“Hey, boss, can I talk to you?”

“Yep. Hang on.” Blake glanced over the numbers on the screen in front of him once more, verifying their accuracy, then clicked save, before turning his attention to the woman who stood in his doorway.

His secretary, Daphne, had her hand braced on the doorframe, and was holding a sheaf of papers, an uncharacteristic look of annoyance on her pretty face. Daphne had worked at The Club for a few years, handling memberships, room reservations, and all the other public interactions that Blake had neither the time nor the patience to handle. She was one of the few trusted employees he’d leaned on more and more over the past year. Tall and willowy, with her pale skin framed by a waist-length curtain of red-blonde hair, she reminded Blake of an innocent maiden he’d seen in a painting once… at least until she opened her mouth. Daphne cursed like a sailor, handled business negotiations with the ruthlessness of a battle-seasoned general, and was the first person to jump in with an inappropriate comment or dirty joke anytime a situation got too tense, but she did it all while wearing a smile that could light up a room. That smile was missing tonight.

“Problem?” Blake surmised, nodding toward the papers in her hand.

Daphne hesitated, looking at Blake’s face while chewing her lip. “Er… maybe. But you know what? Lemme talk to Matt about this, rather than bother you with it.”

Blake’s eyes narrowed. “Pardon?”

“Well, I… I know you’re really busy, and you’ve been pretty stressed, and I don’t wanna burden you when I could just bug Matt or Slay.”

“Bug Matt with what?” Matteo asked, popping his head in from the hallway behind her. The former soldier’s broad shoulders seemed to take up the entire doorway, and as always, there was a light of mischief just beneath the surface of his green eyes. He gave Blake a chin lift in greeting and turned his attention to Daphne.

“Oh, good! We can talk at my desk!” Daphne said eagerly, ushering Matt back into the hall with a gentle shove. Over her shoulder, she called out, “Sorry to have bothered you, Blake.”

God, had things gotten that bad? Had he retreated to the point where his people thought he shouldn’t be bothered with the day-to-day running of his own business? Shit.

“Daphne!” Blake barked in a warning tone. When her head reappeared in the doorway, he pointed at one of the chairs in front of his desk. “Sit. And Matteo, I need you to hear this too.”

Without another word, Daphne sat, though she still looked wary. Matteo, his curiosity piqued, came into the office, but chose to lean against the far wall, instead.

“I know I’ve been a bit preoccupied over the past few months,” Blake told them. “I needed to sort my shit. I needed to grieve for my wife. And I am grateful—more than I can express—that all of you, particularly the two of you and Slay, were there to pick up the slack for me. But it’s time I stopped going through the motions and started really living again.” He remembered his conversation with LanieLove and felt his lips twitch into a smile.

“It’s time,” he repeated. “And this is my club. So, when you have a problem, you don’t hesitate. You come directly to me. Both of you. And make sure that gets circulated to every other member of the team. We’re back to business as usual. Understood?”

Despite his unfiltered words and harsh tone, Daff’s face lit up. “Yeah! I mean, yes, Master Blake. Understood.”

One corner of Matt’s mouth lifted in a smile, and he gave a single nod. “Understood.”

Blake nodded once, closing that conversation hopefully forever, then gestured towards the papers Daphne held. “So?”

“Right! Okay, so…” Daphne’s face grew serious as she laid her stack of papers out on the desk. “We’ve had an influx of crazy emails.”

Blake glanced briefly at the papers, and then back to Daphne. “This is nothing new, Daff. Crackpots have been condemning us to hell since the day we set this place up. If they’re not trying to save my soul, they’re offering me some way to lose weight or enlarge my penis.”

Blake could hear Matteo sucking in a breath, but before he could make the joke that Blake knew had to be hovering on his lips, Blake continued, “I believe you should forward all of those offers to Master Angelico’s inbox.”

Matteo snorted and Blake chuckled silently to himself.

Daphne made a strangled noise that was halfway between a cough and a laugh, then continued, “Right, boss. Will do. No, I know we get those emails on a regular basis. But these are different. For one thing, all of the messages are from the same group.” She leaned forward in her seat and pointed to the paper. “They call themselves The Church of the Highest Prophet.”

Blake and Matteo exchanged a glance. “The Church of the Highest Prophet?” Blake repeated. He felt an inexplicable clench in his gut as he said the words, some sixth sense that told him this wasn’t like the harmless emails he’d gotten in the past. “I’ve never heard of them.”

Daphne nodded. “Neither had I, and that’s because they’re fairly new. Just opened about a year ago, according to their website.”

“They have a website?” Matt asked.

Daff rolled her eyes. “Everyone has a website, Matteo.”

Matt pushed off the wall and prowled over to the desk for a closer look. “Simmer down, Daffy. Just an observation.” His voice was mild but firm.

Daphne sighed. “Yes, they have a website,” she confirmed in a more pleasant tone. “And if their propaganda is accurate, they have a membership of over 10,000 people.”

Blake leaned back and whistled through his teeth. That was a high membership for a church that had started mere months ago. “And now they’re targeting us? Spamming our inbox?”

“Sure seems that way,” Daphne said. “I started noticing the name of the church maybe six or seven months back. We’d get one or two emails a day, and I’d click delete, and that would be that.”

Blake nodded. That was the stand they’d always taken when it came to weirdoes and scammers. Ignoring attention-seekers was the best revenge.

“But then, maybe a month ago, the number of emails started increasing. It went from a couple to a couple of dozen, almost overnight. And over the past week or so, it’s been more like a couple of hundred.”

“A couple of hundred?” Blake repeated. “Every day?”

Daphne nodded. “And even that wouldn’t be such a big deal in and of itself. I set up a filter that sends any email mentioning the church to its own box, so I can go through and delete them later, without having their spam clogging my inbox. But when I clicked on a couple today, I saw these.”

Blake and Matteo leaned forward to look at the paper Daphne placed on top of the stack. It was a picture—a grainy, unfocused, black-and-white image that seemed to be taken by an old-school security camera, but the subject was clear: The Club. The photograph clearly showed the exterior door to the bar area on the first floor, as well as the street number—826—emblazoned on the awning above it. Below it was the caption, The devil hides his lair in plain sight!

Blake sighed. The location of The Club was hardly a secret—with hundreds of regular members and even more guests, it would be impossible to keep the location under wraps. Still, the street address wasn’t something they advertised, either, if only to protect their members from idiots like the members of this so-called church. They were going to have to beef up security. Shit.

“Shit,” Matteo sighed, echoing Blake’s thoughts. “We’ll need to double security tonight.”

“Uh, guys?” Daphne said.

Blake nodded at Matteo. “Inside and outside. We’ll need to consider hiring a couple of the guys Slay works with, maybe bring them on board as contractors.”

Matt nodded. “On it.”

“Guys?” Daphne said again.

“And I’ll give a heads up to all of the wait staff to be alert for anything unusual,” Blake said. “We’ll handle it.”

Daphne waved a hand in the air impatiently. “Guys!” Blake brought his eyes to hers and she continued, “You haven’t seen the worst.”

She flipped the first page over and showed them a second image. Another photograph, this one darker, though more detailed.

“Cell phone camera,” Blake murmured, and caught Matteo nodding in agreement. “Fuck.”

The shot had been taken at night and from a distance. A man stood on the street with his arms folded, his hair gilded by the glow of a streetlight, his face tilted down and scowling. Though it was impossible to make out the details of his surroundings, his identity was clear.

It was Blake, himself.

And the caption read, The devil walks among us.

“They’re coming after you personally?” Matteo asked, his voice heavy with disbelief and anger. “Blasting your picture out there, for any nut job with a God complex to see? Jesus.”

Blake clenched his jaw, and blinked against the red fog that clouded his vision. Without conscious thought, his hands curled into fists.

“Show me the email,” he demanded.

Daphne gazed at him, and whatever she saw in his face made her eyes widen when they met his. “Uh. Maybe…”

“Now.”

Daff swallowed, and grabbed a third sheet of paper from the bottom of the stack, placing it on top.

It was a forwarded copy of a letter that The fucking Church of the fucking Highest Prophet had sent to the idiots they called their “flock,” and reading it did nothing to dispel Blake’s rage.

It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that our sinful neighbors at The Club, the devil’s own lair, continue to promote immoral behavior and licentious acts within their walls. They have not heard our pleas. They have ignored our gentle entreaties to repent. They have refused to heed our warnings.

The time for words has ended. The time for action has begun.

The Club has been a blight on our community for too long. We must rid ourselves of this diseased limb by any means necessary, to ensure the safety of our children and families. It is our duty to ensure that our friends, our neighbors, and our public servants are aware of this evil, before its poison spreads further. I encourage each of you to contact your elected representatives. Let them know we will no longer peacefully accept this scourge on our city!

“Motherfucker,” Blake said, flinging the paper across the desk to land in front of Matteo. “Get a load of that doomsday shit.”

Matt read quickly and blew out a breath. “Jesus. That’s fucked up.”

Blake turned to Daphne. “I need every email from these assholes copied into a folder on the network. Access only to you, me, Matt, and Slay.”

Daphne nodded, and hurried out of the room.

“I want to know everything about this ‘Church,’ ” Blake told Matt. “What kind of money do they have? Where do they get it? Where are they located? Who is their leadership?”

Matt nodded, “I’m working the floor tonight, but I’ll tell the guys…”

Blake shook his head. “No, not the guys. You, Matt. You and Slay. Call Donnie and ask him to cover the floor. There is no higher priority than this right now.”

Matteo nodded once again, but his brow creased. “Boss, I admit they’re saying some scary-ass shit here. I don’t blame you for being freaked if you feel like you’re being targeted. We’ll deal with this ASAP, but we don’t need to go off the deep end.”

Blake braced his hands on the desktop and pushed himself up to a standing position, so that his eyes were on a level with Matt’s. “We are not discussing this. We are not debating this. No higher priority, Matteo. Yeah?”

Matteo blinked twice, obviously taken aback by Blake’s intensity. His eyebrow raised and curiosity swirled in his eyes, but his jaw firmed. “Yeah, Blake. Sure. No higher priority.”

Blake nodded once, then sat back down and turned toward his computer. “Let me know as soon as you find something.”

Matt took this as the dismissal it was, and left. The moment the door closed behind him, Blake pushed his chair back and grabbed the picture off his desk to study it further. Once again, the image made his gut churn.

No doubt Matteo thought Blake was losing his shit, that grief had turned him into some kind of cowering pussy who wanted to protect his identity at all costs. The idea was almost enough to make Blake laugh.

Almost.

In truth, Blake couldn’t care less if they took a picture of him. What Matteo didn’t know, couldn’t know, was that the identity he needed to protect was not his own, but that of the person hovering just outside of the camera lens—the woman he’d been scowling at so viciously just a few nights ago, as she stood in the street and rolled her eyes at his concern for her safety.

Elena Slater.

He laid the picture down and leaned back in his chair, folding his hands against the hard, flat plane of his abs, which he’d tortured just that morning in the gym, and sighed, considering his options. He could call Elena himself, tell her to stay away from The Club until they’d learned whether the “church” was just a bunch of crazy spammers or something more sinister, but he knew the crazy, stubborn female wouldn’t listen. In fact, he admitted, she was just stubborn enough to insist on coming, loathe to show the slightest bit of weakness. He felt a spurt of amusement and something like… pride, before he quashed it.

She’d also take great delight in defying him just to see him riled, he reminded himself. She was a pain in the ass, that’s what she was.

His other option was to call in reinforcements.

He tapped a button on his phone and was rewarded with Daphne’s immediate, “Yes, boss?”

“Call Slay for me. Ask him to stop by before he leaves.”

“You’ve got it!” she chirped.

Blake and Slay were similar in a lot of ways, and he knew that once Slay was aware of a potential security issue, he’d make sure Elena stayed away from The Club. Blake couldn’t help the grin that slid over his face as he imagined Elena’s reaction when Slay told her. Nor could he help the brief surge of possessiveness that followed, the instinctive knowledge that he, Blake, should be the one to protect her, to lay down the law to keep her safe.

He scrubbed a hand through his hair, and willed his cock to deflate, but the fucker didn’t listen. His cock seemed to be attuned to the slightest suggestion of Elena- the smell of her perfume, the memory of her voice, the sight of her lips, the sound of her name.

No matter that he worked out twice daily now – doing Crossfit or weight training every morning, running five miles every evening—he couldn’t exhaust himself enough to prevent his mind from conjuring her while he was sleeping. Every night, she haunted him. Sometimes in his dreams, he claimed her right here at The Club, sprawled out face-down on a spanking bench with her hands tied and her ass bright-red from his ministrations. Sometimes he took her slowly, almost reverently, with his tongue owning her mouth the way his cock owned her pussy. One memorable time, he’d awoken to find he’d been dreaming of throwing her over this desk, right here, while the air was heavy with the sweet smell of her arousal and her voice cried out “Master Blake” loud enough for the entire building to hear.

It was a good thing Slay would soon ban her from The Club, he thought, as he adjusted himself beneath his desk. The Elena who screamed his name so prettily was nothing but a fantasy. The real Elena didn’t want his help, his guidance, or his protection. She’d proven that the other night.

Old man.

He sucked in a sharp breath against the urge to show her just how young he could be, where she was concerned.

His phone chimed in his back pocket and he grabbed it, his annoyance with Elena and his worry about the harassing emails dissipating immediately as he saw that he had a message from LanieLove.

LanieLove: Guess who aced their exam today?

Blake smiled.

MisterHaven: Hmmm... How many guesses do I get?

LanieLove: lol! Nevermind, meanie. WE DID IT!

MisterHaven: That’s wonderful. I’m so glad, honey! Great job.

LanieLove: Thanks! And I’m sharing this victory with you. If it hadn’t been for you talking me off the ledge, forcing me to make a to-do list and get things under control, I would’ve been too messed up to focus. So thank you, bossypants. ☺

Blake felt something loosen inside him, but for once, he didn’t bother analyzing it.

MisterHaven: You’re very welcome. And you know, those good habits weren’t temporary. You need to keep going with that to-do list, and I’m going to be checking in to make sure. Okay?

LanieLove: Yes, sir.

Blake grinned. She’d fallen into the habit of calling him sir without any prompting whatsoever. A natural submissive if he’d ever met one.

MisterHaven: Okay, good. So, how are you celebrating?

LanieLove: Like a mature adult! Working.

MisterHaven: Tonight?

LanieLove: Yep. And tomorrow night, too. One of the guys I work with has the flu and I’m covering. Maybe after that I’ll celebrate, see if my friends want to grab a drink with me.

MisterHaven: Do I need to remind you to be careful? Designated driver, park in a well-lit location, no taking drinks from guys you don’t know, all that good stuff?

LanieLove: Lol. Nope. I AM a mature adult, so I don’t NEED you to remind me…

LanieLove: But I love and appreciate that you do.

And then she sent him one of those little smiley-faces with a red-heart-kiss.

He shook his head as he put the phone back in his pocket and called up his payroll spreadsheet on the computer. Oh, how the mighty had fallen. Master Blake—tied in knots by a stubborn, insolent female he knew all too well, and melted into goo by a female he barely knew at all.

* * *

A few hours later, a soft rap on his office door had him glancing up from his computer screen and what he saw had him doing a double-take. It was Slay, cradling a tiny baby on his enormous shoulder.

“Hey, Daff said you wanted to see me?” Slay whispered, stepping into the room.

Slay was the tallest and broadest of all the guys who worked at The Club. With his shaved head, numerous tattoos, and scruffy beard, he was almost certainly the most feared of all the guys. Which was why Blake had a hard time reconciling himself to the vision that appeared before him.

“Uh, yeah,” Blake whispered back, then shook his head at his own foolishness, and continued in a slightly louder voice. “Yeah, take a seat if you want.” He gestured to the chair where Daphne had sat earlier.

“Nah, I’m good,” Slay said. He took a step closer, but remained standing, his six-and-a-half-foot bulk towering over Blake, the desk, and everything else in the room.

And then the baby cradled against Slay’s shoulder made a noise—not a cry, more like a whimper or a sigh, and Slay began to rock, his entire enormous bulk swaying from side to side, one muscled forearm braced under the infant’s diaper-clad butt while his other broad hand moved in wide circles around the infant’s back, soothing her. The baby nestled her head further into the crook of Slay’s neck, and settled back to sleep.

“Holy shit, you’re good at that,” Blake commented.

Slay shrugged. “It’s a gift.”

Blake smirked. “Matteo know you ran off with his daughter?”

Slay smiled broadly. “Oh, yeah. Frankie started fussing loud enough to scream his ear off, so he let me take her.”

“And she settled down for you.” It was a statement not a question, but Slay answered it anyway.

“Yup. She always does. Drives Matt ballistic, but what can I say?” Slay’s grin was infectious. “I’m kind of a baby whisperer.”

Blake snorted. “I bet it drives him ballistic. Just like it drives Hillie ballistic when you call Francesca ‘Frankie.’ ”

Slay chuckled. “Pretty much. But you know, you love your kid, you give her what’s best for her, even if that means handing her off to Uncle Alex. Isn’t that right, Frankie?” he cooed. “Driving your daddy bat-poop crazy was just a side benefit.”

The baby didn’t reply, but Blake couldn’t help himself.

“Bat-poop?”

Slay leveled a glance at him. “You heard me. Gotta clean up the language,” he declared.

Blake blinked, then smiled. “You do know she can’t understand you yet, right?”

“Yep. But Charlie does,” Slay countered, rolling his eyes. “Kid understands, and repeats, every damn-er, darn—thing I say. Allie says he’s gonna have the most colorful vocabulary in third grade if I don’t watch myself.”

Blake nodded and let the warmth of the scene envelop him for half a second. Slay, his right-hand man and trusted friend, holding their other friend’s baby, while talking about the boy Slay was making plans to formally adopt. Blake had had no idea when he’d started this place, this club for people who enjoyed kink like he did, that The Club would be a catalyst for building these bonds, these families. The idea moved him profoundly, and made him more determined than ever to protect them.

“You talked to Matt about our new email pen pal?” Blake asked, getting to the point of the meeting. He grabbed the payroll sheet off the printer, and a pen from the glass jar Daff kept stocked on his desk.

Slay’s lips twitched. “The Church of the Highest Prophet? Yeah, he mentioned it. Sounds like someone trying to get some publicity at our expense.”

Blake nodded and tapped the pen against the desk. “He told you about the pictures?”

Slay lifted his chin. “Better than that, I’ve looked at them myself. One of the front awning, and one of your handsome mug,” he said grimly. “What’s your take on it?”

“I’m not sure,” Blake said, leaning back in his chair, eyes to the ceiling as he toyed with the pen. “I’m inclined to agree with your assessment. Some pop-up preacher is trying to increase his fame—and the donations to his church—by attacking the friendly neighborhood BDSM club he figures everyone loves to hate. But I can’t quite reconcile myself to it. Something about it feels… off. Personal. I can’t put my finger on it.” He lowered his eyes to find Slay watching him. “We shouldn’t take any chances.”

“Take chances,” Slay repeated. “What are you talking about?”

“This church seems to want its members to rile their local politicians and their neighbors to take action against us. What if they aren’t just making mischief, but trying to discredit us, shut us down, even?”

Slay snorted. “Like you’d ever shut this place down just because some pansy-ass took a picture of you. You’re not ashamed of the way you live your life. That email is just free publicity for The Club!”

Blake snorted. “No shit,” he confirmed. “But it won’t take long for the Prophet to realize that. He’s already escalated from blanket hate mail to something far more personal. What’s the next step in the game, Slay? Hell, what’s the endgame?”

Slay watched him closely for a moment, but when he said nothing, Blake continued.

“This guy is going to realize he can’t do a damn thing by taking pictures of me or you or Matt. Hell, they could post a picture of you with a caption that says ‘Satan!’ and you’d frame the damn thing.”

Slay snorted.

“But what if they took a picture of Allie coming into work and captioned it with the words ‘Satan’s Bride!’ or some shit? What if they see Dom come in, and one of the followers is a potential client?” He paused for a moment before dropping the biggest bomb. “What about Elena?”

Slay looked at him speculatively for a moment, as though seeing more behind Blake’s words than Blake had intended. Then Slay lifted his chin.

“What are you suggesting?” he asked, his voice subdued.

“I’m suggesting… caution. That’s all. For the time being, maybe you and the guys wanna hang with your women at Cara, instead of here. I’m thinking we institute a new rule that employees and their families must park in the employee lot. For the time being, no access to The Club for non-members, including guests. If these assholes are trying to land a punch on us, we wanna minimize the number of available targets.”

Slay nodded. “What’s your timeframe?”

“As long as it takes to make sure this group is harmless, and that their threats are no more than scare tactics,” Blake told him, glancing down to scrawl his signature at the bottom of the payroll sheet. “Which means, as long as it takes you and your team to dig into these guys. And if we find out they’re after something more than an easy scapegoat to gain publicity, we’ll have to make sure the Prophet, uh, sees the light.”

Slay’s face contorted in a grimace. “Jesus. That was awful.”

Blake stood and grinned, before turning around to a tall file cabinet against the wall and opening the drawer. “That was excellent. You’re just pissed you didn’t think of it.”

Slay shook his head, but his mouth twitched. “This is what you do at night, huh? Lie awake, thinking of shitty puns?”

Blake froze, his entire body solid as Slay’s joking taunt penetrated. What would Slay do if he knew just what Blake really did when he was lying awake at night? It would be an end to their easy friendship, that was for damn sure.

Blake made himself move, finding the correct folder and filing the paper in his hand, forced his voice to be light as he turned to Slay and smirked.

“That what you do at night? Lie there wondering what I’m doing? Slay, I’m touched, really. I just wouldn’t want Allie to get the wrong idea, you know?”

Slay’s eyes lit with humor, and his chuckle was a rumble too low to wake the baby. “Peace,” he said, holding out a placating hand. “I shoulda known better than to start shit with you, man.”

Blake snorted. Damn straight.

“All right, call me if you need me,” Slay said. “I’m out of here for the night. Matt’s probably ready to have me arrested for kidnapping, and Allie’s gonna send out a search party. More than one babygirl needs her Daddy.”

Blake chuckled and held out a hand, which Slay shook firmly.

“Drive safely and tell Allie I say hi,” Blake said as he resumed his seat.

He looked up a moment later to find Slay staring at him with uncharacteristic hesitation.

“What’s up?” Blake asked.

“About the other night,” Slay said, “when we were all hanging here at The Club.”

The night he’d had words with Elena by her car. The night the picture of him had been taken. “What about it?”

“You and Elena got into it. She goaded you. She was out of line. It’s been eating at me for days, and I wanted to apologize—”

Blake held up a hand and scowled. “Jesus, Slater! I don’t want an apology from you. She and I are both adults, and we happen to push each other’s buttons.”

Slay nodded. “Yeah, I know you’re right. I think I got in the habit a long time ago of thinking of her like my kid, you know?” He lifted his hand from Frankie’s back to smooth it over his head, then winced. “She’d kill me if she knew I’d said that.”

“Yeah, she would.” And Blake wouldn’t entirely blame her.

Slay grimaced.

“Though, considering you’re still breathing after what you said the other night right in front of her…” Blake goaded.

“What’d I say?” Slay demanded.

“I threatened to spank her, and you volunteered to hold her down!” Blake reminded him.

“Oh, shi… I mean, shoot! Yeah. But that’s only because I knew you wouldn’t,” Slay told him. “When it comes down to it, I trust you with her, you know? You’re pretty much the only single guy in Boston I can say that about.”

Blake nodded, even as he felt his stomach twist with guilt. “That… means a lot,” he choked out.

But as Slay and Frankie departed, Blake wondered whether guilt would be enough to banish Elena from his dreams.