Sold Short (Sidelined Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  Rani was next to arrive. She gave him a what gives look, which in sibling language meant she knew he’d forgotten about this. Ten minutes later Ana arrived, a little flustered, lugging a heavy backpack of books, and he scored the same look.

  “I thought you said China House, not Jade Palace,” Ana said. ‘I went there first.” Odd for Ana to get it wrong. She got the same message everyone else did. He gave her a shrug. She gave Tavish a cheek kiss, squeezed Nita’s hand. “Where are Mom and Dad? Is Shush coming?”

  “They’ll be here in their own time,” said Nita. “But I’ve not heard from Shush. You messaged her, Dev?”

  He had and she’d responded with a smiley, and once the food was flowing he’d stop feeling like he’d let everyone down by changing things up. Perhaps if he said, look, my best friend dropped the fact she was planning to have a baby by turkey baster on me a day ago and it did something to my ability to make sense of the world, they might understand.

  And not.

  Vikram and Leela Patel were twenty minutes late. They came in full of smiles and Dev made his fourth apology after the birthday wishes and all-around hugging had settled. Now there was only Shush to wait on, but he ordered drinks and starters and listened to Rani and Ana complain about everything from transport to heartless law lecturers and sick people who should know how to take advice. That was Rani, a nurse like Mom, but unlike Mom, Rani’d had an empathy bypass.

  Shush was forty minutes late, and came in apologizing, but Dev had the waiter primed to place their order as soon as she arrived. He’d calculated the mealtime, and with running late it could be after eleven before he got out of here. As host, he couldn’t be the first to leave.

  There was another round of hugging and kissing, and then a great disruptive seat migration engineered by Tavish that meant Dev ended up with Nita on one side and Shush on the other. He eyed Tavish sitting opposite and wondered why he’d felt that was necessary.

  “It’s his birthday, he wants everyone happy,” said Shush, leaning into his shoulder.

  “It’s why I choose Jade Palace. Chinese is his favorite food.”

  “Are you okay after whatever devil was in you last night?”

  “Totally,” he said. “And I’m sorry again. I’ll make it up to you.”

  “What are you two whispering about,” said Nita.

  “We’re not,” said Shush.

  “Okay,” Nita responded but it was singsong comic and it caused Tavish to smile into his wine glass.

  He looked at Shush. “We’re not,” he said, because he couldn’t say much more while the whole table watched them without making a thing of something that probably wasn’t a thing. Except it might be one. Why was this so confusing?

  The first course of dishes came out and Rani told stories that Mom didn’t shut down that made you never want to need a hospital and shouldn’t have gone well with food, because they included projectile pus and other gross body fluids, but made for the kind of conversation that had everyone engaged, although Tavish was more interested in looking at him and Shush. It might’ve been because Rani was to his left, but it wasn’t like Tavish had a dysfunctional neck and couldn’t turn it to look at her. So, huh.

  He was so distracted by the gleam in Tavish’s eye, he was ill prepared for his own dad to sideswipe him. “Is it formal, Dev?” He looked down at himself. Distinctly Silicon Valley casual but everyone was in on the joke because there was laughter he didn’t understand.

  “Funny boy. I mean you and Shushmila,” said Vikram.

  He looked at Mom and then at Shush. “I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

  Mom lowered her eyes, but Shush smiled and put her hand on his thigh. He almost left his seat. He was a partner in a big deal tech company but he was having trouble with ordinary family politics. He should’ve seen this coming. This was his own fault. “Excuse me for a moment.” He stood, made off to the bar where he would fake conversing with a waiter, and take a moment to clear the steam from between his ears.

  “I didn’t say anything.” Shush at his back, her hand on his shoulder.

  He groaned. “Do they all think you came after me?”

  “No, they think I’ve gone to the bathroom.”

  Sure they did. He turned to her. “What’s going on with your dad, with my dad?”

  “I maybe just mentioned your name more than usual.”

  “What would be usual?”

  Shush’s face colored. His went blue screen of death. “What did you tell them?”

  “That we were seeing each other, which is the truth. You want me to lie to my parents?”

  He put both hands to her shoulders. “I thought it was clear we were only fooling around.”

  “It’s clear to me that we like it.”

  He ducked his head so their foreheads rested together. He had to go back into that private dining room and tell his family and her parents that they weren’t formal, they weren’t anything, and then he had to not see Shush again outside of family occasions. He was going to disappoint everyone he loved and hurt Shush terribly.

  “We’re good friends who’ve been sleeping together. But we’re not doing that anymore and I’m sorry I gave you the impression we would last night. If you want to tell Nita that, okay.”

  “Are you kidding, I’m not telling Mom that. We can let it drift and they’ll stop thinking about it.”

  That wasn’t happening; he and Shush were the set-up of the century, no one was letting it go. He kissed Shush on the forehead and spun her around so she’d get back to the table before he did. “Tell them I had to take a call.”

  She moved off and he turned back to the waiter’s station, and standing there holding a bag of takeout was Sarina.

  “Best Chinese food,” she said, swinging the bag so he could see it.

  “Family birthday,” he said, gesturing the way Shush had gone.

  “Ah-huh,” Sarina said. “Look, ah, by the time you’ve finished it will be late. We can talk another time.”

  He walked around the counter so they were on the same side. “Are you pushing me off because—”

  “You’re busy, Dev. Family. I get it.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “I don’t think anything.”

  “You think I lied to you about me and Shush.”

  Sarina tugged her satchel higher on her shoulder, taking her irritation with Dev out on the leather strap. “I’ve spent absolutely no time thinking about you and your conquest. Why would I?”

  Conquest? What kind of word was that to use? As if he was some legendary Lothario. “You spent enough time thinking about it that you worked out we’d slept together.”

  “You might get a thrill out of confronting me in public places, but my food’s getting cold.”

  He palmed the top of his head, the day was a total fuck-up. “I’ll see you later.” They would sort this out and be done with this sniping at each other they’d never done before.

  “Not tonight. You’re otherwise engaged and I just want to eat and get to bed.”

  He let her go. Watched Sarina exit the restaurant and stand on the street while she made a phone call. She didn’t walk toward the car park. Wherever she was going, her food was going to get even colder.

  He went back to his family, endured the gleam in Tavish’s eye and distracted himself with food, not worrying about disappointing his family, having messed with Shush’s affections, and the fact that after she finished her call, Sarina had dumped her food in the trash and walked into the hotel across the street.

  NINE

  Sarina went into the whole thing angry, and for no reason she could identify. Nothing had changed. Every decision she’d made about her relationship with Dev had been vindicated. There was no reason to feel this way.

  Maybe it was hunger. She hadn’t been able to stomach food after seeing Dev and Shush in Jade Palace. She’d only picked the place because it was their favorite because she had no view about food that wasn’t inspired by De
v.

  Maybe it was the room. It was too small, though she’d lashed out and upgraded to a superior suite. It was too neat and featureless, too beige and gilt and comfortably pleasant to contain the way she felt. It should’ve soothed, it was designed to be blandly elegant, it wasn’t meant to be paced around, and there was nothing she could throw without breaking, and she might be angry, but she wasn’t rockstar hotel-thrashing mad.

  She was dump good food in the trash, irrationally disturbed, dangerously unsteady mad. For no good reason.

  Disappointed would be reasonable. There was disappointment, but it was like a spray of perfume she’d walked through, a lingering scent. She kicked off her shoes and threw her earrings on the desk. There were layers to this anger, it was the top coat. Under it was anxiety, irritation, and deeper still, right on top of her skin, prickling loss, grief.

  She didn’t want to feel any of that. None of it had a place with where she was and what she intended to do.

  This was a crisis booty call and she’d ordered a screaming orgasm.

  Colby saw it as soon as he entered the room. “Hi.” He dragged the word out, took it up an octave and dangled a question mark in there.

  “Thank you for taking me at such short notice.”

  “You’re not cocktails on opening night, but it was a pleasant surprise.”

  He didn’t look around the room, he only looked at her. He was color and warmth and everything she needed to clear the way she felt. “Lucky me.”

  “I’m not thinking luck is running for you tonight. Is this nerves, because—”

  “I’m not nervous.”

  “You’re something, Sarina, and I’m not sure I like it.”

  “You’re paid to like it.”

  She got one perfectly manicured raised eyebrow. “I’m not paid to have my concern insulted.”

  She lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  “Yes, you did. What’s going on?” He held up a hand. “I don’t need to know the specifics unless you want me to. I do need to know if this is what you should be doing right now.”

  She gave him her best authoritative head tilt. “I want sex with you.”

  He walked further into the room and sat on the end of the king-sized bed with its dusky gold coverlet. He wore an expensive charcoal suit with a white shirt, no tie. Whoever had cancelled on him was missing out on a glorious visual treat. He looked incredible. He was elegant and together and she was a crumpled, day-bedraggled mess, who smelled vaguely of Chinese food and pasta dust.

  He patted the spot beside him and she sat. “And you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I think you have other ways of occupying my mouth.”

  She leaned into him, put her hand to his face. She wanted his lips and his skin and the citrus pepper of his cologne to take away the stench of the day. She wanted his hands and his tongue to lick away the irrational sense of defeat that’d been behind her hard-up summons and the sense of loss that’d trailed her into the hotel. The heat of Colby moving on her, in her, was what she needed to strip the discomfort of resentment out of her head.

  She had no right to resent Dev. No right to be angry with him. But for all that, she was furious and she needed that emotion cleared from her cache.

  “Please, Colby.” She moved closer, leaned into him and lifted her face, pressed her lips to his, her eyes wired open. He didn’t move; let her take the lead, let her prove she wanted this.

  And she wanted it with fire, with clanging alarms, with scorched earth that left nothing behind, emptying her of this discontent she had no use for. She wanted to limp home, worked over and sex sore, stinging with it, reset and ready for the new life she’d build herself.

  She moved her lips on Colby’s, moved her hand, sliding it from his face to the back of his neck, using that to anchor herself, taking the other hand to his chest and meeting cool cotton hiding muscle. He let her push his suit jacket off, let her part his lips so the kiss became less of a demand and more of a labyrinth to get lost in. When she climbed over his lap, he banded his arms around her back, gave her his tongue and put sparks under her skin that danced all along her nerve endings.

  They’d done this much and more before with less clothing and she wasn’t anxious this time. This time there would be actual sweaty sex. Colby’s lips seemed to soften, did lips do that, who cares. These kisses were wetter and slower and disconnecting. They made her floaty and handsy. How did buttons get so hard to undo? And maybe she should be embarrassed by the noises she was making, rising up from low in her belly, wounded sounds to go with the desperate urgency thrumming in her blood.

  He took care of the buttons, he got her arms out of the way long enough to get her top over her head and then there was skin against skin, the shocking richness of it making her eyes close and her hands clutch. Between her legs there was more heat, the threat of pleasure, and tonight she wasn’t going home without feeling Colby all over, all the way.

  He got the tie out of her hair and took a great fistful of it, guiding her head so kissing could be more, and nothing was beige; it was suntanned luscious and diamond blindness on sea water, ripples of blue and streaks of magenta, and pulses of energy hammering in her ears.

  “Slow down, baby.”

  She opened her eyes and, yes, that was better, to see him as well as feel the ridges and satin smooth of him, the moguls of muscle laddering his stomach. Watching her own hands slide on his body short-circuited her brain, made new connections, greedy ones.

  “Don’t make me stop.”

  They didn’t need to. All the boundaries had been discussed, all the protocols were understood. This was designer sex, a mix and match environment where she’d tailored the experience and now, tonight, she trusted the delivery. She would push and he would respond. She would allow and he would take, and this was the safest she’d ever felt with a man. Colby, who she liked for the way he looked and the honesty he employed and the care he showed, whether it was part of the package deal or real, was hers tonight to love as she would, to have no regrets about.

  “Hold on.” He stood with her arms around him, her knees at his hips, and her back hit the bed with a bounce as he half placed, half dropped her there. He stood at the bottom of the bed, shifting his weight side to side as he toed off his shoes, undid his belt, dropped his trousers.

  “Goodness me.” She gasped that. He was something to look at. Buffed and polished and about to let her dirty him up.

  He grinned. “All yours,” and lost the briefs.

  So, so glamorously naked. He should be forbidden, priced out of the market, his best rude bits blacked out by the sensors, but nothing she desired was forfeit tonight.

  “What are you thinking, Sarina?”

  That she wasn’t wearing the sexy underwear she’d bought online for this. That spontaneity was something she should try more often. That this would be over before she was ready, that it wasn’t something she could keep, not even borrow in a way that made sense. “That I’m a lucky, lucky girl.”

  He crawled over her, a thousand percent ready when she was too many kinds of overheated and tightly coiled and liable to splutter to a standstill. “I was angry.”

  “I know you were.” He ran warm hands over her ribs and they flared, as if they had a life of their own, making her breath short.

  “Not at you.”

  “Good to know. At who?”

  “I want the sex, not the talk therapy.”

  She tried to pull him to her but he laughed, then licked her stomach as he undid the tie on her pants and jerked them down her legs, leaving her in serviceable but terminally unsexy cotton underwear. Not that he noticed. He climbed over her again and sat on his heels across her thighs, watching her face, erection at the ready. What was she supposed to do about that? It was so there. Ready, set, go. And his eyes were so very blue, so unlike the dark chocolate ones she normally looked into, his confidence was so very easy on her conscience. She didn’t have to worry about what Colby
wanted, what was best for him, whether he could hurt her just by being in a restaurant, or she him, just by not telling him everything, because they didn’t exist outside of this scene. There were no future expectations. They didn’t mean anything to each other apart from an exchange of body fluids and a rollicking good time.

  “I’m angry at my best friend.”

  He played a finger under the elastic of her underpants, then pressed the heel of his hand to her mound. She’d have levitated off the bed if he hadn’t had her pinned. She made a crow like caw that was painfully raspy in her throat.

  “What did he do?”

  “Nothing, he did nothing, but that hurts more than I believed possible.”

  Colby stretched his weight over her, heat and hardness and a gentle hand to her face. “We can make that feel better. Take the sting out for a little while.”

  “Yes, please.”

  He caught her earlobe between his teeth and tugged, while his hands did things to make her flinch and twist, to sigh and whimper, and forget how Dev had looked at her at Jade Palace, like she was a problem to be dealt with, another thing for him to worry about, to feel he had to fix.

  She wasn’t broken. She was nobody’s obligation.

  From ear to neck and over her cheek, Colby’s lips preached amnesty, while his hands beseeched absolution. She jerked against him, chasing his mouth, seeking her own exoneration. She’d purge herself by gorging on him, handfuls of his hip and shoulder, the taste of his warmth, leverage against his ass, peace inside her head. Knees wide and lifted, pelvis tipped and rolling, her skin flushed hot and her heart sounding in her ears like a countdown to release.

  “More.”

  He gave it, dragging his lips down her chest, palming aside the cotton of her bra and closing his hand over her breast. Puppet strings to her core, yanking on instinct and making her tight with want and loose with care and greedy like the ocean for the pull of the moon and a high tide to wash through her, ferocious in its reach.

  She bucked and slapped a hand to his arm, the crack of it enough to ground her in the way his lips on her nipple had made her soar. None of this was enough, and yet it was too much, out of order, running scared, unbearable.