by Penny Reid
My entire body tenses for no apparent reason whatsoever. It’s as if the Ghost of Testosterone Past has slipped into my office unannounced.
Future mother-in-law.
Marie.
“I’m fine,” I insist. This is getting old. I have three video conferences with accounts, a business lunch with a client who thinks tequila shots confer the same health benefits as a field greens salad (and by the fourth shot, I always agree with him), and a woman right here in this building who I need to locate, pull into a supply closet and bang senseless.
(That would be Shannon, for the record.)
“Declan, I’ve known you since you were in high school, and I’m going to take off my admin hat for a moment and put on my not-quite-mother hat,” Grace says, complete with hand gestures, as if she’s pretending to wear a hat.
Grace was a pre-school teacher in her first career. It shows.
“I have enough not-quite-mothers in my life,” I say in the most I am annoyed voice I can manage, which is a pretty damn strong one. Shannon tells me I have Resting Asshole Face. It’s like Resting Bitch Face but for men.
I try it out on Grace right now.
She waves me off. “Oh, stop it. Listen to me. You’re about to propose to the woman you love. Any man in your shoes would be nervous.”
“Nervous,” I scoff, standing up and buttoning my suit jacket, unbuttoning it, buttoning it. The buttons are a bit tight and it just came back from the tailor for readjustment. I am not nervous.
“You’re human, Declan.”
“I’m a McCormick. We’re not allowed to be human.”
“No matter how often your father says that, you know it’s not true,” Grace says with a smile, clasping her hands in front of her, making the gold at her wrists jingle again.
Someone knocks on the door. We both turn and look.
“Come in,” I call out. To Grace, I mutter, “Maybe we’re secret immortal werewolves and we’ve fooled you.”
“You’re too vain about your suits to let them get torn when you shift,” says Shannon, entering the room with a smile.
One part of my clothing threatens to split quite suddenly.
Grace gives me a look that says We’re not done here. Oh, yes, we are. We’re done talking about whether I’m ready for marriage and, instead, we’re going to talk about how ready I am for sex.
If we’re measuring that readiness, it’s a good nine inches long.
(You expect me to be modest? Good luck with that. Facts are facts.)
Shannon works three floors below me. I like knowing she’s under me all the time. Right now, I want her on top of me, beneath me, spooned in front of me, on her knees at my feet...hell, I’ll take anything. I can hear my heart beat in the quiet between us, except the blood isn’t pounding through my chest right now.
Grace departs, and I take in the vision of my future bride. Bride. I like that word. Could get used to saying it, especially since it has the word “ride” tucked right in there.
Shannon. My ride.
She’s wearing a dark grey suit with a double-breasted jacket and a light colored shirt under it. Nylons and high heels a little taller than the ones she normally wears. Her brown hair is pulled back in a braid, her lips freshly painted with bright red lipstick. Long lashes frame those perfect eyes. Shannon is working the hell out of the naughty librarian look.
She moves toward my desk, not touching me, walking past to tease. She knows damn well how hard I want her, er...how much I want her, and she’s prolonging the moment, stretching it out in an endless series of sultry moves designed to make me fling every paper off my desk and take her in front of the giant glass windows here on the twenty-second floor, with a view of the Back Bay our orgasmic scenery.
The seam of my zipper begins to split as she pulls herself up to sit on the edge of my desk, slipping her heels off with stocking feet, and she widens her legs.
Garters. Red garters. And—
My inner werewolf is trying to climb out of my body through my pants fly.
She’s wearing no panties. At all. Shannon doesn’t do this.
Oh, thank God she’s doing this.
“See something you like, Mr. McCormick? I’m here to pitch a new product for you to consider for Anterdec Holdings.” Widening her legs even more, she licks those red lips. The lipstick matches the color of the garters.
“A new product?” I say through a mouth full of marbles and dead brain cells, hands burning to touch her. I take a step forward and pause, letting desire wash over me. Better enjoy it for a second or two, because in three seconds I’ll be inside her.
“Yes,” she says, unbuttoning her suit jacket, leaning back on the desk with her arms. She’s wearing a red corset.
Corset. A corset makes gravity its bitch. The engineering behind this simple piece of clothing deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, because there is nothing in the world—nothing—that will get a group of straight men to share the same opinion than the sight of a woman in a red corset.
“Nice,” I groan. Her breasts are pushed up, abundant and in need of release. The last time I saw her looking so wicked was at Christmas, eight months ago, when she wore an elf costume that made me deliver Shannon a sack full of goodies.
And by “sack,” I mean—
Bzzzz.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Shannon sits up and—no! Don’t cross your arms like that and put the Himalayas away!
“Declan?” It’s Grace, over my phone’s intercom. Dad insists on keeping this charming 1970s ritual. Says it makes him feel like some guy from an old television show about three gorgeous female private investigators. Right now, I’m about to grab the phone and throw it out the window.
“Yes? It better be important,” I say as I march toward Shannon, nudging her knees back to their proper, wide position, my hands hot on her waist. She looks uncertain, and I need to kiss that out of her.
“Shh!” Shannon whispers in my ear. “I don’t want her to think that we...that you and I are...you know.”
“We’re not,” I groan. “That’s the problem.”
“Declan, there’s a call for you. From New Zealand. Says it’s important. Something to do with a marketing campaign that’s glitching because of faulty web software.” Grace’s voice crackles like we’re on a police radio.
I look at the clock. “It’s the middle of the night there! Who cares if people can’t get their custom-blend cosmetics for the new spa line?” Anterdec handles a chain of twenty-three luxury hotels and spas in New Zealand. We’re rolling out a new product line. In exchange for giving me Mom’s engagement ring, Dad got a concession out of me: fix the nightmare project in New Zealand. What had started out as a nice, cushy contract had turned into an international disaster. I’d left the project a year ago in fabulous shape and it had disintegrated. The developers assured me that going “live” would be glitchless.
They lied. Developers lie. You know those Dilbert cartoons where the marketing people are portrayed as dunderheads who have no link to logic or reality? Who do you think writes that comic strip?
A developer.
“And you’re interrupting me because...”
“Because the system’s crashing and customer service is lighting up in Indonesia and—you need to take this call. It’s the CEO.”
“Fine,” I snap. Grace disappears. So does Shannon, wiggling out of my arms and re-buttoning her coat. A whiff of her perfume, light and feminine, tickles my nose. So does her natural scent, those legs open and waiting for me seconds ago, her body primed for me.
All traces of red, except for her lips, vanish as she folds herself back from the unfolding, making her outer package professional again.
One important, throbbing thing of mine doesn’t vanish, though. I grab her and pull her to me, the kiss hot and sweet. She tastes like coffee and vanilla, like beeswax and sunshine, the smear of her lipstick making our kiss more urgent. I’m groaning again and I need her.
I can’t wait to
put that ring on her finger.
I can’t wait to see her wearing nothing but that ring.
“A quickie?” she whispers, fingers already on my belt buckle, hand feeling exactly how much I’ve missed her. I know damn well I’ve picked the perfect woman to marry, because who else offers you sweet relief in the middle of an international software failure? A woman who gets that is the woman you want bearing your children.
The intercom coughs. Grace’s voice pours out. “Dec? Three calls now from New Zealand, and one from Indonesia. What do I tell them? I’m getting screamed at in two different languages and across three time zones here.”
Shannon’s hands freeze.
This is brutally unfair.
When I was six, and Terry got to go on a school trip to Disneyworld. It wasn’t fair. I cried for three days and begged to be allowed to go, but Dad was too busy with business travel and mergers, while Mom explained ad nauseam that Terry was in the band and was marching in a parade. If that was supposed to make me feel better, it backfired.
I learned that the world just isn’t fair.
Shannon’s unmoving hands on my belt buckle is a nasty reminder of that lesson.
“Damn,” I hiss as she “helps” by re-buckling my belt, tucking my shirt in. Not that there’s much room for it. I have the equivalent of a baseball bat in my pants.
She pats the front of my pants in place and smooths it, which is like pouring salt on a shark bite.
“You need to go fix this,” she says, reaching up to brush my hair out of my eyes. I keep forgetting to get it cut, and she’s asked me to grow it out. Likes the look, she says.
“I need to have you pinned beneath me with those garters giving my kidneys a massage,” I growl.
“Later. My place?” She hasn’t moved in with me. Yet. Says she wants to wait until we’re engaged. Meanwhile, she still shares that tiny little one-bedroom apartment with her sister. Her best friend, Amanda, is like a third roommate, and then there’s the Ghost of Crazyass Mothers-in-Law who haunts the place, barging in at will.
I love Marie. I do. I just love her in the abstract.
“My place,” I grunt. “Not yours. There’s no way we’re going to try to have sex at your place again. Ever.” I frown, and she knows exactly what I mean.
The Incident.
“It won’t happen again, you know,” she says with a pleading look in her eyes.
“Right. Because I am never having sex with you in your apartment. Ever. Therefore, it will never happen again.” The burn of The Incident haunts me. It happened last week.
Just after I decided to propose.
Shannon stops trying to argue. She reaches for a hug and my hand slides up that nice, hot thigh and sinks into—
Oh, sweet Jesus.
“Declan!” she hisses, pulling back, her cheeks as pink as the place I just touched.
“I can’t help it.” Seriously. I can’t. C’mon. I’m a guy. A guy who hasn’t had sex in three days. Would you begrudge a three-days-dehydrated man a sip of a water bottle waved like a semaphore flag in front of him?
“Yes, you can.” She gives me a quick kiss on the cheek and scampers out, leaving me with people on the phone from the other side of the world ready to scream at me, a hand that touched the gates to Heaven, and a raging hard on.
This is all someone’s fault.
But none of that matters, because life is unfair, and the only way to deal with it is to keep on living.
And scream back.
Chapter 3
Andrew won’t let me get out of this one. “Hold on. Back up. This ‘incident’ at Shannon’s apartment. Say that again? Her mom walked in on you two having sex and recorded it? Was it under-the-covers sex or let-your-freak-flag-fly sex?”
“What the hell does it matter? My future mother-in-law saw me naked. You don’t recover from that. Ever,” I shoot back. And for the record, it’s always let-your-freak-flag-fly sex. Always.
We’re weightlifting. There are two ways to deal with an unwelcome hard on. Masturbate, or go to the gym. Because I have a strict rule about sex at work—it must involve another human being—I’m left with one option.
The gym.
At Anterdec, that means going into Andrew’s office and entering a swipe card along a reader installed in the wall. You’d never know the hidden gym is in there. While he’s a fitness freak with a spin cycle in his main office, he’s also a free-weights nut with a deep fear of being outside because of his deadly wasp allergy.
All I know is I get to work out and pump as much blood as possible out of my pelvis and into my legs and arms. It’s the blood immigration program, complete with free relocation and a puppy if you move. After two hours of being yelled at by people with accents that make them sound like they really need to put another shrimp on the barbie and poke a skewer through their eye, I need this. Gym time. Pump out the rage.
Blow out my muscles.
The words pump and blow are killing me, though. Shannon got called across town for a client meeting and swears she’ll meet me at eight o’clock tonight in my apartment. If she’s not there at exactly eight, I’m sending out a search party led by a one-eyed trouser snake.
I’m sure Jessica Coffin will have a field day tweeting that.
Andrew’s trying very hard not to snicker. “Marie just barged in to Shannon’s bedroom?”
“Yes.” I’m lifting forties, working my triceps, on my back on a yoga ball. Andrew grabs them out of my hands and gives me fifty-fives. It takes effort, but I can still press them. I imagine the blood fleeing into my arms.
Too bad the desire can’t be relocated.
“With a camera crew?” Andrew’s standing over me, looking down, eyes filled with the kind of laughter no older brother ever wants to see in his little bro.
“Yep.”
“And the camera crew was because...”
“She showed up with the grandsons of one of her yoga clients. That old lady named Agnes.”
Andrew touches his ass tenderly. “The pincher?” Marie had convinced him to attend one of her yoga classes a few months ago, by promising a direct path to the studio in the winter, insect-free.
“Yep.” I drop the fifty-fives and motion for the sixties. Andrew hands them off and chugs from his water bottle. “Marie said they were doing a documentary on her.”
“Marie? Why? Is she some kind of celebrity?”
“The local cable access channel was doing some show on her life as a ‘reinvented woman’ who found a new career in her fifties, and she wanted them to shadow her as she visited her kids.”
We’d been so deeply, intensely involved in being naked and sticky and perfect that we hadn’t heard the front door open. Then bam! A doorway full of Marie and chattering and screams and shoving, and all I really remember from the whole thing was Chuckles, rubbing his front paws together and doing a Dr. Evil imitation. And shouting, from me. Lots of shouting. Then Shannon, sobbing, and...
Andrew winces. “They caught you doing the two-backed nasty on camera?”
“Hey! Don’t talk about red garters—er, Shannon like that. That’s my future wife you’re talking about.”
Andrew’s jaw goes slack. “Red garters?” See that thin line of drool running down his mouth, the vacant look in his eyes? Told you. It’s Man Soma. Mention garters and we check out, controlled by hormones. Pavlov’s bell in lingerie form.
“And a corset.”
He groans, a sexual sound that borders on lewd. Then again, among the testicled, this is the expected response, but still.
I frown. “Quit thinking about Shannon like that.”
“I’m not thinking about Shannon.”
I sit up. This is new. Andrew doesn’t date. Not the way normal people date, at least. Andrew’s admin picks socially acceptable women and sets them up for business meetings that start with a handshake and end with a Walk of Shame.
“Who are you thinking about?”
“I’m—aman—no, no one.”
�
��A man?” Oh, boy. This conversation just veered into new territory.
“Not a man! I don’t date men.”
“It’s cool. Not judging if you do. Look at Tim Cook. The CEO of Apple can be out and proud—”
“But I am not gay! I didn’t say ‘a man’!”
“Yes, you did.”
He’s flustered. This is fun. Andrew takes a deep breath and runs his hand through increasingly-wet hair. Funny. He hasn’t lifted enough to be that sweat-soaked. “I said ‘aman’, not ‘a man.’”
“And the difference is...”
“One is a woman and one isn’t.”
“That makes no sense. What’s ‘Aman’, then?” While I’m waiting for an answer, it hits me. Aman. Amanda. Andrew’s got a thing for Shannon’s best friend.
“It’s Amanda, isn’t it?” Most people would keep their mouth shut but he’s my little brother. It’s in my DNA to torture him. Plus, he’s on the fast track to become CEO and Dad picked him. Not me. I have resentment and have to take it out on Andrew somewhere.
“It’s no one. Shut up. Spot me while I lift.” Andrew is the worst liar. Always has been. He’s fine with a poker face when it comes to business, but on a personal level, he’s the last person you want to tell a secret.
“Amanda Red Corset Chest,” I taunt. Andrew’s face tightens. Zing! Hit the target.
He snorts, trying to play this off like it’s nothing. “I wouldn’t know Amanda if I walked past her on the street. Haven’t seen her in what...fourteen months?”
Right. He wouldn’t know her if he passed her on the street. But who’s counting?
Oh. He is. How many months it’s been since he saw her. I know I, personally, keep track of how many months it’s been since I last saw someone I don’t give two shits about.
Not.
“Let’s talk about your future mother-in-law getting a full-on view of your ass and...hey. Wait a minute.” He folds his legs and sits on the ground next to me. I’m still on the plastic yoga ball, now stretching out my hips.
“Did you say the words ‘future wife’?” he asks. Sweat is pouring off him and he wipes it off his neck with a small hand towel.