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CHAPTER TWO: SYNCKINK,COM - PART TWO
Pip took a bite of her sandwich as the man at the table with her sipped a cola. She watched Peter Richards, who’d hosted and helped manage her online presence on his kink site for years, watch her. She’d always thought the man looked like Clark Kent—a nice, slightly nerdy man hiding one hell of a secret. The thought made her smile. “So, what do you think?”
Peter pondered. “So you want to compile four year’s worth of podcasts, blog posts, and photos to transfer it from my site onto theirs?”
She nodded. “I talked to Will Arlow and Nita Bhatia, who head Infommunity, and told them that we’ll move all the archives to their site, but I want to keep links to them—and all new posts—on your page. I want my readers who know me from your site, who’ve followed me there for four years, to be able to still find me there; it’s just that the links will lead them to Infommunity.”
“Sure.” Peter tilted his head then nodded. “I can make that happen.”
She picked up her napkin to dab at her lips. “I’ve also talked to them about adding your site as a sponsor.”
Peter set aside his glass, arching an eyebrow. “Infommunity wants me to advertise my site on theirs?” He blinked and sat back, surprised. “They do know that it’s a kink site, right?” He whistled low. “And that’s not going to affect their other advertisers?”
It wasn’t easy—Will and Nita had indeed had the same concerns—but Pip had stayed firm. “It was something I had to talk to them about when I signed their contract. I’m totally willing to take on new sponsors, but I want to keep as many of the ones I’ve been working with as possible.” Which included him.
“I appreciate that, Pip.” Peter tilted his head one way, then the other. “I do. But don’t feel like you have to on my account. You and your audience have been great for the site, but this is an amazing opportunity for you. It’s a big name site that’s rapidly growing. Your follower base has already at least tripled since you joined Infommunity and that number will just keep growing with time.” He smiled wryly. “You’re going to go places my site could never have taken you. And you’re going to do it with a company that understands how special you are.”
“I know.” She gave a little, slightly awkward shrug.
“No.” He adjusted his glasses and leaned forward to peer at her over his lenses. “I don’t know if you do.” He waved a hand at her. “I mean, look at you.”
Pip pursed her lips. Yeah, she knew. Tall, willowy, stylish, and living on the west coast, most people assumed she was an aspiring starlet or popstar instead of a word nerd with her nose stuck in a book or pressed up against her computer screen. Over the years since she started her blog, she’d received offers from people and companies, who’d promised to take her career to the next level. Provided she was willing to sex-it-up or dress-it-down. Who’d paid more attention to her looks than her brains. Who’d wanted to sell her more on titillation than her intelligence. Many of those wanting her to play to the most obvious snappingly sassy or sexually outrageous black woman stereotypes.
“No.” She shook her head. “I get it, Peter. I do. But I also know I would never have gotten this gig without you. You gave me my start when I was just a newb with an idea. You were there when I was literally learning on the job, how to do and write and talk about sex and kink. You stuck by me while I figured out what worked and what didn’t. You encouraged me and helped me get where I am now.” She shook her head. “I’m not going to repay that kind of loyalty with anything less than the same dedication.”
She shrugged, conceding. “Besides, you’d only be advertised on my stuff—my podcast and blog—which is all about sex and kink anyway. Any problems anyone would have with you,” she repeated the point that had won her the argument, “they’d have a much larger one with me.”
“I guess.” Peter shook his head. “I just still can’t quite believe you’re joining up with them. Wouldn’t have thought that what you do—much as I love it—would fit in with their type of accessible academics.”
“Yeah.” Pip laughed. “I’ve been there six months and it still amazes me that they have me and my dirty, little show grouped in with all their lofty news and science and history stuff.” She nibbled a fry. “But, dirty or not, it’s still knowledge.”
“And given the popularity of,” Peter paused, rolling his eyes, “that book, everyone’s interested in sex and kink right now.”
Oh, Steele’s Edge, Pip thought. “Yeah,” she agreed, with a sardonic smile, “for a woman who doesn’t know much about BDSM, that woman has done wonders for the kink world.”
“Job security.” Peter chuckled. “You could spend the rest of your career just correcting everything that woman got wrong.”
Pip nodded, raising her glass. “That’s the plan.”
Peter smiled and clinked his soda with hers. “Here’s to spreading the good word.”
“Speaking of spreading the word,” Pip said, sipping her tea and narrowing her eyes, “I met someone today and, I swear, I’ve heard the name before, but I just can’t place it. And, I figured, you’re the who’s-who of the community, so, if anyone would know this guy, it’d be you.”
Peter, in addition to running his kink site and his securities company, was also the gatekeeper for Donovan’s, the local kink club that they’d both been long-time members. The program he created and ran for the club sifted and kept tabs on all the members of the exclusive, elite group.
Peter leaned back with a grin. “Potential partner?” He sounded intrigued. “Good for you.” He clapped her shoulder supportively, knowing she’d been on the market since her last serious partner began seriously seeing someone else.
Pip scoffed. “No,” she corrected him with a wave of her hand. Definitely not. “No.” She frowned, thinking of the collar wrapped around Sam’s neck. And the way Fischer’s fingers had wrapped possessively around that narrow bit of leather at the base of her throat. “A friend of mine is involved with a man named Scott Fischer.” She leaned forward. “Do you know him?”
Peter frowned. “Not off the top of my head.” He shrugged. “But Donovan’s has hundreds of members now, even more who are being considered, who’ve left for one reason or another, or been rejected.” The technological wonder man leaned back in his chair. “I know a lot of people in the community, but even I don’t know everyone. Why are you interested?”
“My friend is young.” Pip tilted her head thoughtfully. “I,” she hesitated, not entirely sure why she was getting involved—except that whole encounter in front of the café had bothered her, “just want to look out for her.”
“So you want me to check him out.” Peter nodded and pulled out his phone to make himself a note.
“Nothing too invasive,” Pip clarified, knowing her tech-savvy friend could know Fischer’s tax records, criminal history, and underwear brand preference in under an hour, if he really wanted. “I just want to know what his reputation in the community is, if she’s in good hands.”
“Sure thing,” he told her. “I’ll poke around, see if I can drum up some references.” He looked up at her over his phone. “Surprised your friend didn’t ask for some herself; she doesn’t read your blog?”
Pip was well-known in the community and online for being a stickler for play precautions, like references and negotiations. “She’s young,” she repeated. She shrugged, already mentally deciding to talk to Phil about passing on some information to Sam. “Thanks, Peter.” Already, she felt so much better about the whole thing.
“It’s called a community for a reason;” Peter said, wiping his mouth with his napkin, “we’re all in it together. We look out for each other.”
Pip smiled. “Yeah,” she agreed, grateful that she’d found people like Peter who inspired loyalty like that, “we do.”
———
Phil stood up the minute he saw Pip step off the elevator and started straight for her. He’d been waiting for her for over an hour, after coming back from dropping off Sam at school, while Pip went to lunch.
Even after staring at his screen and trying to do some research, he couldn’t stop thinking about the things his niece had said to him. The way she’d talked to him. She’d never been like that before. Mature, sure. Precocious, worryingly so.
But, the idea of her having sex—her having sex with that man—made Phil physically sick. His jaw tightened as he tried to stave off the image of his baby niece—whom he’d raised like a daughter since she was born—being pawed at by that jewelry-wearing bastard.
And he would never have had to—wouldn’t have these images in his head—if Sam hadn’t been reading Pip’s blog.
He reached Pip before she got anywhere near the rows of cubicles. He grabbed her arm and pulled her aside.
“Phil?” Pip wrenched against his hand that was curled around her forearm while he tugged her to the conference room. “What the hell?” She tore her arm away from him when he turned to shut the door behind them.
“What the hell have you been telling my niece?” His stormy eyes glared at her. A few inches over six feet, he usually towered over most women. But not with Pip. She met him gaze to gaze, her black eyes riding a line between confused and pissed the hell off.
“Sam?” Pip shrugged. “Nothing.” She shook her head, bewildered. “I’ve never even met her before today.”
“Maybe not.” He huffed. “But you sure as hell have been filling her head with your opinions on sex and God knows what.”
“What are you talking about?” Pip took a step back.
He stepped closer. “My niece decided to take your advice and screw some jackass two decades older than her, with a wife, who put a goddamned collar around her neck like she was some kind of pet.”
“My advice?”
“Your blog!” He threw his arms up. “She read all the crazy stuff you put on your site and thought, if you could do it, so could she.” He began to pace. “She’s a good girl, Pip. She’s smart. With a real future.” He stopped and frowned at her. “I won’t have her life ruined because of some stupid, teenage mistake.”
He wouldn’t let her become his sister.
“She’s better than that.” He hadn’t taken Sam and his sister into his home, taken care of them both for eighteen years, to have her repeat their family’s same bad history. “I won’t let her become just another cautionary tale.”
“Like me?” Pip asked, her low voice quiet.
Phil looked up.
It was strange. Pip was tall, brash, and ballsy. She was always so full of life and confidence. But she stood in the middle of the badly lit conference room, the fluorescents making even her dark, smooth skin appear pale and ashen, looking small and fragile, her thin limbs wrapped around herself.
“Pip.” He wanted to kick himself, replaying his words in his head, hearing them how she must have. “I didn’t mean—”
“One,” she said, her voice clipped, “I don’t write my blog or do my show just for your niece. People write to me, they call me, and ask me questions that I answer. If your niece found me, read me, and clicked with me and the advice I give to other people, then great—I’m doing my job. But I don’t control what she gets ahold of. I don’t control what she thinks or agrees with.”
Phil felt his neck flush hotly. He knew that. Of course, he knew that she wrote for an audience. Same as him. As everyone who worked here.
But no one had ever started an adulterous affair because of one of his articles on why some people are born left-handed or branded themselves like so much chattel because he’d reported on NASA’s latest Mars rover. Certainly not his niece.
“Two,” she continued, “Sam is eighteen, legally an adult. In a few months, she’ll move out and go off to college. If you don’t trust her to make her own choices and decisions—and, yes, mistakes—now, what are you going to do then?”
Phil huffed and leaned against the conference room table, most of his temper fading fast.
“From what you’ve told me,” Pip pointed out, “Sam is a good kid. She is smart. And it sounds like she’s done some research and really thought about this. You might want to try actually talking to her. Like the adult she almost is, instead of the child you still see her as.” Pip popped her hip prissily. “You may be surprised what a smart, good girl like her might have to say.”
Phil cringed. He never meant to imply that Pip wasn’t smart or good. She was, She was just also…
Pip.
“Look…” He waved his hand, trying to find the words to apologize but coming up unusually blank for a writer.
“Three,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken, “if you want, since you think this all started with me, I can talk to her, if you like. Or be there with you and her mother when you talk to her. Help answer some questions and make sure that Sam has asked herself some crucial questions too.”
He looked at Pip. Still wrapped in her computer game coat, she reminded him of one of those wronged women left at train stations or airfields in old, classic films, her hair wind-tossed and her expression saddened yet resigned.
“No.” He nodded, letting her off the hook he’d unfairly put her on. “You’re right. This isn’t your fault. It isn’t your problem. We’ll handle it.”
Pip sniffed, her shoulders squaring. With hurt? Disappointment? “If you’re sure.” She lifted her shoulder in an overly flippant shrug. She walked past him to the door. “I’m here, if you need me.” She opened the door, her hand resting on the doorjamb. “Just,” she sighed, “let me know how it goes, okay?”
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