Present Tense: Pleasure Times Four (Out of the Fire Book 3) Read online

  “It can be worse,” Eunice told her.

  A gloved hand came between her legs and plucked two of the glass marbles from the bowl.

  And she knew, she just knew, they’d be coated with the same thing as the plug when they were poked into her.

  Sure enough, those two, plus the next three, burned like a curling iron being shoved inside her.

  The burn stayed at her entrance though. She only felt the heat from farther inside a little.

  “Squeeze tight, bad girl,” Eunice told her. “If you lose one, you get that one plus one more poked back inside. Lose two, you’ll end up with four more. Lose them all, we get to stuff ten of them into you. Fabio is left-handed, so he’ll strike from the other side.”

  Fabio’s strikes weren’t harder or lighter than James’s, but they were different. Snappier. More sting and less impact. Everyone has their own style.

  Or perhaps she imagined the difference because she was holding her muscles so tight, determined not to lose a single marble, and — not for the first time — she was thankful the bloody tears thing was a myth.

  She was openly crying when Fabio finished, her eyes squeezed as tightly as her pussy and ass, her head horizontal while she pressed the back of her neck to the top of the stockade hole, to keep pressure off the front of her throat.

  The scent of mongoose floated to her a second before she felt pressure on her chin. A finger, pushing up. Kelsey obediently angled her face to look forward, opened her eyes, and met Eunice’s gaze.

  “Two thirds of the way there. Push the marbles out. If they don’t all come, it’s fine. I want you relaxed while I cane you. You’ll have five seconds to release the tension from each strike, and if you don’t, the one you just received won’t count. If all of the marbles don’t come out now, it will be fine if they come out later. You may have to squat and push to get them all out, and that will have to wait.”

  He didn’t move his finger, and she assumed he wanted to watch her face while she pushed them out.

  “Push, Kels,” Fabio said from behind her. “We’re being formal now. I’m supposed to call you bad girl while you’re being punished. Let’s get this over with so I can hold you.”

  Someone put pressure on the outside of the butt plug to make sure she didn’t push it out as well, and she took a breath and pushed, hoping it would get rid of the marbles.

  They burned again on the way out, and she squealed a little, trying to get a handle on the fiery, raw nerve endings.

  “Three,” James said from behind her.

  Eunice gave her a tiny nod. “Good enough for now. I view tensing your ass as a sign of disrespect.”

  Eunice walked out of sight. Fabio pushed a short stool in front of her and sat on it, his face inches from hers. He rested a hand on her cheeks and turned his head to the side. “Earplugs, so you don’t blow my ears out when you scream.” He moved his cheek back, so it was against hers. “You aren’t human, so Eunice won’t treat you as one.”

  Terror struck a blow to her heart. “I can’t heal fast.”

  His hand caressed her other cheek. “We know. He won’t split you open. He knows what he’s doing. I’m here to help you remember to relax. You won’t always have this. Wiggle your fingers for me.”

  She wiggled them, and then a line of fire imploded on her butt cheeks. The initial strike hurt badly enough, she knew it was going to push her over the edge a second before the brunt of the pain slammed into her. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. The blood in her stomach had already emptied into her bloodstream, else she’d have thrown it up.

  Fabio centered his face in front of hers, his gaze on her eyes, and put both hands on her cheeks. She focused on the heat. The warmth. The tenderness.

  “Relax, bad girl. Don’t give him a reason to make that one not count. Relax your ass, your thighs, your lower back. Wiggle your fingers. You can do it.”

  She fought to force those muscles to release the pain and tension. Or at least the tension.

  When it came time for Eunice to hit her the final time, it was actually the eighth strike, though they were calling it the seventh. Tears streaked down her face. Her ass hurt dreadfully, bad enough she’d forgotten how much the balls of her feet hurt, and how badly her holes burned from the flaming pepper mixture on the plug and marbles.

  Her entire lower butt cheeks throbbed to the time of her heartbeat, which was erratic as fuck because she’d lost all control.

  But her fucking ass was bloody well relaxed. She might not be allowed to cuss in Aussie, but she’d damned well fucking do it in her thoughts.

  Before they had a chance to order her to relax after the final stroke, the top of the stock mechanism was gone, she was off her feet, flipped over, and James was holding her like a baby, carrying her to a sofa. “Get the fucking shoes off her, Fabio.”

  She heard Eunice walk out of the room, and then flexed and pointed her feet once the torture-shoes were off. Her sobs came in hiccups, and she curled into James.

  Kelsey cried and sobbed into his chest first, and then Fabio’s, because the men took turns soothing her and talking to her.

  Eventually, they helped her squat to get rid of the rest of the marbles. They used baby wipes to clean her up, and rubbed a soothing cucumber-mint concoction on her that mostly canceled out the pepper mixture. They took care of her, loved her, held her.

  But the strap on her head stayed in place until she was sent downstairs to get dressed again and freshen up before she went to work for the first time. She collected the clothes she’d left on the bar, and went back to her suite to redo her makeup and put her clothes back on.

  8

  Collosa parked his Jeep Wrangler in front of the Drake Security building and blew out a breath. They were meeting Aaron at midnight for her intake interview, which meant they had thirty minutes to show her around the building.

  Problem was, she was doing a lot of nodding and mmm-hmmm’ing, rather than talking. It made sense — penalties for speaking with her Australian accent weren’t pretty, so she was planning to refrain from speaking.

  She couldn’t keep it up forever, but he didn’t want her doing it at all. Still, about the time he’d decided not to mention it, Fabio had texted him that they should let it play out and see how long it took for her to give it up and talk.

  In the future, consequences would happen at six in the morning, every morning she had demerits from the night, assuming someone was home to mete them out. If not, they’d rearrange it a few hours earlier or perhaps push it to evening, as this one had been. She’d realized this might mean she’d be punished twice on this night, and she’d shut up.

  It had felt important to dole out consequences before she had a chance to rack too many demerits up, though.

  “The building is around a hundred years old,” Collosa told her. “It’s an old school we’ve repurposed for our use. There’s an underground portion below what used to be the sports fields, so no one knows just how many square feet we’ve added to the place.”

  He showed her the gymnasium, locker rooms, cafeteria, auditorium, and workout room, but there wasn’t time to take her downstairs before they were due to meet with Aaron. Just as well, since technically, she’d need her new company ID card before they could take her past those security doors.

  Aaron is an excellent judge of character, and rather than bring up her reticence towards weapons, he pointed out she had thirty days to pass the Drake range test and then another five to pass the tests for her concealed carry license, and pointed out her pay would drop to fifty percent of current if she didn’t make those deadlines, and would remain there until the goals were met.

  Based on what Collosa knew of the adorable little vampire, he thought the financial incentive was the best way to go with her. No threats that she had to, but a big consequence if she didn’t.

  Thankfully, no one was in the range when the two men showed it to her. Fabio had checked out a paintball gun and a bucket of paintballs from the armory
, and Collosa showed her how to handle it once they were in the range. It occurred to him the threesome could have a paintball war in the coming nights, to begin to teach her about weapons safety and how to shoot the bad guys without shooting the people on your side. Sneak training.

  They dropped her off in the geek offices just before oh-two-hundred, and they went home. Someone from Drake would bring her home an hour before sunrise. She’d managed to keep her Aussie accent at bay, so she was good for the day. They weren’t going to ask her coworkers to tattle on her.

  Kelsey’s personal computer equipment was the best money could buy. Well, with the exception of the graphics card since she didn’t use her unit for serious gaming. But everything else was top of the line and frequently updated.

  The equipment in the Drake geek offices was miles better. The truly best stuff can’t be bought — one needed connections in the U.S. military to gain access to it.

  Apparently, geeks new to Drake have to spend time proving themselves before they see the inner sanctum, but she was shown inside on her first day. She scented envy and respect from more than a few of the people in the room.

  She also noted that, while most of the employees in the rest of the building were shapeshifters, she smelled primarily humans in this department.

  Five people were in the room, counting her, and she was told the other four in this division would arrive at oh-five-thirty for a meeting. Unless an op was underway, people in this unit worked mostly when they wanted. So long as two people were in the office at any one time, and everyone got their forty to fifty hours in, Aaron didn’t care when people worked.

  In just about every geek office, it’s standard protocol to give the new girl some impossible task the group has been working on for months. In this case, it was how to hack into one of the most expensive brands of cars on the market. One of those that makes thousands of them a year — not tens of thousands. Certainly not millions per year. Super elite, and hardened by the best uber-geeks on the planet.

  Though, in this case, that meant second best, since Kelsey figured she was the best.

  It took her nearly an hour to get in, and another hour and a half to gain control of all communications between a specific car — currently in Italy — and the internet.

  It helped that Kelsey knew who they’d hired to harden their security, and she knew how he worked, but she figured her new coworkers didn’t need that particular information. She’d done in a few hours what they hadn’t been able to do in nearly two months. They were suitably impressed. No need in explaining why it was so easy for her.

  She scented lion before the door opened, and she wanted to drop to her knees when the larger-than-life Amakhosi walked in — the king of every lion on the planet, and every cat in North America. Even housecats, if the rumors were correct. He wasn’t over Kelsey, but she’d recently fed from one of his cats, so she felt his power intensely.

  “Kelsey, I recognize you from your picture. It’s nice to meet you. I understand kudos are in order already.” He looked around the room and then back to her. “I need to speak to you in a soundproof room.” He walked to the far wall, opened a door, and beckoned her to follow.

  She followed him, and found herself in a soundproofed conference room, locked in with the Lion King. Panic settled in her belly and she tried to keep there, so it wouldn’t spread.

  “During negotiations, you told us you’d need to bow out of projects if it was one you’d worked on. We agreed because we respect people with integrity. I don’t want to insult you, but I need to know how you broke in so quickly. Our top people have been working on this for seven weeks. We’ve been putting off an op until we could gain control of this target’s primary vehicle.”

  The fist in her gut relaxed a little. He was just checking in with her. She hadn’t fucked up already. “I didn’t work on the project, but I know someone who did. My integrity isn’t involved here. I know how he works. Knew where to look for... not a backdoor so much as a peep hole I could focus on and finesse. Exploit.”

  He crossed his arms. “I take it you aren’t friends with the inestimable Harry Jones?”

  Kelsey tried not to show her surprise. Harry Jones was his hacker name, and not the one he used for legitimate work. This had been a legit job, so that name should not have been associated with the person who coded this security. She was impressed Nathan knew it.

  “Acquaintances. Not many people know he plays both sides.” Meaning he has a white-hat name and a dark-hat name, and Nathan knew them both.

  “You have to know we’ve learned all your names, and the fact that you’re barely even grey under your dark-name, despite appearances to the contrary.”

  She shrugged. “I believe the correct Americanism is that I plead the fifth, right?”

  “That’s only when dealing with law enforcement, and should you have to do so, you only speak to tell them your new name and to ask for an attorney. Tell me the phone number you call if law enforcement has you?”

  She recited it back to him, and he nodded. “Yes. No pleading the fifth unless one of our attorneys tells you to. It’s tantamount to admitting to guilt, and it’s a stupid thing to do, most of the time.” He pulled a chair out and sat. “It isn’t necessary to tell your coworkers how you got in. You should know that we have two humans who don’t know about supernaturals. They’re recent additions to this division, and we’re making sure they’re going to stay before we go to the expense and risk of telling them.”

  He told her which two, and reminded her he could tell the other humans about her status as vampire because she’d given Drake administration permission in her employment papers.

  “They’ll figure it out when I only come in at night. One of them touched me and I got the feeling he was seeing if I was hot or cold. I didn’t bother going in his head to look at his thoughts. His scent told me he was afraid.”

  “Give it a few weeks before you make judgments on us. We don’t employ many Strigorii vampires, mostly for logistics reasons.”

  “You employ more Lugat?”

  Strong Lugat vampires can go out on cloudy days, or during the rain. They don’t like the sun and are easily burned, but it doesn’t put them out of commission for a century or more while they heal. Or, in Kelsey’s case, kill them, since she hadn’t grown close enough to a vampire to make him want to house and feed her unconscious corpse for a century while she healed.

  “Still not many, but more, yes. They can stay awake at sunrise, even if they need to be protected from it. Tell me, how do you feel about the Fabulosa trio?”

  “I’m not certain I have enough data yet to answer your question.”

  He wasn’t happy with her answer, but didn’t press for more.

  “Due to your known anxiety issues, we provided more therapy appointments for you in your benefits package than most get. You’re expected to make the phone call if you need someone to talk to. Our in-house therapist knows all about vampires, and she’s a sexual submissive. Nothing you can tell her will shock her. She’s a good listener, and she asks the right questions, so you can figure things out.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.”

  He breathed in and seemed to come to a decision. “We were able to negotiate to hire you only because the local Strigorii affirmed we’d be able to keep a baby vamp in line. After speaking with you, I really didn’t think it would be that big of a deal, but I smell...” He sighed. “You’ve had to be punished already?”

  It’d been too long since she’d fed for her face to flame red, but if she’d been human, even her ears would’ve glowed. “I’m having more difficulty than I expected speaking American English. My Australian accent keeps coming out, Your Majesty.”

  “As I’m not your king, you’ll refer to me as Nathan or Sir while you’re working. Use your best judgement if we’re around others in a formal or political setting.” He eyed her critically a few seconds. “Should we arrange time with a speech coach?”

  Kelsey breathed easie
r. She didn’t need a speech coach, she just needed to remember to watch her accent, but the fact he made the offer told her the kind of boss he’d be. One who looked for solutions rather than merely pointing out problems.

  “Thank you for the offer. If I feel a speech coach will help, I’ll take you up on it, but right now I think it’s just a matter of remembering to be conscious of how I sound.”

  “In which case, consequences when you get it wrong are probably the way to go. It’s important your coworkers don’t associate you with Australia. A couple of them might guess who you are if they have that data.”

  She nodded because she’d quickly realized the same thing.

  “On another note,” he told her, “Eunice and Fabio will be assigned to guard a client coming into town for the day on the seventh. It’s an eighteen-hour shift, which means you’ll need to feed from Collosa on that day. We’ll have either Collosa or Fabio available to you when you rise, but once the three of you get settled in, it’s doubtful all three men will be home at the same time very often.” He stood. “Is there anything else you need to speak with me about? Something I should know?”

  “Thank you for this opportunity.”

  “You thank us by doing the job we’re paying you for. Your work this morning is promising. Also, you’ll find a bonus deposit in your bank account. We posted a five-grand reward to the first person inside weeks ago, and upped it to ten grand a couple of days ago.”

  “Anything else out there with a bonus?”

  “There’s a list, but I believe you worked on at least two of them. When you’ve had your ass in a seat here for fifteen days, you can ask to see the list. It isn’t printed in hardcopy, and won’t be forwarded. You look at it on a screen, but we need some history with you before it’s shared.”

  Fair enough. She stood, followed him out of the conference room, and went back to her desk. Her next assignment was to look through several Drake protocols and offer suggestions for how to improve upon them. Tricky, since doing so might put whoever had come up with them in the first place on the defensive, but failure to recommend specific improvements would be a poor statement on her abilities. They didn’t just want her to hack into other databases and systems, but to help defend the Drake Security systems and databases.