Lesson In Honesty (Club Serenity #3)

Chapter Eleven

Mack

S he slept for fifteen hours.

Fifteen .

It was the longest time of his life.

The aftermath of Liam’s lesson was ingrained in Mack’s memory, a kind of beautiful poetry. How the Masters came together as soon as he’d recovered from his ball-twisting orgasm and retreated from the unconscious sub, taking hold of Sierra’s limp body and lifting her so Ford could release the rope harness from the hooks on the rigging.

Keeping her aloft as the Master deftly unfastened knots until black and green tendrils dangled to the carpet. In minutes, he’d unbound her, and Sierra was wrapped in a blanket, cradled in Liam’s arms.

Face slack and flushed, damp and warm, she’d looked ravished, exhausted, and astoundingly innocent, as though no matter what was done to her, she rose above it all to keep the kernel of inner purity unblemished.

Levi had graciously offered them the run of the house, and Mack had joined his lovers in the hot tub-sized bath to pamper Sierra from top to toe—he’d enjoyed the process of soaping her up, tracing every faint mark left from her bindings, restoring her physical form to clean and unsullied.

They’d commandeered Levi’s bed and been here ever since.

“Stop pacing,” Liam ordered gruffly. “Levi won’t be happy if you wear a track in his carpet.”

“Fuck the carpet,” Mack muttered, shooting the bed an unhappy glance. He honestly didn’t know how Liam was stretched out beside Sierra’s curled form, ankles crossed, arms behind his head, looking like the apocalypse wouldn’t move him. “She should be awake by now. Fifteen hours is coma territory, Liam.”

“She went through a Shibari scene and got fucked by five men shortly after an intense mental trauma, Mack. Exhaustion was the devil on her shoulder before we even started—something had to give.”

“How are you so calm about it?”

“Because she’s sleeping , Mack, not dying or slipping into a coma. She’s recovering and with any luck, healing. God knows she needs to heal.”

“Maybe I broke her.” Guilt savaged his heels, his heart. “Jesus, she was nearly sparked out when Ford finished. I should’ve called it quits and just—”

With a disgruntled sigh, Liam heaved his lanky body off the bed and stretched. Prowling barefooted toward Mack, he jabbed a finger at the space he’d just vacated. “Lay down next to her and close your eyes. Don’t argue—I know you’ve been up most of the night playing guardian. She’s not the only one exhausted.”

Shit, Mack thought he’d been sleeping and hadn’t noticed his nighttime stalk around the room. Besides, it wasn’t only Sierra who’d kept sleep from kicking in; he’d checked his emails and found several from his lead R yeah, the stubble was making an appearance.

Christ, if his staff saw him now, they’d wonder what the hell happened.

Rolling his eyes, he muttered sarcastically, “Yes, Daddy.”

“Careful,” Liam warned. “This Daddy swings both ways.”

Mack was beginning to contemplate whether that affliction was contagious. There was definitely something stirring and he couldn’t figure out what it was. “That’s not what worries me.”

“Falling in love with us isn’t the worst that could happen,” Liam pointed out, shrugging as though falling in love was an everyday occurrence. “Sierra guards her heart carefully and she’s already let you in; I’m pretty damn fond of you as well. This isn’t a one-way street where unrequited emotions die a tragic death.”

No, that sounded more like his family tree, Mack mused. Every time a new branch sprouted, the one it stemmed from turned black and withered into ash. He suddenly needed to know one thing. “Are you going to marry her?”

Liam grinned. “Do I look like a moron? Of course, I am.”

“Why not sooner?”

“A few reasons. We were grieving and it seemed wrong to take such a huge step, like we were leaving Wyatt behind. The new, almost improved Wyatt, not the asshat of old, I hasten to add. Grief passed, but a whole new issue arose and took precedence. I didn’t want Sierra to believe I was proposing to try and distract her from the fact we can’t get pregnant.” He ran a hand through his hair. “And then there was the niggling sensation that one day we would find the one who’d finally complete us. I believe in the sanctity of marriage, Mack. I don’t want to marry Sierra and then just tack on another person like a second driver on my damn truck insurance. Three people committed to spending the rest of their lives together, sliding on wedding rings and signing the paperwork as one being. That’s the dream, for both of us.”

Mack rubbed his fist over his heart.

“If I have to take a guess at what the future holds, I’m pretty sure you’ll be the one standing with us, Maverick. If that’s what you want. I’m willing to wait; she’s mine whether there’s a ring on her finger or not. The question is whether you want to be ours.”

Holy shit, Tristan was going to have a fit when he found out there was a marriage proposal, and that he was partially responsible. It would probably escalate into cardiac arrest when he discovered Mack only had one answer.

“Yeah. Yes,” he repeated. “I want that. Not yet, not when there’s still so much to learn about each other, but when the time comes… I’ll stand with you, Liam, and marry you both.”

Liam moved faster than anticipated, drawing Mack into a strong hug. “She is gonna be pissed she missed this. All I can say is, welcome to the family, Mack. We’re in for a wild ride, I think.”

“Damn straight.” He held on for several long seconds, then drew away. “I’m gonna go for that fresh air. I won’t be long.”

“Yeah, you do that.”

He felt the carpet beneath his feet as he walked to the door and slipped out into the hallway. There was warmth on his skin, the scent of lemon furniture polish, bright winter sunlight beaming through the expansive glass wall of the house.

Yet he floated, lighter than helium.

He’d made a spur of the moment choice and didn’t feel an ounce of regret. Maybe selling the company and moving to Denver was ultimately the right decision; he hadn’t discussed it with Liam or Sierra, not wanting to ruin their time together with business and the shitshow back home.

Creeping across the living room, he was surprised to see there was no evidence left of what had transpired there the previous afternoon. The rigging was gone, there was no sign of ropes or a spare item of forgotten clothing.

The carpet was pristine, not a drop of cum in sight, and even the cloying scent of sex was absent. After all the sweating and rutting that occurred, the room should smell like a high school locker room combined with a brothel—instead, he smelled clean, fresh citrus.

To his left, a door was almost fully open, not quite blocking the computer setup behind it. Levi was sitting in a leather office chair, one elbow on the rest, the other manipulating the wireless mouse on the desktop.

Barefooted—was that a theme now?—and bare chested, the photographer wore a pair of headphones tucked into his ears, only identifiable by the small blue light. A pair of glasses perched on his nose as he leaned toward the screen, utterly consumed by his work.

Leaving him to it, Mack headed out onto the deck overlooking the valley, easing open the sliding glass door. Walking to the guardrail, he set his hands on it and gazed out over the wintery landscape.

It would make one hell of a setting for a wedding, he thought, then laughed at himself. Forward thinking already, but it was too easy to imagine Sierra in a stunning white dress, framed by that fucking view as she gave her life to her husbands.

Yeah, that definitely made him feel a lot lighter.

Pulling his phone from his pocket, he ignored the additional dozen emails from his manager and went straight for the call.

“Maverick, thank God.” Tim Johnson, the irreplaceable research and development manager, broke the record for fastest answer; he picked up before the first peal ended. “I know you’re on vacation, I’m so sorry to disturb you. I just don’t know what to do. Everyone’s panicking, half the staff are losing their minds—”

“Tim, Tim, calm down. Was there a fire? Has one of the experiments decided to get up and walk its robotic self out into public?”

“What? No. It’s worse, so much worse—”

“ Tim . Calm down and fucking breathe. When you can speak without falling over your own tongue, then you can tell me what’s wrong.”

Loud, forced exhales rasped down the line.

What the hell was happening back home to cause this disagree of panic? Setting the call to speakerphone, Mack set the device on the railing and started to pace the deck to offset the cold and keep his own dread from rising up and strangling him.

Finally, Tim breathed out in one long, slow exhale. “The buyers must have requested another viewing of the facilities; they turned up unannounced on Thursday with one of your lawyers in tow.”

Yes, he was aware of that. Of the request, not that his lawyers had obliged.

Mack scowled, making a mental note to ream out his legal representatives. “Which lawyer?”

“Not one we’ve seen before. Honestly, he seemed like an underling, Mack. Didn’t have a handle on the building layout, what we do here, nothing. It was almost as if he was just a skeleton key to get them in.”

“You get a name?”

“Dean Holewinski.”

That wasn’t ringing any bells in Mack’s memory. He stepped over to the phone, brought up the note app, and typed it in. “What did he look like?”

“Five-nine, brown on brown, glasses. Lean, narrow-faced, maybe in his middle-twenties?”

Definitely not someone Mack was acquainted with, that was for sure. “All right, go on.”

“They came in, demanded access to the top levels of development. Areas you refused to let them see last time due to the clearance required. We denied them again on that basis and they got… aggressive. Threatened all manner of things. Hannah and Daisy took the brunt of it, Mack, and they haven’t been back to work.”

Fuck. Mack pinched the bridge of his nose. Hannah and Daisy were instrumental to the development of the new security system the company was due to roll out in less than six months—if they weren’t in the lab, they’d soon fall behind schedule. “Are they okay?”

“Traumatized.”

Heads were gonna roll, he thought. “Get them whatever they need, Tim. Hire a goddamn therapist to come into the breakroom and sit down with them. Give them my assurances that it will not happen again; I’ll apologize to them personally when I get back.”

“That’s not what has everyone in a panic, Mack. That was just the tip of a very sharp, very scary iceberg.” Tim’s voice was getting high and tight. “The men took over one of the conference rooms, locked everyone out. We got suspicious, so Rick decided to test out the fly drone he’s been working on. Man, that thing is a game changer.”

“We can discuss that later, Tim.”

“Yeah, yeah. Uh, he got it through the air vent and attached it to the wall. The visual and audio is fucking amazing—he recorded their entire conversation.” He sounded like he wanted to cry. “They want to fire ninety percent of the staff to start. Somehow they got wind of the top secret stuff—they know all about the Nimbus project, Mack. Athena, Bogart, Titus. They don’t have the specific details, but they know they’re in development. What they’re planning on doing with them is not what they were designed for. It’ll be catastrophic on so many levels.”

Wait a minute. Anger kindled in his belly. Nimbus, Athena, Bogart, and Titus were all what he classed as need-to-know projects. Access to them required a background check that took three months to complete, a special form of identification to take the elevator to the top floor of the building and open the doors to the classified labs, and biosecurity measures to retrieve files and physical models.

There were three people other than Tim and himself with that clearance.

“Find out who sold their loyalty, Tim, and how much it was worth.” Voice vibrating with fury, he fisted his hands on the rail, suddenly grateful for the cold. “Take someone off one of the smaller projects and put them to fucking work tracking down who betrayed us. I want to know who, and I want to know how deep the damage to the projects runs. Check all the files, make sure nothing’s missing.”

“Already on it, Mack. As soon as I realized there was a breach, I started digging. There are no files missing but…” Tim hesitated.

“But?”

“I, ah, checked the hard drive of the copy machine on Level Twelve. Someone made copies of the first five pages of each project file.”

Mack frowned. The first five pages contained no real data pertaining to the research—there was a brief synopsis, hypothetical data, all the boring shit that acted as a precursor to the main event.

The meat of the files, the stuff that was worth millions of dollars, was tucked further back in the folders. At least, in the hardcopy versions.

“Whose access code was on the machine?”

“See, that’s the thing. Each file was copied under a different code—mine, Rupi’s, Trevor’s, and Sonja’s. The only Level Twelve code that wasn’t used is yours.”

Because no one knew it, just like no one else on that team should have any knowledge of anyone else’s security codes, goddamn it. “Lock them out of the system. Until this is cleared up, Level Twelve is on lockdown. Pull them all into an office and tell them I said if the one responsible contacts me in the next twenty-four hours to confess what they’ve done and how badly they’ve fucked the projects, I won’t gut them like trout and leave their entrails swinging in the wind for the FBI to scoop up.”

“I’ll pass the message along, boss. Why would they just copy those few pages when they had the entire files at their disposal?”

Mack’s lip curled. If he stole files for an unscrupulous bunch of assholes, he wouldn’t give them everything at once. Tease their appetites with that brief taste, then withhold the rest until he got what he wanted.

Maximize the financial gain.

“Money. My guess is it all comes down to money.”

“Shit. Anything else you want me to do, Mack?”

“No, this is in my hands now. If the assholes come back and make demands again, call in security and then the cops. Don’t let them, or any representative from the lawyers, past the goddamn lobby.”

Tim’s sigh of relief was tangible. “Got it. Are you coming back early?”

“Not right now.” Leaving Denver wouldn’t achieve anything but murder. “Tell everyone not to worry.” The decision he’d been chewing on for months was suddenly as easy as the one he’d made twenty minutes ago. “MVM Tech is no longer for sale, especially to those duplicitous bastards.”

“Thank God. I know it’s a lot of money, Mack, but they were all wrong for the company. I’ll email you the recording from the drone; you made the right choice.”

“I’ll watch it when I come home.” The last thing he wanted was something else to fuck up his remaining time with Liam and Sierra. He’d have to go back, there was no other choice until he worked everything out with the business, his house, and returned to them.

“Yes, sir. Uh, enjoy the rest of your vacation.”

“Thanks.” Mack stabbed the end call button, then tried to throttle the railing with his bare hands. Fucking backstabbing asshole. When he found out who’d sold classified fucking information to the potential buyers, he’d strip them naked and tie them to the nearest railway tracks.

Why the hell would the buyers pay for information included in the sale of MVM Tech? He wasn’t withholding any of the current projects from the contract—the buyers just weren’t supposed to be privy to the Level Twelve projects until they owned Level Twelve.

Unless—and the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed to be—they were just using the sale as a trojan horse to gain access to the building and its employees, sniff out the weak links, and appropriate data before dropping out of the contract.

They had been stalling for a while, he mused, watching his breath plume into the cold air. Changing details in the agreement, throwing in stupid clauses that made no sense, procrastinating at every step.

Buying time while they bought his people, his research, his fucking life’s work.

Snarling, he flipped through his contacts, not caring less it was the weekend and his next call was to a man who abhorred working anything more than Monday to Friday.

“Alexander Henry.” A sleepy grunt, a yawn. “Black, Hendry, and Peel, attorneys at law.”

“Who the fuck is Dean Holewinski and why is he escorting those fuckwits from Corrinthian Technologies around my goddamn building without my permission?” The tone of his voice was colder than the air around him by far.

“What the fu—Morehead?” The confusion in Alexander’s voice was clear.

“Answer the question, Alex.”

“Jesus, it’s too early for an inquisition.”

Mack didn’t care if it was three a.m. and his friend had fallen asleep two fucking minutes ago. His blood was running hot, he wanted answers, and his patience was dwindling down to the last fragile thread. “Dean Holewinski.”

“Black hired him as an intern, straight from Georgetown. Top five percent of his class, works hard, has a future ahead of him.”

A future with Mack’s foot so far up his scrawny ass, the intern would be sucking on his toes for years. “Fire him.”

“What?”

“Fire him or I fire you, Alex. My trust in your firm is currently non-existent, so you either give me a show of faith or I’m done here and now.”

“I need a reason to fire him, Maverick. There are laws against canning someone on a fucking whim.”

“How many reasons would you like? How about taking potential buyers into my building without my knowledge or permission? Without clearing it with the guy I left in charge of the safety of my property and employees?” Teeth bared, Mack wished he could wrap his hands around his lawyer’s neck instead of the wood. “If that’s not enough, why don’t we take into consideration that two of my staff—my female employees—were treated so reprehensibly during that sneaky little visit that they’re traumatized and unable to return to work on vital R the traitor was his responsibility.

Hannah and Daisy were subjected to an ordeal all because some bigshots thought they could barge their way in to his house, intimidate his employees, and steal data carefully developed by his team.

He would make sure they paid for their arrogance.

“Just get it done, Alex. This shit with Holewinski better be handled by Monday night, otherwise Tuesday is gonna dawn on a very different reality for a lot of people.” Mack ended the call, breathing heavily as he struggled to rein in his fury.

A mug of coffee slid across the railing, the scent hitting him a second later.

Cradling a mug of his own, Levi leaned his hip against the railing and regarded him curiously. “Judging by that conversation, you’re having a really bad day.”

“Isn’t there a saying about best laid plans?” Mack lifted the mug. “Thanks.”

“Selling a business must be hard work, stressful.” Levi looked out into the forest, the sunlight catching the red in his hair and setting it alight. “If you don’t mind me asking, do you need to sell or was it an offer too good to refuse?”

The first sip of coffee shocked his system into full capacity. “Neither. I believed it was best for the future of the research. Being absorbed into a bigger company with more resources, more facilities and techs to focus on the work. It turns out trying to be proactive for the company opened it up to traitors and thieves.”

“Shit. You’ve got a mole?”

“Looks like. Now I have to figure out who it is and how to punish them without committing homicide.”

Levi shrugged a shoulder. “There’s always an ‘accident’. Christ knows I thought about it when my cheating bitch of an ex shredded my life and my sanity. I refrained,” he added, smirking when Mack’s eyebrows almost hit his hairline. “The imagining was almost as satisfying.”

Oh, he’d be imagining multiple deaths until this whole mess was sorted out.

“Can you not expand the company yourself?”

“I’m barely in the millionaire bracket; it could take me years to reach the financial stability to expand the way it needs. I’ve got some projects worth tens of millions, more, but they need the push now before similar research hits the market. That is if the thieving bastards don’t find a way to get the tech,” he muttered, scowling into the mug. “We’ve shut down the breach, but I doubt that’ll stop them from coming at us again.”

“So you need an investor,” Levi mused. “And someone to scare the bastards off giving theft a second attempt. Might be I can help you with both of those issues, if you’re willing to step out of the moral boundaries.”

“If it keeps my employees safe, I’ll give anything a shot.”

“All right then, we need to make some calls.” Levi slanted him a look. “Investor first, or enforcer?”

“Safety first.”

Levi tugged his phone from his back pocket, unlocking the screen with his thumbprint, and tapping the glass until a line began to ring.

“Security.”

“Grit, it’s Levi.”

“Mmm-hmm. You got a problem?”

“Outside issue. Might be right up a tiny blonde kitten’s alley.”

Tiny blonde kitten? Oh shit, Tabitha?

“Wait, you can’t—” Mack grabbed Levi’s arm. “You can’t pit her against these guys, Levi! They’ll eat her alive and ship her bones back with ribbons tied on.”

Grit laughed. “Oh ye of little faith, Mack. Tabby is unlike anyone you’ve ever known. Just pray you don’t meet her in the dark. Now, before I disturb her and risk losing a limb, what kind of resolution are we aiming for with this issue? Do they need wiping off the face of the planet or can they get away with a few broken bones?”

“Mack?” Levi arched an eyebrow. “This is your ballgame.”

Alternate dimension. That was why this was so damn confusing; they’d done something last night, fucked Sierra into a coma maybe, and triggered a switch in dimensions where Tabitha was what, invincible? “Um…”

“Tell you what, give me the name and she’ll make her own mind up. We’ve been restricting her playtime since she came back from the dead, so this might boost her spirits.”

“I need someone to explain this to me. Tabitha’s idea of playtime is what, exactly?”

“She likes playing whack-a-mole with bad people.”

Okay, now it sounded like he should stop asking questions and bury any and all parts of the conversation somewhere where the Feds couldn’t find it.

“Did someone say whack-a-mole?” Tabby’s voice joined Grit’s on the line.

“Hey, little tiger. Mack requires an exterminator. Know anyone?”

“I know everyone. Which rat needs dispatching, Mack?”

There were a multitude of personal and moral boundary lines to consider, especially if the double entendre or six weren’t a joke. Having met Tabitha, he was willing to bet they were not yanking his leg. The question was, what level of punishment did he truly want for the Corrinthian Tech guys?

They outranked him in wealth and connections, that was for sure. They dominated several markets and were rumored to have government contracts; in the eyes of the law and justice systems, they were probably untouchable.

Terrorizing women and stealing classified data would get them a slap on the wrist, if that. Daisy and Hannah deserved more, to be able to sleep in their beds at night without wondering if someone was going to break in and murder them.

“Corrinthian Technologies,” he heard himself say from a distance. “Todd Watkins, Brear Duffy, and Christen King.”

She muttered them under her breath. “Give me a second.”

Levi and Grit started talking about something mundane, filling the suspenseful silence as Mack’s brain and instincts clashed. What the hell had he just done?

Forcing himself to sip his rapidly cooling coffee, he tried not to let the nauseous feeling ruin the beauty of a cold, sunny morning in the Denver forest.

He’d taken a positive step, he reminded himself. The law wasn’t going to help protect his assets or his people, his goddamn friends. The backstabbing mole might see the inside of a jail cell, but he was in the mood to spill blood.

“Did you intend to give me a lovely gift, Mack?” Tabitha’s voice was full of glee now, happy and chipper.

“Ah…”

“Those are three very bad men in escalating degrees of wrongness. They’ll see the error of their ways within the week. Is that soon enough for you?”

“I… yes?”

“Perfect. And seeing as you’ve given me a gift, I’m going to offer you one in return. A freebie, if you want it.” Coyness touched her words, seductive and alluring. “Sonja Williams, one of your top clearance geeks, is in cahoots with them. She was heavily in debt to the tune of fifty-three thousand, seven hundred and thirty-two dollars and is now considerably cushioned by one million, three hundred and seventy six thousand dollars. I went ahead and transferred that over to your account, seeing as it rightfully belongs to you.”

Mack fumbled his mug, tempted to launch it over the railing. Pain stabbed him deep in the chest as the reality of a close friend’s betrayal shredded his heart. “You’re sure?”

“Always. I’ll track the stolen data and remove it from their network, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have hard copies. If they do, they’ll tell me where they keep them. Would you like me to handle the rat as well?”

Honestly, after this latest kick in the teeth, he just wanted to be done with the whole damn mess. Assessing the team for debt risk was something the company did routinely to avoid clusterfucks like this; he insisted on it because debt did strange things to a person—they’d take any risk, any shortcut, any viable means of eradicating that gaping money pit, regardless of the consequences.

Sonja either slipped through the cracks or… hell, he just didn’t know what she was capable of anymore. Her tech skills were certainly strong enough to hack into his system and alter the results—she was one of the original team who helped him build the fucking system.

That meant she was dangerous not only to the projects his team had spent years working on, but to the very foundation of his company. She knew how his coding worked, the preventative and offensive blocks Tim would use to block her access, and how to circumnavigate it all.

“Tickity tock said the talking clock,” Tabitha warned in a sing-song voice.

He wasn’t a man who commissioned murder, he thought in despair. Reprimanding his team was such an uncommon occurrence, he’d forgotten the last time he’d done so. “Ask her why, Tabitha. Why she chose to do this instead of coming to me for help. Why she sold me, and her family, out and left us to hang.”

“I can do that. And then?”

“You’re smart, Tabitha. Highly intelligent. You can read people, right?”

“It’s one of my many, sought-after skills.”

“If she lies, pawns you off with excuses…” He couldn’t say it, couldn’t bite off the words and sentence a friend to hell.

“I’ll take care of it.”

Thanking her seemed cold; he didn’t think his voice was operable right now anyway. Guilt filled his gut with concrete, sinking it to the soles of his feet.

It was Levi who said goodbye and ended the call. “Little bit of advice?”

He nodded.

“If you believe this Sonja is an innocent party, completely devoid of any blame or has a really convincing argument for why she did this, keep holding on to her. Tabitha will root out the truth.” Levi tapped his mug on the railing slowly. “If you don’t believe it, let her go, sooner than later. The project data she copied and sold, how dangerous is it in the wrong hands?”

“Used improperly, any one of them could be disastrous.”

“She sold that data to dangerous men. They paid her over a million dollars to cover a fifty grand debt. Hate to break it to you, bud, but that woman is about as innocent as Dahmer.”

She’d been corrupted, Mack thought morosely. Corrupted by a power more seductive than love, friendship, loyalty, and pride rolled into one—money. The stupid thing was, she would’ve had a payout from each of the projects she worked on—he’d written it in her contract. She’d have earned more than a million per project .

“Bet you want something stronger than coffee,” Levi said, giving him a sympathetic pat on the arm. “Come with me, I’ll show you something that’ll perk you right up while I get your investor out of bed and into business mode.”

“I should check on Liam and Sierra.”

“They’re fine.” Levi turned and walked back inside. “Shut the damn door behind you this time. The heat soon leeches out.”

Mack obeyed his host’s orders, returning to the blessed warmth and closing the cold out where it belonged. He began to shiver as his body reacted to the fresh source of heat; he needed to find some damn socks.

Following Levi back to his office, Mack took the seat the photographer indicated and stared at the computer monitors in shock. Half a dozen images in various stages of editing were waiting for their master to finish them, and they all reflected the sheer carnal pleasure of last night’s adventures.

Mack knew Liam had asked for the focus to be on Sierra; Levi had satisfied that request and given more. There was magic radiating from the woman in the photos, a rare kind of tranquility captured on her face as she was adored and ravished as any woman should be.

But it was the sharp hunger in Merrick’s gaze as he focused only on her; the intense pleasure on Fordham’s face as his hand was caught in mid-stroke down her side; the sense of coming home scribed over Mack’s own damn features that really brought home the lesson Liam wanted to teach his submissive.

All thoughts of business and betrayal fled Mack’s head as he reached out to touch the nearest screen. “Are there more?”

Levi huffed in amusement as he settled in his chair, pulling up a messaging program on a different screen. His fingers flew over the keyboard. “Only about two thousand. You and Liam are a pair of lucky bastards, you know that? Sierra was—is—one of the most fascinating subjects I’ve ever had the opportunity to photograph.”

Two thousand? Christ, the pixie was going to lose her mind.

“Here, click these buttons to scroll back and forward.” Levi leaned over and brought up a full-sized image of the intricate rope harness cradling the weight of Sierra’s breast. “These are all unedited. You’ll have to be patient and see the finished images with Liam and Sierra—I’d hate to spoil the surprise.”

It only took two clicks for Mack to submerge himself in the memories of last night. The photos, taken from every angle imaginable, were beyond erotic yet classy enough to distance them from smutty porn.

The tendons straining in Liam’s neck as he came in his sub.

The pleasure-pain in her eyes when Merrick breached her tight pussy.

The delicate strand of drool from her slack mouth as he fucked her.

Shifting awkwardly in his chair, Mack resisted the urge to strangle his dick as it rocketed from flaccid to erect in just a few heartbeats. “No wonder Evander wanted you here, Levi. You’re a fucking genius with a camera.”

“My life’s work. Some of my early stuff was notably less sophisticated. I prefer erotic to pornographic, and nights like last night really get my creative juices flowing. For a woman to believe she’s so abhorrent to the opposite sex… it makes me mad.” Levi tapped a finger on the screen when Mack flipped to the next image. “This one here. I took this one when you entered her.”

Mack frowned. “They’re out of order.”

“Yeah, I have them on random so I don’t lose my focus working on the same sequence of photos.” He tapped again. “Look at her face, Mack. The shadows and angles of her features, her beard, her eyes. At first glance, you see the utter fatigue of what happened previously in the evening, then the consequences of being fucked by four men and experiencing several orgasms. She’s exhausted, finally ready to surrender, but the expression in her eyes? Look at the dedication, the trust. She was burned out to the max, yet she knew, she wanted , to hold on for you. It’s a fucking privilege to be the one who got that on camera.”

Leaning forward, Mack stared at the beautiful eyes on screen. Some of the nagging guilt dissipated as he realized Levi was right—the camera caught her inherent need to satisfy him even as her body was ready to succumb.

“Can I…” He cleared his throat. “Could I get a copy of that?”

Levi laughed and shoved a notepad and pen at him. “Write down the number at the top of the screen of any you want and I’ll hook you up when they’re done.”

“Let me know what I owe you.” He’d pay any amount to have Sierra on his wall.

Waving him away, Levi’s attention flashed back to his screen as a buzzing noise blasted from the speakers. “Having the chance to slide inside her is payment enough. She may be Liam’s, Mack, but she’s just as much yours.” He answered the incoming call; Evander’s face filled the screen. “Morning, boss. Did I wake you?”

Yawning, Evander shook his head. “Been awake for hours. Hard to sleep when Callie wakes at six a.m. with all the energy of a freaking toddler.” Smirking, he ran his tongue over his bottom lip as though savoring a very particular taste. “She’s taking a nap with Eli, so I have some time to hear your proposal.”

“Not mine. Evander, have you met Maverick Morehead, one of our guests? He’s Liam and Sierra’s new beau.”

“Of course. Finally let you out of the Nursery, has she?”

Mack chuckled. “You made a magical place for Littles, Evander. I blame you for the countless hours over the last couple weeks that I’ve spent in there, listening to Littles sing nursery rhymes while they beat each other with foam bats.”

Evander grinned sheepishly, rubbing his neck. “Ah, the bats were Callie’s idea. She has quite the violent streak when she’s Little, and we discovered a few other potential members also have a short temper when they’re playing. Foam bats seemed preferable to fists and building blocks.”

“I really need to take a camera over there,” Levi muttered to himself.

“Yes, you should. You’d create a lot of excitement.” Evander snorted in amusement. “Anyway, Littles aside, I’m curious as to how I can help, Mack. I don’t think we’ve discussed what business you’re in.”

“Computer and security technology mainly. I have a subdivision dabbling with AI but… quite frankly, the results are frightening. It’s not a direction I really want the company to expand in.”

“Well, at least it’s not chocolate,” Evander said, making Levi laugh.

“Boss over here made himself a multi-millionaire through construction and property development,” he explained. “He’s also heir to one of the biggest chocolate manufacturing legacies in the world. How much is it worth now, Van? Just under a billion, or just over?”

Mack’s jaw dropped. “Billion?”

Evander flushed slightly and waved it off. “I’m not keeping track. It doesn’t interest me. When anything happens to the old bastard, that money is being redistributed to the communities and people who need help simply to live on a daily basis.”

“He’s a real philanthropist,” Levi quipped.

Thinking of the charity Evander and Elias were starting in Sierra’s name, the money they were putting into it, Mack nodded slowly. He didn’t know what it felt like to come from money, only the sensation of suddenly not having to worry whether his card would decline a week before the end of the month. “Then you should know that I’m not in this for money, Evander. My company designs products for people. Security systems for homes and businesses that actually work, fencing systems for the agriculture industries. We were approached by a sanctuary in Kenya, asking for help in creating a security system to battle poachers.”

“Have you been approached by the government?”

“Luckily, not yet. We can’t prevent them from taking patented tech.” It was a constant thorn in his side, especially with the projects on Level Twelve approaching completion. However, given the circumstances with Sonja, he was wondering whether shutting the whole fucking level down was the saner, safer option.

That technology was murder at the push of a button in the wrong hands and, as much as he loved his country, he didn’t trust the people running it were the right hands.

Doubts suddenly erupted. Was finding an investor the right step here? The company’s agenda was always going to be at odds with the government; the technology his teams were producing was getting better and better.

Did he really want his name associating with something that one day might wipe out a city or start a war?

“I… I’m sorry, Evander,” he said slowly. “I think this might be a waste of time. Maybe the company is ready for an overhaul, a change in direction. When employees are selling data from under my nose and others are getting hurt in the process, maybe that’s a sign.”

Evander frowned. “Your people are getting hurt?”

They were both businessmen, Mack reminded himself when he hesitated. Evander, obviously, was on a much grander scale, but they both understood the elations and pitfalls of running a company.

He explained the situation in detail, watching Evander’s face. The guy didn’t give much away, just leaning back in his chair and rubbing his thumb over his lip thoughtfully. By the time Mack finished, everything was silent aside from the quiet hum of Levi’s computers.

“Obviously,” Evander mused, “you can’t expand on the classified projects without a shit ton of paperwork and NDAs, but they’re the crux of your issue. The other stuff your teams are working on still have the potential to be snapped up by the government, leading to more paperwork, legal fees, court dates in order for you to claim financial compensation.”

“That about sums it up.”

“Let’s say you decide to stop everything tomorrow. Monday morning phone call to the board, your employees, everyone—shut it all down, don’t come into the building, destroy the projects currently in development.” Brown eyes bore into Mack’s with serious contemplation. “What are you going to do instead?”

That was the question.

Shutting the company down lock, stock, and barrel was all well and good, but he had exceptional staff who had families to look after. They’d given him the best years of their lives, everything their uniquely coded brains offered, and to just leave them in the lurch went against every grain of his being.

“It’s evident to me that you care a great deal for your people, Mack, and that’s an admirable trait. So is trying to protect people from what your technology could bring in the future. The way I see it is, you have two options here.”

Just two?

“Continuing as you are isn’t viable; it’s already dawned on you that at some point, someone is going to take what they want by force, either by law or otherwise. Option one is, you give your people the chance to buy the company, the projects, the whole damn lot. Let them take it over and continue the work as they see fit.” Evander paused, letting it sink in. “The other option is maintaining your staff, dispensing with your current development line, and pursuing a different avenue like gaming. Hire artists, designers, straight out of college and build a different legacy.”

Christ, how would Tim and the others deal with that?

Sorry, guys, the important, lifechanging work we’ve been doing for the past decade is getting too risky, so we’re going to be creating video games from now on.

They’d either call the nearest mental hospital or hang him from his office ceiling fan. Would they be able to fathom such a monumental change?

The thing was, now the seed was planted in his head, it felt right . Protecting his people from harm was at the top of the goddamn list and he’d failed. One enemy was about to be down and out, thanks to Tabitha, but more would come. More would go to greater, deadly lengths, and while he loved the job and the good it created, he couldn’t justify his staff being terrorized or raped or murdered.

“How about this?” Evander added after a long minute. “Take a few days to think about it. What you’re looking at is a complete overhaul of everything you’ve built. That’s a big shock. Come over for dinner, the girls can have a playdate, and we can sit down and throw some more ideas around. Elias is a goddamn genius, and I bet Liam has some valuable thoughts to contribute. Use us, Mack; we’re here.”

“Yeah.” Mack heaved a sigh of relief, feeling some weight lift off his shoulders. No doubt it would return in short measure, but the prospect of others helping him bear it while he made some drastic alterations to everything he knew was a strange and comforting novelty. “Thanks, Evander.”

“No prob—”

“ Daaaaaddyyyy!” The warbling battle cry gave the Dom half a second’s warning before a naked missile dove onto his lap. There were some nasty scars etched into skin still flushed from sleep; old scars but they must have been painful at the point of origin. “Where did you go?”

“Right here, Callie.” Evander sighed in exasperation even as he nuzzled his face into her neck. “You were supposed to be napping with Eli.”

She giggled, thankfully keeping her back to the camera. “I got frisky.”

Levi snorted. “Surprise, surprise.”

“Master Levi!” Callie tried to spin around as she squealed in delight, but Evander pinned her flat against his chest with a well-placed hand between her shoulder blades. “Aw, Daddy, I wanna say hello.”

“I’m sure you do. Your tits, however, do not.”

Another giggle, sly this time. “My breasts are exhibits.”

“Exhibitionists,” he corrected. “Now is not the time. Go back to bed.”

“But it’s daytime,” she whined.

“It is, and I want to get frisky with my wife until our husband decides to join in.” Giving her a solid smack on the ass, he spun his chair to the side and bumped her off his lap. “Go. Bed. Stay very, very naked.”

“Yes, Daddy.” Blowing the camera a kiss, Callie skipped off.

Evander’s gaze followed her before he turned back to the screen. “Good meeting, guys. Mack, Eli will be in touch to organize dinner.”

Levi just laughed and ended the call. “Jesus, hard to believe I used to be just as infatuated with that thing I called a girlfriend. Only difference is, Callie’s equally as in love with them as they are with her.”

“It’ll catch up with you again one day,” Mack said quietly, thinking of the woman upstairs. “When you least expect it, bang , there she is. Everything you crave, everything you never knew you needed. Game over in a heartbeat.”

“There is something in the water here that turns all the Doms into mush. Sorry to disappoint you, Mack, but my time has been and gone, the bridge to my heart nothing more than ash and charred ruins.” Levi sounded remarkably cheerful about it. “I’m learning to move on, get my rocks off wherever I want without any sticky attachments, and put any lingering frustration into my art.”

“That’s a lonely existence, Levi.”

“Yes and no. I can live without having my heart smashed into pieces again, and images like this,” he said, gesturing to the photo of Sierra on screen, “are next level compared to what I used to produce. I’d rather make someone like her happy and comfortable in her own skin than let another woman under mine.”

There’d be a woman, one day, who wormed her way so deep under his stubborn skin, she’d lodge herself where his heart used to be and make him forget this bitterness.

Mack was excited to watch it happen.

Before the conversation became too embroiled in past misdeeds by previous lovers, he picked up the neglected pen and dutifully wrote down the image number. He imagined by the time he was through with the whole selection, he’d have enough erotic photos of Sierra to start his own art gallery.