Some people might think that swearing at inanimate objects was stupid, but those people didn’t work with computers intimately. Computers needed to be sworn at, cussed out, talked to, cajoled and even caressed. Lee would even whisper sweet nothings into their speakers.
Many people would think this was futile, but none of those people had Lee Hierne’s prowess with computers. He was a virtuoso at mining, extracting and even hacking data. He had only been caught once, when he was a teenager.
He tiptoed in and out of secure databases with ease. Talking to computers was simple, talking to people... not very. He was staring at his computer right now. Because he could not find any information on Ash Gilt besides the basics.
He called Bryan back and asked for his report on Ash Gilt. There was always a possibility that he’d overlooked some source of information. Juggling his business and campaign responsibilities meant he sometimes dropped the ball.
He could hear Bryan breathing hard as he lumbered back to his desk to look up the report. Bryan was carrying about eighty extra pounds, and none of it muscle. Not like Ash, who was curvy, a Marilyn Monroe-like figure. You could almost hear the drum music as you watched her walked away.
Bryan interrupted his train of thought, thankfully. “Ash Gilt, twenty-three, fraternal twin sister of Ling Gilt. Anecdotal information, mother didn’t know she was having twins, had chosen the name Aislinn for a girl. When she got twins, she split the name in half, giving the firstborn the name Ash, and the second twin the name Ling. Brother Connor, interesting information on him. He’s being tried for murder next month in New York.”
Lee couldn’t castigate the girl for that, although it did make him more suspicious.
Bryan continued, a bit less breathy. “Mother and father, fairly normal with the exception of them being nomadic and not much financial data on them. Tax returns filed every year, lived on or just above the poverty line. Sometimes below it. There wasn’t much banking information on them. That set off some alarms for me, boss.”
Bryan was good, but Lee didn’t have any of his employees break the law. That was down to him. He thanked Bryan and hung up. With the exception of the information about her name, which was interesting but not telling, he’d gathered the same information as Bryan.
He pulled up the bank data again. Multiple bank accounts opened, closed or transferred to new branches over the years. Her father’s account was almost always at minimum balance. Any wages were drawn immediately. Every once in a while there would be a large transaction or multiple transactions. All under ten thousand dollars so the IRS wouldn’t notice it.
At first Lee thought the transfers might be drug money, but they turned out to be idiocy instead. He’d traced the recipients of the monies, and more often than not it was to a guy who’d run into the law a time or two. Usually for milking people on get-rich-quick schemes.
Or it was some other type of hair-brained investment. Like alpacas and llamas. Lee snorted at the thought of the very coiffed Ash Gilt taking care of llamas. But apparently she had, and had wisely not included that on her resume.
He bared his teeth, muttered an invective and growled with frustration at the monitors. There was something that she was hiding, and there was something about her, too. He didn’t trust her. But he was strangely... fascinated by her. Not attracted, he wouldn’t admit attraction. Lee was a head-over-heart type of guy.
Sex was something to be enjoyed, a physical release. Recreation. Hearts and flowers weren’t his style. Sure, she was sexy, confident, and had the physical shape he preferred. Ash had many of the attributes he admired in a woman. But he would not allow himself to be attracted to someone else’s fancy-thing.
Ash was Charles’, and Lee refused to allow attraction to interfere in that equation. Lee did not allow himself to be jealous. Ambition, yes. Bettering himself, yes. But jealousy over a woman? No. But it didn’t stop Lee from thinking about her.
Lee creatively insulted his computer for giving him all the information it had, but not all the information he needed. He decided to put that aside for now and look at his results on Thomas. And to follow up on the decision to get more dirt on his employer.
The private investigator had given him some initial findings—for instance, Charles’ ex-wife, Anna, had kept schtum about any details of her marriage. Apparently the divorce settlement was huge. There probably was something there, but the financial incentive for Anna to keep quiet was too great. So a dead end there.
Should he pursue it to the point of finding out? He’d dug deeper than the opposition would be able to do. But his and Charles’ contemporaries were mostly Republicans. There was a chance that one of those old boys might know and then leak information to give their party a leg up on the election. He’d better find out first.
No secret children, thankfully, and affairs? He was sure that the candidate had had dalliances. That erased trail was probably one of them. Lee was sure that Charles was the type of man to be cautious and choose his paramours well. Appleby was a long-range planner. Made it surprising he was having this tawdry thing with his PA.
Cultured women in the higher echelons of society, usually married, those were the best women to have affairs with. It was common sense. These women needed discretion even more so than the men did.
Having a fling with your personal assistant, even if she was sex on legs? Tacky. Not something a gubernatorial candidate should do. Charles was divorced, he could fuck whoever he liked. He was a Democrat, for Chrissakes. He could gallivant nude in public with only a sock on his tallywhacker and still get elected. He was handsome, popular and a Democrat.
OK, exposing himself in public would be a PR nightmare that even Charles couldn’t recover from. But he could do a helluva lot and get away with it.
Lee laughed to himself under his breath, head shaking back and forth at his train of thought. What was it about Ash Gilt that made him think about her so much? She wasn’t uncommonly pretty. She was sexy and attractive, but not in a way that eclipsed all others. There was a je ne sais quoi about her. Perhaps the same quality Charles saw in her.
But he’d never been attracted to the cool-drink-of-water types that Charles usually went for. When they were younger, Appleby had gone for the cool blondes. Even when he was dating Anna, who herself was of Nordic descent, Charles always had a wink and a smile for any other white blonde girls. Basically the Aryan whitebread society-girl type.
Lee had always liked his women more earthy, unfinished around the edges. Raw. He’d never gone for the women in his social class. Lee always thought of them as sexless. He got a chill thinking of them. They were too fake, or maybe that was just them being cultured?
He shook his head again, as if trying to erase his train of thought. He directed an encrypted email to the private detective, advising him to keep digging.
Then he opened up the data mine on Thomas. Ex-military, etc. etc. Honorable discharge, etc. etc. Iraq etc. etc. Your ideal security guy patriot and right-hand man. But again, there were a couple of erased trails...
Something in Thomas’ past was suspect also. And the timing was very coincidental with Charles’. Which meant Thomas had a seat front row and center to whatever had gone on.
Thomas must be Charles’ mess cleaner. Leave Thomas to clean up the messes without Charles’ knowledge, or possibly he only moved under Charles’ orders. The latter was more likely in Lee’s opinion.
Which meant that Charles had known full well when Thomas had decided to rifle through Lee’s belongings and computer. A fucking stupid move. How would a computer expert not know when someone had been in his computer, even without video cameras? Could it have been a test?
Lee dismissed that possibility. Too brain-dead obvious to be a test. He stopped, stood and stretched. They were in this little bullpen area, a disused shop they were working in today. Democratic headquarters in... whatever small center they were in at the moment. Lee had lost track, and he’d only been on the trail a few days. Somewhere in Oregon.
Instead of partitions there were glass walls. It was one of those funky offices someone had tried to rent or lease at a premium but had gone bankrupt. The party had gotten it for a very reduced rate, or Charles, whomever had paid for it. Didn’t matter.
But the glass afforded a view and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Miss Sex on Legs walk. The ba-da-boom music played in his head as she approached the door. A quick tap-tap-tap on the only office shrouded in privacy aka walls: the gubernatorial candidate’s office. Thomas opened the door, stepped outside and Ash entered.
Lee wondered if it was business, pleasure or a combination thereof going on inside. And he wished he could stop thinking about it. And hoped he found some information to allay his suspicions of her, or uncover Ash’s ulterior motives.
At that moment, he had a flashback. Watching her walk from Charles’ room gingerly. Like she’d been ridden hard and well. Almost as if she’d been ridden a bit too hard. But maybe that was her thing, liking it rough. Some women did, some women liked pain.
He didn’t. Didn’t like rough sex. Enthusiastic sex he approved of, but he wasn’t even tempted to try the tie-me-up, tie-me-down trend. He’d never tied up a woman and never would. Did not want to ever be tied up himself. Found that shit just a little too kinky for him.
He didn’t have anything against it, but it had become the done thing. Just like wearing the right shoes, going to the right boutiques and eating at the right restaurants, and ‘Oh, yeah, we should fuck each other with handcuffs on’. ‘Oh, let’s not forget to slap each other on the ass’.
When did sex become about that? When did sex have to be about bondage? Lee liked physical participation, sometimes with a battle of agendas. Loved the scent, the taste and the sensation of making a woman come with his mouth or his hands.
Having reciprocal sex. Not one having power over the others. He didn’t like power games, not in the bedroom at least.
Time to stop thinking about Charles and this Ash Gilt person. Something about her though, something about her...
#
Putting her game face on, Ash channeled her inner sex kitten while walking into the room. She’d ignored Thomas’ bland look of derision. Thomas always tasted of contempt around her, a taste of crabapples and vinegar. A misogynist, he did not like women. She had no doubt he liked shagging them, as he was one hundred percent hetero. She’d never touched him. It made her skin itchy thinking about touching him, she couldn’t imagine what his soul was like.
Conversely, Charles loved talking to women, loved debating with them, loved their minds. When he felt like sunshine and light, Charles adored, even worshipped women. When Charles mutated into shadow, tasting of cedar and ash, she didn’t know.
Charles wasn’t always touching her when the change to his soul happened. It had to be skin to skin, or at least skin to clothing. When his taste changed, permeating her nose and mouth, it gave her a minute or two of warning of what was to come. And when that happened, her heart sped up and saliva pooled in her mouth.
And her brain, along with her powers, blanked out.
Thankfully, he was the Charles she liked and admired right now. She’d had to partition them, like Jekyll and Hyde.
But it didn’t totally partition her fear. Her pulse increased and she always felt a bit breathless around him now. Which disabled her mind. Thankfully she could portray the low-level panic as desire. Symptomatically the same, sensationally divergent.
The first time she’d tasted it, she’d thought her powers were glitching. But now even the smallest taste of it sent a shock of fear. Froze her until she couldn’t taste any longer, sense anything, influence anything at all. She’d tried to use her influencing power before the full sensation of power-disrupting fear kicked in. Nudge him into confiding in her, to entrust her with his problems. So far she was zero for ten, and could probably count as many more bruises on her body.
Charles looked up and gave her his devastating grin. When he smiled, it took about ten years off of his almost forty-year-old face. He was a very handsome and confident man, and when they weren’t in the bedroom, she could look at him objectively. In the beginning she’d thought, It won’t be too hard of a gig. Being intimate with this guy? Could be a lot worse.
But it took all of her inner strength now not to freeze up when he touched her, even when he was good Charles. Not to have flashbacks of the last time. Every time got just that little bit kinkier, harder, worse.
She approached Charles, sexily yet professionally,. handing over the papers that he needed to sign. “These are the financials, Charles.” Bending over, she let her hair brush his arm. “Just sign where the stickers are. Or if you’d prefer to read them over first, I’ll leave.” The financials were one of the first places she’d checked for irregularities. None found, dammit. At least in the accounts she had access to.
“No, I’ll sign them, Ash, I trust you.” This time he flashed a cheeky-little-boy smile, just as devastating. She wondered how she could still find that smile attractive. “How’s the staff morale?”
Ash excelled at her job. When you were shagging the boss you had to work twice as hard so your co-workers didn’t hate you. Plus she would get fired if she wasn’t good. The campaign couldn’t endure any dead weight. Being a secretarial piece of fluff and being able to earn a wage didn’t happen any more.
She saw an opening. “Good, they’re excited with the traction we’re getting. James and Tolliver are still a bit adversarial to each other, but they’re not causing any tension. All the staff are gossiping over the new guy though.” Ash did a mental push, a slight one, to get him to reveal a bit about Lee.
“I’m sure everyone knows Lee’s history. Let’s just say I’m using his talents to put out any potential fires.”
“So he’s not investigating the staff?” Ash meant her, since she was having sex with the boss.
Charles shook his head. “Only in the broadest sense on how any publicity will affect the campaign.” He put a hand on her forearm, avoiding the bruised areas underneath the cuffed long-sleeve blouse, and squeezed to reassure her.
It didn’t. But there wasn’t anything she could do about Lee Hierne at the moment.
Trying not to stiffen under his innocuous touch, she focused her mind elsewhere. Last night she’d done an internet search. She’d suspected from the romances she’d read, but now knew that true BDSM was not like this. Was not about pain, in the way that he was inflicting it and she was receiving it. BDSM was not about abuse, was not about humiliation... well, unless you wanted to be humiliated. BDSM became the cover story when Charles tasted of cedar and ash. All the implements that came with the game enabled her pain, suffering and fear.
A part of her wondered if she looked like she enjoyed it. Charles must think she did, otherwise why would she come back for more? A power dynamic existed between Charles and Ash outside of the bedroom—he was her boss. But Ash knew that even if stopping the affair endangered her job, she’d get a good reference. Charles would most likely use his connections to find her another position.
It was that moment, when she was blaming herself for what Appleby did to her, an epiphany happened. She was in an abusive relationship, making excuses for the abuser. He knew that he hurt her. He saw the fear. If only her powers weren’t on blackout mode during these sessions.
Charles got off on her fear, Ash was fairly confident about that. She felt desperation at the thought of how much more she would have to endure before she found a payoff. She had to get money, had to. There wasn’t time and there weren’t any other options. She and Ling could do short cons every day until the trial; no way they could come up with the kind of money the family needed.
She racked her brain at how to get blackmail material. There weren’t any answers forthcoming. Obviously, she had to find a way to get someone to witness what he was doing to her, but how?
She wasn’t coming up with a solution. The clock was ticking down and her stomach burned with acid. Fear of Charles, fear of the situation, fear of letting the family down.
She wished she could confide in Ling, wished that her baby sister by three minutes could save her. Ash was the older sister in age and in spirit. Connor, the eldest, had never been a caregiver. Mam, as much as Ash loved her mother, had always had ulterior motives. In Mam’s world, Connor came first, Da a distant second, and then the girls.
They had been ingrained from birth with the motto, Family is everything. Brainwashing was easy to do on children. Especially young girls whose powers overpowered their emotional centers. Guilt and the Gilt family were very fierce friends.
Even knowing you were brainwashed didn’t mean you could crack the programming. Family. Was. Everything. On bad days like today, feeling sorry for herself, Ash wished that her family only was comprised of her and Ling. It’d be so much simpler.
“Earth to Ash, come in, Ash,” Charles said affectionately, interrupting her thoughts. The papers were facing her way, stickers removed and signed. She smiled and sauntered behind the desk and started rubbing his shoulders. She didn’t like initiating touch with him. Massaging was a cliché, but it worked well. One of the little honeypot techniques—touch somebody and it increases your connection with them. Especially if you were good at it.
Play the game, Ash, play the game.
Ash’d always been good at giving massages. He purred and grunted like a cross between a cat and a lion. After a few minutes, he put his hand on one of hers.
And then he encircled her wrist. And he squeezed. First in affection, and then as if someone dimmed the lights, Mr. Hyde came out and the scent of wood enveloped her as the squeeze increased, and Ash knew this time would be bad.
It wouldn’t happen right now, but tonight, tonight would not be a good night.
When you were backed in a corner, sometimes desperate measures were needed.
#
Lee had been waiting for Ms. Gilt to exit the office. As soon as she returned to her desk, he crossed over ostensibly to request to see Charles. He always had something to discuss with Charles, but in actuality didn’t need to see him.
Polite and professional, Ash called through to Charles’ office. Her body displayed serenity and confidence, but her hand trembled slightly when she picked up the phone.
Her voice had that smooth and soft quality, and a slightly lilting tone. Lee noted that being brought up by an Irish mother gave her voice elements of the Irish brogue. Just enough to make her voice stand out.
Ash looked up, smiled at him and made eye contact. “You can go in.” Electricity flashed through him, pleasantly, like a wake-up call. Her eyes were a soft brown, almost amber, and glowed with vitality. Lee was trying to dissect these reactions. What was it about her that made him want to, at this very moment, sweep her into his arms, carry her off somewhere and shelter her from some unknown danger?
Lee leaned over involuntarily. He wanted to breathe her in. Grasping the desk to stop his forward movement, he asked in a soft voice, “Is everything all right, Miss Gilt?”
“Ash. We don’t stand on formality here, Mr. Hierne.” She said his name almost teasingly, and Lee thought maybe he was mistaken and didn’t see a tremor. Out of his peripheral vision he saw her hands moving.
When he looked down, she had a couple of fingers underneath her bracelets, yet over her sexy button-up shirt. The type of shirt brought visions of what she would look like in one of his business shirts and nothing else. Hair tousled, eyes cat-wink sleepy with satisfaction.
He finally had to admit he was human. He was attracted.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
Ash looked down at her wrist and immediately stopped rubbing. “Oh, just banged it on something when I was getting ready for work this morning.” A self-conscious laugh, a toss of her hair. He smelled her shampoo when she did that. She smelled clean and spicy. “Serves me right for going through my morning routine with my eyes closed.”
He smiled at her in agreement, speculating, motioned goodbye and went into Charles’ office.
A bit more information gathered. Ash Gilt was a very skilled liar.
Lee entered and Thomas was about to do his sentinel routine, as he always did when visitors came. “No, Thomas, this concerns you also.”
Thomas stopped, looked to Charles. Appleby nodded, and shot a slightly annoyed glance at Lee. Too bad, Lee thought.
Thomas remained standing after Lee and Charles sat down. “Thomas, please sit and cut the soldier boy routine for five minutes,” Charles said exasperatedly.
Thomas stiffened at the command but obeyed.
Lee decided to dispense with formalities. “So Charles, tell me, why get your hired gun to look in my computer of all things? If it was a test of my skill it was a poor one.”
Charles blanched slightly. Ah, Lee thought, I was wrong. Thomas did this on his own. Being the true-born politician he was though, Charles recovered quickly, and said with a smile, “Everyone needs some sort of test, Lee, even lousy ones. You’ve gotten so big, we thought you might have become rusty.”
Lee smiled at Thomas, as the Cheshire Cat would to a likely victim. “Stay out of my room, Thomas, or I might have to look more deeply into your background.” It was said lightly, politely, but it was a threat all the same. Everybody had something to hide.
Ex-soldiers usually had more than most. And there was a cloud of malevolence around Thomas, akin to Charlie Brown’s storm cloud, but more deadly.
Thomas didn’t scare him, even though the man had the tools and talent to kill him. Thomas didn’t frighten him for one reason only; Lee was a useful resource for Charles, and Thomas seemed to be very loyal to Appleby.
Charles gave his shit-eating politician smile, the thousand-watt, I’m a charming bastard, you like me. And if you don’t like me yet, you will soon. It was effective even on Lee. He ruefully shook his head at the manipulative bastard.
It brought Lee back to the look he’d shared with Ash. If she had the talent to make every man feel like he had in that one moment, with her liquid eyes and smooth skin, she’d have a landslide victory.
“Now Lee, c’mon, I know Thomas didn’t find anything, your security is unsurpassed.” An easy guess from Charles, since he hadn’t known of Thomas’ foray into his room. “This is why we need you at the helm of strategy and communications, to make sure that we don’t fuck up.”
That comment was said to Lee, but he had the feeling it was directed at Thomas, as Thomas stiffened at the comment. Thomas didn’t have much of a game face. He’d have to work on that.
Lee spread his hands. “I’m not angry, I just thought I’d let you know.” He turned to Thomas. “You can go now.”
Thunder crossed the security chief’s face, but he didn’t hesitate to make his exit.
“So what other fuckups do we have to deal with?” Charles asked.
Lee shook his head wryly and told him that right-wing Waite, the Republican candidate, had tried to dig up some dirt on Charles, but hadn’t succeeded. “He won’t find anything before the election. If there’s anything to find, I’ll find it in the next few days.” He decided to ask again. “Is there anything you’re not telling me, Charles?”
There was a flash of something in Appleby’s gaze, and then it was gone. Charles chuckled. “You can ask me that until the cows come home, Hierne, the response is never going to differ.”
Yes, Lee thought, but it’s going to be a lie every single time, isn’t it?