Page 27 of Married to My Master

But that's all they were—motions. At least, that's what she hoped they were.

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Dane

Dane turned around to face Emily. She looked beautiful with her wet hair, glowing skin, loose fitting clothes, and a corona of steam surrounding her angelic face. He bit his thumb, agitated, as he looked her over.

He'd been wasting precious time on this little mission of breaking Emily West, and he knew it. Sure, it had been amazing, and he couldn't stop thinking about how wonderful her lips and tongue had felt as they encircled his cock, but he needed to be focused on getting Benton out.

That was the mission, here. The mission he'd lost sight of in his lust for her body, and in his need to subjugate her to his demands. Eventually, the little ruse they'd been able to pull on BioSphere was going to expire. It had a time limit, after all, and each tick of the clock brought them closer. If he didn't manage to find some kind of evidence of Benton's innocence, and do it quickly, he'd end up losing his best asset in this fight. Emily West wouldn't be CEO anymore.

“What, sir?” Emily asked, after a moment.

“We need to go through any kind of files you have on Hymalete that you can access from here. Can you do that for me?”

She nodded. “I can try, sir. But no guarantees. They may not have what you're looking for, or the files might not say what you want them to say.”

She was right, of course. Maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they hadn't seen the results that Benton had experienced. He put his hand on her shoulder and watched as she started to go through file after file that had been emailed to her. He kept his thoughts to himself as she looked through the files, not wanting to disrupt her concentration.

“These look good,” she said, after a little while of searching.

Dane leaned in close over her shoulder as she began scrolling through a bunch of notations, emails, and PDF documents. She was far and away faster and more competent with a computer than he was, that much was for sure. “What are we looking at?” he asked.

She made a low, grumbling noise in her throat, an uncertain sound if he'd ever heard one. “I'm not exactly sure, but I think . . .”

“You think?” he asked after a moment, trying to get her to continue her thoughts.

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head as she opened up another set of documents. “No, that can't be true.”

“What?” Dane asked, getting excited and troubled at the same time. Had he been right? Had he been wrong? Were they hiding something? “Tell me, Emily.”

She sighed and looked at him. “Study after study,” she said, then seemed to pause and swallow as she searched for the right word, “show that it doesn't work—not as effectively as they claim it does.”

“Study after study?” Dane hissed. “You mean they have been lying?” he demanded. “This whole fucking time?”

She just kept shaking her head. “How did I not fucking know this?” she mused, her eyes shimmering with angry tears. “How could I have been so stupid?” she asked aloud, her voice trembling.

Dane watched her face as it ran through the gamut of emotions. Anger, betrayal, anger again, and, finally, fear. He believed her. At least, he thought he did. He slapped a hand down on the edge of the desktop. “That's it,” he announced. “This is what I need. This is definitely it, isn't it? I can get those pieces of shit and hold them accountable, can't I?”

Emily turned to him, her almond-shaped eyes full of shock.

“I have to hold BioSphere accountable,” he said. “You know that. It's the only way my brother will ever get free, Emily. It's the only way.”

Chapter Eleven

Dane

“Can you print these up for me?” Dane asked, as he gestured to the computer screen with a curt nod. “So I can read through them?”

“Print them up for you?” Emily asked, shaking her head. “No, Dane, I can't let you have them. That's a huge breach of protocol. These are all industry secrets.”

Dane barked a short, harsh burst of laughter as he straightened to his full height. “You're telling me that the evidence that they lied and manipulated the truth is an industry secret?”

“Besides,” she continued, swinging around in the chair to face him, “this would destroy the company. I'd lose my job, Dane. My assistant would lose her job. I mean, those people have families, just like your brother did. This is like Enron level of corruption, maybe. The fines from the government, the lawsuits we'd open ourselves to, are off the charts. I already took Hymalete off the market provisionally, Dane. What more do you want from me?”

“I want you people to admit that you ruined lives, that's what!” Dane shouted. “Here,” he said, pushing past her to the computer. He pulled up YouTube on her web browser and searched for a video he wanted to show. “Look at this.”

“What is it?” she asked, a note of distrust in her voice.

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