by Nikki Duncan
“You’re winning this game.” He waved a hand up and down in the air beside him in only his boxer briefs. “Clearly.”
“Maybe I did win.” She crawled across the bed in her underwear until she knelt before him. She hooked her fingers in his elastic waistband and pulled down. “Is there a reason we can’t both be winners?”
He smoothed his palms down her shoulders, keeping his fingers straight. Electric warmth covered her skin everywhere he touched. She loved his touch.
He stepped out of his boxers and rubbed his jaw along her hair. “I like the way you think, Darci.”
“I think you should stop talking.” She grabbed his hips and pulled him to the bed, rolling a moment before he squashed her.
“So, you indulged my fantasy of a man cleaning.” Straddling him, she placed her hands on either side of his head, bracing herself over him. “Do you have a fantasy?”
“You.” He set a hand on the back of her neck and pulled her down until their noses brushed. “You’re my fantasy, Darci.”
“Pretty words from a pretty man,” she said as she kissed him. He was a man who’d promised simple sex without the complication of romance. Technically he was keeping his word, but between the lines of technicality were the signs of non-traditional romance.
They ordered from or ate at her favorite places more often than his. He watched her favorite shows before his, though they shared more than she’d have expected.
Tugging her deeper into the kiss, he hugged her close, held her for a moment longer than seemed normal. Then he eased his grip a little, but he didn’t release her until he flipped her. Humor and fun glinted in his gaze.
Her breath whooshed from her lungs as a result of the sudden shift from tender to playful. Dancing fingers and nibbling teeth moved over her torso and stomach until she was writhing in a fit of giggles. The ticklish wiggles heightened every instance of her leg brushing his, his body beneath her palms as she pretended to push him away, her nipples pebbling harder when he blew on them.
Her panties were soaked and her back muscles grew taut with the quickly approaching orgasm.
As if he sensed her readiness, he shifted between her legs and covered her with his mouth. Unconcerned with the barrier of her panties, he stroked his tongue from back to front. At her clit, he stabbed the nubbin with the tip of his tongue.
Her hips bucked.
He retreated, leaving her trembling, and repeated the stroke and thrust. One time, he simply moved away. The next, he swirled his tongue over her clit. And the next, he sucked her between his teeth and bit down.
She wanted to open wider and wrap her legs around his head, hold him prisoner. She settled for planting her feet on the bed and squeezing the sides of his head between her thighs when he reached her clit. When he moved back for the licking swipe she relaxed her thighs.
Time passed in a blur of licks and nibbles and sucks with her muscles tensing and the heat at her core growing more and more intense until holding back became impossible.
“Let go, Darci. Let me watch you.”
Unable to deny him, she relinquished control and gave herself over to the power of orgasm. It penetrated deep into her pores and tissues, traipsed along her skin, squeezed her heart.
After a hum that sounded innately happy, though he didn’t reach completion, Victor moved up to lean against the headboard and snuggled her close. In long, smooth strokes he brushed a hand over her hair, easing away her remaining tension until her lids grew heavy and she closed them.
The steady bump bump of his heart beneath her ear. The glide of his hand on her hair while the thumb of his other hand moved rhythmically over the pulse in her wrist. The comfort of being in his home, as relaxed as she was in her own. It all equaled intimacy on a level she hadn’t bargained for.
Then he raised the proverbial stakes with a whispered, “I’ve fallen in love with you.”
Chapter Seven
Darci tapped her toes on the tile beneath her desk and stared at her monitor until the pop-up message blurred.
When can I see you?
It seemed like a mundane request, harmless even, except it wasn’t. Just as his whispered confession, when he’d clearly thought she’d fallen asleep, was neither mundane nor harmless.
They made a deal. No strings. No complications. He’d broken the rules and complicated things. And he’d done so after hearing why she wouldn’t be emotionally tied to anyone.
She’d wanted to bolt as soon as he’d spoken. Staying still and pretending sleep had drained her last vestige of energy while waiting for him to fall asleep had tested her willpower.
When his breathing had finally grown heavy with sleep, she’d snuck away, and she hadn’t responded to a message—computer popup or text—since.
I miss you. Another message popped up.
“I miss you too,” she whispered into her empty office. “Now get out of my system.”
Missing him and having the strength to not lose herself in him… She needed to stay away until she trusted her libido, hell, her heart, to see him.
“I told you she’d be here,” Shayna, the invitation queen, said from the open door.
“Then it’s definitely time for a change of venue,” Lori said with a nod toward the front doors. “We’re going for drinks. You’re coming.”
Darci looked at her computer again and the three words staring back at her. They were less harmless than the “I love you” Victor had let slip, if hacking her computer could be considered harmless, but they somehow weighed as heavily.
She’d spent a month of Friday nights and Saturdays and Sundays with Victor. She’d turned down time with her friends so she could have more time with him. She’d worked every day to hide how happy he made her, because she didn’t want to listen to her friends gush. For the last nine days she’d instead worked at pretending happiness because she found herself missing Victor.
It was more exhausting than any time before because she’d had a glimpse of what it was like to share her time with someone who understood her desire for the quiet of home. Not that they’d been to her home, but he hadn’t tried to talk her into going to bars or clubs and when they ate out it was always someplace off the main beat.
He was the perfect balance of being alone and being with someone. Tonight, it looked like she’d be doing the socially accepted definition of hanging out.
“Drinks, huh? I could go for a drink.” She clicked the X at the top of the window, closing Victor’s message. Another window popped up.
Friday night isn’t the same without you. If you’re not busy, stop by?
“I could definitely go for a few drinks,” she stated while closing the new window and turning off the monitor before she risked seeing a new one.
With her purse in hand, Darci headed to the door.
“Do you need to lock the vault?”
“It’s locked.” The vault was always locked if she wasn’t in it, but if she thought she could pass it off as a believable excuse to delay the inevitable she’d have tried. She loved her friends but was still searching for an escape thirty minutes later as they settled on barstools at their favorite bar.
The moment the bartender turned away to get their drinks Shayna drummed her hands on the bar and plunged. “Where’ve you been hiding, Darci?”
“Working, not hiding,” Darci said.
“Hiding in work maybe. Though that doesn’t explain the evenings you’ve turned us down.”
“Watch it, Shayna. She’s about to remind you she’s not a people person.”
“Thank you.” Darci smiled at the bartender, before addressing her friends. “It could be said I suffered from people overload during the bridal show.”
“You can say it,” Lori said with a grin. “That’s not going to make me believe it. The show was weeks ago.”
Of course it wouldn’t, because she was a horrible liar. It was another reason she wouldn’t allow herself to see Victor. He would ask why she’d stopped coming around without an explanati
on. He might even remind her that they’d had an agreement that either of them could end things at any time with no hard feelings.
Facing him meant facing the confession he didn’t know she’d heard which meant facing the rules of the deal they’d made.
“I know that look.” Lori tapped a nail against her wine glass, grinning.
“What look?” Darci asked, blinking.
“Even when you’re here you’re somewhere else.”
Shayna picked up the conversation. “That’s the sign of a woman with a man on her mind.”
“Instead of tonight being about harassing me, why don’t we talk about Lori’s continued rejections of Trevor?”
“We can keep talking about you,” Lori insisted.
“If you would accept his proposal, and we all know you’re close to it, I could show you the headpiece I’ve been sketching for you. It’s going to be fantastic.” Like every other conversation with her friends, the sidetrack would only work temporarily. If at all. “I was talking to my jeweler the other day, and he tells me the gems I have in mind will look like perfectly smooth milk chocolate.”
“Speaking of chocolate…” Lori drummed her fingers on the bar. “I talked Grey into joining Tess on the catering side of things.”
“How’s she doing?” Darci had liked Grey Burgess the instant she met her, probably because she’d identified with the woman’s clear desire to be away from people. Given that she’d spent several years in WitSec until she’d found her way out with the help of her FBI husband Liam Burgess, her hesitance was understandable.
“She’s adjusting to freedom.” Lori got a far-off look in her eyes for a moment. “That’s something I understand.”
“He does love her.” Shayna sighed a sigh that was more like a moan.
It was something she did almost every time she talked about a couple who clearly belonged together. She’d sounded the same way when she was encouraging Leigh to go after Burton. “She’s lucky,” Darci said.
“You could be lucky too, Darci. If you’d just go out with someone.”
“I don’t want to go out with someone.”
“Then we’ll find you another someone,” Tabatha said as she slipped onto a stool.
“I thought you had plans tonight.” Shayna grinned, obviously approving of Tabatha’s plan. “I saw your tweet and was curious.”
“The tweet was mild,” Tabatha defended. Not that she had a reputation for stepping over a professional line. If anything, their clients loved her tweets. “He was the biggest douche I’ve ever had the unfortunate experience of meeting. I left before finishing the first drink.”
“That’s bad.” Darci wasted no time leaping on the new distraction. “What did he do?”
“It wasn’t any one thing as much as it was his arrogance.”
“Arrogance hasn’t bothered you before,” Lori pointed out.
“No, but this guy… He said I’m stiff and uptight.” Her teeth ground audibly. “He’s an ass.”
“Ha!” Shayna’s laugh burst free. “What gave him that impression?”
The left side of Tabatha’s lip curled in mock offense, but she was laughing in the next breath. “Running late, which I could forgive, he slid onto the stool beside me, leaned close and sniffed me. He sniffed me.”
“Did he say you smelled funny?” Darci asked. She’d been guilty of sniffing Victor more than once, though she’d done it while he was sleeping or not paying attention. She hadn’t been able to pinpoint his scent, but it was delicious.
“Not at all, but after sniffing me he asked if I’d be going back to his place with him.”
“It’s an uncommon way to begin a first date, but not enough to leave so soon when you could just as easily set him straight.”
“As if you and Trevor had a normal start, Lori. And I could have stayed to correct him, but trust me when I say he’s not worth it. Life is too short to waste it on men like that.”
“Who’s to say what’s normal in this world?” Shayna challenged. “Lori was a spy posing as a call girl when she met and almost killed Trevor. Now they’d be engaged if she would just say yes already.”
“And Leigh met Burton when he was handcuffed naked to a toilet in a home goods store,” Lori said.
“Misty’s the most normal of us so far. If being saved from a mugger by Captain Hook in a parking garage can be counted as normal.”
“I’m still not calling him.” Tabatha shook her head. “He isn’t welcome in my life.”
There was more to the story than Tabatha was letting on, something beneath her decision she didn’t want to talk about. Diving deeper into her aborted date would keep the conversation away from what they saw as Darci’s pathetic dating life, but resisting would hopefully invite the karma goddesses to be kind.
“I am surrounded by women who seem content to stay single,” Lori said sullenly. “I wish you guys understood what you were missing.”
“The day I meet a man who can slip into my world and worship me without question and isn’t bothered by my OCD I’ll let you know,” Darci promised. A voice in her head whispered Victor’s name.
“Sure,” Shayna said as she pointed to her empty glass, silently asking the bartender for a refill. “You’d have to date someone for him to discover the limits of your OCD.”
Lori added, “Who knows how long you’d have to date him before letting him near your place.”
If they had any idea how close she’d been to inviting Victor over, or that she’d extended the offer to include his dog, there’d be no end to the questions. Or to the prodding for her to keep seeing him.
If they found out and began questioning her, she’d have to admit how she missed him, at least to herself. If she admitted that, allowed herself to think about it, she’d find herself at his door pleading for a new arrangement. That would open her up to too many risks, especially if he really was falling for her. She wasn’t ready for something as heavy as love.
Chapter Eight
Victor passed Katie’s desk on the way to his office after an OSO1 team meeting. Tests showed that the chip was working, the camouflage skin on the orb worked, but the controlling software was still glitchy, and Blue Chip had policies in place that prevented unstable products from being released. On projects of such importance, part of that policy required the approval of five team leads.
At the moment, no one was willing to sign off on the project and he was the lead on the malfunctioning part. He’d assured Trevor that nothing would distract him, yet he was distracted. More so now that Darci had stopped visiting.
His mind felt muddled, unfocused, which he’d have expected to feel while being with a woman. He and Darci weren’t together, though. Obviously.
They’d made an agreement to keep things simple. She’d put an end to it with her silence. Respecting her decision should be easy, but he instead found his mind filling with questions.
When he should be working out code issues he instead formulated and programmed messages to show up in her computer. He had no way of knowing what messages she’d read, or what she felt about them. He wasn’t proud to have become a cyber stalker and though he knew he should stop he wasn’t ready to give up the hope that she’d hunt him down to confront him.
“You’re back. Good.” Katie rushed into his office. Her hair, always tidy in a low ponytail or braid, was falling loose around her face.
“I thought you were taking the afternoon off.” Taking in her disheveled appearance, he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“We need you. For Lindy.”
Thoughts of code and Darci parted and concern for his sister moved onto the path. With her wedding only two days away he’d been impressed with how well Lindy had been holding herself together. Apparently it was time for some unraveling.
“What’s the matter?”
“We’re meeting for the bachelorette party in an hour and a half and Lindy’s tiara and sash haven’t been delivered. Morons wrote the date wrong when I ordered it and it will be her
e tomorrow.”
This was the big emergency? “Why does she have to have a tiara? And why can’t you get one from a party store?”
“Those are cheap! I am not going to be the Maid of Honor known for a last-minute plastic tiara and paper sash.”
“Okay. It’ll be okay.”
“How?” His always-together assistant was the one unraveling, not the bride.
Hoping to avoid another wrath-invoking suggestion, Victor thought immediately of Darci and worked to put Katie at ease. “Why don’t you go fix your hair and makeup? Do whatever else you need to do to get ready for tonight.”
“What about the tiara and sash?”
“I’ll handle them.” He turned her toward the door and moved with her down the hall to the elevators.
On the first floor, he parted ways with Katie, assuring her again. “I’ll bring it by your place in an hour.”
He didn’t know what he would do to fix the situation, but he turned toward Tulle and Tulips hoping they would have some ideas. Like the other times he’d entered the place, the lobby was nearly full of people and, also like every time before, he was greeted instantly and cheerfully by the receptionist who commanded the round desk with ease.
“Good afternoon, Victor. Did you have an appointment?”
“I don’t, Jenny, but I’m hoping you ladies can help a guy out.”
“What do you need?” She focused fully on him and smiled. “Is everything okay with Lindy’s plans?”
“For the wedding, yes. Apparently they have an issue with the bachelorette party. They need a bride-to-be tiara and sash.”
Jenny nodded. “And Katie isn’t willing to go to a party store.”
“I’m surprised I’m still walking after making that exact suggestion.”
“It’s fun when the Maid of Honor is tougher to please than the bride,” Jenny said as she picked up the phone and pressed a button. “I need you.” Changing phone lines, she repeated the same a second time.