Fair Game (11 page)

“Usurped it? I wore the damn thong.
And
I gave you a great orgasm.”

“I didn’t tell you that you could touch me. So you took over the challenge and therefore the next one belongs to me.”

“Wrong. I wore your panties, and I got damn near naked in a dressing room to prove it to you. Plus, I let you jerk me off.”

“You
let
me?”

“As I recall, I said not to, and you did it anyway.” He’d been afraid he’d blow sky-high with one touch. But she didn’t need to know that.

Still, she wouldn’t concede. “You loved it.”

“And you loved it when I fingered you. So we’re even on that score, and it becomes my challenge.” He had plans for her, and he wasn’t giving them up.

“You’re pushy,” she huffed, but he knew it was to hide her laughter.

“True. Which is why I want a date tomorrow night.”

“That’s not a week. Next Wednesday.” The fact that she was now bargaining over the actual day said he’d won the challenge.

“Your place?” he pushed.

“No.”

“Mine?”

“Hell no. I’ll send you an e-mail when I’ve decided where we’ll meet.” She hung up without saying good-bye and before he could say
he’d
choose the place for
his
challenge.

Christ, he loved it. She wasn’t easy. She could skew logic any way she wanted, but he could skew it more effectively. She was delightfully kinky. An affair with her would prove to be more fun than he’d had in years.

He hadn’t looked forward to a date since . . . well, hell, since the blush of new love with his ex before they were married.

Of course, that made it sound like his entire marriage had been a nightmare. He’d adored Marianne. She was year younger than him; they’d met at work and dated for two years. The sex between them had been good; fucking hot, in fact. And kinky. They used to sneak into work early and fuck on his desk just for the fun of it. On their honeymoon, she’d blown him in front of the open hotel window, lights on. She’d loved doing it in risky places as much as he had. He loved masturbating for her, shooting his load on her pussy or her breasts, watching her get down and nasty with a toy. They eventually moved on to other companies as a hedge against getting laid off at the same time, but she’d still sneak in after hours for a fuck. He loved that. He loved her.

Then she wanted a baby, and things changed. He’d wanted a child just as much as she had, but when she didn’t get pregnant right away, the focus of their love life rapidly went from just-for-fun to having a purpose. Lovemaking became urgent. She’d call him up, say her temperature was right, they’d meet at home and fuck. No foreplay, no fun. The joy went out of it.

She started hanging out with some girls from work, and their talk was all about marriage and babies. They began ragging on her about the naughty sex the two of them had. That was when he’d gotten pissed, referring to her friends as the MAGS, Mothers Against Good Sex. The MAGS claimed that’s why Marianne didn’t get pregnant, because he wasted his semen in her mouth or on her breasts. So she decided that he could only orgasm inside her. He could accept that, but he hated the intimate details she shared with her friends and the way those bitches turned a beautiful, fun, adventurous love life into something unhealthy.

Things went nuts when Marianne learned she was the one who had internal issues that were making it difficult for her to get pregnant. It wasn’t him at all. She, however, didn’t want to admit to the problem, claiming the doctor was full of shit. If she’d been obsessed before, she moved into maniacal after. She decreed that he could ejaculate only when it was her fertile time of the month. That way his body would build up lots of sperm, and they’d have a better chance. He was allowed orgasms three days out of the month, and then he had to perform like a stud horse. Secretly, he hated her fertile period. Sometimes he’d watch porn on the Internet and jack off because he was going insane. She’d caught him, and they’d had a helluva fight. That was the end of it. He couldn’t take anymore. They’d had five great years and two really shitty ones. She’d gotten remarried three years ago and adopted a couple of kids from China.

He’d learned that sex was fucking important. He wanted a woman where anything goes, risky places, a dirty mind, sex for sex’s sake.

Josie Tybrook was exactly what he was looking for.

 

 

 

A week? She must have her head somewhere the sun don’t shine. How was she supposed to get through a week without a taste of him?

By Saturday, she regretted not playing on Friday. By Sunday, she was a little wild, wanting to call him and beg. Kyle made her think about sex, sex, sex, even when he wasn’t around.

The worst was that a booty call to one of her buddies wouldn’t cut it. It felt like cheating, though she and Kyle hadn’t talked exclusive. She had to admit she didn’t like the idea of him taking out Little Miss Snowflake despite how often she mentioned it to him. No reason . . . just . . . she didn’t like it.

Monday was a bitch at work. She couldn’t
ever
remember thinking that regarding her job. But she was a woman ruling a bunch of men now, men who had once been coworkers. Being manager was totally different from being one of the guys. She could feel how they shut her out. When she entered a room, they stopped talking. They didn’t come to her with their issues like they used to. They’d done that even when Ernie was the boss, wanting to bounce things off her, to make sure they didn’t sound like idiots before they went in to Ernie.

And Ronson? Jesus. The staff meeting had been a disaster. He’d been openly hostile and antagonistic, calling her ideas stupid, though he had stopped short of calling
her
stupid.

Her career as a manager would go down in flames if she didn’t figure out how to handle them all, and blaming everything on Ronson wasn’t going to fix it. He had a job site he was heading off to next week. Maybe things would settle down, and they could start off on a new foot come the following week.

Why did that feel like putting off the inevitable?

Wednesday morning, after going over purchase requisitions and another slew of résumés in which she found little to spark her interest, she decided to take the bull by the horns.

Punching in Ronson’s extension, Josie felt her heart rate rise. Which was ridiculous. She wasn’t scared of the damn man.

“What?”

She’d called him enough to know he always answered with his name, letting his caller know immediately that they had the right number. She also knew her extension would have shown on his caller ID. So he was being rude on purpose, to her specifically.

She badly wanted to slam him down. “I need to see you in my office.”

“You mean Ernie’s office.”

“I mean
my
office.”

“I’m busy.”

It took two deep breaths to calm down. “Ronson, get in my office, now.”

He hung up, didn’t slam the receiver, simply disconnected without a word. She had no clue if he’d show. Or what she’d do if he didn’t. At what point was she supposed to write him up for insubordination? Where the hell was the supervisor handbook?

It took him five minutes to make a ten-second walk.

“Close the door,” she told him.

He did, then stood there, arms folded over his chest, a smirk creasing his lips.

And she’d had it. “What is your beef? I got the job, get over it or quit.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you.” He punctuated his remark with an ugly sneer.

She hated being seated while he was standing, as if that gave him the advantage over her. Standing up, though, was like admitting she was down in the first place. So she remained butt-in-chair and let him have it. “I don’t really give a shit. You do good work, to a point, but your attitude sucks. You want me to write you up, I’ll write you up. It’s up to you. Just start acting like a human being again.”

“Teach you all that in manager training school?” He’d hit a nerve, and his smug smile said he knew it.

Why the hell was he being such a dick? He hadn’t been this way before. “And you know,” she told him, “you can cut the whole gossip mill, too. Everyone knows I didn’t sleep with Connor to get this job.” Yes, she’d verified that rumor had been floating around. It wasn’t her mother’s imagination.

“That wasn’t me. I didn’t spread rumors. I just told the truth about your lack of experience.”

“Creating dissension is—”

“Speaking the
truth
,” he cut her off. “Everyone knows I can do this job better. I’ve got more experience on much larger projects. I’ve been a lead for a lot longer. I should have had it. I
deserved
it.” His eyes blazed, yet at the same time it sounded oddly as if he were repeating something someone else had told him over and over. “
You
got it because you’re family.”

It didn’t matter who had been giving the pep talk about how great he was. She deserved the job, too. “I got it because you’re late on projects and come in over budget, and if you do that with your own jobs, you’ve got the potential to overlook it with
all
the jobs.”

“Listen, you bitch, you don’t know a thing about—”

This time she stood. “What did you just call me?”

He seemed to realize he’d gone too far. His eye twitched at the corner. He opened his mouth, slapped it shut. Finally, he narrowed his eyes and his lip curled. “Don’t like it, fire me. See if I fucking care. Because I’ll bring a reverse discrimination suit so fast your head will spin.”

Just as he hadn’t slammed the phone down, he didn’t slam the door as he left. He hadn’t even yelled.

This
really
wasn’t like him. He’d never been such an asshole. He was actually a pretty nice guy for the most part. So. What to do? Write him up for calling her a bitch? If she let him get away with it . . .

Aw hell. She wouldn’t let it be said that she ran to HR at the first whiff of a problem, especially since she’d only been a manager for one freaking week. She could handle this. She’d figure out what the hell was going on with Ronson. She knew damn well it had to be more than just the fact that she got the job instead of him. Once she figured it out, she’d fix the problem.

 

 

AT quarter to four the next afternoon—thank God it was finally Wednesday—Lydia entered Josie’s office, a plain manila envelope swinging in her fingers. “You’ve got another package,” she sing-songed.

“It’s work.” Josie went to snatch it out of Lydia’s hand.

Lydia backed up. “No return address. No company logo.” She returned to singsong mode. “It’s from a secret admirer.”

Josie rolled her eyes. “Give me a break. And give me my package.” She held out her hand.

“If it’s not a secret admirer, then you’ll open it in front of me,” Lydia challenged.

Yeah, right. It might or might not be from Kyle. She couldn’t take the chance. “I’m sure it’s something highly confidential from a customer, and it would be a violation of ethics to open it in front of you.”

Lydia laughed like a giddy child. You really couldn’t get mad at the chick. She was too sweet. Then she shook the package right by her ear. “There’s something in here.”

“It’s probably some defective parts being returned to me.”

“Hah. It’s . . .” Lydia wriggled her eyebrows. “I’m thinking . . .”

“Don’t think too hard or—” Josie stopped herself before a totally bitchy comment came out. Lydia wasn’t stupid; not at all. “If it was from a secret admirer, it would be flowers or a card, not an envelope that makes noise.”

“Let’s see who’s right.” Lydia’s brown eyes gleamed.

The girl wasn’t going away, so Josie put on her most stern face. “I am your boss. If you don’t give me that package right now, I will fire you.”

Lydia pouted. “Before you were my boss, you would have shown me.”

Before she was the boss, she didn’t receive naughty packages at work. She didn’t receive presents at all. Flowers and candy weren’t her thing. Honestly, while she might have joked a few times with Lydia, she never revealed secrets. She held her hand out and waggled her fingers.

Lydia grumbled under her breath but handed over the package. “If it’s something fun, will you show me?”

Josie relented. “If it’s something fun.” Of course, that would depend on the definition of fun. If it was from Kyle, dirty, naughty, exciting, and hot didn’t necessarily mean
fun
.

“Close the door,” she said with a smile as Lydia walked out.

The girl smirked, grabbing the handle and swinging the door shut behind her.

Josie’s heart raced as she picked up the envelope. It was the package, it was the surprise, it was him. Though the label was computer-generated, she knew exactly who’d sent it. What did he have for her this time? The anticipation sent jolts of excitement through her.

In a strange way, it felt like Kyle was courting her, plying her with little gifts, making sure she knew she was on his mind even if he hadn’t called her. It was the oddest sensation, because Josie actually liked it.

She’d never been courted before. Not even in college. She’d simply been overwhelmed by Ian’s personality.

She ripped open the envelope, tipped it, and a string of beads fell out onto her desk. Graduated in size, from seed pearl to perhaps half an inch, they were attached by a string that ended with a loop instead of a clasp.

Body beads.

She puffed the envelope open and out tumbled the note. “I want these in you when I see you. Go to the ladies’ room now. Touch yourself while you insert them, but don’t you dare climax.”

She shivered. The challenge didn’t start tonight. It began now. He was already ordering her around. And she liked it.

Stuffing the beads in one blazer pocket, she shoved the letter in the other. She didn’t trust Lydia not to snoop. As she passed Lydia’s cubicle, the girl raised her brows devilishly.