Page 51 of Not Safe For Work

“Good. Perfect.” Marie turned to me. “What about you?”

I’m about as focused as Rick right now.

“Just about done with my current project, and I’ll do like Teagan—e-mail you with a tentative schedule for my next few.”

She nodded. “Excellent.”

She dismissed us, and we headed for the elevator.

“We’d be a lot further along if we didn’t have to go to these stupid meetings,” Teagan grumbled.

“No kidding.” I glanced over my shoulder just in case there was a client or bigwig within earshot. “But you’ve got to admit, if they make some major change to something we’re about to start building, it’s good to get the heads-up. Especially if it’s going to get hung up in Codes & Regs.” Our Codes & Regulations department was notorious for dragging their feet with updated drawings, and Teagan and I had both entertained fantasies of slapping the hell out of the engineers when they notified us of a change after we’d already spent hours or days on a model. As much as these meetings sucked, sometimes they were our only warning, and wasting an hour or two here saved us days or even weeks.

“Well.” She scowled. “You would think they could just e-mail us and tell us if anything like that came up during a meeting.”

“You would think. But you know damn well if someone didn’t convey that information, it’d be our fault for not being there to hear it ourselves.”

She muttered something incoherent. Then, “So I wonder what Pierce did to himself.” She smirked. “How much you want to bet there’s a woman limping even harder than he is right now? Oh! You think he nailed two at the same time?”

The thought of Rick in bed with two women damn near short-circuited my brain. And oh, what Teagan would’ve thought if she’d known who he’d really been in bed with. Or why he was moving so gingerly.

“Jesus, Teagan.” I clicked my tongue. “Are you and Bianca writing Rick Pierce fanfic these days or something?”

“No, but…” She stroked her chin thoughtfully. “That could be fun. Pierce porn.”

I rolled my eyes. “You two are incorrigible.”

“Whatever. If they still brought their COO to these meetings, you’d be ogling her and you know it.”

Fair point. The COO of Horizon Developing was gorgeous and she took crap from no one. Between her and Rick, it was a wonder I’d never started openly drooling on the conference room table.

“Something wrong with you today, McNeill?” Teagan asked. “One minute, you’re snickering at something, and the next you’re staring off into space.”

“And this is new?”

“Okay, no, but you’re doing it more than usual.”

I shrugged. “Nah, it’s nothing. Right now, though, I’m trying to work out how to finish my model before the weekend so I don’t end up on overtime.”

“You and me both. Guess we’d better get cracking.”

I didn’t catch up to Rick again until mid-afternoon, when I was walking by while he was at the Coke machine. After a glance around to make sure nobody important was nearby, I said, “Hey.” When he turned, I grinned. “How does it feel?”

He glared at me.

I laughed. “Good. And what did we learn?”

Rick exhaled slowly. “That apparently snickering in a meeting doesn’t end well.”

“Well, not for you.” I grinned even bigger. “I’m rather enjoying this.”

“I thought you said you weren’t a sadist.”

I shrugged. “Well, I do have a little bit of a sadistic streak. But it’s not the pain I enjoy. It’s watching you squirm because I told you to.”

Right then, he squirmed. Because of the cock cage? Because of the comment? Didn’t matter—I was making him squirm.

“Just think of how good it’ll feel once I take it off.”