Technically Faking Read online

  I dipped my tongue in her entrance and lapped at her folds, striking without mercy, following her cut-off moans and tight breaths like they were barked commands.

  She’d teased herself the whole time she was taking me apart: rocking against not enough friction, so focused on my pleasure that she was already slick with it before I’d gotten my mouth on her. She parted easily for me, and the relentless grind of my tongue against the front of her opening sent her hips into helpless, hitching thrusts, more shudder than purposeful movement.

  The first whimper escaped from her perfect lips.

  “Fuck,” she groaned, tilting her hips forward. “Amber, you, oh hell —”

  I squeezed her hips, pulled her down against my mouth, and encouraged the rocking motion she’d made.

  “You’re sure —” Iris bit out, blue eyes filled with uncharacteristic concern as she looked down at me.

  A raised eyebrow was the only response I gave her. It did the trick.

  She ground down against me, settled into the rhythm she wanted, and fucked herself against my mouth in a punishing pace.

  “Close,” she groaned, and I understood the cue for what it was.

  It meant not to change one single thing until I’d felt her fall apart around my tongue.

  The final seconds were glorious. Perfect. And I fought off the part of myself that believed they might be the only time I would have this. I’d had too many orgasms to be such a downer while I had my mouth on Iris fucking Spark.

  As glorious as she’d been while singing, as beautiful at the coffee shop, as stunning when she laughed at Cary Grant’s antics the better part of a century removed — she’d never been more incredible than when her pleasure finally overtook her and she sagged in my grip. She jerked forward, twitching helpless thrusts, and cried out as she came.

  I pulled her down next to me, felt the trembling in her body speaking to my own, and nuzzled against her neck. I ghosted kisses there in gentling, soothing strokes until her breath went back to normal. Until the pounding of her heart was no longer the only thing I could hear.

  “You’re incredible,” I whispered into the golden strands of her hair.

  Iris’s arms tightened around me and she gave a minute shake of her head, pulling me closer and denying the compliment. She caught my jaw in her hand, swept her thumb across my lips, and sighed against me.

  She didn’t speak. Didn’t make promises or proclamations. She touched my mouth with reverence and kept the slick press of her body against mine until sleep claimed us both.

  * * *

  THE MORNING SLIPPED in past my dreams — caught in a coat but no pants while trying to take Iris to meet my parents for brunch, three guesses what my subconscious was worried about there — and roused me into growing sunlight. I turned my face toward the pillow, closed my arms tighter around the body in bed with me, and fought the way the fog cleared from my mind.

  “You’re awake,” Iris murmured, soft hand stroking over my wrist where it laid across her waist.

  “Nope.” I burrowed into the blonde mass of her hair.

  “I must be mistaken,” she said dryly.

  “’S okay. Even geniuses are wrong sometimes.”

  The soft snort that followed was the only prelude to Iris tipping me onto my back. She rolled to brace herself on her elbow, looking down at me.

  “Morning.” Iris trailed a hand over my brow and pushed hair away from my face as she leaned in for a kiss.

  “Breath!” I interjected, pulling back into the pillows. “Morning breath.” I had definitely fallen asleep without brushing, I could only imagine what horrors were waiting to unleash themselves.

  The blonde lifted an unimpressed brow. “I don’t care.” Her lips were on mine as soon as I stopped pulling away. It was her funeral. The kiss was warm and sweet and lingering — everything I would’ve guessed Iris didn’t know how to be when I first met her. Man, was I happy to be wrong.

  “I kind of can’t believe I’m here,” I said once I regained control of my mouth. I scrambled to explain while Iris cocked her head to the side in confusion. “I mean — I’m really not anything like your ex. At all.”

  Iris rested her jaw on her hand and peered down at me for nerve-wracking, silent moments. “No,” she agreed at last. “You’re not.”

  In retrospect, I wasn’t sure what I had expected. Iris Spark was honest when she wasn’t hiring people to pretend to date her. If I didn’t want to hear that my insecurities were entirely well-founded, I shouldn’t have said anything.

  I definitely shouldn’t have said anything.

  Small favors, but Iris didn’t look like she was on the verge of kicking me out of her bed. She wasn’t suddenly aware that I was not in her league or that there were some senses she needed to be coming to. Instead, she ran a hand down my side and watched it follow the curve of my hip, my thigh. She was more settled than I’d ever seen her. Calmer.

  “I usually run in the mornings. Or bike.” She flicked her blue eyes up to meet my gaze.

  Oh. Did that mean she wanted me to leave? “Right. Yeah, sorry.” I pulled my legs up, ready to move so I could find my clothes and scoot out the door before I shattered the rest of my dignity. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

  “No.” Her palm was flat on the soft lower curve of my belly, keeping me still. “I meant that I usually need to run before I feel this focused.”

  A rush of pride — illogical and bizarre — swelled in my chest. There wasn’t any way I could put that on a business card. And certainly the client testimonials page on my site didn’t need to know it. But somewhere in my brain I was chiseling ‘blew the cobwebs out of Iris Spark’ onto my list of greatest accomplishments.

  “Ah.” I fell back against the pillows. “Then you’re welcome.”

  Iris quirked the corner of her mouth into a smile and continued her hand’s lazy circuit of my body. She wasn’t luring me into another rush of arousal, wasn’t coaxing me back into lust. She was exploring, my presence in her bed something she wanted to savor on its own.

  “Is it worth all this?” I asked, proving that Iris Spark had clearly blown all the sense out of me.

  “Specify.”

  “The fight, I mean. Is it worth all this trouble to fight to keep SparkSignal?” I watched her face, knew the exact moment that her jaw went rigid and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’d fucked that one up.

  “Giving up?” Iris’s voice was tight, almost angry, but her hand was still gentle and she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “No,” I insisted. I curled toward Iris, got as far into her line of sight as I could without pushing her. “No. That isn’t what I mean.” I bit my lip. “I just — when you told me about starting SparkSignal, you said all of it with so much passion. It obviously meant something to you.”

  “It meant everything to me.”

  And there it was, the spark that was so far gone when the conversation wasn’t on what she’d built or how we were going to defend it. “I know that.” The last thing I needed was for Iris to think I didn’t care. Or that I didn’t see her. “But — you sound frustrated when you talk about the board. The — the vote. You sound like you’re irritated with them for pulling a dirty trick. But you don’t sound like you care.”

  Iris’s jaw worked. “I care.”

  “Okay, yes. Obviously yes.” I sat up against the headboard. “But you don’t love it. You don’t love running SparkSignal the way you loved building it.” I was so far out of line I could imagine Iris’s hyper-competent assistant signaling a sniper to take me out of the conversation before I could be even more impertinent. But I was bold and stupid, newly invited into Iris’s bed.

  “It’s mine.” The blonde looked up after a tense, interminable moment. “No one has earned the right to take it from me.”

  “But they can’t take it from you.” I shook my head. “Not the part that matters, right? They can’t change the fact that you built it. They can’t erase you from its history, no matter how man
y articles pretend it sprang out of nothing. I know this is none of my business.” I held up my hands, and the look on Iris’s face said I was entirely right about that. “But I hate to see you…fending off attacks on your throne when the thing that inspires you is creating something new.” Might as well put it all out there, right? “SparkSignal exists. It’s out in the world. There are so many other mountains to climb. You can’t tell me SparkSignal is the only thing you’ve ever wanted to build.”

  I took Iris’s hands in mine, fought the look of irritated discomfort on her face with soft, brushing kisses against her wrists. “You’re brilliant. And you don’t need to prove it by fighting for something you don’t want anymore.” My voice went softer against her skin. “I’m all in on this, you know that. I’ll help organize the campaign any way you want it to go. I only want you to know that you don’t have to keep doing something if you don’t want it.”

  “I want it.” Iris’s voice was firm but her expression was soft. “I’m not willing to give up on it.”

  There was an echo of the words ‘not yet’ somewhere in her voice, but I wasn’t quite dumb enough to insist.

  “Then we won’t give up.” I shrugged and it was that easy.

  The sharp chime of Iris’s phone was an ear-shattering screech in what had been the quiet, safe confines of her bed. She rolled away from me, leaned forward and stretched that athletic body toward her nightstand to swipe open her phone.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Iris turned the phone around to show me the message on the screen.

  The top of the window read ‘Carrie’ and the majority of the screen was filled with short, efficient messages. There were texts about meeting times and rescheduling, the location of particular documents, or when Mr. Stevens would be waiting outside whatever building Iris was in. Each message was followed by a concise answer from Iris. All except the last one. It took a minute to parse, given that it looked like a photo of a screenshot from the local newspaper’s proofing desk. But once I read the headline, my heart sank into my stomach.

  ‘HAROLD GARBERSON TAPPED FOR SPARKSIGNAL TOP DOG’

  Well, fuck.

  13

  IRIS

  “They’re lining Garberson up to replace me. Tuesday. They’re doing it on Tuesday.” The lounge in the Lovelace was ordinarily one of my favorite rooms. It had interesting stained glass panels set into the walls, warm hardwood, comfortable chairs arranged in perfect configurations for small groups to converse. It even managed to be a comfortable place to be alone.

  Right then I only felt caged.

  “You’re sure it’s Garberson?” Dahlia asked.

  An unimpressed look over the rim of my glass quelled her. As she held her hands up in surrender, I caught sight of a fading stamp on her wrist.

  “Hell, Dahlia. Are you honestly going to the sorts of places that stamp your hand on the way in?” It was beneath her. It had always been beneath her. Unfortunately, Dahlia had never seen it that way.

  “You know how it is,” she breezed. “Reclaiming my lost youth.”

  “You’re twenty-eight,” I pointed out.

  “So I am. Claiming my current youth, then.” Hazel eyes twinkled at me. “Don’t worry about Garberson. He’s a useless sack and everyone knows it.” The dismissive shrug was more grating than reassuring, even if I knew my cousin wanted to help. She simply didn’t have all the facts.

  “Evidently they don’t know it,” I growled. “If they’re giving him my company.” It was maddening. I’d known what I was doing when I brought on the new investors, but I needed more time. Damn it.

  “I told you not to give so much control away,” Catherine said flatly. She’d settled into my sphere like a panther unconcerned about the presence of a bear. Just a pair of predators, nothing to see there. We should’ve hated each other. Cate, after all, represented the face of venture capital in Silicon Valley, without whom I’d not be in my current mess.

  I’d be in an entirely different mess and she knew it. “I needed the processing power and it was the only way to get the capital in time.” We’d been over it. It was an old argument. Tediously, it turned out to be one she would win. “Anyway, it’s too late for that now. I’m handling it.”

  Catherine, god bless her blackened soul, looked unconvinced.

  Dahlia just looked pitying. Fuck everything.

  “If Garberson weren’t useless, he wouldn’t have to pick through your exes looking for relevance.” The sharp edge of Dahlia’s tongue was wicked when she wanted it to be. Unfortunately, Garberson wasn’t there to bear the barb, and the glancing blow hit me more than him.

  It hit Amber more than me, and I wasn’t comfortable with how much I hated the implication. I bit back the first three things I wanted to hiss at my cousin. Everyone had someone who could get beneath their skin faster than anyone else. We’d been that for each other.

  “You noticed that, hm?” There. If I sounded like I didn’t care, they’d drop it.

  Catherine stifled a snort, but Dahlia didn’t bother.

  “Everyone noticed that,” my cousin said. “Your mother noticed that. Felt like I was fifteen again when she texted me, trying to remember if you were out yet or if I needed to hide it like that one time you tried smoking.”

  A disgusted pull of Catherine’s painted lips punctuated Dahlia’s statement.

  “If mom doesn’t know I’m gay at this point it’s her own fault.” I took a sip of my bourbon.

  “Speaking of, how are things with the adorable Ms. Kay?” Dahlia asked, stroking the stem of her flute of prosecco. Humor glittered in her expression, trying to coax an answering smile from my face. “Karaoke. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I never would’ve believed it.”

  “Kowalczyk. And they’re fine.” I ignored the pointed way Dahlia waited, the way she stared, prompting me to continue. It was none of her business.

  She tried a different tactic. “Why don’t you bring her to the charity ball? Introduce her.”

  I blinked. “Why the hell would I do that?”

  “Because if you don’t, eventually she’s going to think you’re slumming,” Dahlia said bluntly. She leaned forward and clapped a hand on my knee with more force than was strictly amiable. “She has friends. She probably doesn’t realize that all you’ve got are a cousin and some comfortable enemies. It’d be reasonable for her to expect you to introduce her around your crowd, too.”

  “She’s met Carrie,” I protested automatically.

  Dahlia fixed me with a steely stare that didn’t fit with the pink in her hair and the fading ‘21+’ on her wrist. “Employees don’t count.”

  I bit my tongue so hard I tasted blood, and the tang of copper was the only thing keeping me from pointing out that Amber was on my payroll, too. The uncomfortable reminder settled in among my thoughts like mold, growing where I didn’t think to look, shocking me when I let my mind wander from its appointed paths.

  “Don’t you mean ‘realize she’s slumming’?” Catherine asked idly, carefully not meeting my eyes.

  The explosive rush of rage through my veins was followed by an unexpected jolt of gratitude. Anger was significantly easier to deal with than the sickening truth that Amber was, in fact, my employee and every time I let myself touch her it was a black mark against my integrity.

  Dahlia rolled her eyes. “It’s like you want her to bite you.”

  “I’d be careful about who you’re calling low class, Vogle.” It wasn’t exactly a threat, wasn’t exactly the parlor snipe my grandmother had tried to train me in, but it was close enough. And I knew she felt it.

  “That isn’t —” She scowled, sat forward on her chair and leaned in toward me. “It isn’t about her ‘class’. It’s about dipping into a world that isn’t yours.” A muscle in her jaw worked while her eyes traveled from point to point in the middle distance faster than anything in the room could’ve been moving. “You like that she’s not part of — this.” Her hand waved through the air, endangering her drink and the cl
ub floor’s latest refinishing. “You know it would change things if she were.”

  Dahlia, who could manage a soft spot for someone who’d cut the brake line in her car, let her eyes go fond and her smile sweet once Catherine stopped talking. “Bring her to the fundraiser.”

  “Fine.”

  * * *

  THE DAY HAD BEEN a long one: meeting after endless meeting with heads of all of the cogs in the massive machine I’d built. Amber hadn’t been wrong when she’d said that I didn’t love the reality of running a large company. But the thought of stepping down — letting someone take away the thing that I’d built as if it weren’t mine — was anathema.

  Carrie had been the only thing that made the workday go smoothly. She’d kept me from devolving into the caricature the tech press liked to paint me as. She’d kept meetings moving and made sure that the obvious follow-ups were followed up.

  I suspected that Carrie was also the reason that when I’d finally stumbled home, I’d found Amber sitting on my couch. She’d been surrounded by notebooks and her phone while she frowned down at something on her laptop screen. She’d looked like she belonged there.

  It was late into the evening, but it’d been sunrise when she smiled at me, chirping that she’d ordered from the poke place and it should arrive in fifteen minutes.

  After dinner, Amber had sent me off — alone — to the shower to let the specialized showerhead pound on my shoulders until the throbbing in my brain had stopped.

  It didn’t take long for her to find me afterward.

  “What is that?” Amber asked, sliding in between the sheets beside me and dipping her head to rest on my shoulder.

  My heart gave a fierce double beat as the scent of her hair wafted up to me. I focused on my laptop screen, fighting to keep a helpless smile from my face. She had that effect on me. “Shell script.”