Blame It on the Bachelor

by Karen Kendall

  God help her, she knew exactly what he meant, and more X-rated images flashed before her eyes. A naked Dev straddling her, sliding his cock between her—

  “Dev, stop it!” She was afraid she might explode; blast off like a female rocket, leaving nothing but her damp, charred panties behind.

  “What’s the matter, sweetheart? You’re sounding a little strained.”

  She glared at him, letting her eyes travel deliberately to his crotch. “Am I? Well, it’s your fault. And you appear to have shoved a cucumber down your shorts, you jerk. You’re no better off than I am.”

  He flashed white teeth at her. “Cucumber? More like a giant butternut squash, darlin’.”

  She slid away from him and made for the door. “You’re impossible. I’m here on business.”

  “And like I said, I’m all too ready to give you the business.”

  She turned her back to the exit. “Do you ever think about anything besides sex?”

  He eyed her as if he were starving and she were a slice of key lime pie. “Not when it comes to you.”

  The door was frigid and she pressed against it for relief from the heat of her own body.

  “Well, get over it. Seriously. Snap out of it. Because I have a job to do, here, and you’re going to have to help me do it—with your clothes on. Mine, too.”

  Dev sauntered toward her and instinctively she tried to back up, but had nowhere to go. “Me, I’ve always been a big fan of naked account management.”

  “No. No, no, no. No naked account management. Not happening.”

  He chuckled and kept coming for her.

  “Stop right where you are, or I’ll—” She didn’t know what she’d do. But the threatening tone was good.

  “You’ll what, babe?”

  She cast about for a sufficiently dire consequence.

  “What will you do?” he taunted softly. He stood a foot away, looming over her. “Spontaneously combust?”

  Yes. “Of course not.”

  His leer was back—not that it had ever truly gone away.

  “Don’t you lay a finger on me, or I swear I will—”

  “Hump my leg?” Dev was openly laughing now, and she didn’t appreciate it one bit.

  Game over. “I’m leaving,” she said, feeling wildly around for the door handle.

  “No, you’re coming,” Dev told her. Then he leaned over and bit her nipple, right through the white blouse and her bra.

  “Ohhh!”

  Worse, he took the placket of her shirt in his teeth and ripped open the snap buttons, holding his hands in the air to demonstrate that he hadn’t laid a finger on her.

  Then, still using his teeth, he tugged down the edge of her bra and captured the other nipple in his mouth, triggering chaos throughout her nervous system.

  She leaned weakly against the steel door and gave in to the hot, sucking pleasure. Gave in to that clever mouth and Dev’s utterly stubborn, wily, no-hands seduction.

  He gave equal attention to her other breast before making a suggestion that was just short of a command. “You should pull your skirt up, now.”

  “I should?”

  Dev dropped to his knees in front of her, still keeping his hands idle. “I think it’s a real good idea, unless you want me to chew it off.”

  She met his gaze. She shook her head ruefully. He raised a completely corrupt eyebrow and waited her out. Still holding his gaze, she reached for the hem of her skirt and pulled it up, past her knees, and slowly up her thighs.

  Dev nodded encouragingly.

  She hesitated as she got to the apex.

  “C’mon,” he said. “All the way.”

  She pulled it to her waist.

  And Dev bent forward and slipped his tongue under her thong.

  13

  KYLIE ALMOST COLLAPSED against the door as Dev touched her there, pressed his face between her legs. Pleasure took over and all conscious thought fled. The sense of the forbidden, the knowledge that discovery could be imminent, only heightened the sensations.

  The two days’ growth on his cheeks and chin abraded her inner thighs, but she didn’t care. She rode the sensations, climbing higher and higher…

  Until he took his mouth away.

  She made a small noise of protest and squirmed.

  “Kylie,” he said, his voice husky. “You like this?”

  “Yes! Don’t— Please…”

  “You don’t want me to stop?”

  “No…”

  He did something incredible and her knees buckled.

  “Okay, then you have to agree to a date with me.”

  “C-can’t.”

  Dev did some kind of swirl or figure eight in just the right place and she clutched at his hair.

  “One date,” he insisted.

  “You…are…the devil…”

  “What can it hurt?”

  “Aaahhh!” She was pretty sure he’d traced a question mark this time.

  “Nobody has to know.”

  Now a heart? “Yes…whatever you want…okay…”

  “Atta girl.”

  And Dev went for the kill as a reward.

  She wasn’t sure what he did, but she was way past analyzing it, a slave to heat and sensation, to rhythm and pure, unadulterated pleasure.

  She spasmed, convulsed and came hard against him, over and over.

  Dev chuckled and sat back. “Don’t look, ma,” he said. “No hands.”

  She came back to earth and was immediately embarrassed, since she was half-naked with her skirt rucked up around her waist, while he was sitting there fully clothed and getting an eyeful. Shaking partially from cold, she pulled her panties into place and yanked her skirt down.

  “Hey,” he protested. “You just spoiled my view…and besides, I have other plans for you, my pretty.” He indicated the tent in his jeans.

  “Dev, anyone could walk in here at any moment,” she said, adjusting her bra and pulling her blouse together again.

  “I know.” He seemed unfazed by the concept. “That’s what makes it fun.”

  “Fun for you. Catastrophic to my career.” What was she doing in here? She could lose it all. Everything she’d ever worked for. And her job was everything to her, since her parents had died on her and her personal life had disintegrated. Maybe she’d round out her life by meeting the real Mr. Right one day and pop out a couple of troubled kids. But Dev was most definitely not that guy.

  He stood up and took her hand, placing it on his erection. “You’re not gonna make me walk around with this, are you? You can’t be that cruel.”

  It would be cruel. But Kylie feared discovery. She struggled with herself. So Dev wasn’t Mr. Right. Why not enjoy Mr. Wrong for the moment?

  She sighed. “Do you have an office in this place? One with a locking door?”

  “Yeah, but it’s about as big as a shoe box.”

  She shrugged and made up her mind. “Then,” she said in her best Mae West voice, “why don’t you take the big, bad, bank lady in to look at your books?”

  “Mmm. I can’t wait to adjust the figures.” Dev pressed her against the door and set his mouth on hers, grinding himself into the hollow between her legs.

  She wrapped her arms around him wholeheartedly and kissed him back. It surprised her, but she found herself actually wanting to go on a date with him, even if he’d used a low-down, dirty bribe to secure it.

  She pulled back away in order to point out just how slimy that had been, and her left elbow connected with something solid—the lever of the door handle. It depressed, as designed to do.

  And the door opened, as it was designed to do.

  Kylie shrieked as she fell backward out of the walk-in fridge, with Dev on top of her.

  Shit! DEV DIDN’T have time to roll under her before she hit the concrete, but he got his arms under her head to protect her. Pain immobilized him as his elbows and wrists took the brunt of their impact.

  “Christ, are you okay?”

  Kylie evidentl
y had hit hard enough that the wind got knocked out of her, because her mouth was open but no sound came out after her initial scream.

  “Kylie? Hey, Kylie.” He twisted onto his side to get a better view of her face.

  Finally she gasped—once, twice—then closed her eyes. “My tailbone,” she said. “Oh, God. It hurts.”

  Worst thing she could have landed on. He ignored his own pain. “Can you move?”

  “Argh.” She struggled to sit up normally, but it must have been too painful. She, too, rolled onto her side to take inventory. “Yes. I think so.”

  Dev breathed a sigh of relief, and the room came into focus around him. Along with three employees and their bemused expressions.

  Bodvar held a long, wicked-looking chef’s knife and half a chicken. Maurizio, the sous chef, wielded a spatula. And Marla the cocktail waitress clutched a corkscrew and a sweating bottle of white wine.

  “Hi, guys,” Dev said. He cleared his throat. “Um. They should put a warning on those fridge doors. They’re downright dangerous. This is Ky—”

  “Katherine.” Kylie overrode him fiercely. “Katherine Jones. From, ah, the health department.”

  “Right.” Dev rubbed his forearms. “So. Katherine, here, was inspecting the cleanliness of our refrigeration unit.”

  “Yes.” She smiled brightly. “And I want to congratulate you all on a job well done. Extra points for tidiness. Although you may want to consider, uh, alphabetizing the contents.”

  None of his three employees was buying the act.

  In his heavily accented English, Bodvar said, “Ya. Well. I get back to de-boning.” He shot them a pointed glance, shook the chicken, turned on his heel and walked away.

  Maurizio smirked, shook his finger and made a spanking motion with the spatula.

  Marla pursed her lips and ran her hands up and down the wine bottle suggestively. “I’d better pour this before it gets too warm.” But she made no move to leave, eyeing them with open curiosity.

  “So nice to meet you all,” Kylie said, then looked at her watch. “Oh! Boy, am I late for another appointment.” She got to her knees and winced, clutching at her tailbone.

  Dev shot to his feet and extended an arm to her, pulling her up the rest of the way. “But we have all that paperwork to fill out,” he said, eyeing her meaningfully.

  Her smile became fixed. “Paperwork? No, no. You can do that on your own. Mail me the forms when you’re done.” She tried to pull her hand out of his, but he hung on. He wasn’t going to let her get away this easily. He was too horny. And he needed to cement that date with her.

  It wasn’t like he sat around and analyzed his feelings, but when he’d seen her again his brain had formed the word yes.

  This is the girl. You screwed things up; now unscrew them. This is the girl.

  “I can’t mail you the forms. I have a few questions.”

  “Oh, it’s all self-explanatory.” The smile had become a simple baring of teeth.

  Dev nodded and released her hand. “Fine,” he said smoothly. “Then I’ll contact you at work if I run into any snags, okay?” He bared his teeth right back at her.

  Something like panic crossed her face, and a small tic started at the corner of her left eye. She glanced at her watch. “Um. I probably have a couple of minutes to spare. I seem to have misread my watch.”

  “Easy to do.” Dev kept his tone agreeable to a fault. “Watch faces these days are just so complicated.”

  Her hazel eyes smoldered and promised retribution, but she allowed him to place an arm around her shoulders.

  “Here, let me show you the way.” Dev raised his eyebrows at Marla and Maurizio. “I’m sure the bar is getting busy by now.”

  They got the hint and vanished, leaving him and Kylie alone.

  “First,” she said in dangerous tones, “you play unbelievably dirty.”

  “Dirt is my middle name, sweetheart.”

  “Second, whatever you had in mind for me is not going to happen right now, because I can’t even stand up straight. I think my tailbone is broken.”

  He seriously doubted it. “If it was broken, you wouldn’t be mobile. Here,” he said with a lascivious grin, “why don’t you let me rub it for you?”

  “Funny. Look, I don’t know what you do all day, but I actually work for a living, and if I don’t get back to the office, they’re going to wonder what happened to me.”

  “And will you tell them?” He deliberately let his eyes roam her body. “Will you gather the girls around the water cooler and describe exactly what I did?”

  “No, you pervert. You wish.”

  He laughed openly at her outrage. Her blond hair was mussed and he’d smeared her lipstick. Her white blouse had a big smudge on the back from the floor. Her skirt was a little worse for the wear, sporting a sea of suspect wrinkles. It didn’t take an investigator’s license to figure out that it had been bunched around her waist.

  She all but advertised the fact that she’d been pleasurably manhandled.

  And he was just the man to handle her. “I think you should probably go home and change before you go back to work.”

  She looked down at herself in dismay.

  “Sorry.” He offered her a sheepish smile. “I’m a sex-crazed barbarian. Your skirt never had a chance.”

  She sighed. “And I’m stupid.”

  “Right. Which is exactly why you’re going out with me on that date we negotiated. How about this Saturday?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What if I said I was busy?”

  “And what if I didn’t believe you?”

  “Why not? I’m no dog. I could have a hot date lined up.”

  “But you don’t,” Dev said with finality. “Or you wouldn’t have come on to me at Mark’s wedding.”

  Kylie inspected her shoes, seeming fascinated with the navy bows on the toes.

  “So on Saturday,” he continued, “how about if I pick you up at seven o’clock? We’ll go for drinks at the Rusty Pelican and I’ll make a dinner reservation somewhere.”

  She caught her upper lip between her teeth. “So this is a real date?”

  “No, it’s a fake one,” he retorted, exasperated.

  “How many other women are you dating?”

  He stared at her. “None.”

  “Well, you need to find some and ask them out.”

  Dev glowered down at her. “Let me get this straight. You’re ordering me to date other women.”

  She nodded.

  “Next you’ll want me to send you written reports on these dates, right?” He couldn’t rein in his sarcasm.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Dev. All I’m saying is that we can’t get serious—”

  He stepped over to the wall and literally banged his head on it. Once, twice and then a third time. “Serious?” he asked. “Nothing about this whole situation is serious, honey, so if I were you, I wouldn’t worry about it. This is all one big, freakin’ comedy. In fact, it’s a farce.”

  14

  KYLIE WAS AT her condo before she realized that she and Dev had not discussed one thing about his business or the loan. Great. Just great.

  The mirror told its tale: she looked like some crazed slut on a bender, or at the very least a character straight out of a disaster movie. What got into her when she was around Devon? She wasn’t some idiot groupie, but somehow she degenerated into one as soon as he shot her those teasing, smoldering looks of his.

  She stripped off the smudged blouse and, wincing, stepped out of the wrinkled navy skirt. She’d had to ease gingerly into her car and the drive home had been torture. Every movement involving her tailbone was a symphony in pain.

  She wondered if she should go to the minor emergency room to check if she’d cracked it, but dismissed the idea.

  Instead she took four ibuprofen and a quick hot shower before redressing for the office. It was late in the afternoon, and she didn’t have to go back, but she was always conscious of image, and she didn’t want anyone to think th
at she’d played hooky.

  Now in a black skirt and similar blouse in taupe, she forced her feet into heels, grabbed her bag and slowly made the trek out to her car, moving like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

  Agony as she got in. She prayed for the ibuprofen to work fast. And then she put the car and her dignity into gear and drove back to work.

  Kylie hobbled through the glass doors of Sol Trust’s building and through the tiled lobby with its jungle of tropical plants. She hoped to get to the elevator and then her office without anyone commenting, but no such luck.

  To her consternation, Milty Goldman stood in the direct path of the elevators, surrounded by a group of dark-suited men whose demeanor screamed investment banker. She offered a weak smile and tried to dodge around them.

  “Miss Kent,” Milty boomed.

  Her spine snapped to attention, causing her tailbone to shriek in pain. For a moment she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She erased Edvard Munch’s The Scream from her face and slowly turned around, producing her best corporate smile.

  “Yes, Mr. Goldman? How are you today?” She forced one foot in front of the other in a sort of military goose step until she got to the edge of the group. She must have looked like a flamingo on Xanax.

  “Kenny, Mort, Dave, Steven, I’d like you to meet Ms. Kylie Kent, one of our up-and-coming account managers, here at Sol Trust. Kylie, these gentlemen are going to give us more money to look after.” He turned to them with an ingratiating smile. “Aren’t you, boys?”

  They all chuckled and backslapped him. Everyone was a little too jovial, and she wondered if they’d had drinks at lunch.

  She kept her eyes on their faces, even though every single one of the men covertly assessed her breasts. The one called Mort openly checked out her ass.

  “Will you be joining us for dinner this evening, Miss Kent?” asked Dave.

  Her gaze flew to Milty’s. “Oh, no, I don’t think so—”

  “That’s a great idea, Dave,” said Milty.

  Worse and worse. This was clearly a case of invite-the-pretty-girl-along to keep the big boys happy, which could be very good for her career, even though it made her angry that the gesture had to do with her looks and not her competence.