Make Me (3 page)

Who would do that for him if she didn’t? She blinked back tears at the thought.

And he did have his moments. He was funny, often unintentionally. And he could be endearing on the rare occasion, such as when she’d gotten the call at work that she’d lost her father and needed to come home to West Virginia immediately. He’d rushed into work having already made all of the arrangements for her including buying the ticket, brought her home and helped her pack – which would have been a riot in different circumstances; him standing there holding a pile of neatly folded lacy underthings as if they were a pile of scorpions – and went with her to the airport himself, keeping a protective arm around her right up to the security line, where he kissed her on the forehead before sending her on her way and telling her to take all the time she needed.

She still welled up at the thought of how wonderful he had been to her.

He’d even checked in on her with the occasional text throughout her time away, although she wasn’t sure anyone else would consider them “checking on her”. They were more in the form of complaints:

Out of toner in the copier.

The man had two masters and a PhD and couldn’t figure out how to work their relatively simple copier.

Batteries? In the fridge? Really? MYTH. They’re in the garbage now.

Get more when you come back.

A few seconds later:

Garbage overflowing.

To which she texted back:

Didn’t the service come in last night to clean?

Since she knew he had his phone in his hand, it was an unusually long wait.

Yes, but I, uh... fired them.

Translation: one of them had disturbed him and he’d gone off on them and they refused to come back. It had happened before. This was their fifth cleaning company since he’d hired her.

Cold, indeed, she argued with herself. He wasn’t cold; he was volatile in the wrong hands. The nagging voice in the back of her head then said he hadn’t been at all cold when he was rubbing himself against her, cupping her bottom as if he had every right to.

And he had spanked her! She should quit just on that account; she was sure she could make a fortune off Cayson if she sued, and she was sure to win.

But she’d never been the litigious type and, as absurd as it seemed, she wasn’t sure she was mad enough at the guy to do that to him.

At home, she poured herself a glass of white wine and got undressed. She was almost always in pajamas at home – they were so much more comfortable than real clothes – so she took off her bra with a sigh and pulled on a set of sea green baby dolls that were really a size too big and practically hung off her, but they had pink roses embroidered all over them and they were her favorite. She grabbed her wineglass off the counter on the way past, flicking the TV on as she plopped down on her enormous, comfortable couch.

Time to indulge in a little Netflixing. She’d recently discovered a new series she wanted to see all of the episodes of and this seemed like a good weekend to hunker down, order in, and forget about reality for a while as she lost herself in a world where patients never died, the good guys always triumphed in the end, and mindless, defenseless zombies who shuffled like arthritic grannies threatened to end the world.

Of course, as soon as she sat down with a tube of Pringles there was a knock at the door.

A disturbingly
familiar
knock.

Insistent.

Impatient.

Demanding.

She crunched loudly down on a chip and reached for the remote to turn up the show.

The knocking continued, more loudly than before. “I know you’re in there.”

“Good for you.”

“Open the door.”

“No.” She was proud of how calm she sounded.

Three seconds later, he was standing next to the couch, staring down at much more of her than she had ever shown him before.

“What the fuck! How did you get in here? I know I locked the door.” Jodi leapt up and stood at the end of the couch, putting some distance – and a hefty piece of furniture – between them and realizing she had entirely too little on to be standing anywhere in his vicinity.

Especially when he was wearing an entirely unrepentant and wildly dangerous smile. “I convinced the door that you wanted it to open for me, but were reluctant to do so yourself.”

She frowned fiercely at him as he began to move around the couch to his left. “You picked my lock, in other words,” she accused, moving to her right around the couch so that they remained at twelve and six o’clock.

“I persuaded it to open,” he repeated, obviously not in the least sorry for what he’d done.

Realizing they were getting nowhere just circling the couch like this, and unhappy at the idea that she was having to do so in what should have been the safety of her own home, Jodi stopped at what apparently was just the wrong spot, with him at the middle of the back of the couch and her in front of the middle cushion. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, folding her arms over her chest.

“Because I haven’t had a chance to do this yet,” he said, vaulting the couch and landing directly in front of her, tugging her down onto his lap and holding her there, then lifting his hip and reaching behind him to dig the Pringles can out of his butt. “How can you keep so slim when apparently all you eat is junk food?” he asked, but didn’t much care about the answer, apparently, as he kissed the breath out of her.

Jodi wanted to melt against him, to lose herself in his kiss, but she couldn’t. Dragging her lips from his, she asked, “What are you doing here? On a weekend. Again?”

He seemed surprised by her question. “You got my text that I finished the Anderson project, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

She tried to sit up, but he wouldn’t let her. “Well, what?”

“I had to get that finished before I could turn my attention to... other things.” His lips were nibbling on hers, teeth just grazing, the tip of his tongue following soon after, and Jodi felt herself slipping.

“Well, maybe ‘other things’, as you so delicately put it, isn’t interested in having your dubious attentions!” she practically yelled at him.

He drew back a bit at the anger in her tone and she could see the wheels turning in his head. “You’ve been crying.”

It had been a while, but just in case, she swept her hand over her face. “I have not.” Even so, she was surprised he’d bothered to notice.

She heard and felt him take a deep breath. “Your eyes are red, and I can’t smell any pot, so…”

Jodi closed her eyes and took her own deep breath, praying for patience. “I’ll have you know that the pot was Karen’s. I don’t do it except on the rare occasions when I see her.”

One moment she was facing him, the next he had twisted her – gently and carefully – so that she was facing the couch cushions, and she could feel that long fingered hand of his claiming her behind as if she wasn’t wearing any panties – not that what was there was much cover, but still.

“Correction. You don’t do it
at all
, do you, Jodi.”

It wasn’t a question, but apparently she took too long to respond anyway because even her cry of “No, I don’t!” the first time his palm connected with her butt, didn’t stop him from giving her a very thorough spanking.

Now she really was crying when he turned her over and kissed her with more gentleness than she would have bet he possessed, and the spanking must’ve done something to lower her defenses because she couldn’t seem to stop herself from kissing him back.

But her brain kept nagging at her to say something. She had to, didn’t she?

“You’ve got to stop spanking me, Cayson.”

He chuckled against her lips, one of the few times she could remember him laughing. “Oh, I don’t think so. Someone’s got to keep you out of trouble.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do – you even admitted so in your profile on that fetish website.”

Her eyes widened and she blanched white, so much so that he helped her to sit up more. “Wh-what do you mean?”

He had the grace to flush a bit. “Well, you know, when you let me in here to get that file, your iPad was connected to your home network, as was the work computer, and I had the file on my jump drive within about two seconds...”

And yet he’d used the computer for about ten minutes. She should have thought of that at the time!

As the realization sunk in that he had gone snooping around on her computer and found out things about her that she hadn’t even told her best friend, she thought she was going to faint. And then she thought she was going to die.

And then she realized that she wasn’t going to die – that she was going to have to live through the humiliation of having him know... He knew! He
knew
she was into spanking – that’s why he hadn’t hesitated to spank her either time.

Jodi was a sensitive person, and unlike her boss, she was constantly battling her emotions. Right now, all she wanted to do was to curl up into a ball and disappear. With her hand over her eyes to hide the tears that were overflowing down her cheeks, she stood and walked to her door.

Cayson felt as if someone was trying to pull what there was of his heart out through his throat. He could see that she was crying, and everything good and human in him – not that there was much left, but what there was desperately wanted to apologize for his error in judgment. He would throw himself at her feet, he would grovel, he would even meet her mother if she would forgive him, but it didn’t look as if any of that would do anything but piss her off further – not that he was any kind of an expert at reading emotions – especially female ones. He’d had his own beaten out of him long since, but Jodi had always touched him more than any other person he’d ever met. He was closer to her than anyone else on the planet, and it seemed he’d managed to ruin that, too, by not being able to resist delving a bit when given the rare chance to get to know more about her without having to go through the usual, tedious, painful social conventions like dating.

But it was wrong of him, and he’d known it at the time; he just couldn’t seem to stop himself.

He stopped in front of her on his way out the door, his eyes begging her to look at him, but she kept her face turned away from him. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you, but I shouldn’t have done what I did and I’m very, very sorry.”

An apology from Cayson was a red letter day, but Jodi couldn’t appreciate it. Even before he was all the way out the door, she began closing it, forcing him to hurry out.

Cayson stood there facing the door for a good long while, listening to her sob and make grunting noises like she was lifting something heavy.

Then it dawned on him that she was putting something big in front of the door so that he couldn’t get into her home. She hadn’t bothered to lock the door.

His big hand came up to almost touch the door itself as if it was her, as if he was going to cup her cheek the way he’d imagined he might so many times in the past, but then he snatched his hand back and turned away to head down the sidewalk alone, as usual.

That’s the way things would always be for him.

The way they were meant to be for the likes of him.

His father was always right in the end.

That Monday morning, when she arrived at work, Jodi had her letter of resignation all written and ready to print out and hand to the bastard, or, if the coward didn’t come in that day, she’d email it to him. She wasn’t sure which method, exactly, she preferred. If he were here, at least she’d get the satisfaction of seeing his face when she handed it to him, although it was impossible to tell really whether or not he was going to be moved by it in the least. Of course she’d fantasized that he would drop to her feet and beg her to stay, but she also knew that the reality was that he was just as likely not to notice it for a decade or so.

Emailing it to him was a bit sterile, but then she considered whom she was mailing it to, and what he’d done to cause her to send it in the first place. Every time she thought about what he’d done she wanted to throttle him even more than she’d ever wanted to before – and that was a fair amount.

But she had no sooner gotten out of her car then he was beside her, grabbing her arm and hurrying her along and into their building. “Come on. We have to get to the roof. Quickly.”

Jodi stood stock still and refused to move another inch until he told her what the hell was going on.

He looked very agitated at her delay. “Look, we don’t have much time, but there are problems with the Anderson Project.”

“But I thought you’d finished that?”

“I did. And someone else, besides our own government – remember the guy in the parking lot? – would love to get their hands on the results.” He made a leading hand gesture, as if that would answer all her questions.

“And? So?”

How he thought he had the right to issue an exasperated sigh at her she’d never know, but that didn’t stop him. “Good God, woman, you have to trust me.”

Jodi’s eyebrows shot up and she opened her mouth to mention just how ironic that request was, given what she’d learned about him recently, but he cut easily through any protest she was going to make. “We are both in danger. The other entities,” he chose his words very carefully, she noticed, “that would like to get their hands on that information aren’t going to say ‘pretty please’ or ‘Mother may I’ to get it. We need to get out of the country as soon as we can.” He had her upper arm in a death grip again, saying, “Roof. Now.”

How was being on the roof going to help them? And why was she in danger, too? She asked the second question out loud.

“They’re not going to make a distinction between us. They don’t know that you don’t have anything to do with the nuts and bolts of what I do. They don’t care.” He didn’t say that they wouldn’t hesitate to use her against him; that they’d do unspeakable things to her to get him to give them the information they wanted.

A shiver ran through Jodi’s body, and goosebumps rose everywhere on her skin, her nipples pinched uncomfortably tight. She’d never really feared for her life before – the little West Virginia town in which she’d grown up wasn’t a hotbed of anything, and certainly not crime. So far, she’d been lucky enough not to have had a bad situation arise in California.

Until now.

Seconds after they burst out onto the roof, a helicopter appeared and landed near them. Cayson ushered her to it, getting her in and settled before himself.

They both put headgear on so that they could communicate. There were two men in the copter already; both appeared to be American agents of some sort. CIA? NSA? FBI? Who knew? Who could tell them apart without a scorecard, anyway? They all wore dark suits, dark ties and white dress shirts. They were interchangeable, as far as she was concerned.

“Where are we going?” she asked, aiming her question at Cayson.

But it was one of the agents who answered her. “It’s best that you know as little as possible about the location of the safe house we’re taking you to, ma’am.”

Oh, dear God, had he just “ma’am’d” her? Did she look that old? Then she realized that how she looked or didn’t look didn’t matter much in this situation. She’d be very happy to be called “ma’am” every day for the rest of her life – because it meant she
had
a rest of her life.

A few minutes later, Cayson realized that she had gone quiet, which was unlike Jodi. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and she appeared to be trying to make herself as small and insignificant as possible, which, as far as he was concerned was impossible, because she was the most significant person in his life.

It occurred to him suddenly that she might be scared; this was well out of her realm of comfort. Hell, it was out of his, too, although he was reasonably well equipped to take care of himself, and he thought, probably much more so than she. So he reached down and touched her arm, knowing she would probably never allow him to do much more than that now that he had blown it so badly with her. But, although the impulse, too, was unusual for him, he wanted to give her some sort of reassurance.

She surprised him by grabbing his hand and lacing her fingers into his, holding onto him for dear life. He was startled, but pleased by her reaction, however artificially inspired. She was scared and he was there. He knew better than to hope for anything more than the cold shoulder once they landed, but he was going to enjoy the contact while he had it.

The hand he was holding was shaking, although he could see that she wasn’t crying, for which he was eternally grateful. She was white as a sheet and that was well out of his comfort zone, too. He’d never felt the urge to soothe someone who was scared before, but her distress created an unfamiliar ache in his chest. So he harkened back to what his mother used to do sometimes when he was scared and she was trying to comfort him; he began to tell her everything he could remember about helicopters – the good parts, anyway. Nothing about crashes or malfunctions, but interesting tidbits he could remember from what he’d read, since he had that wonderful gift where he remembered every single thing he’d ever read or seen. He’d always had a thing for flying and was building his own plane in his spare time – not that he’d had much to devote to it lately.

His babbling seemed to work; she relaxed a bit and even looked a little bored – as if it was even possible to become bored when discussing aviation – although he was glad that she didn’t let go of his hand. He put his arm around her experimentally and held her loosely to his side. She didn’t pull away and he considered that to be another small personal victory.

The chopper brought them to a tiny, almost unused airfield, at which they got onto a small plane. He escorted her on board and buckled her in himself and then turned to head for the cockpit. Jodi grabbed at his hand to stop him from leaving. “Where are you going?” she asked, not liking how desperate and needy she sounded.

“I’m going to go co-pilot the plane.”

“Oh, okay.” She should have known. He had buckets of money, and the only thing he ever spent it on – besides computer stuff – was anything related to flying of any kind. Jodi forced herself to let go of his hand and turn away from him, curling herself up in her seat as best she could, looking out the window rather than at him. She couldn’t say it. She wouldn’t say it. She was fine here by herself. She wasn’t some scared five year old who couldn’t be alone.

Cayson stood there for a long moment, not moving to the front of the plane. Instead he called out towards the front, saying, “Maybe next time,” and resumed his seat next to her.

He didn’t do anything more than sit next to her and, she hated to admit it, that was more than enough to put her more at ease.

It was a long flight to wherever it was that they were going, and she fell asleep in the middle of it, despite how tense she felt. She didn’t awaken until he was bundling her into the passenger’s seat of a car, latching her seat belt there as he had on the plane, then coming around to get behind the wheel.

“Where are we?” she asked sleepily, stretching unselfconsciously.

“Very close to our destination. We have agents in front of and behind us, so we’re relatively safe. You can go back to sleep.”

As if she had been waiting for his permission to do so, she did just that.

The next time she woke, he was carrying her in his arms and as much as she wanted to remember every single second of the experience – despite the fact that she was still furious with him – she couldn’t seem to stay awake.

She opened her eyes, what seemed like days later, in an unfamiliar house in who knew what country, and in a strange room that was black as pitch, and before she could stifle the scream, it passed her lips. Only, she was horrified to realize that it came out more as a mournful howl than anything.

She was in his arms again in a second, before the cry died on her lips, and she let him hold her without protest because it felt so good to have his arms around her. “You’re all right. You’re safe,” he whispered, rocking slightly back and forth as he leaned over to turn on the bedside lamp.

If she had been more on the ball, she would have realized that it had taken him no time at all to get to her when she’d cried out. And she would have noticed the chair at the end of the bed, in which the quilt he had obviously been using over himself had been hastily piled.

He had stayed in her room, concerned that she might be scared when she awoke, and wanting to be there to reassure her if she was. And if she wasn’t scared when she awoke, she would realize that, although he had rearranged her clothing a bit for her own comfort, he hadn’t slept in the bed with her. He thought that might earn him some points in the plus category.

Maybe.

The room was good sized, and they were obviously in a log cabin. She was already in love with the place from her first full breath. It was gorgeous; she’d always had a weakness for wood tones, and this was the heart of that. Even the big bed itself was made of rough hewn logs, but with silky soft sheets, a warm blanket and thick downy comforter for warmth.

Once her stark fears receded, Jodi realized that she wasn’t wearing very much, and began to try to move away from him.

Only he wasn’t letting go. Instead, he tipped her chin up and kissed her, once, the most gentle and tender kiss she’d ever had, before he reluctantly let her leave his lap.

“You undressed me.” It was a statement made from her position across the bed from him, although in retrospect, she guessed if he had wanted to take advantage of her, he could have done so at any time while she slept.

“I thought you’d sleep better in your underwear than your work clothes. I didn’t peek.”

Jodi glared at him, but she said the first thing that came to mind and regretted it immediately. “The hero always peeks.”

He looked startled. “What?”

“I said, well, there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?” she lied smoothly, hoping he wouldn’t pursue her Freudian slip.

Although he looked as if he would have preferred to discuss either statement further, he instead said, very quietly and sincerely, “I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” She almost flung the covers away, then her innate modesty took over and she instead hugged them to her. “I didn’t bring anything with me. I have no clothes but what I was wearing.”

“I had some bought for you and they’re in the dresser. I didn’t think it would be safe to send anyone to your house to get things.” Having said that, he simply sat there and stared at her.

“Ahem.”

“What?”

“Leave so I can get dressed. Did you get me underwear? And how did you know–” she began then stopped, a blush suffusing her entire body. “Forget it. You probably looked at my Amazon order history, didn’t you?”

“Well, in my defense, you shouldn’t stay logged into all of those places, Jodi. And a password program? That’s just asking to be hacked.”

“So it’s all my fault that you saw all that stuff, is that it?” she asked, scrambling off of the other side of the bed, near nudity be damned, to go and hold the door open in an eerily familiar tableau. “Out.”

“But I–”

“Out!”

Cayson slunk reluctantly towards the door, pausing when he was directly in front of her to say in a quiet, humbled voice, “I
am
sorry, you know.”

A large part of her wanted to soften, wanted to say that she knew he was and that she forgave him, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. He hadn’t suffered nearly enough, and, regardless, she wasn’t at all sure she even wanted to forgive him. Some things you just couldn’t recover from, and she was of a mind that his blatant invasion of her privacy was one of them.

Her body, on the other hand, had long since forgiven him – the traitor!

When she opened the door again, she was dressed in a tee shirt that she suspected had been intended for him, but she liked hers loose anyway, jeans that fit like a glove and even a pair of bikini panties. The only thing that was missing was a bra, and that wasn’t too much of a bad thing, even though her breasts were large enough on her frame that she was a bit self-conscious about them, it certainly wasn’t enough to keep her in her room.

She was assailed by the scent of garlic, and she realized that she was famished. She hadn’t stopped at her usual drive-thru for a cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich this morning, and her stomach was reminding her of how neglectful she was being of it.

He made them a wonderful
lupper
, since it was three in the afternoon according to the ‘birds of the west’ clock on the wall in the living room – pasta with a lovely, cheesy Alfredo sauce, served with white wine and garlic bread.