Read Online Punishing for Pleasure by Avery Gale - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Avery Gale
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energy searching your memory.”
Meri let out a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding and felt herself sag. In the back of her mind, Meri wondered why she was fighting this battle when it was so obviously in vain. “I have a business trip coming up in a few days. My hope is whoever is doing this will lose interest and move on while I’m gone. I promise to call them if I’m still having trouble when I return.” Despite what everyone might think, her life really was incredibly boring. Even her weekly trips to the Prairie Winds Club had begun to dwindle under the mounting pressures of her career. And she’d also started worrying about trouble following her there as well. Quite frankly, the fear that someone else might be caught up in her mess was the stuff of nightmares.
“Well, pet, I think perhaps you need to start at the beginning. And don’t leave anything out.” Ash’s voice was pitched lower than she’d ever heard it and sounded even more menacing than his usual Dom-voice, and just the sound of it sent a shiver of apprehension up her spine. And if the two of them thought they were miffed before, they were going to be positively livid when she told them about the trouble she’d been having recently.
*****
Ash’s jaw was ready to crack under the strain—clenching his mouth closed might be keeping him from spewing curses like the sailor he’d been, but it was going to cost him a fucking fortune in dental work. The more Merilee Lanham talked, the more difficult it was to keep from asking the most basic question, Why haven’t you asked for help? Of course that question would lead to a hundred others, including What made you think this would just go away?
He and Dex listened as Meri recounted how she’d started getting text messages to her private cell phone the day after her parents left for South America. The messages hadn’t been particularly threatening in the beginning, but they had been fairly frequent. When she didn’t respond, the sender had begun including photos of her that had been taken during unguarded moments. A few had shown her walking from the parking garage to her downtown office, others had been taken during her quick lunch breaks. She’d known they were current pictures because she’d recognized the clothing she’d worn on the days she’d eaten in specific locations. Once she started watching for someone taking her picture, they’d abruptly stopped.
“I really thought it was over, because I hadn’t gotten anything for a couple of days…but then I started getting emails to my personal account.” Ash was watching her closely or he might have missed the small shiver that moved through her before she continued, “This time the pictures were taken from a distance, enough so some were a bit grainy. You know, like they’d been taken using a high-powered zoom lens. One showed me driving through the gates at Prairie Winds and another was taken later that night when I’d been standing out on the terrace behind the club. There were more over the course of several days’ activities, but you get the idea.”
“Is this why you haven’t been to the club much in the past few weeks?”
For the first time since they’d started talking, Ash saw a very real sadness move through her expression. Thinking back, he could only recall one other time he’d sensed anything other than a positive vibe from Meri and that told him a lot about who she was at her core. “Truthfully, that is a part of it but not all. My responsibilities at the Foundation are growing faster than my ability to acclimate and delegate…and with my dad gone, well, things are even more insane than usual.”
One of the things Ash had noticed was the fact she appeared to have lost weight—not a lot, but enough to let him know she was probably stumbling into her home late at night when she was far too exhausted to do any more than fall into bed. If she belonged to them, he and Dex would make damned sure she took
Meri let out a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding and felt herself sag. In the back of her mind, Meri wondered why she was fighting this battle when it was so obviously in vain. “I have a business trip coming up in a few days. My hope is whoever is doing this will lose interest and move on while I’m gone. I promise to call them if I’m still having trouble when I return.” Despite what everyone might think, her life really was incredibly boring. Even her weekly trips to the Prairie Winds Club had begun to dwindle under the mounting pressures of her career. And she’d also started worrying about trouble following her there as well. Quite frankly, the fear that someone else might be caught up in her mess was the stuff of nightmares.
“Well, pet, I think perhaps you need to start at the beginning. And don’t leave anything out.” Ash’s voice was pitched lower than she’d ever heard it and sounded even more menacing than his usual Dom-voice, and just the sound of it sent a shiver of apprehension up her spine. And if the two of them thought they were miffed before, they were going to be positively livid when she told them about the trouble she’d been having recently.
*****
Ash’s jaw was ready to crack under the strain—clenching his mouth closed might be keeping him from spewing curses like the sailor he’d been, but it was going to cost him a fucking fortune in dental work. The more Merilee Lanham talked, the more difficult it was to keep from asking the most basic question, Why haven’t you asked for help? Of course that question would lead to a hundred others, including What made you think this would just go away?
He and Dex listened as Meri recounted how she’d started getting text messages to her private cell phone the day after her parents left for South America. The messages hadn’t been particularly threatening in the beginning, but they had been fairly frequent. When she didn’t respond, the sender had begun including photos of her that had been taken during unguarded moments. A few had shown her walking from the parking garage to her downtown office, others had been taken during her quick lunch breaks. She’d known they were current pictures because she’d recognized the clothing she’d worn on the days she’d eaten in specific locations. Once she started watching for someone taking her picture, they’d abruptly stopped.
“I really thought it was over, because I hadn’t gotten anything for a couple of days…but then I started getting emails to my personal account.” Ash was watching her closely or he might have missed the small shiver that moved through her before she continued, “This time the pictures were taken from a distance, enough so some were a bit grainy. You know, like they’d been taken using a high-powered zoom lens. One showed me driving through the gates at Prairie Winds and another was taken later that night when I’d been standing out on the terrace behind the club. There were more over the course of several days’ activities, but you get the idea.”
“Is this why you haven’t been to the club much in the past few weeks?”
For the first time since they’d started talking, Ash saw a very real sadness move through her expression. Thinking back, he could only recall one other time he’d sensed anything other than a positive vibe from Meri and that told him a lot about who she was at her core. “Truthfully, that is a part of it but not all. My responsibilities at the Foundation are growing faster than my ability to acclimate and delegate…and with my dad gone, well, things are even more insane than usual.”
One of the things Ash had noticed was the fact she appeared to have lost weight—not a lot, but enough to let him know she was probably stumbling into her home late at night when she was far too exhausted to do any more than fall into bed. If she belonged to them, he and Dex would make damned sure she took
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