23. Malcolm
MALCOLM
I can’t stop thinking about fucking. Ryan was stingy yesterday, and I got laid a grand total of twice.
Once in the morning and one more time when we took a shower before bed.
I did get to sleep over again, but I left early this morning to go back to my apartment and get ready for work.
It’s for the best anyway since he walks to work with Jia, and it’s not like I’m not going the exact same place.
I wind up in the elevator with Miguel and a few other people I don’t know. He’s dressed in one of his usual statement suits, this one in a stunning garnet. He’s sneaking looks at me like he wants to say something and keeps chickening out.
I have no relationship with him whatsoever, so I don’t help him out. I pretend not to notice. Now that I’m in the building, I’m remembering Piper’s shitty attempt at undermining our project, and since he’s on her team, I’ve got nothing to say to him.
That all changes when I follow him into the conference room, he makes a beeline for Ryan, and they immediately leave together. Suddenly, I have plenty to say. To both of them.
Bailey doesn’t seem to notice, only gives me a once over when I sit next to her. “You look better,” she says. “You and Ryan make up?”
“We’re fine,” I tell her. “What’s he talking about with Miguel?”
She shrugs, her gaze shifting to the door where Nathan and Piper are coming in. I don’t miss the look Piper shoots in Bailey’s direction. It’s smug. Derisive.
“What’s her problem with you?” I ask.
“No clue. Maybe she’s one of those girls who thinks everybody wants to have sex with her. Like in this case, my best guess is she and Nathan are probably fucking, and she thinks because I’m a lesbian that would make me jealous because obviously I’d want to fuck her, too.”
She got a lot from one look.
“Maybe she’s just a bitch,” I say.
Bailey snorts. “That, too.”
“Are you gonna stitch her videos? I liked Ryan’s idea.”
“I need to be focused on the project—not her petty bullshit.”
“You could do it just for fun,” I suggest.
“My idea of fun does not include putting my face on the internet.”
“I mean literally nothing by this, but do you ever wear makeup?”
She glares at me. “No. Why? You think it’d make me easier to look at?”
“ Noooo .” Did she miss my whole I mean nothing by this thing? “I’m saying something more like you don’t have to be yourself when you’re on the internet. For all anybody watching knows, you slay in makeup. You could straighten your hair or something—look even less like yourself.”
“Look, I know I’m not finance Barbie, but it is so fucking rude to comment on another person’s looks.”
“You do it to me all the time. ”
“Oh, like you care what I think about what you look like.”
“I’m actually very sensitive,” I tell her, sounding like I’m joking, but I’m actually not.
“Golden boy really is the perfect nickname for you,” she says.
“Yeah, you don’t get to call me that.”
She arches her brows. “Who does?”
“Mind your own fucking business, Bailey,” I say without any heat, and she snickers.
Georgie enters the room, followed by Ryan and Miguel. Miguel has his hand on Ryan’s shoulder and is leaning in close to speak into his ear. Either he’s a close talker in general or he likes to put his hand on my guy . Either way, I hate it.
Ryan is nodding at whatever he’s saying as he glances around the table, looking first to the other group, then to Bailey, and finally me.
As he takes his usual seat between Nathan and Miguel, he gives me half a grin, but I don’t return it.
I don’t even try. Because I’m a complete psycho, I text him even though we’re not supposed to have our phones out during the huddle.
Me
What’s going on with you two?
Either he has his notifications off or he’s got a perfect poker face because he doesn’t blink. I shift in my seat, restless, then wince as I put too much pressure on my hole. Funny how having Ryan’s cock in it is no problem, but sitting on it makes me feel like it’s being stabbed with a hot poker.
What Georgie’s talking about isn’t interesting to me with Ryan six feet away, so my mind wanders to butt plugs. Vibrators. Vibrating butt plugs. By the time we wrap up and I have to face Isla, I’ve got a semi and a hole desperate to be filled.
Ryan and Miguel remain glued together until Charlie waves Ryan over to the couches. Logically, there’s nothing wrong with Ryan talking to other people, and I’d probably be more fucked up if he were talking to whoever that Seattle woman is, but yesterday was special—at least to me.
It was making out in the beanbag chair and a buffet of takeout Chinese food. It was practicing good cop bad cop for the podcast while I kept messing with his hair to annoy him—or get him to touch me. Tackle me. Do whatever he wanted to me.
What’s stressful is that he runs so hot and cold.
One minute all he wants to do is talk about the project—the next, he’s all over me, and I can’t tell what I did to get him there.
If I had it my way, I’d glue him to me. Our conversations however, since Saturday night, haven’t been deep.
Not that I’m knocking them, we’ve laughed a lot, but I don’t feel any closer to knowing what makes him tick—or more importantly—what it would take to get him to choose me over Seattle.
Which means I have to assume what he told me that night still holds true.
This is just for the summer, and he doesn’t know how to trust me.
And how the fuck do I overcome that? He doesn’t seem to have believed me when I told him I love him.
Or he blew it off as a heat of the moment thing.
He hasn’t said anything close. And I don’t count how many times he said he wanted me.
I mean—I did count—it was four times—a mere fraction of the times I said it to him—but it’s not the same as the feeling of not being able to breathe for the fear of losing him all over again.
Isla is being very short with me today, so I don’t ask too many questions.
She’s been harder on me since I turned into a vapor trail that night at happy hour.
I get it. I led her on, and didn’t put out.
It was a shameful lapse of judgement, both because of Kaylin and because I think I embarrassed Isla, which she didn’t deserve.
If she were interested in actually getting to know me, maybe she’d understand, but I get the feeling my mentor is just as big of a mess about what she wants as I am .
I get a return text from Ryan around 9:30 which says he wants to have lunch with me and Bailey and asks if I mind if Miguel joins.
I respond with a totally chill, What the fuck is going on?
He responds with, Meet us at Big Bites.
Us? Us? He and Miguel are an us ?
There goes what was left of my focus.
At eleven, I get up to grab a coffee. When I pass the unisex bathroom on my way back to the workroom, I hear grunting on the other side of the door. A man’s grunt. A sex grunt.
I nearly have a heart attack until I find Ryan seated on the couch with Charlie, right where I left him. Isla’s missing, though.
I sit down, sip my coffee, and scan the room to see who else isn’t here.
No Piper and no Lisette, but their mentors aren’t out here either.
Nathan is missing, but his mentor is at the communal worktable on a call.
There are a few other men unaccounted for, both senior analysts.
If someone’s fucking in the unisex bathroom, fuck if I can figure out who it is.
But damn, it makes me horny knowing it’s happening.
I text Ryan that I have a better plan for how to spend our lunch hour.
I can practically feel his smirk when I get his message.
Ryan
Miss me, golden boy?
Me
Do you have a problem with that?
Ryan
I have a problem with the way you keep flashing your ankles
I light the fuck up. He’s thinking about me.
Me
Why’s that?
Ryan
It makes you look like a slut.
I cross my legs, trying to disguise the hard on rapidly tenting my pants, and also exposing my ankles even more.
Me
I get so hard when you talk like that
Ryan
Then maybe stop texting me at work?
Me
Someone’s fucking in the unisex. Should be us.
Ryan
Jesus. Stop.
Me
Can’t. My ass needs to be stuffed. Need to touch my dick.
Ryan
Who’s in the unisex?
Goddamnit, Ryan. It makes me crazy how impervious he is to me unless I’m literally sitting on top of him. He started this. He was talking about my ankles. How was I supposed to take that besides flirting? I try again.
Me
No clue. Are you hard?
Ryan
I’m trying to work.
Me
Am I distracting you?
Ryan
Obviously.
Me
So are you hard or not?
Ryan
I’ll see you at lunch.
If I could find one sliver of myself that still hated him, I would put it to use for that text.
But these days, I’m a bonfire of burning love—the operative word being burning .
This erection—this one-sided erection—is solid and insistent.
It’s taking all my will power not to touch it in the middle of the workroom.
The financial report on my laptop might as well be a faded Sanskrit scroll for all I can decipher it.
My brain is parked in neutral, and my dick wants to plow full steam ahead.
Isla returns to the table with a flush on her cheeks and a faint sheen of sweat on her neck.
I glance around the room to see who else is back, but I’m too worked up to remember who was missing in the first place.
I stop short of asking her if she was the one being screwed, because it’s pretty obvious she was.
I’m jealous. Not of whoever had her, but of the fact that she just had a cock inside her from the looks of it.
“We’ll need to send a report to Stevenson by three. Where are you at with that?” she asks, and I swear to God, she hasn’t even caught her breath yet.
“Struggling,” I admit, pathetically.
She sighs. “Risk assessments are part of the job. Even if you don’t like analysis, you still need to develop a base level of competence. What are you not understanding? ”