Insatiable (15 page)

Trish shot an angry look over at Quinn, the expression turning her face ugly. Then she left in a huff. She left quickly, too.

I breathed, trying to calm myself. Then I hooked my thumbs in my pockets and turned to Quinn. She kept looking back over her shoulder, as though she couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.

“What...?” she said, caught off-guard.

I tilted my head towards her desk and computer. “I saw her sitting there looking at something on your screen. I knew it wasn’t her desk, so we had a conversation about it.”

“Something on my computer?” she said, looking at the device. Then her eyes went wide. “Oh!”

Q
UINN

The picture!
I thought right away. I had it saved to my desktop, the icon right there against the background for anyone to see. Anyone enough of an ass to snoop on someone else’s computer. Someone like Trish.

Must not have logged off completely when Ms. Spencer called.

A million things shot through my mind. Vaughn was here. He’d met Trish. Trish had touched him, tried to work herself on him.

...
And he had told her to get lost
. I saw the way she’d been licking her lips and batting her eyes and thrusting her tits out at him. I remembered how I’d told him to have fun with that bartender.

In fact, for the past three days I was assuming he’d taken her home after we left that pub. But maybe he hadn’t. He’d seen right through Trish’s little seduction and tossed her aside.

And he’s here. In front of my desk. Smiling at me.
I thought right away of Ms. Spencer and her missed opportunities. Ward was my opportunity, I knew.

Ward, whose college picture was on my computer.

“So, what do you think she was doing?” Ward asked. He started around my desk, intent on finding out what snooping had been done.

I didn’t want him to see that picture, didn’t want him to know that I’d found it. It seemed private, somehow. Something about his past I wasn’t entitled to see.

“Here, let me,” I said, hustling over so fast my hair lifted up off my shoulders.
Ah, the hair!
I thought,
he must see I left it down.

I plunked my butt down in the chair and used my body to try and hold him away. It looked like Trish had been going through some of my recent slideshows and documents.

That made my shoulders slump with relief. She probably hadn’t seen the picture. If she had, she wouldn’t have held that back. She wasn’t that sort of person. If she had a dart to throw at you she tossed it right away.

“Everything okay? You know, I could make sure that she’s not working here tomorrow,” Ward said.

I considered it for a moment. It would be so delicious to get her out of here, to see the expression on her face while she cleaned out her desk and while security marched her out.

It felt too easy, though, and she deserved so much worse than that. “No, forget about it. She’ll get what’s coming when she’s due. And no, it doesn’t look like there’s any permanent damage.”

“No permanent damage? I like the sound of that,” he said.

I glanced at him and he smiled. My cheeks started heating up so I turned back to my screen. “We’ll see,” I said.

I wanted to ask him what he was doing here, but I also got the compulsion to get rid of that picture before it actually did cause any trouble. I knew I should wait until later, but after having my computer snooped once while I was away I didn’t want to risk it again.

I’ll just drag it over to the trash bin. The thumbnail’s so small, he won’t know what it is.

I pretended to check a few of the files Trish had looked at. Then my moment came. Ward looked away, uninterested in what I was doing. I minimized the windows quickly and then clicked the image.

I started moving it.

“What is that?” Ward said. My heart lurched up into my throat.

“Just some old file I’m deleting,” I said.

“Where did you find that?” he said. He took my hand off the mouse and then clicked the picture again to make it full-sized. A young Vaughn Ward and his two college friends smiled out at us.

Excitement blipped inside me. I’d been so curious about that picture and the effect it might have on Ward. I thought that I must have let myself get caught there, my subconscious unwilling to deny my curiosity.

“Some old college message board,” I said.

“
Why?
” Vaughn said. His tone caught me off guard. He stared wide-eyed at that picture. It looked like he couldn’t decide whether he should be enraged or terrified.

“It’s just some old picture,” I said, my own nerves acting in sympathy with his. “You were a cute nerd back then.”

“You didn’t have any right to go looking for this,” he said, his teeth clenched. The tendons started standing out in his neck.

“I wasn’t looking for this specifically. I was just doing some research. Why are you so upset? You look happy there with your friends. Maybe a little goofy in that shirt, but certainly nothing to be embarrassed about.”

I didn’t know what sort of nerve I’d struck in him. Only that it was a deep one.

“Get rid of it,” he said, his eyes hunting over my keyboard for the delete button.

“Yeah, sure, fine,” I said. I wanted to know why he felt the way he did when he saw it. What memory did it bring back that was obviously so upsetting to him? I dragged the picture over to the recycling bin and then clicked around until that was empty, too.

“There, it’s gone. You want to tell me why you came here, now?”

His eyes kept scanning my desktop, as though he didn’t quite believe that the picture was really gone. I’d never seen him so unnerved and upset before. I didn’t even think he was capable of those feelings.

Then again, a couple hours ago I didn’t think he’d been that kind of person in college. I had the urge to comfort him, but I wasn’t certain how. I reached out for him.

He recoiled from my hand. “No. This was a mistake. You were right. Emails only.”

He turned and started back towards the elevator lobby. I stood up, watching him over the false wall. “Vaughn! Wait!”

He jerked at the sound of me using his first name, but didn’t stop. He continued around the corner to the elevators.

What the hell was that?
I wondered.
It was just an old school picture!
And then I wanted to follow him. I looked at the clock. Not even lunch yet. I couldn’t leave work. Shouldn’t, rather.

I’d never skipped out on work, never left the office before it was time to go. Most of the time I stayed late.

Except work didn’t seem so important at that moment. It was diminished in my mind.

I couldn’t think about anything but the stricken look on Ward’s face when he saw the picture. And then I recognized that expression. It was like seeing a ghost, seeing someone from the past you thought was out of your life and had suddenly reappeared.

But what could possibly haunt him so much?
What could make him crack like that? I had to find out.

This time, I carefully logged off my account on the computer before leaving my desk. And then I went to catch the elevator down.

From there, I went to Vaughn Ward’s brownstone.

***

I
didn’t know if he would answer the door, but I rang the bell anyway. My heart kept pounding in my chest, and I could feel sweat gluing my blouse to the small of my back.

I kept thinking about the look on his face, my curiosity over the photo, and Ms. Spencer’s speech about missed opportunities.

I didn’t have long to think about it, because Ward answered the door before I could even think about ringing the bell again. He’d taken the time to compose himself again, and once more he looked like the man I’d known before.

I tried picturing him with the smile I saw in that picture and couldn’t. Although I also found that it did feel nice to be near him.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“It’s not obvious? I came to talk to you,” I replied.

He frowned. “About the picture, I’m guessing.”

“Yeah. That and other things.”

He gave it some thought, and for a little bit I thought he might actually ask me to leave. The frown disappeared, his forehead smoothing out, and he stepped aside. “Come in, then.”

I did. He started up the stairs, probably heading up to the third floor and its big den. I didn’t want to go there, though. It made me think of Alisha and her warning, and any other women he might have had up there.

“Can we stay down here, maybe?” I said. He turned around on the stairs, another frown directed at me. He nodded, then led me to another, smaller sitting room with bare brick walls, a couch, and an easy chair.

He took the couch and I sat down in the overstuffed chair, the leather pleasantly cool for now.

“Are you going to make me drag it out of you?” I said, wanting to dispense with all the meaningless preamble. “I’ve been trying to figure you out since we met. What is your deal, Ward?”

Ward sat back, his hands gripping his knees, and nodded. He looked me in the eye, his gaze intense.

“That picture was taken my senior year. I was smiling because I’d just released my first app and it looked like it was promising. It was such a simple thing, but I guess sometimes the simplest things are the ones most often overlooked. I was expecting beer money, maybe something to put towards my loans after graduation.

“It exploded. I couldn’t explain it, no one could. The only fact that seemed to matter was that I was suddenly pretty much a rock star. Then I had another idea, and another. And not long after that I had people working for me, my face was appearing on magazines. I had publicists getting me interviews, personal trainers getting me in shape. And I didn’t know why. How could a few lines of code, code that anyone else in my class could have come up with, start up all that?”

It was my turn to frown. I leaned toward him, “You don’t think you deserve any of it?”

“Maybe. Sometimes I feel like I was just in the right place at the right time, and somehow I keep ending up back there. Except now I’m not who I used to be. Now I’m who people expect me to be. And if that’s true, how do I deserve any of this?”

He thinks he’s an impostor
, I thought. And that no one seemed to see it but him. That was what he feared, I knew: he thought that if someone was with him long enough, looked at him close enough, they might see through the façade.

It was almost funny, but not in a comic way.

“No,” I said. “You are who you make yourself to be. Trust me on that one.”

“And what have I made myself?” he said, spreading his hands and grimacing.

“Well, I don’t know what you
think
you’ve made of yourself. Only what I can see of you.”

“Do I want to know?” he said, smiling.

“You’re the type of person who lets himself put a lot of faith in other people, but doesn’t hold any back for himself. Maybe you need a bit of that faith to believe that maybe you deserve what you’ve made. Sure, maybe that first release was luck. Everyone needs a little luck. But everything that came after that? There’s no such thing as coincidence. Especially not that many times.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me, “No such thing as coincidence? Coincidences like the two of us meeting?”

Heat flushed my cheeks and I had to look down from his eyes. “Maybe.”

“So what else did you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

“You told at the door that you wanted to talk about more than the picture. What is it? And don’t tell me it’s something to do with the account.”

Now that I sat there, alone with him, I wasn’t certain I could do it. I mean, I wanted to. His little reveal about his past really did push past those barriers I’d set up around me, trying to keep him out. He wasn’t who I’d first thought he was.

“Nothing. I should go,” I said. I stood and started for the door.

He caught me, turning me so that I faced him, pulling my body against his. “Don’t tell me that. Not after what I just told you.”

I swallowed, my throat dry and closing. We were so close. Our hips touched. His fingers were gentle but firm, holding me in place. I started trembling inside, heat building up in my core.

“Someone told me that I really needed to think about my life. What I want out of it... and who I want in it.”

“Who do you want in it?” he said, his eyes searching back and forth between mine.

“Are you really going to make me say it?” I asked him.

He didn’t. He kissed me instead, hauling my body harder against his. My hands slipped up the firm flesh of his stomach, up under his arms so that I could grab his shoulder blades and pull him even closer.

His mouth was hot on mine, and fit against me perfectly.

Then, his face flushed, he pulled away. “You know what you want now? You’re not going to tell me
never again
, and push me away?”

“No,” I said, my lips tingled from the kiss, and I missed his mouth against mine. I gave into his desire and mine.

“Then show me,” he said. We kissed again, more fiercely than even before.

He picked me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist. I looked down into his face. The air rushed in and out of my lungs like fire, but I still couldn’t get enough of it.

We paused every few steps to kiss some more. I needed the feeling and the pressure of his lips against mine, and he needed it, too.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked when he carried me out of that room.

“To bed,” he replied.

We started up the stairs and I tightened my legs around his waist until I realized that he had no trouble carrying me up them.

And now that I’d given myself over to my desires I couldn’t wait any longer. My inner thighs burned. My clothes felt stifling and tight. And I needed to see what he looked like without anything covering him up.

His suite was on the second floor, and when he opened the door it revealed a large bed in the middle of the floor and a curtained picture window hiding us from the rest of the world.

He set me down on my feet, keeping his hands on my hips to steady me. We kissed again, and this time I put my hands between us, popping the buttons out of their loops on his shirt one at a time.