by Anne Marsh
Maple teases me all the time about my crushes. I spot a guy and I fall in love or at least in like from a safe distance. Imagining the possibilities excites me. Once I get to know my crush, however, my feelings fade rapidly. Cinderella probably came to her senses, too, and realized that Prince Charming wasn’t who she’d imagined him to be. Maybe he was better or (more likely) he was worse, but once the distance between them was erased, things changed. I usually solve this problem by avoiding real-life dating and opting for an active fantasy life instead where there’s zero disappointment as long as I’ve remembered to replace the batteries in my battery-operated boyfriend.
Over the years, I’ve enjoyed a number of memorable crushes. My first was the hot guy who played third trombone in high school competitive band. I spent more time staring at the impressive bulge in his shorts than at my sheet music. Next was a college literature professor for a required freshman seminar—I zoned out once imagining giving him a blow job and rejoined reality with the professor and the entire class staring at me because “I’d been making noises” (I’d dropped that class because there’s no going back after relative strangers know your porn sounds). And then there were plenty of noncontact fantasies that started with sexy emailing and texting and ended abruptly when my correspondent announced the ball is in your court and waited for me to make good on my dirty promises. Actions aren’t my thing—I ghosted those guys.
“Hello?” Tall, Dark and Cranky frowns at me. We’re nose to nose thanks to my perch on his lap.
“I—” My heart does a delicious nosedive. Now is the perfect time to snap out something witty, but I’ve got nothing. I’ll just have to make it up later.
“Never mind.” He tips me off his lap and onto the seat as he gets to his feet in one fluid, panty-melting move, more barbarian than white knight. To be fair, I just crushed his balls with my knee. He straightens his jacket, revealing that my champagne has christened his right sleeve in addition to darkening his shirtfront.
I give him puppy dog eyes as he strides away. Fortunately, he can’t see, so what’s left of my dignity remains intact. I’m not sure he even looked at my face. He definitely didn’t ask my name. Or tell me his. And there’s nary a business card involved. He’s perfect fantasy fodder.
Later tonight I’ll relive these moments and remember the way he touched me. The heat of his fingers braceleting my wrists. His scent and the crisp rustle of expensive cotton. I’ll touch myself when I’m alone, imagining what could have happened next.
Of how he might have kissed me with that sinful mouth.
Of how I might have bitten that full lower lip just to make him pay attention to me.
Of how I could have pushed my hands beneath his suit jacket and explored the hard, muscled chest he’d so thoughtlessly hidden from the world. The truth is, I love not knowing who he is. Tall, Dark and Cranky is a mystery. I know only that he’s fit, horrifyingly attractive and—given his presence at this mixer—likely business-minded to a sharkish fault, but everything else about him is just a gorgeous possibility. He’s the ultimate fill-in-the-blank problem where I can pencil in absolutely anything I want and he will never, ever disappoint me since I will never see him again.
CHAPTER TWO
Dev
MONDAY MORNING SHOULD not surprise me. After all, I wrote the agenda for my company’s executive team meeting. When I stroll into King Me’s San Francisco conference room, however, the mood is not jubilant. I closed a major e-commerce deal at the Friday mixer despite crazy chick’s drenching, and that means more stock options, bigger bonuses and the hugest possible gold star. Winner.
I drop into my chair at the table and eyeball the room. People claim my surfer boy outside in no way matches my CEO insides. That I’m a cranky bastard who routinely demands near-impossible coding heroics from my people. I offer this truth: I make those people money and ergo there are no complaints. Something is up today, however.
“Explain.” I point to the head of my engineering department. Simon Rand is an excellent software developer. He doesn’t do the bullshit dance around unpleasant truths. This forthrightness saw him let go from two previous start-ups, where the CEO-owner-entrepreneurs preferred team members to blow expensive, happy smoke up their asses while the companies burned through VC capital and made rapid descents into bankruptcy. I prefer making money hand over fist, so I insist on truth-telling.
Simon makes a sour face. Rather than ask the logical question explain what?, he assumes I’ve acquired telepathy powers over the weekend and already know the what. He plunges into explanations.
I hold up a hand. “Stop.”
Simon stops.
A tense pause follows as the team attempts and fails to get on the mind-reading train to figure out who I’ll fire for this. It’s tempting, because Simon’s news (and it’s news to me) falls into the no-good-very-bad-day bucket. It’s also humiliating, frustrating and makes me see red.
I recap on the off chance I’ve misheard. I don’t make mistakes but hell could freeze over. “Someone stole our brand-new e-commerce shopping cart code.”
Simon nods.
“The exclusive code we’ve presold to twelve major online vendors.”
Another nod.
“Exclusive code that is no longer exclusive unless Merriam-Webster has changed the definition of the word.”
A veritable storm of head-bobbing around the table. We’re all on the same page.
“Who is the cause of this really big fucking problem?”
No one moves because the first thing you learn in the corporate world is that moving makes you a target. Simon looks like he might be sick.
I try again. “How?”
This one should be easier to answer given the multiple levels of security I’ve instituted. Unfortunately, this question is also met with silence.
“So essentially we know nothing.” The theft may now be a fact, but revenge remains an option. I build a back door and handy-dandy detonator into our apps. Steal my shit and poof—your e-commerce site sells rubber ducky dildos in fashion colors rather than whatever you’ve really got in your warehouse. And because industrial espionage is rampant and I trust no one outside my immediate circle of friends, I build in that safeguard from day one. I also build in a tracker that alerts when my software goes live on the internet, which must be how Simon knows.
“Yet,” Simon clarifies. “We don’t know anything yet.”
Now it’s my turn to nod. “Exactly. All we have to do is figure out the connection between the three seemingly unrelated businesses illegally using our code. We didn’t sell it to them, but they’ve got it. Somehow. There’s a pattern even if we don’t see it yet.”
Simon leaps to his feet, grabs a dry-erase marker and starts sketching on the whiteboard. While the rest of the room pretends to listen intently to the stream of engineering coming from his mouth, I brainstorm internally. The first business sells mail-order hemp candles and I assume they’ll likely get arrested on drug distribution charges. The second business, an adult pool float company, might not mind a deluge of rubber ducky dildos (I’ll trigger the alternate version of my destructo-code for them, the one that crashes your site by playing endless loops of puppies and kittens). The third company is a woman-owned, eco-friendly, socially conscious feminine hygiene products start-up that promises to donate a box of tampons for every one you purchase in the ultimate two-for-one deal. The only obvious connection between the three is that none of these companies can possibly make any money.
The marijuana maker inhabits office space three hundred and forty miles north in Humboldt County and an ocean separates me and the pool party, which maintains offices in China. That leaves the girl boss company. I check my phone. I can get there in forty minutes, straighten out this Lola Jones who thinks she can steal from me and still make my two o’clock. I just need to know. I hate secrets. I’ve always sussed out my Christmas presents e
arly, I read the ends of books first and I check for spoilers on my favorite TV shows. Enjoying the ride is easier when you know how the ride ends.
When Simon finally comes up for air, I stand up. “Meeting adjourned.”
CHAPTER THREE
Dev
THE HIPPIE CHICK at the receptionist’s desk either doesn’t recognize a heartless bastard when she meets one or she optimistically believes dating is the ultimate DIY project and she can fixer-upper me into happily-ever-after. From the slack-jawed way she’s stared at me since I strode through the door and demanded to see the company founder, she may also be entertaining naked fantasies. My expensive suit is gift-wrapping on an amazing package and we both know it. Strip me down and, heartless or not, I’m gorgeous. I’m also not afraid to play dirty—in bed and out—and I’m confident.
Too confident?
Borderline asshole and all the way arrogant?
Noise.
I know my worth. In addition to my billions, I have surfer hair, sun-streaked and shoulder-length, salt-tousled and unruly. Ironically, given my chronic inability to sleep, I usually look as if I just rolled out of bed. Beast lord, billionaire bad boy, surfer, Conan the Barbarian, pirate king—I can star in any fantasy you jill off to and Hippie Chick has clearly zoned out to her personal favorite.
Her forehead wrinkles as she tries to bring her brain back online and do her job. “You want to see Lola?”
Pay attention to the fact that she doesn’t ask why I’m here. She’s made an assumption, an important and entirely incorrect assumption.
“That’s why I came.” She’s wasting my time. I could have been in and out already, and that’s no euphemism.
Hippie Chick beams at me. I could ask her out right now, but I’m not here to score a date. I have two rules: never bring a girl back to my place and never screw at work. It’s too risky. Too drama inducing. Too boring. And while Calla Enterprises isn’t technically my workplace, I’m here on business.
“Okay.” Hippie Chick bounces to her feet. Literally. Instead of normal, ergonomic office chairs, this place has neon-colored yoga balls. As she flip-flops away, presumably to fetch Lola and not on a karmic journey of self-discovery, I admire the view even if I’m staying otherwise hands-off. Business casual has achieved a whole new level of undress, and the ripped jeans hugging her ass are spectacular—as is the white T-shirt over the jewel-green bra.
I used to be Mr. Impatient but surfing taught me to slow down (some) and pick the right moment to rush in full speed. Nothing beats chilling on the ocean, hanging on my favorite board until the right wave arrives and I ride it home. I put that same, patient plan into action at King Me, my software company. My IPO might have made me a billionaire, but my impeccable sense of timing has kept me riding the financial wave when so many of my competitors have crashed and burned—and I’m only in my midtwenties.
Calla Enterprises is ambitious. It’s a fledgling start-up that promises women around the world easy, nonembarrassing access to tampons because tampon access is apparently an important first step toward gender equality. According to the website copy, tampons remove a critical barrier between women and important things like an education and a job. And while I’m all for vaginal self-care, this company will fail long before the grenade I planted in their e-commerce system ever detonates. In the company’s brief life span of thirteen months and two days, it has yet to close a round of venture capital funding or bring its product to market. Cue the death march.
In addition to lacking both operating capital and actual product, the company naively assumes that its customers possess genuine humanitarian spirit. Calla promises to donate one box of tampons for every box purchased online. Think about that for a minute. If you were dating and scored two girls for the night, would you really want to hand one off to an unknown guy at the club? Nope. You’d keep them both for yourself and have a threesome. No one is as altruistic as Calla’s founder hopes.
And hope is clearly said founder’s strategy. Calla is located in a repurposed loft/warehouse deep in San Francisco’s Mission District. The neighborhood reads like a Who’s Who of busted start-ups. Despite constant tenant turnover, the building’s great—a loft-style, three-story workspace with a big atrium, an open-space kitchen that reeks like lunch and an enormous disco ball. A handful of flip-flop-wearing, jeans-clad twentysomething women hunch over laptops on tables.
Oblivious to the impending financial doomsday, Hippie Chick flip-flops her way inside a conference room separated from the main space by a wall of glass. It’s like a gigantic fishbowl, except it holds a lone woman and an odd collection of furniture instead of fish and fake mermen. The woman perches on yet another inflatable yoga ball. She’s also head-down on her laptop—I’d have fired her on the spot.
When Hippie Chick bounces in, however, Sleeping Beauty somehow rolls off the ball and onto her feet without serious bodily harm. Seconds later, she marches toward me. Hello. The reason for my visit flies out of my head as the blood in my body heads south and stages a fiesta in my dick.
I think I know this woman. She’s the one who crash-landed on me Friday. She drowned me with her champagne. She all but gave me a lap dance, and then I tipped her off and left. At the time all I could think was what the fuck was that? I scowl. It was dark and I didn’t get a good look at her face—although just remembering the luscious peach of her ass wriggling against my dress pants... This woman is my thief?
I may need to revisit Friday night’s rejection. Lola Jones is unexpectedly, seriously hot for an engineer turned CEO. Dressed even more casually than her receptionist, she wears black yoga pants and a tank top with skinny straps. The tank top is cute and pink, and even though I’d have bet my man card that she isn’t wearing a bra, my thumbs itch to check. To nudge those thin strips of cotton down her shoulders. To mark every creamy inch of her with my mouth, my teeth and my body. I promptly start a Lola to-do list.
Lick her
Explore that sexy shoulder hollow
Nip
Suck. TBD what and where—or everything
Palm a sweet little tit hard
Catch her nipple between my teeth and—
Focus. The porn film in my head is simply reflex. See a pretty girl, think dirty thoughts. It’s nothing I can’t handle. Just as soon as I’ve finished here, I’ll retreat to my Porsche and handle the problem she’s created in my pants. Or I could be a gentleman about our other problem and let her make amends. On her knees, on her back, on top as she rides me like an enthusiastic cowgirl—I’m unexpectedly flexible about the terms.
She shrugs into an oversize, black-and-white flannel shirt, doing up the buttons as she gets closer. Dragging my eyes away from her now-covered tits doesn’t help. Her hair is long and dark brown. She’s twisted it up on top of her head in a spectacular feat of engineering. Perfect for fisting. We should totally try it. She wears tortoiseshell glasses that rest just above a spray of freckles on her right cheek (hello, dirty librarian fantasy). And since she wears no visible makeup, including no nail polish on her bare feet, my brain—both the big one and the smaller, temporarily in charge one below my Gucci belt—fixates on one thing. She’s wearing pajamas.
And yet even half-dressed, she radiates confidence as if she knows this is her space and she completely owns it. I admire that assuredness, even though it’s probably the reason she thinks she can get away with pirating my software. For those of you who’ve ever contemplated doing that: don’t. Like many things in life, software is worth what you pay for it.
Despite my reputation as a bastard, I try to stay friends with karma. I buy flowers for my dates, I routinely spot the panhandler on the corner five bucks and I donate generously to animal charities. I can’t and won’t, however, let people steal from me. It’s like sex and marriage. Why buy the cow if the milk is free? Why pay my premium subscription fees if you can just download what you want from a mirror site in Asia?<
br />
Oblivious, my sexy thief pads to a halt. She looks stunned, but only for a brief second. “You.”
“Me,” I agree.
“God,” she groans. “This is so embarrassing.”
Pink creeps up her chest and over her cheeks as she looks at me. She’s staring, but I stare right back. I won every staring contest growing up.
Yes, you sat on my lap.
Yes, you felt me through your dress.
Yes, I know you weren’t wearing any panties.
She has a heart-shaped face with high cheekbones and that distracting spray of freckles beneath a pair of melting brown eyes. A crinkle grows between those eyes as she frowns. I imagine kissing away that little look of confusion. She doesn’t look impressed by who I am. Or scared. Or even, ever so slightly, wowed. It’s more the embarrassed kind of look when you’ve just bitten into the last doughnut and realize you were expected to share. Perhaps Friday night’s crash landing was an accident after all and she wasn’t a founder hounder trying to meet and marry a tech billionaire.
She abruptly shoves a hand at me. “Perhaps we can start over? Lola Jones.”
Ballsy but nice.
“Devlin King, but the jury’s out on the second chance.” I wrap my fingers around hers. Smooth and delicate, her hand would feel better wrapped around my dick. No polish, no rings, short nails, but that’s okay. She can scream my name instead of digging her nails into my back.
She purses her lips as she reclaims her hand, skepticism written all over her pretty face. She rocks back on her heels. “You’ve never screwed up and needed a do-over?”
“I don’t make mistakes.” I lead off all my interviews this way, but my trademark quote doesn’t appear to ring any bells.
Instead, she snorts. “Despite your unhuman good looks, I’m certain you’re Homo sapiens. Ergo, mistakes happen. Crap.” She slaps a hand over her mouth. “Let’s pretend I never said that.”
