Changing His Game (Gamers #1)

by Megan Erickson

  God, was this her life?

  “Thanks,” she said, fingers tangled in her hair behind her ear.

  A barely perceptible shift in his eyes before he said, “Anytime.”

  When he turned and walked toward the front doors, she told herself to get back to work, to quit ogling the guy, but the way his shirt shifted across his broad upper back, the way his butt filled out those pants… Oh Lord.

  She didn’t look back at her monitor until the doors closed behind him.

  Chapter Two

  Austin Rivers didn’t go back to the office. Doug could handle the rest of the shift. It was end of business hours anyway.

  He reached his car, a black Jaguar, which he always parked behind the building, and rested his hand on the top of the door. His head slumped forward between his shoulders.

  He should have let Doug handle it. It was his shift. His job. Austin shouldn’t have even been there, but sometimes he helped out at IT, under the pretense he was just another employee. And he’d happened to be there today, of all days.

  He’d heard the receptionist say Ms. Lake and maybe he shouldn’t have skipped lunch, because he was just light-headed enough to act like a fool and volunteer to help her.

  Marley.

  She was one of only three women in that office, and she held one of the highest positions at the magazine. She often ate lunch alone on the picnic table right outside of his office, the wind blowing through her curly brown hair, the sun catching on the red highlights.

  She usually wore tight pencil skirts that cupped her well-endowed ass, and stockings with a seam up the back with high heels. So many times he’d wanted to trace that seam with his fingers.

  He thunked his head on the car. He was a fool.

  Because up close, she was even better. Almond-shaped hazel eyes. Creamy, fair skin. A smattering of freckles on her nose.

  He’d admired her from afar for her beauty and her brains and ambition. But he’d stayed away because he had no business fraternizing with her.

  He realized it was just an assumption, but she seemed the type of woman who liked gentle sex full of sighing and declarations of love. Austin’s tastes ran…a little different. Rougher. Dirtier might be a good descriptor, too. Frankly, he liked control everywhere in his life. It was how he’d come to be this successful at thirty-two.

  And that need for control carried into the bedroom.

  He’d shoved Marley to the back of his mind as best as he could. She never gave off any sort of vibe that she’d be compatible with him in bed in any way.

  But that GIF.

  He moaned and shifted his hips. He’d been hard ever since he saw that image on her monitor. Since he heard the catch in her throat and saw the blush spread over her cheeks and top of her chest, visible along the V-neck of her shirt.

  Marley had been turned on. She’d liked that—the man’s hand at the women’s throat. Holding her. Claiming her. His hand dipping into her wet folds…

  Austin wrenched open the door and dropped into his seat, starting up his car and listening to the purr of the engine. The weather was finally warming up, announcing that spring in Willow Park, Pennsylvania, was in full force. After a particularly long and brutal winter, Austin was happy for it.

  He pulled out of the lot and steered toward home. He had to do something to get Marley out of his mind. To relieve this ache. He could call…

  He shook his head. No one else would do. He liked specific things and that took a specific woman. A trusting woman. A strong woman.

  Like Marley, a voice whispered in his head, and he gunned the engine down the highway. He wondered what other fantasies she had, which made his mind race and his knuckles turn white where they gripped the steering wheel.

  His phone rang and he glanced at the display before answering. “Hey, Grant.”

  “Am I catching you at a bad time?” There was a hint of a smile in Grant Osprey’s voice. “Date maybe?”

  He was usually amused at his friend’s attempts to encourage a social life. Tonight he wasn’t. “I’m leaving Gamers after checking up on IT. What can I do for you?”

  Grant clucked his tongue. “So formal.”

  “Grant—”

  “Can you take Syd to the new movie out tomorrow? That Axel Revenge thing?”

  There was a teasing tone to his voice now. It was like Grant couldn’t have a conversation without trying to annoy the shit out of Austin. He’d never admit it, but Austin actually liked it.

  Grant knew the name of the movie. The magazine they owned together had reported on it for the last year. And Grant was the only one who knew Austin had spent most of his early twenties creating the video game on which it was based. “Aric’s Revenge.”

  “Oh, is that the name of it?” Still with the teasing tone, but Grant sounded distracted, which wasn’t unusual. The man was always completing about five tasks at once, with a side of ADD.

  Austin sighed. “Aric’s Revenge, that’s the name of the movie, adapted from the video game of the same name, which sold over fifty million retail copies and made me a very rich man.”

  A pause. “God, I love when you spout statistics. Gets me hard.”

  Austin barked out a laugh—a sound he rarely made but one Grant seemed to pry out of him. They’d started Gamers magazine together right out of college. Grant was the public CEO, the name everyone knew, while Austin used a pseudonym on most of the paperwork. Only Grant knew that Austin had a secret partnership in Gamers, just like he was the only one who knew about Aric’s Revenge. Austin didn’t trust anyone other than Grant to know about him, what he did, how much money he had. He’d been let down too many times, lied to, stolen from. He’d learned his lessons from painful experience.

  Grant laughed. “Okay, so I know this is short notice, but I’ve got this dinner meeting with one of Gamer’s advertisers and Syd needs a ride. She’s meeting her friends, but I’m not comfortable with her riding with a kid who just got her license. So, can you drive her there, watch the movie while she watches it with her friends, and then bring her home?”

  Sydney was Grant’s fourteen-year-old daughter. He’d had a one-night stand freshman year of college and nine months later, Sydney was born. Her mother had planned to put her up for adoption, but Grant said he’d support the child. So with the help of his parents, Grant secured custody and worked his ass off to support her. It was one of the reasons he and Austin started Gamers together. Grant was a great businessman and put a lot of effort into the idea of Gamers. But as a recent college graduate ten years ago, he needed some capital to get the magazine off the ground. Austin, whose bank account had been padded with funds when he’d begun working with a software company on Aric’s Revenge, invested in the magazine. It was important to him to help Grant, since Sydney was like a niece to Austin. “Of course I’ll take her.”

  A muffled sound, then Grant yelling in the distance, “Baby, he’ll take you!” Then an excited squeal, which he assumed came from Sydney. “Thanks a lot, man,” Grant said into the phone.

  “No problem.”

  “Don’t forget about checking—”

  “—the ingredients on the boxes of candy because of her peanut allergy.”

  A pause, then, “You’re the best.” Austin could hear the smile in his friend’s voice.

  “I’m almost home. What time do you need me tomorrow?”

  “Seven?”

  “See you then.”

  Five minutes later, Austin parked in his garage and pushed the button on the remote on his dash to lower the doors.

  Then he leaned his head against the steering wheel.

  Taking Sydney to see a movie tomorrow night would be good for him. An action-packed movie should hold his attention. Even if the damn thing made him think of Marley, picturing her sitting at her desk, working on a layout of an article about the movie that was his creative vision.

  He had to do something to forget about her.

  Because even though she didn’t know it, even though his owner
ship in Gamers was silent, she was still his employee.

  So despite how he ached for her, despite that fucking GIF that taunted him, he needed to keep her in his fantasies. And out of real life.

  He was great at maintaining control, but a churning in his gut made him wonder if this would be the one time he’d let it slip.

  …

  Marley lay with her head and back on the floor, her feet propped up on the seat of her couch. She wore a sports bra, oversized sweatshirt that hung off one shoulder, and a pair of underwear. She had been doing sit-ups. Then her cat needed petting, then she got distracted by a watermark on the ceiling of her apartment that looked like a penis, and then she zoned out.

  She idly scratched Sadie’s ears and closed her eyes. Her mind wandered to that GIF of the woman and man, her go-to fantasy, but it was quickly replaced by a pair of sea-green eyes.

  She had to stop thinking about yesterday. About him. Austin. He was a coworker—sort of—and she couldn’t get involved. She’d fought hard in this testosterone-filled industry to be taken seriously. She wouldn’t let a moment of weakness and this sexual dry spell be her downfall. She couldn’t even imagine what the guys in the office would say if they found out she was fantasizing about sleeping with one of the IT guys. Let alone if she actually did it.

  Fuck.

  Her front door opened, and she turned her head. Chad sauntered in, stooping to pet Sadie who’d deserted her for a guy. Figured. The furred turncoat.

  “Can’t you knock?” she asked.

  He held up his key to her apartment. “Why bother?”

  Chad wore a pair of leather pants, a tight gray T-shirt, and a leather jacket. The buckles on his motorcycle boots clinked when he walked across her scarred hardwood floor. He wore his hair, which he’d dyed black, in a faux-hawk and his diamond earrings glittered in the light.

  They had the same eyes, but Marley always thought they looked better in her little brother’s face than her own.

  Chad plopped on the couch. Sadie promptly jumped in his lap and curled up in a ball. He wrinkled his nose at Marley. “Go put on some pants.”

  She looked at her bare legs and tilted her hips. She needed to shave. “These are my workout clothes.”

  “You’re not working out, though. You’re staring at your ceiling.”

  She glared.

  “Are you staring at that watermark that looks like a dick? I noticed it the other night when I crashed here.”

  “Yes!” Marley pointed to it excitedly. “Curves a little to the left.”

  “I prefer them a little bent.”

  Marley rolled her eyes.

  He smacked her ankle. “What’s up? You get that layout finished?”

  She couldn’t stop the blush creeping across her face, because the layout made her think of…other things. “Yes.”

  Chad cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, leaning slightly toward her. “Are you blushing?”

  “No.”

  “You are. Why are you blushing?”

  She dug her heel into his thigh and earned a hiss from Sadie. “Stop it.”

  Chad relaxed back onto the couch and tapped his finger to his chin. “Tell me why you blushed or I’ll keep bugging you.”

  He would, too, the jerk. She released a breath and raised her hands over her head, playing with the ends of her hair spread out on the floor. “There was an incident with the IT guy.”

  Chad frowned. “Cheese Stink Abraham?”

  She snorted. “No, this was a new guy.”

  Chad raised his eyebrows. “Is he hot?”

  Her brother’s sexuality was fluid. He always said he was attracted to souls, not gender. And he would absolutely keel over and declare his undying love if he saw Austin. She sighed.

  Chad’s eyes widened. “No words? Just a sigh? Damn, he must be smoking.”

  “He saw my Tumblr,” she blurted and Chad’s smile immediately froze, and then dropped off his face.

  “What did you say?”

  She stared up at the ceiling, concentrating on the phallic watermark. “My computer froze and he saw my Tumblr account and…”

  She looked back at her brother. The only movement was his eyes, blinking rapidly. “Oh my God, he saw your porn.”

  She covered her face with her hands and groaned. “It was awkward and—”

  “Were you turned on?”

  She looked at him and bit her lip.

  “Was he turned on?”

  She bit down so hard she tasted blood. “I think.”

  Chad dislodged Sadie from his lap and jumped to his feet, then walked over to Marley’s bookcase, fingers running over the spines of her books.

  “What are you doing?”

  “There it is,” he muttered. He pulled out a spiral bound sheaf of paper from between a graphic novel and a dog-eared John Grisham paperback.

  She braced her weight on her elbows. “Is that my employee handbook?”

  He sat down and she climbed off the floor to sit beside him as he ran his index finger down the page of contents. “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t look up. “Checking to see if there is anything about fraternizing among coworkers.”

  “Chad—”

  “What? You two basically skipped first base and are halfway to second because you’ve already watched porn together.”

  She smacked his thigh. “We didn’t watch porn together.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. Just one. She hated when he did that.

  “Ok, so we sort of did,” she mumbled.

  He grinned and bent his head back to his task. Marley played with Sadie, who was rolling around with a toy at Marley’s feet.

  She looked up when Chad snapped the handbook shut. “There are no rules about fraternizing that I can see. You are free to screw the brains out of your IT guy.”

  She gave her brother’s shoulder a shove while he laughed. “Just because there’s no rule doesn’t mean it’s okay!”

  He tossed the book on her side table. “Why not?”

  She twisted her hands in her lap. “Because…because what if people find out? I’ve worked hard for those guys to take me seriously in that office and then to blow it all by…blowing a coworker?”

  He laughed harder.

  “Chad!”

  He held up a finger and then finally spoke when he caught his breath. “Look, here’s the thing. You’re telling me they won’t take you seriously if you…what? Remind them you’re a woman?”

  “That’s not—”

  Chad wasn’t laughing anymore. At all. “No, seriously, Marley. I don’t understand. He’s not a direct coworker. He’s an IT guy you’ll see in the office, what, once a week? It’s not a conflict of interest unless he…I don’t know…installs more RAM in your computer than others.”

  She pursed her lips. He didn’t understand because he wasn’t a woman.

  “Marley, showing interest in a man doesn’t make you weak. It’s not going to make those men think any less of you. And if it does? There are discrimination acts in place for that reason. You’re a gorgeous twenty-seven-year-old woman who works sixty hours a week. You deserve some happiness.”

  She stared into those sincere hazel eyes, so like her own. She was conflicted. She’d suppressed herself for so long trying to make it at Gamers. She loved her job, so why was she so worried about what her asshole coworkers like Jack thought of her?

  “I’m good at my job,” she said.

  Chad nodded and laid a hand on her knee. “You are.”

  “Fuck them. I’m a woman, right? I have needs.”

  Chad kept nodding. “You do.” He paused. “So what’s this guy’s name?”

  She ran her tongue along the back of her teeth, savoring the name in her mouth before speaking. “Austin.”

  Chad’s eyes sparkled. “So, Austin can check your software updates, huh?”

  Marley rolled her eyes, but Chad wasn’t done. “And he can defragment your hard drive?”

  “Chad—”

/>   “Perform some pair programming…horizontally?”

  “Oh my God, stop now.”

  Chad had erupted into a fit of laughter again, bent over at the waist. Marley folded her arms over her chest and crossed her legs, jiggling her foot in the air.

  When Chad was gasping for breath, she asked, “Are you done?”

  “Maybe,” Chad breathed. She growled, and he held up his hands. “Okay, okay. Look, I’ll make up for my teasing by treating you to a movie. Aric’s Revenge is out.”

  That stupid video game, and that stupid movie. But she wanted to see it. She played the game and beat it a week after it came out.

  She hopped up. “Fine, but you’re paying.”

  “No problem. Just shave your legs for me, all right? Getting a little cave woman there.”

  She shot him the finger over her shoulder as she walked down the hall to shower.

  Chapter Three

  “Quit taking all the red ones,” Chad complained, snatching the bag of Sour Patch Kids from Marley’s hands.

  “Hey!” she protested.

  “I bought them.”

  “Yeah, for me!” She grabbed the bag back and shot him a glare.

  Chad leaned back in his seat and took a sip of his gigantic soda as the light of the pre-show slides flickered across his face. The theater was packed. Aric’s Revenge had been out for a week or two, but the positive buzz seemed to be fueling more ticket sales.

  Marley dug in the bag for more coveted red, corn-syrupy goodness and pulled out a couple. She tossed one in her mouth and looked around at the crowded theater.

  The movie was set to start in about five minutes, but a couple of patrons trickled in. Her eyes caught on a man and a teenage girl walking down the middle aisle. Something was familiar, and his walk…

  “Mars.”

  She turned at the nickname her brother sometimes used for her. “Yeah?”

  “What’s the set-up of this movie again?”

  She frowned. “How do you not know? You’re the one who suggested it.”

  He shot her a small grin “Nah, I don’t know anything about it. I just suggested it because I thought you would like it.”