Page 15 of Disciplining Dana

“Gary has arranged access for us. I’m pretty sure he’s not in the lifestyle, so I seriously doubt he knows the details about the kind of place Rawhide Ranch really is. So, unless someone in corporate travel is a kinkster, however they managed to get us on the property must have circumvented any need for either of us to appear in the market for a Dom or sub.”

“Whole lotta assumptions going on there.”

“Maybe so, but he wants us to check the place out. Surreptitiously. He doesn’t want us tipping the owners off to what might be hidden in that mine.”

“Are you kidding me? He wants us to spy on the place?”

“It’s not like we haven’t done something similar before.”

“In a foreign country! Where we had no choice! And not posing as…” She made an agitated gesture with her hand.

“A sub and her Dom.”

“Oh, no!” Dana stabbed a finger at him. “No, no, no. Don’t even think it.”

The tiny grin pulling at the corners of Kurt’s mouth told her he clearly found this whole thing amusing, but… going to a BDSM resort in conjunction with work had not been on her bingo card this month, this year—ever. It was one thing for her and Kurt to enjoy their mutual kinks at the random clubs they’d gone to here and there, because those were kept separate from their actual fieldwork. This… this brought both those worlds too close together for Dana’s comfort.

And there was another thing. Those thoughts from over the past few months and the other evening still hadn’t gone away entirely. This… this intersected with those anxieties in ways she couldn’t afford to deal with right now.

Good job, Dana. Keep kicking that can down the road…

As all of this raced through her head, Kurt stared back with a wicked look, waiting.

“No.” She repeated the word, growling it this time for emphasis.

“I’m just saying,” he replied, his voice filled with ill-concealed mirth, “it would save the company the price of an extra room and amenities.”

“Dream. On.”

“Fiiine.” He sighed dramatically. “Separate rooms it is, then.”

She silently pushed her glass across the white tablecloth as Kurt picked up the bottle then poured.

“This is… ridiculous,” she mumbled, drawing back the refilled glass.

“No, going into a jungle filled with revolutionaries to investigate a decrepit mine was ridiculous. This”—he topped off his own wineglass—“is a vacation.”

“No, that’s what you want this to be.”

“Dana,” Kurt said, his tone going serious, “all I want is the same thing you do. To figure out if your research is correct?—”

“Which it is.” Because it was. She’d proven it over and over and she’d do it again this time, too. Her way, as always.

And he knows it. Which was true because Kurt had never shied from praising her for her results. But there was another thought hidden inside that kernel of knowledge. Something that was less affirmative and more…

Disapproving? Okay, but if so… of what?

“—and to see what this find could potentially net out at,” Kurt went on over her train of thought. “That’s why we do what we do. You’re extremely good at it. I’d like to think I am, too. And if I have the opportunity to work with you at a location where there isn’t the possibility of getting shaken down every other day, then—yeah—I’m going to enjoy it.”

Dana shot him a dubious look.

“The other option is”—Kurt made a sweeping motion with both hands—“we turn this down. Ask for a different assignment. And we can do that, though I wouldn’t suggest it.”

“Why?”

“I… I just think it would draw attention if you did. And let’s be fair, you could do with a little less corporate attention right now.”

Wait, what?

---