Come Back to Me

Chapter 36: Present Day

"How do you know about that?" I looked around for Melody, wondering if she saw or heard more than I realized, and then blabbed to Thad.

Thad reached into his tuxedo jacket and pulled out his phone, hit a few buttons and then turned it toward me. There we were, Noah and I, very clear in the black and white video. He was spanking me and I was writhing on top of Thad's desk, whimpering and moaning like a harlot. I gasped as the video continued. I could hear myself ordering Noah to fuck me. I forced myself to look away, the image of us turning me on in ways I couldn't explore at the moment.

"Turn that off!"

Thad studied me as he stopped the video. "I have cameras everywhere in here, for security, of course. Never thought I'd capture something such as this."

This was so embarrassing. And a little exciting. "I'm sorry, we just –"

His eyes narrowed, and his hand brushed my hair away to gaze at my shoulder. Then he wrapped his fingers around my upper arm, pulling me even further from the crowd. I knew he saw where Noah had bruised me. "Are you hurt?"

It occurred to me that Thad didn't care that we had done anything in his office. He was worried Noah had actually hurt me. It did look like Noah was spanking me awfully hard, looking at it from his point of view. At the time, that's not what it felt like, and the mild tingling of my backside reminded me how much I actually liked it.

I shook my head, blushing like crazy. "No, Thad. He didn't hurt me."

His usual mysterious grin played at the corner of his lips as he kept his gaze on mine, his hand gently tightening on my arm. "Well, then, you certainly are a tantalizing creature, Regan."

"Please don't tell Noah you saw that."

"I value my life too much to do so."

I looked around, seeing the crowd dispersing, and he was no longer at the front of the room. I didn't see him, but I knew he'd be here soon, especially if he saw Thad and me talking again. If Noah wasn't, Joshua or Mark would show up any second.

For a split second, I thought about asking him to send the video to me. Instead, I said, "You need to delete it."

He removed his hand and gave me a small bow. When he straightened, he pulled the video back up and let me watch as he deleted it from his phone. "Your wish is my command. However unfortunate it is."

Still worried Noah would pop up any second, I scanned the room again. I spotted him talking with a group of people in the middle of the room. He smiled when he saw me watching him, and as I went to smile back, something behind him caught my eye. Melody was speaking with someone; his back was turned toward me yet something about him was unsettling me. Before I had a chance to figure out why, a small group of people intercepted me, talking excitedly about finally meeting me, Riley used to talk about me all the time, and so on, blah, blah, blah.

I was half listening. The nagging feeling at my back wasn't going away and in my rising panic, I had latched on to Thad's arm to keep him with me. He looked momentarily surprised, then seemed to understand that something was off. He charmed everyone as easily as he did me, carrying the conversation while I tried scanning the room again to find the man Melody had been chatting with.

She was standing in the same place. The man was gone.

It couldn't be Stephen. The hair color was wrong and too long.

After a few more minutes, Thad politely dismissed the group, coming up with some excuse about needing to talk to me privately about a business matter. He removed my death grip on his arm, forcing me to look at him.