Chapter Nine
Tom needed Flick’s touch. He was scalded, his skin too tight. Like he’d walked through fire and burned off a protective layer he’d painstakingly built up to stop from feeling. Now he felt too much. Leftover splinters and sweat in the crease of his elbow, an ache in his eye socket, a wrinkle in the sheet under his hip, Flick’s panted breath, his own creaking lungs, the laughter they couldn’t contain.
“Holy fuck, Tom.”
She touched his shoulder with her hand then her lips, and it wasn’t too much, it didn’t sting. He rolled to snatch her up, bringing their bodies together, and there was no shock, no pain, only the gentlest, richest ease.
He wanted to live in it.
She kissed his cheek, his jaw, his brow. “Are you okay?”
His sigh felt decades old, parched and stale, coming from ancient forgotten disappointments, and let go before he understood the danger.
“Tom?”
“You might have broken me.”
She nipped his chin. “Don’t joke.”
Pushed so he would stop thinking. Scalded so he could be comforted. Broken so he could safely risk. Hollowed out so nothing else mattered but satisfying himself with the sound and touch and thrill of her. The only danger was having the time to take his fill.
“Gonna need to do that again before I have a definitive opinion.”
“I don’t need a second opinion to know the earth moved.”
So that’s what happened. He’d gone deep, struck the molten core, caught fire and walked out alive. “It’s a miracle.”
She put her teeth to his neck, but he felt her laughter and echoed it. He half expected colors to be brighter, the air more refreshing. It felt like he’d woken from a deep sleep after a long period with a vague illness that’d left him lacking in energy and confused.
Good sex had never made him feel that taken apart and put back together before.
Flick played her fingers through his hair, not minding it was damp. “I loved that and I don’t think you hate me for baiting you into it.”
“No such emotion as hate.”
She laughed. “You’re drunk.”
He pulled her harder against him. “Best post-orgasmic haze ever.” Kissed her bottom lip, then remembered. “Jesus, tell me it’s not a wet towel.”
“Fresh from the washer-dryer.”
She yelped when he pinched her ass. When he turned her over and soothed that spot with his tongue, she squirmed. He had a reason to squirm too. He’d gotten too carried away. “I got tested. I’m clean. I’m sorry, I should’ve told you.” He’d done it because it was the sensible thing to do. That’s what he’d told himself at the time. Probably not his motivation if he thought about it.
“You told me.”
Had he? Not directly. “I wouldn’t have risked you.”
“I have no doubt of that.”
She’d risked him. He eased her to a kneeling position, her ass on his thighs, her back against his chest. “How did you know I needed it like that?”
She turned her face up to him. “Because I needed it like that.”
It was too simple an answer, too greedy, when Flick had been the one to push, to give. A cupped breast, a rubbed tit, a press of his middle finger inside her, and he got the truth.
“I wanted you to get the same thing from good sex I do. Wanted you to stop being so polite about it and live in it.”
“Arrogant.”
“Yes.” Her head clonked on his shoulder.
“You’re less than half my size. How were you not worried I’d hurt you if I lost myself?”
She palmed his cheek. “That’s a real concern with you?” He nodded, and that made her frown. “You knew this was a game. Maybe not before I started dropping clothing, but you knew and you almost stopped it. Losing yourself in pleasure isn’t about being mindless and out of control. You’re one of the most disciplined people I know. If I’d said stop, if I’d been uncomfortable, you’d have stopped, Tom. I know it, even if you don’t.”
It was a nice idea. Wished he felt secure in it. He wasn’t sorry this’d happened. But it changed them. “What does this make us now?”
“Landlord and roommate with extracurricular activities on the side. You cook and fuck like a god. I try to stay tidy and be your fuck goddess. We get to have a good time before we go our separate ways.”
An hour ago, he’d have rejected that proposal outright. Seen it as irresponsible, damaging. It was still those things. It was harder to give words like irresponsible their due measure when a warm, willing woman pleasured herself on your hand. Thinking about it was for a time when he wasn’t still blissed, when he wasn’t hard, planning to take Flick on her knees.
“Are you too sore to go again?”
The answer was Flick moving to her hands and knees, showing him how wet she was. The question was, how would they feel when he got back from Des Moines?
Des Moines was three days of wall-to-wall bore. Lifesaving drugs and medical devices, which he normally found fascinating, had never been so dull.
Instead of being in the Holiday Inn conference center with America’s finest drug companies and device-makers, his head was back in the condo with Flick.
He followed Wren down a corridor crowded with device and drug exhibitors flogging everything from robot pill dispensers for hospitals to cell-phone-controlled muscle stimulators for knee surgery patients.
He was speaking on a panel about supporting patients and advocacy through social media. It was the dreaded 3 p.m. spot where half the audience was only seated for the after-lunch snooze. But it was important profile-building for Rendel, and since it was being live cast and recorded, he needed to be on his game.
And his game wasn’t “how dare you leave your bag in the hall, let’s fuck.” Too bad.
“Tom, you’re here.” Dr. Evan Modal, the session moderator, pointed at the small riser on which a mock living room had been set up. “You’re in the red chair. You speak last. I’ll do an introduction to all of you up front and then it’s ten minutes each and fifteen minutes for Q&A.”
“Great. Thanks.” He sat in the red chair and grinned at Wren, who’d snagged a front-row seat. She made a face, then put her hands behind her ears so they stuck out sideways. The universal signal for Harry, who had wing-nut ears.
Huh. How about that? He hadn’t known the boss was going to be here. His meeting with Harry had been canceled and rescheduled three times—it was starting to look deliberate.
He waited while the room filled up with conference delegates, greeted his two co-presenters and listened to Evan’s introduction. Somewhere after the first speaker offered statistics on the reach of Facebook, he drifted off. At least half the audience already had.
There was so much about that episode with Flick to unpack. And top of the list of oddities was that she annoyed the heck out of him but got him more turned on than he could remember being. That most certainly did not happen in any other situation in which he was even mildly irritated. The two states didn’t come together in any conceivable way, except when Flick was the irritant up his nose.
The kind of annoyed she made him had a slippery edge to it. It dissolved into out-and-out necessity with an urgency to it that was frankly unnerving. Flick did it for him. Revved his engines like nothing else. And then mysteriously, he found a kind of peace and ease in bed with her that wasn’t so easily replaceable by a long hike or a favorite meal cooked.
Did that say more about him or about her?
She was playing games with him, that was certain. It was surprising how much he liked it. Was it the blatant sexual challenge? Maybe he had some unresolved authority issues and she flipped that switch with her personality and her deliberate insubordination.
That had to be it.
Christ.
“Tom O’Connell, are you with us?”
He still worried about the idea that with Flick’s games he might lose himself enough to—
“It seems Tom needs a caffeine fix.”
Fuck. He jerked at the sound of laughter, looked up and caught Wren with her hand over her mouth and her shoulders shaking. “I’d like to say I was demonstrating the soporific effects of social media, but Evan is right, I need caffeine.”
That got another laugh, but it was a damn rocky recovery.
Half an hour later he stood from the red chair to scattered applause, shook hands with his fellow presenters, and thanked Evan for inviting him on the panel as the audience raced for the door and the refreshment tables.
Wren was waiting when he stepped down.
“Think you sampled too many silicone breast implants today,” she said. “What happened?”
He sampled his shoes. That was a regrettable screwup. All the more embarrassing because he’d never been caught out like that, with Harry in the audience and the session live-streaming and with no chance for the dead air to be edited out. His screwup was available forever. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“It was the vaginal mesh implants for incontinence that did it to me, broke my concentration.”
Wren grunted. “Remind me to do my pelvic floor exercises every day.”
Not touching that. “Grandma Bel will think I was wonderful.”
“Everyone else thought you’d been sampling free drugs. What is going on with you?”
Sex-struck wasn’t the best answer he could give. Vaginal implants of a wholly different nature. “You think there’s something going on with me because you’re bored and want a drama.” Way better to be defensive. I need a drink.
“Fuck you, Tom.” Wren turned to go.
“Wait. That was meant to be—not like it came out.” She gave him a look that said be very careful about what you say next. “I missed my cue. I was daydreaming, half the room was. It doesn’t mean anything is going on with me.”
“You fell down a mountain. Fell. Down. A. Mountain. You’re still bruised-looking. Your promotion isn’t solid. Harry is obviously avoiding you. You went to sleep on a panel. You leave the office early. Tell me you’re not thinking of resigning. I just lost Josh, I think I’m about to lose you and I’m not ready.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Unless there was any truth to the swirling conspiracy theories that something was going on with Harry.
“I’d rather do Kegels than listen to you pretend everything is normal right now.”
That was not a visual he needed. They’d once launched a Kegel device for women with urinary incontinence. The program brainstorm had been unsuitably hysterical. Josh had been unable to keep a straight face the entire time, especially as the product’s tagline was “Pelvic floor exercises that are better than sex.” He’d walked around for weeks saying “Lift, hold and drop” at the least appropriate moments.
“I might’ve done something ill-advised.”
“Ooh. There’s my drama. As long as you don’t mean you got a parking ticket.”
“I, ah. Look, it’s nothing.” To talk about it made it real. Better it was a fantasy, some adult sex-scene thing he’d had no idea he was going to be into.
“You did it with Flick.”
He looked up to check who was around. Only the sound guy in the booth at the back of the room, and he had a headset on. “Jesus, Wren.”
“I’d do her. Why wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“I don’t want to do Kegels.”
Maybe he should talk about this. Without Josh around, Wren was the next best sounding board, and if you could talk about exercises for the vagina with a woman, you could talk about anything. He sat. “Me and Flick—”
“I knew it.” Wren took the next chair. “Spill.”
“She’s—” he sighed “—a mosquito. Buzzing in my face the whole time.”
“And then she stings you and you like it.”
“And then. Well. Yeah.”
“What’s the problem?”
Apart from this conversation about sex with a female colleague being something HR should never know about? He gestured to the stage. “That’s the problem. She’s a distraction and now is not a good time for me to be distracted.”
“But the sex is good.”
“I’m not talking details with you.”
“I’m doing Kegels right now.”
“The sex is—not talking about having sex with Flick.”
“Wow. That good.” Wren sighed. “One day my excellent shoes and my sporty, fit vagina and I will find someone to have sex with that’s so good I won’t want to talk about it. Meanwhile, I need details.”
“What do you mean by details? We do it.”
“Who’s on top? How would you rate her pelvic floor strength?”
“I am not—” He stopped when he realized she was laughing. “If you run into Flick, you can’t mention this.”
“So, Flick was on top.”
“You are never getting another bonus. Never.”
“Typical.” Wren’s smile dropped. “Now tell me what you’re doing about Harry.”
Of the evils, talking office politics or sex, sex was probably the least problematic. “I don’t think the rumor is true. Harry is busy, that’s all. We’ll get to it.”
“The whole office is gossiping, you know. Harry had an affair. Harry needs a divorce. Mrs. Harry Hardiman is going to take every penny she can get. It means Harry needs the money, so he’s not going to retire.”
Tom was aware of it. “We don’t know any of that.” It was hard to imagine Harry having an affair in the first place. He didn’t want to play into it. If he was going to be the boss, he had to act like the boss and the boss didn’t gossip.
Or lose his concentration on a panel because he was thinking about the sex he’d had and how he wanted to have more of it.
And how he couldn’t because he needed to keep his head straight and he’d just proven he was incapable of doing that.
“If you don’t get the job, they’ll bring in an outsider.”
Wren was right. If he was passed over it was a vote of no confidence and his career at Rendel would have a use-by date.
“There’s no reason to worry. Worst case, Harry’s retirement is delayed.” And he’d need a new roommate after Flick moved out, or a new job if the delay was serious.
He went straight to the office from the airport Monday and put in a full day of meetings and client reports. After a weekend of enforced social activity, he was desperate to go home and not have to talk to anyone.
And reluctant.
Because he’d have to talk to Flick, to tell her in as emotionless and practical a way as possible that much as he’d enjoyed their hookups, for the sake of his job, it couldn’t happen again.
She’d understand if he put it like that, because perhaps the one thing they had in common was their ambition.