play, got it?”
She would have loved to string him up and tie the rope nice and tight. She’d soon have him singing a different tune. As it was, she was at his mercy, at least for the time being. They’d struck a deal, or, more accurately, he’d stated his terms—a fifty-fifty split in the gross revenues from her site until he decided she’d paid enough for the risks she’d taken, not to mention the loss of the Franklin account.
“You’ve been using my equipment and my space scot free for two years,” he had snarled when she protested that she had significant expenses. “You could have cost me my business, and might still if that guy decides to come out of the woodwork. Pay for your expenses out of what you owe me for that .”
Cabrón . Along with making her work from his basement, he’d forced her to give him access to her merchant account for her credit card processor. No way was she going to let him extort her forever, with no end in sight. She’d pretend to go along for a while. She’d bide her time until she could get out without too much collateral damage.
Houston was a big city—Texas even bigger. Hell, she could go anywhere in the world. Her site was gaining in popularity every month. She’d get away from Eric, change her name, lock him out of her site and her accounts, and reinvent herself.
Until she could figure a way out of this, though, it was going to be more than strange to have to report for work at the ad agency, pretending to be Miss Bland-and-Innocent with Blake and Tony, while Eric stood by smirking.
He’d really thrown her for a loop yesterday. She’d had him pegged as an easy mark, someone she could twist around her little finger if she’d chosen. She had definitely underestimated Eric Chapman—she knew that now.
Not only hadn't she expected him to be such a hard ass, she’d also been taken by surprise by his comments about preferring floggers to cat o’ nine tails. Maybe he was just messing with her head—pretending to a knowledge and interest in BDSM to try to keep his upper hand. Or maybe Eric was a closet sub boy , just waiting for a strong woman to take him in hand. The way he’d stroked the leather on the flogger—could it be the guy was secretly aching to feel its sting? If he was a sub boy, she had no doubt she could push the right submissive buttons to get into his head and his pants on her own terms.
The thought almost made her laugh until she remembered the camcorder was recording. She needed to focus, damn it. She had a fan base depending on her. She looked down at Gerald, whose broad shoulders and back reminded her of Eric’s physique. Yes, that could be Eric kneeling before her, naked and groveling as he kissed her feet.
Jessie brought the crop down hard on Gerald’s ass, much harder than a moment before, drawing a gasp from the man. She struck his other cheek just as hard, putting her whole arm into it. She glared a moment at the tiny camera before continuing to crop the sub boy at her feet with energy fueled by fury.
Take that, Eric, you son of a bitch.
~*~
Eric popped another can of beer as his home computer booted up. It had been a stroke of genius the week before to make Jessie switch venues to his basement. Now she couldn’t disappear in the middle of the night with his expensive equipment, nor did he think she would just vanish, not when he had possession of the gear she used to make her videos. And it gave him the added control of watching her in action and making sure she stayed on schedule.
Using the information he’d forced Jessie to provide, he logged into her merchant credit card processing account. Her site didn’t accept PayPal, which apparently reported transactions to the government, instead going the credit card route only, where no such stipulations were required. She averaged about $7,000 per month in gross income from her little venture, with some months going as high as $10,000.
Let’s see…this month so far… he added the