“I’ve found reading erotic literature out loud together can really heat things up,” another woman offered.
Not a bad idea. Trent filed the tip in his memory.
A woman wearing blue rhinestone cat-eye glasses and a matching bejeweled shirt turned to him. “What does our guest suggest for catching a man’s interest?”
Okay, maybe he’d gotten more than a little out of his league here. Trent grinned and shrugged. “I can’t imagine you ladies having trouble seducing men.”
One woman said, “Our trouble is, we need men that still have a pulse.”
The rest of the group nodded in agreement.
“Yeah, like Cutie Pie over there,” said another woman.
“What are you doing Saturday night, honey?” said a third.
Josie now looked as if the bowling ball was making its way through her digestive tract. “Ladies! We’re getting off topic here. I’m afraid our guest is more of a distraction than anything, so—”
“Say no more. I’ll wait outside,” Trent interrupted, holding up his hands in defeat and thankful for the easy out.
Several of the seminar attendees groaned their disappointment, and the woman next to Trent blew him a kiss as he vacated his chair.
Out in the lobby again, he sunk onto one of the leather sofas, prepared to wait as long as necessary to corner Josie. He grabbed the nearest magazine on the table next to him and checked out the cover. The Secret Garden: Erotic Stories for Women. Hmm, interesting.
He was halfway through the story of Sabine and her nubile young lover when women began to file out of the class area. Glancing around for Josie, he spotted her at the registration desk talking to a student.
When she looked up at him, he could have sworn he saw raw desire flash in her eyes. But that must have been a mistake. The Josie he knew never gazed hungrily at men. She made the men do all the gazing and hungering.
He started to put down the erotica magazine, but then thought the better of it and rolled it up to stick in his back pocket for later—purely for research into the female psyche. With Josie still watching him, he approached the desk.
Two gray-haired women passed him and he heard one of them whisper, “Oh, honey, if I were twenty years younger, I’d have my way with that one.”
He glanced around to see their gazes fixed on his Levi’s—or rather, what the jeans concealed. Trent’s neck burned and, turning back to Josie, he saw from her wry grin that she had overheard the comment, too.
“Don’t let it go to your head. They’re just all riled up from the seminar.”
“Right.”
They were so close he could reach out and touch her now if he wanted to—the closest they’d been in years. All his senses became hyperaware of Josie. Her perfume was something fruity and intoxicating, and the smooth curve of her jaw begged for his touch. But, as he’d learned the hard way, touching Josie always led to trouble.
“And don’t ever drop in on one of my classes again.”
“Sorry, I didn’t think you’d mind.” His grin betrayed the fact that he’d known very well it would drive her crazy.
“Finally come to welcome me back to the city?” she asked, as if she didn’t know she was two months late on the center’s rent payments. Or that she had used the Braille method of parallel parking today behind his car.
“No, I came to offer you a free parking lesson.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that since you hit my car, I can’t ignore your presence any longer.”
Now there was a lie. He couldn’t have ignored her presence if his Porsche depended on it. Ever since she’d arrived back in town, he’d been unwillingly focused on her comings and goings.
Even as he’d listed in his head all the reasons he didn’t want to see Josie, all the reasons he was over her for good, he constantly watched for her to pass by his store window.
Trent took note that there was now a stiffness in her posture, a strain around her eyes, which was new since the last time he’d been this close to her. She looked like a woman who needed…a good roll in the hay. If he were letting his urges influence his decision-making, he’d say he was just the man for the job.
“I didn’t hit your car, I just nudged it a little.”
“You nudged a thousand-dollar dent into the bumper.”
Her jaw sagged and her eyes registered horror.
Trent instantly regretted making up an estimate. “Maybe not a thousand, but Porsche body work isn’t exactly cheap. I hope you’ve got insurance coverage.”
She frowned. “Just liability, and I may have let it lapse this month. Are you sure I put the dent there?”
“Positive.”
Josie slumped back against the counter and expelled a ragged breath. “It’s one thing after another. I’m sorry about your car.”
He stared at her, his arms crossed. If she was trying to guilt him into calling them even, he wouldn’t fall for it.
“Give me a bill from the repair shop, and I’ll pay you when I can.”
“Which will be when? Right after you pay me for the past two months’ rent on the center?”
She winced. “Oh, that. I was hoping you hadn’t noticed.”
“Believe me, I notice when someone owes me six grand.” It was an obscene amount for two months’ rent, but normal for San Francisco these days.
“My mother left the finances in a shambles.”
“Rafaela was never late with the rent.”
“She took all the excess money in the business account when she left for Prague.”
“Why would she do that?”
Josie shrugged. “To finance her boyfriend’s literary efforts.”
Rafaela, Trent knew from her harmless flirting, had a thing for younger men and, judging by the tone of her voice, her daughter obviously didn’t approve. Not that he could blame Josie. As much as he’d teased her when they were kids, he could imagine how hard it was to be Rafaela’s daughter, to have a mother so wild that the only option was to become a stick in the mud.
But for a stick in the mud, Josie sure had a strange effect on him. Something about her too-wide mouth never failed to illicit pornographic thoughts, and those small, round breasts of hers… On any other woman he never would have given them a second glance, but on Josie’s compact frame, he couldn’t help but imagine how they’d feel in his palms, in his mouth.
He forced the unwelcome thoughts out of his head.
“Kind of funny that you went into counseling at all, considering how you always tried so hard not to be like your mother. Why marriage counseling?”
“I guess because I came from a broken home, I wanted to help other people avoid it.”
“Makes sense.” Never mind that she was sort of a head case herself. She’d been such a cock tease in high school, she’d probably caused countless horny teenage boys to seek counseling.
Josie smiled and waved goodbye to one of the last grandmas to leave the lobby.
“So what brought you back to the city? Did you get tired of breaking up marriages?”
Her smile vanished and her eyes narrowed at him, but she resisted taking his bait.
“My mother needed someone to run the place, and I needed the job. Simple as that.”
“Life in the Midwest wasn’t all it was cracked up to be?”
“I was living in Boston, not the Midwest.”
“Same difference. Did you get fired or something?”
“No, I just wanted to move back to San Francisco.”
“I’m flattered,” he joked. “I’ve never had a woman move cross-country to be near me.”
“You’re as deluded as ever,” she said casually, but her stiff posture told volumes. Regardless of her words, she obviously wasn’t comfortable talking about their attraction to each other.
That fact intrigued him far more than he would have liked. Focus on the task at hand, man. “You still haven’t told me how you plan to come up with your late rent payments.”
She squeezed her eyes shut tight, probably doing mental calculations of what it would cost to run off to Mexico instead of paying him.
“I can maybe give you one month’s rent in another three or four weeks.”
“That’s not good enough.” Trent felt a pang of guilt, then reminded himself that this was Josie he was talking to.
He had every right to bring a little discomfort into her life after what she’d put him through. Still, he was a sucker for a damsel in distress. And she looked like one seriously distressed damsel right now.
“What do you want? A pound of flesh?”
“Not a bad idea. Maybe we can work out a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
What kind of deal, indeed?
On the counter lay a stack of lavender flyers announcing upcoming seminars. He picked one up and scanned it out of curiosity. “The Art of Sensual Touch. The Role of the Five Senses in Arousal… Dangerous Places: Sexual Excitement Outside The Bedroom.” The list went on.
Josie shifted her weight forward and he caught the scent of her perfume again. He suddenly imagined that scent on her naked skin, intensifying with the sweat of their lovemaking in some dangerous place, some tropical snake-filled forest.
Everything about her had always made him think of sex. Even the nerdy little glasses she was wearing. He didn’t care much for women in glasses, and he didn’t go for intellectual snobs like Josie, so it frustrated the hell out of him that every time she was around he turned into a horny teenager again.
And these seminar subjects weren’t doing a thing to quell his libido.
An idea was forming in Trent’s head. Something slippery that he was almost afraid to grasp hold of. Something involving Josie, and him, and an old score to settle. Something involving revenge.
“What’s this ‘Art of Sensual Touch’?” he asked.
Josie sucked her lower lip between her teeth and it emerged full and wet. Trent watched, mesmerized, not sure what was more interesting, her mouth or the impending course description. “It’s one of our more popular seminars.”
“Care to explain?”
“You can use your imagination, right?”
Oh, yeah, his imagination was working overtime. “Is this a hands-on class?”
She sighed. “Parts of it, yes.”
Hmm. The idea was fully formed in his head now, just sitting there, offering him a chance to accomplish what he never would have thought possible—to get San Francisco’s biggest tease, Josie Marcus, into bed; to give her a taste of her own medicine; to finally even the score between them.
“Could I speak to you privately in your office?”
Josie wrinkled her nose, already smelling something fishy. But he had to convince her otherwise, that what he was about to say was absolutely true.
“I guess.” She motioned for him to follow.
He trailed her down the hallway, making a great effort not to watch her firm rear end as she walked. They passed the classroom to the last door, where she flicked on a light to reveal an office that was pure Rafaela Marcus. Butter-soft purple leather sofa and chairs, lots of funky art pieces decorating the walls and shelves, a wide birch desk stacked with books and papers. He wondered if Josie felt at home here or if she was just trying on her mother’s life for size.
“Have a seat.” She motioned him to the sofa as she sat in a nearby chair. When he sat, she asked, “So what’s the big secret?”
Trent made like a man about to admit something supremely embarrassing. He glanced at his feet, ran his hand through his hair a few times, cleared his throat.
“So you’re pretty much an expert on sex, right?” he asked.
“I prefer to think of myself as an expert on romantic relationships.”
“Which means sex.”
She blinked. “Sex is one small component of romance.”
“Sounds like you know more about it than I do then.” He cleared his throat. “I need your help.”
Her eyes widened. “With sex?”
Trent wore what he hoped was his most earnest expression. “I’m having some problems. In the bedroom. My girlfriends seem to be leaving unsatisfied.”
Josie’s jaw sagged and it took all his willpower not to laugh. She glanced at his crotch and said, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll give me private lessons, one on one, just the two of us. Help me figure out what I’m doing wrong in the bedroom and fix it.”
A little strangled sound escaped her throat. She covered her mouth with one hand and produced a fake cough, then another, and another.
It was time to make his offer clear. “You give me two months of sex lessons, and I’ll call us even on the back rent payments.”
2
JOSIE HEARD HERSELF sputtering, then snapped her mouth shut until she could think clearly enough to form words. Could Trent O’Reilly, the most wanted stud in their high school graduating class, really be sitting in front of her asking her to teach him how to please a woman?
She looked up into his blue eyes, which always held a spark of mischief, only to find him gazing back at her completely earnest. His trademark smirk was gone, too. Trent, with his raven hair cut stylishly short and his outdoorsman tan, his five o’clock shadow and his lean athlete’s body, sat in front of Josie reminding her of her every teenage fantasy—most of her adult ones, too. But she’d never imagined him asking for this.
Josie had learned in her work that anything was possible. And it was true that some attractive men tended not to work very hard in the bedroom, figuring it was enough for a woman just to be in bed with the likes of them. Maybe Trent was an honest enough guy to admit the error of his ways, but still…
“I can’t give you private sex lessons!” she screeched when she’d found the power to speak again.
“Sure you can. Do a bang-up job and I won’t even make you pay for the dent on my car.”
“You want sex lessons. As in, me having sex with you?”
Just spelling out his request was enough to make her dizzy with desire. And the fact that Trent had only grown more gorgeous in the past three years didn’t help matters. The anxiety of her predicament battled with a warm fuzzy feeling between her legs to influence her decision-making abilities.
“I doubt I could learn much just sitting across the room from you.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I mean, considering our history—”
The image of Trent in her rearview mirror at Ocean Beach three years ago flashed into Josie’s mind. She’d just tossed his shirt and pants out the car window for him; his face registering only disbelief, not anger, as she’d driven off.
“It’s the perfect solution,” he said.
“There is the matter of the bad feelings between us. Do you really think you’d get anything out of these…these…lessons? From me?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll get quite a bit out of them.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you with your problem. You’ll have to think of some other way for me to repay you.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Positive.”
Trent shook his head and stood up. “I’m sorry we couldn’t work out a deal. I’ll expect your full two months back rent payment on Monday.”
Panic seized Josie’s chest. “I’ve already told you I can’t pay that soon.”
“Have you read the terms of your lease?”
“No,” she lied.
“The lease says I have the right to evict you if one month’s rent goes thirty days past due.”
“But…” But what? She owed him thousands of dollars and she didn’t have a clue how she was going to pay up.
“Have a nice day, Josie.”
She watched him exit the office, realizing exactly how in need of sex she was when the sight of his firm jeans-clad rear end temporarily erased her worries.
Josie sat at the desk in a daze, afraid to leave the office until she was absolutely sure Trent had left the building
. How had her life come to this? A few short months ago she’d been living a perfectly normal existence in Boston. She’d had a secure job as a marriage counselor, and it had been the future she’d always envisioned for herself.
Well, sort of.
She hadn’t envisioned marriage counseling being such depressing work, and she hadn’t ever imagined herself staying home on the weekends redecorating her tiny apartment—that no one ever saw—over and over again. She hadn’t pictured herself having such a dismal personal life, with no boyfriend, no late-night lover, not even an annoying ex to call to beg her for a second chance every now and then.
The friends she’d made in Boston were all married or seriously dating, and they’d all considered it their personal duty to find Josie a boyfriend. The problem was that they were all a little too good at it, tracking down every eligible hunk in the city of Boston. Josie couldn’t admit to her friends that she simply wasn’t capable of having an intimate relationship with a sexually attractive man; that every time she got close to going all the way with a man who turned her on, she became paralyzed with fear that she’d lose control and end up like her mother, a woman ruled by her passion for men.
When Josie turned down one date after another, her friends got annoyed. Over time they’d invited her to fewer and fewer get-togethers until finally she’d rarely heard from anyone.
Growing up with a male-bimbo-chasing mother like Rafaela Marcus had taught Josie the dangers of physical attraction, and working as a marriage counselor had exposed her to the darker side of romance. She wasn’t ready for any kind of committed relationship.
But maybe what she did need was a lover. Someone to ease the burning ache inside her a few times a week. Or more.
Here she was, back in her hometown, still pitifully alone, with the last guy she wanted to see suddenly making her the most outrageous proposition she’d ever heard. Was this the universe’s idea of a joke? Was Trent O’Reilly—the boy who’d chased her with snails in kindergarten, the kid who’d pulled up her skirt at the bus stop in the eighth grade, the guy who’d taken her to the prom in high school only because his first three choices had already had dates—really her only option right now?
Pleasure for Pleasure Page 2
