by Alison Kent
“And she was,” Aidan agreed in a reverent tone, his gaze warmed by memories. “As far as I was concerned, she was. But to Dad…” His focus sharpened. “She never had a chance of pleasing him. She was human. Just like you are.”
Chloe started to pace, her bitterness welling to spill free in a flow of words. “When I argued with him about volleyball, he threw it in my face that my mother never questioned his decisions.
“When I wanted to major in phys ed, he told me she would never have pursued anything unladylike even if she had considered working outside the home…which she hadn’t because her only interests were home and family. She never smoked or raised her voice, and she certainly didn’t drink. He let me know all of that when he caught me smoking and drinking and cussing up a storm.”
Aidan reached out a hand and snagged her wrist when she next passed by. “When she swore, he took away her car keys. When he caught her in his whiskey, he cut up her credit cards. When she told him that she’d enrolled in business classes at the community college, he told her she’d never pass. Why humiliate herself and him?”
Chloe had lost all feeling in the hand Aidan gripped, as well as in the rest of her limbs. Her heart, suddenly bruised and aching, had stolen all sensation. “You saw this?”
“I saw. I heard. But I didn’t realize it qualified as verbal abuse until I was out of that dysfunctional house.” Aidan shrugged and let her go. “It’s a lousy excuse, but the only one I’ve got.”
Chloe sank back into the chair beside her brother. “Well, fuck me.”
After a minute, Aidan chuckled. “Nice, little sister. Very nice.”
The words were barely out of his mouth before Chloe whipped her head around. “Why the hell did she stay with him?”
“I can think of five reasons, all under the age of ten.”
Five children, and tied to a man who set impossible standards. No wonder her mother had adored Cary Grant. She had to have been miserably unhappy, forced to surrender her identity, her individuality. Having no control over a life that should have been her own first, shared with her partner second.
Chloe sighed and closed her stinging eyes, struck by the irony that, in the end, she’d done exactly what her father had wanted her to do. She’d become her mother, giving up who she was to earn her father’s love.
She’d broken free, yes, but to become what? A wisecracking ball-buster her father would despise.
A woman Chloe wasn’t too crazy about herself.
“I can’t deal with this right now. I don’t have time to deal with this right now.” She shook off her tears and sat up straight. She had to get through the open house before she could even begin to deal with all of what Aidan had said.
“Are you staying at the Doubletree?” It was where she’d always known him to stay, he’d never stayed at their father’s home when he’d come to town from his place near San Antonio.
Aidan got to his feet, gave her his room number. “Seven o’clock?”
“Perfect. And have your bags packed. You’re coming to stay the night with me.”
TIRED OF WAITING for Chloe in the gIRL-gEAR lobby and having already mingled for fifteen minutes with the rest of the open house attendees, Eric finally went in search of his nondate date.
He found her in her office, her back to her desk, her arms wrapped around her middle, one finger pressed to the tip of her nose as she stood staring out her first floor window onto Kirby Drive.
He leaned a shoulder against the door jamb, shoved his hands into the pockets of his khaki Dockers. The tails of his navy sport jacket flared around his wrists. He couldn’t help but take a deep, steadying breath.
He’d never expected her to make him feel anything but the flirtatious affection so natural to their friendship. But he was feeling more now. More that he didn’t want to acknowledge, because it would make him a sap. A whipped sap. And no man with any self-respect allowed himself to be whipped by a single blow job.
The thought of her mouth made him weak. But he’d long since learned that he wanted more from sex than the obvious fun. He wanted a connection, a woman to touch him in more than the physical way. He just wasn’t sure Chloe was that woman. Not if she only had it in her to see man as the enemy.
If they didn’t have anything going for them as a couple beyond the banter, the innuendo and the sex, then she was right that this time spent together was nothing more than a favor between friends. Eric had hoped it might be more. He’d wanted for a long time to discover the source of their sparks.
The gIRL-gEAR offices fronted on an east-west cross street rather than onto Kirby Drive, so he knew she wasn’t watching out the window for him to pull into the front parking lot. He wondered what she was thinking because, though she faced away, at an angle, he could sense her pensive demeanor from the stiff set of her shoulders and hips.
She wore a flowing dress, pink, of course, a floral print that draped loosely over her lower body, hugging her waist and her bustline, yet teasing more than revealing most of her amazing curves. The hem, a flouncy type of ruffle thing matching the ruffled collar, hit just above her knees. Her legs were bare.
And that played perfectly into Eric’s plans to pay her back for yesterday’s kitchen encounter.
When he’d come downstairs from his second shower, fully dressed and ready to deal with the conversation they needed to have about what was going on between them, he’d wavered between disappointment and relief when he’d found Chloe gone.
It really didn’t surprise him that she’d hoofed it. She’d been in a strangely prickly mood since they’d left the park. He’d wanted, on the drive back, to ask what was on her mind. He knew she’d enjoyed the volleyball tourney. No denial she could possibly make would change his opinion on that.
But she hadn’t said anything at all. She’d just stared out the car window, a funny sort of thoughtful crook to her mouth, as if trying to remember why she’d held such a grudge against sports in the first place. Or replaying the reason and finding it no longer held much water.
Sooner or later he’d get to the bottom of yesterday’s disappearance. He’d also figure out why she’d been so adamant that they keep their exchange of favors nonsexual, then had stripped him naked in his kitchen the first time they found themselves alone.
Today, however, he had his first part of their three-part bargain to uphold.
And a self-made promise to keep.
“Tell me something, Chloe.”
She gave a start when he spoke, pulling in a gulp of air and shaking off the surprise before turning calmly from the window and offering him her usual chop-busting smile. “Anything you want to hear, sugar.”
Facing him now, she wrapped her fingers over the waist-high headrest of her funky mesh ergonomic chair. It was a telling sort of movement in that she deliberately kept the chair between them instead of moving to the door to link her arm through his and join the reception in the lobby.
“What help am I going to be to your reputation if you hide out in your office instead of mingling and giving the press the sound bites they’re here for?” He stayed where he was, his pride preferring she make the choice to come to him.
She didn’t move except to tilt her head slightly to the right. The curved ends of her white-blond pageboy brushed her shoulder. “Actually, I was trying to decide if staying in here wouldn’t be the smartest thing to do. Especially since any best foot I might put forward is still recovering from yesterday’s sandblasting.”
“A tough cookie like you? Done in by a little sand?” Eric gave a snort. “I don’t believe it.”
Chloe narrowed her eyes until the barest sliver of violet peeked through the slits of lashes and lids. “I am not a tough cookie.”
“Princess, you are the toughest cookie I know. You don’t take crap from anyone. You know what you want and you go for it.” He paused, struck anew by the thought that she’d certainly gone for what she wanted in his kitchen. “Besides, you spike a hell of a volleyball. And that can’t be said of a marshmallow
.”
“That spike was pure luck and you know it.” Her mouth twisted into a cute but still only halfhearted grin.
He wanted to see her smile. The way she’d smiled yesterday on the volleyball court, full of more life than he thought he’d ever seen…even more than he’d seen when she’d been in his kitchen.
A particular truth he could’ve done without. So much for making a big first impression. “Maybe. Maybe not. One thing I do know is that you don’t hate sports quite as much as you’ve been trying to convince me you do.”
“Don’t be so sure.” She swiveled her chair back and forth, back and forth. “But don’t think the way I feel means I don’t know how to play.”
“I know you know how to play. I was there, remember?” And Eric still wanted to take a bat to whoever it was who had burned this girl so badly. “So, do you want to join my team?”
“Permanently?”
“Why not? We’re a sort of self-contained league. Sports bars. Restaurants. Friendly competition that has nothing to do with business. We bowl, play volleyball, softball. All in the name of fun, and the losers buy the beer.”
“Ouch. A double whammy.”
Eric shrugged. He was still having trouble reconciling Chloe with “permanently.” “Whaddaya say?”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” she said, and then she frowned and asked, “Don’t the members of your team have to have a connection to Haydon’s? How did you manage to sneak me past the officials yesterday?”
“I told them we were lovers.”
Chloe’s chair came to a total stop. “You told them what?”
Eric moved into the office, closing the door most of the way with one hand, but with a gentle shove so Chloe wouldn’t feel physically trapped. Like it or not, it was time for that conversation she’d run out on yesterday. “Actually, I said you and I were seeing each other, which is the truth. Especially now with the way things have changed…”
Reaching her desk, he let the thought trail off and waited for her ball-busting denial that their relationship had changed. What he got instead was a thoughtful silence and a lazy consideration from eyes boldly enhanced by eye shadow in shades of dark blue and pink.
Her irises were deep violet and her pupils flashed with what instinct told him was the memory of holding him inside her mouth. Eric stirred at the thought. He’d stirred every time he’d thought of her the past twenty-four hours.
But even before she’d wrapped her lips around his dick and made him come, he’d reacted much the same way. Yesterday’s blow job had just put a new twist on an already tightly wound tension between them.
She rolled her chair beneath her desk, walked around the far end and propped a hip on the corner. Arms crossed, she swung that one dangling foot, her skirt hiked halfway up her thigh…which wasn’t doing much to keep Eric’s mind on the here and now. He lifted his chin, kept his gaze locked on hers.
“In what sort of way have things changed?” She asked the question with all sincerity, or with such well-veiled sarcasm she had him fooled dead to rights.
Either way, she was toying with him rather than giving him a straight answer. She wanted to play? Fine. He’d play her until she begged him to stop.
He took a step forward, trailing his index finger along the edge of her desk. “Do you really want me to answer that?”
“That depends, sugar.” Her voice was low, both in tone and in volume, a husky, seductive whisper complementing the low sweep of her lashes. “Do you think you have an answer?”
Oscar-caliber performance aside, her shy act was still an act. And he was not about to let her get away with ignoring what they’d done. “An answer other than the obvious? I mean, it’s not like every woman who comes into my kitchen gets fed my strawberry shortcake.”
She didn’t even bat an eye. “Now that I find hard to believe.”
“Why? You think because I’m a man I can’t say no to a woman?” Not that he ever had, but he could. Though he wasn’t sure how he’d feel about saying no to this one.
“You’re a man. You’re predisposed to say yes.” Her arms remained crossed. Her foot continued to swing.
Amazing. Absolutely amazing, the workings of this woman’s mind. “Believe it or not, Chloe, not all men are ruled by the head of their dick.”
“Oh, I know that.” She swept her hair from her face with her fingers, then waved her hand to make her point. “Sure, you use the head on your shoulders. Then, with a little luck and enough votes to win the election, you turn the program back over to the head in your pants. Face it, sugar. From D.C. to Hollywood to Houston, Texas. Men will be men.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” He crossed his arms and stared. “You really don’t think a man has any control over his baser instincts.”
“Not as much control as a woman has.”
“Over his or over hers?”
She lifted both brows. “Both.”
“You think it’s easier for a woman to seduce a man than for a man to seduce a woman?” When she looked at him as if he’d lost his mind, he said, “Scratch that. What I mean is, do you really think a man can’t break a woman’s self-control as easily as a woman can break a man’s?”
She laughed. “Oh, sugar. Don’t make me laugh, using self-control and man in the same sentence like that. I have never met a man I couldn’t bring to his knees.”
Eric wasn’t going to debate that very real possibility. “But you are rarely brought to yours.”
She straightened her swinging leg, examined the skin of her kneecap. “Nope. Not a single carpet burn.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.” He pointed to a freckle, keeping his finger there on her skin. “If that’s not carpet, then it’s got to be from the tile on my kitchen floor.”
Chloe pressed her lips together, taking a moment before lifting her gaze from her leg to his face. “I might have been the one on my knees, but I was also the one in control.”
Well, she had him there. He had certainly demonstrated a total loss. He circled his fingertip over her kneecap. “Tell me something else, Chloe.”
Chloe didn’t say a word, though she did look back down to the skin-to-skin point of contact. Eric took that as permission granted to move his hand farther up her bare leg. “About that blow job in the kitchen. Why the rules about no sexual contact if you didn’t intend to hold up your end of the bargain?”
For a moment, she hesitated, then her chin came up sharply. “My end of the bargain was agreeing to grant you three nonsexual favors. As in, you ask me for them first. You never asked me to sample your…strawberry shortcake. That wasn’t part of our deal.”
As explanations went, her logic was weak, but Eric couldn’t be bothered with more questions. He was too busy taking great pleasure in hearing her voice catch, listening to her breathing grow choppy and shallow.
Control, my ass, he thought, and continued the trip he’d begun at her knee. She had no idea who she was dealing with. Not if she thought she could deliver a fast ball and catch him looking when he was ready to swing.
Reaching the loose hem of her dress, he walked his fingers beneath the edge of the material and up the smooth skin of her thigh. His hand lingered, and when she didn’t move a muscle, when she didn’t say a word, when she didn’t let go of the breath he’d heard her pull in, he took a bold step into her space.
He moved his hand in a slow caress up her thigh to her hip, watching her pupils widen, her lips softly part to draw air into her lungs as he approached the strip of elastic that served as the waistband of her thong.
Touching her skin was like feeling that slide of whipped cream and chocolate all over again. A sensation of exploring the forbidden, sharing the rush of blood and the rise between his legs with the very woman making him ache.
His palm skimmed over her belly and she adjusted her perch on the edge of the desk, spreading her legs a bit wider, her weight balanced between the one foot she had on the floor and the hand she’d braced flat on the desk at her side.
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She lifted her chin. Her eyes drifted shut with the arousal that shuddered through her. Anyone peering into the office would see their heads close together in quiet conversation.
What no one could see were Eric’s fingertips scraping across the thong’s material, his knuckles brushing through the barest strip of hair hidden beneath.
He pulled the thong lower, his index finger dipping down to find her hidden bud and hovering there before sliding to the side of the tight swell and pressing hard.
Her eyes flew open and she looked over his shoulder, her lower lip caught by even white teeth as if to hold back sounds rolling from her belly to her throat.
He heard them all, and he wasn’t having any of this looking away business. His dick was throbbing, caught between his shorts and his stomach. But even that satisfaction mattered less than looking into Chloe’s eyes while making her come.
He kept his hand in her panties, but lifted his finger away. She squirmed and arched, seeking the return of his touch. A smile drew up a corner of his mouth. He could hardly imagine the intensity of taking her to bed. And it would happen. But not now, not here, not in this room.
This, he thought, rubbing his finger down one ripely swollen lip of her sex and up over the other, taking what he needed of her juices spreading between to ease the friction of his way. This was all that he could think about now. This giving her pleasure like no pleasure she’d known.
Again he reached her clit. Again he stopped, teased with a single butterfly kiss of his finger to her flesh. The hand she wasn’t using to support her weight moved to his between her legs.
But he wasn’t having any of that, either. Not until he had more than her body’s attention. “Look at me, Chloe.”
She gave a tiny shake of her head. “I can’t.”
He made as if to pull his hand free from her hold and from her panties. But her fingers, so small, so cool, so insistent on his, made it hard to stick to his guns.
“Chloe. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll give you exactly what you want.” To make his point, he stepped closer, moved his lips to her ear and slid one long finger through her wet folds to the mouth of her sex, then deep inside.
