Offensive Behavior (Sidelined #1) (27 page)

Exasperation
colored his cheeks, sent pink streaks under the dark of beard hair growing in
and had him palming his head. Laughter gurgled in her tummy, skipped up into
her chest and tumbled inelegantly out her mouth.

“What?”
he barked, “is so funny?”

“I’m
your girlfriend, am I?” She had to bite her lip not to laugh again. She took a step
back. “You don’t think you should’ve consulted me about that?” Yes, yes, yes. She’d
be this incredible man’s girlfriend. She’d be the best girlfriend he could ask
for. “You don’t think maybe we might’ve discussed it?” She made her eyes go
wonder-wide, as if the suggestion was more outlandish than Paris, and in a way
it was. “Girlfriend is a major step up from the girl I’m having a thing with.” She
made an it was this big gesture, holding her arms open. “Major.”

It took
him all the way to the final word before he suspected she was teasing. His
whole body stilled. “How is that funny to you?” He slapped a hand on his chest.
“Are all relationships so hard to understand?”

“Yes.” She
hopped from foot to foot in a jig to punctuate that. “You’re sunk, baby.”

He
shook his head. “Zarley, did I screw up? God, put me out of my misery.” No
misery in his voice, no darkness in his eyes, but he wasn’t on solid ground. “I
don’t care what we call this thing we’re doing. After last night, after today,”
he reached a hand out to her, “I need to know if you want to keep doing it or
you’re simply worried I’ll go back to being a drunk if you leave.”

This
would be the moment to fling herself in his arms. Too easy. She put her hands
to the edge of her tee, yanked it up, flashed him bare breasts and hard nipples
and bolted. There was only one place to run. She fled to the bedroom and up on the
bed. He took his sweet damn time coming after her. He moved about, turning off
appliances, lights. She stripped down to panties and turned on a bedside lamp. When
he got here she was going to jump him so hard.

He
stood in the doorway, in the muted lamplight, and her throat went tight. This
man did it for her with his intense manner and extreme enthusiasms. He was the
thrill of competition without the risk of failure and the joy of winning without
giving your whole life over to its ambition.

He made
her skin prickle with awareness, her blood fizz and her muscles fire. “Get over
here, Back Booth.”

He
stripped off, eyes never leaving her, and stepped onto the end of the bed. “You
weren’t bouncing on my bed, were you?”

There
was threat in that tone, it sent a prickling thrill up her spine. She bounced, once,
twice and collided with him when he reached for her. But a well-placed shove
made him step back, feet tangling in the covers. He went down to his knees,
which brought his face level with places she wanted to feel his lips. She put a
hand to his hair but forgot who she was playing with, he yanked her ankles and
she bounced to her ass, he yanked them again and she was staring up at him from
her back, laughing in his face.

“You
don’t get to bounce on my bed without me.” The implication was clear. He didn’t
want her doing anything without him.

“Oh
yeah, what are you going to do about it?” Wreck her mind, send her body, break
the bed. Oh, please.

He
shifted and his hipbone pinched her thigh, he brought his lips to her neck. She
flinched, he was scratchy, her hand coming to rest on his face.

“I
should shave.”

She
wanted him now. “No time.” She wiggled left and he moved right. “Oh, you’re on my
hair.” He adjusted. That was worse. “You’re still on my hair.”

He
rolled them, clumsily, pulling her hair again, and her elbow conked his chin.
“Sorry.”

“Move
your arm, Flygirl.”

“I can’t
get—”

“Shift
up the bed.”

“Ow. My
hair.”

“Jesus.”

“Is
that your—oh.”

“Fuck.”

“Stop.”
She sandwiched his face between her hands, his eyes were narrowed with impatience
and his body was rigid. Not from the first had they been so out of sync.

“That
was horrible.” He said that as if it was an outbreak of Ebola, a plague of
locusts. “What was that?”

“That
was bad timing sex.”

“Wasn’t
on the frigging list.” He was mad. “Tops off a douchebag of a day.”

She
snorted.

“Not
fuckin’ funny.” He tried to kiss her but got teeth and that was funny. He
muttered ouch in her mouth then tried to pin her hands to the mattress at the
same time as she tried to move up the bed and kneed him in the ribs. At which
point she laughed so hard she wheezed.

It went
from awkward awful to a wrestling contest in a heartbeat. He dropped his body
weight on her but not quick enough, she squirmed and got an arm and a leg clear.
He put his teeth to her shoulder and she bucked. He gripped, rolled and flipped
them and they laughed together, all the stress of the last twenty-four hours burning
off like excess calories.

But she
wasn’t done with him. He copped a pillow in the face while she tried to get out
from under his bulk, squirming and laughing and not playing fair with elbows
and knees. He fought back going in for the tickle, dirty, dirty trick. He’d pay
if she could catch a breath. She kicked and squirmed and he bear growled. The
bedclothes were a trap and Reid was the weight of unexpected emotion that made
her feel like she could fly even buried underneath him.

“Get
off, you big oaf.”

“Yield,
pipsqueak.”

Yield. Like
this was a video game. Like she was doing that ever. She scrabbled for a
pillow, got it raised, ready to bop him and he attacked her side with the
scruff of his cheek. She dropped her arm to push him away and there was a loud
crash and complete darkness. She gasped and they both went still.

“Knew I
didn’t need lamps in here,” he said.

That
might’ve been the moment. One leg stuck in the sheet, one wrapped over his hip.
A hand to his head, the other wedged underneath him. She was on her own hair,
uncomfortable, the itchy heat of beard rash on her neck. His heartbeat was
between her legs, his face tucked into her side, his soft hair between her
fingers. Her calf was going to cramp and she’d just broken his uber-expensive
bedside lamp.

There
was nowhere else in the world she wanted to be. No one else she wanted to be
with and it made her eyes sting with tears.

“Shit,
Reid.”

“It’s a
stupid lamp.” He lifted up, crawled over her and turned its matched partner on.
But she didn’t mean the lamp.

“Flygirl,
what’s wrong?” A hitch of concern in his voice, he pulled her into his chest.
“Did I hurt you?”

If hurt
was discovering how much she wanted him. If it was knowing he felt deeply for
her and that in this rumpled bed was the start of a different thing; greater,
truer, mucking with the fabric of who she was, then she was bleeding out.

She
eased into his lap, crossed her legs behind his hips. “I love that you want to
take me to Paris.”

“But
you won’t let me.” He brushed hair off her shoulders, ponytailed it in his hand
behind her neck.

“No,
babe, that’s not how we can be. The rich guy buying the poor little pole-dancing
student an international airfare. I’m not that girl.”

“That
girl who’s my girlfriend.”

She
tipped forward, lifted her chin and nibbled on his bottom lip. It would be so
easy to run away with him, but she’d been running away for years, she couldn’t
break anymore promises to herself even with a man who made her ache to.

He let
go her hair and wrapped his arms around her back. “I’ll take that.”

“It’s
enough?” Rich men were supposed to pressure poor girls, supposed to get what
they wanted and Reid was genetically engineered to be pushy.

“It’s
everything.”

This
rich man didn’t care that she danced for other men every night, that she
wouldn’t give to him easily. This rich man wanted her to dance in the world’s
best club. That was too good to be true, it should worry her. She pushed the insecurity
aside. “You still need to get out of the city.”

“I’ll
go dark instead. Stay inside, turn everything off.”

“Want
company while you do that?”

He
leaned away to look at her face. “Does my girlfriend want to stay over another
night?”

“She’s
thinking about it.”

“Unprecedented.
I got used to the rationing.” He palmed her ass and brought her flush against a
very nice erection. “Let’s see if I can persuade my girlfriend to spend the
week.”

“Don’t
push your luck.”

She
uncrossed her ankles and unfolded her legs, stretching them into a side split
so that when he tilted her hips she was as wide open to him as humanly
possible. That made him swear as his eyes centered on her pussy.

And then
he pushed his luck all over her body.

TWENTY-THREE

Dear Plus People,

It
may have come to your attention that I was a giant jackass at the tenth anniversary
function on Saturday night and in case you missed it, I’ll give you the skinny.

For
a start I wasn’t invited. Why would I be, I was fired. Yeah, you read that
correctly and I’ll come back to that. For now, you need to know I gate-crashed.
This is the first of many embarrassing but necessary confessions I need to
make. I put Kuch and Owen, Sarina and Nerida in a horribly difficult position. They
could choose to chuck me out and make a scene or let me bully my way in. Because
they’re gracious, generous and sensitive people who are proper adults, unlike
myself, they let me stay.

Let’s
move on to the next dumbass thing I did. I forced myself on to the official program
and made a speech. And oh, what a speech. And let’s call it what it was. You
were there. I was an asshole.

I
stood up on that stage and told you all that without me you were C-grade. I
said Ziggurat would fail and I had no faith in Owen as a leader. No wiggle room.
I didn’t use those exact words, but that’s what I meant and that’s what you
heard.

I
was an asshole.

Because
of me your Plus staff shares might not be worth what they were on Friday. Because
of me, you might be worried about your job or whether Plus is still the right
place to build a career.

I
wish I could tell you I was drunk, or on drugs, or I’d fallen down and hit my
head. I have no excuse for what I did, except that’s what an aforementioned asshole
would do.

Take
a step back. Kuch fired me. I know you were told I’d quit to explore new ideas.
It was a lie. I was great at developing the vision for Plus. I was great at
getting the company started with Owen, Sarina and Dev at my side. I’m shit-hot
at lots of things. But I was bad at things that mattered most for where the
company was at. I was difficult to work with. I micromanaged. I showed my
temper and I sulked when I didn’t get my way. I was intimidating. I didn’t
sexually harass anyone, but I might as well have. I was an asshole, and you know
Plus has a no asshole rule, which for some inexplicable reason, I thought I was
above.

I
was wrong. I was given plenty of chances to change and I was too much of a dick
to take advantage of them. Kuch and Owen were right to exit me. They’re more
right than ever after Saturday night.

The
exquisite irony of being fired from a company, expert in helping people work
brilliantly in teams, for not playing well with others isn’t lost on me.

Needless
to say, I didn’t take it well. I’ve lived and breathed Plus since college,
losing it was a dreadful wrench, the stuff of cosmic nightmares, especially as
it was my own fault. But that’s no justification for the fact you were made to
suffer through a tantrum of epic proportions. I wore the dinner suit but I
behaved like a spoilt brat.

I apologize
unreservedly for being a giant asshole, both as your CEO for the last year and for
the entitled crap I carried on with Saturday night.

The
fundamentals of the Plus business are strong. You have no need to be concerned
about your job or career prospects because of me. Plus’ leadership across the
board is the best in the industry, and the company’s five-year plan is so
exciting I can hardly bear to think about what I’ll miss out on.

I
posted this on the company intranet, yes, I hacked in and that’s a jackass
thing to do as well (close port 733, dudes), but I wanted you all to have
access to this without any filters. Be nice to Sarina if you see her this week.
No doubt she feels like punching someone in lieu of being able to thump me,
because there’s no way she’d think this was anything but another dumbass move
on my part.

I’ve
spent today telling journalists the same things I’ve said here, so you can
expect to see the confessions of the dickhead Reid McGrath in the media over
the next few days. If we’re lucky, some other Silicon Valley CEO will screw up
in a day or two and the focus will shift. Until it does you know who to blame.

I’ve
apologized privately to Kuch, key stockholders, and to my Plus co-founders, Owen,
Sarina and Dev, who continue to be my dearest, most trusted friends (assuming
they ever forgive me).

My
plan now is to hide for a while. It was pointed out to me recently by someone
new in my life, who I care about immensely, that I’d never learned to deal with
failure. I think I’ve done a bang-up job of proving that. I’m going to focus on
getting my shit together and when I’ve done that I’ll get to thinking about
what I might do next.

I’m
worried about Ziggurat. It would be disingenuous to say I wasn’t. The point of
Ziggy is to secure the future of Plus. I’d be worried if I was still there with
you because it’s a huge undertaking, but you know what?

You’ve
got this.

I
believe in you. You’re skilled people and you know your stuff. Dev’s got this. He’s
a rockstar engineer, any of you who’ve worked alongside him know it. Owen’s got
this. He’s a far better CEO than I ever was. Give him your support and you can’t
help but do well.

Better
Together.

And
as it turns out, better off without me.

Now
get the hell back to work.

Reid.