She almost typed back a hot-tempered retort, but deleted it. That reaction in her was so ingrained, that defiance, that steel that she used, needed, at work. Here though? With him? It didn’t seem to fit anymore. Now she was more concerned with why her husband issuing orders to her, making her obey him, was making her pussy wet. Even now, her tingling nipples had hardened into stony points at the mere mention of it, of obedience, of the prospect of submitting to his will.
Did that fact comport with, well,
anything
she’d been raised to think? To feel? Absolutely not. On its face, it seemed diametrically opposed. As she’d looked deeper within herself though, at the needs, the urges, her upbringing had practically
trained
her to gloss over, even ignore, it was a startling discovery indeed.
She didn’t give a shit anymore about what the “right” thing to do was. She didn’t give a shit about what she was supposed to feel and do. To her mind, feminism was about the choice, the freedom, to be whom — and what — she was.
And apparently that was a woman who practically went into heat every time her husband ordered her around.
What did that really mean though? What did that say about her? Was this — like so much else she’d been questioning of late — just the pregnancy hormones talking, or was it something else, something more profound? She’d always assumed she’d have a nesting instinct when she got pregnant. Instead, she seemed to have an instinct to curl up at her husband’s feet, her ass raised for both his caresses and his slaps.
“Get a
hold
of yourself,” she whispered, making the plate of white rice and chicken — one of the few things she hoped wouldn’t trigger her nausea again. She put it in the microwave, set it, and picked up her phone again.
She leaned against the counter, rubbing her neck as she waited for her food to heat, for her husband to reply. For this to all start making some
sense
.
Of course, he was right, but she wasn’t about to let him know he’d been reading her like a goddamned book.
Her mouth suddenly went dry, heat flashing in her cheeks. He was so quick — and devastatingly effective — at redirecting her attention, at focusing her.
At making sure she behaved.
Behaved? What the fuck?
, to obey him.
Her thighs clenched together, hard, the wet heat between them flaring. She either needed to masturbate really, really badly — or Keihl needed to somehow time-warp his ass back across the country and fuck her brains out. Like
now
.
She froze, reading the words again. How did he know? And
why
did she like it so much? She still couldn’t answer it. She kept coming back to the whys of it, even as part of her was starting to conclude that it was a question impossible to answer, as if basic instinct, primal urges passed down through the eons, could be explained in concrete terms.
They just… were.
The questions swirled in her mind again, her brain unable to anatomize all of it, all the implications of it. To see what this might mean for her — and for her relationship with her husband. It was probably time to talk to Sharon again, and maybe Joely too.
Or maybe both.
* * *
I
t was the last full day of the meeting. He’d learned more about the new updated EPA regs than he’d ever wanted to know in ten lifetimes. He and two dozen other environmental attorneys had sat through conference after conference, breakout sessions, lectures, and more. Fortunately, nothing he’d heard would have much of an impact on the Coal Creek project. Stan would be happy to hear that — if indeed it was possible for Stan to be happy about
anything
. Perhaps some of the BLM updates would present complications, but Keihl didn’t have the brain power left to unravel all of them now. Most of it was bullshit. Well meaning, yes, but like so much in government, full of unintended — and most of them negative — consequences. He’d wait until he got home to try to unpack all of it. Ella was good at such work. Very good.
Maybe he could use this to keep her nose in the books, and keep her out of trouble.
During a short intermission before the closing break-out session, Keihl found a quiet chair in a corner of the hotel’s beautiful lobby. It was a sort of atrium, all soaring glass ceilings, palm fronds, and bubbling fountains. Balancing his laptop on his thighs, he peeled away the spill guard from the coffee cup, the heat of it starting to singe his palm. He inhaled the slightly burned, but still wonderful, aroma of the coffee as the computer booted.
The e-mail notifications cascaded in as he’d expected — conferences were hell on e-mail inbox queues — but there was one particular e-mail that caught his eye. Well, the subject line did, really.
“Subtle, Ella.” He shook his head, chuckling.
Then he scanned the e-mail, lowering his coffee slowly from his lips as he read.
Hello Keihl,
Hope the conference wasn’t a complete waste. It’s been crazy without you here. Different partners keep asking for you, and I keep telling them you’re at the conference they paid to send you to. It’s like the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand’s doing. Stewart Phillips asked for you twice! Guess he didn’t believe me the first time I told him.
Anyway, I thought you might find this… illuminating. I pulled the next batch of names from that agent list. As you might have already guessed, they’re also all listed as Dominion Trust. No surprise there, right? But take a look at some of the companies listed there. Call me when you get a chance.
Ella
Keihl pulled out his phone, looking around for somewhere to put his coffee, wishing he had three hands. He finally set it between his legs on the chair, hoping he wasn’t stupid enough to spill it on his crotch and parboil his nuts. No lawsuit would rescue him from such idiocy — and it certainly wouldn’t cure sudden infertility either.
He dialed the number, still reading the e-mail, trying to remember where he’d seen some of those names before. While not technically illegal, if he were an auditor — or the IRS — this would send up a whole army of red flags. No matter how above board it looked, when something didn’t
feel
right, it usually wasn’t.
The phone connected.
“Ella Rhodes.”
“Now, that
is
very interesting, Ella.” Keihl lowered his voice. “Did you pull the rest of the names from the list yet?”
“Nope, I wasn’t sure if it’d be worth it. Trying to be a good girl — for once.”
Keihl laughed softly. “I like this new Ella — but stow that shit for a while. I need evil Ella back for a bit longer.”
“Thank God!”
“I recognize some of the names on the list you sent me. Centurion, Fiske Capital, RefServ — I think that’s an oil services one — but most of the rest don’t ring a bell. What would I need to do to convince you to—”
“Way ahead of you, bossman.” He could hear the glee in her voice. “I looked up most of them. No real pattern I could make out, but some of them are definitely big time corporations.”
“Yeah, I know Fiske has something like a four billion market cap.”
“Jesus.”
“A couple things jump out at me,” Keihl said. “They’re all over the map — financial services like Fiske, then you’ve got petroleum, mining. I see one that’s a telecomm outfit in the Midwest. I think Centurion is a goddamned
weapons
manufacturer. The other question I’ve got is how come they’re all connected to the Dominion Trust? Doesn’t make sense for one entity to be into all of these areas at once.”
“Fishy?”
That’s my Ella.
“Looks totally legal from what I can see. Nothing I can point to as being an issue. But the whole thing has me twitchy. Something definitely doesn’t look right here.”
“I’ll keep pulling them for you. Maybe when you have all the names, you can piece together something, a pattern, commonalities —
something
.”
“I like that idea,” Keihl said, leaning his head back and watching the way the broad, brilliant green of the palm fronds above him seemed to wave upon the air currents in the atrium. “But I want you to do something for me.”
“Do I get to carry a gun? Jump out of a plane?”
“You’re not in a spy movie, dear.”
“Shit. And I thought this job was going to be fun!”
“I’m serious, brat.” His voice lowered to a murmur as two of his breakout partners walked by, giving him a nod as they went. “I need you to promise me this. Keep this shit
quiet
. You understand?”
“Okay, but why? This isn’t anything that’s not publicly available, with some patience and persistence.”
“Just trust me on this. Quiet as a mouse.”
“Or a ninja.”
Keihl chuckled again. “Whatever will keep you under the radar. I don’t know exactly why yet, but for now, this is just between you and me.”
“No problem.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Aren’t you flying back tomorrow? Why don’t you just go home?”
The image of a naked, kneeling Kirsten, her palms laid neatly on her pale thighs came to mind.
Not now, horndog.
“I’d love to. But I need to check this all out first. And if I go home …”
“Distractions, distractions.” Her voice was a lurid sing-song tone.
“It’s not like that, Ella.”
“It needs to be. Considering the amount of sex I’m
not
getting? You married peeps better be making up for it.”
“I want a new secretary.”
She snorted. “We call them admins these days. It’s like, the twenty first century now, you caveman.”
“I thought you liked cavemen?”
“Only in the bedroom.”
He covered his mouth to stifle his laughter. “Annnd now we’ve officially passed over into line-crossed land. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Fly fast, bossman!”
He hung up, slipping the phone into his pocket, and taking a sip from his coffee. This list posed more questions than it answered. Really, this was probably nothing — or at least nothing a lowly enviro attorney needed to be fucking with. But curiosity was always an Achille’s Heel of his, and he knew he couldn’t just let this drop. At least not now. He did know one thing, and he wasn’t sure if it was a good, or a very bad, thing.
He needed to talk to Tom Forster.
Chapter Nineteen
S
he was on him before the front door even closed, finding those soft demanding lips of his that had haunted her dreams every night he was away. She surprised him, driving his body against the hallway wall, his bag slipping off his shoulder to thud against the floor. Her fingers worked at his belt as he growled into her mouth, showing her how much he’d missed her too.
He pulled her back, the dark eyes glinting with lust. “Missed me?”
“Oh you know I did.” And she flung herself against him once more, pulling his shirt from his waistband, working the fly open, all the while her mouth devoured his, their hot breath mingling, the taste of his wet lips driving her desire yet higher.
Should she tell him everything? How many times had she paced at the front door waiting for him? She’d tried on at least a dozen outfits, rejecting one as too conservative, another as not quite slutty enough. She’d settled on the tight white tank she knew drove him wild. She’d put her hair up, a wild, black mess atop her head, held together —barely — by the Japanese sticks she knew he loved.