The Denim Dom

Chapter One

Sunglasses…check. Coffee…check. Laptop—

Shayla Pierce glanced over her shoulder at the backseat. Check.

She’d been damn lucky to fall into this job. Last thing she needed was to mess up her first day by forgetting something important.

She put her Civic into reverse, then hit the brakes.

Crud.

Shifting back into park, she shut the car off and pulled the keys from the ignition. Might help to have my purse today. She jogged back to her apartment and found her purse sitting on the kitchen counter where she’d left it. She grabbed it and returned to the car.

One more try.

This time she made it out of her apartment complex and down the street. She turned onto Clark Road and headed west toward US 41. She’d timed her drive already. She should make it to her new office in downtown Sarasota in under forty minutes.

Tropical Sarasota was a far cry from her snowy Minneapolis childhood, college days spent in Athens, Ohio, at the Scripps School of Journalism, and a year on the copy desk at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland before being promoted to reporter, when she got to write her own copy.

Now, at thirty-three, she was starting her life over again. Or at least that was what it felt like.

No more snow. No more ice. No more turtlenecks.

Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel. No more backstabbing, lying sack-of-monkey-shit bastard ex-fiancés named James I wasted eight years of my life on.

The publisher and editor in chief of Sunshine Attitude Magazine, Bill Melling, waved her into his office when she arrived ten minutes before eight.

He stood and offered his hand. “Glad to see you didn’t back out on us, Ms. Pierce.”

“You can call me Shayla, or Shay, Mr. Melling.”

He smiled. “Bill’s fine. We’re casual around here. We’ve got a morning editorial meeting at nine. We have them Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.” He glanced at his watch. “That’s in an hour. When Suzanne gets here, I’ll have her show you to your desk and get you up to speed.” A woman appeared in the office doorway. “Oh, there she is.”

Twenty minutes later, Shayla was seated at her new desk in a large cubicle with a window overlooking Ringling Boulevard. Not too bad. Not an office, but the only one with an office in this organization was Bill Melling, so that was fair. At least she had tall divider walls and more floor space than some of her coworkers.

She took a few minutes to quiet her nervous stomach. This has really happened. I did it.

The day after the discovery three weeks ago, she’d been drowning her sorrows at a hotel bar with Allison, an old high school buddy. Finding out her fiancé had robbed her of over fifteen thousand dollars to pay for Internet porn tended to upset a girl.

Allison had been supportive, sympathetic, and more importantly, had called Shayla two days later with a proposal.

Fortunately, Shayla’s killer hangover had gone away by then.

“I was talking to my brother about what happened,” Allison said. “His best friend’s uncle has a magazine down in Florida, dead-tree and web editions. Pretty popular. It’s been around a long time. They’re looking for someone to replace one of their staff who’s leaving. A writer. You interested? I’ve got the info. He called him already and asked if he could refer you.”

Was she interested? Hell yes.

She’d called Bill Melling, talked with him over the phone, flew down three days later to meet with him in person, and got herself hired.

While in Sarasota she arranged to rent an apartment, and her whirlwind move began.

Shayla fought the urge to fidget while waiting for the editorial meeting to start. Instead, she rearranged her desk several times.

New job, new apartment, new life.

She smiled to herself as she looked out at the beautiful, sunny spring day. Palm trees swayed in the gentle breeze washing over the town from the Gulf of Mexico. This was, literally, a tropical paradise.

It’s a whole new start. A whole new life.

A whole new me.

Fifteen people, including Shayla, gathered around the long conference table. As Bill introduced her to the rest of the staff, she nervously smiled and nodded to everyone. It didn’t take her long to feel like part of the team even though she mostly sat back and listened.

The print magazine went out once a month, but they updated web content every week with exclusive Internet-only stories to help draw more readers and advertisers. They covered everything from local to national stories, from politics to entertainment, never shying away from controversial topics.

Toward the end of the meeting, Bill stood and walked over to a whiteboard on the wall. “Brainstorm time. Let’s get some good ideas cooking.”

People tossed out ideas for stories and Bill listed them without question, regardless of how outlandish they sounded. He looked at Shayla. “This is just something to help us keep the creative juices flowing. Feel free to shout out anything. Whatever comes to mind, no matter how off the wall.”

She nervously smiled, a little embarrassed to be the center of attention again. “Kinky sex practices?” She wished she could call the words back as soon as she said them, horrified she’d even uttered the phrase. She’d been thinking about how to pay off one of the credit cards James had maxed out on porn charges.

He’d taken the cards out in her name without her knowledge or permission.

Everyone laughed at her suggestion, but Bill wrote it on the board, nodding as he did. “Actually, that’s pretty good. The county commission is doing battle with a strip club right now. Zoning ordinance lawsuit pending. Anyone else?”

Some more ideas were floated, including a few X-rated ones along the lines of Shayla’s idea. When the meeting broke up fifteen minutes later, Suzanne was busy tapping on a laptop.

Bill offered Shayla a smile. “Don’t be embarrassed. That was tame compared to some of the stuff we’ve tossed around in here before.” He nodded toward Suzanne. “She copies down the list every week and sends it out through e-mail for staff. We’ve come up with some of our best stories this way. Probably a little different than you’re used to doing it at the newspaper, huh?”

Shayla shrugged. “Different’s good.”

Bill nodded. “We think so. It’s what’s kept us competitive and in business for so long.”

It turned out Suzanne wasn’t just an administrative assistant, although that was her title. She was the glue that held the organization together. Assistant editor, nerve-soother, proofreader, den mother, referee, research—she did it all.

She spent the morning with Shayla familiarizing her with their server system and workflow process, getting their IT crew to install needed software on her new work laptop they assigned her, and taking her around to introduce her to staff in the other departments like advertising and production.

The business didn’t rely solely on the magazine for income. They also did production work, printing, and graphic arts preparation for hire, which helped support the entire enterprise. The magazine made money, but the largest profit margin came from the side work.

At lunch, Shayla walked with Suzanne and a couple of other editorial employees to The Tropical Tavern, a local restaurant a block away. They served a huge lunch buffet for a reasonable price, and Shayla soon found herself warming to her new coworkers as they chatted.

One woman, Kimberly, had close-cropped, bright orange hair and large brown eyes. “That was a wicked suggestion at the meeting. I’m glad you said it. I’ve been too chicken to say anything like that.”

Michael, the man sitting on her right, snorted. “You? Chicken? Since when? Weren’t you named Queen of the Pervs or something?” Michael was handsome, with blue eyes and black hair.

Kimberly slapped his shoulder. “That’s the last time I take you to Gasparilla with me, jerk.”

Suzanne leaned in and in a stage whisper said, “We’re still wondering when to plan their wedding.”

Shayla laughed.

By late that afternoon, Shayla had helped edit three articles and taken on an assignment to write a piece for the website about movies filmed or set in the local area. Bill insisted he wanted her eased into the job and not overwhelmed her first day there.

After two weeks, Shayla felt comfortable with her coworkers and relaxed in the atmosphere. A new running joke emerged at the thrice-weekly editorial meeting. Someone always piped up at the brainstorming session with “kinky sex practices” as their idea. On Shayla’s third Monday, Kimberly came to the meeting with a handful of papers, printouts from a website.

She handed them out. “We keep talking about this, so I thought you’d be interested in knowing more. Looks like this area, from just north of Tampa down to Naples and even over to Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale, has a pretty large kink population of various kinds. Did you know one of the largest and oldest fetish trade conventions is held in Tampa every year in late summer?”

Shayla read the paper. It was a printout from a site for a local BDSM group called the Suncoast Society. Very plain, without a single naked person anywhere on the page. It contained a few announcements about their monthly Munch, whatever that was, calendar updates for a play party—she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what that was—and links and contact information.

Bill sat back in his chair and read the paper. “Okay, now let’s talk about this for a few minutes. This is giving me a few ideas. Some of you remember we did a profile on Joe Redner, that strip club owner up in Tampa, when he ran for a seat on the Hillsborough County Commission a few years ago. That was one of our best-selling issues ever. The web article received a ton of hits, too.” He went quiet for a moment before looking around the room. “Ideas?”

Now that the boss was seriously considering this, some of the staff went silent.

“Oh, don’t go all chicken on me now.” He looked at Shayla. “What do you think? You’ve been here long enough to see how we run things. Feel free to chime in.”

She shrugged. Frankly, she’d seen too much sex of the kinky kind to last her a lifetime. Especially when it cost her a hundred dollars to have her computer wiped clean of the crap after James downloaded porn to it the first time. In addition to the credit cards she’d be paying off for too damn long from the second time, thanks to him. And all the other related niceties that went along with that.

Like cancelling her wedding and having to face her family and friends and tell them why. She had refused to let James off the hook for the pain he’d caused her the second time. She’d been honest that she was dumping him due in no small part to all the money he’d cost her…and exactly how he’d spent it.

“There’s a lot of roads to explore,” she eventually hedged. “You could do a running series.” She hesitated. “Porn addiction.” That was a subject she knew all too well. “Internet hookups.” She held up her copy of the printout. “Kinky lifestyle stuff.”

Bill scrunched up his face and turned his gaze to the ceiling. Everyone went silent, recognizing his “deep in thought” face.

After a moment, he spoke. “I like that.” He still stared at the ceiling. “I like that a lot,” he said with a nod. “An ongoing series.” He looked at everyone at the table. “Let’s seriously consider this for a few minutes. We’ve hit a plateau on web hits over the past few months now that the elections are over. Housing market’s still in the tank, bad news there. Economy sucks. Jobs are down. People aren’t really paying that much attention to the fancy high-end lifestyle stories right now. Our biggest web hits the past few months are for the stories on entertainment and anything remotely related to sexual issues. There’s also that Fifty Shades trilogy that’s so popular.”

He looked at Suzanne. “Can you pull up those web stats Barry sent you?”

She nodded and did it, then hooked her computer to the projector. Bill stood, dimmed the lights, and walked over to the wall where the figures were displayed. “Right here,” he pointed. “See the trend? Every time we run a story remotely having to do with sex we get a spike in traffic. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why.” He looked at his staff. “Now, I’m not saying we need to turn into Playboy or Hustler, but let’s chew on this for a while longer. Anyone have anywhere they need to be right now?”

Everyone shook their heads.

“Good.” He stared at the numbers again as he slowly nodded. “Very good.”

Two hours later they broke for lunch with a fairly detailed list of potential topics, ranging from local swinger groups to BDSM clubs. With the fetish convention being held in a few months, Bill wanted enough lead time to tap into that potential market. Suzanne would contact the promoters and secure an interview with them, the staff member to be assigned later.

Shayla avoided Suzanne’s gaze. Please don’t let it be me.

Shayla wasn’t a prude by any stretch of the imagination. She had no problem with people’s sexual preferences running more toward chocolate than vanilla. But after finding out that James was turned on by, among other things, anorexic, silicone sluts with breasts the size of watermelons getting the crap beat out of them, and that he regularly jerked off to them instead of her at times when she’d begged him to sleep with her, her self-confidence had taken a beating it hadn’t quite recovered from yet.

She knew she didn’t possess a Hollywood starlet’s artificially enhanced, top-heavy body, but she wasn’t ugly or obese. She didn’t consider a size sixteen “fat” especially when she was a lanky five-eight and it was distributed all over and not in any one area. Her pale northern complexion hadn’t seen enough of Florida’s tropical sun to tan yet, and her hazel eyes matched the rims on her glasses. She didn’t want contacts, not when she really only needed her glasses for reading or long stints on the computer. She wasn’t bat-blind without them.

Yet.

She’d chopped a few inches off her hair after moving down here though. Now it hung a little below her shoulders, a blasé brown that usually did what it was supposed to when she asked it to without it bowing too much to humidity’s wrath. Long enough to pull it into a ponytail, or wear it down in long layers.

Still, it stung to know James had preferred to sink into an artificial fantasy than to seek her out when there were times she begged for his attention. Rationally, intellectually, she knew it was his problem and not hers.

But her pride still suffered the aftereffects.

Adding to the sting, the additional betrayal of him taking out credit cards in her name and using them to charge his porn.

Bill accompanied them to lunch. After passing through the buffet line, he seated himself at the end of the table, next to Shayla.

Her senses on high alert, she recognized a setup when she saw it.

“I wanted to talk to you about this, Shay,” he started.

Oh, boy. Here it comes.

He speared a piece of raw carrot in his salad with his fork. “How would you feel about doing a hands-on investigative piece about the local BDSM lifestyle scene?”

She tried not to choke on her broccoli soup. “How hands-on?”

He chewed his carrot for a moment. “Something beyond the crap people normally see on the Internet. Separating fact from fiction. Is everyone doing like what’s on the porn sites, or is that the exception? That kind of thing. How do people get into this sort of lifestyle? Day in the life of someone. I’ve got Pete doing a report on the nudist colonies up in Pasco County. Alice is going to cover transsexuals, and we’ve got leads on strip clubs and swingers groups.”

Shayla felt her face redden. She studied her food. “What are you asking me to do, exactly?”

“Get to know some of these people. Write an article, hell, even better, a series of articles about them. What makes them tick, something fair and balanced. You could even interview mental health professionals and get their take on what they do, talk to law enforcement, that kind of thing.”

Shay’s appetite had faded. “BDSM?”

“I won’t require you to do it. If you want to say no, I understand. We can get someone else to do it. But I really think, after talking to some people locally and doing a little poking around of my own, that it’ll be one of our biggest series. A way to get your name well known on our site. I’m not talking about a sensationalized T&A piece. I’m talking seriously looking at it from the inside out. It’ll be a web-only series, but we’ll promo it in print.”

Serious writing. She did want to do serious writing. On her résumé, she’d highlighted some of the IR pieces she’d written, and that in-depth reporting was one of her loves.

She just didn’t know if she could be unbiased on that particular topic.

“Can I think about it?”

“Of course.”

She nodded. “Okay. Let me have a few hours. I’ll get back to you before the end of the day.”

She knocked on Bill’s open door later that afternoon. He was alone and on the computer. “Hey, what’s up?” he said.

“Can I talk to you privately for a few?”

He sat back and nodded. “Sure. Close the door if you want.”

She did.

Shayla sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk. It took her a moment to compose her thoughts. “About the story idea. The BDSM one.”

“Don’t want it?”

“I honestly don’t know if I can be unbiased.”

She’d found out in her few weeks of working for the magazine that Bill Melling wasn’t just a good boss, he was a nice guy. Fair, easy to talk to, and was considered a friend by many of his employees.

“Need to talk about it?” he asked.

She took a deep breath. “As long as it’s just between you and me.”

He nodded.

“I have ex issues. The reason I left my ex was because he downloaded BDSM porn behind my back. Well, that wasn’t the only reason, but that sums it up nicely.”

He sucked in a breath. “Yowch.”

“Yeah.” She studied her fingernails. “It was the second time I’d discovered he’d been downloading porn. The first time, I found it on my computer and he swore he’d stop. It turns out, after the final accounting the second time, he’d downloaded over fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of porn. Using credit cards he took out in my name.” She picked at her cuticles. “I believed him the first time when he said he’d stop. He did seem to change. Got more attentive. I had no reason to doubt his word that he’d stopped and wouldn’t do it again.”

“He didn’t stop?”

“Nope. He got sneakier, proposed, and asked me to set a date for our wedding.”

He winced. “Double yowch. Bastard.”

She managed a wan smile at his tone. Bill was obviously on her side. “So we spent months shopping for a dress and rings and ordering invitations and a cake. All that crap. Then I found out how sneaky he was when he’d borrowed my car. I found a stack of mail in it that he’d forgotten he left there. Including some envelopes with my name on them. That’s when I learned it wasn’t the one thousand dollars of the first go-round. It was over fifteen thousand, and it was six different credit cards he took out in my name without my knowledge. Most of it for sites showing that BDSM stuff.”

“Well, I appreciate your honesty. I understand that it would be too much for you. I’ll go ahead and reassign—”

“I’ll do it.”

He tilted his head as he studied her. “I was expecting you to say no after hearing about all of that.”

It surprised her, too. “I want to find out why he wanted that stuff more than me. Why he was willing to lie and steal and throw away what we had for it.”

She chewed on the inside of her lip to keep from crying. “We were together eight years. Lived together five of those. He swore I was the only woman he wanted. That I was the love of his life. His soul mate.”

She took a deep breath. “Then I found the first batch of porn. And you know the rest of the story. I want to know why it was more important than me.” She met his gaze. “I want to see if I can figure out what it was he destroyed my trust for and why, because he damn sure never could answer the question.”

Why the hell did I say yes? She sat on her screened-in lanai and stared out at the green space behind her apartments. A small flock of some sort of ibis walked along, checking the ditch for insects as they moved.

She still didn’t know for sure. She sipped her beer and contemplated it for a while, until it grew dark outside and she felt a slight buzz from her empty stomach combined with the effects of the beer.

Inside her apartment, she settled on a toasted cheese sandwich, easy to make and easy to eat. Part of her relished the freedom of living a peaceful life, never wondering where or when—or for how much—the other shoe would drop.

Part of her cursed James for putting her in this position. Being alone with no one to rely on. All she’d wanted to do was make him happy. Was it too much to ask of him to be honest with her? To not go behind her back?

To not put her in frigging debt over his Internet porn?

Hell, after the first discovery, she’d even offered to explore kinky stuff if he wanted to. He’d flat-out refused the offer, leaving her even more confused than before.

I need to quit thinking about it tonight. This isn’t helping.

Instead of the TV she opted for music. She thumbed through her iPod and found Michael Hedges. Mellow and soothing guitar instrumentals that never failed to settle her nerves. She curled up on the sofa with a book and read while she ate.

Finally, when she couldn’t stop yawning, she shut off the music and headed to bed. But she lay there, her mind racing about the article she had to write.

Why the hell did I say yes?