You Give Love a Bad Name

by Marilyn Brant

  Her voice was distinctive and so sweet. I desperately wanted to hear her call out my name.

  Her eyes, chest, legs, thumbs, earlobes—damn. I wanted to touch every single part of her. My fingertips itched with it. I had to immediately snatch a beer from the fridge to keep myself from reaching out and grabbing her.

  “Want something?” I asked, holding up a beer bottle in one hand and a can of soda in the other.

  “Not this time. I can only stay for a half hour.” She bent down to where Winston sat on the carpeted living room floor and lavished him with attention. He practically purred like a feline. Couldn’t blame him. I would’ve purred, too, if she were stroking me like that.

  “Look at you,” she whispered to my dog. “You look so much better than you did on Sunday, you big sweetie.” Then, to me, she added, “I left a message for that saint of a woman who drove us to the animal hospital. She’d asked me to let her know.” Then, back to Winston, Vicky said, “Lots of people were worried about you.”

  As I watched the two of them together, I felt something peculiar and unfamiliar in my chest. Maybe this was a medical condition. Some sort of irregular heartbeat that my doctors had overlooked in past years. Or a new health problem that had recently developed. But something was definitely off. I couldn’t seem to move. And my breathing was screwed up, too. It was tight. Shallow. I couldn’t quite get enough air. What the hell?

  I set both unopened beverages on the counter and finally regained the use of my legs. They were making a beeline toward her—my body acting before I could consciously decide to do anything. Being near Vicky, having her in my arms again, seemed to be the only way to relieve the odd tension in my chest. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

  I pulled her to standing, encircled her with as much of myself as I could manage, and pressed my lips softly to her neck.

  It helped, but the tightness squeezing my heart and lungs was still there.

  “Blake,” she whispered, but she didn’t push me away. She wasn’t resisting at all. In fact, her fingertips were digging into my back, pulling me closer, and her upper thighs were brushing against mine. I wanted to strip off her sturdy school clothes to get to the silky fabric underneath. But the second my fingers connected with the lacy waistband of her panties, I knew that was a lie.

  I didn’t give a damn about the delicate underwear. It was really only her skin that I wanted to touch.

  I unbuttoned her black dress slacks, eased down the zipper, and got as far as sliding both the slacks and the panties halfway down her hips before her hands stilled mine.

  “Blake,” she said again, only this time it was a warning, not a breathless whisper.

  “Vicky,” I said back, mimicking her tone and using my free hand to shimmy up under her shirt until I reached her bra and could cup her breast in my palm. “You’re wearing too many clothes.”

  “Yeah,” she said, swallowing hard and putting one of her hands on top of my hand on her breast. The other hand shackled the wrist of my hand on her hip. “That’s because I need to leave.”

  “Why?”

  “Parent/teacher conferences are coming up in two weeks,” she said sensibly, as if everyone on the planet knew this. “I need to get mid-semester grades turned in by this Friday.”

  I groaned and, with great reluctance, pulled away. “That means you’ll be free on Friday night, right?”

  She sighed. “Look, you’re a very, very attractive man, Blake, but—”

  “Oh, no. Stop right there while I’m ahead. You can’t start a sentence so promisingly and then qualify it with a ‘but.’ I don’t want any excuses, Mademoiselle. I owe you a real dinner out—the location of which you can choose, or I can choose. And it can be this Friday night, this Saturday night, or even this Sunday, but I am taking you out and I’m not taking no for an answer. Isn’t that right, Winston?”

  And perfectly on cue, my brilliant mutt barked.

  In spite of herself, the serious Miss Vicky laughed. “You don’t need to—”

  “Yes, I do. Were you not listening to my last statement? Maybe this’ll help.” I pulled a slip of paper out of my pocket. “My cheat sheet,” I admitted. I’d Googled the exact phrase so I could ask her to go out on the town with me this weekend in proper French. “Je tiens à vous emmener sur en ville ce week-end. Dis oui, s’il vous plaît.”

  I felt like I was waiting a decade before she finally responded.

  “Oui,” she said, while stepping back, re-zipping and re-buttoning her slacks, and straightening her shirt. She licked her lips, and they looked so kissable that I had to force myself not to pin her to the wall and devour her mouth.

  I needed to sleep with her. That was the only chance I had to get this woman out of my system. The only cure in my arsenal of remedies. I knew from years and years of experience that nothing killed the flame of fantasy like the morning after a good, mindless roll in the sack. Until then, though, I’d be stuck daydreaming about her constantly and, even worse, imagining hanging out with her beyond our time in bed together. That was the most disturbing part. Vicky Bernier was beautiful, smart, and kind. Didn’t matter how incredible she was, though, I didn’t do long-term relationships. These insane feelings had to stop. And I knew how to stop them.

  Once she and I slept together and faced the awkwardness (or indifference) that always followed, I wouldn’t be a prisoner of these unsettling impulses any longer. And I’d bet anything that the weird tension in my chest would disappear, too. These were symptoms of an uncharacteristically deep infatuation—that was all.

  “Excellent,” I told her. “What night? What place? What time?”

  “Saturday. You can choose the spot. Anytime after six.”

  I grinned. “It’s a date. I’ll pick you up at your apartment. Just text me the address...and be ready at 6:01.”

  Chapter Ten

  ~Vicky~

  I’d been actively avoiding Shar all week.

  Friday night, the Quest group was meeting for dessert at The Apple Factory in a nearby Glen Forest for spiced apple cider, warm fritters, and slices of pie. I feigned exhaustion and, this time, I wasn’t going to let Blake’s sister talk me into going.

  “Sorry,” I told her. “I really can’t come. With midterm grades due today and Homecoming Week starting this Sunday, I’m booked.”

  “But—” Shar protested.

  “I’ll be at the next gathering,” I assured her, although, I suspected this might turn out to be untrue. Sharlene Michaelsen Boyd was an expert at reading other people’s micro-expressions. She’d take one look at my face and just know that I’d been kissing her brother.

  I did not need perceptive people around me this week. Especially not the day before a big date with Blake. And no matter how well—or how poorly—it went, one thing was absolutely certain: A relationship with him wouldn’t last long.

  But, hopefully, he had enough of a sense of self-preservation not to spill too many details about us to his overly curious little sister. For one thing, Shar would glom onto every bit of info like Krazy Glue and never forget a single word. And, for another, we both cared about her. I wouldn’t want her to get caught in the middle of the fallout when everything flew to pieces.

  And it would.

  It was just a matter of how soon and if I’d be smart enough to step away the second I was capable of resisting Blake.

  Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to be possible when I was within ten feet of the guy.

  Every ounce of good sense in my body dissipated into a wisp of air when he gazed at me with those mischievous dark eyes. Or when he said my name with his sexy DJ voice. Or, worst of all, when he caressed my skin with his fingertips, which were warm and slightly callused and very capable.

  I shivered. I’d never wanted anyone to touch me as much as I wanted Blake to touch me. And, yet, how could that possibly end well? He didn’t believe in love. Not that I could only date men who were serious about getting married, but what was the point in going out with somebody fo
r whom a committed relationship wasn’t even an option?

  Nevertheless, when Blake appeared at my apartment door to pick me up on Saturday night—promptly at 6:01—I didn’t turn him away.

  “Wow. Punctual,” I said instead, trying not to stare at him. Royal blue dress shirt. Dark jeans. So hot I could almost hear him sizzling.

  “I’m a man of my word,” he replied, stepping through the doorway and glancing around, taking in my small place with an alert and very interested gaze. “So,” he added, “where’s the little dictator?”

  “Napoleon? He usually goes into hiding when visitors arrive. Probably lurking behind the sofa.” I pointed to the middle of the living room and, sure enough, I spotted the distinctive swish of a gray tail at one end. I motioned Blake into the kitchen area a few feet away. “This might get him to show himself.” I noisily opened a can of cat food and spooned it into Napoleon’s bowl.

  My cat slunk out from behind the furniture and regally strolled into the kitchen, as though he knew he was on parade. He eyed Blake suspiciously. As for me, he regarded me with his usual bored familiarity before digging into his dinner.

  “That’s about all the attention you can expect from him for now,” I told Blake.

  He chuckled. “He’s a beautiful creature. Maybe I’ll have better luck with him later.”

  “Maybe,” I said, but I wasn’t yet prepared to have Blake come back into my apartment after our date. There wasn’t going to be a “later.” Not if I knew what was good for me.

  Already I could see Blake’s gaze cutting curiously toward my bedroom door.

  “Gonna show me around?” he asked.

  I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “Just a quick tour,” he said, sounding amused, albeit slightly defensive. “I’m just trying to picture your surroundings.”

  “Fine.” I had a one-bedroom apartment. This wouldn’t take long.

  We were already in the kitchen, so we walked a few steps and I let him get a full view of my living room. The TV and DVDs. My music and books. I had a few framed pictures of my parents. “I’m an only child,” I said when he asked about siblings. He took in every item, including a handful of my French souvenirs. A glass bottle in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. A porcelain doll wearing a beret that I got in Paris.

  “Cute,” he said, playing with one of the dark curls on the doll’s head, making it spring. Then he saw my e-reader on the end table. “May I take a look?”

  “Sure. No romance bashing this time, though.”

  He clicked it on and it opened to a story I’d recently downloaded. It was the first in a multi-part romantic serial called Alternate Austen, and Part One was entitled “Pride, Prejudice, and Parallel Universes.”

  Blake squinted at the electronic text. He started reading aloud:

  It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good intergalactic transportation device, must be in want of an interstellar mission.

  He grinned. “Seriously?”

  “It’s fiction, Blake. Fun, romantic Austen-inspired fiction.”

  He continued reading aloud in his skilled and devilishly sexy radio voice:

  Captain James Fitzwilliam, commanding officer of the Starship Pemberley, turned to his second in command, Leonard Charles, and barked out his twenty-sixth order in half as many minutes.

  “Activate the cloaking device and set us on course eighty degrees due west toward Alpha Centauri,” Fitzwilliam said. “We’ve gotten a report from Federation Headquarters of a disturbance near the Brighton-Hunsford System.”

  Charles checked the graphics on his screen and frowned. “There’s a documented black hole in the region, Captain. We’re going to need to steer clear of the center and set our coordinates off to the northeastern side to avoid being drawn into its dark mass.”

  “We’re at warp factor 9.2, Captain,” Officer Radcliffe said. “If we maintain our course and speed, our expected arrival at the black hole will be in under an hour. But the televiewer is picking up an odd imbalance in the force field already,” he admitted. “It’s a separate entity from the black hole, however. And it’s unlike anything we have on record, even utilizing the most updated intergalactic maps.”

  “A second black hole, perhaps?” Charles suggested.

  Fitzwilliam shook his head. “It’s behaving differently. Note the fluctuations on the oscelloscope. Not a black hole but—”

  The rest of his words were lost in a vacuum as the entire vessel was sucked into something. A funnel? A shoot? To Fitzwilliam it felt like an amusement park ride, but without the safeguards. No rails. No brakes. No gravity.

  Everyone on the starship screamed.

  The Captain, grabbing onto his chair on the bridge, called out to his second, finishing his thought at last. “A wormhole.”

  “Where will we end up?” Charles called back.

  “Who the bloody hell knows,” retorted the Captain, seconds before everything went dark.

  “Scene break,” Blake said. Then, “I have no idea what the hell I just read, but it was damned funny.” He closed my e-reader, set it back down on the table, and sauntered back toward me. “So, Star Trek meets Jane Austen, huh? I like sci-fi.”

  I shrugged. “You probably wouldn’t like this. There’s romance and kissing scenes and stuff.”

  “I got nothing against kissing scenes, Vicky. What happens next?”

  “The members of the starship fall into a time warp and end up in a parallel literary universe. While caught in this new dimension, the Captain and his first officer are mistaken for Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley from Pride and Prejudice by two of the planet’s inhabitants—Elizabeth and Jane Bennet—who’ve materialized from the pages of the Austen novel. The men need to decide if they’ll stay in the parallel universe or if they’ll try to reverse the warp and make their way home again.”

  “Odd but intriguing. I might just have to read more of this story later.”

  Once again, he was talking about “later.” Wasn’t going to happen.

  Just. Say. No.

  But what I said was, “Are you done being nosy now?”

  “You still haven’t shown me your bedroom.” He grinned demonically.

  “Yeah, we’ll be saving that for ‘later.’” I used air quotes.

  “Oooh. You don’t want me to come back up here, eh? Bet I can get you to change your mind.”

  I picked up my purse and my keys, strode to the door, and crossed my arms. “Don’t push it.”

  He laughed and followed me out without a second’s hesitation. I didn’t know how to interpret that. Whether he’d decided to give me a break and drop it...or whether he was just so confident that he didn’t bother to argue.

  As I locked the door, he stared at me so hard, though, that I finally said, “What?”

  “I neglected to tell you that you look stunning.” He leaned in and kissed me very lightly on my cheek. “Thanks for going out with me tonight, Vicky. Hope you’ll have fun.”

  As was the case before, wherever his lips touched my skin, I could feel a tingling. A wanting that spread from my face throughout my entire body. I stood paralyzed in the hallway, knowing with a certainty that was powerful and unerring that a night in bed with Blake Michaelsen would be pure pleasure. I had to do a better job of fighting that realization.

  He was still staring at me, a knowing and sensual smile curling his lips upward. He could see right through me. But all he said was, “Shall we go?”

  I nodded.

  We must have been on the road for ten minutes before I managed to untangle my tongue and ask where we were headed.

  “First, to dinner at a sweet Italian restaurant downtown. It’s called La Bella Villa. Then to one of Chicago’s dance clubs. It’s small, intimate,” he informed me. “The Crypt. Ever been there?”

  I shook my head. “No. To both.”

  “Good. Then tonight will be all new.”

  I almost laughed. Tonight was going to be all new even if we just got burgers
and fries from Sloppy Joe’s again. Every moment I spent alone with Blake felt like I was traipsing over new territory. And there was something very different in the air between us tonight than there had been on Sunday back at his place. I didn’t need the crew of the Starship Pemberley to tell me that I was on the edge of a major space-time disturbance, and I’d very likely get sucked in to something highly dangerous and entirely unknown.

  At the restaurant, Blake recommended the chicken marsala and the Italian sausage lasagna.

  “Hard to choose between those,” I said, although my stomach was filliping wildly. Wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to eat of either dish.

  “We could get one of each and split them,” he suggested.

  “Perfect.”

  Then he grinned at me again. Another one of his toe-curling smiles that made me feel as if I were back in high school in that empty gym with Jeremy Reede, the hottest guy in the sophomore class.

  Jeremy was predatory with women—like Blake. Used to getting his way. Someone who knew the effect of his face and his expressions on others. The Charm Meister of Indiana’s Cedar Grove High School District 127. And, for one quarter of that school year, I was his prey.

  What I felt then mirrored almost exactly what I was feeling now. I was out of my depth and on the verge of drowning, but I was still frantically treading water anyway.

  “You don’t need to look so scared, Vicky,” Blake said after the waiter brought us our meal. “You’re not trapped here. If you don’t like the food, we can leave.”

  “It’s not the food,” I murmured. Both dishes looked amazing, actually. The problem was me. I didn’t want chicken marsala or Italian sausage lasagna. I wanted Blake, and from the confident way he gazed at me from across the table, he knew it.

  He dug his fork into the lasagna first, blew on it, and then brought it to my lips. “Try this,” he said, presenting me with the first bite as seductively as if he were offering me a chocolate-covered berry.

  I opened my mouth because...well, how could I not?

  He slipped the morsel of cheesy pasta goodness between my lips. Everything melted.