Insecure

by Ainslie Paton

  She reached for her robe. Behind her he was still, but she hung on to his voice.

  “I only work at Wentworth to have money to live on, to pay for what Buster needs.”

  She dragged the robe across her knees, but kept her back to him. “Go on.”

  “I’ve got shit for brains.”

  She laughed. “You think telling me you have interests outside Wentworth is a problem.”

  “I don’t think it’s smart to admit to the company heiress you’re planning on being somewhere else. She might decide to pull the rug out from under you.”

  “That would be the same heiress who hit on a junior employee who could have her up on sexual harassment charges and blacken her name forever. Who do you think is really at risk here, Mace?”

  “Not you. I would never.”

  Exactly what she’d figured. He was dangerous, but he was safe too. She pulled her robe on and belted it, but shifted on the bed to face him.

  He’d let go of the sheet and his shoulders lifted with a deep breath. “I have a Plan A.”

  She moved closer, crossed her legs; let her knees almost touch his. She didn’t want him to go. She liked this little slice of life they’d created. It wasn’t made to last but it was a holiday from her real world and precious because of it.

  “Personal life management.” He stopped, as though that told her everything she needed to know.

  “Do you mean identity security?”

  He reached for the leftover cord of her gown and threaded it through his fingers. “More. I mean knowledge and control of an individual’s personal data. You can build intelligence from data. The more data the more intelligence, the more capability and control.”

  Wentworth had data about retail customer’s deposits, loans and spending patterns, and employed data engineers whose job it was to mine it and develop new services to market. She watched Mace move the silky tie between his thumb and first finger. He’d used those clever fingers inside her. She wanted them there again before the day was over.

  “Everything you do online causes information to be stored about you. Like when you shop online, or pay a bill or use your credit card in a restaurant. You have very little control over that, but companies, like Wentworth, profit from it, sometimes without your permission. I believe people should have control of their own information, from X-rays and dental records, through to the cost of your last parking ticket and how much you spent on entertainment in one easy to see and manage program. Like a mega diary and a file store of every piece of your personal data that’s important. It operates like a sophisticated car dashboard that gives you relevant data on call, like blood pressure, savings targets and the list of books you want to read. It works like social media but for managing your life for real, not just talking about it and taking selfies. You get to say who sees that information and what they use it for, not the other way around. You might even charge for the privilege of using your information.”

  “We have engineers who do that kind of work.”

  He tugged on the tie and it tightened around her waist. “My program will blow your engineers out of the water.”

  He said that without a trace of humour to soften it. “Really.” There was that arrogance she’d seen from Mace, the attitude that made him a difficult employee to manage. “You think you have something special—well, good for you.”

  He sniffed; a derisive sound. “It’s not special, it’s revolutionary. It’s an entirely new direction. It will change the face of how businesses relate to customers, how information is stored, catalogued and provided, how transactions are processed and buying patterns customised. It will change how people control their identities, how they live.”

  “You’re either insane or a genius.”

  He slow blinked, his out breath was audible.

  “And no one has done this yet?”

  “Nothing as comprehensive as what we’ve got.”

  She put her hand to his face and he raised his eyes to hers. She leant across and kissed him, softly, quickly, then drew back. He looked bemused. She laughed. “You’re cute when you’re intense.”

  He frowned, and then he pounced, pushing her back on the bed, nudging her knees apart and settling himself between them. He had her robe undone and his hands on her, his lips at her collarbone. “Oh God.”

  He kissed his way from her neck to her sternum, his hands at her back, lifting her to his mouth. At her belly, he raised his head, dragged his chin across her hip, prickling her skin. “Still think I’m cute?”

  There was a right answer here, but she had no idea what it was. Her hands were in his short clipped hair. “Yes.”

  “Wrong answer.” He scraped his teeth over her hipbone.

  “No!”

  He nipped her, hard, and she writhed in his hold.

  “Mace!”

  He liked that answer. She felt his grin, felt his laugh low on her abdomen, then his mouth on her. That tongue that got tangled with talking had no trouble making her blood hammer in her ears, her eyes shut fast. She draped one leg over his shoulder and gave herself up to him.

  Whatever data he’d gathered on her, he used it to send her pulse into overdrive. He’d talked about personal control, but he’d taken hers and bent it to his will. Her peak was so high, so sharp, so shocking she clutched at the bedclothes trying to find a way through it. He found her hand, closing over it, threading his fingers through hers, grounding her while he pushed her towards a summit so unexpected she feared the fall.

  He took her over that edge and he held her while she lost her breath and shook apart and when she could open her eyes he was watching her.

  “Fuck. I want to do that again.” He brought their joined hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “To see you let go like that. Beautiful.”

  She reached for him. “You didn’t.”

  “Nope.” He crawled up her body.

  “That’s not—”

  “What, fair, right?” He hovered over her, the evidence of their one-sided affair brushing her thigh. “I’m happy.”

  “You can’t be.”

  “Yeah, I can. I have a plan.”

  “Plan A?”

  He laughed. “A side plan.” He wrapped his arms around her back and rolled them, pulling her down so she was hip to hip with him. He groaned and closed his eyes, as though he hadn’t factored her weight on his erection feeling so good, flexing his pelvis to grind against her. She would’ve willingly spread her legs and taken him in, but he lifted her away. “A plan to try out your pool.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t have a pool.”

  He settled her in his lap and stood up. She wrapped an arm around his neck and he lifted her. “Yeah you do.”

  He carried her to the bathroom. His gait unsteady as he favoured his good foot. He sat her on the wide marble vanity while he turned on the taps. He tossed in bath salts and came back to stand between her legs, his hands spread on her thighs. “This okay by you?”

  It was the holiday of a lifetime. Using the bath was novelty enough. She never bothered, it took too long to fill, and what was the point sitting in its temperature-controlled vastness alone.

  “I want to kiss you. I should borrow a toothbrush.”

  She tilted her head up and kissed him. “I like the taste of us.” The taste, the smell, the whole idea of them was starting to interfere with her sanity. But looking at him, the sheer masculine grace of him, no one could fault her short-term madness.

  He grunted his approval and kissed her back, his hand pressing up her backbone, then cupping her head, tying her to him. Nothing easy about this kiss, nothing tentative, slow rising or gentle. While the bath filled she drowned in his mouth, in the tide of his tongue and the suck of his lips. The air filled with lavender scent and her robe was pushed off her shoulders, their torsos surged together. He slapped a hand to her thigh to drag her against his penis, groaning when their heat met. That sting was replaced by the bite of his fingers at her nipple, and the nip of his teet
h on her tongue.

  From stumbling verbiage, they were stunningly coherent in the language of pleasing each other.

  The sound of the taps shutting off as the bath reached its high water mark had her pushing him away, had him lifting her over the rim and coming in after her. They sat side by side in the seductively temperate water that filled the circular expanse, not touching, hyper aware of each other.

  “What now, Mace?”

  “Laps.”

  She moved to him, traced wet hands over his shoulders and down his arms, swelling with muscle, inert with strength. “It’s not that big.”

  The grin he gave her was filthy, not a flavour you could ever wash out. It broke over her and made her shiver. “Oh my God.” Last night there’d been a joke like this, now it was her turn to fall in.

  He was so hot he electrocuted her senses, turned them to a bubbling, scorching, steaming mess of need to have him inside her fast and hard. She was sick with it. She had no idea how he was containing himself. And then he didn’t.

  He pulled her across his body and she shrieked when his tongue went to her breast and she understood what he had in mind, more sensual torture, laps that had her floating in a sea of desire and need. His plan was to destroy her, take her heart and shipwreck it against the rock of his body. They’d be no survivors; the coming together too storm-tossed, too violent in its lust-soaked glory.

  She had to fight him to stay afloat, to keep her balance and take what she needed. She pushed him back, climbing his body to lick at his lips, digging her fingers into the guide rope of his spine, sucking his tongue thick into her mouth. He gave up, his teasing laugh stuttering, dying in his chest when she took him inside her in a cyclone of movement that rippled through them both, sending water cascading over the side of the bath to slap the floor.

  In the shattered calm that followed, when he’d combed her hair and played his fingers along the edge of her ear, pinching it like before but without the sting, she lay in his arms and felt such bone soft pleasure, such weightless, effortless ease she must have slept. She came to with a start, his lips at her ear, with his arms around her, keeping her prisoner. She tried to get her feet flat but they were tangled with his.

  “I’ve got you.”

  She’d dreamed of bodies floating, debris and death, the sound of wailing women, the colour red and fire making her skin hot, her mouth dry.

  “You were dreaming.”

  She tried to push away from him. “So stupid. I could’ve drowned. I can’t just lay here.”

  He let her go and she went to the other end of the bath, wishing she could cover herself from his gaze.

  “I wouldn’t let you drown.”

  “You don’t have to look out for me.” She pushed hair out of her eyes. What time was it? Time for him to go. Time for her to get on with her day. Too much time wasted. People died last night, died today, and she was lolling around in the bath with a man she’d picked up easy as reheating dinner.

  “It was a bad dream.”

  This was a bad dream. What on earth was she thinking? She should’ve let him stay in the foyer, in her office, in the spare room, anywhere but in her body again.

  “I had you, baby.”

  “Did you just call me baby?”

  He stood up. “You heard.” He towered over her, his skin all flushed warm, not a single self-conscious twitch. He reached for a towel and held it out to her.

  It wasn’t his fault she’d felt the sticky tentacles of panic, the nightmare; the temperature-controlled bath, the release and closeness she’d felt in his arms and knew to be a phantom thing, a ghost ship in her night.

  She stood and walked into the bath sheet he held. “I’ll take baby over Princess Severe.”

  He wrapped it around her and pulled her into his side. “I get your severe.” He lifted her over the edge of the bath. “It’s something you need to get you through the day.”

  He’d seen too much of her, cached too much of her data. “We should be paying you more.”

  He stepped out and picked up a second towel. “Not for what you have me do.”

  “A job well beneath your skills, I suspect.” She rubbed the end of the towel over her hair. “If you could have any job what would it be?”

  She watched him dry off. She could watch him move all day; the economy of him, the thoughtless elegance.

  “I didn’t sleep with you to improve my job prospects.” He said that while he folded the towel, skirt-like around his hips. She was so thirsty and he was making it worse. She wanted to lick the droplets of water off the washboard of his abs as much as she wanted to kick him out and be done with this feeling of unease.

  “Don’t be so goddamn prickly. That’s not what I meant.”

  He inclined his head. “Our own company, Dillon and me. It’s called Ipseity. It means individual identity, selfhood, plus it has the letters I and P for intellectual property. We have the concept, the basic software, we have a business plan. We need legal and commercial advice. We need the time to build it out, investors, I don’t know,” he rubbed his chin, “that’s Dillon’s bag, not mine. But we need venture capital.”

  “What if I could get you the money?”

  “I must’ve been some lay.”

  “I should’ve left you starving and bleeding in the foyer.”

  He smiled, but tried to hide it by looking away. “Wentworth money?”

  “No. We’re not in the venture cap game. Do you know how many IT ventures succeed?”

  “You’re going to tell me.”

  “Most start-ups fail. Depending on how you define failure, and let’s go with projected return on investment, then eight out of ten fail.”

  “I didn’t tell you to get your help.”

  That was true. He’d told her in an attempt to level their risk profile, to willingly put his own job safety in her hands, and show her he was no threat.

  And to keep her in bed.

  “But you’ll be pig-headed enough not to take it.”

  He folded his arms and leant back on the vanity. He was trying not to laugh. He really didn’t care what she thought of him. The panic she’d felt waking in his arms was still in her limbs. He was a one night stand who’d overstayed his welcome but stood in her bathroom as though he owned it. “You’ve been called pig-headed before.”

  He licked his lips; a precursor to responding, except he didn’t. She fought the urge to drop her bath sheet, walk across the room to him and lick where he’d licked. “Assuming you’re not on a superhero fantasy kick about your own awesomeness, I know someone you should meet.”

  “I don’t need a cape.”

  She believed him. There was no trace of fakery in him, no element of false bravado.

  “You’d introduce me?”

  ”I already have.”

  He cocked his head, unfolded his arms and braced against the vanity. “Jay?”

  “Ask Dillon if he knows Jay Summers-Denby.”

  Mace planted a hand over his face. He spoke through his fingers. “I know that name. That’s Summers-Denby? Dressing gown, bandaid, BLT, hissy fit, wants to get in your pants?”

  She walked passed him towards the bedroom. She needed to be away from him and dressed. From the falling light outside she knew it was getting close to dinnertime. “He has a global venture cap fund. And he’s not interested in what’s between my legs.”

  “Shit.”

  She picked her dress up from the floor. Mace followed her into the bedroom and watched while she went to the drawer for fresh underwear. “If you’re thinking you should’ve been nicer to him, you’re on the money.”

  9: DNA

  He’d have to let Dillon take a good swing at him. That was all Mace could think about as he dressed. He’d been in a room with Jay Summers-Denby, the man Dillon quoted like he was the Messiah, the venture capitalists to end all venture capitalists, and he’d snarled at him, virtually challenged him to compare dicks, and flaunted his sexfest with Jacinta.

  Fuuck. />
  The only good thing—the man was gay. Had to be. He watched Jacinta put on peach coloured lace underwear. It was impossible not to watch her. Unless she was trying to get him to spill his life’s secrets or was pissy with him, he didn’t want to glance away from her.

  How she looked when she came, petal soft and shockingly fragile, he wanted to own that look and never let it be exposed to another man’s sight.

  He shouldn’t have let her fall asleep in the bath, but exhaustion sat in black smudges under her eyes and he’d wanted it, for himself, that quiet come down, that slow peace with a gorgeous woman in his arms.

  He needed to watch himself; he’d gone too far too quick with her. Told her stuff that was important to him. Wanted her to listen, wanted to know her secrets too. He wasn’t sure where that’d come from, wasn’t his usual style. Not that it mattered. They were one unexpected rip-tearing night and one delayed exit away from being done with each other. And that’s how he needed it to be. He didn’t have time for this. And the idea of him and her—one drunken night and a whole lot of very satisfying sexual gymnastics? Sure. But program over.

  He watched her step into the dress she’d had on earlier. He stopped her hand at the zipper. Did it up; letting his knuckles brush against her back. Her skin was so silken he thought about running his nose and mouth up her neck while she wound her damp hair back into a knot. She looked over her shoulder at him; a knowing smirk. His chance to touch her was drawing to a close. He could feel her distancing herself.

  They’d left the TV on, tuned to the news station. It was showing other vision but a ticker on the bottom of the screen kept repeating the various stats: victims’ details, information hotlines and websites. They waited for a bulletin and learned the lockdown was still in effect. The area contained had narrowed substantially, but not sufficiently to exclude her building.

  Jacinta moved into the kitchen. “That has to mean they know where he is.”

  It also meant Mace was stuck. She hung about the open fridge door. He hovered between the sense that he should apologise for whatever it was he’d done to erect a wall between them and relief that they’d come to this. It would be easier to walk away.