One week of her swearing at me in Irish as often as she says hello. One week of her fighting me on everything from what she wears to what she eats to where she goes online. One week of providing discipline, finding her limits as a sub, testing my strength as her Dom.
She’s stubborn.
She’s angry.
She’s wild.
And—impossibly—she’s not the thing most on my mind when I leave her in our bed at half past midnight, very early on Sunday morning. I could work at the computer set up in the corner of the room. I’ve exhausted her enough that she’d sleep through whatever noise I make typing.
But the sound of her soft breathing is too much of a distraction. I’m too tempted to ease back the sheets. To study the redmark of my handprint on her ass, still livid where I spanked her after she called me a motherfucking shitehawk of a controlling arsehole. She was coming as she said it, riding a monster vibrator I filled her with instead of my own throbbing cock.
My sweet Kate.
I thought it would get easier, not fucking her. I’m applying all the restraint I’ve ever mastered as a Dom. I’m measuring out sensations—hers and mine. I’m more aware of everything I see, everything I taste and smell, as if some veil has disintegrated between my body and the world.
That should be enough reason for me to maintain control. But I’m taking care of morning wood every day before I hit the gym down the hall. I’ve run more treadmill miles in the past week than most athletes training for a marathon. I shower after I work out and again at night after Kate and I finish in the dungeon, after I put her to bed, wrung out from whatever new punishments I’ve devised.
My wrist is starting to ache. But my rules still stand. I’m stronger than my base needs. I remain in control.
Which is a fucking miracle, given the pressure I’ve been under this week. Maybe it’s a blessing that the hit list culled my client rolls. Every one of my remaining customers seems to have generated a major crisis in the past six days. Barry Lynch alone has called two dozen times.
And my blackmailer has stayed silent, exactly as promised.
The message is there, every time I log into my computer.
I know you never graduated from Dunbar High, and I know why. Twenty-five million to keep the world from knowing too. Noon. Next Sunday.
Well, this isnext Sunday. I’m not paying.
Let them do their best.
At 12:01 in the afternoon, my computer dings with an incoming email.
Maybe you’d be smarter if you’d graduated high school.
The press has the attached document.
One hundred mill by May 1, noon, or I send again, all redactions cleared.
There are two attachments to the email.
The first is a distribution list, the top two dozen print and electronic publications in the world that specialize in information technology.
The second is the criminal complaint that put me into jail. Every element of the collection agency scam is laid out in painstaking detail. Every dollar that Shannon dragged in is accounted for. Every mark is identified by name, age, and loss of funds.
My name is obscured with broad black bars.
For now.
My blackmailer has the goods. And they aren’t afraid to use them.
36
KATE
Wolf and I celebrate our one-week anniversary by making sandwiches for dinner because it’s Nilsson’s and Anna’s day off. I’ve taken a break from my failed coding projects, using the time to study public—and not so public—databases. My goal was to find new evidence to needle Wolf, and I’ve finally succeeded at something online.
“It must be rough,” I observe over peanut butter and jam. “Never knowing your da. Not even having a name filled in on your birth certificate.”
