Chapter 10
Magnum
I didn’t take long getting off the next morning. I desperately wanted to stay in her forever, but that isn’t the morning routine.
So I spent seven minutes inside her, rough as ever while she begged for mercy beneath me, and then I came inside her without allowing an orgasm.
She cried again when I took the cincher off and the plug out, sobbed so much she nearly had me in tears when I asked who I am, and she answered with my name.
But then she went to the bathroom, washed her face, put clothes on, and came out without tears.
“I’ll cry when you’re gone,” she told me. “Thank you for last night, and for not changing things up this morning.” She blew out a breath, still working hard to manage her emotions.
“I vote for French toast with entirely too much bacon this morning,” she said with a smile. “That work for you?”
An hour later, after a wonderful breakfast, I handed her a burner phone.
“I have another burner, the number’s in the contacts under Junior, which is normal for Alabama.
It’s possible someone out there is monitoring your phone, and I’d just as soon keep our conversations private.
But, if we only call each other, that’s a red flag, too.
So, you’ll call Ember with it, and try to use it at least once or twice per day, besides our calls.
Ordering food, calling a ride, or talking to a contact who isn’t top secret, since I know you have other ways of keeping those calls confidential. ”
She stared at it a good dozen seconds before she nodded.
“Yeah, okay. I’d like to think my calls aren’t being monitored, but you’re right that it’s possible they are, and yeah, I’ve taken that into account when deciding how to communicate with even regular contacts, like detectives and other investigators.
The encryption I use for informants, I’m pretty sure that’s safe.
My tech guy helped me set it up, but maybe you can look it over the next time you’re up? ”
“I can do it now, if you’d like.”
And okay, maybe it was a way for me to stay an hour longer, but I didn’t mind doing it for her, even without that. Turns out, it was well done, and I only tweaked it a tiny bit.
When I finally pulled out of her driveway, I tried to focus on the positive. This trip had proven we can work even when she’s working fifteen or more hours a day, which, from what she’d said, happens frequently in short spurts when she’s hot and heavy on a case, but rarely for this long.
So we’d survived, in her words — her heaviest workload ever.
And she didn’t know it, but I’d be on the phone with her that night, and she was going to have an orgasm on a video call, so I could watch her face when the pleasure overtook her.
- - - ? - - -
Storm
Watching him drive away was damned hard, but I threw myself into my work, and then drove to fucking Virginia early the next day so I could handle interviews with the first responders.
And my crazy boyfriend… fuck, that sounded odd in my head. Boyfriend. I mean, society was going to call him that, but he was so much more than that.
So, my crazy Magnum called me the night he left and talked me through masturbating with the huge vibrating dildo he’d ordered for me a few days after he arrived.
Over the next seven weeks, he visited three times — two long weekends and a six-day stretch.
And now it was my time to visit him. I tried to argue against him sending a plane to get me, but he said he didn’t want to risk flight delays that might steal one of my days with him.
I was going to be there for thirty days. Four weeks and two days. I was chasing a story in Huntsville, Alabama, yet another scientist who’s gone missing, and barely two hours north of Magnum’s home.
I’d also be talking to some of the victims in Alabama, and checking in with the family members I’d talked to in my original investigations, long before I figured out where the people were.
Our high-protocol schedule was going to be a work in progress.
Unless I had something big come up, I’d stop working at seven in the evening.
If I could get away earlier, I’d text him and let him know, in which case, he’d put me in my slavewear earlier, and I’d cook dinner.
If not, he’d cook it, and I’d clean up after.
But I’d be in high-protocol from seven in the evening until either seven or eight in the morning most days, depending on how early I needed to begin my day.
We were going to start with me being responsible for cooking breakfast daily, and for my laundry and the towels, plus cleaning three bathrooms weekly.
This would be handled on Tuesday and Wednesday unless my schedule didn’t allow it, in which case it was my responsibility to write it into the schedule around my other responsibilities.
I felt like I could make that work, but if not, communication was crucial.
I wanted to make it work, and I really thought it would, most weeks. I was concerned, and would be until we tested it, but I appreciated the ways he’d written communication into the deal.
But the part that made me the most… uncomfortable, was maintenance.
We had to do it. Giving me the ability to say I don’t need it and we can just forgo it would spoil everything. Our power-exchange works because I hand him the power. Letting me pick and choose would make everything fall apart.
I’d stated strongly, and came close to arguing, that I only need it every third month, but he’s the one who decides how often we need it. How often our relationship requires it.
Granted, if he makes too many rules I can’t live with, it’ll screw things up, but I had no reason to think he would. Still, it puts a lot of responsibility on his shoulders, but that’s the way these things work.
And Magnum, as the Master, had decided maintenance will happen on the thirteenth day I’m with him — the second Tuesday. It was on the calendar, so I’d once again watch it get closer and closer.
And maybe it’s wrong of me to have planned for this, but if I figured out that we weren’t going to work, then I wouldn’t stick around for maintenance.
Basically, this meant if we’re still together fourteen days from me flying to him, odds are good that I’ll be selling my house in the coming months.
And honestly, we did okay during the biggest workload I’ve ever had, those first two weeks he came to visit me, and then we did fine one weekend when I worked maybe three hours the entire time, and we spent the rest of the three-and-a-half days together, both in and out of high protocol.
And we love each other.
Not only that, we are mega-compatible in nearly every way — kink, OCD about cleaning, we like mostly the same foods, and it turns out we’re both really good at ping pong.
Crazy, right? But then there’s the whole biker and investigative reporter thing, and I was just going to have to spend time around his club before I could figure out if that was a dealbreaker.
The pilot was really nice, and she offered to let me sit up front with her, but I’d planned to read through the complete bio of the missing scientist, and that involved digging into learning more about the missile guidance systems this gorgeous, healthy, intelligent woman had specialized in.
I had an insider feeding me information, but they were being careful to point me in the right direction without giving away so much, it was obvious someone was breaking protocol and telling me things I shouldn’t know.
The problem is, nearly everything about this scientist’s job was classified, so I was having to mostly learn from the very little open-source stuff I could find. Still, I gave myself a crash course in what I could.
Magnum had told me to wear jeans and to dress casual.
We were well into fall, so a sweater would’ve been fine at home, but it was still eighty-eight degrees in Birmingham.
I opted for my sport sandals and a cream-colored V-neck tee that showed lots of cleavage, because I was dressing for him.
I didn’t know he was going to take me straight to the clubhouse until I realized we were headed into the city and not toward the lake.
“Didn’t want you to stress over it,” he told me when I pointed it out and he explained where we were going.
And when I glared at him, he only said, “You’re welcome.”
“I need to change shirts,” I told him. “I’m showing way too much cleavage to meet new people!”
He laughed. “Darlin’, your tits’ll make you fit in. These are bikers and their ol’ladies.”
And there was that term. Old ladies.
It was almost enough to make me not want to date a biker, right? Did I want to be referred to as an ol’lady? No, I didn’t think so.
But I was trying not to make judgments until I met everyone.
I liked the men I’d met. Every one of them.
They’d put themselves in serious danger to try to find the biological brother of one of their MC brothers, and they’d all gone at the problem logically, understanding why they couldn’t kill the men responsible — or even beat the fuck out of them.
Their wives and girlfriends deserved the benefit of the doubt.
Ember met us in the parking area and gave me a hug. “I’m so glad you’re here. Magnum was worried you’d stress, so I couldn’t tell you what we were planning, but I made sure we have plenty of ginger ale, and we have plenty of food.”
She practically pulled me across the parking lot and into an impressive clubhouse, with about a dozen screens around the room, some showing video games in progress, some showing a football game, and two showing the parking lot from different angles.
And I couldn’t believe Ember had remembered when I told her my drink of choice is either bourbon, neat, or bourbon and ginger ale.
A woman in jeans and a black tee met us at the door, and Ember introduced her as Velvet. I remembered that she was Mad Dog’s wife, which means there was likely some kind of protocol about the order people got to meet me.
“My husband thinks highly of you,” Velvet said. “It’s good to finally meet you.”
The two women steered me toward a table loaded with food — casserole dishes and platters. This was clearly potluck and not catered. I recognized what looked like cornbread, some mac-n-cheese, a potato and cheese dish, and then more people were talking to me and I had to look up.
I met Tempe and immediately liked her, then Tori walked to us, and I recognized her without an introduction. “OMG,” I told her. “I’m obsessed with your channel! I even made my own cheese after watching you make it!”
She laughed. “It’s so much better than the storebought stuff, isn’t it? And I love your channel, too. No clickbait, just the facts. I appreciate that.”
Tess stayed back for a while, but eventually stepped forward and introduced herself. “Frost says you have a good head on your shoulders. Our men like you, despite your job, and that’s saying something. Still, you could do them a lot of harm with just a few stray words.”
She was a criminal attorney, so I didn’t get offended. I didn’t know why Frost had told her, maybe because I hadn’t spent much time with Bobcat, so he didn’t know me as well as the others.
“I’m aware,” I told her, “and I’ve been, and will continue to be, careful. I know they helped because it meant rescuing Gears’ brother, but there’s no way I can ever thank them for all they did. I’ll go to jail myself before I risk any of them.”
She nodded. “So they say. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Rumor has it you’re researching the whole missing scientists thing now?”
“Just one of them.”
Another nod, and then Tempe was on the super-nice, professional-looking bar with tons of warm wood and shiny chrome, wearing jeans, a lavender sports bra, and lavender bunny ears, dancing like a stripper.
Tess rolled her eyes and said, “You a table dancer? She’ll drag Cheyenne up next. Maybe Kitty.”
Ember tried to drag me up on a table to dance with her, but Tori rescued me, and we talked about algorithms and editing software until Mad Dog jumped onto a stage and said, “Storm, can you come up here, please?”
I frowned at Ember, who nodded for me to go, and then Velvet was beside me, an arm around my waist, walking me to Mad Dog.
“There are no secrets in an MC,” Mad Dog said to the room once I was on the stage with him. “All of you know how Magnum’s Storm helped us get Mason back. We figure enough time has passed, it’s safe for her and Magnum to quietly be together.”
He looked at me and then back to the room. “She’s Magnum’s, but even if she wasn’t, we’d owe her.” He looked at me again. “Whether you’re in Magnum’s life or not, if you need us, you let us know. I’m officially making you a friend of the club, whether or not you’re in Magnum’s life.”
I stared at him a good ten seconds before I could come up with anything to say.
“I’m never speechless, so congrats for that, and thank you.
It means a lot, but I feel as if I’m indebted to all of you, for going above and beyond to…
” I shook my head and looked out at everyone in the room.
“I was so focused on finding the missing, and then when two investigations slammed into each other…” I blew out a breath.
“I didn’t have any options, but I wasn’t going to let it go.
I couldn’t. So many of you got involved, and it showed me how tight your organization is.
You aren’t just people who hang out together, but friends, and also professionals. ”
I looked to the women, still around the table we’d ended up sitting at, talking and drinking together.
“Thanks to all of you for the warm welcome. I didn’t know what to expect when Magnum surprised me by bringing me here right from the airport, but it’s been fun.”