by Roni Loren
“Ugh. Enough staring.” She once had a professor tell her that when numbers don’t make sense, draw a picture. He’d meant charts, but she had a better idea for this. She grabbed her laptop from her bag and opened up a free-form text editor that let her draw concept maps. She needed to see these connections as more than just names on a page. She laid out her papers and started typing in the names, putting little ovals around the submissives, squares around the doms, and color-coding for gender. Then once she had everyone in there, she started to draw the lines between the people. A single line if they’d chatted in the last six months, a double line if they’d played, a squiggly line if they were exclusively paired.
She got lost in the project and regained her hyperfocus. Lines started to fill the page, ovals joining others, connections becoming more obvious. And the more she added, the more a pattern started to emerge. A very obvious one.
She frowned, checked her work. At the center of the tangled web of lines and shapes were three names, three dominants. And one was very, very familiar. A pit settled in her stomach. Well, shit.
—
Hayes leaned back in his office chair and massaged his temples. He’d finished most of what he’d planned to do this afternoon, but his head was starting to throb. Probably because all the blood in his brain had been rerouted to his dick for an hour after he’d left Ren’s office. Sharing a bed with Ren this week had been earth-shifting enough, but seeing him with Cora today had poked the old Hayes with a cattle prod, making him want to fight to the surface. It’d taken everything he had to turn Cora down when she’d asked him to join in. But the risk was too high. Despite what he’d witnessed this afternoon, Cora was still a stranger to him.
A sexy, smart, drive-him-to-distraction stranger.
“Knock, knock.”
The sound startled him and he lowered his hand from his eyes, his gaze shifting to the doorway. Cora was leaning in with a tentative smile. She’d put her hair in two braids and had thrown on a gray army-style jacket over her blue Smurfs T-shirt. It shouldn’t have been alluring in any way, but he couldn’t help the way his baser side perked up at the sight of her. He’d like to undo those braids. Or maybe have Ren hold them while he guided her mouth onto Hayes’s cock.
He groaned inwardly. She’s coming here about work. Put the dirty thoughts away. He needed to show her that what had happened didn’t change how he’d treat her at work. “Hey.”
“Am I interrupting?”
He sat forward in his seat, the chair squeaking under his weight. “I could use the interruption. What’s up?”
She stepped inside, a notepad and file folder clutched to her chest, and a hesitant look on her face. “Okay, so I’m not going to lie. This feels a little awkward.”
He gave her a brief smile. “Just let it roll over you. It will pass. I promise I have the ability to be professional and to separate what happened from work. Two different worlds.”
She chewed her lip, considering him. “Okay. I can compartmentalize if you can. Plus, I need to run some stuff by you if you have time. Ren’s out at a meeting and I think you may be able to help.”
She let out a breath and he could tell she’d probably practiced this little speech, which was kind of endearing.
“Of course.” He indicated the chair in front of him for her to sit. “Tell me what you’ve got.”
Cora strode across the room and settled in the chair, a little wrinkle in her brow and a tense set to her shoulders. Unlike earlier when she’d been vibrating with energy, she suddenly seemed worn-out and . . . disturbed.
“You found something bad.”
She sighed and set the notepad down. It was filled with small, round handwriting that seemed to be no-nonsense and pretty all at the same time, just like her. “Yes and no. I’ve confirmed that no other emails went out except the one to me and the guy who jumped me. That’s the good news.”
“Okay. But?”
“But like I showed you when we first talked, a list of other profiles were accessed. I thought they’d just been read, but this week, I found others were altered. Ren got on chats with a few people and verified that there were changed safe words and new information that the customers didn’t put in. Like mine. All of them having that flavor of putting someone in a position to get hurt. All women. So it seems like our guy was planning on more of this and either got interrupted or is waiting for some reason.”
Hayes frowned. The idea of an enemy lying in wait was not a comforting one. “That’s concerning.”
“Exactly. So I started looking through site activity histories, trying to match people up, see if there were any connections that stood out. Who talked to whom. Who played with each other. If anyone was blocked or had some sort of falling-out. I mapped it out and three names kept popping up. Almost every person’s account that was accessed had interacted on some level with one of three particular players—three male dominants.”
“Okay, that’s a promising lead.”
“Right. But I couldn’t get much from their Hayven profiles. So I pulled the credit card pages of those three to get real names and addresses. I was trying to avoid that because it feels a little sticky privacy-wise, but I was out of other options. I needed real info to Google them to see if I could find any red flags.”
Hayes leaned back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his jaw. “And you found something.”
She put her fingers on top of the notepad, her expression grim. “Yeah. Two of the men seem to check out. I was able to find them on Facebook and LinkedIn, cross-reference their info. All seemed pretty standard. Neither are in tech jobs or had anything that stood out. But the third—the credit card info was dummy info. Some business that doesn’t exist—at least not online. And I couldn’t find any name connected to the account. I think that could be our guy.”
Hayes’s stomach dipped, dread curling through him. “What’s his Hayven name?”
She sighed, her face drawn. “Dmitry.”
Hayes kept his expression as placid as possible. “Just because you can’t verify who he is doesn’t mean he’s the hacker. Maybe he’s just extra cautious about protecting his identity.”
She nodded. “Maybe, but it seems suspicious. Someone smart enough to have that level of security is a flag in and of itself.”
Hayes rubbed his brow bone, the information sinking in and twisting around in his head. He obviously knew he wasn’t the hacker, but the fact that those on the list were tied to him in some way pretty much confirmed their deepest fear. “Fuck.”
Cora cleared her throat, ignoring his outburst. “And, just so you know, I could probably get more information on this guy if we need it. More than what I could find in the system. But it may mean venturing into some ethically gray areas. That’s really what I needed to run by you.”
Hayes looked up at that, wary. “What do you mean?”
She shifted in her chair, looking altogether uncomfortable. “I, well, I know Dmitry in the game. We . . . chatted regularly, developed a friendship, which just freaks me out now, thinking about it. He seemed like a good guy, but maybe this was all some part of his mind game. I was chatting with him the night of the attack. He would’ve known I was heading home.”
Hayes stared at her, only hearing half of what she’d said. “Wait, you’ve talked to Dmitry regularly?”
“Yes. I know I said I mainly observed in the game, but I was lying to protect my privacy. I guess that’s kind of a moot point now after what happened this afternoon. But the only reason I’m bringing it up is that I could try to draw him out since he trusts me a little. We broke things off recently, but I may be able to get him to talk to me. Poke around.”
Alarm bells were going off in Hayes’s head, adrenaline like a dam break in his blood. She’d talked to Dmitry. He’d only talked to one woman regularly. One who’d dominated his mind for months. One who he’d had to let go. One who . . .
Was sitting right in front of him.
Worlds collided in his head in a fiery crash. Wham! Fantasy smashing into reality. The manufactured images of Lenore mixing in with the woman sitting across from him. I’m just an average girl. Memories of so many nights of talking, teasing, playing. He’d made this woman come. He’d made her laugh. He’d opened himself up to her in a way he hadn’t to any woman in years. He’d been grieving the loss of her.
This woman.
Cora.
Cora was Lenore.
She frowned. “I mean, I obviously don’t want to put the company at any legal risk. I just . . . If we can find out who this is, we may be able to press charges or at least know why . . .”
His thoughts were like a tornado in his head and he had to curl his hands to keep them from trembling. “Dmitry isn’t the guy.”
She blinked behind her glasses, probably put off by the tone and harshness of the words. “What?”
“I know who Dmitry is. He’s not the guy.”
“You—” Her lips opened, closed. “You know Dmitry?”
“I do.” He stared down at his blotter, unable to look her way. He was afraid his poker face would falter. God, how had he not considered Cora could be Lenore? Lenore had been smart like Cora. She’d not shown up online the night of the attack. And then that last night they’d talked . . . I met a guy. A dom. She’d met Ren. It all seemed so obvious now.
But everything about her was so different from what she portrayed as Lenore. He knew that people altered their appearances in the game, but Hayes had been expecting a tall, outgoing blonde. Not the quirky techie who wore shirts with eighties’ cartoon characters on them. Cora had her own look, her own style, and sex appeal in spades. And she didn’t apologize for that. Why had she changed so much about herself in the game?
But Ren’s words came back to him—about how Cora had been hurt, overlooked, passed over because she was different. The realization made his chest ache. Cora had created Lenore to be the woman she thought people wanted, who she thought she was supposed to be.
Cora shifted in her chair. “Is the guy someone who might want to mess with the company?”
“No.” Hayes peered up, finding her tense and worried. “Cora, I’m Dmitry.”
She stared at him, her expression going lax. “What?”
The shock in that one uttered word was absolute. Stark.
He wanted to reassure her, to explain, but he was reeling himself. She was Lenore. This was the woman he’d started to fall for. The thought was like a slow-burning wick inside him, one that had a bomb on the end.
She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “You’re Dmitry.”
“Cora—”
“Give me a second here.” She didn’t lower her hands. “Did you know? Please tell me you didn’t know. Tell me that I haven’t been some joke since I started.”
“Of course I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have— I would’ve never put that together. You—”
“Aren’t blond and stacked and built like a brick shithouse?” she bit out. “Yeah, I’m aware.”
He frowned. “That’s not what I was going to say.”
She shook her head, lowered her hands, and stared at her lap. “God, I thought I’d been through some mortifying moments in my life, but the universe keeps upping the ante. I can’t even look at you right now. The things we talked about, did . . . Shit.”
“Yeah, you probably shouldn’t look. If I see your face, your international espionage career will be ruined.”
The words seemed to catch her off guard, and she made some sound in the back of her throat, like a laugh with a rope tied around it. He wanted to reach out, touch her, pull her into his lap and curl his body around her, more so than any moment in the office earlier. This was a fucking revelation, a blinding light. Two hours ago, she’d been Cora, the smart, sexy woman Ren was pursuing. A stranger. But now she was Lenore. A woman he’d trusted, one who’d snuck past the guard. In so many ways, that woman felt like his. His submissive. His girl.
But he wasn’t stupid enough to think she felt the same way. This changed everything. He wasn’t Dmitry. This wasn’t Hayven. This was no fantasy.
“I know I’m not who you wanted me to be,” he said in a low voice. “The big bad dominant spy turns out to be an ex-con who’s just trying to put one foot in front of the other each day without fucking everything up. That’s not very sexy. I’m sorry.”
She finally lifted her gaze to his, her eyes flickering with too many things to pick out one. “That’s what you think? That’s what you think I’m freaking out about?”
“I—”
“You know you’re more than that, right? Where you’ve been the last few years isn’t who you are.”
His jaw flexed. “It’s a big part.”
“A small part. You know what I see? I see a guy who started a successful company and made it through a really tragic thing. A guy who didn’t want to make me feel uncomfortable when I started here. The guy who when my head was about to tilt off the desk earlier cradled it so I wouldn’t get hurt.” She held his gaze. “You’re the guy who Ren looks at like you hold his world in your palm.”
He swallowed.
Her attention traveled over him, openly taking him in. “And you’re not all that different from the game. No blue hair, but you’re still big and intimidating. Ridiculously good-looking.” She rubbed her lips together, a rare bout of shyness surfacing. “Unlike me, who lied and went all Kate Upton when I’m more Tina Fey.”
“You didn’t lie,” he said simply.
Her lips kicked up at the corner. “Of course I did. I look nothing like—”
He sniffed. “You think I gave a shit about what your cartoon character looked like?”
“You—”
He gave in to the urge and reached out to her, gently touching a fingertip to her forehead. “This, Cora. This is who L was to me. Your words. Your wit. The way you”—he cleared his throat again and sat back in his chair—“the way you trusted me, submitted to me.”
A pink tinge stained her cheeks, her almost invisible freckles standing out in relief.
“And even though I couldn’t pinpoint it, when we first met in person, I felt something. Like this jolt of awareness. Maybe it was recognition. Some gut part of me recognizing that part of you. I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get Cora the hacker out of my head.”
She smirked at that. “Not your usual type.”
“No,” he said simply.
She stiffened, his brutal honesty obviously catching her off guard.
“You’re not. Not in the obvious ways. You’re the kind of woman I prefer to be friends with.”
She winced and looked down, hiding her expression and grasping her elbows. “Right.”
He frowned, realizing how she’d taken it, and stood to step around his desk. He sat on the edge of it and bumped his knee against hers. “Look at me.”
After a breath, she lifted her head, her defenses clear in the set of her jaw.
“I mean that I only slept with people who were no risk. They were there to do some kink and go on with their day. Ironic, considering how that worked out for me. But I didn’t want to start up something with someone who I could actually get attached to, who I wanted to spend time with outside of the sex. I mean, fuck, look how long I avoided crossing that line with Ren.”
Her brows dipped.
“I cared about him too much. And someone like you . . .” He peered toward the window, remembering those long conversations with Lenore, how comfortable they’d become, how much he’d looked forward to the chats with her, not just the sex talk. “Someone who could make me laugh and help me forget all this shit I’ve been going through, someone who challenged me and turned me on at the same time? Someone who wasn’t afraid to match me toe-to-toe on kink?” He looked back to h
er, forcing himself to meet her eyes and be naked with the truth. “That’s like world-class danger for a guy who doesn’t want to fall in love. Lenore was a risk, but she was behind a screen. You, on the other hand, are a full-on terror threat.”
Her lips parted, those hazel eyes of hers tracking over his face with something akin to wonder. “I—I don’t even know what to say to that.”
“Say it was real,” he said softly.
“That what was?”
“Our conversations. The things we shared. The things we did together. The feelings you said you felt.”
She wet her lips and bravely met his eyes. “It was real.” Her throat worked as she swallowed. “It still is. I’ve been miserable all week missing you.”
Every ounce of air he’d been holding whooshed out of him.
Without letting himself think too hard about it, without giving the anxiety time to take hold, he reached out and took her hand, pulling her to her feet. He guided her between his knees, cupped her face, and kissed her, letting everything he’d felt for Lenore over all those months pour into it. She was here. She was real.
He was so tired. Tired of hiding. Tired of keeping so many emotions tucked away. Tired of being scared. Tired of fighting his instincts.
He’d let himself go with Ren and now the woman who had become such an important part of his days was here before him, in the flesh, her heart beating hard beneath his fingertips, her mouth against his. He wasn’t going to let this moment slip by and he wasn’t going to be scared.
So he held her face in his palms and kissed her like he meant it, and he didn’t let go for a long damn time.
NINETEEN
“I think we should go out.” Ren plopped into the armchair across from Hayes and took a sip of his beer.
Hayes looked up from his spot on the couch where he was going through Cora’s notes yet again. A rollicking Friday night. “What?”
“Out. The three of us. Take a break from all this stuff and have some fun. Well, fun outside the office. Apparently, I missed a hot make-out session yesterday afternoon.”