Page 137 of Obey

I collapse, too exhausted to hold myself up, but Elias holds me his chest. His breath is hot against my neck, ragged and uneven, matching my own.

“Shhhh.” The edge is gone from his voice. “Breathe for me, Doe.”

His hand slides up from my waist, palm flat against my sternum, pressing just enough to remind me my lungs still work.

“That’s it.” His lips press against the sweat-damp skin behind my ear.

After a few minutes, he slips out of me, much to my disappointment. And I can feel the mix of our release coating my thighs.

Once he’s sure I’m not going to pass out, he slides one of his arms beneath my knees, the other cradling my back, and then I’m weightless. In a haze of warmth, he carries me down the dark corridor and by the time we reach his room, my eyelids are heavy.

A single, gentle kiss lands at the crown of my head, sweet and soft against the brutal night we’ve shared.

I exhale, drifting…

But his voice rumbles beneath my ear, bringing me back.

“No sleeping, Little Doe,” he says, voice warm with promise. “I’m not done with you yet.”

thirty-four

System Failure

I stand in the middle of my study, jacket discarded over the back of my chair; a glass of bourbon poured nearly an hour ago sits on the desk.

I haven't taken a sip; my attention never leaves the six monitors mounted across the wall, watching the security footage from tonight's gala.

Guest manifests, vendor records, and auction registration logs cover my desk. I've been staring at the same footage for the past forty minutes, watching Sloane's face as she's led onto that stage. Waiting for us to do something.

I rewind it again.

I’ve been dismantling the night one frame at a time, because whoever put Sloane’s name on that list had a reason. Someone wanted her on that stage, and they wanted us to watch.

The only question is whether it was because the target was my assistant... or my company.

A knock sounds against the open office door. Sergio, Elias’s second in command, steps inside with a tablet tucked beneath one arm. In six years, I’ve seen him genuinely unsettled twice.

Tonight makes three.

"We've confirmed Miss Harper never registered herself," he says without preamble.

"That I know. What else did you find?"

“The QR code attached to her auction credentials was generated through the gala's registration system.”

"Internally?"

"Someone cloned a legitimate registration and reassigned the profile less than thirty minutes before the auction began."

"Can we trace it?"

"We're trying."

Trying. A word I dislike almost as much as impossible.

“Sergio, we don’t pay you to try. We pay you for results.” I turn from the monitors. "I want a name. I want an IP address. And I want to know who put my woman on that roster thinking they would get away with it."

Sergio doesn't flinch. He's been on the receiving end of my temper enough times to know it isn't personal; it's transactional. Results in exchange for the obscene amount I deposit into his account every month.