Harper's Submission [Golden Dolphin 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) (18 page)

The delivery man thought for a moment and said, “I did see an old, dark-green Volvo parked in the dunes a few times. It wasn’t always in the same spot, but I thought it was probably just kids making out.”

“Thank you. If you see it again, please call me.” He handed the young man a tip and one of his cards.

Morgan brought the food out to the kitchen and put it on a tray with a bottle of Chinese plum wine. Harper was taking a bath in the master bathroom, so he carried the food to the bedroom.

“Food’s here. Are you a prune yet?”

“Not yet. I wouldn’t come out except I’m starving.”

“Need any help washing your back?” he asked with a grin.

“Ha! No thanks. That won’t help me get out of this tub any faster. I’ll be right out.” When she came into the bedroom wrapped in a fluffy white bathrobe, he smiled. She was delicious with her hair piled up on top of her head and damp tendrils framing her face and long, swanlike neck. He just never got tired of looking at her.

She climbed onto the bed on the opposite side of the tray and began to pile her plate with food from the ubiquitous white containers. “It’s funny. Only Chinese restaurants use these containers,” she said as she continued to prospect among the several open boxes for goodies. “I wonder if they have a patent on them.”

They ate in relative silence. Morgan’s mind continued to work on the Maxprotem problem, and he could see that Harper was preoccupied as well. When they were finishing their plum wine, Morgan tossed Harper one of the fortune cookies. “Do you know the fortune cookie game?”

“No, what’s that?”

“Well, when you open your cookie you have to read the message inside out loud and then add ‘in bed.’ My first one says ‘Nothing is impossible with a willing heart’—in bed.”

Harper laughed and opened one of the cookies. “You will get what your heart desires, in bed. That’s hysterical. I never heard of that before.” They each opened another cookie. “‘Everywhere you choose to go, friendly faces will greet you,’ in bed. That one is not as good. How about ‘You will soon be surrounded by good friends and laughter,’ in bed?”

Morgan countered with, “‘Many pleasurable and memorable adventures are in store for you,’ in bed. Now I like that one. Why don’t we try it out?” He got up, put the tray of food on the desk across the room, and rejoined her on the bed with a determined look on his face. When she rolled toward him, he grabbed her around the waist and quickly stripped off her robe and dropped his own on the floor beside hers at the foot of the teak four-poster bed.

Morgan pulled her up against his chest and slipped into the icy-blue pool of her eyes. She was soft and inviting, and he willed himself to slow down and savor the moment. This woman brought out the beast in him, and the desire for her rushed hotly through his veins with his blood. Her bold beauty and her aching vulnerability never failed to touch his heart. He knew he was head over heels in love with her at this point. There was no use denying the facts to himself or to her.

“Harper, you must know how I feel about you. I think I’ve made it pretty obvious, but just in case you’re confused about it, I love you. I want to be with you, and I want to continue our friendship, as well as our love affair, regardless of the antitrust litigation, the Maxprotem situation, or any other problems that arise from now on. I need to be with you.”

“Oh, Morgan…”

“Just wait a minute before you start to argue.” He could see the anxiety beginning to build in her eyes.

“You know me too well.”

“You steady me, make me laugh, help me think. I need you in my life. I’d like to be able to be the rock to steady you when you need it as well. I’m not pushing you for a commitment now. I just want you to be aware that we are far from done, and I intend to keep working on your trust issues. When we get back to the city, I want us to try another session at Le Club Eastside.”

“I know I still have some work to do on that, and I want to try to bottom for you again. I can’t promise that I can do it permanently.”

“Don’t worry about that. We’ll work it out as we go along. There’s no timetable or level of submission requirements. Just as long as you know that I’m the Dom and you’re the sub, and eventually, you are going to submit.” He laughed at the outraged look on her face as he rolled her under him. He plundered her surprised mouth as she tried to open it to refute his outrageous statement. His erection was hard enough to pound nails, and he didn’t know how long he could wait to fill her.

* * * *

“No one can say you lack confidence.” Harper laughed as his lips cruised down her neck to her breasts. She sighed heavily as his mouth captured her pebbled nipples. She loved his touch and tried to urge him on, but as usual, he would not be hurried. Morgan took his time pleasuring her breasts as the waves crashed on the beach outside the bedroom window and the shadows of the flames in the fireplace danced on the walls. She loved the sound and felt the heat in her blood as the desire for him seared through her system. It was the most natural and safe feeling in the world to have him wrapped around her. She smiled in anticipation as he reached down and captured her pulsing clit between his long, elegant fingers, and a sharp stab of pleasure sliced through her body. His husky voice whispering love words in her ear whetted her appetite. Morgan kissed down her body until he encountered the moisture that had flooded her sex at his words. He pushed her legs over his shoulders and settled himself between her spread thighs. She groaned as he feasted on her eager center. When she was writhing out of control, he finally pushed himself up and entered her. She held her breath as he plunged his steel-hard shaft into her soft center and rode the cresting surf of her desire while her heart pounded, and she came hard around his cock. She felt his climax explode through his body, and they coasted down together.

“Oh, baby. That was incredible,” she said as she rolled over and spooned up against his side. She closed her eyes, ran her hands down his muscled chest, and tried to absorb his scent and the essence of his masculine beauty as her system finally returned to normal. She wanted to store up the good memories. It was her experience that sometimes the good things didn’t last. “I’m going to hate to leave here tomorrow.”

“We’ll be back. We have all winter to enjoy the beach. Mel and the kids almost never come out in the cold weather. How about if we spend Christmas here? We can decorate the house and put up a Christmas tree.” He sighed. “I hate to leave, too, but at the same time, I’m anxious to talk to my security team and get those samples in to the lab for testing on Monday.”

* * * *

Harmon Burke parked his car down the street from his apartment. Apparently, the parking fairies were with him for a change. He carried the crocodile briefcase up the three flights of stairs to his apartment and put it on his kitchen table. He examined it from all sides and tried several different combinations on the three-number locks. None worked, of course. That would have been just too easy. Finally, although it pained him to damage the beautiful briefcase that he would never have been able to afford, he took a butter knife and pried the locks open.

When he had gained entry, he was disappointed to see the case did not contain any dirty pictures as he had hoped. It only had some scientific shit about drugs. He scanned through the material. He read it again several times more carefully, and he began to realize that he might have something here after all. It looked to him, and he was certainly no expert, that Court’s drug trial was not producing any results. This was not the explosive information he had been hoping for, but it was better than nothing. He would take it in to Maurie Cullen on Monday and see what his editor thought.

* * * *

Harper and Morgan had a leisurely pancake breakfast on Sunday morning, tidied up the house, and left in the early afternoon to drive back to the city. She was anxious to spend a night in her own bed and check on things at her house. She agreed to meet Morgan at his office on Monday morning. She needed time to think about how she felt about all that had happened in the last few weeks. A deep love for Morgan had crept into her heart even though she had tried to armor it against him. The man had a way of crashing through her defenses like a pillaging Viking. She had to be glad that he didn’t take no for an answer.

Morgan Court’s Office at Court Industries, New York City, Monday, November 25, 2013, 8:30 a.m.

Morgan had his secretary get John McGregor, the head of security, into his office at eight thirty sharp. He handed him the samples Harper had liberated from Eastern Shore Research Laboratory for testing.

“John, I want you to get these samples down to the lab to be run through the mass spectrometer, and also investigate the ownership of Eastern Shore, as well as all of their employees. Harper and I think that the best explanation for the lack of any results in the clinical trial is that the drugs being used are possibly all placebos. We can’t think of any other reason that there were no results at all, good or bad.”

“On it, boss. I wish I had thought of that myself. I’ll get these samples down to the lab immediately and tell Toshimi to put a rush on it. I’ll wait for the mass spec results and get back to you.”

By the time Morgan had finished with John, Harper had arrived at his office with a bag of donuts. She poured them each a cup of coffee and took a seat across from him. “Thank you for the wonderful weekend, Morgan. I had a great time.”

“No, thank you. If you hadn’t snagged those samples, we still wouldn’t have a lead on what’s going on. I’m waiting to hear from our lab.” He got up and shut his door then he turned to Harper and took her into his arms for a stunning good morning kiss. “I missed you last night. I’ve gotten used to having you in my arms.”

“And I’ve gotten used to being there.”

* * * *

Harmon Burke sat across from Maurie Cullen in the cramped and smelly office at the
World Tipster
that gave even him the creeps. He wondered what horrors lived under the messy piles of paper, old food wrappers, and empty coffee cups. He watched as Maurie read through the material a second time. “Where did you get this stuff, Burke?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Come to think about it, no. I suppose I don’t. Let’s just say it’s from a ‘confidential source’ and let it go at that. Let me run this by someone I know with a scientific background, and then maybe we can put something out on the AP wire, under your byline of course. I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, write up a story for release.” He had a shifty look on his face that Harmon didn’t particularly like. The thought of a story based on stolen material with his name on it gave him pause for thought, but this was what he had been waiting and working for—some national exposure.

“Thanks, Maurie. Let me know what you decide. In the meantime, I’ll put a story together. And I plan to keep on Court’s and Cameron’s butts. They seem to be joined at the hip lately anyway. I followed him into the office this morning and saw Cameron go in about a half hour later.”
Shit. Wish I could be a fly on the wall.
And he really did. He wished he knew what they made of the missing briefcase. The prompt visit of the village police cruiser Saturday night had really given him a scare. He had hoped they wouldn’t notice the briefcase was gone until at least this morning. Now, here comes a story about the drug trial not producing results with his name on it based on material from the stolen briefcase. It was going to look suspicious.
Well, freedom of the press
.

* * * *

Morgan looked up as John McGregor rushed into his office without knocking. McGregor was so excited he could hardly pause to breathe. “Boss, you guys were right. Toshimi says all the pills in the bottles we gave her to test are sugar pills. All placebos. Apparently none of the text subjects have been getting the actual Maxprotem.”

Morgan should not have been shocked, but he was nonetheless. Although he and Harper had thought that scenario made the most sense, he had not really thought the answer to the question of why the trials were not producing results could be so simple. Now that he thought about it, it was really not simple at all. Who was responsible for this act of industrial sabotage? If it hadn’t been discovered, the outcome could have been devastating, costing Court Industries millions and millions of dollars in just preliminary development and trial costs, not to mention years of work. He had to think this through before he did anything, and he needed Harper’s input.

“John, keep this quiet. Run background checks on the lab, all their employees, and ownership. Dig deep. The answer is not going to be lying on the surface. Get back to me as soon as you have anything.” Morgan looked over at Harper and asked, “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking we are going to be surprised again when we finally figure out who is responsible for this. I can’t imagine that pharmaceutical companies routinely do this kind of thing. I’m wondering if it could be tied in any way to the antitrust problems you’ve been having.”

* * * *

Harper sat back in her chair and sipped her coffee. This information, especially when considered with the missing briefcase, was troubling. She opened her laptop and pulled up
Pharma Magazine
online. She did a quick scan for articles mentioning Court Industries but found nothing new. Next she brought up LexisNexis for legal news with the same result. She intended to keep monitoring the Internet for any new information popping up on Court Industries. She just had a bad feeling about this whole situation.