Technically Faking

by Robin Hale

  “I guess it’s good to come from a family with money?” I laughed weakly. It was a pathetic joke, but I was a little worried that I was suffering from hypoxia with how disoriented I felt. She was just…starting a new one.

  She wanted me to work for her. With her.

  It didn’t feel real.

  Iris, when I finally made my eyes focus on her rather than the dots swimming in front of me, looked scandalized. “Kowalczyk,” she said. “Never start a company with your own money.” A beat, then a considering look flickered over her face while she cocked her head. “At least not twice.”

  “What?” My IQ was dropping like a lead balloon. Was the room filled with some sort of gas? Did I have nitrous oxide poisoning?

  “The SparkSignal vote,” she explained.

  “They removed you.” I nodded. It hurt to get the words out, to finally have to acknowledge how completely I’d failed.

  She hummed as if I’d commented on the weather. “But they couldn’t kick me out.” Her teeth flashed and there was a glint of that power-hungry ambition that had set the tech press so on edge about her. “You made it so they couldn’t simply kick me out. I was too popular. Public opinion had me too closely linked with the company.”

  The spark in her eyes was conquest, and I wasn’t sure what to make of the rush of lust it set off in my gut. Better not look at it too closely.

  “They had to accept my resignation. They had to pretend they didn’t want me to go. And I wasn’t going to give them a resignation without enough money to start Nanofiche.”

  I didn’t want to think about what that figure must have looked like. “They gave you enough to start another company?” I asked. Rich people were another species entirely.

  Satisfaction dripped from Iris’s smile. “Without a round of angel investing,” she said in a tone that suggested confirmation.

  “Are you sure you want me?” I blurted out. “I’ve never — I don’t have a degree, Iris. I couldn’t keep you in your position at SparkSignal. Why would you want me to launch a company with you? You must have better options.” Like someone she’d known at SparkSignal. Or a new grad from Stanford. Or a raccoon she found in a trash can outside the coffee shop where we met.

  Iris blinked at me. “There’s no one better than you.”

  A jolt of heat shot through my chest and tingled all the way to my fingertips. I didn’t need food, didn’t need coffee, I just needed Iris Spark saying I was the best at something. I didn’t care what it was.

  But I couldn’t move from one contract to another, not that easily. I couldn’t pretend that all I wanted was to be near her while she conquered worlds. That I’d be happy getting to share her bed while I did.

  I swallowed hard, bracing to shatter every good thing that had just happened. It was the right thing to do. But I didn’t want to do it. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  Iris went unnaturally still. “Oh?” She asked, voice carefully neutral.

  Time to rip off the bandage. “I — made a mistake. While we were...while I was working for you. I shouldn’t have let things get so…” I huffed, scrubbed a hand down my face and tried again. “It was unprofessional of me, and I can’t blame you for thinking that it wouldn’t be a problem.”

  The look on Iris’s face was indescribable. It was almost enough to dry up the words on my tongue. Almost.

  “I’m in love with you.” There. Simple, undeniable, and the scariest thing I’d ever had to say. The air in my lungs sat like lead weights. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I get that you’re — that sex doesn’t have to mean anything, but it did for me. And I don’t want to —”

  Iris cut me off with a wave of her hand and the horrible mix of pain and defensiveness was replaced with confusion. “Amber, I asked you to launch a company with me,” she said as if it explained everything.

  Judging by the look in her eyes, she’d expected it to.

  “I know. That’s why I’m telling you I need more than…than that. That’s why I’m the wrong choice. For the company.” Where had my spine gone? Oh, there it was, in a useless puddle on the floor.

  “‘More than that’.” Iris stared. “To give you more than that I’d have to reach inside my chest. It’s the first time I’ve told a woman I love her.”

  My heart shot upward at a rate of about a thousand feet per second. “Oh.”

  The corners of Iris’s eyes crinkled, her mouth went soft. “Yes, ‘oh’,” she chuckled and reached for me. Her fingers slid through my hair as she tilted my head to kiss me again. “There’s no one better than you,” she murmured against my lips. “I want you with me.”

  My pulse was racing so quickly it was likely to shake me apart. “I want to be with you.”

  “Then be with me,” Iris said and it was so simple I could believe it was all that mattered. “And since you evidently need to hear it: I love you.”

  She loved me.

  She loved me.

  We crashed against the table as I threw myself into her arms.

  19

  IRIS

  Dahlia would have to forgive my sudden departure.

  She couldn’t have missed it. We weren’t subtle about dashing out the door, hands clasped to fight a nonexistent current. Hell, Dahlia might’ve stood on the front step and shouted after us for all I would have noticed. Nothing existed outside of Amber.

  Nothing mattered other than getting her back to the condo that had become home when she was in it.

  Nothing mattered other than slipping our hands beneath our clothes, moving by silent agreement into the large shower attached to the master bedroom.

  We had a world to wash away, after all.

  Amber’s fingers flexed beneath my hand, arm raised and pinned against the marble wall. The rainfall showerhead let out a silent storm that made the air thick and close and impossibly intimate. Her back was slick against my chest and I crowded her forward, cradled the curve of her ass in the bowl of my hips and pressed my lips to her shoulder.

  “Iris…” she whispered, forehead to the wall while she arched her back against me, pushing us closer together.

  It was intoxicating. It was the only time — the first time — that I wasn’t worried about when I would next get to touch her. Whether this would be the last taste of her skin, the last time listening to her breathing grow shallow and urgent. The last time chasing shivers down her back and painting my touch over every inch of her.

  She loved me.

  She’d said it a thousand times at the Lovelace. Breathed it into my mouth, poured it down my throat. We’d barely gotten to the car before she’d tried to trace it on my thighs with her tongue.

  A low groan escaped from my mouth and I slid my free hand around the curve of her waist, chasing upward to the point of her chin to feel her lips press kisses against my fingertips. She loved me. I couldn’t stop repeating it in my head, letting the sound of it echo off the inside of my skull, building a slow, languorous heat that chased away every last shred of loneliness I’d carried in my bones. Loneliness I’d carried where I had believed no one would meet me. Down where my ambition was engraved in my soul and my focus resonated in every breath.

  I’d thought, once, that the best I could hope for was a partner patient enough not to mind my eccentricities.

  I was an idiot. A damned lucky idiot.

  I pushed tighter against Amber’s back and slid my hand down her throat to her chest to let the curve of her breast settle into my palm. Every touch was heavy and sweet. Intoxicating. Water sluiced down her neck, between the devastating wings of her shoulder blades and I needed to taste her there. I lapped at the water, kissed promises into the skin over her spine.

  Amber loved me for every last flaw I had. I’d been called arrogant before, but I would be insufferable going forward. The gorgeous woman in my arms thought I was perfect and no one would be able to convince me otherwise.

  Her shoulder was warm beneath my cheek when I tipped my head to lick a stripe along her neck
. She shivered, nipple pebbling in my palm, and I grinned. Gorgeous.

  I pressed her hand flat to the shower, pinning her there, relishing the hitch in her breath, the cant of her hips that followed. My thumb swept over her nipple while I rocked my hips against her, sucking red marks into her shoulder that wouldn’t fade for at least a day. For the first time, it was allowed. Welcome. A shiver of need rolled through my body and I plucked at her nipple again, drawing a stifled whine. I needed to make Amber as undone as I was.

  She didn’t disappoint. She whimpered, thrust her chest forward and her hips back and I pushed against her, holding her still. Holding her where I wanted her. Mine. She was mine. And she wanted to be there as much as I did.

  Goosebumps lifted on her skin even in the heat of the water pouring down over us, and I followed the trail they blazed down her belly, skirting over her hips, letting the softness of those curves tempt my touch lower. I combed through the hair at the apex of her thighs, teased over the seam of her, giving her pressure but no friction. Not yet.

  I felt a slow contentment while heat built between my thighs and my heartbeat raced. I didn’t care if I shook myself to pieces so long as I could pet Amber’s skin, could tease her, could feel her fall apart. If there was a heaven after all of this, it couldn’t be better than that shower with her.

  “Please,” she whimpered, voice soft and sweet and helpless.

  I bit back a snort. Helpless, she certainly was not. I hadn’t forgotten the way she’d pushed me around my bed, the way she’d moved my thighs, the way she’d yanked my orgasm out of me. But there was nothing sweeter than having someone like that choose to go pliant under my hands.

  My fingertip dipped between her folds and the slickness there sent a jolt through my core. Fuck, she was so hot. So ready. I bit down on the juncture of her neck and shoulder, adding a sharp edge to the mark I’d raised, and let my fingers slide through her wetness to pet over her opening.

  “Yes,” she gasped. “Yes, there. Please.”

  If she thought she could hurry me along, she was mistaken. Where before I’d needed to steal every ounce of pleasure from the hours I had, the game had changed. She loved me. And that meant I could have days of this. Weeks. Years of her moans and whimpers. And I wanted all of them.

  Amber shivered and shuddered, rocking back as far as I would let her — which wasn’t far at all — while I traced the edges of her opening. She was so sensitive, so easy to rouse and to push over the edge. I was usually a one-and-done myself, but if I played her carefully, I could coax endless cascades out of the brunette beneath my hands.

  I rubbed along the rim of her entrance, dipping shallowly to slick my fingers and tease at a deeper touch. She was so good. So, so good. I caught her earlobe between my teeth and sucked, lapping and feeling the velvety softness in my mouth while my fingers made her skin flush in a searing wave.

  “I missed you.” It was a simple confession, but it made Amber’s shoulders jerk, her abdomen convulse. Her hips bucked, sending her pussy pushing harder against my fingers. There wasn’t any reason to keep the resulting grin off my face. I petted the hood of her clit, stroked down the soft inner lips of her vulva and listened to my darling whine in the back of her throat. “Missed seeing you. Missed having you.”

  “Iris…” It was a plea. An affirmation. Amber rolled her hips in tight circles against my fingers, and I followed the line of her body until I was on the brink of combustion. Our skin sliding against each other, our bodies pressed so tightly there was no space between us, the slick push of my fingertips across her core…we were perfect together.

  “Soon,” I promised. I swirled my touch around her clit, rubbing at the bud, letting her ride the movement of my hand while the muscles in her back, her shoulders, her thighs grew tighter and tighter. The water pouring over her hair, down her neck to my waiting mouth was sweeter than any wine I’d ever tasted. And it had nothing on the taste of her desire. She trembled against the marble wall, fingers flexing and gripping my hand where I pinned her, panting these short little huffs of air that were the reason my heart kept beating.

  “Iris —” Again, choked off, begging so prettily for me. “I —”

  “Go ahead,” I whispered with a twist of my fingers against her clit.

  She bucked, keening until it slid into a subvocal moan, shuddering against the fingertips pressed hard against her opening, and gave me the electric jolt of satisfaction I only felt when I made her come. I petted her through the first one, soothed her skin with my lips until the shaking subsided and I moved back.

  “Spread your legs,” I said. “Lean forward and brace on the shelf.”

  Amber barely glanced back at me, not confused so much as hazy in the wash of her own pleasure, and followed my instructions. She leaned forward until she was braced against the low, built-in platform in the wall that held an array of unlabeled, stylishly monochrome shower products.

  To think I’d been keeping my shampoo there when it should’ve held Amber’s forearms.

  “What are you —” Her voice was a soft, gauzy thing until my knees hit the floor and she felt the first touch of my mouth against the lips of her pussy. “Oh fuck.”

  I grinned and let my teeth graze her slick flesh. She was so easy for me. So perfect. My tongue spread over her opening and my fingers found her clit and I let my teeth press my lips against soft, delicate places — covering their sharp edges with my own body so I wouldn’t hurt her. Never hurt her.

  Her moans were constant, her knees shuddering while I knelt between them. I dipped my tongue inside her, thrust my way inside to the rhythm of my fingertips on her hard little bud and the wave of her next orgasm crested. She flexed around my tongue, nearly forced me out of her body but my hand on her thigh kept her right where I wanted her.

  I was high on my victory over the board, high on the knowledge that Amber wanted me, that she was happy to belong to me, that I belonged to her. Each orgasm I wrung from her body was better than the bubbling tease of champagne Dahlia had tried to soothe me with. There was nothing like the feeling of Amber at the apex of her pleasure. Nothing.

  “Think you can give me another one?” I asked and indulged in an appreciative squeeze of her thighs.

  Amber’s voice was wrecked and trembling. I could taste the salt of her sweat through the shower still bearing down on us, she was so undone.

  “Iris.” All those pretty words of hers and she’d been reduced to just my name.

  Good.

  I nipped at the globe of her perfect ass and soothed the bite with a kiss. “Maybe one more,” I coaxed and drew my tongue from her soaked vulva over her perineum to trace spirals over the wrinkled skin of her other opening.

  “Iris!” Shock. Surprise. But — not disgust.

  I pulled back anyway. “No?” I asked.

  There was a heartbeat of silence and Amber squirmed while I didn’t touch her. While I waited.

  “Please…” It was soft and shy and so fucking sexy that I had to growl against her pretty skin and dive back in.

  My fingers parted the lips of her pussy and dipped in, rocking shallow thrusts inside her that wouldn’t be enough. Not for my Amber. Every stroke of my tongue over her ass made her thighs shudder and I wrapped a hand around her leg to hold her upright. Everything about her opened for me. My fingers were covered in the slick evidence of her pleasure and slid into her body so easily it was like she was begging me to be there. My tongue pressed against the silky-strange skin of her ass and lapped gently, gently. It could be overwhelming if you weren’t used to it, and I was sure I was the only person who had touched Amber there.

  My thumb stroked her perineum in time with my fingers, soothing and stoking in turn, but my tongue barely fluttered over her. It was enough. I felt her orgasm start inside her before I heard her cry out — she clenched around my fingers, not forcing me out but forcing me to stay, stay inside her as if there could be anywhere else I intended to be. Her cry was a sob, broken and shattered and the most beaut
iful thing I’d heard in my entire fucking life. I pressed kiss after kiss to her thighs, her back, her hips. I stroked my fingers along the outside of her vulva, smoothing the shudders until they were ripples rather than waves.

  Once she’d settled, the wild lust I’d caged behind the need to take care of her finally slipped its leash. I surged to my feet, pressed the pair of us forward so that every gorgeous inch of her was tight against my body, so that my nipples rubbed against her back, my thighs against hers, and I got the fingers that had just been inside Amber to the apex of my legs and sprinted toward orgasm.

  My head fell against her shoulder and I had a helpless arm around her waist as I clung to her.

  Her hands stroked my arm and she whispered things that would’ve sounded impossible a week ago. “I love you,” she said while I rubbed my clit and sobbed against her body. “I want you so much, Iris. I want to keep you.”

  Her voice was perfect in my ears, her skin excruciatingly slick and soft and wonderful against mine, and I surged against the soft roundness of her ass and my own relentless fingers until I broke myself open on my release.

  “Amber —” I gasped while everything crashed through my body at once. It took centuries to come down. Millennia. And when I did, Amber was turning her head, leaning into my mouth to kiss me.

  “Are you sure?” I asked once I remembered how to form words. “I was just —”

  “I don’t care,” she said with the kind of smile that floated above all other considerations. And then she kissed me. Softly and sweetly until my shoulders relaxed and I yielded against her.

  I panted against her skin, sacrificing the odd breath for another taste of the salt the shower hadn’t quite washed away and clutched her closer to me. She was there, she loved me, and she was perfect.

  And I didn’t ever want to let her go.

  “Move in with me,” I begged between brushes of lips and fingers. I tilted her head to the side, leaned up to dip into her mouth for another jolt of the taste of her. No one had ever tasted so sweet before.