Standing, I drained the rest of the mug and grabbed the clothes I wanted to wear for the rest of the day.
“I’m going to grab a shower,” I said. “Then we can get down to business figuring the rest of this thing out.”
The afternoon was winding down, and I was getting increasingly stressed-out. As we moved further and further into the prototype engine, more coding issues were popping up faster than we could solve them. I knew the team back at the office was working on it, too, but we needed the engine up and running immediately for beta testers. For the third time in the last hour, I picked up my phone.
“Thanks, Kiesha, keep up the good work. I’ll check in one more time before you guys get out of there,” I said, hanging up the phone.
“Any luck?” Amanda asked, turning in the desk chair and stretching her arms high over her head. I couldn’t help but let my eyes wander to the way her cleavage pushed together when she did, and then snapped back to the laptop on my lap.
“Not really,” I said. “Small fires being put out, but the big one is still a problem. Every time the team goes in to modify the source code, it just knocks something else out of alignment. I’m getting worried we might have to start from scratch.”
“How long would that put you back?” she asked.
“Weeks. Maybe more. Months. It all depends, really.” I glanced down at the phone to check the time. “Alright, I’m going to call my brothers again and see what they’re getting done.”
Amanda nodded and stood. “I’ll give you some privacy,” she said, heading to the door. “A nice walk sounds good anyway. Anything, but that chair,” she said, smiling, and headed out. I hit the Call button on Mason’s number, and he answered on the second ring.
“Hey, Tom,” he said. He sounded frazzled. Immediately, I worried something had gone terribly wrong.
“Mason, what’s going on?” I asked.
“The same thing that was going on the last time you called an hour ago. Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Well, not nothing, nothing. Just nothing that will solve anything just yet.”
“So there’s something?”
“Well, I feel like we’re getting close to tying it all together with Danny, but it might take time.”
The conversation continued for a solid thirty minutes, and Amanda returned from her walk. When she saw me on the phone, she tried to duck back out, but I waved her in. I was on pins and needles and like I might lose it at any moment. The more Mason and then Jordan talked, the more I felt like I was losing a grip on everything. While we had been talking, I had gotten at least four text messages and two emails from the team at the office with questions and concerns. Then, just before Amanda came in, an investor emailed, and the tagline had simply said, “Glitches?”
“I have to go, Mason. Please, if anything else changes, call me.”
“I will, Tom,” Mason said. “Try to relax. We’ll get this figured out. It has to be Danny.”
I hung up the phone and stared over at Amanda. Even in my panic and worry, she was absolutely stunning. Something about the way she sat across from me, one leg bent over the other, drove me insane. More insane than everything else was at least.
“Amanda, could you email Richie and Paul and tell them I need status updates every hour. On the hour. Starting with one in ten minutes,” I asked.
“Sure,” she said, pulling her tablet to her. “Did something happen while I was gone?”
“Nothing I want to mention to the team yet, but apparently word is leaking out we’re having trouble with the pre-beta. We need this fixed immediately.”
“An investor?” she asked, her eyes wide. I nodded. “On it,” she said and began drafting an email.
I stood up to pace the room, racking my brain to try to figure out the latest piece of the glitch puzzle. Two of my best debuggers had moved on to other companies in the last few months, and I was tempted to call them and offer them handsome bonuses if they could work as consultants on this for me. It would be a conflict of interest for at least one of them, who went, with my blessing, to a competitor. But at this point I was willing to take whatever help I could get, even from a supposed enemy.
“I know it seems hard right now,” Amanda said, putting the tablet down on her lap. “But everything is going to get figured out. The bugs, the bar, all of it, we are going to get it all figured out.”
“Do you really believe that?” I asked, now just a few feet from her. I sat down so we were just a foot or so apart, and she sat the tablet down on the table beside her.
“I do. You’re brilliant, and your brothers are smart guys, too. You will figure out the bar stuff, and together with the rest of the team, we will get these bugs fixed,” she said.
“I….” I said, trying to find the words that were swirling around in my brain. But none of them were coming. I couldn’t focus on anything except her lips. They were soft and baby pink. I wanted to touch them, to taste them on my own lips. I wanted to smell her skin and feel her body against mine. The drive to kiss her was overwhelming, and I tried to resist it, but it was no use.
I leaned forward, sliding one hand behind her head, and crushed my mouth into hers. A surprised sound came from her pursed lips, and I pushed further, and she slid back in the chair. Suddenly her lips opened, and she relaxed, and my tongue slid into her mouth, brushing against her own and tasting the forbidden fruit. I pulled her close to me, my mouth stretching to open further and hers doing the same. Her arms wrapped around me, and she shifted, so I pushed through between her legs to get to her more easily.
16
Amanda
I couldn’t think. It was as if my brain was an Etch-A-Sketch that had been shaken violently.
Our lips were pressed against each other, and his tongue was in my mouth. I registered that these were things, real things, all of which were really happening, but I had no idea how or why. My body was operating without any instruction from my brain, and I tried to resist the urge to pull at his shirt, to yank it off and throw it on the ground.
I leaned back, and he came with me, either by choice or because I knew my hands were now behind his neck and pulling him in. He slid to his knees on the floor between my thighs. Our kiss broke, and for a split second, I was afraid he was going to move away, but he didn’t. Instead, he moved his lips to my cheek, then my jaw, then the crux of my neck. My head fell back, and my mouth opened as I concentrated on the hot breath and growling, hungry sounds he made as he moved down to my collarbone. I was aware of his fingers pulling at the hem of my shirt, and I arched my back toward him, giving him more access.
Suddenly, my shirt was in the air, soaring toward the couch where he slept. The cool air of the hotel room created goosebumps along my arms and raised the hair on them. I didn’t care. His lips were pressing further down my chest and now settled between my breasts. His fingers were pulling at the clasp in the center. Then, it was open, and his mouth descended on one of them, taking the nipple onto his tongue, while his hand filled with the other.
I moaned at his touch, the soft strength of his tongue on me, licking me, tasting me as he made his way down further. It swept across my belly and back up before he pulled away, reaching for the waistband of my pants. I sat up to help him, and he pulled them down in one movement and tossed them away.