Sold Short (Sidelined Book 3) Read online

  Dev would be gutted to lose Arik but he was about to quit for the one thing Sarina couldn’t combat, just like Nerida and the others before him.

  “This is the worst part of my job, Arik. I want to fight for you to stay, convince you it’s the right thing, but I could be doing the wrong thing by you.” What an uncomfortable echo of her personal life.

  He groaned. “Could you maybe fight a little?”

  If there was a chance to keep Arik, she’d fight dirty and he’d opened up his soft flank. He wanted to stay. “You have to ask yourself if this company makes a product you can get behind and if they’re well-funded.” A pet-feeder service wouldn’t keep Arik’s attention long. “Do they have a vision, or just a gimmick, is their leadership strong and focused.”

  She stopped. If Arik asked that question of her about Plus, she’d have trouble answering honestly. They were not doing better together. He nodded. She could see him processing what he knew.

  “Are the people you’ll work for talented, passionate, respectful? Are they going to challenge you?”

  “Reid shouted at me once for some code I broke.” Arik shook his head at the memory. “I almost quit that day. It wasn’t the first time and it was humiliating, but he was right, and I learned from that. Next time he did it, I shouted back and he laughed at me. Reid’s all about the passion. I learned from that too. But I’d walk on a bed of rusty nails for Dev, I respect him as an engineer, as a manager and a person, and that’s what I’m having trouble with. I don’t want to leave because I love working with Dev and I’m having trouble with the concept of not doing it.”

  Hearing that shouldn’t make tears sting behind her eyes. She blinked them away.

  “It’s just that lately Dev’s not been himself, and it’s made me question things.”

  That landed on her like a Hudson Hornet Super Hollywood dropped from a great height.

  “When do you need to make the decision, Arik?”

  “A week.”

  That gave her time to come up with a new strategy. “Leave it with me.”

  She went back to her office and called Dev. He answered briskly, knew it was her. It was the way they talked to each other now. Brisk, impersonal, verging on frosty.

  “I need to talk to you about your team and you’re not going to like it.”

  He swore. A Reid-like torrent of non Dev-like words. “How urgent is it? I have an investor presentation in ten minutes and the company insurance physical after that.”

  “We should talk today.”

  “I can shift the physical.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “I’ll come see you when I get free.”

  She was almost dead from hunger by the time he showed. He stood in her doorway, as if coming inside her goldfish bowl would have him treading water he found too deep. “Can it wait?”

  It could, but Arik was the most senior member of Dev’s team to be targeted. “I’d rather we talked now, if you can?”

  “You look tired.” He was looking at his green sneakers so how would he know. He didn’t want to do this now.

  “I’m hungry.” And not sleeping well was probably starting to show.

  He thumped the doorjamb, looking back out at the rows of empty desks. “Go home. I’ll pick something up and bring it around.”

  “Really?”

  He looked directly at her. “I’ve had enough of today and I’m hungry too. It’s just food and whatever bad news you need to tell me.”

  She couldn’t disagree with that. He went back to his office and she closed out of the programs on her desktop, noting the email that told her he’d aced his physical in all its forms, and left Plus, beating Dev home by approximately the time it took for him to order and collect a meal from Jade Palace. There was closer, there was quicker, but there wasn’t any takeout she liked more.

  She had time to throw on sweats and a t-shirt and give the house a quick tidy, shoving Project Offshoot stuff into a neater pile on the kitchen counter. They ate, and it was glorious, the wontons making her smack her lips together and moan.

  Dev caught her and smiled around a chopstick and they were almost Dev and Sarina sharing a meal like the old days, but then he got down to business.

  “What do you need to tell me?”

  There wasn’t any way to soften it. “Arik has been made an offer by the company raiding us.”

  “Fuck.” Dev pushed away from the table and stalked around it.

  She told him the details of the offer and watched the tension in him build. “There’s more.”

  He circled again. “This mystery start-up is prepared to near double his salary, what more is there?”

  “Arik came to me because he’s not totally sold on the offer.”

  “Okay, that’s good, but why didn’t he come to me?”

  She watched him make another circuit of the table, and then said, “Because you’re part of the problem.”

  He stopped moving, facing away, his head low and his shoulders slumping. “How?”

  He was three chairs away, but she could feel the stress in him generating heat. “Arik worships you, Dev. Believes in you, trusts you, likes you and respects you.” Dear God, her voice cracked, she might as well have been talking about herself, “but they’re offering him more than we are, and you haven’t been yourself. He’s questioning his loyalty.” It was her fault Dev wasn’t himself, her wants and desires had split them up.

  Dev remained facing away, three chairs, the angle of the table between them and a world of distress in his posture.

  “He should.”

  His bitterness filled her senses, made her eyes water, her throat clog. “We can fix this.” Oh, please she needed to make this right. Dev and Arik. Herself and Dev.

  “Can we? How? What is there left to fix?”

  “Everything good about your relationship stands, it’s just under stress at the moment.” Everything good hadn’t been good enough for her. Despite what working with Reid had taught her about never been satisfied, maybe there was such a thing as good enough.

  “Some events are final. Some things get too mangled to straighten out,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure she believed that. She wasn’t certain they were still talking about Arik “What happened?”

  “I made a terrible mistake.”

  Sarina pushed her chair out from the table and stood, kept her eyes on Dev who didn’t turn. He didn’t want her to see his face. “What did you do? Nothing will be so torn we can’t mend it.” She had to believe that. He didn’t respond but for a tired exhale she felt as an ache all over her body.

  “I didn’t understand.”

  The hesitancy in his voice made her twist her hands together. “What didn’t you understand?” Maybe the same thing she didn’t, that when you hurt the one person who knows your heart the best, you hurt yourself harder.

  “That it would make me question everything.”

  Two chairs, the angle of the table and no distance at all between the skipping beat of her heart and the man she’d hurt and had no business comforting. Still she went to him, placed her hands on his back, and when he groaned and shifted his weight toward her, she slid her arms around his body, closing the distance between them, resting her forehead between his shoulder blades.

  Sorrow made her limbs heavy, made Dev unresisting, but he didn’t do more than accept her touch, his arms hanging by his sides. He suffered it. She jerked away, stepping back. Why would he want her touch when she’d so thoroughly rejected him, when he disapproved of her choices?

  “Sarina.” He turned and their eyes met, his so dark, the heavy lashes making them more magnetic, but she couldn’t hold his gaze, hers shifting sideways to avoid his condemnation.

  “Fuck this,” he said, “Fuck all of this between us.”

  There was half a heartbeat, suspended like a pending avalanche, before he palmed her cheek and tilted her face. She’d been in love with him forever, what if she was wrong about how he felt? “Dev—”
/>   He captured the rest of the sentence with a firm kiss before they crashed into each other, bodies slamming together, hands reaching, gripping, lips touching, sealing. Urgent and rough, the taste of blame, the press of confusion. A desperate tongue swipe she matched with her own, a pull on her hair made her whimper for more. Wrong and mad and vital. He was holding her up and tearing her down and making her wild for more of his touch, greedy to have more of him. She shivered and he trembled and they locked hard into each other, shutting out everything that wasn’t this fantasy of how they might’ve been.

  Lust-drunk on the smell and taste of him, on the way he tightened around her, caging her body to his, she could barely open her eyes until he commanded her to.

  “Look at me.”

  He was fierce. He didn’t want her to smile, but she did; it was an outlet for the joy she felt.

  “Tell me to leave.”

  He couldn’t go. She couldn’t bear to be shunted back into the lonely nothingness without him.

  She nudged his chin and licked up his throat, along his jaw, and opened her mouth over his ear to breathe. It was her answer, enough to make him yank her closer, grunt in pleasure. And that hollowed-out sound of him wanting unwrapped her.

  Backward, with stumbling feet in a dance neither of them was graceful enough for, she pulled, he steered, and still they bounced off a chair, a wall, a doorway, each step taking them closer to destiny or ruin.

  At her bed, they broke apart, both of them panting. He’d never been inside her bedroom before but he didn’t shift his eyes from her. She’d take him into her body where he’d always belonged. Her eyes slammed shut at the thought and he moved onto the bed with her, mouth to mouth to sustain each other, hands fumbling with the human elements: buttons and ties, hooks, shirts. Hearts skidding at the thrill of taking all they’d been and stripping out the nonessentials: history and comfort, convenience, leaving this: labored breathing and ungentle hands, sliding satin skin and chills of desire inside the lick of heat and the beguiling threat of possession.

  Dev’s shoes thudded to the floor. His pants zipper catching, he brushed her hands aside impatiently and undid it himself, his lips never leaving hers. He broke away with a guttural sound to drag his pants and her sweats off, leaving her almost bare, to crawl naked over her and lower his body to kiss all along her length, making her shake and snatch a tattered breath.

  They had no need for words; more than a decade of them stored, understood, remembered. There was no shock to see, to touch, to be matched naked, just the jolt of recognition. This was the shape of him, the width, the strength, the roundness, softness, hardness. This is how they fitted together: his rough against her smooth, her legs open, one of his between them, the other hitched at her side, his opposite forearm braced on the bed, his hand in her hair, hip to hip, chest to chest, no room for disagreements. This is how they breathed: out of sync and short and shuddering but settling to a gentler ease, with slower, deeper kisses and more deliberate caresses.

  Urgency bled out to a concert of sighing breaths and drugging kisses, each one fresh with purpose. In her house, on her bed, in her arms, he owned her entirely and yet there was further to fall.

  He left her mouth to love her body, humming against the indentation of her throat and down her chest, settling on his bent knees to bring both his hands to her breasts, kneading then revealing her tight, drawn nipples, flicking the barbell piercing, before taking it in his mouth, tonguing, adding the danger of teeth. A drawn-out suck that made her back arch. He was going to reset her expectations of what two prone people could do, how intense the connection between a hand and a rib cage, a thigh and a hip bone, a wet index finger and the midline of a fluttering belly could be. Enough to melt her spine, jelly her muscles, make her molten, but still electric enough to twitch at his touch.

  When he removed her underwear, the thought that he would touch her inside made her pelvis tilt in fear he might forgo that hot secret place he’d already made acutely slick. She could smell what he’d done to her, barely breathe in anticipation of the halting journey of his hand, from the crest of her hip to the junction of her thighs, where he traced the space between her legs and lost his own breath.

  When he touched her inside he started a whirlpool in her lower body, and one side of her head dissolved in a shower of sparks. He stroked and rubbed and she pushed back on his hand, unable to resist, crying out when he pinched, flicked, and gave her the pressure she needed. He’d make her come like this and she’d never have a coherent thought again and please, please, don’t stop.

  When he put his mouth on her she screamed, half rising from the bed, eyes flying open, because her ability to watch him was intimately connected with star systems forming and exploding and forming again inside her.

  He was beautiful, making her feel essential. He was essential making her feel wretched, gluttonous for more than his tongue and his clever hand, faster, harder, right there, right there, don’t stop, never stop . . .

  Until she hit a peak and broke apart, jaw clenched, with tears on her face and one of his hands so tightly clasped in hers they might need a surgical separation.

  And that was the warm-up.

  TWENTY-TWO

  If Dev stopped to think about this, his head was going to explode. He rested the side of his face on Sarina’s stomach and closed his eyes, listening as her breathing evened out, as her grip on his hand softened. He’d seen the clinic receipt in the jumble of paperwork on her kitchen counter, when he’d arrived. It was dated a week ago. He’d just given her an orgasm and she could be pregnant with a donor’s baby.

  He couldn’t think about a second tiny heartbeat inside her while she played with his hair, while she still held his hand, while he was hard and leaking on her sheets, hurting to be inside her. Maybe his head had already exploded because he shouldn’t turn his lips and kiss a line across to her hip bone and slide his arm under her ass so she couldn’t shift from his hold as he licked up her rib cage and over the swell of her breast to suck on her pierced nipple, the barbells clicking on his teeth.

  The smell of her skin was hypnotic, the way her body moved seduced every sensible notion straight out him, but the sounds she made, helpless and demanding at the same time, like she was losing and winning and needed both to survive, was his absolute undoing.

  He didn’t care it was wrong, because it felt good; that it was dangerous because he needed it as much as she did. More. He’d needed this his whole adult life without understanding it.

  She said the one word that cranked him from revved to overdrive, and she said it while grinding her hips on him.

  “More.”

  Last shred of restraint ripped, he eased over her, took her mouth, and aligned himself. She brought her knees up either side of his hips, feet pressed to the bed and arched, and he pushed inside, the wet heat grip of her like nothing he’d felt before, making his pulse thud so erratically it caused a stabbing pain in his chest.

  He scrambled for her other hand, needing to feel attached to her completely before he forgot what was him and what was her, before he lost the ability to still the raging urge to move, not in slow delicious pulses but in high-powered thrusts that would burn them up and take them both over too quickly.

  She gripped his fingers, moaning into his mouth and squeezing around him, and that was fuel ignition slamming into his pelvis and spine and surging through him to create a synchronized seesawing that brought pleasure so intense it made him howl and shake, while she bucked beneath him, her head thrown back in a rictus of same ecstasy that shook him apart as he emptied inside her.

  He rolled them before he crushed her, all his strength gone, but reluctant to pull free, knowing the moment he did he’d feel the loss as permanent. She was just as boneless, slumping beautifully over his chest, eyes closed, a mess of tangled hair, flushed cheeks and puffy lips. He had crescent nail marks on the back of both hands and he’d reddened her neck with kisses that were too aggressive. Superficial effects. He couldn’t o
rganize his thoughts to focus on the deeper ones, gave himself over to the luster of the afterglow and together they slipped into sleep.

  She was curled into his side when he woke, her leg across his thighs, her forehead smooshed into his arm. If it wasn’t a hire car parked out the front he’d have gone out and taken a swing at it. What had they done? They’d just had unprotected sex and they were mad with each other and she had an another insemination, so she was committed to her donor.

  But he couldn’t get Sarina pregnant if she already was. And she wouldn’t take the risk he would unless it was safe. He wasn’t sure what that meant. He couldn’t give her a disease because he’d just had his insurance check-up and gotten the all-clear on every possible ailment. But still, they were no better than Ana and her friends; worse because they were completely sober, drunk only on each other. The chemical sex was all them, no substances to blame.

  He expected great gushes of regret to wash over him, but he felt inappropriately light and that was take a bat to a rare classic car confusing.

  This was wrong but it was the most right thing he’d ever done.

  The desire to wake her with kisses and start up again wasn’t at all mystifying. He was hard again and he wanted her and if this was one and done for them then there was no point martyring himself when he could get to nirvana another way. Assuming he lived as long as his grandmother, he had plenty of years to perfect remorse.

  He stroked a hand across Sarina’s head and through her hair. Sometime in the last week she’d swapped the blue stripe out for vivid pink. Once he’d have known the exact day, the exact name of the color, but he’d been busy staying out of her way.

  Her body was so well formed to fit his, inside and out, it was a disaster he’d never guessed it before. Her left breast was slightly fuller than her right, but the right nipple was pierced, a man could pick a favorite if he had the time to make a closer study.

  She stirred when he took a handful of her ass, lifting her face and giving him a sleepy smile that morphed into lovely evil determination. He was not leaving here without being scarred. But he lost the thread of that thought when she climbed across him, centering over his dick, making them both gasp.