by Lisa Wells
Her expression took on a swagger. “Ian Thompson, I’m going to be the best sex you ever had.”
“Or not. Look at you.”
“What’s wrong with how I look?”
“You’re wearing long-sleeve pajamas. Pajamas that cover every inch of your body. You’re not a seductress.”
“Maybe not if I’m just sitting here. But what if I were to stretch.” She stood and raised her hands over her head again and bent from side to side. Then she lowered one hand to the hem of her top and slowly inched it up, showing the creamy expanse of her flat stomach. After what felt like an eternity to him, she slowly lowered her other arm and looked him in the eyes. “Still think I’m not a seductress?”
He ran his finger under his collar. “Kid’s stuff.”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t stand a chance against what I have in store for you.”
He inclined his head. “I like your confidence, but remember the deal. You have to get me to sleep with you one time without regretting the decision when it’s over. It’s going to be hard for you to get me to sleep with you once. To get me to not regret it the next morning will be damn near impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because your brother would kill me if I had a casual affair with you.”
“I know another female who managed to seduce you despite the fact he’d be furious. I’m thinking my chances are pretty damn good.”
“I hope you’re wrong.”
“Ian Thompson, you better get a good night’s sleep, because tomorrow night I’m going to knock your socks off.”
“Honey, tomorrow night, it’s not my socks you should be focused on getting off.”
Chapter Seven
“I have meetings scheduled all day,” Ian said, averting his gaze from Kinley, who’d appeared from the suite’s bedroom dressed in workout clothes. Somehow she’d commandeered the bed last night and left him sleeping on the pullout couch with a pillow that smelled of her lavender perfume.
She yawned. “Oh right.” An impish siren’s smile played on her lips. “Considering your age, you might want to try and grab a nap today.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I did a little research before falling asleep, and you’re going to need your energy tonight.” She flounced to the kitchen area of the suite and poured a cup of coffee.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. The lump that hadn’t been there until she came out of the bedroom. “So, about that…we’d both been drinking last night…in the light of the day…I think this is a bad idea.”
She gave him a look that didn’t require words to get its point across. But she used them anyway. “You aren’t actually going to go back on your word, are you? I thought you weren’t a liar.”
He cursed his stupidity. “Of course not. It’s just—”
“I’m a grown woman. Completely sober. I’ve thought about this. Sure, there’re some obstacles to what we’re doing, mainly me not liking you a lot, but my brother isn’t one of our obstacles. He has no right to know anything about my love life. If you have some misguided concern that you can’t do this because of him, or that you have to tell him before you sleep with me, you’re wrong. If I want him to know, I’ll tell him. If we do this, your loyalty lies with me. As in, you can’t kiss and tell. Now, I’m telling you that I’m in one hundred percent. The question is—are you?”
When had she gotten so good at arguing? “I’m in—if you can seduce me.” The situation with her brother…he wouldn’t lie. But they’d cross that bridge if they ever reached it. “Tell me something, Kinley. Are you a runner?”
She smiled. A confident woman smile. Leaned against the cabinet. “Only when I’m being chased…or in the right mood.” The hot, sexy voice that came out of her lips did things to his ability to think. Did things to his ability to speak.
He took advantage of the opportunity to take in her long bare legs beneath a pair of running shorts. Imagined them wrapped around him. He watched her spoon several helpings of sugar into her coffee. “I take it you’re in the right mood to be chased.”
“Oh I am. Shall we meet back here at say six o’clock this evening?”
He walked over and poured himself a cup of coffee, nudging her out of the way with his hip. All too aware of the length of her legs. “I may be in, but I’m not letting you seduce me that easily.”
She nudged back. “What does that mean?”
He put some space between them. “First, you have to pick me up. Then you have to talk me into coming back to the hotel with you.”
She twirled and pinned him with an arched brow. “Pick you up?” Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her face bare of makeup, and she had on an antitrust T-shirt with a lime green jog bra showing through underneath. “Beg you to come back to the hotel with me?”
“I didn’t say beg. But now that you did, I’m digging the idea of you begging.”
She thumped her coffee cup down, causing some to splash out. “I don’t beg.”
He took a sip of his coffee. “If you’re any good, you won’t have to beg.” Damn, she looked good.
As in a good girl. Like the Catholic schoolgirl she once was.
“Please tell me you know how to pick-up a guy?” He didn’t know why he was teasing her. Or why there was a sensation of excitement tightening his gut.
“Of course I know how to bring a guy home from a bar with me.” Her voice jumped several notes.
Ian continued in a blasé tone he hoped annoyed the hell out of her. “Great. Tonight you have to flirt. Make me laugh. Make me want to come back to your room with you. Make me feel macho.” Okay, now he was laying it on extra thick.
Her somber inspection slid smoothly over him. She tapped her lips with her finger. “Are you insecure in certain areas of your manhood? Is that why you need a woman to make you feel macho?”
He grinned. She’d always had witty comebacks when they were arguing. “I guess you’ll have to successfully seduce me to find out.” And if he wasn’t mistaken, this was the second time she’d made a reference to the size of his cock. The lady was prying. How long had this curiosity about him been stashed in her brain?
She sat down at the table and tucked her legs underneath her. Her smile fell away. Determination filled her eyes. “Where exactly am I going to find you to flirt with you?” She raised her hands over her head and did a series of side stretches.
He couldn’t force his gaze away. Where was the tomboy of years gone by? The one who’d shown up to his apartment to seduce him wearing sneakers and a baseball cap and her school uniform? “Mmmm.” The easiest place would be in the bar down stairs.
Except tonight she would fail to seduce him. Success wasn’t an option. No matter what she said, one didn’t accept the task of “watching out” for a sister and then fall into bed with said sister. And he didn’t want her to fail in front of other writers, agents, and editors. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll be at Club Uno by nine o’clock tonight. You can show me what you’ve got there.”
She dropped her hands to her sides and frowned. “I heard that’s impossible to get into if you don’t know someone.”
“You know someone.”
“Who?”
“I’ll have your name on the guest list. Go to the front, you’ll be able to skip the line.”
“Make it eight o’clock.” She placed her left foot on the chair and tied her shoestrings.
“Anxious?” Did she know he could see up her shorts when she did that? Was she doing it on purpose? He glanced away and focused on the potted plant in the corner of the room.
“I’d like to have you seduced and asleep by ten. The conference starts tomorrow, and I want to be fresh for it.”
He glanced back at her.
She swapped feet and tied the other shoe.
“Kinley, when the time comes, you can say no.” At this rate, she wasn’t going to have any problem getting him to say yes. He better get his priorities straight before tonight.
�
��And in the morning, if I’ve wowed you with my abilities, you’ll spend the next three nights wowing me with yours?”
He reluctantly nodded. “Yes.”
She dropped her foot to the floor. “Are you going to think less of me for doing this?” She nibbled her thumb.
He shook his head. “This has nothing to do with my feelings for you one way or another.”
Chapter Eight
Kinley sat at the blackjack table with Charlie, glad her new airplane friend agreed to spend the day plotting with her. Not book plotting. Seduction plotting. All Kinley had to do was promise to play some blackjack with her first.
They’d been playing about an hour, and Kinley was up twenty dollars. “Hit me,” she said to the dealer.
The dealer laid a seven on Kinley’s cards.
She waved her hand over them. “Stay.” You couldn’t just tell the dealer you wanted to stay on your cards, you had to make the hand movement for the cameras to pick up.
The dealer moved on to the next person at the table.
The Pit Boss came to their table. His name was McGill. Black, bald, and a man of few words.
“Hi McGill,” Kinley said, giving him her best flirtatious smile. “Have I bet enough yet to be comped some buffets for my friend and me?”
McGill picked up her card and swiped it in a machine he held in his hand. “Not yet,” he said, lying it back down on the table.
Kinley sighed in a dramatic fashion. “I’ll make you a deal. You give us two buffets, and I’ll give you a starring role in my next book. And I’ll be very generous with your measurements.”
McGill’s lips twitched, but he didn’t smile. “You’re going to have to keep an eye on this one,” he said to their dealer.
“Doubling down on a bust card,” said a dealer at the table beside them.
McGill walked away and went to that table.
“I would have never pegged you to be such a flirt,” Charlie said. She was sitting at first base.
After a year hiatus from men, Kinley was having a hard time holding her flirting back. It was like a vital part of her had been released from jail, and she was enjoying the hell out of the freedom. “You know what they say, still waters run deep.”
Charlie gave her a quizzical look. “Obviously so.”
Kinley glanced around. She didn’t even know the chairs at a blackjack table had names until Charlie made them search for a table with first base open. According to Charlie, she didn’t want newbies messing up the cards for her. She always sat at the far most right chair at the table.
“Are you sure you want to seduce him?” Charlie asked, bringing Kinley’s attention back to her cards.
“McGill?” Kinley shook her head. Why would she want to seduce McGill?
“Ian.”
Oh. “No. Yes. I don’t know,” Kinley said. “I could probably use some practice in the seduction scene. And he’s as safe as any man is going to be. I mean, if I say no at the last minute, he’ll honor my desire.”
The dealer flipped up a ten, giving him sixteen. He took a hit, which was another ten. “Dealer busts,” he said.
The table cheered.
“You’re the Tom Sawyer to my Huck Finn,” Kinley said to him. He’d been busting more than winning. She pushed a chip toward him as a tip.
He took it, tapped it on the tip jar and then dropped it in.
Charlie gathered up her chips. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve got things to do.”
“But I’m winning,” Kinley said. “Unlike McGill, Tom Sawyer’s being good to me,” she said, speaking loudly so McGill could hear.
McGill lifted a hand in acknowledgement of her reply.
The dealer smiled politely and waited for them to either place their bets or leave the table.
“Come on,” Charlie said, standing up.
Kinley gathered her chips. “I guess I’ll leave while I’m ahead.” She gave Tom Sawyer a wink, and he gave her a professionally bland smile. “You pretend indifference, but I know beneath your polite, this-is-just-a-job smile is a man who likes me.”
“How’d you come to be such a flirt?” Charlie asked her as they cashed out their chips. “This side of you changes my whole plan for how tonight is going to play out.”
“My mom worked two jobs to pay the bills,” Kinley said. “Which left my brother to raise me. He’s six years older. I grew up around his friends. If you grow up surrounded by boys who tease you like crazy, you learn how to tease back. Flirting is just teasing with different intent.”
Charlie giggled and stuffed her winnings in her billfold. “You’ve just given me an idea on a sure-fire way for you to seduce Ian into going back to the hotel with you.”
“I did?” Kinley took a step to the side.
“First, we need to buy you a seduction outfit.”
Kinley glanced around. There were several shops to choose from in the hotel. “Where does one go to buy a seduction outfit?” She spied a couple walking into one of the restaurants. Was that Ian? Who was he with? Why did her heart hitch at the sight?
Charlie grabbed her hand and tugged her out of the casino. “To a store that is owned by a renowned seductress.”
Will, one of the hotel’s concierges, who looked an awful lot like a young Leonard Nimoy, approached them. “Ladies, may I get you a taxi?”
“Please,” Charlie said.
“How does one become a renowned seductress?” Kinley asked, blinking in the bright sunshine that bounced off the immense beads that draped the outside of the hotel.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Charlie said, slipping into the taxi and quickly saying something to the driver.
Kinley crawled in beside her. “Then I shall have to get you drunk later so the secret comes out.”
Charlie slipped on her sunglasses. They were the type of sunglasses Hollywood actresses wear when they don’t want to be recognized. “Be careful which Pandora’s box you try to pry open,” she said, with a semi-serious expression.
The taxi pulled away from the curb.
“Something tells me you’re more than a sex-toy peddler,” Kinley said, staring out her window. They drove by the casino’s fountain. A big ass carriage, Cinderella-style, rose from the depths. Kinley blinked. “Oh my God. Look at that.”
“Gorgeous, isn’t it?”
“Spectacular.” Kinley watched all of the sights as they drove slowly by them. Vegas had a lot of unique people walking up and down the Strip. It was like the rich and poor comingled in harmony.
The store they went to was a boutique about a mile from their hotel. A boutique that offered them champagne served in crystal flutes when they entered the unmarked black door.
“Charlie, darling, it’s so nice to see you. How may I be of assistance? Are you in need of a new…purchase for Saturday night?”
Kinley looked from one to the other. She wasn’t sure what it was, but there was definitely an undertone of something going on between the two women. She took a sip of her drink. The bubbles made her sneeze.
Charlie removed her sunglasses. “This is my friend Kinley.”
The woman grabbed Kinley’s hands and held her arms out wide and read her T-shirt. “Where did you get this adorable tee?” She had an enchanting English accent. “I’m loving the vibe.”
Kinley glanced down at her shirt—black with Trust No Bro written in hot pink across the front. And two stick figures. One with a broken heart. The other with a forked tongue. “I sell them at TrustNotTees.com.” They were available in five brilliant colors.
“I have a girlfriend who dumped her boyfriend after she caught him with his dick in a chick that wasn’t her. She so needs this T-shirt to remind her he’s a jerk—because I know her, give her a week, and she’ll be right back to him, forgiving and trusting him all over again.”
“I know. Right?” Kinley said.
Charlie cleared her throat. “We’re on a tight schedule. Kinley needs an outfit that will knock the cum out of this man she has her eyes on.”
“They’ll be hooking up at Club Uno tonight,” Charlie said.
“Ooo la la. That’s a swanky club. Way to go, girlfriend.”
Kinley smiled, feeling like she’d been given the best boyfriend ever nod of approval, from an It Girl. Someone who gave out compliments about as often as a sumo-wrestler went on a diet. She had to admit, she was a tiny bit impressed that Ian had the power to get her in without the need to wait in a line.
“What size are you?” the sales lady asked.
Kinley glanced at the ladies over the top of her glass. “A two mostly.”
“A two?” the sales lady questioned.
Kinley took a sip. “Sometimes a four. A six feels nice.”
The sales lady stared at Kinley with a smile—a smile that didn’t grow or falter. Not so much a smile as a comment. Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“Okay I’m an eight, but a small eight, so don’t bring me any large eights.” Kinley stared into the eyes of the sales lady, daring her to suggest otherwise.
She didn’t. But her serene, “I call chubby-girl” smile did.
Kinley folded. “Oh, what the hell, go ahead and throw in a ten. You know…in case they run small.”
“Yes. Of course,” the sales lady replied, taking the dress off the rack she’d had her hand on throughout the entire size conversation and holding it up for observation.
“That’s not quite what we have in mind.” Charlie pulled a black dress off a rack and held it up. “We want something that sizzles sex. What do you have that’s much sexier than this?”
“Twirl,” the lady demanded of Kinley.
Kinley stood on her toes and did what she was told, feeling like a wound-up ballerina perched on a child’s jewelry box.
“Mmm hmmm. You’ve got the legs for a mini. Your junk’s not fabulous, but it’ll do. Unless he’s an ass man and then we’ll need to get you a fake ass. Will your boobs stand up on their own?”
Kinley stopped twirling. “What?”
“Do you have to wear a bra?” Charlie interpreted.
Kinley glanced down at her boobs. “I guess not. They’re perky.”
