Chapter Seven
Being Vivian’s top might kill him.
He sat at the conference table watching her. She hadn’t
presented a case today, merely sat there taking notes and speaking only when
Damon asked her for updates. She was professional and polite, and he wanted to
murder someone.
Robert Seeger gave all his updates, and then the head of the
bodyguard unit went over all the assignments, complaining briefly that he
thought he was being given a new hire, but that man had never turned up at
work.
He’d been looking directly at Mal, who if he’d been nothing
more than a bodyguard, would never have been in that upper-level meeting in the
first place.
“Sorry, mate,” Oliver said from beside Mal. “I’m afraid he’s
probably working with us from now on.”
He had his clearance. For now, he was a consultant, but he
knew Damon was working to get him on fully at MI6.
He should be thrilled, but now he worried what happened when
he was gone on long missions. They could potentially ask him to go away for
years at a time, setting up a different identity to monitor hot spots or
surveil enemies of the state. A few months back he would have said that was the
dream.
How quickly things turned.
“I’ll look into hiring someone new, Connell,” Damon
promised. “I know you’re stretched.”
Connell McNair was a man in his prime, someone Mal would
have gravitated to in the before times. That was what he’d started calling it
in sessions with William. There was the Mal before the betrayal, the Mal after
the betrayal, and the Mal he wanted to become.
“I appreciate it.” Connell turned to Vivian. “How about it,
love? You don’t want to do boring investigations. Come work for me. That’s
where the real adrenaline is.”
“That’s enough,” Damon said.
Connell looked slightly confused. “What? I’ve watched her
train. I think she would actually be quite effective, especially when the
client doesn’t want anyone to know he’s being guarded. I could make a
wicked-good guard out of her. And she could profile all my stalking cases from
the inside.”
“She’s not joining the bodyguards.” Mal would die before he
let that happen.
Nikolai Markovic sat up, yawning. He’d been in Berlin at a
conference and had flown back on a red eye because of his daughter’s dance
recital. It looked like he hadn’t caught up on his sleep. “Why would Vivian
join the bodyguards? Does her father know?”
Vivian slapped her laptop closed. “My father doesn’t need to
know, Mr. Markovic. I’m not joining the bodyguard unit. I’m fine where I am for
now. Thank you for the compliment, Connell.”
“Mr. Markovic?” Nikolai looked confused. “Vivian, I was
speaking as a father. I would want to know if my children were considering
changing careers.”
“Then you’ll be happy to know I’m not.” She had that
expression she had on her face so often these days. Blank. Bland. None of her
usual light.
Sami sat beside her mother. “You shouldn’t join the guards,
Vivi. They’re mostly boys, and they smell like feet. They work out all the
time.”
“I think this is the point in time where my mother would
want me to remind everyone that Vivian is as good as any man, and if she wants
to smell like feet, we should let her,” Lucy offered.
Damon sighed and sat back. “Vivian, do you have a case for
us today?”
“I don’t,” she replied.
Damon’s brows rose.
She shrugged and gathered her things. “Everyone was right.
It was a passing fancy. I’m going to concentrate on my real job and what I’m
good at.”
“Vivian, I didn’t…” Damon began.
He heard Penny Knight mutter under her breath…something
about the fact that she’d told him so.
“Not a problem,” she replied. “I have a session. If there’s
nothing else, I’d like to get prepared for it.”
She didn’t have a session for another hour.
Unless she was telling him something. That she was restless
and needed him.
She walked out the door after Damon reluctantly gave her
leave.
“I told you pushing her wasn’t a good idea,” Penny pointed
out. “She’s not one of your soldiers, and she never will be.” She turned to
Nikolai. “And she is an adult woman who does not need her father’s permission
to pursue her career.”
The Russian looked like he wished he’d never said a word.
“Yeah, Mom,” Lucy was saying into her cell phone. “I know
it’s early, but the Euros are totally disrespecting Vivian McKay’s bodily
autonomy.” She was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, I’ll put you on speaker.”
It was time for him to go. He stood. “As much as I would
love to listen to Lucy’s mom’s lecture on feminist principles, I have work to
do.”
Damon’s eyes narrowed. “Do you?”
Oliver was staring at him, too. “Yes, you’ve been
mysteriously busier than usual.”
“Because he is back to doing the boom boom
with Vivian.”
Mal sighed. He’d forgotten Sosa was sitting in a chair in
the corner, her knees pressed to her chest. She would put her head there and
look like she was napping, but the young woman was always listening.
“Is the boom boom consensual?” a
light airy voice asked over the surprisingly loud speaker. Nell Flanders knew
way too much about his business for someone he’d never actually met. Lucy’s mom
had thoughts about everything.
“Vivian and I have an understanding,” Mal explained. He
should have known they couldn’t hide it forever.
“Do you?” Oliver asked. “I haven’t seen a contract come over
my desk. Have you?”
Damon’s head shook. “No.” He frowned and looked to Mal.
“Good lord, man. Don’t tell me you’re doing the vanilla thing.”
Mal flipped Sosa off. She simply grinned at him before he
looked back to Oliver. “I’ll have a contract by the end of the day. Do not give
her hell. And she’ll have a case to present next time.”
“Are you shaming Vivian for her sexual needs?” Lucy’s mom
asked, her tone going deeper like something terrible would happen if the answer
wasn’t to her liking.
Damon’s head hit his hands.
Mal left. He didn’t need to punish the men. Lucy had taken
care of that. He checked her office first, pushing through the door, and
realized how bad the situation was. She was on the floor in a submissive
position, waiting for him.
His heart ached because she wouldn’t talk to him about it.
She would take the discipline and the sex and send him out. He was feeding her
body, sharing her body, but she held her soul apart.
Still, he put a hand on her head and prepared to give her
what she needed.
* * * *
“You’re sleeping with that super-hot grim dude?”
Sophy sank down on the sofa across from where Vivian sat in the lounge. She set
her glass of Pinot Noir on the table between them.
Dominion was quiet. It wouldn’t be in an hour or so. Then
the music would come on, the lights would dim, and the party would begin, but
Vivian didn’t think she was going to party tonight. She was going to quietly
watch and wait for when Mal decided to take her to a privacy room.
Not that they needed one now, apparently. Someone had
talked.
She was sitting on the sofa where Mal had bent her over and
smacked her ass and fucked her hard. She could still feel his cock inside her,
stretching her, rubbing her in all the perfect places. Mal started taking
dungeon monitor duty, which included coming in early and checking the
equipment. The day before she’d come in to make sure she was ready on time.
Sure. That was why she’d done it. She’d done it so they
could have sex and then she could pretend to ignore him.
Since they’d begun their perfectly reasonable for the
lifestyle D/s-only relationship three weeks before, she’d had sex with the man
almost everywhere. In her office. In his office. In his flat upstairs. In the
kitchens one morning before anyone else was in. On Oliver’s couch because it
was literally picked for how easy it was to have sex on. It was okay. He’d been
in Paris for the day, and she’d cleaned up. And it wasn’t like Oliver hadn’t
misbehaved pretty much everywhere.
The one place she hadn’t spread her legs for that man was in
the flat where she lived. Where she was a guest. Oh, she was certain Sophy
would say they shared the place, but Vivian didn’t pay rent or utilities. She
bought groceries and paid her half of the housekeeping, but the truth was she
was a guest. She hadn’t brought Mal there and never would because it wasn’t her
real home. It was a happy way station.
She hadn’t wanted to explain her sexual relationship to
Sophy. It was sad, but she was distancing. Sophy knew what she wanted. She
wasn’t sitting around mooning over a guy. She was preparing for a future she
wanted.
Vivian wasn’t sure what she wanted except it wasn’t to be
behind a desk for the rest of her life.
But she also didn’t want to be the person who didn’t talk to
her best friend. Or her brother. Or her parents.
She thought briefly about lying, but Mal had told her that
Sosa had let the cat out of the bag. It was hard as a therapist to not lecture
her on gossip, but she’d kept things professional. She had hopes that her
colleagues would have some discretion. She should have known better.
She glanced around. She was still in yoga pants and a
T-shirt. Sophy was in street clothes, too. Mal was somewhere upstairs working
on the plumbing. Or at least that was what she was told when she nonchalantly
asked about him.
So they were doing this here.
“It started at your birthday,” Vivian said.
Sophy sat back, a serious look on her face. “Are we going to
talk about it now?”
Vivian was aware that Sophy knew something happened that
night, but apparently her uncle hadn’t told her. Nor had Oliver. Mal wouldn’t.
He wasn’t a man to gossip. He could keep secrets.
Unfortunately, Sosa couldn’t.
“You want to know what happened? Because it was pretty
extreme.”
“Not between you and Mal, though I would listen,” Sophy
admitted. “Yeah, we should go over that, but I’m talking about Tarquin
revealing he filmed you having sex with him and threatened you with it.”
“I didn’t think you knew.” Tears sparked, but she was
determined not to shed them. She’d cried enough over this. But it was oddly
getting easier and easier to cry. Like all the spankings had trained her that
it was okay. Yet, she still felt stuck.