She was so busy staring at his face, she didn’t realize what toy he’d selected until he slapped his palm with a hairbrush. She jumped and stared at the wooden brush with some trepidation.
“Thorn, look at me,” Veles said as he neared her.
She dragged her gaze from the brush to his face. Had he seen her weakness?
“You have to trust me,” he whispered.
“I do, Sir.” At least as much as she could trust anyone right now.
“Good.”
Once more they swayed, and this time he ran the bristles up her sides. The rough, abrasive tines of the brush made her wince and try to side-step the attention, but he moved with her, rubbing it up and down, reaching around to her backside so she pressed herself to his chest.
Pop!
He smacked her ass with the flat of the brush. She yelped and began to shake as tremors of fear rushed through her. The sound of the house, the music and moans of pleasure crashed back into her, leaving Rosaline momentarily disoriented. Another swat to her ass had both cheeks burning, and her shoulders stinging in remembered pain.
“No, please, no,” she got out through her dry throat. “Please, no.”
“Thorn?”
“No,” she said louder.
“Rosaline, listen to me. No or red?”
“Red. Red. Red. Red.”
In an instant her hands were released and she was swept up in the safe, strong arms of—whoever he was. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Andy, but she could still feel his ghost haunting her.
***
Kaspar cradled the slight woman in his arms. One thing was clear, demons haunted her, and whoever it was that broke her deserved a slow, painful death. Though she no longer shook, neither had she picked her head up off his shoulder.
He didn’t know if their play space was cleaned up, or if one of the attendants had blown out the candles. None of that mattered except she’d reached a point where she could no longer continue. More than anything, he was concerned with her well-being.
The same woman who had taken his coat earlier in the evening peered around the door. She held two bottles of water out toward him. He nodded, and she tip-toed to the small table next to the sofa and left them there. He’d barged through a few closed doors before finding a quiet, out of the way corner that appeared to be Fletcher’s office.
“Do you want something to drink?” he asked her as the door creaked shut.
Rosaline peered at the water.
He cracked the seal and handed it to her. She took it and drank deeply, closing her eyes and shutting out the world.
What had made her snap? The hairbrush? A little spanking?
“Thanks.” She handed the bottle back to him, and he placed it on the table. “I…I can go now, if you like.”
Rosaline wouldn’t look at him. The sparkle was gone. There was defeat in her voice.
“I’d like to know what happened.” He rubbed her arms, wishing he had a blanket to wrap her in.
“Bad memories. It wasn’t you.”
“But it was me.”
“Look, I’ve got—issues. Clearly I need to take care of them before I play with anyone.” She scrambled off his lap and walked a few paces away.
Kaspar didn’t know her, but he knew she didn’t need to be alone right now with her demons. He got to his feet and cleared his throat as he closed the distance between them. She didn’t run away from him, so he wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her tight.
She shuddered and relaxed, allowing his embrace.
“Tell me.” So he could break the no good prick’s neck. Kaspar worked with cops. He didn’t doubt that in a pinch, he could dispose of a body so well, even his co-workers couldn’t find it.
“You don’t want to hear my sob story.”
If she didn’t want to tell him, he wouldn’t press her for more information. But he also wasn’t going to walk away.
“I’m cold,” she said after a moment, her voice gone high.
He stepped back and unbuttoned his shirt. It was all he had to give her. She turned and he laid it over her shoulders, buttoning a few buttons to hide her distracting breasts from view.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Sit.” He urged her back toward the couch, and she settled in his lap without more than a pat on his thigh for invitation. He had enough problems of his own to manage, but the moment he’d said yes to playing with her, he said yes to many other things, which included being there for her when she needed a shoulder.
“Things didn’t end well with my last Dominant.” She slanted a glance at him.
That much he’d figured out.
“We were together for, shit, a year and a half? The last six months he started hanging out with a new group of friends. They don’t go to Fletcher’s parties, so I didn’t know them, but Andy was never good at making friends. They started telling him we weren’t doing kink the right way, that in order to really be a Dom, he had to use certain toys, we had to act in a certain way.”
“One true way’ers?” God, he hated people who thought there was only one way to do shit. He ground his teeth together.
“Yeah. Things…went downhill. Fast. Before I knew it, he’s trying to do stuff we’d agreed we’d never do.” She hunched her shoulders and her gaze grew distant.
Kaspar wound a lock of her hair around his finger and tugged. She glanced at him and smiled, some of that sensual grace back in her.
“Let me guess. He told you if you loved him, you’d do this stuff, and then he hurt you?”
She nodded and glanced away.
Kaspar took a deep breath. He’d have to talk to Fletcher about the guy. Chances were, Fletcher would know who he was. There wasn’t a BDSM police, but the least Kaspar could do was look into the guy.
“This might not be my place, and feel free to tell me to fuck off, but I don’t think you should be alone tonight, maybe not even tomorrow.” He held his tongue, wanting to offer his apartment, but he hadn’t bothered to fully unpack yet. It wasn’t the place to take a lady.
“Well…I mean…yeah.” She nodded and sucked in a deep breath. “I guess you don’t want to do breakfast, huh?”
“I would, but if you’d rather have one of your girlfriends over-”
“No.” She shook her head.
Fuck. Tonight was going to test his control.
“Okay. One thing though. No sex. And it’s not because I don’t want you, or because I think you did anything wrong.” He cupped her cheek, forcing her to look at him. “When I’m in you, I want to know I’m the only person you’re thinking about. Got it?”
Rosaline nodded, her big, dark eyes pulling him under her spell. It was going to be a long, goddamned night.
Chapter Three
Rosaline stared at the ceiling, watching the beams of light leaking in around her blackout curtains lengthen. She’d slept the sleep of the dead for a few hours, nestled against Veles. Even now, he had an arm wrapped tight around her, his deep, even breathing fanning across her neck.
Last night was a nail in her coffin. She was damaged. Before Andy, she’d never had to use her safe word to end a scene, because she could trust her partners. He’d stolen that trust from her. In the light of day, she knew Veles wasn’t the kind of man to hurt her. Sure, he’d push her, but he was the kind to respect her wishes and limits. And she’d still crumbled.
Restless, she wiggled out from under his hold and rolled to the side of the bed, sat up and took a deep breath. She got to her feet and picked her way carefully across the bedroom. Two months in her new place, and she still ran into furniture. But that was her fault for moving things every couple of days.
She wrapped her arms around herself as she tip-toed into her living room and pulled the frosted glass pocket door closed. For a moment, she rested her forehead against the cool surface. She still wore his shirt and the scent of the cologne teased her nose. She grabbed the fabric, pressed her nose into the material and took a deep breath.
Who was Veles
? And why did that name still tickle her memory?
Rosaline might not be able to cure her ailments in a night, but if she’d ever run across Veles, he would be in her files. She crossed her pristine, white living space to a set of metal doors that had a keypad entry. The condo’s high-tech amenities were the only reason she’d made the move. Things like this panic room, or in her case, a controlled environment for her personal rig, were worth triple the asking price.
The doors whisked shut behind her, shutting her into her personal sanctuary.
A dozen monitors created a half shell around an egg-shaped chair. She sank into the cushions, crossed her legs, and pulled the keyboard tray toward her. A few keystrokes later, the screens filled with browsers, lines of code, and a few projects. The monitor in the bottom left flickered with a new video message. She smiled at the tags: Mother, Father.
Who would have guessed that hacking would lead to a multi-million dollar company? Not her parents, but she made damn sure to take care of them the way they’d never been able to provide for her and her sisters. For all the headaches she’d given them, they deserved to be kept in the lap of luxury for the rest of their lives.
She’d save the video for later, when she needed a pick-me-up.
First, to crack the secret of who the man in her bedroom really was.
It didn’t concern her to not know his real identity. She doubted Veles was his real name. In her life, there were two circles of people: the hackers and the kinksters. Neither group used real names, most of the time out of a need to protect their privacy. But it was a thin barrier.
A red light flashed in the middle of the screens.
She turned, peering at the door and the security monitor.
Veles stood on the other side, examining the digital pad mounted on the wall. The only way to gain entry to the room was by scanning her hand. At least that was the only way most people would see.
He was…handsome. From the vantage point of the camera, she had a lovely view of his bare back. He had tan lines on his arms and a tribal tattoo that lay over his left shoulder, wrapping around his shoulder blade.
She smiled as he popped the exterior pad off, exposing the wires.
Smart move—if she hadn’t already tweaked the system for that known weakness.
Rosaline pressed the entry button and the doors whisked open. She did not feel like fixing the door today.
Veles straightened, but showed no remorse for having been caught in the act of breaking and entering. He stepped into her sanctuary as if he belonged there and glanced around.
“Good morning.” His voice was low, with a little twang to it she hadn’t heard the night before. “I see you found my shirt.”
“I did.” She glanced down at herself, still clothed in his button down and her panties.
“It looks better on you.”
She smiled and rocked the chair from side to side.
Veles glanced at the screens, taking in her set-up with little to no surprise. Interesting. Who the hell was he?
“Nice rig. I’m guessing it’s not out of the box?”
“Not a piece.” She’d built every bit of it herself. There was no other way to get the job done to her specifications.
“Nice.”
“So…you wanted help with something?”
“We can discuss it over breakfast.”
He was smart enough to identify her security system on sight and know at least one way to disarm it. He expected her to have this rig. He’d also called her by her given name last night.
“Why wait?” She shrugged.
Veles frowned. “Trying to get rid of me?”
“Trying to get business out of the way so I can enjoy breakfast.” She didn’t know if she wanted to get rid of him yet. A lot depended on what he would say next.
Veles sighed and scrubbed his face. Worry, and maybe stress, creased his brow. He leaned against the bit of unoccupied wall space and stared at the floor a moment.
This was bigger than having a computer problem.
“My name is Kaspar Hrna. I work in the New Orleans Police Department’s computer forensics department.”
“Casper, as in, Casper the friendly ghost?”
He stared at her. Clearly he’d heard that one a few times and was not amused.
“Sorry. You’re a cop. So, did I do something wrong?” She was a professional hacker. There was a lot of skirting the rules in what she did, but it was all above board now.
“No. I…A few months ago, I transferred here from Dallas to take over a special unit. In my audit of the systems, I found backdoors someone had set up to get into our servers. I left them, and set a program to log the access of those doors. They close and reappear in what appears to be a random pattern.”
“Why not shut them?” It was an interesting bit of code she could probably dissect, but why did he need her help?
“I tried that. They just made another one. Someone accessed the system and got into a specific patrol officer’s computer. The one in his patrol car. He responded to a call, and they guided him to an intersection, and when he got there a group of men in masks pulled him out of the car and killed him. Right there in the street. I don’t know who is doing this, but they’re good at what they do. Probably better than me. And it’s gone beyond accessing records and changing things. They’ve killed someone.”
Rosaline stared at him, shocked at the story he’d just spun.
“Prove it,” she said.
He gestured to her keyboard. “May I?”
She pushed the keyboard tray toward him and scooted over a bit. He perched on the edge of the chair and pulled up a new browser. She watched his long, artistic fingers fly across the keyboard with one eye, and the screen with the other. In a matter of seconds he was into the PD system via a website for a donut store she doubted was real. A few keystrokes later, he pulled up a video window and pressed play.
It was a dash cam, likely from a cop car. The street was clear as it pulled up to a red light and eased to a stop at the curb. Instantly, several figures in black bolted out of a door.
“Stop,” she snapped, covering her eyes with her hands.
The mechanical hum of computer fans stretched thin. The only sound in the room.
“I need help,” he said. “I need to stop this before someone else gets killed. That cop? He was supposed to testify in two weeks as the only eyewitness the prosecution had against this guy who beat and killed his kid. The officer was walking home from a corner store, came around and saw the guy do it. He tried to save the kid, but he couldn’t. Without his testimony, the guy might get off. I really need help.”
She peered at him, torn between shock and compassion. “Why not just call my office?”
“I did. Your receptionist doesn’t like me much.”
“Shit. I did tell her to not bother me because...it doesn’t matter.” She reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Something like this is going to take a lot of time to pick apart.”
“I know. You should also know, I can’t pay your fee.”
“Fuck the money.” She’d grown up in New Orleans, and though it wasn’t the case everywhere, the cops who’d worked the beats in her low-income neighborhoods had cared. They’d watched the playgrounds, walked her across streets and even ran bullies off. Money was the last thing she was thinking about.
She pulled the keyboard tray over her lap. It didn’t take her long to access the OS kernel, and start examining the code, looking for anything familiar. All hackers had signatures, a personal flare. Identifying the perpetrator was started with finding that identifier.
“Do you have any butter?” Kaspar asked.
“Butter?” Rosaline stared at him. What in the hell did that have to do with anything?
“Breakfast.”
“Uh…yeah. There’s butter in the fridge.”
“Okay.” Kaspar stood up and let himself out and into the condo. She stared at the closed doors a moment longer. Veles…why was that so familiar?
***
Kaspar flipped a pancake out of the skillet and onto the leaning stack of fluffy goodness.
“Veles. 1999. Scorpio. You were the one who put the jaguar pictures everywhere.” Rosaline swept out of her command center and into the living room, finger jabbing at him as she leaned over the bar.
He stared at her a moment. “That would be me.”
“Ha! I knew I remembered that name from somewhere.” She plopped down on a stool across from him and pushed a hand through her wild curls.
“Perfect timing.” He placed a plate in front of her and slid the silverware and syrup across to her.
“What’s this?” She blinked at the plate as if she’d never seen pancakes before.
“It’s breakfast.”
She looked from the plate, to him and back. “You made me breakfast?”
“That was part of the bargain.”
“I thought we’d go to IHOP or something…”
“If you’d rather—”
“Oh, hell no.” She grasped the plate with both hands and curled her body over it as if she might bite him for looking at it.
He chuckled and circled the bar to sit next to her. She poured syrup all over the stack until it almost dripped off the plate.
“Do you cook all the time?” she asked.
“When I can.”
“I might have to marry you.”
She chuckled as she popped the first bite into her mouth. The sparkle was back, and he couldn’t help but bask in her nearness, soaking it up. He watched her eat several bites before she peered sideways at him.
“Did you poison the food or something? Why aren’t you eating?”
He shrugged. “Making sure you had everything you needed first.”
She chewed slowly. It was her turn to watch him as he cut into his food and took a bite.
“I don’t recognize any of the tags yet, but whoever hacked your systems is good. I bet I know the source by the end of the day.” She licked syrup off her finger. “About last night…”
As much as Kaspar wanted to drop his utensils and wrap her in his arms, tell her she didn’t have to think about last night or the past ever again, he remained where he was. This was her life, and she had to work things out for herself.
Taming the Alpha Page 29