Her heart sank. He didn’t know, after all. And what little he knew of her―he knew nothing. She was just a body to him, which was exactly how she liked to keep it with a Dom, but with Blake she wanted to be so much more. It was an unbridgeable gap.
“I’m sorry,” Blake said.
But if he called out my name, he must have fantasies. He was thinking about me. Her mood lightened. “Who is she?”
“It’s not―I don’t want to talk about it.”
She knew she was playing a dangerous game. She normally went along with whatever her Dom wanted, unless it was so bad that she walked out. But she pressed. “I think you owe me that much, Sir.”
His brow furrowed a moment, while he stroked her back. Finally, he nodded. “Fair enough. She’s my secretary. She looks a bit like you. You even sound a bit like her.”
“And you have the hots for her?”
“She’s―she’s my employee. It’s not right. When she briefly wasn’t, I left an offer for a date on her answering machine, and she never called me back.”
Crap. I should have had that machine fixed. But no one ever called the home number except salesmen. She only still had a landline because it was bundled in with her internet.
Her heart raced. “I don’t mind if you wish to pretend I’m her, Sir.”
His face darkened. She had seen him angry before. He was always very controlled and formal when he got angry. “I think you better get dressed and go. I’ll call you a taxi.”
She hesitated for a moment, and then her C persona took over. “Yes, Sir,” she said and got to her feet. I’ve fucked this up. But he likes Carrie, or at least he lusts after her. And that’s me. She didn’t know whether to feel elated or crushed, but she was sure it was one of those.
He got up and walked past her to pick up his phone, which was lying on the dining room table. Frozen, she watched him as he called the taxi service. She wanted to go and kneel at his feet and beg forgiveness. She thought of taking off her mask and telling her who she was, but she could lose everything that way, both his love and her job. How do I make this work?
He hung up. “The taxi will be here in five minutes. I told you to get dressed. Your breasts are too tempting to me right now.”
“Yes, Sir.” She crossed the room to the closet and got her coat. She put it on and reluctantly buttoned it up, to cover any cleavage. “Will I be allowed to serve again, Sir?”
“I shouldn’t say yes.”
She glanced out the window, but of course the taxi wasn’t that fast. She turned back to him. “Does your secretary dress provocatively?”
He frowned at her before answering. “Yes.”
“Does she tease you with her body?”
The frown deepened. “Sometimes. Possibly on accident.”
“I think you should tell her what you want.”
“No.”
“Then if not, I think you should allow me to serve. I am content to be a vessel. I can sate your lust. You can look at her and know that you will get relief. I do not want anything more, Sir―I know it’s strange, but it is good for me, to have just that. And it can be good for you, too.”
“I need to know more about what drives you, C. Why are you so happy to be treated as an object?”
She looked down. “To know more, Sir, would be to destroy the illusion that is good for both of us. Don’t ask for more.”
“I need some answers or I cannot let you serve.”
She sighed and then looked back up. “There is incredible pain in my life, Sir. Please do not ask me what it is. But this is my drug, if you will, that lets me go and be a normal person. When I receive physical pain, it gives voice to the pain inside and transforms it into something I can deal with. When I serve, it fills me, gives me purpose. For just a little while, I know my place in the world, and that gives me strength to face the whole confusing mess that is the rest of it.”
“Maybe you should let someone in, to help? I sense a good person in there.”
“Maybe, Sir. And I’ll believe you practice what you preach when you tell your secretary how you feel. But until then, we can help each other, perhaps?”
“Perhaps,” he said and then looked toward the window as the light of headlights played on it. “Your taxi is here.”
She knew him well enough to know that she wasn’t going to get better than “perhaps” from him right then. So she simply said, “Yes, Sir.” There had been times the struggle of uncertainty, of not knowing what a Dom might want, had been a good thing. It excited her and occupied her mind so she wouldn’t think of worse things, and in the end there would always be another Dom. This was not one of those times.
He opened the door for her, and she walked out into the night. To her surprise, he followed her.
“Thank you for this evening, C.” he said.
“Thank you, Sir.”
He opened the door for her, and she slid inside. Then he walked around to the driver’s side and gave the driver his credit card to pay for the ride. When the transaction was finished, he nodded at her.
She nodded back. I have been dismissed. I have to accept that. He’s in control.
It was strange. She trusted him. But she couldn’t give him all the information he needed to make the right choice. And in general, she agreed with him that dating one’s secretary was all sorts of wrong. She just wanted to be the exception.
A secretary, with benefits. She smiled. First, she’d see if he let C serve again. If not, well, she might have to take more drastic action. In the meantime she’d save up the extra money in her paychecks just in case it all went badly and she needed to look for another job. First, though, I need to fix my answering machine at home, just in case.
Chapter Four
Blake punched the heavy white punching bag in his basement with his ungloved hands. Normally, he’d put on gloves for a workout, but this time the pain felt appropriate. I am such a jerk.
He wasn’t sure whether he’d sent C away because of a sense of propriety or because he just didn’t want to deal with his emotions for Carrie. Either way, though, he understood what C meant about one thing. Physical pain could help mental anguish. Exhaustion could quiet the mind. He had every intention of punching the bag until he was ready to collapse.
Mental anguish. Bah. I’m well off, have no problem finding attractive women to fuck or even submit to me, and I’m calling pining for my secretary mental anguish. What C has to deal with is probably a lot worse. What Carrie has―well, she seems better now, but when she started with me she was clearly a mess, and trying to hide it. I’ve got nothing. Not even a good excuse to feel this way.
He gave the bag a hard slug. Carrie had definitely been going overboard flashing her body at him lately, and he was beginning to think it was not on accident. At first, he’d assumed it was. But earlier that day, when she was leaning over his desk with her blouse gaping? She had to know, didn’t she? But she’d said she had someone new in her life, so what was she playing at? Maybe just having someone made her feel sexy. He knew she had gone through a breakup, and had lost her child, and he suspected it had been a long time for Carrie. He was happy for her, but she was being very distracting.
He aimed a really hard shot and then stopped, backing away. He wasn’t going to help anything or anyone by hurting his hand. He wrapped his hands and fitted on the big black boxing gloves before resuming his workout. Only when he was exhausted and drenched in sweat did he back away and head upstairs.
He fell asleep.
In the morning he showered, trying not to think about C or Carrie, and especially trying not to think about C’s offer to be a stand-in, but he did anyway, and he felt his cock getting hard at the thought. He turned the hot water down, making the shower uncomfortably cold. The Longdale account beckoned. He’d told Carrie they’d get it done on Monday, but the client wanted it by Tuesday, and that was cutting it close if something went wrong. Not that anything was likely to go wrong. It was a simple accounting project that didn’t look to r
equire his expertise at all. Carrie could probably do a lot of it herself, and he’d just have to double-check and sign off on things, but it would keep his mind off her to do it now. Maybe he’d give her a day off, just so that he could have a break from sexual frustration.
He went to work on the files. It was three o’clock before he looked up and realized he was hungry. The Longdale account should have been simple, but it wasn’t. Unless he missed his guess, someone was skimming some money from the company.
He picked up the phone. He’d gone from wanting to give Carrie Monday off to needing her help. She couldn’t do the tougher financial stuff, but if he was going to get a report in, he’d have to have her working on that while he tried to puzzle things out. Either way, they were going to be behind.
“This is Carrie.”
“Ms. Keller.” He didn’t often call her that, but he wanted emotional distance. “This is Blake. Tomorrow may have to be a long day. Did you have plans?” Carrie never had plans, but that might have changed.
“I don’t. I think―I’m probably wrong, but I think there’s something wrong with Longdale account. I’m wondering if I should come show you?”
“You were working today.”
“Yes.”
“I thought I told you to leave it be.”
“Sorry, Sir. But I needed the distraction.”
Uh oh. Maybe something had gone wrong with the new someone in Carrie’s life. He cursed the sense of relief he felt at that thought. He should be happy for her if she’d found someone. It wasn’t as if he could fill that position. He focused back on work. “There is definitely something wrong with the Longdale account. And if you’re working on it anyway, we might as well work on it together in the office.” Oh, that was asking for trouble.
“Okay” Was it his imagination, but did she actually sound happy at the thought of working on a Saturday?
“Ms. Keller.”
“Sir?”
“No short skirts, seamed stockings, or unbuttoned blouses today. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
There was a long pause. He didn’t know what she was making of his comment, but he did know that if she decided to spend the time flirting with him right now, it might cause him to miss something important.
“As you wish,” she said, her voice sounding tight. “I’ll see you at work.”
“Good. See you―” there, he was about to say. But he saved his breath, because the line had already gone dead.
She was, apparently pissed at him. He didn’t blame her, exactly, but it didn’t change the fact that if they needed to get work done. She’ll probably never dress like that to work again. And in spite of himself, he knew he’d miss it.
He changed into work clothes, got in the car and drove into the office. The high-rise office building he’d rented space in was almost empty on the weekend, but that was okay. When he got there he found Carrie already typing away at her desk.
He hadn’t ever seen her dressed the way she was before―no, that wasn’t true. There had been the Quinn Cosmetics company picnic a little over a year ago. He’d missed the most recent one, he supposed.
She wore blue jeans and a red T-shirt. The shirt hugged her body and outlined the shape of her breasts, but it had a high collar and wasn’t meant to be provocative, clearly. In fact, the only way she could have beaten him to work was if she hadn’t bothered to change at all.
She looked up at him when he came in, her face dark. He half-expected her to sarcastically ask if she had on acceptable work attire. She had a sharp wit when she felt like it, although he never seemed to be the target.
Instead she just shook her head. “This is seriously fucked-up, and I don’t know how. I just know it’s wrong. I’ve prepared a list of the entries I can’t be sure of and have put them on a spreadsheet.”
He reminded himself that despite her savvy, she wasn’t a trained accountant. It wasn’t going to do any good to take the bad entries out and look at them in isolation. They’d be meaningless. It was the pattern, the way they fit in with the whole. He glanced at her monitor, recognizing the figures. Just rows of numbers really. Something was strange about them, but he couldn’t put his finger on what.
“I’m going to get to work on the figures, Carrie. What I need you to do is to start getting everything else done we have pending, because this report is going to be long and will take all our time.”
Carrie frowned but nodded. “Yes, Sir, that would be the best use of our time.”
He walked into his office, left the door open and sat at his desk. He started going through the numbers again. It was almost impossible to tell which numbers were real and which ones weren’t, but they couldn’t all be. There were a few he was sure were legit. The rest was hard work, and he’d have to request more information, which he probably wouldn’t get until Monday.
The click-clack of Carrie’s fingers on the keys in the next room, writing out letters, was familiar background music. It helped him focus. But it didn’t create any magical solutions.
She walked in on him after an hour and a half. “These need your signatures. I still think there’s something off about those numbers that I haven’t seen before.”
“Some of them are made-up.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Just don’t know which ones.”
“I sent that spreadsheet to you. Just in case.” At the same time she spread out the letters for him to sign. She was bending over the same way she had the day before. The only difference was that this time her shirt covered her completely. He stared into her blue eyes for a moment, then picked up the pen to sign the papers.
She was such a good employee. She deserved to be treated like one, even if she drove him crazy sometimes. “Let’s look at them for a second together,” he said. “Come around.”
She moved over to look at his screen. He pulled up his email, and sure enough, there was mail from Carrie. And one from C. Forwarding those to the one email he was sure to check seemed like a good idea at the time, until he saw the subject heading. “Playing Secretary.” The first few lines of the letter also appeared on the list of emails. “On my knees I long to take you in…”
He could only imagine the rest. Or what Carrie thought of it. He quickly clicked on Carrie’s email and brought up the spreadsheet, hiding his email behind it.
He glanced up at her. “So what do you think?” he asked, ostensibly meaning the email but searching her face for a reaction. She has a smirk on her face he didn’t like at all.
“I think these numbers are all wrong. Everything that isn’t verified. But I don’t know why I think that. And why would there be both credits and debits?”
He shook his head. “Good question. I haven’t even figured out if they are putting money in or out. It depends on what numbers are real.”
“Why would you put money in?”
“You wouldn’t. But fake entries could make the company look good to investors. The only person who would do that would be Gerald Longdale himself. And yet he hired us to look at them.”
“Because you just started your business. Because they thought they could slip something past you that they couldn’t with a big accounting company.”
“Maybe.” The thought hurt his pride, but she might have something at that. Maybe Longdale had to provide an audit for a creditor. More than likely, in fact. But maybe the point of all the credits and debits was precisely to cover up the direction of the money flow. He glanced at the spreadsheet again, and then his eyes opened. There were about a hundred numbers there. He knew his finances, but Carrie was better with the program. He scooted to one side to let her have access to the keyboard. “Put them in order,” he said.
“They’re in chronological order.”
“From smallest to biggest.”
She shrugged. “Okay.” She clicked a few times with the mouse, and the numbers changed on the screen.
“I think you’re right,” he said at last.
“I am?”
“
Yes. Look at these numbers. If you…if you have real transactions, you have more small ones than big ones, right? Up to a point, for a company like this, perhaps.”
“There are four-digit transactions, all the way up to six…seem to be more threes than sixes. I don’t see what you’re driving at.”
He smiled. “Right. So if you have more three-digit transactions, then the four-digit transactions you have will be more likely to be in the low four digits. Sixty of these transactions are in the hundreds. That means, of the thirty in the thousands, most of them should start with one―in fact, you’d expect the curve to continue, and about half the rest to be less than two thousand. But they aren’t. They’re evenly distributed through the thousands. The same for the five-digit ones. The reason I haven’t been able to find a pattern is that there is no pattern. Not even the pattern real numbers would have.”
“You’re saying these numbers are random?”
“Yes. The numbers are random. But the signs aren’t. The debits are always just a little bigger than the credits, which means money is being funneled out of the company, not in.”
Carrie punched a button and had it show a sum at the bottom, confirming what Blake had said. “Problem solved and we go home?” asked Carrie hopefully.
“I wish. It means we have to document and write it all up. We may never be sure of what numbers are fake and which not, but we can give a broad overview and do some digging. Also, we need to let Longdale know as soon as possible, now that we have evidence that something is going on, so he can do an investigation on his side. We’ll draft an email and then you can go home, and I’ll work on the rest myself. But we’ll need a bright and early start Monday.”
Carrie nodded. “Yes, Sir.”
* * * * *
Monday morning at five, Carrie debated what to wear. Blake had technically not ordered her to wear less-revealing clothing in general, just on that Saturday, but she knew she was rationalizing. On the other hand, she also knew now that she was having an effect. With luck, the more she flirted at work, the more likely Blake was to call C for a little relief.
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