I Brake For Bad Boys

by Foster, Lori

  She remembered the hot pink, embarrassingly phallic candle, with “Love Dreams” scripted on it in pale, glowing wax. She lunged to blow it out. “Um . . . nothing. It was for Irene. My six o’clock.”

  “You could’ve left it burning.” His deep voice made the fine hairs prickle on her neck. “I like love dreams as much as the next guy.”

  The room seemed breathlessly warm. “Go ahead and get ready,” Tess murmured, sidling past him. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  When she stole back into the room a few minutes later, he was laid out between the sheets. No claw marks today, thank goodness.

  She put oil on her hands, and smoothed them over his back, tracing ropy knots of tension with her fingers. He hissed in pain, his muscles twitching. “You’re very tense,” she said. “Did you get a chance to do those stretching exercises I recommended last week?”

  “Too busy. Crazy week.”

  “Try to make the time,” she urged. “They really will help.”

  “You’re always scolding me.” He twisted around, and his gaze swept over her as if that hideous white dress that Jeanette mandated was actually sexy. “But that’s OK. I kind of like it.”

  She gaped at him. “I do not scold!”

  “Next you’ll tell me I’m a very bad boy and need to be punished. I’m already laid out on the table, ass-up. Go ahead. Smack me one.”

  Tess drew in a shaky breath. Suggestive comments were wildly inappropriate in the context of a therapeutic massage. She would be within her rights to stop the session.

  It was the very last thing she wanted to do.

  She cast around for the perfect response in their gentle game of deflect and evade. Something to keep him at arm’s length, and yet not threaten their delicate equilibrium. She didn’t want to drive him away. She desperately needed something sparkling and effervescent in her life, even if it were just a faraway fantasy. Life without weekly doses of Jonah would be intolerably drab and savorless.

  She placed her hand between his shoulder blades and pushed him gently down. “I think you’ve had a very stressful day,” she said softly. “And we are both going to forget that you just said that.”

  He was quiet as she spread oil across the quivering muscles in his shoulders with broad, circular strokes. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “Shhh,” she whispered.

  It took longer than usual for him to calm down, but eventually the door between them opened up like Aladdin’s cave. Everything she’d ever learned in massage school or technique workshops melted away, along with every other conscious thought. His body was a vast landscape for her to wander through, following pure instinct, raw feeling. Horizon upon horizon, wild and exotic and unknown.

  She wanted to map them all.

  Her voice floated to him from so far away that the words had no meaning. All he caught was the caressing tone in her husky alto voice. He had to hold the words in a containing cell in his blissed-out mind until he woke up enough to process the data.

  He fished the words out of the containing cell when the fog cleared. It was just what she always said. “Take a few minutes to come back before you get dressed. I’ll be out front.”

  How could such an innocuous statement sound so sexy? He swung his legs down from the table, sat up, and dropped his face into his hands. Massive boner, of course, but he was used to that by now.

  He rubbed his face, and bit by bit, the painful details of his monumentally horrible day floated back to him. The early morning call about the heart attack. Granddad with an oxygen mask and tubes stuck in him, sniping at him from his hospital bed, telling him to get lost. His cousins John and Steve, staring at him from across the room with blatant loathing. And as if that wasn’t enough, the apocalyptic scene in the restaurant with Cynthia three weeks ago had to come floating back, too. He’d have been better off not remembering.

  Too bad he couldn’t maintain the floating high that Tess’s massages gave him, but he would have to abuse controlled substances to maintain that kind of buzz. Not his scene. He was doomed to keep both feet flat on the concrete. A chip off old Granddad’s block.

  The up side, of course, was that if the old bastard had enough energy to kick Jonah’s ass out of his hospital room, then he must not be ready to die yet. Even if Granddad wouldn’t speak to him or forgive him, he was still roaring like a steam engine, making noise, dominating his world. He allowed himself to be comforted by that.

  He put his watch back on. She’d massaged him for almost an hour and a half. Yeah, she liked him for sure. He grinned as he pulled on his clothes, remembering how tense and awkward he’d been the first time he’d walked into the place. He’d only done it because his office staff had gotten together and bought him a six-massage package at the Multnomah Massage Center, and though they’d laughed it off as a gag gift, it was a pretty damn costly gag gift. It had gotten his attention, conscious as he was of exactly how much he paid them all. Besides, Eileen, his assistant, had seen to it that he got the real message, which was “Dude, you are losing it, and you need to chill. Right now.”

  Then his doctor told him that the headaches were due to muscle tension and the stomachaches were from the painkillers he took for the headaches. Yo, bozo. You’re creating the perfect conditions for an ulcer.

  Fine. Message received; everybody could stop beating the dead horse, already. He would get some freaking massages.

  Then Tess had walked into the waiting room and called out his name. Shaken his hand with her small, capable-looking hand. Looked him over with those big, tilted gold-green eyes. Asked him brisk, businesslike questions about his medical history, his headaches, his back pain. What a turn-on. Who’d have thought.

  She was so pretty, in a subtle and yet luscious sort of way. With those generous tits, tightly constrained in the white dress that was clearly designed to discourage sensual thoughts while utterly failing to do so. Her Jennifer Lopez-esque ass, which he checked out thorougly as he followed her into the back room. A few massages from that bodacious little number suddenly seemed like a very good idea.

  It had taken him the entire first session just to get used to the concept of someone touching him for any reason other than to make him hot. Hah. Tell that to his cock. It had no clue.

  Truth was, just lusting after his massage therapist wouldn’t have been such a big deal. So what? He would just keep his boxers on and stay rigorously face down. It was what happened during the massages that blew his mind. She put her hands on him and zing, the world turned upside down. Since Granddad’s business troubles, and the subsequent series of heart attacks, Jonah’s stomach had been in knots, his lungs tight and constricted, his mind racing day and night. But when Tess touched him, his mind slipped loose of that frantically spinning hamster’s wheel of anger and regret, frustration and guilt. It floated unexpectedly free, into a vast open space that he exhaled his whole self into, with a rush of relief so intense it almost made him want to cry. Though thank God, it had never come to that.

  He was strung out on her. Look at him, running straight from the hospital to the massage center like a toddler running to his mommy to get his owie kissed. Throwing a goddamn tantrum in the waiting room, for Christ’s sake. His out-of-control desperation was kind of freaky.

  And his crush on Tess had gotten way out of hand, too. When he was all loosey goosey and dazzled from one of her massages, she looked like she was lit from within. Resplendent. The luminous, delicate flush on her lovely face, devoid of makeup. The wavy chestnut hair, wound into a braided bun so tight that he could never get a good sense of how long it was. Today, adorable fuzzy bits corkscrewed around her slender neck. Soft and tousled and sensual. Yum.

  She kept blowing him off when he asked her out, but he couldn’t seem to stop trying. To hell with dignity. The words just popped out of him. Whenever she leaned over him, he caught whiffs of her scent. Not like the nose-tickling, knock-you-on-your-ass Eau de Whatever that Cynthia drenched herself in. More like rain on a spring night. Cool, leaf
y. Lemon and mint, wood and water. Vanishing before he could pull enough into his lungs to satisfy himself, leaving him gasping for more.

  And then there was the sweep of her eyebrows, with the little swirling snarl of darker hair marking the crest of the arch. The black, curling lashes. And her lips. Damn. His cock had just started to calm down to socially acceptable proportions, and he’d ruined it by picturing the crease down the middle of her plump lower lip, dividing it into two succulent, kissable pink cushions. He’d have to drape his jacket carefully over his crotch when he marched out front. As usual.

  She was standing next to the Devil Receptionist from Mars, who was giving him the death-ray look. Time to bump back into reality.

  The receptionist flipped her big hair and opened the appointment book. “Same time? Or do you anticipate any more emergencies?”

  “Could I schedule an appointment for this weekend?”

  “No way.” Lacey was clearly delighted to thwart him. “Elsa could—”

  “I am not interested in an appointment with Elsa,” he snarled. He turned to Tess with the most coaxing, soulful puppy-dog look he could muster. “Couldn’t you rearrange your schedule again? Like today?”

  A rueful smile activated the little dimples at the corners of Tess’s mouth. “It was a mistake, letting you get away with this. I’ve spoiled you rotten. Now there’ll be no reasoning with you.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed swiftly. “I’m completely ruined. So can you?”

  She shook her head. “Not a chance. I won’t even be here this weekend. I’ll be working up at Cedar Hills Resort.”

  “All weekend? How much do they pay you for that?”

  Lacey bristled in outrage. “None of your business!”

  “Shall we put you down for the usual time?” Tess asked gently.

  He nodded as he wrote out the check. Nothing more to be gained from talking to her while that extraterrestrial harpy looked on, but the thought of Tess giving massages at a resort planted an idea in his head.

  He wandered out onto the street and turned it over in his head. Her car was parked across the street in front of a Starbucks. He would get a decaf, in honor of the fact that he’d just spent eighty bucks trying to relax, and let his plan develop while he waited for her to come out.

  He got his coffee and checked out the surreal art that hung by his table. A painting of a floating, naked transparent guy with clouds inside him. New Age fluff, but it reminded him of himself during one of Tess’s massages. Maybe she put him in a hypnotic trance. Some brain wave thing. He’d read articles about stuff like that, in health magazines that he found in the bathrooms of other people’s beach houses. He imagined his body as a revolving galaxy of light, visited by a benevolent feminine entity with small, strong hands that glowed with life-giving heat. Yikes. He’d been catching too many late-night Star Trek reruns lately.

  But being a relatively normal guy, and as such, having an appropriately dirty mind, the next obvious question was, what would sex be like under such conditions?

  Sexually, he was very skilled and aggressive. It was a game of conquest, a hot, sweaty duel, and orgasms were points he scored in the game. He liked to make his lovers have lots of them. That was how he won. And he wanted to win with Tess Langley. He wanted to kiss that luscious mouth, pop open the buttons on that kinky white dress, stroke and lick and suckle her until she screamed with pleasure. But as he stared at the naked floating guy, a suspicion began to form inside him.

  The rules of the game as he knew it would be null and void in that magic landscape where he went with Tess. He would be brand-new, a bumbling beginner. Vulnerable and helpless.

  The idea intrigued him as much as it alarmed him.

  “Excuse me.”

  Tess stifled a squeak as she spun around. Her nerves couldn’t take much more of this overstimulation. “Were you following me?”

  “Just waiting.” His voice was defensive. “That doesn’t count as following. I have a business proposition, and I couldn’t talk about it in front of your colleague. Let me buy you a drink. I’ll tell you about it.”

  He waited patiently while she made repeated attempts to access that part of her brain that governed speech. Seconds ticked by. He frowned. “Got other plans? A date?” His eyes swept over her, taking note of the hideous white uniform under her jacket, the white shoes.

  Date, hah. Just a half-formed plan to flop openmouthed on the couch and watch Frasier, or Xena, or whatever else she found channel surfing. Hardly a reason to not have a drink with the sexiest man she’d ever seen in real life. She shook her head. “No date.”

  “Great. There’s a restaurant at the end of the block.”

  He got right to the point as soon as they were seated in the bar, and lucky for her, since she was too tongue-tied to handle chitchat.

  “When you said you were working at a resort all weekend, it gave me an idea,” he told her. “I want you to come up to my house at Cougar Lake, and do the same thing for me. Friday night.”

  “This Friday? For . . . you? But—”

  “For my house party,” he clarified. “I’m having people up this weekend, and I’d like to surprise them with something special.”

  She covered her confusion taking a nervous sip of her Dos Equis. “It doesn’t sound very ethical,” she said.

  “The MMC—”

  “The MMC would never know. And it would be lucrative. I pay eighty bucks for a massage here. What percentage of that do you get?”

  She hesitated, biting her lip.

  He nodded, looking satisfied. “Exactly. I’ll give you twenty-five hundred. A thousand a day, and five hundred for Friday night.”

  She was dumbfounded at the sum. “But that’s . . .” She choked off the words too much. Such words didn’t belong in the vocabulary of a future entrepreneur. “But I’m already scheduled to—”

  “Get someone to cover for you,” he cut in. “Get this famous Elsa who’s so monumentally available to do it for you.”

  She set down her beer with a decisive thud. “Elsa is an excellent massage therapist,” she said crisply. “Come to think of it, you might call her for your party. You would have no complaints if—”

  “No. I want you.” There was a bright, steely glint in his eyes.

  Yeah, that’s the problem, right there, she almost blurted. “I don’t think it would be a good idea,” she said hesitantly. “I really don’t like the idea of going behind my employer’s back, and furthermore—”

  “Four thousand.” He gave her a winning smile.

  She gasped. “But I . . . I wasn’t bargaining with you! I can’t—”

  “I’ll write you a check for two thousand now.” He pulled out his checkbook. “I’ll give you the rest when you get there on Friday night.”

  Her spine stiffened up, ramrod straight. “Money is not the point!”

  He glanced up from the checkbook. “Money is always the point.” His tone suggested that he was stating something painfully obvious.

  Her chin lifted. “Not with me, it isn’t.”

  And it wasn’t. That was one of the vows she’d made when she left her old life behind. She’d left her old values, too. Or rather, the values that others had imposed upon her. Money would never rule her again.

  Jonah studied her for a moment. He signed the check, ripped it out, and laid it on the bar, equidistant between their two beers. “So what is the point, then?” He sounded genuinely curious.

  She stared at his jagged black signature. Two thousand dollars. Another two on Friday. With what she’d already saved, and a couple of loans, she’d be able to quit the MMC and open her studio right now.

  She swallowed, and looked away. “I do strictly therapeutic massage,” she said stiffly. “Going to the private home of a man I don’t know seems to invite misunderstanding. You must know what I mean.”

  His sensual mouth curved. “Of course I know what you mean. I just get a kick out of watching you blush.”

  She leaped off the bar stool a
nd backed away. “You know what? It’s just exactly that sort of flirtatious, inappropriate comment that makes me nervous.”

  “Sorry, sorry,” he said hastily. “Relax. My guests know what a professional massage therapist does and doesn’t do. And so do I. I’m not inviting you to an orgy. Bring a friend, if it makes you feel better. Bring a squad of Ninja bodyguards. There’s plenty of room.” His expression was so winsome and contrite that her face ached to smile back. He put his finger on the check and pushed it toward her. Slowly. Inch by inch.

  She looked away, flustered. “I have to think. And I have see if someone can cover for me at Cedar Hills.”

  He fished a card out of his wallet and wrote two numbers on the back. “Home phone and cell phone. Call me anytime.” He leaned forward and tucked his card and his check into the breast pocket of her denim jacket, ignoring the flinch and tremor that his touch provoked. “Take the check, too. Meditate on it.” His eyes flicked down over her body. “I’m hungry. Can I buy you some dinner?”

  She backed up another step, holding her purse in front of her.

  His eyes gleamed with silent amusement. “Oh, yeah, I forgot. You’ve got something against having dinner with me. Wish I knew why.”

  “I don’t have anything against you,” she babbled, taking another step back. “I’m just not dressed for dinner, and I have to go. Right now.”

  “Hey. Tess.”

  The quiet force in his voice stopped her. She shot a nervous glance over her shoulder. “Yes?”

  “I’m harmless,” he said. “Really. I swear. A great big pussycat.”

  Pussycat. She imagined petting him, making him purr and stretch. Sinuous and sensual . . . and predatory.

  “Yeah, right,” she muttered. “Totally harmless.”

  She turned, and fled.

  Chapter Two

  “Yo, Tess. I just found your purse in the fridge. You going to tell your good buddy Trish what’s up, or am I gonna have to nag?”

  Tess looked up from her tepid mug of tea, and took the purse that Trish held out. The leather was clammy. “It’s cold,” she mumbled.