Pressure: A Diamond Doms Novel Read online

  Inside the lobby, she looked around and smiled at the very subtle hints of kink. To the untrained eye it just looked like a beautifully decorated hotel lobby. But she spotted the small statues on either side of the double doors that undoubtedly led to the ‘good stuff’.

  “We’ll set up in the conference room. We’re still waiting for Lance.”

  She froze at the name Lance but shook her head and forced herself to follow Elijah. It couldn’t be the same person.

  Inside the spacious conference room, Elijah motioned for her to sit in one of the enormous office chairs that surrounded the table.

  “While we wait, let’s go ahead and get some paperwork out of the way,” he said as he set a folder in front of her.

  The top page was an NDA which she readily signed. It was likely she would come into contact with sensitive information about people, and the NDA offered some protection for that information.

  The next few pages outlined a simple contract. The number at the bottom under compensation was a lot bigger than she was expecting.

  “Really?” she asked as she stared the number. “Fifty thousand? That’s more than I make in six months.”

  Elijah just leaned back in his chair and smiled. “It’s important to us that this job be done right and with care. We’re willing to pay for that.”

  She read through the contract one more time. It would be better to have a contract attorney look it over, but everything seemed pretty crystal clear to her.

  She picked up a pen and read the last few paragraphs again as her hand hovered above the signature line.

  The door flew open. “Sorry I’m late everyone.”

  The hair on the back of her neck stood up at the sound of a familiar voice. A voice she hadn’t heard in years.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Barrett,” she whispered as she dropped the pen. “There’s been a terrible mistake. I need to go.”

  She stood, afraid to turn around and see the ghost from her past. But she forced herself to do just that.

  “Marissa?” Lance said, his eyes wide with surprise. “You’re the one they hired?”

  “It would seem that way. But I’m not taking the job so don’t worry. I’ll be on my way now.”

  Elijah quickly rushed to the door, blocking her from leaving.

  “What just happened?” he asked. “I take it you two know each other.”

  Lance laughed. “You might say that. We were engaged until five years ago.”

  She noticed he didn’t say why they broke up.

  Elijah dragged a hand through his hair as he looked between the two of them. “Well this is awkward. Lance, go wait for me in my office while I talk to Miss Sullivan please.”

  He backed out, lifting his hands in surrender. “I’m gone.”

  “Please sit, Marissa,” Elijah said when they were alone again.

  “You don’t understand, Lance Moss nearly ruined my life and ended my career. I can’t work with him.”

  “What if I triple your salary?”

  A hundred and fifty thousand dollars would be more than enough to launch her own firm. But she knew a job like this meant working in close proximity with Lance. It wasn’t something she could do from her office in Chicago. She would need to be here with the system, and if it was Lance’s baby, there was no way in hell he would just let her have at it without supervising. Then there was the minor matter that he didn’t trust her, and she didn’t exactly trust him either.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I just don’t know how I can say yes.”

  “I believe in taking no for an answer.”

  “But you still want me to stay,” she said wearily.

  “I would like for you to stay here while I talk to Lance. That’s all I’ll ask for now.”

  She sighed and sank back into the chair she’d just vacated. “I can do that.”

  ♦♦♦♦

  Lance paced Elijah’s office. Of all the people they could have hired, they found Marissa? He didn’t even know she was back in the game. Elijah stepped in and shut the door.

  “So that happened,” he said with his hands in his pockets. He moved to sit behind his desk.

  “Did she leave?” Lance asked, dragging a hand through his hair.

  Elijah shook his head. “I asked her to wait until I talked to you.”

  “She hates me. With good reason. I almost got her sent to prison. Completely by accident,” he added when Elijah whistled.

  “So, do you see a way forward to work with her?”

  Lance shrugged. “I think that’s going to be completely up to her. I can tell you she’s one of the best. At least she was when we were together.”

  “That’s what Russell said.”

  “Russell sent her to you? I had no idea they knew each other.”

  “Seems to be a small world indeed. What do you want me to do?”

  “We can’t make her stay. I’m not thrilled about the idea of working with her again, but I can’t say I would pick anyone else either. If she’ll stay in the same room with me long enough, I might be able to convince her to take the job.”

  Lance dropped into one of the visitor’s chairs and buried his face in his hands. “This is seriously fucked up.”

  Elijah chuckled. “You’re not telling me anything new. This whole situation is fucked. Go talk to her. If she doesn’t run screaming from the room, that means she’s at least thinking about my offer to triple her salary.”

  Taking a deep breath, Lance stood again and stepped into the lobby. He’d helped found this oasis of kink, and he didn’t want anything to happen to it. The thought of hiring someone else to come look at his work had kept him up at night because he knew how dangerous outsiders could be to a community like theirs. But Marissa wasn’t exactly an outsider.

  He pushed his way into the conference room. She sat at the table with her back to the door and one hand on her forehead while she read something on her phone.

  “Hello, Marissa,” he said quietly. She jumped and dropped her phone at the sound of his voice. He stepped in front of her chair, bending to retrieve it.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said when he handed her the phone.

  “It’s fine.”

  “Of all the gin joins…” he trailed off when her eyes went cold.

  “Don’t quote that to me. You’re lucky I’m even sitting here talking to you at all.”

  He sat in the chair next to hers and spun it to face her. “I know. I’m sorry. Will you stay?”

  “Aside from the obscenely large paycheck, why should I?”

  He shrugged. “Do you need any other reason?”

  “Maybe not. But I do need to know that we can work together peacefully.”

  Lance blew out a lengthy breath. “I guess we’ll have to find out, won’t we?”

  Marissa jumped up, startling him. “No. That’s not good enough. I need assurances that you’re not going to sell me out again. That you’re not going to undermine me and attempt to sabotage me when we get into an argument over differences of opinion.”

  He looked at her with wide eyes. What on earth was she talking about?

  “Why would I do that, Marissa? I know you got screwed over, but once I learned the facts, I tried to fix it. You have to know that.”

  “Do I? You called the cops on me, Lance. In our fucking house.”

  He stood and walked to the door where he’d dropped his bag when he first arrived and pulled out a laptop.

  He set it on the table and began typing when the screen was up and running.

  “Look,” he said, flipping the screen around.

  “What is this?” she asked as she bent to study the screen.

  “It’s a list of all the people I fired after I realized I’d been duped into believing you were guilty. I also bought the company that started all of this and broke it into tiny pieces and sold it off bit by bit. It doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Her eyes were still cold as she read the screen, but a little smile played at
her lips. “They were a shitty company anyway.”

  He chuckled. “It’s true.”

  She huffed. “Fine. I don’t forgive you. But I’ll stay. It really would be stupid to turn down this much money.”

  Lance cheered on the inside for the small win. This was probably going to be hell. He knew Marissa didn’t forgive easily; she never had. Earning her trust would take time but he was glad to be given the chance.

  “Did you bring your gear?” he asked.

  “It’s in the car.”

  “Wow. You really have changed. The Marissa I knew practically kept her gear handcuffed to herself.”

  Marissa laughed. “I didn’t want to be presumptuous about getting the job, so I locked it in the trunk.”

  “Go get it, Riss. I’ll walk you through what I know.”

  Five minutes later, she was back with her backpack. She pulled out a sleek laptop and two tablets and began setting everything up.

  As Lance talked her through the system, she was quickly catching on to how he’d built it.

  “Why do you think you have a problem?” She asked after she pulled the raw code up on her machine.

  “We’ve had at least two people get outed and I’m experiencing some kind of data breaches that seem like personal attacks at Moss Tech. I can’t prove the two are connected, but it sure feels like they are.”

  “So how were the people outed?”

  He told her about Austin being harassed by the media and Garrett and Isabelle being stalked by his brother, including the video of them on the red carpet being sent to them by an anonymous source.

  “OK but that doesn’t sound like hacking or cyber security to me. Why am I here?”

  Lance sighed. “Honestly, the board forced my hand. And they weren’t wrong to do so.”

  She quirked up an eyebrow. “Why?”

  “With Garrett and Isabelle, it had to be electronic. I’ve gone over everything and the leak had to be electronic. I just can’t find it. Garrett is incredibly quiet about his life here at Solitaire and he doesn’t have a personal online presence. Neither does his girl, Isabelle.”

  “Isabelle…”

  “Stop,” Lance said harshly. Marissa didn’t always get along with other women and found petty reasons not to like them.

  “What?” she asked as her fingers flew across the keys. “It just sounds like a very princessy name.”

  “Isabelle is great. I’m not saying you’ll love her or that you’ll be besties, but you don’t have to be a bitch to someone you haven’t met yet.”

  “Don’t use your Dom voice with me. It doesn’t work unless I’m in sub mode. I think we both know I’ll never be that with you again.”

  He sighed. “Let’s not start fighting already.”

  She gave a curt nod and changed the subject. “How does check-in work for a party or for say renting the cabins or the suites?”

  “It’s a pretty typical reservation system similar to what hotels and campgrounds use. It’s just stored on a more secure server.”

  “And what kinds of electronic devices do you let your guests bring in with them?”

  Lance leaned back and watched her work. “If they’re renting a cabin or suite, we don’t care what they bring to their rooms. In the bar and dungeon areas we only allow cell phones.”

  Marissa scowled. “Why would you do that? Seems like you’re asking for people to be outed.”

  Lance nodded. “We talked a lot about it. Ultimately, we decided that we want to treat people like adults. A lot of our members are people who need to be easily reachable. That’s especially true for those of us on the board. And we didn’t want to grant special privileges to the board like that, so we just have a blanket no photography policy. If people break it, they get kicked out. It’s never been an issue.”

  “Maybe not with pictures, but it would be very easy for someone with less than stellar motives to use a smartphone or tablet near your servers to get access to data.”

  Lance smiled. “You’re right. But we have the server room pretty fucking well protected. Most of the board doesn’t even know where it is.”

  “OK but that doesn’t mean someone hell bent on doing harm didn’t find it. If you sit in here or out at the desk or anywhere else in the building with your feet kicked up working on your laptop—I’m assuming you still do that—you’re probably more vulnerable than you think.”

  His smile turned to a scowl. “Look, you don’t have to get personal. If we’re going to work together, you need to treat me like your boss, because that’s what I am.”

  She held up her hands. “I’m just trying to point out the obvious here, Lance. It’s highly likely you’ve got vulnerabilities that you can’t see. And according to my contract, Elijah Barrett is my boss.”

  He hated that she was right—on both counts. Though it was probably for the best that Elijah was the one with his name on her contract.

  “Let’s just wrap up for today. I need to get to work on some other projects and we have a board meeting later.”

  “I’d like to sit in on that.”

  “Nope. Not happening.”

  She stood and walked out of the room. Lance rolled his eyes and jumped up to follow her.

  She knocked on Eli’s door. “Can I sit in on your board meeting?” she asked when he opened it.

  “Of course. I think having you meet the board is an excellent idea.”

  She turned and gave Lance a wicked smile. “Guess it is happening.”

  She brushed past him and went back into the conference room leaving Lance staring at Eli.

  “What just happened? I feel like I just stepped into something.”

  Lance shook his head. “It’s fine. This is just Marissa being Marissa. I’ll see you at the board meeting.”

  When he stepped into the conference room, her fingers were flying across the keys.

  “Now that you know I’m serious, any chance I can get on the guest list for the parties this weekend? I want to take a look around while people are here.”

  He growled. “You’re not here to play detective, Marissa. You’re here to check out my back-end and do an audit.”

  Her eyes lifted to his. “Lance, I stopped checking out your back end five years ago.”

  When she smirked, he just gave another growl. Working with her would be just as frustrating as it had been five years ago. He just hoped this job didn’t end with an engagement ring nearly taking out his eye while they were surrounded by a room full of police.

  3

  Marissa fumed as she scrolled through lines of code. How the hell had she wound up in the same room with Lance Moss again? Right, the money Elijah Barrett was offering her to stick the job out was too good to pass up.

  After the years of getting over him and the way things had ended, she was feeling a lot of negative emotions that she wasn’t sure how to process. But she had to remain professional. That was the most important thing.

  “How much time do you have to devote to this?” Lance asked.

  It was his subtle way of trying to figure out what she was up to these days.

  “I’m taking an extended leave of absence from my job,” she said. It wasn’t exactly true. She’d maxed out her PTO to do this gig but with the amount Elijah was paying her, she wasn’t sure she would need to return to the boring law firm.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “I’m assuming you want me out of your hair quickly. If I could stay at the club that would give me round-the-clock access.”

  He eyed her skeptically. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’re not a member. Members might not like that.”

  “If you don’t want this to drag on and on, you need to think about it.”

  He sighed. “We’ll talk about it at the board meeting. For now, why don’t we get some lunch and talk?”

  She huffed. “I have nothing to say to you, Lance. I just want to work and go home.”

  He growled. “I’m not trying to talk about us, Marissa. I�
�m trying to talk about the job and the best ways to tackle it.”

  She didn’t believe him. He would find a way to turn the conversation around to them. And it was so not a conversation she wanted to have.

  “At least let me get you a room at the Glenview for now. I saw a car out front, I assume it’s yours. If you drove all the way from Chicago, I’m sure you’re tired.”

  “Jesus Lance. Just ask me the questions you want to ask. Stop fishing. I didn’t drive from Chicago. Yes, I still live there. I work for a law firm as the head of their IT department. I drove from Arizona where I was visiting Daphne. I haven’t had a serious relationship since you, though I rediscovered my switchy side with a nice little subby paralegal boy for a few months. Is there anything else you want to know, or can we get back to work?”

  She tapped the space bar a little more forcefully than necessary as she finished talking.

  Lance just stared. “I always figured you were a switch,” he murmured a minute later. “But no. I think you’ve answered all my questions. I’m sorry. This is awkward for me too.”

  “Fine. Tell me more about the application process. I’m assuming with your membership being from all over the country and world it’s mostly electronic.”

  He nodded. “It is. We built a highly encrypted form that people fill out. We host everything on our own private servers, so it doesn’t get routed through some corporate server farm. It’s the internet, though, so there’s only so much we can do there. After we have reviewed the form, we start the review process. They go through extensive background checks and have to sit through at least one interview with members of the board. We don’t let anyone in with certain types of felonies, we also require that they have something to offer the BDSM community other than just their presence. We don’t require membership in local communities because we know that some of the people drawn to us have to live this part of their life in secret. You’ll meet Garrett Oliver at the board meeting. He’s an example of someone who has to be careful but he’s also someone who’s been nearly outed, and we don’t know why.”

  Marissa nodded.

  “So, after a person applies, what exactly does a deep background check entail? It seems like some of these people wouldn’t want to have their pasts dug into too deeply.”