Page 9 of Pressure

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Marissa fumed as she scrolled through lines of code. How the hell had she wound up in the same room with Lance Moss again? Right, the money Elijah Barrett was offering her to stick the job out was too good to pass up.

After the years of getting over him and the way things had ended, she was feeling a lot of negative emotions that she wasn’t sure how to process. But she had to remain professional. That was the most important thing.

“How much time do you have to devote to this?” Lance asked.

It was his subtle way of trying to figure out what she was up to these days.

“I’m taking an extended leave of absence from my job,” she said. It wasn’t exactly true. She’d maxed out her PTO to do this gig but with the amount Elijah was paying her, she wasn’t sure she would need to return to the boring law firm.

“Where are you staying?”

“I’m assuming you want me out of your hair quickly. If I could stay at the club that would give me round-the-clock access.”

He eyed her skeptically. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’re not a member. Members might not like that.”

“If you don’t want this to drag on and on, you need to think about it.”

He sighed. “We’ll talk about it at the board meeting. For now, why don’t we get some lunch and talk?”

She huffed. “I have nothing to say to you, Lance. I just want to work and go home.”

He growled. “I’m not trying to talk about us, Marissa. I’m trying to talk about the job and the best ways to tackle it.”

She didn’t believe him. He would find a way to turn the conversation around to them. And it was so not a conversation she wanted to have.

“At least let me get you a room at the Glenview for now. I saw a car out front, I assume it’s yours. If you drove all the way from Chicago, I’m sure you’re tired.”

“Jesus Lance. Just ask me the questions you want to ask. Stop fishing. I didn’t drive from Chicago. Yes, I still live there. I work for a law firm as the head of their IT department. I drove from Arizona where I was visiting Daphne. I haven’t had a serious relationship since you, though I rediscovered my switchy side with a nice little subby paralegal boy for a few months. Is there anything else you want to know, or can we get back to work?”

She tapped the space bar a little more forcefully than necessary as she finished talking.

Lance just stared. “I always figured you were a switch,” he murmured a minute later. “But no. I think you’ve answered all my questions. I’m sorry. This is awkward for me too.”

“Fine. Tell me more about the application process. I’m assuming with your membership being from all over the country and world it’s mostly electronic.”

He nodded. “It is. We built a highly encrypted form that people fill out. We host everything on our own private servers, so it doesn’t get routed through some corporate server farm. It’s the internet, though, so there’s only so much we can do there. After we have reviewed the form, we start the review process. They go through extensive background checks and have to sit through at least one interview with members of the board. We don’t let anyone in with certain types of felonies, we also require that they have something to offer the BDSM community other than just their presence. We don’t require membership in local communities because we know that some of the people drawn to us have to live this part of their life in secret. You’ll meet Garrett Oliver at the board meeting. He’s an example of someone who has to be careful but he’s also someone who’s been nearly outed, and we don’t know why.”

Marissa nodded.

“So, after a person applies, what exactly does a deep background check entail? It seems like some of these people wouldn’t want to have their pasts dug into too deeply.”

“We check for criminal activity, we check their public facing social media profiles for messages that we don’t support. Basically, if they spew bigotry or hatred but then want to come join a kink club that promotes equality, consent, and acceptance, they’re not getting in no matter how much money they have to give us.”

She nodded and continued typing, taking notes.

“When is the board meeting?”

“Tonight, at seven.”

Eli knocked on the door. “Lance, can I talk to you for a sec?”

She watched as he stood and left the room. And for the first time in five years, she checked out Lance Moss’s ass.

She let her mind drift back to the time they spent together. It had been passionate and intense. Every emotion they had was intensified by their feelings for each other and they rarely sat still. If they weren’t coding or fucking, they were working out together or going on some adventure. But mostly it was coding and fucking. They had explored every kink that interested either of them. Some they put on the never try again list and others had become staples of their Dom/sub dynamic. Knowing now that she was a switch probably explained some of the clashes they had in that department. She bit her lip as she thought of his hand in her hair bringing her to her knees while she resisted the entire way down. Even though she knew she would like everything he did to and for her, there was something about that first act of submission that she always resisted.

A groan escaped her lips and she shook her head. Now was not the time to get lost in these thoughts. She’d shoved them out of her head for a few years now.

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