Insecure (35 page)

Oh.
Every interior muscle furled and flipped, she heard herself moan. She'd expected more than he'd given her before, but not this. She'd thought he'd share something outlandish, swing from the chandelier stuff, whips and chains, more to do with the rough science of being turned on than to do with her. She expected to be a bit part player, a stand-in for his private out there porn show, but he'd created a scene that mimicked their initial dynamic.

“Sometimes stilettos, sometimes boots,” he tapped his thigh to indicate exactly what kind of boots he wanted. “Hair pulled back tight so I can see every expression when I make you come. You try to ignore me, but you can't. I try to take you, but you hold me off.”

And oh, God, she'd overplayed her hand, she'd promised him something she couldn't deliver. She could not ignore him; she could never hold him off.

“We don't play fair.” He pushed his feet into the floor and opened the chair back out. “You don't let me touch you. But you touch me. Fuck, you touch me.” He closed his eyes and his head dropped back as the fantasy and his own hand gripped him deep.

It had her in its thrall as well. His total unexpected abandonment. His words ground out in a rusty metal tone, his hand moving slowly up and down his length, abs contracted, chest braced, eyes half lidded. If breathing weren't automatic, involuntary, she'd have ceased doing it. But she couldn't live up to the woman in his vision, didn't have the first clue; she was a tragic imitation.

He sat forward suddenly. His pale eyes locked on her, like he'd only now realised she was there. “None of it is as good as the real you.”

She gasped. Searched his face for tactics and found only truth. She crawled forward, hands to his bare feet, then his ankles. She climbed them up his legs, scooting inside his thighs, and picked up where she'd left off.

And she annihilated him.

Made him an unholy mess of groans and twitches, uncontrolled thrusts and fluttering eyelids. He gripped the chair arms till the scars on his knuckles went white. He let out a string of curse words and he fought release, his heel balanced off his toe striking the floor repeatedly.

“Enough.”

His voice was strangled and when he hauled her up to his lap she was a mess as well, so needy for him she was trembling. He took her hands and had her thread her legs over his hips through the back of the chair. He was a genius. She could touch the edge of the desk with her feet, she could rock the chair. She moved against him in a way that connected them profoundly and pushed them both to the brink.

“You fucking rule my world.” His mouth was on her throat. He'd been largely silent, locked in the fantasy or out of protest, out of pig-headedness, but now he let go with hoarse grunts and moans, his orgasm triggering hers.

“Only you. Can't be without you.”

He pressed her down suddenly, “Don't know how to love you enough,” and flexed up, lifting from the chair seat, sending it spinning sideways. She lost her footing on the desk and slumped into his torso, shuddering through her release and folding inside the frame of the chair and the shelter of his body.

After her breathing settled and they'd kissed each other near silly again, Mace wrapped his arms around her and shifted forward, then stood and sent the chair flying backwards. She curled her arms and legs around him. He shuffled them through to the bedroom, placed her on the bed, got rid of his jeans and stood looking down on her. “You done?”

Almost. She was sated. Hostile takeover complete. Now there were only the terms of the merger to be negotiated. “Come here.”

He quirked the eyebrow. “I was doing something.”

“And now you're coming to bed.”

He shook his head and stalked towards the bathroom. That should've been fine, she'd done what she set out to do and he wasn't making up deadlines and issues to deal with to keep him away from her, they were genuine concerns.

“Mace.”

“What?” His voice echoed off the tiles.

“If you sleep it might come to you easier.” She heard water running. He'd hit the shower. It was after midnight.

He came back in rubbing a towel over his wet hair. “What do you want?”

Mergers were always tricky and they often failed to produce the synergy of one plus one, ending up with a minus score. Night after night without him beside her in bed she felt like the minus. “Sleep with me. Hold me, close your eyes and rest properly. I'm worried about you.”

“Shit, Cinta.” He flung the towel over a chair but he got in the bed. She should wash too, but she wasn't risking him getting bored waiting for her. She lay on her side and he curled around her, his hand on her hip, his breath in her hair. He wouldn't be able to help but sleep, but he moved before she'd drifted off, realised too late she was still awake.

He kissed her cheek. “If I had a choice.”

She rolled towards him and studied his face. He did have a choice and he'd once have chosen her. It was wrong to feel slighted, wrong to want to be his first choice, but she understood it, better than he did. She let him go back to his program and the loft was horribly empty again when she woke.

Mace waved a hand in front of his face. “Don't start that, seriously, man.”

Dillon breathed another stream of smoke at him. “Anderson told us they want to hire a CEO to replace us and that's what you've got to say.”

They were standing in the car park of the office. Dillon had excused himself and walked when Anderson delivered the news. Mace'd followed him. He felt dumbstruck but worse than usual. He could be happy as founder and chief engineer, but all of Dillon's functions would be replaced by a new CEO, reducing him to founder and a role in sales and marketing. In Anderson's world view, Mace was a key man. Dillon was surplus.

He didn't know what he was supposed to say. “Fuck.”

“That about covers it.” Dillon took another long drag. When had he started smoking again? They'd smoked as kids, stupid crazy for Dillon with his asthma, but neither of them kept with it.

“We tell them no.”

“Which means we're driving out of this car park for the last time.”

Mace shrugged. That's what it did mean. Saying no meant the money and support stopped. Anderson wasn't asking them for an opinion on hiring a new CEO, he was telling them he was going to do it.

“Mace, don't be a fuckwit. Anderson's right. I don't have the experience.”

“I don't do this without you.”

Dillon flicked the cigarette onto the asphalt where it still smoked. “That's fucked. Of course you do. No one quits in the final round. But I can't stay and work on sales. I can't. I know they'd make it look like I was more important, a fancy meaningless title. I know my stake would be the same in terms of shares, but I can't work for someone else on this.”

“We virtually work for Anderson and Jay now.”

“That's not the same thing and you know it.”

“I don't do this without you.” It was unthinkable, Ipseity without Dillon. His influence was all over it. They'd never have gotten this far without him. Mace would still be tinkering with software in a spare room somewhere.

“If I have to beat sense into you I will. Don't think I won't try. We're sitting on the edge of making millions of dollars. We'll be set for life. I wanted to be on the front line. I know that's never mattered so much to you, but it matters to me. But my on-paper credential isn't battle hardened and Anderson is right. I don't have the experience to make it work. This part of the dream is over for me. I need to act like a grown-up and get on with it. If this works I'll still be a rich fucker.” Dillon shrugged, “Just as a shareholder rather than an employee.”

Mace cracked his neck, left, right. “You'd better be able to knock me out.”

Dillon coughed.

“It'll need to be a kill shot, because I still hit that bag every day, so taking me down is going to cost you.” He hadn't hit the bag in months, and Dillon would know it. But the last thing Dillon hit was the car he rear-ended while taking a call from Anderson.

“Give it up, it's not cute.”

“Wasn't going for cute. Not doing this without you.”

Dillon sighed. “I'll be around, but I won't be running the show. Come on, a walk out doesn't look good.” He turned to go back inside and Mace hit him; hard enough to knock the wind out of him, to make him stagger.

Dillon straightened up, red-faced and coughing. “You fucking thug. What do you think thumping me changes?”

Mace dropped his eyes to the pockmarked tarmac. His hand was numb. It changed nothing. This was a lock. If Dillon quit, he'd get his cut as a founder and the business would go on. If Mace quit too it was all over—neither of them would get a cent and Mace would lose the money from the sale of Buster's house.

When he looked up, Dillon was gone, but Jay was there.

“What's going on, Mace?”

“Nothing.” He didn't know what Jay had seen. He didn't need Jay knowing they were fighting, particularly now. But it would've been smarter if he didn't sound like a petulant kid.

“So I didn't see you hit Dillon with a right hook that would've laid me out?”

“You did, but it's nothing. Minor dispute.”

“Is that how you boys do it?” Jay laughed and that was a surprise. “God, there are some guys I'd like to flatten. A couple on my own board to start with. When did business get so civilised we stopped using violence to solve our disagreements, ‘eh? I'm asking you what the problem is Mace, and I expect an honest answer.”

“It's got nothing to do with Ipseity, nothing to do with you.”

“Don't insult me.”

Mace shook his hand out, the blood starting to flow back into it now, bringing the sting. “Anderson told us you guys want a new CEO, someone with experience.”

“Ah.” Jay took sunglasses out of his coat pocket and put them on. “I know you want this business to succeed. A few more years and you can quit, you won't have to work for the rest of your lives.”

“You work.”

“I do. I enjoy it. And I get that what you're going through now isn't much fun, but it's the price you pay.”

“I understand.” The price was steep; sleep and health, the sacrifice of time with Cinta that he felt like a wound that wouldn't heal, and now the loss of Dillon. At what point did it become not worth it any longer? It had to be getting close.

“Do you, Mace? Look, I like Dillon and I can't say that about all the founders I've invested in. I'd like to knock out a bunch of them too. Dillon is the real deal. He has the smarts and the heart and all the right intentions, but he's doing everything you need for the first time.”

“So am I.” Which was the point. Ipseity was a game changer.

“I get your loyalty. I admire it.”

Is that all it was? Dillon was his family. Was he thinking clearly enough? He was tired all the time and constantly on edge. Getting to the end of every week with an intact business plan was the biggest challenge he'd ever faced. He'd learned enough to know business and loyalty were incompatible forces, but they'd come so far in seven months, in fifteen years of dreaming, doing it without Dillon was a severing his whole body revolted against.

“We'll work harder.”

“Shake it off, Mace.”

“You don't understand me.” Jay widened his stance, folded his arms. “We'll work harder, jump higher, sprint faster. We'll take on a coach, a leadership mentor full-time, we'll even dilute our shares to get the right person, but I'm not doing this without Dillon as equal partner.”

“You do know what you're saying?”

As surely as Jay knew how to bake a good sourdough. Mace nodded, once, the back of his neck so tight it was a wonder his head moved at all.

Jay sighed. “I could close you down now and there are twenty, forty, a hundred other guys like you, just as hungry, who'll take your place.”

Mace shrugged. He'd made his decision. Jay would make his and there was nothing he could do to alter it.

“Talk to Cin. She can help you on this.”

He hadn't talked to Cinta in days and he knew she was uptight about her show. He couldn't involve her in this any more than he could make her stop looking at him like he'd broken them. She'd done enough for him and Dillon on the way here with counsel and advice. And he'd done nothing lately for her.

“You were there for her.”

Jay inclined his head. His hair was barbershop perfect. It was hard to believe he'd been in a dressing gown when they met. “What are you asking me?”

“I'm thanking you. You were there for Cinta when she was in trouble.”

“I was. Not that she truly needed me.” Jay smiled for the first time. “She had it under control. She was lonely and didn't know by how much before you arrived. I was keeping her company. I hope you get that us doing business has put distance between her and I. You're a conflict of interest.”

He was conflict all round; fighting deadlines, time, Dillon, Anderson, Cinta and now Jay.

“Take tonight to think it over.”

“I'm done thinking, Jay.”

He left Jay in the car park and made his walk out official by getting in the car. He went home, but she wasn't there and that had the effect of turning his frustration into anger. He changed and went for a run, his legs protesting the sudden burst of activity after almost none for at least a fortnight.

He shouldn't have hit Dillon. He should've called Cinta and gone to meet her wherever she was, taken her flowers in some dumb show that everything was okay between them. It was not okay, it was fraying at the edges. Buster had taught him to darn so he knew he could stitch them back together, but he needed time and time had become a commodity more rationed than free money.

The last time he'd tried to make time sparkle for them, he'd taken Cinta out to dinner, but spent twenty minutes standing outside the restaurant talking to Anderson on his phone. He'd been distracted when he came back inside, and they'd eaten in silence. He hadn't been able to look at her, though she never said a word in complaint. Then he was so annoyed with himself he'd stayed up half the night working before crashing on the sofa in the office again, feeling like he didn't deserve to lie next to her.