Page 13 of Pressure

“Coffee would be great,” Marissa murmured.

The group moved to the conference room where Austin put on the coffee.

Lance sat at the table and watched as the others began taking their seats. “Patrick, I saw you made the cover of GQ, is your wife ready to divorce you over all the fan mail you’re getting from the women?”

Patrick chuckled. “No, but she is regretting letting me take her last name. That’s the only reason I’m getting any of the publicity I am.”

Austin turned from her spot at the coffee maker. “Though his publicist checked the mail last week and said there were at least three pairs of women’s panties in the PO box.”

Marissa spoke up then. “Whoa, back up. You’re like a billionaire hot shot, right?” she said, looking at Patrick. “I know what kind of egos your types have. You’re seriously telling me you took your wife’s last name?”

Patrick chuckled. “Let’s just say my last name was not something I wanted to be associated with anymore and leave it at that.”

Marissa held up her hands. “That’s fine. I just think it’s cool.”

“You and the rest of the world,” Patrick muttered as Austin set coffee in front of him.

A commotion in the lobby told them Hunter, Dakota, and Russell had arrived.

The three spilled into the conference room seeming to argue about something.

Elijah whistled and they all looked his direction. “You’re late. Let’s get started, folks.”

He’d always been the no nonsense one of the group, which might be why they’d elected him director of the board.

When everyone was settled, he patched Garrett in.

“Lance, my girl says I have to be nice to you now. I appreciate the apology and I’m sorry if I was too big of an ass about it.”

Lance coughed. “It’s fine, man. I was out of line.”

“Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” Elijah said, “Let’s introduce our guest. Marissa has kindly agreed to come on board with us and do a deep dive of our data security systems and help us shore up any vulnerabilities we might find. She has asked if she can attend the parties this weekend as a guest and possibly stay on site while she works to give her better access to our servers and other electronics. Does anyone object to any of this?”

Dakota raised her hand. “Not to bethatperson but are you even familiar with our lifestyle?” she asked Marissa.

Lance closed his eyes and prayed Dakota’s tone didn’t rub her the wrong way.

“Well, I was Lance’s submissive for nearly four years. After that I had a submissive of my own for a little while, so you tell me.”

Dakota’s mouth dropped open as she looked back and forth between Lance and Marissa.

Lance grinned. “Congratulations, Riss. You’ve done what we’ve been trying to do for years, render Dakota speechless.”

The southern woman flipped Lance the bird and Marissa snickered.

“OK, children,” Garrett said through the speaker phone. “I have to get back to work soon or I won’t be able to get on a plane tomorrow. If you make me miss a weekend with Isabelle, I will not be able to keep my promise to her that I be nice to you.”

“Sorry,” Lance muttered.

“I’ll ask again,” Eli said, “Does anyone object to any of this?”

“I have no objections, but I do have a question about optics,” Hunter said.

Elijah nodded for him to go on. “We’re very stringent about who we let in, even guests of vetted members have somewhat of a vetting process to go through, and only get to come to one weekend of parties before they’re asked to become a member. If this goes beyond one weekend, how do we explain bending the rules for Marissa? I’m assuming we’re not ready to tell the members exactly what she’s doing here?”

Lance shrugged. “I don’t see why she would need to attend more than one weekend of parties.”

“I’m just asking for contingency plans. I don’t see the harm in discussing that.”

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