The Hating Game (17 page)

“Is that why you didn't want to be a doctor? Because you hate people?”

“It didn't work out.” His voice gets hard.

“Was there anything you enjoyed about it?”

“I enjoyed most of it. I was good at the theory component.
I've got a good memory. And I don't hate all people. Just . . . most people.”

“What about the practical component? Did you have a bad experience? Did they make you put your finger up someone's butt?”

He laughs even as his nose wrinkles in distaste. “You don't start on live people. And you don't start on butts. What kind of mind thinks of that?”

“Cadavers! I bet you saw cadavers. What was it like?” I think of all the autopsy scenes in
Law & Order
.

“This one time, my dad . . .” He hesitates, looking away, considering.

I don't push him, and after a long silence he continues.

“My dad, in his wisdom, decided to set me up on a bit of informal work experience at his hospital, in the break before I started college. Some of it was okay. Mainly I was passed around by a few doctors who all seemed too exhausted to say no to him. But one afternoon he slaps me on the back, introduces one of the coroners, and leaves us to it.”

I am starting to feel terrible. “You don't have to tell me if it's hard.”

“No, it's okay. I guess it was the ultimate baptism of fire. I made it through about five minutes before I threw up. The smell of dead person, and chemicals, it left a taste in my mouth. Probably why I started eating all these mints. Sometimes I can't get the smell out of my nose and it's been years.”

He lifts my arm and presses my wrist to his nose.

“Your skin smells like candy. Up until that point, it was a given I'd study medicine. My great-great-grandfather was a doctor and it's always been the Templeman chosen vocation. But after seeing someone's rib cage get jacked open, it was the beginning of the end.”

“You managed to stay for the rest of the autopsy?”

“I managed to stay for another year. And then I quit.” He looks distressed by the memory and defaults to defensiveness. “So you came over to grill me on my life choices?”

I catch his fingertips and hold his hand between mine.

“I didn't want to be anywhere else tonight. I was crawling out of my skin.”

I'm proud I had the courage to say it.

He turns back to me and the expression in his eyes is softer.

“My leg was jiggling like this.” I demonstrate and he grins. “You should have seen me driving here. I was laughing like I'd broken out of prison. I was completely deranged.”

“Do you think you've finally cracked your sanity?”

“For sure. The weird need to stare at your pretty face completely overwhelmed me. I had the energy of twenty atom bombs.”

“Why do you think I go to the gym so much?”

A big bubble of happiness fills me. I struggle upright and lean against him, my head falling easily into the perfect cradle of his neck. It's true; he fits me everywhere.

“You never have to explain your choices. Not to me, not to anyone.”

He nods slowly, and I cover him in the blanket too.

I could never have imagined one day I'd be sitting on a couch, my mouth tasting like vanilla, with my head on Joshua Templeman's shoulder. It's going to end in disaster. I close my eyes and breathe.

“I want to know why you were so sad today, Shortcake.” It's uncanny how he senses shifts in my mood.

“I just was. I was thinking about everything at stake for me.”

“Tell me.”

“I can't. You're my nemesis.”

“You're awfully snuggly with your nemesis.” It's true. I'm snuggling.

“I don't want to talk about me. We never talk about you. I probably don't know anything about you.”

He laces his fingers into mine and rests our hands on his stomach. I move my fingertips in tiny circles and he sighs indulgently.

“Sure you do. Go on, list everything.”

“I know surface things. The color of your shirts. Your lovely blue eyes. You live on mints and make me look like a pig in comparison. You scare three-quarters of B and G employees absolutely senseless, but only because the other quarter haven't met you yet.”

He smirks. “Such a bunch of delicate sissies.”

I keep ticking things off.

“You've got a pencil you use for secret purposes I think relate to me. You dry clean on alternate Fridays. The projector in the boardroom strains your eyes and gives you headaches. You're good at using silence to scare the shit out of people. It's your go-to strategy in meetings. You sit there and stare with your laser-eyes until your opponent crumbles.”

He remains silent.

“Oh, and you're secretly a decent human being.”

“You definitely know more about me than anyone else.” I can feel a tension in him. When I look at his face, he looks shaken. My stalking has scared the ever-loving shit out of him. Unfortunately, the next thing I say sounds deranged.

“I want to know what's going on in your brain. I want to juice your head like a lemon.”

“Why do you even want to know anything about me? I thought I was going to be your one glorious bout of hate sex to cross off your list before you settle down with some Mr. Nice Guy.”

“I want to know what sort of person I'll be using and objectifying. What's your favorite food?”

“Vanilla ice cream. Eaten from your bowl, with your spoon. And strawberries.”

“Dream vacation destination.”

“Sky Diamond Strawberries.”

When I level a frustrated look at him, he relents, and points at the frame on his wall.

“That exact Tuscan villa.”

“I want to climb inside that painting. What would you do there?”

“Swim in a pool with a tile mosaic on the bottom.” He smiles at how much that image delights me.

“Does the pool have a fountain somewhere? Like a little lion spitting water?”

“Yes, it does. After the swim, I lie in the shade eating grapes and cheese. Then I'd have a big glass of wine and fall asleep with a book on my face.”

“Basically you've just described heaven. What happens then?”

“I forgot to mention that a beautiful girl swam in that pool with me and slept in that sun too. She's starving. I'd better take her out for pasta. Carbohydrates and oil, covered in cheese.”

“I'm enjoying this food fantasy,” I manage. I want to be that girl so badly I could howl.

“We'd walk back to the villa in the dark, and I'd pull down the zip of her red dress. I'd feed her champagne and strawberries in bed to keep her strength up.”

“How are you coming up with this stuff.” I'm so enraptured I'm almost slurring. If this is what his holiday daydream is like, I wouldn't survive his bedroom.

“Then I'd wake up and do it all again the next day. With her. For weeks.”

I stare at the painting and imagine standing with him under the glittering dark purple sky, the headlights of faraway cars illuminating the rows of poplar trees lining the road.

I have to say something. Anything. He's looking at me, clearly entertained.

“Lucky bitch.”

He laughs out loud at that. I fire off my next quiz question.

“You're shipwrecked onto an uninhabited island. What three things would you take with you?”

“A knife. A tarpaulin.” He thinks for a long time on the last item.

“And you. To annoy you,” he amends.

“I'm not an object. I don't count.”

“But I'd be so lonely on the island,” he points out. I think of him sitting alone in the all-staff meeting.

“Okay. So we're crawling up the beach and I'm cursing your name for pulling me away from civilization and hair-care products and lipstick. What then?”

My shiver from the movement of his lips on my earlobe shakes the couch. When I feel the press of his mouth to my throat, I groan out loud.

He turns the TV off, and for a moment I'm certain he's about to walk me out. Or pick me up and throw me on his bed. It's hard to tell. He raises his hands into my hair, softly trailing his fingertips through it, until he reaches my scalp. My eyelids flutter.

“I'd build you a shelter and find you a coconut, and then we'd pass the time.”

“How?” My voice is barely more than a whisper.

“Probably like this.” He presses his mouth to mine.

W
e both suck in a breath and the room has no oxygen left.

Last night he picked me up under a streetlight and gave me a kiss that was calculated to leave me wanting more. Now I know what my problem has been today. I've been craving.

Images of us in another life in Tuscany are still behind my eyelids as he kisses my mouth open, touches my tongue with his, and breathes. He
sighs
. He's wanted this. He's been craving as badly as I have. My mouth is vanilla, his is mint, and they combine to create something delicious.

A miracle has occurred, and I don't know when, but I know it now. Joshua Templeman does not hate me. Not a bit. There's no way he could when he kisses me like this.

He loosens one hand from my hair and spreads it across my jaw, stroking my skin, cupping and tilting my face. It's so completely sweet, even as our tongues begin to get filthy.

I slide my knee over his lap, feeling my inner thighs stretch.

“I swore to myself I wouldn't come here tonight.”

“Yet here you are. Interesting.”

We both look down at my thighs on his, and I can't stop myself from sliding my hips forward.

This new position splices power and adrenaline into my blood. I put my hands on his collarbones and look him over. His hair is still a little damp. I cup the nape of his neck in my palm and press my hand against his heart.

I start a slow slide down to his chest, ribs, testing the density of flesh. He's so firm I can trace the lines between each muscle, even through a T-shirt. I try to tug up the bottom of the shirt but it's pinned under my knees.

Impatience rips clean through me. I nearly tear his shirt off but I force my fingers to loosen. He must see this flash of violent cavewoman, because he closes his eyes and his throat hums in a groan.

“Sometimes you look at me like you're . . .”

He forgets what he was saying when I begin to kiss his jaw. His hands lie palms-up on either side of my calves. He's letting me control this and I like it. I feel him smile when I nibble against his bottom lip.

The couch gives softly underneath my knees, and as our clothes begin to make a warm friction, I feel his arousal, hard and blunt, pressing into the back of my thigh.

“I need it,” I tell him and watch his eyes go viciously black. I take huge handfuls of his clothes and we kiss again.

I roll my hips slowly in his wide lap and his hands slide down my body in a series of slow, squeezing pauses. Shoulders, underarms, the sides of my breasts. I shiver, and he slides his hands lower. Ribs, the curve of my waist. Hips. Butt.

His hands slide down my thighs, his long fingers dragging down the outer and inner seam of my jeans. He traces his fingers along my calves. When I drop my face to his neck, his hands tighten on my ankles, a little reminder he could take control if he wanted to.

“I like how little you are.” He sure sounds like he likes my body as he takes another slow, stroking tour.

As I slide my tongue into his mouth, I begin thinking about a board meeting we'd been in, a few weeks back. He'd been sitting by the window and I remember watching the sun slowly slide along the windowsill, across the floor, across the board table as the afternoon dragged on.

He'd been wearing a navy suit I don't see him wear often and the pale blue shirt. I'd sat there opposite him, watching the way the sun slowly crept up his body like a rising tide. I'd breathed in the scent of the fabric warming on his body.

I remember how he'd cut his dark blue eyes to me during the meeting, and it had flustered me, made my stomach twist in half. He'd smirked and resumed his patient staring at the PowerPoint presentation, not taking a single note whereas my scribbling hand was cramping.

Those eyes, flashing to my face, made me jump out of my skin. I hadn't known why. Now I do.

“I was remembering the board meeting a few weeks back.” My head rolls to one side as he kisses under the hinge of my jaw. I have a full-body shiver. His hand spreads across my ribs, thumb nudging the underside of my breast. My total focus narrows down to this half inch of contact.

“Yes, what about it? I'm not doing so well if you're thinking about it now.”

He returns his mouth to mine and dials it up a little. It's minutes before I can speak again. Possibly hours. My breath is in little gasping pants, and he bites down gently onto my bottom lip.

His thumb slides up, nudges my nipple softly and continues up to my jaw. I jolt and quiver.

I have to explain myself properly. “You looked at me and . . . And I think I wanted to kiss you. I only just realized.”

“Oh, really.”

I am rewarded by his other hand sliding up the back of my top. Skin against skin. Fingers playing languidly with my bra strap.

“I was remembering how you gave me this look.”

“Like I was thinking about something dirty? I was. You were wearing your white silk shirt with the pearl buttons. And this soft-looking cardigan for the first half of the meeting. Hair up, red lips.”

He leans back and trails his fingertips down my throat to the top of my cleavage. His fingertips dip in, I shudder out the only thing I can think of.

“It's a cashmere cardigan.”

“You like Doctor Josh . . . I like prissy retro librarian Lucy. Silk-cashmere Lucy. That's
my
kink. A pencil in your hair, grilling a department head on absentee stats for last quarter.”

He continues his slide down my torso, fingers pressing into my ribs.

“What a specific kink. I can't believe you can remember what I was wearing. But hey, I can roll with this. I could get some nerd glasses and scold you.” I frown sternly and hold my finger to my lips. “Be
quiet
.”

He groans theatrically. “I couldn't take it.”

“Can you even imagine how it would be between you and me? All day, every night?”

He knows exactly what I mean. “Oh, yeah.”

“Like you said just before: The trick is to find someone who's strong enough to take it. That one person who can give it back as good as they get.”

“Can you?” His eyes look like he's on drugs. Pupils inked, irises hazy.

“Yeah.”

We kiss with a new intensity, sparked by our shared boardroom fantasies. Lucy and Josh starring in graphic, sweat-slicked pornography.

He arches against me. His hard-on is pressing so hard against the back of my leg my hamstring feels bruised.

He breaks the kiss. “Slow up. I want to ask you something.”

He sits back a little and we stare into each other's black eyes. His mouth is softened, pink and I want it all over me. Licking and biting mouthfuls of my flesh. My breathing is so loud that I almost can't hear what he says next.

“When you called me tonight, did you nearly call Danny instead?” I start to protest but he smoothes his hand down my arm.

“I'm not being a jealous psycho. I'm just interested.”

“You already won that competition with him. He's my friend now. We are only going to be friends.”

“You haven't answered, though.”

“He's the sensible option. I'm not doing many sensible things with my evenings these days. I'm glad I didn't call him. I'd probably be sitting in a movie, instead of here.” I bounce a little on his lap.

Josh tries to smile, but it doesn't quite work. “I'd go to a movie with you. Look, it's getting late.”

His hands slide down my back to grip my butt. He tilts me, and drags me down the hardness of his arousal. Then he lifts me off and sets me aside.

He sits forward on the edge of the couch and puts his face in his hands. He's breathing as heavily as I am. It does my ego no harm.

“Fuck.” He sighs it. “I am so turned on,” he says with an embarrassed half laugh, and I completely understand his desperation.

He's surely got to be wondering why he's subjecting himself to this. He's an adult man, reduced to teenage make-out sessions with his weird colleague.

“Do you want to hear how turned on I am?”

“I'd better not,” he manages.

“I guess I should go home.” I pray he tells me to stay. He doesn't.

He talks through his hands. “Give me a minute.”

I take our mugs and my bowl into the kitchen and rinse the bowl. I look at the frying pan and put it in the sink and fill it with hot water and suds. My legs are trembling and doing a poor job of holding me upright.

“I'll do it,” Josh says behind me. “Leave it.”

My eyes badly want to drop below his waist, but because I am a lady I resist.

He feeds my arms into my coat and we both put our shoes on. We carefully stand on the opposite ends of the elevator, but we stare at each other like we're one second away from slamming the elevator to an emergency stop to put ourselves out of our misery.

“I feel like your Easter egg.”

He catches my hand at the curb and walks across the street with me. When we reach my car, I tilt my mouth up to his. He carefully takes my face in his hands and he kisses me. A simultaneous shocked gasp rocks us. It's like we haven't kissed in an eternity. He presses me against the car door and I whimper. Tongues, teeth, breath.

“You taste like my Easter egg.”

“Please, please. I need you so badly.”

“I'll see you at work tomorrow,” he replies. He turns me in his arms, and presses his mouth against the back of my neck. Even through my hair, the heat of his breath makes me inhale so hard it's more of a snort.

“Is this an asshole control-freak thing?” I wriggle free.

“Possibly. Sounds consistent with my character.”

I have a thought. “Are you planning on sexing me comatose on the morning of the interview so you beat me?”

Josh puts his hands in his pockets. “It's worked for every other promotion I've gotten in my life. Why stop now?”

“You want to make sure I'm all over you like a rash at the wedding.”

Something about the look on his face makes me step back and press my back to the cold door of my car.

“You haven't lied and told them all about the brain surgeon you're betrothed to?”

He smiles. “Dr. Lucy Hutton, MD. She's brilliant, yet unorthodox.”

“I'm serious. Answer the question. I'm coming as me, aren't I? I'm not supposed to be acting?”

“No.”

I bite my thumb and look down the street. Why do I feel like he's lying?

“Well, I'm beginning to think you're leaving me horny to make sure I'll keep coming back here. I'm like a cat. You're leaving out a saucer of cream.”

Josh laughs, a big proper laugh like I'm hilarious. Delighted, irritated electricity floods me. I'm crackling with it. In this moment, I'm more alive than I've ever been.

Fight with me, kiss me. Laugh at me. Tell me if you're sad. Don't make me go home.

“We'll have to see if it's true. If you're back tomorrow night, I'll concede it's part of a deliberate strategy.” He looks down at me with undisguised pleasure.

The thought of returning didn't properly occur to me. The following day now glows with promise.

“One more.”

He kisses my cheek and I groan in misery.

“Get outta here, Shortcake. And remember, I don't want to see you freaking out tomorrow.”

I can't get my seat belt on properly. I'm so wired it's like I'm having drug withdrawals. He taps my window to make me lock the door.

I'm halfway home when a scary thought crystallizes.

I can't wait for work tomorrow.

T
ODAY HIS SHIRT
is the color of a saucer of cream.

Act natural, Lucy.
Walk in there like sex on legs. No awkwardness. Go.

He looks at me, my ankle wobbles, and I drop my handbag. The lid of my lunchbox pops off and a tomato rolls across the floor. I drop to my hands and knees and my stiletto heel gets caught on the dangling buckle belt of my coat.

“Crap.” I try to crawl.

“Smooth.” Josh gets up and walks to me.

“Shuddup.”

He unhooks my coat and gathers up my lunch, before holding a hand down to me. I hesitate minutely before I take it, letting him haul me up.

“Can I rewind my entrance?”

He pulls the coat from my shoulders and hangs it up for me.

Mr. Bexley's door is open and the lights are on. Helene's a late starter. She's probably still in bed.

“How was your evening, Lucinda? You look tired.”

My stomach sinks in dismay at his impersonal tone until I look at his face and realize his eyes are lit with mischief. If Mr. Bexley is eavesdropping, he'll hear nothing out of the ordinary.

This is a dangerous new game, the Act Natural Game, but I'll give it a try. “Oh, it was nice enough, I guess.”

“Nice. Hmm. Get up to anything interesting?” He's got the pencil in his hand.

“I sat on the couch.”

He shifts in his chair and I look at his lap.

“Serial killer eyes,” I mouth at him. I sit on the edge of my desk, take out my tube of Flamethrower and begin to apply, using the wall nearest me as a mirror. He looks at my legs with such naked lust I nearly smudge it. “And what did you get up to, Josh?”

“I had a date. At least, I think it was.”

“What's she like?”

“Clingy. She really threw herself at me.”

I laugh. “Clingy is not an attractive trait. I hope you kicked her out.”

“I guess I sort of did.”

“That'll learn her.” I begin to gather my hair into a high bun before smoothing down my dress. It's a fine cream wool knit, stretchy and warm, and I admit I wore it to match his shirt. He likes prissy librarian Lucy? He's got it today.

He watches my hands. I watch his. They're white-knuckled.

“Not sure if I'll see her again, though.” He sounds bored, and
he's clicking his mouse on his computer. When his eyes cut sideways to mine, I flash to last night and my insides clench.