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She closed her eyes, willing herself not to lose it completely or vomit behind his hand. Her entire body trembled from the effort of trying to appear calm.
“I’m going to move my hand now,” he said against her ear. “You know we’re just playing now. You don’t have to be scared. You don’t need to scream. We’re just going to have a fun night for real this time. I’m going to give you what you want.”
She nodded her promise. But the second he moved his hand away from her mouth, she screamed like she was on fire.
“Shit!” His hand instantly clamped back down, but it’d been enough. Within a few seconds, her neighbor’s door flew open and Josh came charging out in his boxers, blond hair wild. Carlos was right behind him, mostly dressed and carrying a baseball bat.
“What the fuck?” Josh’s eyes went wide as he took in the scene.
Cora yelled behind the guy’s hand.
“Oh, hell no.” Carlos charged forward, rage in his eyes and the bat looming in his hand. “You better get your fucking hands off her, asshole.”
Her captor dragged her back a step. “Whoa, man, chill out. It’s not what it looks like.” The voice behind her had changed completely—from deep and menacing to dude-bro speak. “We’re just playing a game. She’s in on it. Tell him, Lenore.”
The hand moved away from her mouth and words burst out of her in a rush. “Get the hell off me, you crazy fuck!”
“Lenore?” The guy’s voice turned confused.
“Her name’s not Lenore,” Josh said, stepping up behind Carlos and looking ready to throw down. “And if you don’t get your hands off her, my boyfriend’s going to show you how good his batting average is.”
“Damn straight,” Carlos said. “Your big-ass head will be an easy target.”
“Jesus. Calm the hell down.” The man released Cora at that and she nearly fell on her face as she bolted away from him in those godforsaken heels. She ran to the spot behind Carlos and then spun to face BigMan. The guy was a big dude. Beefy and barrel-chested and thick around the middle. But his face was young—a college-boy face. And he seemed . . . bewildered. He lifted his palms to them. “Look, bro. I think this is just a big misunderstanding. I wasn’t here to cause trouble. She wanted this. She’s got a safe word.”
“Call the cops, Josh,” Carlos barked.
But Cora reached out and put a hand on Josh’s arm. “Wait.”
Josh gave her a what-the-fuck look. “Hon, we have to—”
Cora didn’t have time to explain about how complicated it could get with her mom the police captain knowing or one of her mom’s officers interviewing some guy Cora had met in a kinky video game. “Just . . .”
“Wait, you’re not Lenore.”
The blurted statement from BigMan drew all of their attention.
The guy stepped closer, his eyes evaluating her face, her hair, her body in the light coming from Josh and Carlos’s open doorway. “And if you are, you’re a goddamned liar.”
Carlos waved the bat. “Back off, man.”
The guy halted his step but shook his head. “Jesus Christ, I’ve got the wrong girl. You’re . . .” His gaze traced over her again and he winced. “Yeah, there’s no way you’re her.”
The words were like a bucket of ice water. She didn’t want anything to do with this nutjob, but the dismissiveness of his words cut deep. She could hear his opinion as loud as a bullhorn: How could someone like her possibly have anything to do with the sexy, beautiful Lenore?
Cora straightened her spine, gathering every ounce of will she had to look righteous and unaffected. “I don’t know who the hell you are or who you’re looking for, but if you’re not off my porch in the next thirty seconds, I’m—”
But it was too late. The sirens blared from down the street. Another neighbor must’ve called.
BigMan jumped the railing and bolted.
—
A few hours later, Cora had been interviewed by two cops she knew, which meant her mother would find out—yay—and she’d drank too much of Josh’s gourmet coffee, which had left her jittery. She hadn’t given the police the full story. She’d stuck with the lie that she had no idea who the guy was and that it was apparently some case of mistaken identity.
Carlos had given her a raised brow. He’d probably grill her on another day, but she wasn’t going to admit to anything more than that on record. And she appreciated that after the cops left, he and Josh had hung around with her for a while to make sure she was okay and hadn’t pushed for more information.
But now she was alone and should probably go to bed, but there was no way she could sleep. Instead she wrapped herself up in her grandmother’s afghan and sat in front of the dual computer monitors in her makeshift office space in her bedroom. She pulled up the Hayven game. She’d missed the window of time to chat with Dmitry by many hours, but that wasn’t why she was signing in now. Hell, she may never chat with anyone in the game again after what had happened tonight. If someone like BigMan could get her information, she wasn’t safe from anyone. She hadn’t gathered a lot from BigMan in the few times they’d chatted, but she’d figured out quickly that he wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. How the hell had someone like him gotten her personal information?
Time to find out.
She opened up the log-in box and used her password manager to enter the long, complicated string of numbers and characters. Then, she clicked the checkbox for stealth mode. She didn’t need anyone knowing Lenore was online right now. The game queued up. Her inbox was stuffed with unread messages. Dmitry had sent her an invitation to play privately but, of course, she’d been too busy being attacked to answer. She minimized the mailbox to get into the main part of the game. The interior of the house she’d built for herself in Hayven came into view, a cute little cottage in the woods. The game was first-person style, so she was looking out from the perspective of Lenore, who was currently lying in bed.
But Cora wasn’t there to be Lenore right now. She was on a mission. She opened chat mode and went into her list of people she’d interacted with before. Their screen names were there along with an icon letting her know who was actively online and who wasn’t. BigMan wasn’t online. Neither was Dmitry.
She clicked BigMan’s name to open up his profile. It was relatively vague but had more than hers did. He listed his profession as athletic trainer and his age as thirty. Yeah, okay. No way was that guy a day over twenty-two. She scanned down. Located in north Texas. No pets. Favorite sports team—Dallas U Coyotes. There were multiple exclamation points behind the team name.
“Bingo.” The word slipped passed her lips as she opened up another log-in page for Hayven on her second monitor. She typed in BigMan232 and then for the password tried Coyotes.
Guys were notorious for choosing their favorite sports team as a password. She’d seen it way too many times at the police station. But that one didn’t work, so she tried a list of variations: coyotes, DallasCoyotes, DallasU, GoCoyotes, GoBigOrange. The system didn’t seem to have a limit on how many times someone could try a password—a shitty lack of a security—but it served her purposes right now. She typed a few more and started to wonder if she was going down the wrong track when she remembered a T-shirt she’d seen Carlos wearing one day. Fear the Coyote. She typed that in and the screen changed, bringing her into the castle BigMan had fashioned for himself. Of course the dude had built himself a castle.
“Gotcha, motherfucker.”
It was a bizarre feeling to see through his “eyes” in the game, but she didn’t linger. Even though it was virtual, it felt creepy being in his head. She clicked into his account settings. There it was. William Bentley Barrett, twenty-one, Fort Worth address. Everything was there for the taking. If she really wanted to work at it, she could probably grab his credit card number, but she had no interest in that.
She needed to get some idea of how this guy had gotten to her. Maybe he played dumb online and really had some mad tech skills. She closed out Lenore’s page on the other screen and opened up Facebook. She searched for William’s name, found him easily enough, and opened his page. He hadn’t bothered to set up any privacy settings and he used the same password for that account—flag number one that he wasn’t some closet computer genius.
She clicked around to the About section and his timeline. He worked as the front-desk attendant at a local gym. Was a student at Dallas U. Used to play on the football team but got sidelined by an injury. He’d liked a few sports-related pages and local dance clubs. His Instagram feed looked to be nothing but photos of big plates of food and muscle-flexing selfies. He’d chatted with a few girls from his college, but all of it seemed pretty lighthearted. Nothing stood out.
She frowned and tapped her fingers on her desk. Weird. She closed out the page and went back to his Hayven profile. She clicked on his inbox. It wasn’t nearly as full as hers. A few requests to play. A few update emails from the game. But then a subject line caught her eye. Tired of being teased?
She opened the email and sucked in a breath.
Special alert. Lenore Lux wants to take this to the next level and is local to your area! She’s ready to play for real. Click the attachment for her information so you can set up some fun.
The words didn’t make sense to her at first. It was just too goddamned unbelievable, but then angry heat flooded her. With a shaking hand, she opened the attachment and there it was—a screenshot of the information she’d entered when she’d joined the site. Her name was listed as C. L. Benning, the name she used on her credit card. And her address was there plain as day. Luckily, because it was a screenshot, her credit card just showed up as dots in a jpeg, but what the fuck did it matter when someone was literally advertising her home address?
Her eyes skimmed to the bottom. Below all the information was a short list.
Safeword: Watermelon
Wrong.
Likes: Toys, Edge Play, Anal, Bondage, Rape Play
Scene request: I would love to be taken captive by surprise.
Her stomach dropped and her skin went cold.
That wasn’t her list or her request. She’d never filled out that portion. She wouldn’t have. Someone had doctored this and sent it out.
Christ.
BigMan had acted like a psycho, but he’d thought she’d been the one to initiate. He’d thought she’d made a goddamned request. Whoever had done this could’ve gotten her raped.
The back of her throat burned and she was trembling again. What if this note went out to other men? And what if she wasn’t the only one affected? Who the hell would do something so sick?
She scrolled up to see where the email had come from, but it was the admin address from within Hayven, the same one that announcements and updates came from—which was also the same address she was supposed to use to contact customer service to make a complaint.
Fuck. If she sent in a complaint, it’d go straight to whoever had hacked the damn thing in the first place. But someone needed to know what was going on. God only knew how many people had been doxxed and put at risk.
She hit Print on the email for evidence and then signed out of William’s account. She opened up the main site for Hayven and went to their Contact page, knowing she’d probably be led through some winding trail of customer service via some faraway country, but she was surprised to find the site was owned and operated by a company with a Dallas address—Restless Games, Inc.
She’d never heard of them, which was strange since they were local, but maybe it was a start-up. Knowing that the servers that held her private virtual world were housed that close by gave her a dart of anxiety, but if the company was in town that at least gave her hope that she’d actually be able to talk to someone who could get this fixed quickly.
Because this shit needed to get fixed. Now. The fact that a company that was responsible for such intensely private personal information hadn’t caught this yet pissed her off. The email had been sent to William days ago. How could the company not realize their system had been compromised?
She scrolled down. There was an eight-hundred number and the address. She jotted down both. It was just past four A.M. so she wouldn’t get an answer now, but at least she had a plan of attack.
Attack.
She rubbed the chill bumps from her arms.
Time to check the locks one more time.
FOUR (#u7ebd0ce8-11e2-5305-ae8a-877ef3c9c5a4)
Thirty more reps. I can do thirty more.
Hayes Fox dropped into a one-arm push-up and breathed through the burn in his body. One. Two. Sweat dripped onto the mat he’d laid out in the garage. The temperature outside was already climbing into the eighties even though it was barely six in the morning. But the heat didn’t bother him. He’d grown accustomed to uncomfortable conditions a long time ago and relished the level of intensity it added to his workout. If he was thinking about the heat and the exhaustion in his body, he wasn’t thinking about other shit.
Seven. Eight.
He always defaulted to old-school rock for workouts, so Guns N’ Roses’s “You Could Be Mine” blasted from a nearby radio, thumping hard along with his heartbeat.
Nine. Ten.
The music turned down.
He didn’t look up. Eleven. Twelve.
Expensive black shoes came into view. “Good morning, Rocky. Are we going to run steps next or maybe drink some raw eggs?”
Hayes kept going. Up. Down. “You wouldn’t be able to keep up, Muroya.”
A drop of his sweat splashed onto Ren’s shoe. Ren moved out of the way and then swiped the drop with his finger. “You’d be surprised what I can keep up with.”
His best friend’s tone was smug, but there was a current of something underneath that made Hayes falter in his count. Fuck. He dropped down onto his forearms and knees, breathing hard. He didn’t need this right now. After a long night of no sleep and a racing brain, he wanted to get lost in a mindless workout. “Did you need something?”
“I need lots of things,” Ren said cryptically. “What are your plans today?”
Hayes looked up to find Ren leaning against the wall, already dressed for work in a bright blue T-shirt, gray sport coat, and dark jeans. His inky black hair was styled just haphazardly enough to look like he hadn’t styled it at all. He sipped his coffee and gave Hayes an expectant look.
Hayes rolled onto his back, sat up, and grabbed a towel from a nearby weight bench to wipe the sweat off his face. “My plan is to finish this workout and then spend the rest of the day putting together financial documents for our newest investor. I got your email. Good work last night.”
Ren didn’t acknowledge the praise. Instead, his gaze moved over Hayes’s shirtless form—brief, but enough that Hayes didn’t miss it. His friend was sizing him up. Hayes knew how different he looked now. He’d always kept in shape. But three years locked behind bars had left him with nothing to do but think and push his body to the limits. He’d become a machine. No one fucked with you when you looked like he did. But his best friend didn’t seem to know what to make of this version of him.
Hayes didn’t ask his opinion. He’d promised himself when he got out that he’d keep the boundaries with Ren clear. They were best friends and business partners. Their days of partying, sharing women, and blurring lines in their relationship were done. Hayes couldn’t be that guy anymore.
“Good. Then you can put together those documents at the office,” Ren said with a nod.
“What?” Hayes blinked, Ren’s words dragging the conversation back into focus. “I don’t need the office for that stuff.”
He eyed him. “Don’t care. You told me six months, Fox.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and held it up. “I marked it on my calendar. Today’s the day, my friend. The CFO returns.”
“You marked it on your calendar? Of course you fucking did.” Hayes rolled to his feet. He didn’t need to be having this conversation with Ren looming over him. “I’m not prepared for that today. All the stuff I’m working on is here. None of my old suits are going to fit. I have errands to run.”
Ren pushed off the wall and walked toward him. “Don’t give me that shit. We own the company. You can wear whatever you want. And you can have someone at the office run the errands.”
A cold feeling crept through his chest, frost encasing his lungs. The office. Returning to work. Being in charge of the business again. “Ren, I—”
“Stop.” Ren clamped a hand on Hayes’s sweaty shoulder and squeezed. “It’s time, Fox. Wyatt and Jace Austin invested in us, not me. And last night I got Grant Waters on board because I assured him you were going to be back at the helm with me this week. We’re finally gathering some steam again. This is the time to return, hit the ground running, show the people who believe in us that this is a strong company.”
“You don’t need me for that,” he repeated. “It’s easier for everyone if I stay behind the scenes.”
“Fuck that noise,” he groused. “Look, I get it. It’s going to be hard coming back after all that happened. But it’s our company and there’s no reason for you to hide. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Hayes scoffed and shrugged from beneath Ren’s touch. “You think the people who work for us believe that? The cops certainly don’t buy it.”
“If any of our employees don’t, they can fuck off and go work somewhere else,” Ren said, the words sharp and his jaw going tight. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I care that your office has been empty for too damn long. The place needs you back. Shit, I need you back. I didn’t sign up to do this on my own, man. I’ve kept things going, but you know we’ve always been better as a team. Balls are getting dropped. I only have so many hands and mine were meant to draw, not balance P&Ls or woo investors. I’m so far out of my wheelhouse, I’m going to need a GPS to get back.”
The last words tumbled between them, a rare admission from Ren that he needed any help with anything, and that hit Hayes square. All those years ago when they’d started their original company, now renamed FoxRen Media, they’d gone into partnership not just because they were best friends but because business-wise, they complemented each other.
Ren was the creative one—an artistic genius and idea man—but scattered in his thoughts and methods. Impulsive. When they’d met as teens, Hayes had been the one to help temper that, to slow him down and show him how to focus his ideas. To find ways for Ren to channel all that talented energy into something useful so he could get away from the hell he’d been living in at the time. And on the flip side, Ren had kept Hayes from playing it too safe in business, had helped him take risks, think outside the box. He’d also been the one to make sure Hayes didn’t work himself to death and had some fun in between.
But Hayes had left Ren on his own with the company for three and a half years. Longer really, since Hayes had pretty much checked out after he’d been charged. Since getting out of prison, he’d taken back the basic financial duties, but he hadn’t been involved in the day-to-day operations. He’d put that all on Ren’s plate and left it there. He’d thought staying out of it would be for the best. He didn’t want to deal with the rumors and discomfort of employees. He didn’t want his past tainting the newly renamed company or Ren by default. Ren already had enough in his own past to deal with.
But now, standing here and looking at his best friend, he realized that he’d been acting like a damn coward. No, he couldn’t go back to how things used to be. That Hayes was dead. But that didn’t mean he got a pass to leave Ren on his own to handle all the work of running the company. That didn’t mean he got to hide.
Hayes released a breath and wrapped the towel around the back of his neck, pulling it taut. “Can I at least finish my workout first?”
Ren’s mouth curved into a victorious smile. “Of course. But you know, if you just got laid, you wouldn’t need to do Thor’s workout every morning to shake off all that frustration. See how relaxed I am this morning? You should’ve come to that party with me last night. Lots of fun to be had.”
Hayes grunted, but the comment dug into him like a burr. Ren thought Hayes’s self-imposed abstinence was ridiculous. Maybe it was. His body certainly protested on a regular basis. He’d found ways to work around the need, accepting that nothing would ever be a substitute for the real thing. But anytime he thought about going there again with anyone for real, everything inside him locked up.
Things weren’t as simple as Ren was making them sound. Hayes didn’t have vanilla sex. It’d never done anything for him. Dominance and kink were inextricably twined with his desire. But that lifestyle was the one thing he could never allow himself again. Going to the party with Ren would’ve been the worst kind of torture. Seeing all his old friends from The Ranch, being reminded of the life he’d once had, knowing he could never have it again. It was too much to face.
Ren sighed when Hayes turned away. “You know, Grant asked about you last night. He said your membership is still yours if you want it. And there are submissives he trusts implicitly who—”
