Dangerous Designs

by Kira Matthison

  “Right now, though…” His voice was so deep that I shivered, feeling it slide over my skin. “Right now you’re going to tell me everything you saw in my apartment.”

  My breath stopped. “I—”

  “Everything, Catriona.”

  I swallowed hard, turning as he swept everything off his desk almost casually. He grabbed me, picking me up effortlessly, and sank onto his cock as he sat back on the edge of the desk. His hands cupped my ass as I rose and fell, our faces hovering a scant inch apart.

  “Talk.” His fingers tightened on my skin.

  “I went into your study.”

  “And?”

  I didn’t want to say it, but I couldn’t resist it. When he commanded me, I wanted to obey him—and want wasn’t a good enough word for it. I needed to obey him. Everything in me yearned to see his smile of approval. I bit my lip and gasped as he thrust deep into me. “I looked at your files.”

  “And? What did you see, Catriona?”

  “I saw a form—you’d signed it. There was an X. Someone went for human testing. And...”

  “Is that why you went to the newspaper?” His voice was soft, but I had never heard him like this before. It was a deathly quiet, so many threats veiled that I had to stop myself from crying out the truth. He couldn’t know the truth yet.

  “N-no.” His deep thrust gave me a reason to close my eyes.

  “Why did you go? Tell me.”

  I had practiced the lie. “Nate might quit and go back. I wanted to—oh, God—I wanted to see if they’d let him.”

  “Really? Is that the truth, Catriona?”

  “Yes!”

  I didn’t think he’d believe it, but he took one hand off my ass to drag my head in for a kiss. His tongue thrust into my mouth and I tried not to wince as his fingers pressed against the bump on the back of my head.

  He couldn’t know. He couldn’t know, couldn’t know, couldn’t—

  I couldn’t hold back any longer. I was going to come, I could feel myself beginning to quiver as he thrust into me. I wanted him, wanted everything he could do and everything he could make me feel. I didn’t want this to end.

  “You want the truth, Catriona?”

  “I…don’t know.” I didn’t know anything except what my body wanted—and it wanted him.

  “You have to decide.” He knew I was close to coming. I could see the satisfaction in his eyes. He held me close, moving slowly inside me, fingers digging in to remind me of my disobedience when my hips jerked.

  I closed my eyes and tried to escape, but there was only the truth: I was going to find out. I was. And it might as well be now. I felt myself fracturing, my body betraying me even as my mind accepted reality.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “Good girl. Come for me first.” And he thrust into me again, mouth capturing mine as I came with a cry.

  I clenched around him, feeling him come inside me with a rush, and savored the satisfaction that he wanted me. He’d chosen me. He was taking me because he wanted me to be his good girl. Right now, with him gasping out my name, I didn’t doubt. I knew, and everything was perfect.

  For a single moment. Because when my eyes opened, I knew I would hear the truth.

  “Who did you send?” I wasn’t going to hide from it like a child.

  “I checked myself in,” he said simply. “I sent myself for testing.”

  - Dominick -

  “What?” I felt her shock. Whatever secrets still lay behind those brown eyes—and I knew they were there—she could not hide the emotion that coursed through her. She had not known, and that, paradoxically, gave me hope.

  If she hadn’t known the truth, what would happen when she did?

  Nothing. I should send her away now, warn her of the danger she’d put herself in by betraying me. If I cared for her, even as a human being, I would send her away now so she wouldn’t get caught up in the rest.

  “Dominick…?” She was biting her lip, staring into her eyes. When I lifted her and set her back on the floor, turning away, I saw her face fall.

  I had to let her go. In a flash that let me see me far, far too deep into myself, I knew that I could. I had always done what I needed to do. This was no different, except that it was more important. I could give up hoping to know what secrets she had, even knowing I would always wonder.

  “You should go,” I told her.

  “What?” Her voice was uncertain.

  “You should go,” I repeated. “Don’t come back here.”

  “But—a moment ago you were going to tell me everything.” I could hear her desperation.

  “Catriona, do you know what I would ordinarily do to someone who violated my trust and went through my apartment?”

  She flinched; I didn’t need to see it. I felt it. There was a pause, and then she said, barely audible, “I don’t think that’s why you want me to go.”

  I looked around at her and she took a step backward. She was half dressed, trying to wrap the torn pieces of her blouse around her well enough that the coat would make everything seem normal. It should have been ridiculous. It wasn’t.

  “You don’t know the first thing that’s happening here.” I made my voice as brutal as I could. She had to understand. She had to leave. “You don’t understand anything. This is dangerous. Sebastian is dangerous.” I paused. “I’m dangerous. Do you see, Catriona?”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t know that by now?” She looked me dead in the eyes. “Tell me. Please, tell me. You went to have the tests run on you, yourself? Why?”

  And there was hope in her eyes. That was what broke me.

  Who else had ever even hoped that I might be a good person? I looked back out the window and took a moment to steady myself before I spoke again.

  “I trust this will remain between us?”

  - Catriona -

  He didn’t speak on the car ride back to his apartment. He stared out the window and I tried to sit in silence as if I were not raging with impatience. As if I were not terrified to my core at what I was about to hear.

  I had made an agreement I wasn’t proud of. Should I tell him?

  I would wait to see what he said. I forced myself to stay silent, lacing my fingers together and twisting them until he ached. When I caught him watching me. I looked away; I wanted to throw up, I was so afraid.

  We did not speak in the elevator. He went into his bedroom, motioning for me to stay in the living room, and came back with a button-down shirt to replace the blouse. He was already turning away to get a drink, and so I didn’t have to figure out how warmly to smile, or what to say. When he came back, with a glass of scotch for each of us, I could tell he had already chosen his words.

  “I was fifteen when I found out what Ellison Corp did.” He sat down, elbows on his knees, and he rolled the glass between his palms.

  I said nothing, watching the amber liquid swirl. Like him, I had no desire to drink it; there seemed to be safety, simply a grab at normalcy, just in holding it.

  “I’d seen science fiction movies. I never really liked science fiction.” He paused, and lifted a shoulder. “I’ve never seen the point in saying something sideways when you could just say it. But—” He sighed. “That was what it was like, you understand? It was like finding out that there was some super secret, videogame type of crazy…it was everything you’d be afraid of. It was the worst thing I could imagine. I saw pictures of it. I wasn’t supposed to, it was just supposed to be Sebastian.” His face twisted.

  “How did you find them?” It was the wrong question, but I sensed he was glad that I had asked.

  “Sebastian showed them to me.” His lips twisted bitterly. “I think he knew what was going to happen.”

  “What did happen?”

  “I threw up.” He didn’t look at me. “I threw up, and then I went to my dad and told him to explain everything. He was mad at Sebastian—I don’t know what happened, but I know Sebastian neve
r did anything like that again. You…didn’t cross my father.”

  I felt a chill. “I’m sorry.”

  “Does that change anything?” His eyes met mine for one moment and then he shook his head, looking away. “He didn’t have to do it again.” The voice almost didn’t sound human. “Because he’d proved to our father what I was.”

  “What you were?” It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.

  “I was the weak one.” He looked like he was about to choke on it. One hand clenched beside the glass. “All our life, it was—it was life or death with me and Sebastian. Always. From when we were children. And our father encouraged it. He wanted to know which one of us to back. Which one was the strong one. Sebastian proved it, and I…did something stupid.”

  “Throwing up when you—”

  “Oh, not that.” He took a sip, the cocky mannerisms back. One brow lifted, and the humor, however fleeting, was real. “I went up against him. I tried to turn him in.”

  I nearly dropped the glass. I had frozen, every fiber of me crying out for me to move. Let him finish the story. You don’t know how it ends.

  Hope could be cruel, I reminded myself.

  And then I realized what he was saying.

  “The government already knew,” I said quietly.

  He tipped his head back, assessing me.

  “I figured it out. It was little things. And then I—today—I looked up the laws. It’s not illegal if it’s for the government.”

  “So you know how the story ends.” He drained his glass bitterly.

  “No.” I shook my head, meeting his eyes. “It wasn’t just revenge, was it?”

  “Would you be disappointed if it were? No, don’t answer, I can see it in your eyes.” He lifted one shoulder, elegant despite the pain I could see in every line of him. “No. It wasn’t just revenge. But…there was some revenge to it. I wanted to destroy it all.”

  I tried to stop my heart from racing, but there was no use. I wanted so desperately to hear what he had to say. I wanted him to be innocent in all of this.

  “I made myself the heir,” he told me simply. He was staring at the cold hearth, eyes distant. “It was never going to change my father’s opinion. That was the worst part of it. I shouldn’t have wanted his approval anymore. And I knew I shouldn’t want to screw him over, too. It was hard to see him laugh with his friends, though. He thought I was worthless. He thought I was trying to regain his trust.”

  I didn’t understand. I tried to think, frowning. “If not him…”

  “Everyone else.” He looked over at me, and his smile was the coldest thing I had ever seen. “Everyone else,” he repeated. “I needed to be good enough that when my father died…I was better than Sebastian. He didn’t see it coming. He saw the same thing as my father. He didn’t see what I’d become, he measured everything…by what our father thought. And that’s how I ruined him.”

  “What…” I didn’t want to know. When he looked over at me, I forced the question out anyway. “What did you do to him?”

  “You know you don’t want to know the answer to that.” He nodded at the glass. “Are you going to drink that?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked down at the glass. I wasn’t ready for the burn and blur of alcohol in my blood. “So why did you get tests done on yourself?”

  “Because my father cast a very long shadow,” he said slowly. He closed his eyes and shook his head, a minute movement; he seemed ashamed of the poetry of it. “It’s possible to run a company without knowing much of what goes on there. I knew, of course. I knew. But they knew my face. They knew what to hide. So I went to the people who didn’t care—the scientists.”

  “You let them…” My throat closed. “What did you let them do?” All of a sudden, I remembered the scar on Sebastian’s hand. What did you do to the rest of them?

  You know you don’t want to know.

  “Does it matter?” He lifted one shoulder.

  “And…since then…”

  “You know it’s not as simple as saying something to the papers, right? You know. Or you would have told your old boss, wouldn’t you? You had the opening.”

  I swallowed and looked away. He didn’t know the truth. He didn’t. Did he?

  “But you run the company. You can shut it down.”

  “It’s not that simple,” he told me. “Contracts…were signed. A lot of the projects are classified. Burning it down, making sure I get everyone—I have to be careful.”

  “Not to catch the wrong people?”

  “Innocents have already died for this. I care more about getting every one of the guilty ones.” He didn’t look at me, but I saw his smile. “You don’t like that. I can feel it.”

  “Of course I don’t—”

  “What happens if they get away?” he asked me brutally. “If they can go somewhere else and do this again? Because they will. They’ll do everything they can get away with. And I am going to burn it down before I give them the chance. I am going to ruin every. Single. One of them. If you don’t like it…you can walk out that door.”

  He waited, and I looked down into my glass. I did. I wanted to walk away. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t worth it to take innocents along with the bad guys. I wanted to be able to draw the line in the sand and tell him what his compromise was costing all of us.

  I understood. God help me, I understood. I considered the bargain, considered what it would cost to go back on it now, and knew I had no choice. I tossed back my drink in one gulp and set the glass down on the table, looking him dead in the eye. He raised one eyebrow to see me wince at the burn of the alcohol.

  “I’m not leaving,” I told him.

  I saw something kindle in his eyes, a savage pleasure. Something he would never name. He set down his glass as well, and then he hesitated.

  “Dominick?” My voice was tentative.

  He looked away, and I saw him come to a decision. When he stood, he did not look back.

  “Come with me.”

  ***

  He half threw me onto the bed, eyes traveling appreciatively over me. “Leave the shirt. You look good in it.”

  I blushed. Wearing his clothes, drinking scotch in his apartment, the sweet relationship things you did…just usually not after your boyfriend told you his plan to take down a Fortune 500 company and some government officials.

  I wanted to tell him everything. I sat up, opening my mouth, and he laid a single finger on my lips.

  “Not yet.” Something flashed in his eyes. Sadness? It was gone too quickly for me to see.

  I frowned, and he guided me back to lie prone, his lips brushing mine, touching my neck, burning where he kissed the tiny sliver of exposed skin on my chest. His fingers found the zipper of my skirt and slid it off, and my panties followed. When his fingers slipped inside me, I moaned his name.

  “Already wet for me.” I could feel his smile when he kissed me. “Good girl. Turn over.”

  I felt unaccountably shy, worried about disappointing him. When he pulled my hands behind my back and bound them, I wriggled my fingers, testing the bonds. I felt him slip his fingers between the rope and my skin, making sure my circulation wouldn’t be cut off, but I couldn’t get my hands free—I tried, instinctively, and got a slap on the ass for my trouble.

  He helped me kneel, brushing my hair back from my face, and tied a blindfold over my eyes. I heard him walk to the corner of the room, where he kept the toys, and my mind filled with images: the toy in my ass again, the flick of the whip against my skin, my lips around his cock.

  The silence lasted so long that I felt the first prickle of unease. I looked around, trying to sense him. Was he still there? Had he left? The blindfold covered my ears as well, and I might have missed—

  There was no way to miss the sound of a gun cocking. I froze.

  “So, Catriona.” His voice was as cold as death. “Now it’s your turn. I told you I was going to ask again someday, and this time…you’re going to answer me. Who do you wo
rk for?”

  ***

  END OF BOOK 5

  Get Book 6 here:

  DANGEROUS TRUTHS

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  Thanks for reading!

  -Kira