Page 188 of On A Manhunt: Complete Series

SILAS

“Why the hell did you send me that link?” I asked Bridget.

After washing my hands, then finishing up the meeting with the Hyport team–with tons of apologizing and disappointed looks–I’d gone directly back to my hotel room.

In one of the Presidential Suites on the top floor since the Hyports were generous–and open to making me happy during negotiations.

“You saw it.”

“Jesus, yes.” I wasn’t going to mention any more details than that.

It had to have been my worst, and most embarrassing moments as CEO.

While they hadn’t said anything, I had no doubt the Hyport team knew I’d been watching something inappropriate.

Watching Eve in almost-porn and probably seeing my epic hard-on during a meeting.

Then I’d hid and jerked off in an empty office because my woman was reading X-rated sex scenes from romance novels and I was–like the other horny guys listening and watching–picturing all of it really happening to her.

Not with a lumberjack and his big ax, but with me. I knew what she looked like as she took my dick bent over a desk. The way her perfect ass jiggled with each thrust. Or the way she looked when she came as I loomed over her with her legs wrapped around waist.

I’d been in the worst situation ever.

That had been two days ago, and I’d bought up all her time. All of it. If she was talking with me, reading with me, unbuttoning the front of her little sweaters with ME, then she wasn’t doing it for anyone else.

The next night, we’d talked–thank fuck in private and nowhere anyone from Hyport would hear–about blow jobs and sixty-nine. I’d had to end our evening meetings early, but it was worth it. Just thinking about it now and I was hard again. I had to stand because sitting was uncomfortable.

“Well?” she prodded.

“Well, what?” I paced, ran a hand through my hair. Wished I had a Danish spandauer right about now.

“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.

I couldn’t go into Steaming Hotties and tell Eve to shut that shit down and force money on her. For one, I was in San Francisco. Two, I didn’t want to be throat punched. I wanted my dick down her throat. There was a very clear distinction, and it was my actions that determined which one I received.

“She’s a cam girl. What can I do about it?” I wanted to fly back to Hunter Valley and tell her the only one she could do something like that with was me. Not throat punching, but… anything sexy.

I remembered the conversation with Dex when he talked about video calls and doing sex stuff with Lindy. Where had I been? Right, Denmark. Now I saw why he was all over the concept. I’d just done it… twice with Eve and it had been H.O.T.

I’d gotten hard in a roomful of Hyport hoteliers, for fuck’s sake.

“I talked to Mav about it, and we felt you needed to know this is what she’s doing for money to keep Steaming Hotties going,” she explained. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it because it’s empower–”

I froze in my pacing. “What?”

“It’s empowering, and she’s a marketing and branding genius with her idea of being a naughty librar–”

“Not that,” I interrupted, swiping my hand through the air. “The other part.”

“The other… oh. She’s done it for a few days, and she said the money’s good. Like really good.”

“She’s camming, or whatever the hell it’s called, because she wouldn’t take the James Corp small business loan?” I asked, stunned.

“Yes,” she replied simply.

I ran a hand through my hair. This was my fault then because we slept together. Because I couldn’t keep my hands off her. Because I had to drag her to the back office at a bar or push her back on the conference room table. Shit.

She was camming because of me. Was this what women who’d been under my father’s thrall been forced to do? Had their livelihoods been so impacted by him using them for a quick fuck that they had to play a virgin librarian to pay their bills?

Fuck me. I’d solve this.

“I’ve already booked out her sessions,” I told her. No way is another guy seeing her like that. Those perfect tits. That voice. The way she bit her lip. Even talking about sixty-nine or BJs or anything remotely sexual and guys were going to blow their load.

“What’s that mean?”

Obviously she didn’t know much about this type of thing.

Not that I did either. Not until she sent me the link.

“You can pay for a private room with her. I did that and I set it for the rest of this week.” I paused.

A week. That wasn’t long enough. Fuck. It would take a few months for her to earn what was being offered in the loan.

“Wait. That’s not long enough. I’ll change that to the rest of the month. ”

She was quiet for a moment. For Bridget, that meant that she was thinking, which she did a hell of a lot.

“So you’re going to what… visit her every night and monopolize her cam time yourself?”

Yes. Exactly that. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

“You like her.”

Fuck, I admired Eve for this… ingenuity, for finding a way to get money for her business, but this? I hadn’t expected it. Holy hell, never in a million years.

“Yes.”

Bridget knew all too well we had a fling. Twice. Knew I didn’t think our flings should hold Eve and her business success back. Now Bridget was learning that Eve meant something. So I told her the truth. “I don’t want anyone else to see her like that.”

Except for the person who walked in on us at the bar, whoever the hell it was.

But that didn’t matter because it had been my mouth on her pussy.

My name she screamed. The fucker knew she was taken and being well taken care of.

By me. I didn’t give a shit if the guy got an eyeful.

Whatever, because Eve knew when I made her come she was mine.

Until she walked out. Thanked me for the orgasms and went on her way. Then turned down the James Corp loan. Because of sex. With me.

“So, she won’t take money from you because you had sex, but you’re going to give her the money to keep her business afloat this way instead.”

That about summed it up.

“Looks like it.”

“Wait.” She paused and I could see her pushing up her glasses as she thought. “Wait. She doesn’t know it’s you on there, does she?”

Bridget was ridiculously smart. I didn’t say anything.

“Oh my God. She doesn’t know. Sil–”

“If I tell her, she’ll block me or whatever. I don’t want other men seeing her. No way. If this is the only way to give her that money, then so be it.”

“You know who she is, don’t you? Her family?”

“Um, yeah. Eve. Evelyn.”

“Right. Evelyn Hunter.”

I wasn’t following. “So?”

“Hunter, as in Hunter Valley.”

What? “The town is named after her family?”

“I forget you’re not from here. No, her family practically owns the valley.”

“You forgot?” Impossible. She probably remembered what shoes she wore to her first day of kindergarten.

“Her great, great, great something founded the town. It was her grandparents who created the resort and where the real money came in.”

“So her parents run it?” I needed to look into that company.

“No. Her aunt. Her son, Eve’s cousin, is named Hunter. He’s the town sheriff.”

Strange, but whatever.

“Okay, so what about her parents?”

“They don’t work.”

“Because of the family money?” I asked.

“Because of the family money,” she repeated. “I’ve known Eve since we were kids. Her parents stay up on the mountain. Live the posh lifestyle wholeheartedly. I met them once. I was maybe… eleven. Eve and I were in 4H and helping out with the show chickens.”

“What the hell is a show chicken?” I grew up in Denver. A big city. I ate chicken. The only ones I came across were on my plate or under plastic at the grocery store. Which I never went to because I was never fucking home.

“They’re entered into contests at the county fair. They’re judged and ribbons are handed out. Not just chickens. Rabbits. Cows. All the animals.”

“What does this have to do with Eve?”

She sighed. “Her parents found out she was having fun. With chickens. Yup. It was actually fun and it’s an interesting area of science–”

I dropped back onto the couch, my hard on gone after the talk about fowl. “Okay, focus please.”

“They yanked her from 4H and shipped her to boarding school.”

I flopped back, stared at the ceiling. “Oh. That kind of parents.”

I knew them all too well. I grew up with families like that, where kids were ignored and shipped off to school. Or pranced about like show ponies.

Or, in Eve’s case, probably both. No Hunter would get her hands dirty in a pole barn and the only way to ensure that was to move. God forbid the parents up and relocated. No, she ended up in some far-flung school for rich kids with shitty families.

“Now do you see?”

“No.”

“She has money. Or her family does. Yet she applied to James Corp for one of the local loans.”

“Okay.” I was trying to figure out where she was going with this.

“Silas, don’t you see?”

“Obviously not.”

“She refused the James Corp loan out of fear of being financially controlled by a man she had sex with.”

“Are you saying this is a trend, or just me?” I wondered. I didn’t want to think of her having sex with her ex, or him controlling her somehow with money, but that would be hypocritical. If this was the case, he was old news. I was the one who was fucking her and fucking her well.

I wouldn’t control her with money. No way.

“I don’t know, but you were there. She was adamant.”

“And I accepted that, but you said she had sex with. We’re having sex,” I clarified. “I might be in San Francisco, but it’s definitely not past tense. When I get back to town–”

“Whatever.” I had a feeling she waved her hand through the air. “My point is, now you’re financially controlling her again, but this time without her knowing it’s you. This is exactly what she doesn’t want.”

“Too bad. There is no way in hell I’m letting other men see her like this. And we both know–you and me–that I wouldn’t fuck with that loan. This is only a different way for me to give her the money. This time, no interest, no paying it back.”

“But there is still a cost, Silas.”

“No there isn’t,” I countered. “It’s me. We’ve had sex. There’s nothing different about what we did and what we’re doing in a cam room except the actual sex part.”

“TMI,” she grumbled. “She’s camming. That’s her cost. It goes to show how determined she is not to take the loan from us. And how much she needs one.”

“She’s camming for me. Me. CEOBill. Not a stranger.”

“CEOBill?”

“My screen name.”

“Well, in that room, you are a stranger to her. She doesn’t know it’s you!” She sighed. “Silas. You like her. How are you going to take her out on a date or whatever without telling her you know?”

“I can’t tell her I know.”

“She needs to know it's you. You have to tell her.”

“There’s no way she can know I know. She won’t take the money, and like you said, she needs it. Me knowing is enough.”

“Well, I know that you know, and she doesn’t know that you know. I can’t look her in the eye knowing that she doesn’t know when I know that you know. What am I supposed to do?”

This was getting ridiculous and really hard to follow. “Don’t do anything. I’ll be back in a week. I’ll take care of it.”

“No. Today. You have to call her and tell her it’s you in that room, today.”

“Fine.”

I’d tell her today. If I only knew how.