Emily Tilton [Tilton - The Shame Gambit

The Shame Gambit

By

Emily Tilton

Copyright 2019 by Stormy Night Publications and Emily Tilton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.

www.StormyNightPublications.com

Tilton, Emily

The Shame Gambit

Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson

Images by iStock/Baltskars and Shutterstock/Amy Corti

This book is intended for adults only . Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults.

Chapter One

M aia North had not had a good morning, and her afternoon looked significantly worse. As she put her face in front of the camera that opened the secure communications room in Confidelias basement and heard the usually reassuring thunk of million-dollar kinetic privacy at work, she wondered if the demise of her pod cappuccino maker that morning should have tipped her off.

The chief executive, super-coding nerd, and high-level sex spy didnt have a superstitious bone in her body, but she did have a lizard-brain thing about random events probably triggering the apocalypse. The bang from the crazy-expensive, hyperbolically shiny cappuccino maker, together with the jets of scalding hot milk shooting out all over Maia and her partner Gordons marble countertop, seemed now like just the kind of thing that should have flashed a cosmic warning to an astute software wizard and international woman of mystery.

Or was it random mechanical failure, after all? Did Relicorp send the thing some malware this morning, just to fuck with my brain?

Maia didnt think Relicorp owned CaffeMaLuxe, manufacturer of the worlds finest and most expensive coffeemakers, but the delivery of caffeine represented a deadly serious affair in Silicon Valley. She certainly wouldnt put it past the evil minions at Relicorp Holdings to acquire the company through a blind subsidiary expressly to fuck with Maia North.

Ill have to check with Joe Barbera to see if Henry Granby is still on the reservation.

Since a very special, very erotic party in Rome a few months before, Confidelia and Relicorp had been less openly hostile to one another. The change had occurred in the wake of Henry Granby, CEO of Relicorp Holdings, marrying a pretty young woman trained as a submissive bride in the Institutes Thoroughly Trained program.

The Institutes parent corporation, Selecta, also happened to have acquired Confideliaand, in a certain very important sense, Maia herself. With the help of some white-hot sex that introduced Jenny Granby to a few of the more shameful aspects of her new life as the young bride of a dominant CEO, Maia had gained a little access to the inner workings of Relicorp.

Selectas inroads into subtly weakening Relicorps market share through intelligence gleaned in bed, however, didnt extend to efforts to fuck with Confidelias caffeine supply. On the other hand, Maia couldnt see Henry Granby stooping to such measures, so...

So youre using the stupid cappuccino maker to avoid thinking about the video on FriendSpace. You know: the reason youre entering the secure communications room and signing into a conference call with the scariest people in the universeat least among the women youre lucky enough to call your friends. The reason your morning got so, so, so much worse than even jets of scalding milk on your silk blouse could make it.

Maia North, she said, looking at the screen to authenticate herself.

Four faces popped into view in the four corners of the screen.

Sarah Bennett, seventh-level initiate of the Order of Ostia and chief of operations for the Pretorian Guards North American division, in the upper right.

Cynthia Hall, lead Ostia field agent of Operation Raptor, based in Paris, in the lower right.

Charlotte Elkins-Nakama, academic dean of the Institute, in the lower left.

The women Maia had expected to see on her screen in such a situation, and good friends with whom she thought she could work out some solution to the current shit show.

Maia had not expected to see, however, the lovely, perfectly made-up face in the upper left of her screen, that of a woman she had never met but knew instantly on sight.

Erin Metz, First Lady of the nation.

Maia swallowed hard, and felt her cheeks grow pink as her eyes went wide. She knew as soon as she saw the First Lady exactly why Erin Metz would get involved in the situation with the video and its wildly spinning aftermath. That didnt mean that the presence on Maias screen of the beautiful redheaded occupant of the East Wing represented any less a catastrophic worsening of her already horrible day.

Mrs. Metz! she said, not managing to keep the exclamation point out of the words, hard as she tried.

Erin, please, the First Lady said. Erin made a visible effort to force her face into a gracious, welcoming expression, but the compulsion required made the moment worse for Maia, and she couldnt keep a wince from her own eyes.

Fortunately Sarah Bennett never had any use for sugarcoating with social graces when Pretorian Guard business needed doing. The hyper-intelligent former CIA analyst, one of the very few people in the world Maia thought she might actually not quite best in cognitive skill, made a lovely dinner companion, but she could also savage any associate who took her eyes off the ball. Ripping you a new one hardly described it, when Sarah had the power to tell the master of any of the women with whom she invariably worked that a certain girl needed anal punishmentthe existing, old, submissive bottom-hole did just fine for Sarahs retributive justice.

Maia couldnt help squirming in her ergonomically perfect chair at the thought, in fact. She remembered the last time Sarah had told Maias master and Pretorian Guard chief, Gordon Ernkat, that his capta needed a lesson. Maia had missed a crucial detail in a report, and so she had worn the big black punisher in her anus all evening, including at the dinner table, perched desperately on the edge of her chair. Gordon had made the discipline extra effective by keeping his deep-chested, ultra-sexy body just out of her reach, until the plug in her backside had made her so needy she had begged him to take it out and use her there.

Maia, what do you have? Sarah asked in a flat voice that Maia knew from experience concealed a great deal of frustration.

So bad did the situation look that although she knew exactly what Sarah meant, Maia had the urge to answer, A bottle of wine waiting for me at home. Then she would get up and leave, and someone else could save the world from economic collapse.

No, not even save. Someone else could fight the losing battle to make sure the worlds onrushing disaster happened in such a way that a few havens of civilization could be saved, to build a new and hopefully better but really, presumably just as terrible civilization from the ashes. The soft landing , many Guard and Ostia operatives had taken to calling it, recently. The term had a good deal of inherent irony: if the predictions on which the Guard founded its actions held up, both soft and landing were hilariously optimistic words for what would befall the world even if all went perfectly.