I was feeling a bit tipsy at dinner, but the crazy drama of the evening got me stone-cold sober, and then there are the snacks and coffee that Malcolm sends for around midnight.
He’s developing this without the traveling team. He wants things airtight.
Most of the time he spends on the phone organizing things. It’s kind of amazing to be a proverbial fly on the wall and witness him in his element. He runs people hard; he’s woken people up all over the globe to pull this together. He has poor social skills, that’s for sure, but he is never overtly mean to anyone. And they all seem to want to help.
The traveling team isn’t the only group that’s proud to be with him—does he even see that? Or does he filter everything through this idea that he’s a villain?
I take a short rest and lay my head on his shoulder, briefly closing my eyes. “People say you’re a villain, but you’re really just niceties challenged,” I mumble.
I can feel the gentle shake of his chest as he chuckles at this. “Like a serial killer is letting-people-live challenged?”
“Shut the bruschetta hole,” I whisper.
“You should sleep,” he says. “You’re asleep now.”
“I’m just resting my eyes,” I inform him. “After which I’ll be bright as a daisy.”
The next thing I know, I’m curled up next to him with a blanket over me as he taps away on his laptop. I doze off to the soft, baritone murmurs of him on a phone call. The next thing I know, I’m squinting blearily at the red numbers on the bedside clock.
Six in the morning.
My tank top and yoga pants are twisted around me from tossing and turning. I kind of can’t believe I put my home outfit on last night; it’s not the kind of outfit I wear in front of guys. But Malcolm is different. He feels like my people in a way that other guys don’t.
I don’t let him know I’m awake, because I’m enjoying listening to him on his calls—he’s so blunt with his employees, and they seem to understand that’s Malcolm. He doesn’t start conversations with small talk. He barks one-word questions. Maybe he doesn’t know how. He doesn’t soften up his sentences.
Malcolm’s an unlicked cub—no mother. A father who clearly despises him.
His harshest phone call is reserved for his security person—he really does seem upset about the mole—his team means a lot more to him than he lets on, maybe even to himself. “It’ll be a blockbuster offer,” he mumbles softly. “Once I make it, there’s no way our mole could resist letting Dad know.”
He and his security person seem to be hatching a plan to flush out the spy. It sounds to me like they’re going to do something temporary with the internet maybe or something—I can’t tell, but I hear the woman on the other end talking about grabbing communications that go out as long as the person doesn’t go down to the street. There’s a backup plan for anybody who calls or texts from the street during the break.
Whatever the plan is, Malcolm seems to like it. As usual, the sign of Malcolm liking something is him turning the gruffness down a notch.
Maybe it’s the strange clarity of being in that state between sleeping and waking, but working with him the way I have, and now meeting his dad, I feel like I get him in a new way, beyond what he presents to the world. I see a man who doesn’t trust easily. He thinks he’s a villain. Maybe that’s how he survived.
His mother lied to him. The potential spy in his organization has him in knots. And what am I doing? Running the biggest deception of all.
I have to tell him the truth before it goes any further. Before he works it out, and before AJ tells him. I have to stop this. I knew it tonight in the restaurant when he asked me about obstacles to us being together. I know it all the more so now.
A ball of emotion forms in my throat, like my own body warning me not to do it. As soon as I tell, I’ll lose him. More than lose him—he’ll push me away as forcefully as he’ll reject the mole when he finds them, but the longer it goes on, the worse it’ll be—for him.
The building will be done for. It doesn’t matter. Somewhere along the line, his well-being has become extremely important to me.
I shut my eyes tight against welling tears. God, what have I done?
I’ll tell him after he nails the negotiation—he needs to nail this negotiation. He needs to have this plan go right. It’s something nice for him to have. And then I’ll tell him.
“About time,” he says.
I squeeze my eyes closed harder, willing away the sadness.
“I know you’re awake.” He takes my hand and kisses it, and then my wrist. I’m still curled in a ball next to him and he’s kissing up my arm. And I’m smiling through my tears. Because I’m falling for him so hard, it’s crazy.
“Whaaaat?” I say. I wipe my eyes with my free hand as if I’m wiping away the sleep. The fact that this will be the last time we’re together makes me feel hollowed out with emotion.
He keeps kissing his way up my arm.
“Are you being funny?”
He plants a kiss on the inside of my upper arm; my skin there is crazy tender under the delicious scratchiness of his whiskers.
“Keep going,” I say.
He grumbles and kisses the pillowy billow of skin where my arm meets my chest.
“Were you waiting for me to wake up?” I ask.
“Yes. Would you rather I’d woken you up?” he asks. “You know that I thought about it. I had three dirty ideas for waking you up.”
“How dirty?” I whisper.
“Disturbingly dirty,” he says. “I’m not a good person, as you may recall.”
“I want to know them,” I say. “All three.”
“In good time.” He plants a kiss on the pillow of skin on the front side of my underarm. “This is an underrated spot on you.”
“C’mere.” I grab his hair, trying to get him away from my unsightly bulgy spot that he has deemed underrated, but he stays and kisses it again.
“I didn’t know spots on me were being rated,” I say. “Are there overrated spots? Are my wrists not all that? My toes not living up to the hype?”
“Shut the bruschetta hole.”
I snort, loving the way he says that in his clipped English accent. He kisses me again, and then he rolls me up and onto his lap so that I’m straddling him, facing him. He tangles his fingers through my hair.
“Is it all done?” I ask.
“Mostly.” He’s watching my eyes, holding my gaze. He grabs the hem of my shirt and slowly starts to pull it up, pulling it off. I help him, undoing my bra, lifting my arms. “I do love a woman in uniform,” he says.
And then my shirt is off.
And I’m naked on the top, facing him, looking right at him, and he has his shirt off, too, but he’s more naked because he just said the L word. Not that it was a direct use, but it was partial use of the L word, and things feel more intense, suddenly.
I joke it off—I say, “Wait until day five of wearing this and you might be singing a different tune.”
He isn’t going for my joke. The awkwardly serious look on his face tells me that he’s feeling this big thing happening between us. It feels good, like promise and excitement.
I make myself remember that it will be over soon. Then his abs harden impossibly as he comes up for a kiss, curling up to me and cupping my cheeks, kissing my lips, then my chest, then my nipple, where he settles in for some seriously sexy sucking.
I reach around and it’s only a little bit of gymnastics to grab his cock through his sweatpants. “This part of you cannot be overrated,” I say. “It simply cannot be overrated.”
He just growls, adding vibrato to the nipple action. And then we shift and we’re kissing. And he says, “Can you reach over and get that condom?” He lies back. “On the bedside table. I want you to put it on me. I want to watch you put it on me.”
I can tell he wants me to do it sexy like maybe it’s a thing with him, a woman preparing him to fuck her or something. I love that it’s kind of dirty even.
I smile.
“God,” he groans, “you have to do it while you’re wearing that witchy smile.”
“You think this is a witchy smile?” I ask.
“Mmmm-hmm,” he says.
I like that, being that I’m not a witchy person. And it’s not hard to keep the smile, because now I’m feeling witchy. I lean over and grab the condom from his little bedside kit that has a sleep mask and other stuff. I rip it open and I scoot down and pull off his sweats. His cock is hard and thick and dusky, and curled slightly to one side in a way that feels really Malcolm. I kiss the tip, just because I really, really want to, and then my whole mouth is on him, and I’m taking him all the way in. I want to feel him inside like this, to know him like this.
“You had one job to do,” he says.
I hum my answer really loudly and his body tenses in response, like the hum nearly put him over the edge. He feels sexy and dangerous. Eventually, I let him go and I make a big production of taking the condom from the wrapper. “How do I do it?”
“Just a little air at the tip—”
“No, dude, I was in class that day. I mean, how do I do it sexy for you?”
“Serious and slow. Deliberate.”
“But with the witchy smile,” I say.
“Yes.”
“You are very specific,” I whisper, cladding him slowly and deliberately, with my witchiest smile and witchiest vibe—but not like I’m being somebody else, or role-playing. It’s a part of me that he brings out.
I crawl over him and settle onto him, dying to have him in me. He moves under me, watching me, entering me slowly, filling me.
I give him a little growl of my own.
“You want a little something extra?” he asks.
I narrow my eyes.
He smiles. “Whatever you were just thinking, you have to tell me.”
“All in good time,” I say. I’m stoking up a rhythm that I don’t think I can ever stop.
“I meant little extra here.” He puts his thumb on my clit as he moves, letting me rut against it, rutting into the dampness between us.
“Yesssss,” I say, eyes shut tight.
I feel swollen against him, against the knucklebone of his thumb right on my clit, and like every nerve ending down there is exposed and building pleasure. When I open my eyes, I see him watching me, monitoring my reactions, my pleasure, adjusting his thumb angle, minute adjustments like a pilot coming in for a very difficult landing. Because he’s like that, seeing people, responding to them.
People don’t always see him clearly, the unlicked cub alone in his castle, but he sees them.
He’s monitoring my pleasure, trying to give me this, because he thinks I’m a good person who deserves his best.
Desperation flows hot through me as I move on him. I’m desperate for release, my body coiling; my hands greedy for every inch of his sexy body. And then I can feel him starting to come, though I can’t be sure, because I am coming, pleasure exploding through me like a thousand secret, desperate fireworks.
26
Malcolm
* * *
The process of taking seats around the negotiation table has always been a tiresome drama of people finding socially acceptable reasons not to sit directly next to me.
Which means they have to find reasons to sit next to other people.
The drama is mostly a pantomime, with some awkward comments thrown in— “Let me see that…” or “what was your question again?” Or sometimes the comment comes first, and then the shock of discovery—an empty chair right there. “Oh!”
The drama is tiresome, mostly because of the assumption that my feelings might be hurt if I realize that nobody wants to sit near me, whereas I vastly prefer that nobody to sit next to me.
Except Elle.
The not-sitting-by-me drama has become hugely convenient over the past weeks. All Elle has to do is wait and she’s forced to sit next to me.
We even laughed about it once. She tried to suggest that people might truly want to sit next to me, but they’re scared of me. I told her to please not be tiresome like that, and she smiled like she does, and I sat there loving her smile and I forced her to agree, at any rate, that it was convenient for us.
Nobody says anything about my black eye and split lip before the session begins, but there are definitely two empty seats on either side of me.
As usual, Elle takes one, settling in next to me. I’m still vibrating from this morning—not just the sex, though that was amazing, and not just because her body is delicious, and not just because of all of the pornographically hot high points of it, of which, trust me, there were many, but it’s because of how right we felt. How we worked together, caring about getting it right for each other. It was more than getting off; it was us collaborating on a secret experience.
There are times when I feel like I’m building a private world with her. Nobody ever told me it was like this in a relationship. Nothing could’ve surprised me more.
I’ve certainly never communicated with a woman as extensively as I have with Elle over the past three weeks. I never imagined something like that would be a plus.
Even more surprising, considering that the sex was so amazing, it was almost more satisfying to have her sleep curled up next to me. It was something about her presence, or more, the way she seemed to take comfort in my presence, that was deeply satisfying.
So many times I wanted to settle my hand onto her shoulder, but I didn’t want to wake her.
There was this photo series of a gorilla that raised a kitten circulating a few years back. The kitten would snuggle with its gorilla parent—it only liked the gorilla; no one else, human or nonhuman—would do. I think it disheartened a lot of people who felt like they had soul bonds with their cats when really, it’s just that they’re a large mammal that the kitten has become accustomed to.
Not a high bar, admittedly but what do you want from a kitten?
So I could’ve been a gorilla or maybe a toaster and Elle would’ve snuggled next to me.
I tried to remind myself of that—that it has nothing to do with me, but it swelled me up all the same. And then that light came into her eyes when she looked at me—the kind of light that wouldn’t come into her eyes had I been a gorilla or a toaster—and it was impossible for me to lie to myself and tell myself I didn’t care.
So I’m sitting waiting for the session to start and thinking all of these things, and she turns to me like she senses the direction of my thoughts.
I direct my gaze at the croissants and she rolls her eyes.
Then Gerrold is seated. “Somebody had a wild night.”
I smile. He’s the only one who dared to say anything about my face.
I have the proposals in my satchel, a paper copy for everybody. My lead New York attorney has arrived and my legal team bristles when I introduce her around. I can’t imagine the mole being among the West Coast legal team—something like that could lead to disbarment, but I don’t mess around.
“We’ve got some interest from another quarter,” Gerrold says.
I can feel my people stiffen. Are they surprised? Is somebody a good actor? Meanwhile, Gerrold’s son has an eager look on his face—he reminds me of a dog, trying to contain himself at the kids’ table, thrilled at the opportunity to squeeze more money out.
“Is there an offer?” I ask.
“No, but a request to open the process up,” Gerrold says.
“You might want to take a look at this first,” I say, passing out the packets. I can feel the confusion from my team, but they’re trained well enough that they won’t show it. They don’t even pounce eagerly on the sections that spell out the deal, though that’s the area they’ll be interested in. I’m sure they’re wondering if my black eye is related to this personnel switch-up.
My New York lawyer and I set out the terms, the training, the guaranteed employment terms after training.
It’s obvious when Gerrold reaches the important part. Ev
erything about his body language changes. “You’d train my displaced people in coding?” he asks, stunned. “Even the truckers?”
“And their significant others, if they so desire,” I say. “It’s still a job they can do sitting down.”
“Truckers and support staff…coding?” the son asks in disbelief.
“People have displaced coal miners doing it,” I say. “It’s a skill. Skills are learnable.” I walk them through the HR portion of the writeup, all of the success rates and income charts for coders.
Gerrold’s team wants the room to go over everything, so we head out for a break.
Walt comes right over. “What’s going on?”
“Maybe I had to balance out the badassery of my black eye,” I say.
“I could’ve helped work this up…” He gestures back at the room. He knows somebody had to coordinate the details, and it usually would’ve been him. “You had New York step in?”
“It was late,” I say.
He nods unhappily. Is he the mole, fishing to see what I suspect? Or is he an employee, worried that I’m disappointed with his performance—to the point that I cut him out?
“It’s quite an offer,” Walt adds, trying for a smile. “Should you be wearing a red suit and beard? Or am I missing something?” He wants to know if it’s the gift it looks like. Nisha is there, now, and Lawrence. They’ve been hovering. They want to understand, too—enough to defy tradition and actually group around me during a break.
“Maybe I just want any other interested party buried,” I say.
“Usually you use a shovel,” Coralee says. “When you want to bury somebody.”
“Instead of a delicious candy treat,” Nisha puts in humorously.
“There are intangibles,” I say. “If that’s what you’re wondering.”
They all seem to relax at this. Inside knowledge. An angle. That’s more like me.
“I know you wouldn’t put together a bad deal,” one of my West Coast lawyers says, showing he’s on the team. Everybody’s agreeing that they’re sure I know what I’m doing. I wouldn’t put together a bad deal.
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