, there was a long moment of silence before the other man cleared his throat.
“Okay. Tomorrow at ten. You know where the clubhouse is. Just walk on in and ask whoever is around to take you to me.”
“Sounds good. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Piper hit End and grinned. She had a possible good job lined up that might mean a continuous flow of money if she could satisfy what they needed. Then her stomach dropped to her toes. What if what they were doing was illegal? Could she work on the mechanics of the site then leave it to them to run?
She really didn’t want to have anything to do with illegal shit. It could tarnish her reputation in the computer world. She’d just have to wait and see what it was they wanted her to work on. Maybe it had to do with their custom bike shop. She could do that. What else could they be running from the web?
A solid lump of worry blocked her throat then landed in her belly like an iron weight. There really was no telling. It wasn’t that she was a prude, considering what she did, but it was legal. She wasn’t hurting anyone by giving men a safe and harmless way they could satisfy their sexual urges. Yeah, lots of the men she talked to were probably married or had a steady girlfriend, but they weren’t going out behind their women’s backs by talking to her instead of acting on their urges.
That had always been a fine line that Piper had walked. Maybe that was a cop-out, but it worked for her. For now. Once she had her web design and graphics career on a steady path, she’d give it up. She just prayed that she could do that sooner rather than later. She was worried that her stalker would find her if she continued for much longer.
Chapter Six
Piper walked into the clubhouse of The Ghost Riders and looked around with more than a little nervousness. She’d expected to see drunk men hanging all over women, so she wasn’t prepared for a clean room with two women talking on the couch while a man sat behind a long bar reading the paper. It looked almost normal.
She walked over to the bar and cleared her throat. “Um, my name is Piper. I came to see Turk. He’s expecting me.”
“Sure thing. I’ll show you where to go. I’m Gill. I parked your car last weekend.”
“I remember you. Thanks.” Piper followed the young man down a long hallway to one of the doors mid-way. He knocked on the door then opened it at the call for them to come in.
“Your lady friend is here.” Gill stepped back to allow Piper to walk past
him into the office.
She looked back and forth between the two desks that faced each other. Irish sat back at the desk on the right, and Turk stood from where he’d been leaning over a computer monitor behind the desk on the left.
“Hey, Piper. Thanks for coming. You remember Irish, right?” Turk asked.
“Yeah. Hi, Irish.” She gave him a little wave.
“Good to see you again. I sure hope you can help out on the websites. Turk’s been sore as an ingrown toenail for nearly a month now.”
“Fuck you,” Turk said with a snarl. “Who is it that’s complained that revenue sank because the damn sites aren’t working properly?”
“Yeah, yeah. Doesn’t matter now. Piper will work them out for us.”
“I sure hope so,” Turk said.
“First things first.” Irish stood, picking up a couple of papers. “We need to you to sign a nondisclosure form. Anything you work on for us is private and can’t be revealed or talked about to anyone outside of The Ghost Riders. Understand?”
“Um, yeah. I would never discuss your business with anyone else.” Piper drew in a deep breath and blurted out what she was worried about. “Is it anything illegal? Because if it is, I’ll help you set it up, but I won’t work on it on a regular basis. I can’t risk my reputation like that.”
Turk laughed. “Nothing illegal, but once you sign the form, if you decide you don’t want to maintain it for us, you can quit with no hard feelings. You just can’t tell anyone what it is. Understand?”
“Yes. I understand.” She looked at the paperwork Irish held out to her, and after reading through it, she signed it. Piper held it out to Irish, and the other man took it with a smile.
“Now that that part is settled, come over here and let me go over what we have and what we need from you.” Turk took her elbow and guided her over to his desk, where he settled her in the chair he’d been occupying.
“We’ve got four separate websites. The one for our custom bike garage and the one for the mechanic shop are each separate of each other. Both of them are separate from our other two businesses, which are connected to each other. We need help with all four of them.”
“Okay. Four websites. That’s fine.” Piper watched as he pulled up the one for their custom bikes.
“See how the links are sitting on top of the descriptions? We need that fixed. Also, when you click on each link, they take you to the wrong pages. That needs to be corrected, as well. Then there are a couple of recent builds we want to showcase. I have the pictures, but can’t get them to load in the right place.”
“All of that sounds easy. I’ll need administrative rights to be able to work on the sites. You can either let me use your log-in or you can create a webmaster log-in so you can keep track of who’s been in and when. That way you can see when I’ve been working on the site.”
Turk nodded. “I’ve already set you up as a super-user with admin rights but as the webmaster. You can change your password when you log in, but for right now, we’ll use mine.”
For the next hour, with Turk standing behind or beside her, Piper corrected all the problems with the custom bike site and the general mechanic site. It was all surprisingly easy for her. She’d expected major issues from the way Turk had been so frustrated, but then she still had two more sites to work on.
“How does that look to you?” she asked as she leaned back to give the other man a closer look.
“Perfect.”
Piper couldn’t fail to breathe in his masculine scent, which included the leather he wore and something citrus scented. Having him so close to her gave her a small thrill down her spine so that her insides quivered with awareness of the man standing so close to her.
She looked up to watch Irish as he worked on something on his computer. His dark good looks left another twist of arousal that gave her pussy a small gush of wetness she prayed wouldn’t leave a wet spot on her jeans.
Piper found herself inhaling deeply of Turk as he handled the mouse over her shoulder to scroll through the pages she’d corrected.
“Yep. Everything looks solid. Thanks. Now to the other two sites. These are the real money-makers for us and the ones you have to promise not to talk about outside these walls. Got it?” Turk turned her chair so that she had to look up at him. His eyes bored into hers, watching hers as he spoke.
“Okay. I won’t.” She worried what exactly the two websites were for. They’d indicated that there was nothing illegal about them, but their version of legal and illegal might be skewed compared to her beliefs.
Turk typed in a URL and hit Enter. Then he stood up and waited. A porn site popped up with the first page, portraying men and women in various sexual positions with their genitalia blanked out. The name of the site was Bare Biker Babes XXX. A disclosure button required the user to vow that they were twenty-one or older before they could access the site.
Turk didn’t say anything as she looked at the computer in front of her. She nearly laughed at the worry she’d had that they’d want her to work on something illegal. Provided there weren’t children or snuff films on the site, it was just as legal as her phone sex job was.
“So. Are you willing to work on sites like this?” Turk asked.
“I have no problem working on porn sites, Turk. As long as children aren’t involved or anything else is illegal, I’m fine with it.” She looked over her shoulder at the man who seemed to relax with her words.
“Great. So, let’s get started on what all is wrong with this one. The other site is linked to this one and is an adult toy page. We sell all sorts of toys like vibrators, cock rings, and nipple clamps on that one,” Turk said.
“Got it. Show me what’s screwed up, and I’ll get to work on it.”
* * * *
Three hours later Piper stretched to work some of the stiffness out of her back, shoulders, and neck. She’d made good headway on clearing up the mess on the site’s pages but still had long way to go on having everything working smoothly again.
“Fuck, Piper. I just realized that it’s after two and you haven’t had a break or eaten anything.” Turk stood up and reached out with his hand to help her stand.
“I could definitely eat,” she said.
“Let’s run into town and grab something at the diner rather than mess with looking for something here,” Irish spoke up.
The other man has been quiet throughout the day as Piper worked with Turk on the various challenges their pages presented. She’d looked up a time or two to see him staring at her with an almost hungry look. It hadn’t unnerved her but had made her wonder what he was thinking.
“Sounds good.” Turk looked down at Piper. “That okay with you, babe?”
“Sure.”
“Mind riding on the back of a bike?” Turk asked.
“No. I can do that,” she said.
“Good.” Turk lifted his chin at Irish, and the two men escorted her out of the office and through the front room.
Piper couldn’t help being a little surprised when they’d opened the front door and held it for her as she walked through it. They walked on either side of her toward where their bikes were parked in the long line of bikes out front.
“I’m assuming you’ve ridden on back before,” Turk said, handing her a helmet.
“Yeah. Just about can’t be from around here and not have ridden one before.” She smiled then waited while Turk started the bike before she climbed on behind him.
They rode through the front gates of the clubhouse’s land and eventually turned on the highway leading into town. After a short ride, they pulled up outside the diner. Irish helped her off the back of Turk’s bike then led her into the building with a hand at the small of her back. Turk followed behind them.
They chose a table near the back and ordered their drinks when the waitress hurried over to greet them.
“Meatloaf and mashed potatoes are the blue plate special today. I’ll get your drinks and be right back.
“Sound good t
o you?” Irish asked her.
“Yeah. I love their meatloaf.” Piper smiled over at the other man.
“Sounds good to me, too,” Turk agreed.
Irish placed their orders when the waitress returned. She nodded without writing anything down then walked back toward the counter where she called their orders to the cooks in back.
“So, how do you feel about maintaining our pages for us?” Turk asked.
“It really won’t be that hard. I can make the changes you need on a weekly basis or daily depending on when you need changes made. None of it will take very long or be too hard to do.”
Turk nodded. “That would be great. Right now, if I can even get hold of the one we’ve been using, he would take two to three weeks to get the changes made. That doesn’t work for us.”
“Won’t happen with me. I can pretty much update anything within a few hours.” She stopped talking while the waitress set their plates of delicious-smelling food in front of them then continued. “I would like to make some suggestions on some of the pages though.”
“Like what?” Irish spoke up.
“Your opening pages after the age notice need to pop more. I’d like to design new ones and show them to you. I think you can draw in more people if they’re intrigued by what you have to offer.”
Turk nodded. “By all means. We’ll take any suggestions you have. I’m a hacker and can write the heck out of security code, but advertising and web pages aren’t something I know anything about.”
“Great. I’ll work on that part from home and shoot you what I come up with.” Piper smiled. She couldn’t wait to get started.
“How much longer do you think you’ll need to get the pages back up and running smoothly again?” Turk asked.
“I figure it will take another two or three hours. Maybe less.”
“Good. They’ve been screwed up long enough that I’m sure we’ve lost business.” Turk finished the last of his meatloaf topped off with the remainder of his potatoes.
Piper still had a good bit left on her plate. She hoped they didn’t mind that she ate slowly. She’d learned when she’d had little to eat to enjoy and savor every bite of a good meal. She never knew when she’d get another one that nice. These days she didn’t have to worry about that anymore.
