Restrained Under His Duty

by Stacey Kennedy

  He shakes his head, still reading. “Knowing me, I would delete something. Why change something that works?”

  In all honesty, I never want him to change, not truly. Even if my life would be a lot easier doing things electronically, he’s old school, and in today’s busy and crazy world, I kinda like that about him.

  My father eventually places the papers down onto his lap and watches me again. I’ve seen this look a thousand times. He’s worried about me. So I’m not really surprised when he asks, “Do we need to talk about you and Blackwood being in the tabloids?”

  I shake my head. “Blackwood made it clear he’s taking care of the problem.”

  “I have no doubt he will,” Dad says gently. “But are you worried at all about being in the magazines?”

  “Not really,” I admit. Because right now the tabloids are the last thing I’m worried about.

  “Then what’s wrong?” he presses.

  “Nothing.”

  Dad frowns. “Hadley.”

  “Father.”

  He snorts a laugh. “You’ll discuss this with your mother then?”

  Which in Dad talk means he thinks this is a woman’s problem. And I can only imagine he thinks it’s because I’m head over heels in love with Ryder and things are all complicated. Which, of course, they are, but he doesn’t need to know that. “Yes, I’ll talk to her.” But not about Ryder, of course. Or about the video. I’ll chat about normal everyday life, so that’s not really a lie, right?

  Dad’s lips thin. “You wouldn’t be lying to me, would you?”

  Of course he misses nothing. “Me?” I point to my chest and attempt to look appalled. “Your princess? Never.”

  Dad stands up from his chair and gives a dry laugh. “You are a lot of things, Hadley, but I don’t think a princess is one of them.” He taps the back of the chair as he moves around it, then he holds up the papers. “Thanks for this.”

  “You’re welcome. Now hurry up, you have a meeting in ten minutes.”

  He swats at the air, as he usually does when I’m hurrying him along, and grumbles something incoherent as he leaves the office.

  In the silence, as my coworkers stride by my office door, my mind circles back to what he said: I don’t think a princess is one of them. He’s right—I’ve never been a princess. I’ve always stood on my own two feet. I’ve made my own choices. And I’ve never had a single thing handed to me.

  I can’t run scared because of this threat. I need to fight back. Now how to do that?

  Ryder instantly comes to mind. He would fix this for me. Hell, he’s the guy I know would remove any threat facing me down, not out of duty but because they dared to put me in danger.

  Only problem: He’s the last person I want to know about that video.

  Ryder

  Later that evening, with my workday behind me, I park my bright blue Ram truck in between the sleek Audi and the Bentley in front of the old factory that’s home to Blackwood Security. Tonight, I have no intention of walking around to the front and checking in with my staff. The day has been long and my mind is lingering very close to exhaustion. I need to jerk off and get Hadley finally off my mind, and then I need to sleep to ensure I stay sharp around her.

  I sigh and exit my truck, catching the voices coming from the back door of the factory. I move toward them, and beneath the lighting above the door, I find three imposing men, Micah Holt, Gabe O’Keefe, and Darius Bennett.

  Tonight Micah and Darius wear their normal tailored suits while Gabe sticks to tradition as the outcast of the group, wearing dark jeans and a black T-shirt with O’KEEFE’S PUB written across the front. His dark brown hair is messily styled, and by all appearances, you’d never know he’s nearly as rich as the others.

  To the public, these are the most powerful men in San Francisco. To me, they’re longtime friends, full of adventure, and like me push life’s limits and enjoy wild sex. Or maybe that was what we were in our twenties more than now.

  As a group of twenty-year-olds, we formed a secret society we called the Dominants’ Council. If that name alone didn’t show our egos, the number of women we’ve shared under that title would. But they weren’t just any women. They were submissive women who attended the four sex clubs we own in the city. Promiscuous sex was the endgame.

  But now, things have changed.

  We are at a crossroads. Each one of us is choosing a different direction, and life is changing, as we all knew at some point it would.

  With our responsibilities to our jobs, what the Dominants’ Council stood for, and our clubs, took a back seat. Now with the threat of someone recording our private conversations to print our dirty little secrets, the change in our priorities and the lack of involvement with our clubs couldn’t have come at a better time. We have to be cautious in what we do.

  First, the tabloid Gotcha! went after Micah. Then they printed stories about Darius. Now I’m their focus. I can only imagine Gabe’s grimly anticipating his turn. But with each story that passes, I’m slowly getting closer to the person selling us out. I can’t stop until I find and remove the threat. Because what’s worse than the tabloid printing false stories is them printing real ones. Private parts of our lives that we don’t want the world to know.

  As I approach, the first to greet me is Gabe. “About time you got here.”

  “Sorry I’m late,” I reply, and they part, letting me step in closer to the door. I press my thumb against the fingerprint scanner. One beep later, the door unlatches and I open it, letting the others enter first before I step inside my house. I flick on the lights and move into the open-concept loft. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Does your long day have anything to do with our problem?” Micah asks, following closely behind me.

  “It just might,” I admit, heading toward the kitchen bar, outfitted with a black marble countertop. The men take their seats on the leather couches in my living room, while I grab four beers from the fridge. As I walk back to join them, I hand out the beers and drop down into the recliner, cracking open my own. “A theory is beginning to present itself.”

  Darius tosses his beer cap onto the coffee table and runs a hand through his brown hair. “What theory?”

  I take a big, long gulp of my beer, relishing the crisp brew before addressing them again. “Earlier tonight, I had a chat with the senator. He’s facing some corruption in Washington.”

  Eyebrows drawn over his sharp hazel eyes, Gabe asks, “Which has to do with us because…?”

  It took Darius becoming the tabloids’ focus to discover the recording devices, and that only happened because he realized something he’d said at Gabe’s pub was printed in the magazine nearly word for word. But now I’ve discovered a new layer to this madness. “I know we thought this was personal, but I’m beginning to think the tabloids and the bugs have nothing to do with any of you,” I state.

  Obviously catching on, Micah leans back against the couch, beer resting on the armrest. “You’re thinking someone’s after the senator?”

  I nod and explain, “It’s the most logical assumption that I can come up with. Whoever is behind this must have money, considering the equipment they used.” When I’d first discovered the bugs in Gabe’s bar after Darius’s revelation, I found high-tech listening devices that I highly doubted a grocery store tabloid would have at their disposal. “And they had to have a good reason for wanting to bug us. I cannot fathom that anyone we know would be behind this simply for the money they’d get paid for the info.” Also, because no one that we personally knew seemed to be behind this. “There needs to be another motive.” I pause and let them in on what I’ve thought through. “The truth is, before all this started, none of our lives were that interesting.”

  Gabe snorts and grins. “Speak for yourself.”

  “Which actually only proves my point,” I add. “The tabloids should have focused on you first. Your life is one of women and excitement.” To Micah, I say, “You were single for a long time, only recentl
y dating Allie.” Who is also Darius’s baby sister.

  “That’s true,” Micah comments.

  I add to Darius, “And you were in the same boat until Taylor.” She’s an old girlfriend who came back into his life and was now to be his wife. “At this point, I can understand the tabloids being all over your stories. They have some juice to them. But before…” I let my words trail off for the unspoken thought to fill their minds.

  Gabe sees my point and nods. “So, you think that the motive is to bring the senator down?”

  “I think that the senator pisses off people every day,” I explain. “I think that those same people have the means to acquire that kind of apparatus. I also think they have the motive to listen in on my conversations in the hope that I will say something they can use against the senator, because who is the senator’s closest confidant?”

  “You,” Darius offers.

  I nod. “And who are my closest confidants?”

  “Us,” Micah adds.

  “Precisely. It makes sense that if someone wanted dirt on the senator they’d go through me. It also makes sense that they’d look for my weak spot.” And Gabe’s pub is where I let my guard down. “There are still missing pieces here.” I see the question in everyone’s eyes, Is he right? But I know I am, so I push on. “But I finally feel like I’m on the right track.”

  Darius watches me a moment, his chiseled jaw clenches twice. “I can see where you’re going with this. But why would the stories about us be printed, too?”

  “Perhaps it’s a decoy.” I offer the logical assumption. “It’s possible they are giving up dirt on all of us to make this look personal, when it’s not that at all.”

  Micah snorts. “Which is exactly how we’ve looked at it since all this began.” He shakes his head in frustration, placing his beer down hard on the coffee table in front of him. “Did the senator say who exactly is attempting to corrupt him?”

  “I get the impression it’s not one person specifically. I can only imagine as a senator, he’s getting some push from the other side, but at this point, it’s only gentle pushing, nothing too forceful.”

  Darius asks, “But it could turn into something to worry about?”

  I nod. “It can always become dirty, that’s the game of politics.”

  Gabe drums a beat with his fingers against his beer bottle, still resting on his armrest. “What exactly does that mean for us then?”

  “It means you need to be extremely careful.”

  Micah gives a dry laugh. “More careful than we’re already being?”

  “More careful than you can possibly imagine. It’s a different game if we’re playing against politicians rather than the tabloids. This isn’t about getting a hot story. This is about shifting power. And that means there’s no limits to where they’ll go.”

  Heavy silence fills the room, and it’s a silence I understand. Weeks ago we worried that the tabloids would catch wind of us owning sex clubs and it would be the next big scandal. But that’s the least of our worries. Micah has Allie. Darius has Taylor. Now they are tied up in all this and it’s pretty obvious from their firm expressions they don’t want their women involved. And for that I can’t blame them. I don’t want Hadley near this either, and she’s not even mine.

  Micah finally breaks the silence. “Will you continue to search for the person behind the bugs?”

  “Honestly, it’s a dead end,” I admit, because I’d investigated all angles after Darius was in the tabloids and we first discovered the bugs. “There were no fingerprints to find out who put them there. Yes, if I find the person behind them, I’m sure it will lead us to the one responsible for all of this, and I can only imagine that will lead me to some shady politician. But I’ve gotten nowhere on that front.” I ask Gabe, “Have you gotten anywhere on the video?” The last time we talked, we discussed the security cameras that Gabe had put in his pub. From what I’d seen, an hour had been cut from the feed and Gabe was contacting the company to see if they had a backup.

  He shakes his head. “Sadly, I’m helpless there. That missing hour couldn’t be recovered from the server.”

  Thick tension fills the room, nearly vibrating off the men around me, till Darius finally asks me, “What’s your plan then?”

  “I’ll need to focus on the senator for the time being,” I tell them, carefully choosing my words so as not to seem disloyal to them. “If I find out more about the senator’s situation, I think it will lead to the person recording us.”

  Nods follow, and it’s an amazing show of our long friendship that no one questions my plan or doubts my direction.

  Gabe asks, “What do you need us to do?”

  “Keep playing along,” I instruct the group. “We need to wait for that story about Micah being investigated for fraud to come out.” Days ago, we’d purposely fed the tabloids this story while sitting in the pub, knowing the bugs would record our conversation. One, to keep the heat off us for a little while so we could find out who was tapping us. Two, because the story had no truth to it whatsoever. In time, the tabloids would learn this. But that’s why I hadn’t removed the bugs. We needed to control what the tabloids were printing. None of us wanted our dirty laundry spread across a cover for all to read. We all had something to hide. “While they’ve recently taken an odd interest in me, I’m hoping you can deter them. I need them off my ass.” I pause, considering my next steps. “Perhaps go back to the pub, talk again at the table, and leave something on the recording that’s juicier that they could print regarding this fraud.”

  Micah nods. “That I can do, but since they haven’t printed the story yet, I wonder what else could entice them to do it now?”

  “Whatever you do, make the story good,” I say, feeling the weight of all this landing on my shoulders. “The second the stories stop, whoever is responsible for this is going to realize we’ve caught on to what they’re doing. The best chance at finding them is keeping up the illusion that we are clueless about it all.”

  “And you have no doubt you’ll find them?” Gabe asks.

  “Find?” I shake my head, thinking of the position they’ve put Hadley and my friends in, and promise, “No, I’m going to squeeze until they have nowhere to run.”

  Chapter 4

  Ryder

  On the forty-ninth floor of the high-rise, I enter the glass-encased condo offering a bird’s-eye view of the San Francisco Bay and city skyline. I frown at the floor-to-ceiling windows in her living room. I would never have picked this condo for her. She’s too exposed.

  “Are you planning on telling me why you’re here bright and early on a Saturday morning?” Hadley asks, closing the front door. “Don’t you ever take a day off?”

  I glance over my shoulder, finding her giving me a puzzled look. Believe me, this is the last place I want to be is what I want to say to her. Being alone with Hadley spells danger of all types. But instead of telling her that, I raise a finger to my lips, silencing her questions. I scan her living room to find some way to communicate with her other than verbally and spot a notepad and pen by the telephone. Feeling tense and not particularly thrilled at the moment, I grab it and quickly jot down Checking for bugs on the piece of paper before handing her the note.

  She reads my scribble before her worried eyes return to mine. Of course I want to reassure her, but at the moment I have a job to do, and that job isn’t comforting her, it’s ensuring she’s safe.

  Although I’m determined to do exactly that, my focus is drawn to her…how fresh her face looks without makeup and how her loose bun shows off the gorgeous lines of her neck. The way her yoga pants accentuate her curves, and how her tight T-shirt emphasizes her breasts. It’s easy to imagine how she’d feel pressed against me. How she’d taste. Even how she’d sound when she comes. I clench my fists, fighting off the desire to grab her and make her mine once and for all.

  You’re not here to fuck her, dipshit.

  I focus on the task at hand and take the bug detection device out
from my back pocket. Not looking at her again, because that’s where danger lives, I begin scanning over the mahogany hardwood floors, up to the smooth ceilings, then comb through all of Hadley’s things, until I end up in the one room I don’t want to be anywhere near: her bedroom.

  There’s nothing special about this room but my heart is racing. A queen-size bed rests against the wall with a lavender-colored duvet and fluffy decorative pillows on top. There’s a night table beside the bed with a reading lamp, a chair in the corner, and a dresser on the far wall, and that’s about it. Regardless, sweat is forming on my upper lip at the way her sheets are crumpled. I don’t think I can endure the punishment of thinking of her in her bed.

  My mind begins to wonder. Surely, she’s touched herself in that bed. Maybe even climaxed there…Fuck, Blackwood, get it together.

  I force the carnal thoughts and images in my mind aside and move swiftly through her room, examining everything from the lamp on her end table to the chandelier hanging from the ceiling to the pictures on her walls to her closet and under her bed. I find nothing, which is good and bad as I’m sure there’s something in her place. Last, I am forced to comb through her drawers and save the best for last: her panty drawer.

  It’s when I sift through the lacy garments I realize what hell this really is—the girl has every thong, really more like butt floss, imaginable and as I get tangled in a red pair she makes a smartass comment, “Like what you see, Blackwood?”

  I don’t dare look over my shoulder. I’ll be fucked if I do. I hear the heat in her voice. I don’t need to see it in her eyes, too. My cock is already hard, throbbing for release, and I’ve been tortured enough.

  “That black thong happens to be my favorite,” she remarks in a raspy tone that I’m sure she knows has an effect on me.

  I shift the particular thong she’s discussing to the side, cursing my damn cock as it hardens to steel in my pants. That lace has touched her in places I want to touch her…no, where I want to taste her. I’ve never been so jealous of a pair of panties in my life, so I refocus my thoughts. I ignore how incredible the garter belts, bras, and every other damn lacy thing feels against my fingers as I ensure there’s not a damned recording device in her drawer.