That afternoon when I got off work I headed to John’s office. Of course M texted me when I was en route.
What are you up to?
My stomach lurched. Was he watching me?
Running a couple of errands on my way home. Can we Skype tonight?
It had been several days since M and I pulled an all-nighter on Skype, interspersing some intimate getting-to-know-each-other conversation with sizzling video sex. For the first time I’d seen M’s naked body, and he was absurdly hot. He was careful not to let me see his face, though, not even for a second.
Tonight’s no good. Some other time, gorgeous.
Mmmm, “gorgeous.” I liked that. I texted back Tomorrow? but never got a response. Those abrupt brush-offs always made me wonder whether M was upset with me. Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing for sure.
John let me into his dumpy office and ushered me to a chair with cracked leather upholstery. He was as dumpy as the office and looked perfectly at home there. Sitting at his desk, he pulled a file from a shelf and set it in front of him.
“Quick recap, Rachel: You asked me to find the identity of a man you know only as ‘M.’ He’s a billionaire who has business dealings in Portland and might even live here. He’s a male with a name containing the initial M. His first concert was Pearl Jam’s ‘Vs’ tour. He anonymously paid off your student loans. And he may or may not have odd relationship issues in his past.”
He looked across the desk at me. “Sound about right?”
“Yes, that’s all I know.” I wished I could remember whether M had said his first or last name started with that letter. Dammit.
“Okay, first off, I don’t have one unique person to point you toward,” John said. He must have seen the disappointment on my face, because he quickly continued, “But I have been able to substantially narrow down the pool of suspects.”
He went on. “That Pearl Jam tour was in 1994, making your mystery man roughly thirty to forty years old if that was his first concert. Make sense?”
I nodded. That age range seemed to fit M perfectly.
“There are about eight hundred people in the US who are worth at least a billion dollars,” John said. “After we rule out the women, then the men who are too young or too old, we’re left with about a hundred guys.”
I was beginning to get excited. This wasn’t as pointless a search as I thought it might be.
“Out of these hundred, only a dozen have an initial M. Unless…” he leaned over the desk and peered over his glasses at me. I sensed he was about to say something important. “Unless his middle name starts with that letter.”
I felt so stupid. How could I have overlooked something so obvious? M had told me that his name began with that letter, but he never said which name. Hardly a Sherlock Holmes level revelation, but I’d somehow missed it. John smiled, obviously happy with his sterling detective work.
“Another seven guys have the middle initial M,” he said, “which brings us to nineteen possibilities that meet all of your criteria. Of those, only five have business ties to Oregon. Two of the five have a primary residence here in Portland.”
He pushed the thin, coffee-stained folder across the desk to me.
“These are your candidates, in order of likelihood, as best as I can determine.”
I hesitated, then took a breath and opened the folder. Inside was a single sheet of paper and a flash drive.
The paper contained a list of nineteen names divided into three groups: two highlighted at the top, three underneath those, then a bigger group of fourteen. The top two were noted as living mostly in Portland. Atop the list was former Portland Trailblazers owner Crispin Rashka, and beneath Rashka was new media magnate Ryan Dorrance. As it turns out, Rashka’s first name was actually Michail and Dorrance’s was Montgomery — both men went by their middle name. Rashka had a very high profile and I would know his face if I saw it. Dorrance I’d heard of, but didn’t know much about. I’d previously ruled out both of them because neither their first or last names started with an M.
The second group, those who at least had business concerns in the state of Oregon, were three men whose names I’d never heard: newspaper tycoon Robert Milligan owned a daily paper in Eugene but lived in Chicago, venture capitalist Martin Sorenson had investments in several Oregon Internet startups but lived in Miami, and David Myles Turner was a real estate mogul from Los Angeles who owned property in Portland and Salem.
The fourteen names in the third group seemed unlikely candidates. I felt certain that M conducted business in Portland. That meant the five men in the top two tiers were my best bets.
I held up the flash drive and looked at John.
“Pictures of the nineteen men on that list,” he said, “and other odds and ends I dug up on them. Divorces, sour business deals, charges filed against them, and in two cases, prison terms served.”
I nodded.
“One other thing,” John said. “Your student loans were paid off by a finance company called First Capital. They’re located in the Cayman Islands, a country commonly used for transactions that someone doesn’t want traced. I pried around a little, but got nowhere. I’ll keep poking, though.”
On the drive home, I thought about the last two things John said: that someone had gone to great effort to make sure the student loan payment couldn’t be traced, and that John would continue to try to dig up more information. Suddenly, I had severe misgivings about having hired him to begin with. What if M found out someone was investigating him and traced it back to me? He’d certainly dump me, and would have every right to do so. I couldn’t risk that. I pulled my car to the curb and called John to inform him I wanted the investigation halted immediately. I thanked him for his efforts and told him to send me a final bill. He understood and agreed to look no further into the issue.
When I entered my apartment, though, I took the flash drive straight to my computer.
2
The next day I called Whitney and asked if she wanted to meet for drinks. Whitney was the receptionist at the shared office space where M had a small, sparse office set up solely for the purpose of communicating with his sub — me, at this point, assuming I was the only one. In the few times I’d been to that office, Whitney and I had struck up a friendship of sorts and I was anxious to find out what she knew about M.
We met after work at a downtown club called Athena, halfway between my office and the building where she works for M. She was already at the bar when I got there and greeted me with a warm hug.
“I’m not used to seeing you without your disguise,” she said with a laugh. True, the last few times I’d visited the office I was wearing my blonde wig and sunglasses.
After I’d gotten a drink, I looked her over, casually so she wouldn’t notice. She was young, maybe twenty years old, with medium-length auburn hair and bright blue eyes that imparted a fresh-scrubbed appearance. She looked like she could have been from the Midwest. I remembered her telling me she was studying modern dance at the University of Portland, and her body sure fit the part: high, firm breasts, thin waist, nice little butt and great legs. She’d worn a short skirt with a cute blouse that showed off that tight body. I had to practically force myself to stop looking at her.
Whitney quickly asked a question that would break the ice in a big way, considering we didn’t know each other very well.
“I’m dying to ask you, Rachel: What’s up with the change of clothes when you go into M’s office?”
I was aware that must have seemed strange to her, that I’d walk into M’s office wearing one thing, then walk out wearing something different that he had selected for me. Those clothing changes were a prelude to M sending me out to reveal my body, or some of it, in public. I laughed at Whitney’s question.
“How am I supposed to answer that?” I countered. “It’s a little complicated.”
“I have to say I loved the sheer blouse you left in one day,” she said. “It was gorgeous, and the bra underneath was so lovely.�
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“It was a gift from M,” I said. “But of course, you probably put the box on the desk in his office.”
“I did, but had no idea what was inside,” Whitney said.
“Did M drop it off himself?” I asked.
“No, a courier left it,” she responded. “I’ve never actually seen M. Even when I interviewed for the job, it was over the phone.”
My hopes sunk. “That day you told me that M sent you out to walk along the riverfront in that outfit,” Whitney said. “That was pretty daring. In daylight, that blouse would be absolutely sheer. You weren’t embarrassed?”
I blushed. “Whitney, do you know what kind of relationship M and I have?”
“Not really. It does seem kind of strange, though.”
“M is my dom. I’m his sub,” I said as her eyes grew wider. “So I have to do whatever he tells me. And yes, I was embarrassed that day. Especially when I reached the Saturday Market and he had me leave the bra behind and walk all the way back without it.”
Whitney’s mouth hung open. “With just the sheer blouse?”
I nodded.
“But… but couldn’t everyone see… um, see your tits? Through the shirt?”
I nodded again. “M told me to. I had no choice.”
“Weren’t you scared to death?” she asked.
“It was terrifying,” I said. “But it was also the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever done. In a weird way, I felt empowered. Strong. I even got looks of admiration from other women.”
Whitney took a sip of her drink and processed what I’d said. Setting her glass down, she grinned and said, “That is so fucking hot. You’re a badass, Rachel.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said, “But I’m a good sub.”
She asked what else M had ordered me to do, and I told her everything. Maybe it was the alcohol buzz, or maybe I just needed someone I could confide in about my strange situation. I certainly didn’t want to go into details with Lindsey, my co-worker and close friend, as she had been judgmental about what little I already shared.
When I told Whitney about the booth in the adult bookstore, she covered her mouth to suppress a squeal. I even told her about the cock that entered my booth through the hole, though I lied and said I ignored it and left the booth at that point. Sucking a cock through a glory hole made perfect sense to me at the time, but I didn’t want to admit I’d done it.
She was beyond impressed by the lengths to which I was willing to go to make M happy. I didn’t think of it that way; I was his sub and was required to do everything he told me, no matter how scary or sleazy. I loved thinking each time that M was yet again surprised and pleased when I carried out his instructions.
Whitney and I talked about her love of modern dance and how she was disappointed when she was accepted to Juilliard, but given such a small scholarship that she was unable to make up the difference. That’s how she ended up at University of Portland, which she said only had a decent dance program.
As we talked, Whitney eventually realized I’d never seen M and didn’t know his identity.
“And all those things you do for him?” she asked, leaving her question hanging there, unfinished.
“I’ve fallen for him, Whitney,” I said. “I’d do anything he wanted. Does that make it weird?”
“No,” she responded, a gleam in her eyes, “it makes it even hotter.”
Before we parted company I asked Whitney if there was anything at all she could tell me about M. Unfortunately, she had no information that I didn’t already know. She’d never seen him and had only spoken to him over the phone a few times. Her paychecks were deposited into her bank account directly by First Capital, the same company that paid off my student loans, so that was a dead end as well.
During the walk back to my building to retrieve my car, I couldn’t get my mind off of M. My talk with Whitney made me feel more comfortable about what I was doing. Maybe I wasn’t crazy after all for displaying my body in public for a man I’d never even met.
As I crossed the Burnside Street bridge on the way home, I decided I wanted to do something for my man, a sexy little surprise. I pulled to the curb, made sure no one was looking, then put on my blonde wig and sunglasses. I removed my shirt and bra and continued driving topless. Only a few people noticed, and they either smiled or laughed. When I got closer to my apartment, I tried to take a selfie to send to M, but couldn’t really capture the moment the way I wanted to.
The drinks I’d had with Whitney, while not enough to impair my driving, had certainly lowered my inhibitions. I pulled to the curb to attempt a better selfie. As I aimed my camera, a young couple walked by, both overtly staring and smiling as they passed. I waited until they were behind me, then made sure they were in the frame. This time the picture captured exactly what I was hoping for. It was sexy and fun, with me displaying my breasts and the couple behind me craning their necks to look. I quickly put my shirt back on for the remainder of the drive home.
As soon as I’d closed my apartment door, I looked at the picture on my phone. There I was, smiling from my car in my blonde wig and sunglasses with my breasts on full display. I sent the pic to M.
I was disappointed when I didn’t get a quick response and went back to my computer to look at the contents of John Collingwood’s flash drive again.
The first night I had looked at the drive, I had only skimmed the pictures. Crispin Rashka, the former owner of the Trailblazers pro basketball team was devastatingly handsome and seemed to be quite aware of it. Over the last fifteen years he’d been connected to dozens of female celebrities — actresses, models, singers and rappers. Thirty-nine years old and 6’4” tall with a gym-rat body and a shaved head, he was born in Seattle, hometown of Pearl Jam. Rashka had made his fortune in the early days of the Internet, investing heavily in companies that blew up big time soon afterward: Yahoo, Amazon, Google. He owned a five-million dollar home in the Southwest Hills part of Portland, where some of the city’s most exclusive homes were. Most intriguingly, two years earlier Rashka had an ugly public spat with an ex-girlfriend, who detailed to TMZ the most intimate parts of their sex life. Now that’s someone with every right to have trust issues.
Ryan Dorrance was the second name on the list. Handsome as well, with a devious smile, he was a couple of years younger and not quite as tall as Rashka. Like Rashka, he went by his second name — which was understandable, as his first name, Montgomery, seemed a little old-fashioned. Dorrance was the founder of a dozen high-profile websites, selling his very first site, TrendingTech.com, for a cool two billion dollars at the height of the dotcom boom in the late nineties. Since then he’d branched into television and radio to augment his online properties. He’d married young but he and his wife had no kids and were divorced after just two years, before he made his fortune. He owned an estate in Forest Park and a luxury condo downtown which took up the entire penthouse floor of a swanky address. The detective hadn’t been able to find too much about Dorrance. His private life was just that: private.
I looked at over a hundred pictures of Rashka and about a dozen of Dorrance and couldn’t see anything that stood out about either of them. They both looked like sexy billionaires who could have any woman they wanted, which made me immediately think neither of them was M, because M was currently spending time with chubby little me.
The second group of three candidates, those who didn’t live in Portland but had business dealings in Oregon, were a diverse bunch. Robert Milligan owned several major newspapers and magazines, but the pictures John had given me showed a man who had been heavyset his entire adult life. That was definitely not the naked body I’d seen via Skype a week earlier — that body had been svelte and toned, without any extra weight at all.
Venture capitalist Martin Sorenson lived in Miami and evidently hated climates that weren’t tropical. While that didn’t rule him out, I couldn’t build any enthusiasm toward him as being M. Sorenson wasn’t very attractive, and I desperately wanted M to be.
Silly, I know, but I couldn’t get past Sorenson’s looks and found myself ignoring him. Collingwood had found several video clips of Sorenson and his voice sounded nothing like M’s.
The last of the five best candidates was David Myles Turner, a single real estate magnate from Southern California. Turner was absurdly attractive, with looks that stood out over all the others. Brownish-blonde hair, square jaw, beautiful blue eyes — Turner was Hollywood handsome with a flawless sense of style and an elegant grace. I simply could not peel my eyes away from the photos of that man. The big problem with Turner was that he was rumored to be gay, with no long-term relationships with women ever surfacing in the media. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that he was actually straight or bi, but I felt pessimistic about his being M.
I forced myself to stop agonizing over M’s identity, at least for the time being. It was late and I still hadn’t heard back from M regarding my topless selfie, so I got ready for bed. Not long after I’d slipped under the covers wearing only M’s Pearl Jam T-shirt, my phone played Pink Floyd’s “Money” — the ringtone I’d chosen for M’s texts.
When was that pic taken?
I quickly responded.
This evening. I drove home topless. Like it?
There was no response for a while. As I started to text him again, one arrived.
Don’t ever do that unless I tell you to.
Oh, no. M was angry with me. I could feel it. I sent a sheepish reply.
Sorry. I won’t do it again.
M never texted me back that night, and I lay awake wondering yet again if I’d made an error that might jeopardize our relationship. He was fine ordering me to carry out all kinds of risque things in public, but when I did it on my own, he got angry. I was still trying to understand the dynamics of our dom/sub relationship when I finally fell asleep.
3
While I was at work the following morning, I received a text from M:
Be in my office today at 6pm.
Forced to Bloom, The Complete Series: (BBW Alpha Male Billionaire BDSM Romance) Page 11