His Secret Desire (2 page)

"Well I can’t imagine why. All I'm doing is
drinking coffee."

"I think you're doing a bit more than that."
He said knowingly. "Clayton Hargrave is my name and it’s a pleasure
to meet you Ms. Maldon. Now would you care to explain to me how you
know about that glassware on the table?" He nodded down to his
eyewear.

"I don’t know anything it Mr. Hargrave,
except that I don’t like being filmed or photographed or ID'd
without my consent. Not that any of it would get you anywhere, but
still, there is the principal."

"Do you know how much it cost to develop that
prototype? It should be virtually undetectable."

"Well the glasses are undetectable, it's your
blinking and staring off into the corner of space and whispering to
yourself that gives it away."

He nodded his head as though acknowledging
the obvious flaw in design.

"Well nothing has given
you
away." He
said. No cell phone signal, no signals from any wearable technology
and nothing at all from that no-name laptop you have there. No
references to your image on the internet or in any database that I
have access to."

"Is that so strange? Why should I broadcast
my identity to the whole world just because I want to do some work
in a café? Surely there's nothing strange about that?"

"Everyone broadcasts Ms. Maldon. The only
people who don't are either homeless or naked, and even then
billions of faces show up instantly via facial recognition cross
referencing social media. You aren't homeless I presume and you
certainly aren't naked." He paused for a micro-second after the
word naked and Katy felt it acutely. She hadn't been naked for
anyone in a long, long time. The thought of being naked for this
guy… she pushed the thought back down again.

"Now unless that laptop is a chunk of plastic
molded to look like a computer you have the quietest and most
sophisticated device I've ever seen outside of a military lab. You
are a blank space in the digital electromagnetic field Ms. Maldon
and that makes me very, very curious about you indeed. In fact,
this puts you on my need to know list."

Katy smiled but her palms had become moist
with a mixture fear and excitement. It was a confusing cocktail and
one she wasn't used to. This guy was coming to close to the bone in
more ways than one.

She weighed up her options.

He could be military, he could be NSA or he
could be some other government agency and none of that was good.
The technology she made use of to protect her clients always
skirted the edge of what the government was happy for the public to
have access to. She dreaded getting the call from the NSA asking
her to hand over files about her clients but it hadn't happened so
far but maybe this was it. The big boys of technology could survive
that kind of scrutiny but it would ruin her reputation, put an end
to her business and most worryingly of all, expose her
identity.

She was in enough trouble with her current
client as it was.

"What would you like to know?" she said,
buying time while weighing up her options again.

"I
need
to know who you are. In fact,
let me put it this way, I'm not comfortable with you leaving here
until I know exactly how it is you've managed to hide yourself so
effectively from my technology."

Her palms were getting wetter and her heart
was beating faster. Privacy was Katy's strength but also her
weakness. She was an expert in remaining invisible but if someone
threatened to get close to her it tended to rattle her nerves. This
guy, whoever he was, had spotted her and confronted her more
quickly and directly than anyone ever had since she had decided to
go off grid and devote herself to entirely to making herself and
her clients as invisible to the world as it was possible to be.

Cornered and fearful, her instincts told her
to go on the attack.

"I understand that I've made you nervous Mr.
Hargrave and clearly there's a reason for that. Would you like to
share it with me?"

"Sure." He said sarcastically. "I'd love to
share my most closely guarded personal secrets with you out here in
the open, in a café, in the middle of the day. I suppose we could
just make love to each other right here in front of all these
people as well and it would be perfectly normal."

Katy blanched but a spark of fire ran through
her at the same time. His brazenness in using the image of their
making love out in the open in full view of the world, caught her
by surprise and part of the surprise was how instantly thrilling
the idea was. The down side of privacy was not being able to share
anything with anyone. Her life had been a closed book for three
long years, ever since the death of… she couldn't even bear to
think about it.

"I think I need to go now." She said and
began gathering her things together.

Clayton watched her quietly but inside he was
panicking. This was going horribly wrong. He had no idea who this
girl was and the idea was intensely exciting for him. His instinct
to control found its most satisfying outlet in people, especially
when the person was an attractive woman he badly wanted to fuck. He
was driven to find out everything about her that there was to know;
mentally, emotionally, physically and most of all sexually. This
was for him, the most gratifying experience in the world and it
was, outside of his work, his absolute passion.

Not to mention that he was exceptionally good
at it.

Knowing how to read people was one of the
reasons he had been so wildly successful in business and it was the
main reason he had had his prototype glasses developed. He had no
intention of competing with other products in the market; he just
wanted the absolute cutting edge best technology for himself. What
he had developed and pulled together from other surveillance
projects over the years now allowed him to put another person's
life at his fingertips with just a glance. Any hint of mystery set
him on fire and the mystery of this woman, Ms. Katy Maldon, was
complete.

Therefore, she would be fucked by him. That
much was sure. And she would be fucked in a way that he would
extract from her deepest, darkest, sexiest fantasy. She, like all
the other women he had had, would never be the same again
afterwards.

But that was future tense. If he let this
girl go now he might never see her again, never get to solve her
particular mystery, and never get to see her break into a million
little pieces as her sexual fantasy was fulfilled to the absolute
letter; eyes dotted and tees crossed. Plus, if she was really as
good as she said she was and if she were as good at covering her
tracks as she was at hiding electronic signals from her personal
technology, then this could really be goodbye and Clayton Hargrave
only ever did 'goodbye' strictly on his own terms.

"I did learn one very important fact about
you through those glasses Ms. Maldon." He said. "But of course, if
you aren't interested to know what the weak spot in your 'cloaking'
technology is, then all you have to do is walk away right now and
it will remain forever a secret. Until of course, the next person
comes along who can see right through it and read your life like an
open book."

"I've got nothing to hide Mr. Hargrave. If
you have something to say to me then I suggest you go right ahead
and say it, because I don’t have time in my life for games."

"Nothing to hide except that military grade
privacy technology you have protecting all of your personal
devices. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing the government
doesn’t know much about your 'business' activities."

Katy sat down again. If this was it, the
knock on the door she had feared since she got into the business
then she would have no option but to face it head on.

"And what's your connection to the government
Mr. Hargrave? Why keep me in suspense? Go ahead and tell me what's
on your mind."

"I have no connection to the government but
I'm sure they would love to know about that technology you're
using. Maybe they'd be interested in your client list as well."

He was hitting her right where it hurt. It
couldn't be co-incidence, this bastard knew exactly what he was
doing.

"Is this what they call a 'shakedown'? You
soften me up with some threats first and then get me to play
ball?"

Hargrave watched her and smiled inwardly. The
walls surrounding this mystery were coming down even faster than he
had anticipated. A beautiful woman obsessed with privacy to the
extent of making it her profession. Stripping her down to the bare
naked truth would be about the most satisfying thing in the world,
his ultimate conquest yet, but it would be, like always, on his
terms; he
would
have her, but it would be within an
environment that was entirely under his control.

"Go." He said. "You're obviously smart enough
to figure out what the flaw in your security is all by yourself.
You don’t need me and I certainly don’t need you."

It was an insult to her professionalism, a
challenge to her competence, and it stung her deeply.

"You're bluffing Hargrave. I'll admit you're
good with that sexy poker face of yours--" She stopped in mid
sentence and watched his lips curl up into the hint of a smile.

"Don’t worry Ms. Maldon," he said, "I can
assure you that the attraction is mutual."

"I didn't say I was attracted to you, I just
said, just said that--"

"You said I was sexy."

Katy threw her head back and sighed. What did
it really matter anyway?

"Okay, so I find you attractive, big deal,
the important thing is that you're bluffing. Your glasses didn’t
tell you jack squat because if they had you wouldn't have had to
approach me and ask my name, you wouldn't have to ask about my
reputation and you certainly wouldn't have to make idle threats
about the government being interested in my perfectly ordinary
privacy software controls."

"I don’t bluff Ms. Maldon. Ever. Now I'm
telling you that I know something about you that you can't even
imagine, but I need to know more, and one way or the other I intend
to find out, but I'm going to give you a choice here."

"Is that so?"

He reached into his jacket and drew out a
sleek, embossed business card and pushed it across the table to
her.

"I'm taking a chance here by revealing to you
exactly who I am." He said.

Katy looked suspiciously at the card, as
though the mere accepting of it would change her life
irrevocably.

"Take it." He said. "It's just a business
card, not a subpoena."

Everything in her told her to walk away from
this. Everything except one tiny voice inside. Privacy had been
Katy's holy grail for three long years and she had come to depend
upon the bubble of invisibility that she had cloaked herself in,
reveled in it even sometimes. The tiny voice inside her could
barely be heard above all of the alarm bells going off in her head
but it was there, insisting, crying out to heard, wanting to be
known, needing to be seen, desperately wanting to be
recognized.

She reached out her hand and picked up the
card. It read:

Clayton Hargrave

Hargrave Robotics Inc

Below the name was a mobile number and email
address. Katy breathed a sigh of relief; at least he wasn't
government. She had heard of the company but didn't know much about
it, from what she remembered it had an excellent reputation and was
a pioneer in the field of nano parts for wearable technology. So
she had been dead right about the glasses all along and he hadn't
been lying about them either.

"So what's the angle Hargrave? Your x-ray
specs couldn’t profile me, is that such a big problem for you?"

"I've been wearing those glasses for months
and you're the first person to see them. To me that's a big deal.
You're also the first person in possession of modern technology
who's come up a total blank for me and that is a huge problem." He
paused. "However, like all problems, there is a solution."

"I'm all ears."

"You come to work for me at Hargrave
Robotics."

Katy smiled.

"Thank you Mr. Hargrave, but I'm not looking
for a job."

"You haven't heard the conditions yet."

"Okay, if it will keep you happy, what are
the conditions?"

"Number one, you come to work for me
personally and exclusively. No other clients. My business and I
will be your number one and only priority."

"I'm sorry Hargrave but I don't do
exclusivity deals."

"Number two, you will take your best year to
date and then double the amount to arrive at your total annual
salary."

He watched her, waiting for her reaction. She
did her best to remain cool. She didn't really know this man, this
could be all hot air.

"Triple it and then maybe." She said.

"Done. My last and final condition is that
you are totally honest with me, meaning specifically that I need to
know everything about you. No question is off limits. If you are to
protect my privacy this means you will learn a lot about my
personal life, likewise I need to know about yours, intimately and
in detail, if we are to trust each other and work together in
harmony."

Katy started to laugh, although she wasn't
sure exactly why. Her entire body had suffered a kind of
contraction at the idea of revealing everything to anyone,
particularly to a stranger. More particularly to a stranger who she
had had two lightning fast sexual fantasies about since meeting him
just minutes ago. At the same time, the idea of learning more about
Clayton Hargrave, whoever he really was, knowing him in intimate
detail and learning about his personal life, was kind of thrilling
to her. If she was crazy enough to accept it, then this would be an
assignment like no other she had ever had.