The Sweetest Taboo

by Alison Kent

  And he wasn’t at all sure he was comfortable with that.

  5

  CALI GLANCED AT HER WATCH, shook her head, blinked away the grit from her tired eyes—grit leftover from work and Thursday’s makeup she’d never washed away—and glanced at her watch one more time. Unbelievable. She’d never even made it home from work and now she was due in class in thirty minutes.

  Last night after leaving Paddington’s, she’d joined Will at IHOP for a middle of the night brainstorming session over Cherry Coke and French fries. Both had been too wound up for sleep and agreed the time would be well spent in working through their screenplay’s plot elements.

  For hours they’d played “what if,” scratching notes as they challenged one another to up the stakes in their collaborative story’s twists and turns, to dig for deeper motivation, to breathe life into their characters with added details of personality and goals…and to work on ways to increase the internal conflict between their two main protagonists, not to mention giving the antagonist a better developed back story of his own.

  Half the night Cali found herself wondering when Will had become so hardheaded, and if they’d ever come to a meeting of the minds.

  Toward that end, they’d stayed until the smell of maple syrup, sausage and hotbuttered pancakes had roused their stomachs for breakfast. Hot coffee had accompanied the meal and given them both a second wind. Had that really been two hours ago? Double unbelievable. She blew out an aggravated breath, shoving a hand back through her hair.

  Now she was going to have to skip all the errands she’d planned to run this one free afternoon of the week and catch a nap between class and tonight’s shift at work. If not, she’d crash and burn big time. And she so did not want to piss off Erin by dragging ass on a Friday night.

  Cali gathered her things, shoving pencils, spiral bound and colored index cards, a letter-size legal pad and a textbook into her tote bag, then dug out her wallet to pay for her share of the shared meals.

  Will stopped her with a warm hand covering hers. “What’re you doing?”

  “It’s seven-thirty. I have class at eight on Friday.” She pointed to her watch. It was now, actually, seven thirty-five. Even worse. “I’m never going to make it.”

  “You’ve been late to class before.”

  “I know, but I hate being late. And skipping is just so not me. I’ve paid out all this tuition and missing a lecture means I’m not getting my money’s worth.” Besides, she had to look like crap, being up all night. Baggy raccoon eyes. Splotchy skin. Frizzed out curls from too much tearing out of her hair.

  And then there was the little tiny issue of realizing how comfortably intimate the night had been without anything physical going on when she’d actually been thinking of inviting Will to her bed. How could she risk screwing things up for the sake of sex? Sex that she could find elsewhere. Except she didn’t want sex elsewhere.

  She wanted sex with Will.

  “What if I make you a better offer?”

  Her head came up from where she’d been looking through her tote for her car keys. Will’s eyes were bright, his gaze teasing but issuing a challenge that hit her hard enough to knock the air from her lungs.

  She huffed out what breath she had left in response. “What could possibly be better than listening to Professor Smith yammer on about genre fiction?”

  “A nap.” Will shoved his open legal pad into his satchel, dropped his number two yellow pencil in beside and stuffed his textbook into the remaining space. He wore a distracted look while packing up his things and Cali wondered if he was even aware of what he’d said.

  She wondered even more exactly what he’d meant. “You want to take a nap?”

  Will looked up, dragged a hand down his face. Then he grinned, a lopsided boyish expression that added a twinkle to his eyes. “That didn’t come out exactly the way I’d planned, did it? God, I’m exhausted.”

  Exactly what she’d been afraid of, she thought, and sighed. Good thing she knew him well enough not to feel slighted that he’d taken back an offer when he really hadn’t made one at all. “That’s what you get for being a talk, talk, thinker. The worst openmouth, insert-foot type I’ve ever seen.”

  Will grinned widely, crossing forearms and bracing elbows on the table to lean closer toward where she sat in the opposite booth. “I like to speak my mind and, yeah, it gets me in more than a little bit of trouble. But it also ends up getting me what I want.”

  “Like a nap?” she asked, brows arched. She really did need to get moving. At least the part of her devoted to her degree in creative writing. But the other part of her, the part devoted more to Will—even if it was a borderline schoolgirl devotion—wanted to stay and listen to him worm his way out of the nap he’d offered.

  He seemed to ponder the idea, taking his time coming to a decision, the same time she was wasting. One of them had to make a move and, as much as she longed to spend her time enjoying his company, her education called. She hoisted the strap of her tote bag over her shoulder…

  …at the same time Will slapped his hands on the table. “Let’s do it. Why not. You can read Professor Smith’s lecture online this weekend. You know she’ll have it uploaded by this afternoon. Her ego will allow for no less.”

  Cali hesitated. If she left now, she’d miss maybe fifteen minutes of class, barring no run-ins with rush-hour traffic. Who was she kidding? This was Houston, Texas. Have car, will drive everywhere.

  She might as well follow Will’s example and catch up on her sleep. Sleep, right. She so could not believe she was this easy, jumping when he hadn’t even snapped his fingers. What had happened to her spine?

  “So, we nap. Then what? You want to meet for lunch and see if we can come to an agreement on this third turning point?” She turned her aggravation with herself back to her aggravation with their number one screenplay issue of the moment. She narrowed her gaze and drilled him hard. “Or do you just want to admit now that I’m right and there’s no way Jason can go back to the boat dock and risk being caught?”

  “You’re so far off base, Cali. If Jason doesn’t find the knife at the dock, he can’t be connected to the fire.” Will frowned. “I thought we already settled this.”

  “No, you settled what you think should happen. You’re back to thinking plot, not character, and that just won’t work in this case. This turning point has to be all about Jason’s need to prove his innocence.” Cali got to her feet, tossed down her half of the food bill and an extra large tip. She knew all about working for tips.

  Will followed suit, thumbing through his billfold and hesitating longer than Cali had over how much extra to leave. She glanced up, caught the wry twist to his mouth and said, “We’ve been here all night and poor Dora has been a total doll to take care of us. Don’t be a cheapskate.”

  “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be.” He added a handful of bills to the ones on the table and shrugged, stuffing his wallet down in his back pocket. “But as of yesterday I’m unemployed and not likely to find another agency as flexible as Kirkwood’s was.”

  Will had done freelance graphics work for the advertising firm as long as Cali had known him. Shocked wasn’t even the word for what she felt. She hardly knew what to say. “They let you go? Just like that? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Oh, God, she felt all sorts of caregiver instincts kick in, when more than anything Will would be needing a friend.

  “I did tell you. Just now.” He put his hand in the small of her back and headed them toward the door. “And, yeah. They let me go. Business is slow. Not much reason to keep me around and pay me for doing nothing but looking good.”

  “What are you going to do?” And why did she feel the sudden urge to invite him to move in to her place and share expenses? She couldn’t even find a response to his comment about looking good.

  “Right now I’m going to take a nap.” They’d reached their cars parked side by side. The rising sun had Will squinting and replacing his glasses with the prescripti
on sunshades from the case shoved down in the pocket of his baggy khaki Dockers. “You going to follow me? Or you just want to hitch a ride? I can bring you back to get your car later, if you want.”

  What was he talking about, hitching a ride? Following? Bringing her back to get her car later? Her heart pattered like a thunderstorm on glass. He wanted them to nap together? Oh, great. Now she couldn’t breathe. The only safe thing she could think of to say was, “I thought you wanted to meet for lunch later?”

  “I’ll fix us lunch.” He unlocked and opened the door to his sporty black Eclipse.

  “I’ll dig out a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. You can shower then sleep on the futon in the living room.”

  “The futon. Perfect.” Sleeping on his furniture wearing his clothes. Naked in his shower while he…did what? Went about his business as if she wasn’t naked in his shower, waiting to put on his clothes and sleep on his furniture? “I’ll follow you. I’ll need my car later and it’ll be out of the way to come back and pick it up here.”

  “Great. I figure by noon we should be human again. And then you’ll see that it only makes sense for Jason to find the knife at the dock.” Will dropped down into the driver’s seat and slammed the door, giving her a thumbs-up as the engine raced to life.

  God, but he was such a guy! Playful and sexy and he made her laugh and caused her tummy to tingle and she loved arguing with him over their screenplay ideas and oh, but she was afraid she was getting close to falling in love.

  She stuck out her tongue in a teasing response, and then she tossed her things into her own car’s passenger seat, backed out the candy apple red Focus and pulled behind Will into the traffic that wasn’t quite as heavy as she’d expected this hour of the morning.

  She’d been to his apartment more than once, an apartment that was actually the second floor of an old Victorian house close to downtown, but always to work on their project. He’d cooked dinner a couple of times early in the semester and they’d sat at his kitchen table to hash out their story ideas. True, it didn’t happen often because of the very schedules they’d bemoaned last night.

  So why was she getting her hopes up that today was going to be any different? He hadn’t invited her over as a date—since they weren’t dating, only hanging out like they’d decided yesterday—but as his study partner. She’d kissed his cheek and that was it. Now they were both going to sleep. So what? They weren’t going to be sleeping together. And that pretty much answered her question about the future of their relationship.

  Or the nonfuture of our nonrelationship, she grumped to herself, turning up the volume on Alanis Morissette and belting out her irritation under the guise of singing along. And, why not? She sure didn’t have a Man To Do to help her work off the frustration. Lucky Erin.

  ERIN AND S EBASTIAN NEVER made it out of the shower. Hours later and she still couldn’t believe it. She’d been a wrung-out, wrinkled prune by the time she’d dried off and dressed and backed her way through Sebastian’s loft—hard to do when he’d followed her, drip ping and naked and once again hard—from the bathroom to the front door.

  Once there, he’d braced a hand above her shoulder and leaned toward her, smelling of warm clean skin and fresh sex. He’d buried his face in her neck and taken her hand in his, wrapping their joined fingers around his erection and stroking in that rhythm she now knew so well.

  He’d opened the door before he’d come. She’d ducked through with a wordless goodbye, stood on the other side and listened to his labored groans, his grunts, the strangled agony of a man in pain—or pleasure. She wondered if he knew she’d waited. She wondered why she had. Even then, as she’d found herself waiting, seeking signs of his movement, his breathing, his heartbeat through the solid wooden door…even then, she’d wondered why she’d stayed. Finally, she’d had to go.

  She’d hurried back to her own place, the sounds of Sebastian’s struggle still ringing in her ears and her body responding to that need he hadn’t shared. During none of the times they’d come together, or the times they’d gotten one another off, had Erin sensed his release to be as rich as the completion he’d found there alone behind his closed door.

  If he did know that she’d waited, she wanted to know what he’d thought, how he’d felt about her remaining until he’d finished. She still hadn’t decided why she’d stayed. Except that so many things about Sebastian Gallo intrigued her. The size of his library and the opulence of his shower just to name two.

  After all that time they’d spent wrapped up in the steam and the spray, she’d known if she’d gone anywhere near his bed she wouldn’t have wanted to leave. Neither would she have wanted to sleep and she was desperately exhausted, not to mention achy and sore and more than a little bit raw. Tomorrow she had a meeting with the caterer to finalize the menu for the Halloween anniversary bash. And she needed sleep.

  She’d had her pleasure. Hell, in one night she’d had pleasures she’d been without for months, if not all of her life. Now that she was home, it was back to whatever business she could manage before tumbling into bed. At least until the next time Sebastian crooked his finger. And after doing the one thing she had to do before crawling between the sheets.

  Call

  Cali.

  A call to her cell produced, “The customer you are trying to reach is unavailable,”

  which meant Cali had forgotten again to turn on her phone. And a call to her home phone got voice mail. Desperate enough to page her, Erin glanced at her bedside clock while kicking off her shoes.

  Well, duh. Cali would be on her way to her Friday morning class and wouldn’t be home before Erin was asleep. That left one option. E-mail her Men To Do girlfriends. She stripped off her clothes for the second time tonight, and swore she could still smell Sebastian on her skin.

  She tugged her nightshirt over her head and settled down into her pillows, settling her laptop on a pillow in her lap.

  From: Erin Thatcher

  Sent:

  Friday

  To: Samantha Tyler; Tess Norton

  Subject: My Scary Guy

  I did it! Er, him. I did him! I can’t believe it! He was absolutely amazing. And, no, not Hannibal Lecter scary at all, though he is definitely frightening in an intimidatingly sexy sort of way.

  I had no idea there were actually men who knew how to do the things he did. My body is still reeling. I SO totally picked the right Man To Do! I’d share the juicy details but I’m too exhausted to type, much less figure out how to put thoughts into words.

  Which brings me to my problem. I’m not supposed to be thinking about this, am I? This is supposed to be all about sex, right? So, why am I dying to get to know him? Is this that female thing in action? Where we can’t separate the physical from the emotional? I don’t want the bloody emotional! I don’t want anything but the physical. Period. End of story.

  But I do want to know why he has a shower that belongs in a locker room. No, not a locker room. More like a hedonistic resort. We’re talking three showerheads and staggered levels of built-in benches perfect for, well, yeah, that. And more of that. At least two hours of that. I’m not kidding. I’m a total prune. And I may never walk again!

  He also has a virtual library in his living room. The rolling ladder and everything. No television. Just a high-tech sound system like you wouldn’t believe and books that go on forever. Classics and bestsellers and psychology texts and…the list goes on.

  It’s like, if I were looking for a relationship, I’d say he has more potential than any man I’ve known in ages. I feel like I ought to give it a go, just in case. What if he turned out to be The One? But I’m just not ready. So what do I do? Besides whine!

  Oh, and his name is Sebastian Gallo. Love, Erin

  She didn’t bother to proofread. She was way past exhausted and figured even the most glaring mistakes would get by her foggy, bleary eyes. She hit Send then moved her laptop to the bedside table, leaving the connection open, thinking maybe Tess would check her e-mail befor
e heading out to wave her green-thumb wand over the houseplants of Manhattan.

  Or maybe Samantha wouldn’t have a client meeting or a court date this early and could whip out a quick reply to help Erin make sense of the night. She felt fuzzy-headed and goofy. And wrung-out and giggly and on the verge of tears. All the symptoms of a classic sex hangover. And what a doozy.

  But as appealing as she found the idea of returning upstairs for the hair of the dog that bit her, and bit her, and bit her again, she couldn’t think straight about anything without at least a few hours of sleep.

  And tomorrow was Friday, ugh, today was Friday, one of her busiest weeknights. Figures that she’d start the affair she’d been dying to engage in when she didn’t have time to enjoy it. But when would she have time to enjoy it? It wasn’t like tomorrow was going to be any less stressful than today.