Bad Boys Online

by Erin McCarthy

  "But it was more than great sex, it was… intimate." Another lusty sigh emerged. "And now that I've let the cat out of the bag, I don't think I can stuff it back in."

  "What do you mean?" Violet asked.

  She wasn't sure exactly. She just knew she couldn't be the same old Kindra-the-wallflower anymore. She had changed. Mack had brought out parts of herself she had forgotten existed.

  "I may not be able to have Mack, but I'm tired of being taken advantage of at work. I'm going to stand up for myself, and get some excitement in my life."

  "Does that mean better clothes?" Ashley asked hopefully.

  "Will you quit harping on my clothes?" she said in exasperation. "But yes, it means new clothes."

  "Cool." Trish swung her backpack purse back on. "Let's skip the movie and go shopping instead."

  Ashley stood up and hugged Kindra. "Hey, I'm sorry things didn't work out with Mack, but you never know. Maybe he feels the same way about you."

  Hah. And Mack Stone was going to get a pet poodle named Bitsy. Please.

  @ Mack sucked down his third cup of coffee in the last hour and glared at Jim, his coworker. God, Jim was annoying. Of course, everyone was annoying this morning.

  After a miserable Sunday afternoon wallowing in self-pity, Mack had spent a sleepless night. He'd woken up Monday morning with a pounding head and an aching heart.

  Then to make it all worse, Kindra had strode into work that morning looking breezy and sensual, confident and happy.

  For the first time ever she was wearing her hair down at work. The soft auburn sleekness bounced over her shoulders, and she was wearing very subtle makeup that brought out her green eyes and made her cheekbones look a mile long.

  Instead of black, her suit was brown. Warm chocolate that made her skin glow. The cut was feminine, tighter, and shorter than he'd ever seen Kindra in.

  She looked fantastic. Gorgeous. Edible.

  Damned if he wasn't the only one to notice it either. Half the office staff was sniffing around her. The male half.

  Mack stood over Jim's desk, wishing Jim would put his doughnut down so they could solve the problem they were working on. Bright laughter floated over to them. Mack gritted his teeth and turned.

  It was Kindra perched on the reception desk, surrounded by three guys. Mack rubbed his forehead. When Kindra had seen him this morning, he had gotten nothing more than a cool hello.

  He'd seen her naked. He had been inside her.

  But these geeks got her smile, her full attention, and her laugh.

  Kindra had a great laugh.

  "Damn," Jim said around a mouthful of doughnut. "Something is different about Kindra this morning. Maybe she finally got a little action over the weekend." He snorted in laughter.

  Mack turned and glared at Jim. "Watch your damn mouth."

  Jim stopped laughing. "What's the matter with you?" Then his eyebrows rose. "Oh, I get it. Kindra was with you this weekend, wasn't she?"

  Mack didn't answer, but turned back to watch Kindra and her entourage.

  Jim said, "I've never seen you look so ticked off. Has the great Mack Stone finally fallen?"

  Like a boulder.

  Without thinking, he marched himself over to Kindra and interrupted rudely by elbowing past Bob from payroll.

  "I need to talk to you."

  Kindra flushed. She darted her eyes around and her shoulders tensed. "I'm busy right now."

  "I don't care."

  Kindra glared at him, held her chin up high, and walked away, her hair swinging.

  Mack stood there flabbergasted. She had walked away from him.

  A hand touched his arm. He looked down at Ashley, who was tugging him away from the crowd.

  "What?" he said, trying to pull his arm away.

  "Get a clue, Mack," she whispered. "You can't just embarrass the hell out of Kindra by acting like a total cretin and then expect her to listen to you."

  She pointed her finger at him. "Now you listen to me. How do you feel about Kindra?"

  Sick with love. He tugged at his tie. "That's none of your business."

  "Do you love her?"

  He couldn't say yes, but he couldn't say no either. He looked at Ashley in agony.

  She nodded in satisfaction. "Good. She loves you too, you know, but she thinks you were in it for the sex."

  "I never said that!"

  "You never said otherwise," Miss Wisdom pointed out to him.

  Mack ran his fingers through his hair. Could it be true? Did Kindra love him? Hope rose like a hot-air balloon.

  But what if she didn't?

  "Do you think I should tell her how I feel now?"

  "No, I think you should both spend the rest of your lives miserable for being so stupid." She rolled her eyes. "Yes, you should tell her!"

  Mack barely even noticed Ashley's sarcasm. If Ashley was wrong about Kindra's feelings, he certainly couldn't feel any lousier than he did right now.

  And if she was right…

  Oh, man. Bliss.

  Mack had an idea. He bent and squeezed Ashley by the shoulders. "Thanks, Ashley. I owe you one."

  Then he turned and headed to his office, telling himself that Kindra was worth all the embarrassment he would suffer if this didn't work.

  Kindra was still in shock an hour later. What exactly had Mack been doing?

  Had she wounded his male ego by telling him one night was enough?

  Rubbing her temples, she spat hair out of her mouth. Wearing the hair down was supposed to be symbolic, but it was just getting on her nerves. She was constantly pawing it to get it out of her way.

  The words on her screen were blurring in front of her. She'd been hiding in her office since she had walked away from Mack, and she couldn't concentrate on anything.

  She'd been staring at the same proposal for a solid thirty minutes and the words were dancing tiny tangos with each other.

  Frustrated, she clicked to check her e-mail. Anything to distract her. It was possible there would be another pleading message from Russ begging her not to sever their relationship.

  Those had been his exact words after she had e-mailed him the night before telling him she wasn't interested any longer. The word relationship made her snort out loud.

  Talking about sex in a chat room was not a relationship.

  Neither was one night together.

  She groaned. This wasn't distracting her from thinking about Mack.

  She was a federal disaster area. Hurricane Kindra.

  Then her eye landed on her new messages. There was one from Mack Stone.

  "Oh, no."

  If he talked dirty to her, she was not going to be able to resist.

  One eye closed, the other covered by her hand, she clicked to open the e-mail. Then she spread her fingers and held her breath.

  The message was short.

  Marry me.

  Kindra dropped her hands and gripped her desk. "Ohmigod, ohmigod."

  Was this some sort of cruel joke from Mack or Russ or some office prankster? Her vision went blurry.

  Her stomach lurched like she'd had bad calamari.

  The door to her office opened.

  Frantic, she bent her head and scrolled down so her screen was blank. Praying it was Ashley, she said, "Yes?" in a bright fake voice.

  "Woof."

  What the heck was that? Her head snapped up. She turned, blinking hard.

  Now she'd seen everything. Truly. Mack was standing in her doorway with a fluffy white poodle sticking out of his computer backpack.

  "What are you doing?" she blurted out.

  "Hoping like hell I'm not making an ass out of myself."

  No comment.

  Kindra thumbed back toward her screen, her heart pounding way too fast to be normal. If she passed out, she hoped Mack would think to call 911. "Did you just send me a message?"

  "If it said 'Marry me,' then yes, I did."

  That's it. She was gone. Tears raced down her face and she struggled not to blubb
er. "Why?"

  "Kindra." He took a step forward. "Because I love you."

  "No, you don't." Now why had she just said that? Hadn't she learned anything? If the man of her dreams proposed and said he loved her, she needed to latch on and ask questions later.

  "Yes, I do." The fluffy little dog put its paws on his shoul-der and panted. "Come on, I have a freaking dog on my back. With pink bows in its hair. Doesn't that tell you anything?"

  It told her volumes. That Mack did love her. The pink bows confirmed it. She laughed. "I love you too."

  "Whew." He grinned. "You had me worried there. Does that mean you'll marry me? We can live in your house and raise Bitsy together?"

  "Yes." But the dog's name had to go.

  Kindra stood up and went to Mack. Right into his arms. Where she belonged.

  The kiss he gave her was long and passionate, moist lips and groping hands. His hot tongue lapped against hers.

  "Oh, baby," he groaned.

  Oh, baby was right. Kindra snuggled up against his hard chest and tugged on his cranberry tie. She absolutely loved the way he looked in a tie.

  Mack gestured to her computer. "You have to tell cyber-Romeo to take a hike. Then we'll change your e-mail address. Maybe to IbelongtoMack@hotmail.com."

  She laughed. "I already did. Yesterday. Told him to take a hike, that is, not changed my address."

  His eyes burned. "You know, we should take the dog home before she has an accident down my back."

  "Oh, good idea." Kindra was due a long leisurely lunch, since she'd never had one in four years on the job.

  Feeling fabulous and daring, she let her hand slide down past his waist. She squeezed him and grinned in satisfaction when he went hard.

  He said in a tight voice, "Want to have a nooner?"

  Yes, please.

  "Sure. Let me grab my purse." Kindra rubbed the little dog's head over Mack's shoulder and said, "She really is cute."

  Bitsy barked.

  Mack shifted the pack on his back. "You know, I never did get to watch that little video we made. Maybe we could do that first. Did you save it?"

  "It's on my hard drive." But Kindra had a better idea.

  Her hand back on his pants stroking him, she whispered in his ear, "Let's make another one instead."

  Mack watched Kindra walk toward the door, her sweet little ass swaying as she shot him a "come and get it" look over her shoulder.

  Damn, he was one lucky guy.

  He followed her, his tongue probably hanging as low as Bitsy's. "Baby, let's go burn up your hard drive."

  Press Any Key

  Chapter One

  "I don't feel the love in this room."

  Jared Kincaid stared at Harold, who was standing in the middle of his office, hands on his leather pants-clad hips.

  What Jared felt was not love, but a skull-grinding, breath-robbing headache. Trust him to get hired at a marketing firm where the boss was having an existential midlife crisis.

  It had started with Harold's leaving his wife six weeks ago. Now it had graduated to his boss's wearing a gay hairdresser's wardrobe to work every day, preaching to the staff about oneness with self, and eating massive quantities of hummus.

  Since Jared's instinct was to tell Harold to take his love and shove it up his leather pants, he remained silent. With a little luck, in a month or two Harold would rediscover his true passion lay in Beamers and Armani suits and they could get back to normal.

  A sultry low laugh filled the room. Jared gritted his teeth.

  That laugh was a perfect example of why he was doomed to middle management and a lifetime of dodging trouble. Trouble followed Jared. Everywhere he went.

  Trouble usually had long legs and breasts. This trouble had all of that plus blowzy blond hair, a Southern accent, and lush cherry lips that pouted and taunted.

  And her name. Who the hell named their kid Candy Appleton? Had her mother envisioned her newborn baby as a future porn star?

  Maybe it had been cute when Candy was a little girl, before she'd grown breasts, but now, on that body… it was just perverted.

  Candy, who looked relaxed and sexy as hell in her red suit, kicked the heel of her crossed foot up and down, annoying Jared even further. When she did that, he had a view straight up her thigh nearly to the promised land.

  She'd be the type to wear garters, he was sure. Black ones, green ones. Red ones, cream ones.

  He shifted in his chair, slouching to hide the fact that he now had a steel boner.

  A boner. In the middle of the goddamn day, in the middle of his boss's office.

  Trouble. Plain and simple.

  Trouble spoke. "Harold, I don't think Jared's ready to feel the love."

  He sat up straight. What was that supposed to mean? He could feel the love if he wanted to. If he could ever figure out what the hell Harold was talking about.

  Candy tossed him one of those sultry, open-mouth smiles that made him want to tug her full bottom lip into his mouth and suck hard. He dug his fingernails into his thigh.

  Harold frowned. "Is that true, Jared? You're not ready to feel the love?"

  He was ready to feel up Candy's curves. Did that count? Jared cleared his throat. "Uhh, what exactly are we talking about here?"

  "I'm talking about the fact that we have exactly three weeks to get together the ad campaign for Chunk o' Chocolate, and you and Candy have barely spent an hour on it."

  That's because he just about ran away every time Candy came near him. She scared the hell out of him. He had been forced to leave five years of hard work and a 401k plan behind him when he'd left his previous marketing firm, due to an unplanned encounter in the copier room with the big boss's secretary. Unknown to him at the time, that secretary was also the boss's girlfriend.

  Work and sex didn't mix. Jared and women didn't mix. Every embarrassing and detrimental incident in his life could be traced back to a woman and his inability to control himself around them.

  The buck stopped here. Or his dick, however you wanted to look at it.

  He was not going to screw this up. Or screw Candy, no matter how much he wanted to taste those lethal lips.

  "We can work on it whenever Candy likes." He avoided looking at her and focused on the bright yellow spot Harold had dyed on the front of his rapidly diminishing hair. It looked like a flashing caution light.

  Caution: Middle-aged man approaching baldness.

  Candy said, "Maybe you should assign someone else to work with Jared. I don't think he really likes me all that much." Her words were slow, and rolled, like a water drop across his skin.

  That's where she was wrong. He liked Candy. Candy was sweet and lickable and belonged in his mouth, where he could swirl it around, sucking and tasting every delectable inch.

  Harold clapped his hands together, startling Jared out of his erotic fantasy.

  "See, that's what I'm talking about! Jared doesn't like you, and you don't like Jared. I can't have that."

  Candy didn't like him? Jared turned to her in amazement. Well, hell, that hurt. It was okay if he was avoiding her, but she wasn't supposed to avoid him.

  He was likable. He returned phone calls and held open doors for women. Of course, whenever Candy was around, he usually just grunted and bolted for the nearest exit. He supposed she might take that personally.

  But what was he supposed to do? Tell her it wasn't her, it was her hot knockers that had him running like a cat from water? That was sure to go over big.

  "I like Candy," he managed to say, not at all sure he wanted to know where Harold was going with this.

  Candy laughed again, and he was suddenly aware of his poor word choice.

  "Liar," she murmured. "But that shouldn't have anything to do with this client."

  "It doesn't."

  Harold studied them both and said, "I've noticed the tension between you two, and it's got to stop. It's affecting the rest of the staff. It's altering the feng shui state of the office. There are negative auras camped i
n my company, and that has got to go."

  If Harold pulled out crystals and started chanting, Jared was out of there.

  Not that he could afford to quit. As luck would have it, he'd bought himself a pricey condo right before he'd gotten canned from his previous job. The three months pounding the pavement had put a real dent in his assets. Another stint of unemployment and he'd be eating macaroni and cheese out of his car after the bank foreclosed on his mortgage.

  "We don't want negative auras." Candy dropped her foot to the ground and smiled at Harold.

  It made Jared suspicious. She never looked as if she was being sarcastic, yet he suspected she was. She was intelligent, and her ad work was brilliant, yet that brain was housed in a stripper's body.

  He had the feeling that, if left alone, Candy could outmaneuver them all, leaving a string of drooling men in her wake as she deftly climbed her way up the corporate ladder.

  Maybe he'd catch a glimpse under her skirt on her way up.

  Jesus, he was hopeless.

  "So Candy is willing to work on improvement. What about you, Jared? Do I have your word that you'll open your mind to a more natural unity?"

  Sure. Why not. He had to say yes. This was his boss, no matter how off-the-wall Harold was acting, and he was still in charge. Jared didn't like macaroni and cheese, so he forced his mouth to open and say, "You have my word, Harold."

  Harold beamed. He said, "Yesterday I had the best idea.

  You're going to love this. There is obviously something holding you and Candy back, something that needs to be resolved." Harold put his finger to his lip. "We could be talking about a betrayal in a past life, I'm not sure."

  Jared pressed his hand to his temple. If he'd had a past life, he'd obviously done something really shitty to have earned this torture in his present life.

  "What did you have in mind?" Candy leaned forward as she redirected Harold.

  "I've signed the two of you up for online couple counseling!"

  Jared's head pulsed so violently he could swear he went momentarily blind.

  "Oh!" Candy cleared her throat. "Well, that sounds like a great idea."

  It wasn't a great idea. It was a stupid, asinine, garbage-can-full-of-crap idea cooked up by his boss who had temporarily lost his mind due to the onset of male pattern baldness.