NINE
The words hit Hayes in the back, Cora’s hesitation clear. He closed his eyes and turned his head to look at her. Seeing her was still like a punch to the ribs. He’d forgotten himself for a few minutes. Talking with her, hearing about her life, her relationships . . . seeing all those subtle signs that screamed that she craved more than the previous men in her life had given her. Catching her sneaking glances at him a few times, looking at him as something other than a spectacle. It’d made him feel human again. Like a man. A little like the dominant he used to be.
Then he’d accidentally touched her and she’d nearly launched herself across the room. Seeing that fear in her eyes had been a knife in the side. Reality ripping through the fabric of that daydream where a woman could see him as more than a criminal.
He couldn’t bear to stand here and take that look much longer.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice sounding like it’d scraped its way out of his throat with claws.
Her shoulders rose and fell with a breath, those hazel eyes unflinching behind her glasses. “For what it’s worth, I don’t not believe you. I want to believe you.”
He stared at her, the statement shocking the hell right out of him. “You want to believe me?”
She flattened her palms on the desk, her short fingernails going pink against pale skin. “Look, I’m not going to lie. A big part of me is saying stay away from you. When women accuse men of rape, the statistics are overwhelmingly in favor of the woman being the truthful one.”
He turned around fully and gave a nod. “Of course.”
She tilted her head, consternation there. “But I also know convictions don’t get overturned easily. So if they let you out, there must have been compelling evidence to do so.”
He tucked his hands in his pockets, unsure where she was going with this. “There was.”
“And it’s none of my business and you don’t have to tell me what that was but—”
“The woman who accused me retracted her original statement and admitted that someone had paid her to frame me.” The words landed bluntly, but he couldn’t muster up any emotion over it anymore.
Cora’s eyes went wide. “Frame you? I— How? Why?”
He cleared his throat, that familiar chill going through him anytime he thought about everything that went down that night. “It’s a long story. I don’t mind telling you. Most of it can probably be found online—well, the media’s twisted version of it anyway. But it’s not exactly appropriate work conversation.”
She frowned. “I just told you about my shitty past relationship and you labeled me a submissive. I think we’ve jumped that shark.”
His brows rose. Cora had this layer of shyness at times, almost an innocence about her, but then there was also this outspoken side, this refusal to play games or mince words. She’d be a woman who would keep a guy on his toes.
She glanced at the open doorway, and it was obvious she was calculating her risk. He knew he’d never hurt her, but she couldn’t trust that. So he imagined she was going through a checklist. There were people down the hall. They were at the office. She had a phone. “Shut the door. I’m willing to listen if you’re willing to share it.”
Hayes closed the door with a quiet click and walked back to the chair in front of her desk. He sat down and rubbed his palms on his jeans, unsure now that he’d made the offer whether or not he really wanted to do this. He didn’t tell strangers his story. He didn’t share. But for some unknown reason, he had this need to be honest with Cora. She wanted to believe him. And God, he needed to be believed by someone who wasn’t related to him or bound by lifelong friendship. But telling this story was like cutting his chest open and letting her stare inside at all the ugly guts of his life.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want,” she said gently.
He took a breath and looked up. There was no judgment on her face, just this open expression. I’m listening. And in that moment he realized that she truly was giving him an opening. This wasn’t—ooh, tell me your tawdry, scandalous story. She wanted to know the truth. She was withholding her decision on his guilt. For now.
It was up to him to give her the information so she could make an informed decision. Honesty. That’s all he could give her. “I’m guessing you’ve figured out that I’m a dominant.”
He saw a flash of something in her eyes. Fear? Curiosity? He couldn’t tell. But she answered with a stoic “Yes.”
He gave a little nod. “Well, back then I was very active in the local scene. It was a big part of my life and most of my weekends were spent at a resort I belonged to. Most of my play was done there because I knew the members were vetted and the rules were clear. But I also did demonstrations for a local group.”
When her brows went up he explained.
“Workshops. Negotiation skills. Rope techniques. Creative ways to edge someone.”
“Edge?” She shook her head as if admonishing herself. “Sorry. I’ll shut up. I have a bad habit of letting my curiosity override my filter. I’m sure that’s not relevant to the story.”
He shifted in his chair. “Edging is bringing someone to the brink of orgasm over and over but not letting them come for an extended period of time. It . . . can make things pretty powerful. Intense. Every touch feels like torture and pleasure all at once.”
“Oh. Gotcha.” Two blotches of pink rode high on her pale cheeks and her gaze dipped to his left hand where he gripped the chair.
The shift in her demeanor threw him for a second. What was she thinking? He flexed his fingers and she crossed her legs.
The simple move was like a shot of heroin in his veins. She’s thinking about my hands. Perhaps how he’d edge someone. Maybe imagining how he could pet and pinch and penetrate with nothing but a few skilled fingers. Was she thinking about him doing that to her? The possibility was almost too much to consider. He was projecting, seeing stuff that wasn’t there. He couldn’t let himself go down that line of thought. Off-limits.
She lifted her gaze to his and held it for a beat too long. Just enough for him to see that blink of attraction there. She didn’t know if she could trust him, but on some basic, physical level, she found him appealing.
Fuck. He didn’t need to know that. Didn’t need that kind of temptation waved in front of him.
“So something happened at the club?” she asked, her voice coming out slightly strangled.
He forced himself to focus. He would tell her his story. By the time he was finished, anything she thought she was feeling would probably burn into a bright blaze of Get the fuck out of my office and stay away.
“Yes.” He looked toward the window, anywhere but the pretty, pink-cheeked Cora, and reeled himself in. “A request came to me through that group. A woman was looking for an experienced dominant to do a stranger role-play, one with an element of force . . . and pain. She told the leader she’d seen me speak and wanted to know if I’d be willing.”
Cora’s chair squeaked but she didn’t say anything.
“I’d seen those types of things go badly before. Submissives trusting people they shouldn’t. Guys who weren’t trained dominants taking advantage of that kind of trust. So when the head of the group asked me, I said I would do it. He knew I’d done a non-con scene a time or two before.”
He expected Cora to recoil at that. Even within the community, saying a role-play that simulated nonconsensual sex turned your crank was often looked at warily. But he wasn’t going to feed Cora a line of bullshit. He dared a glance at her.
Cora’s fingers were threaded in her lap and she visibly swallowed. “Rape fantasy.”
He nodded. “Essentially. I wasn’t down for anything overly violent. Delivering pain isn’t my thing, but force and physical restraint were going to be major components. And the mindfu—” He caught the word before it slipped out, edited. “The mind warp of it all.”
That was what had always held the appeal for him the few times he’d acted out that dark of a scene. That feeling of holding all the power, of putting his sub in the mindset of total helplessness. It could be freeing as hell for both sides. That total acceptance of normally unacceptable desires all within the safe confines of a scene. Not that he’d ever experience that again. Even if he wasn’t on sexual lockdown, he could never go there again. Couldn’t leave himself that vulnerable to anyone or enjoy that kind of scene anymore.
He cleared his throat. “As I’m sure you can imagine, it’s not the type of scene to take lightly or mess around with. There’s a lot of pre-work. I had her sign a contract with all the limits and safe words, everything spelled out. Multiple parachute cords for both of us to pull if things didn’t feel right or go the way we wanted. All the things we were supposed to do. But we never met face-to-face. Because—”
“That would’ve ruined the stranger element,” she said quietly.
“Yeah.” He ran a hand over the back of his head. “So, I went forward with the scene, assuming both of us were on the same page. I met her at a bar and took her back to a hotel like planned. We got along fine. She seemed comfortable. She was supposed to resist me once we got to the room. I was supposed to get mean and not back off unless she gave me the signal or said one of her safe words. She never did. We went through with the scene. I provided aftercare and then I left. I thought everything had gone as planned. But a few hours after I left the hotel, the cops showed up at my door. She’d claimed I’d raped her and denied that there’d been any previous discussion or planning.”
Cora’s lips parted. “But the contract . . .”
“She said she’d never signed one. Said I was just a guy she’d met at the bar. And when I provided a copy of the contract, it wasn’t her real name on the document. I had no way to prove she’d been the one to sign it. I had never met her. I had no idea if she was the woman at all.” His stomach twisted, the memory of that always bringing back that sick feeling. “For a little while, I wondered if I had actually raped someone. Picked up the wrong woman and enacted some role-play she hadn’t known was going on.”
“Jesus.”
He peered up, that old torment rolling through him. “That was the worst part. Prison I could handle, but thinking I’d hurt an innocent woman? I didn’t know how I could live with that.”
“Had anyone else met her before?”
“Yeah, the head of the group. He’d gone over the contract with her, recognized her as the woman who’d made the request, but he hadn’t watched her sign it. The prosecution tore him apart on the stand. Made it look like he was just covering for a friend. And who wants to believe the head of some BDSM group anyway? Kink isn’t understood or respected out in the vanilla world, especially around these parts. So the prosecution brought up all the ‘sinister’ things about kink to scare the jury—sadism, age play, humiliation. After that, I didn’t have much defense in the case. They demolished my character, exposed my personal life, made my lifestyle look as dangerous as possible. There was never a doubt I’d go to prison.”
She shook her head, what looked to be real empathy there. “So how’d it get overturned?”
He smirked and looked down at his hands. “Ren and his hard head. I’d still be there if he hadn’t continued to hire investigators and lawyers. The guy wasn’t going to give up on me even when there were times I didn’t have any fight left.” He rubbed the center of his palm, remembering how dark his thoughts had gotten at some points, how he’d started coming up with ideas of how he could end things in prison. The only thing that had stopped him was knowing how much it would hurt Ren. “Eventually, one of the PIs dug up that Holly, the woman, had been an escort in the past and that shortly after I went to prison, she went from living in a one-bedroom place on the bad side of town to a big house in an exclusive suburb in Florida. She’d had some type of windfall that no one could trace. We kept uncovering stones and that’s what broke the case.”
He could still remember that visit with the lawyer. We’ve got something. Hayes hadn’t let himself believe the words at the time. His future had looked like a black hole and he’d been afraid to let any light shine through, to even grasp onto a thread of hope.
“It was almost two years before we had enough. But when Holly realized she could get arrested for lying on the stand and false reports, she came forward and admitted that she’d been paid by someone to set me up. She said she’d been threatened and was terrified not to go through with it. That she’d feared for her life.”
“Paid by whom?”
Hayes clasped the back of his neck. “That’s the million-dollar question. She gave a description of the guy who approached her, but it was so generic that we’ve got nothing to go on. And most likely, the person who approached her isn’t the guy but just a guy who knows the guy or whatever. This wasn’t some amateur job. And if she knows who it really is, she’s not telling.”
“Or is afraid to tell.”
“Yeah.” He lowered his head. He still felt that stab of guilt over Holly. Even if she had set him up, she’d probably been desperate for money. So desperate that she’d let herself go through that rough scene with him to get it. Taken his bruises, taken his body into hers. He felt sick thinking about it.
Cora peered at him, expression unreadable. “This is what you meant by the dominant is as vulnerable as the submissive.”
“Yeah. I was too stupid to realize just how much back then. It was all in fun, an adventure. I never considered how much power the other person has in that kind of he-said-she-said situation.”
She frowned. He could see her brain was working, taking all the pieces and putting them together, trying to make sense of them. He just had no idea where those pieces would land. He knew it was a far-fetched–sounding story. He wasn’t sure he would believe it if it hadn’t happened to him. He wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t buy a word of it.
“You have any idea who would want to hurt you that badly? You have to have some theories.”
He tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling, rubbing his brow. “Prison gave me nothing but a cage, bad food, and time to think, so of course I have theories. But none have led anywhere.”
“I’d like to hear them anyway.”
He lowered his head to look at her and blew out a breath. “The company was booming back then. We’d taken out competitors. We had partnered with another tech company and had developed some new virtual reality technology that had big promise for the adult market. The big names in the industry were courting us, wanting to get their hands on that and a few of our other products.”
“You had things other people wanted,” she said, all business.
“We did. But we were also cocky and young. Way too arrogant. Flaunted our success. I’m sure we made more than a few enemies that way.” God knows he had. The power and money had gone straight to their heads.
“We.”
His gaze flicked up at that. “Ren and I.”
She put her chin in her hand, gaze shrewd. “But they only went after you.”
He shrugged. “If you knew us, you’d know that to come after me is to go after him and vice versa. We’ve been by each other’s side since we were seventeen. We shared everything. The business, a house . . . women. All of it.”
Her eyebrow twitched up at that.
He wet his lips, feeling way too exposed. “So it could’ve been a case of a competitor trying to cut off the head of the snake, take out the company via me. Or it could’ve been a matter of someone wanting to knock us down a peg. Or a scorned lover seeking revenge. I’m not sure we’ll ever really know.” He sighed. “All I know is that whoever it was wanted to destroy me. And succeeded.”
She frowned at that. “No, he didn’t. At least not permanently. You’re out. You’re here.”
He scoffed, unable to hide the bitterness. “Yeah, I’m here where I can’t even talk to a female co-worker without her worrying I’m going to attack her.”
“I’m not—”
He held up his hand. “You don’t have to defend yourself on that. You’re smart. You assessed the risk and are protecting yourself. From the outside looking in, I’m red-level threat. I’m an ex-con who was charged with rape and has deviant sexual proclivities. I can’t change any of that. All I can tell you is that I’d never hurt a woman.”
“Unless she gave you permission to.” The words were quiet but packed a punch.
His eyes met hers, something tense there. “Yeah. And not even then anymore. I’m . . . not part of the scene anymore.”
Her lips parted, surprise there. “At all?”
“Not worth the risk. How would I know who to trust?” He said the words plainly but even he could hear the hitch in his voice, the sharpness.
“Right,” she said with a nod. “Of course.”
Hayes scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling drained and raw. Now she knew. Now she’d dismiss him like everyone else had. “I’m sorry if that was too much or TMI, as you’d say. I don’t normally talk about any of this, but I just . . . I wanted you to have all the information. You don’t have to believe—”
“I believe you.”
His gaze snapped upward, shock echoing through him like a sonic boom. “What?”
She leaned back in her chair, expression unflinching and resolute. “I said I believe you.”
All the air seemed to sag out of him, wonder replacing it. “Just like that?”
“Just like that. Thank you for being honest with me. I know that couldn’t have been easy to share with a stranger. But I’m going with my gut. And I believe you.”
Christ. She said it like it wasn’t a big deal. Like people took him for his word all the time. He didn’t even know what to do with that.
But before he could react, she braced her elbows on her desk, lines bracketing her full mouth. “But now we’ve got a bigger issue to tackle.”
He couldn’t process what she was talking about. His brain was still whirling. She believed him. This woman who’d just met him had listened to his story and accepted it. She had no idea what kind of gift that was. How long it’d been since anyone besides his mother or Ren had accepted his truth without question. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to . . . No. He couldn’t do any of that.
What he needed to do was listen to her. She was trying to tell him something. “What issue?”
“The person who came after you wanted to destroy you or the company. They tried to pin rape on you. What if . . .” Worry hovered in her eyes. “Hayes, I was almost raped because of your game. What if whoever set you up is coming after you again? What if they’re behind this hack?”
Every ounce of warmth from the moment before drained out of him in one sinking rush, his body going cold as ice.
What if it’s starting again?