by Joan Kilby
Even if he wanted her, it didn’t mean he wanted to want her.
Would he resent her if she came on to him?
Could she climb into bed with him and not try to seduce him?
She dried off and slathered herself with body lotion, nongreasy and faintly perfumed. Dispassionately, she regarded her reflection. With wet hair and no makeup, she was no femme fatale. But then she slipped the negligee over her head, a mere whisper against her sensitized skin, and saw how the light, soft fabric molded her curves and hinted at the dark shapes of her nipples and groin. She’d never felt more wanton and sexy.
She started to put on the dressing gown, then hesitated. Why act coy? Why not go after what she wanted and damn the consequences?
She hung the dressing gown on the door and went out, her heart tripping over itself as she casually walked into the sitting room. Deliberately, she paraded past Scott, who was perched on the edge of the sofa as keyed-up as a racehorse at the starting gate. “The bathroom’s all yours.”
He stared at her without speaking, his eyes burning. Nervously, she went to the ice bucket and lifted out the vintage champagne. With a twist of the cork she opened the bottle and let the frothing liquid slide into a long-necked flute. She held it out at arm’s length and leveled a direct gaze at him. “Or would you like a glass of bubbly first?”
“What are you doing?” Scott said in a strangled voice. “Are…are you trying to seduce me?”
Cassy poured another glass for herself and sat next to him, her knee touching his. Her negligee slid up her leg to mid-thigh. Handing him the champagne, she touched his glass with hers with a tiny crystal ring. “What if I was? Is it working?”
“You’re crazy.”
“Maybe I am, but I’m going to kiss you.” And she did.
His lips were firm and warm and delicious. Hers parted and his tongue slid inside. The erotic reality, on top of her shower fantasy, spiked her to full arousal. Frustratingly, she still held the flute and couldn’t get close. Drawing back briefly, she put her glass on the coffee table and did the same with his. She put her arms very deliberately around his neck and leaned in for another kiss. His eyes glazed with a slightly desperate look. She smiled a little. Whatever he thought he should do, he wanted her, no doubt about it. Huh. He didn’t have a chance.
She toyed with him, pressing soft kisses over his lips, licking the corner of his mouth, while she pressed her breasts against his chest. “Touch me, Scott. I want you to touch me.”
“Cassy, don’t say that… This isn’t who we are!”
“Isn’t it?” She took his hand and placed it on her breast, pressing until his fingers curved around her flesh. Then she edged closer to kiss his jaw. Slowly, inch by inch, she kissed and licked her way up to his mouth. “Tell me you haven’t wanted this, as I have, for years.”
His hand stilled on her breast. “I’m not going to take advantage of the situation. Or of you.”
“I’m taking advantage of you, you idiot. Trying to, anyway.” Her hand slid up his rock-hard thigh to brush his bulging erection. She cupped her palm around it, stroking the outside of his pants, relishing the leashed power beneath the strained fabric. “I can tell you want me. There’s no point denying it.”
Scott hesitated for a long tense beat of silence. After what seemed like an eternity he carefully placed her hand back in her lap and moved her leg off his. He shifted a couple of inches away from her. “We should be going over the pitch for tomorrow. I’m not ready.”
What? Was he kidding her? Confusion clouded her brain. It took a few seconds for it to sink in that he meant it. When she finally got it, that her attempted seduction had failed, a boulder of disappointment and humiliation threatened to crush her chest. “But…but… We’ve been slaving away on the presentation all week.”
“You have. I’ve been finishing the prototype Dreamcatcher.”
“You know your subject back to front, inside and out. You don’t need to prepare. Just get up and yak away.”
“I told you, I’m not ready.” He spoke so sharply she jerked back.
“Well, sorry,” she said stiffly, mortified. “And sorry about the kissing. I misread your signals. I’ve been a fool. Clearly work is more tempting than I am.”
“Oh, God, Cassy. It’s not that. I’m just so confused.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “This is really bad timing.”
“I know. It’s late. We’re both tired. I, for one, have drunk too much.” She gabbled out excuses, anything to cover the awful truth that he simply didn’t want her.
“No, listen. My role in the presentation tomorrow really is a problem. I’m dreading it.” He went on almost eagerly, as if he’d found an explanation that would save her pride and give him an acceptable way out. “Public speaking isn’t my strong point.”
“It’s only Lorraine and Tod.”
“You’re not getting it.” His expression turned hunted. “It doesn’t matter how many people are there. Standing in front of an audience with all eyes focused on me is…scary.”
Cassy’s jaw dropped. Scott always seemed so confident and together. To discover that he was afraid of public speaking was nothing short of astonishing. They’d been friends for twenty years and there were still things she didn’t know about him. “You never said anything like this before.”
“I don’t exactly go around trumpeting what I’m bad at. You’re so good at public speaking. Didn’t you ever notice that when we did class projects together in high school you were the one who always did the talking?”
“Now that you mention it, yes. I thought that was just me being pushy and you being polite and letting me get the glory.” A silence fell over them. Her shoulders hunched forward as she twisted her fingers in her lap. The pink diamond solitaire caught the light and winked mockingly at her. She felt so exposed and vulnerable. She wanted to run and hide. The sexy moment had passed and they were discussing business with her wearing a flimsy nightgown. “I’ll do the talking tomorrow, too. You just sit back and answer questions.”
He shook his head. “Lorraine specifically said she was looking forward to me explaining how the Dreamcatcher works. I don’t want to blow my big chance. Tonight we work on the pitch,” he reiterated. “First I’ll go take a shower. A cold shower. Maybe you could put on something less…comfortable?”
Her cheeks burning, Cassy nodded. “Sure. It was a dumb idea anyway. I don’t know what I was thinking. Too much wine at dinner probably.”
He’d warned her ages ago. Why hadn’t she listened? She’s gotten all caught up in the banter and flirtatious glances passing between them lately. In all the excitement and glamour, she’d deluded herself into believing he felt more for her than he did. She’d forgotten their engagement was a fraud. Well, the joke was on her.
Ha ha. Laughing my ass off.
…
Scott felt like a jerk leaving Cassy sitting on the couch feeling embarrassed and miserable. He grabbed his shaving bag and shut the bathroom door behind him, then flipped on the shower, angling the handle to blue. He hadn’t been kidding about taking a cold shower. Of all the women for him to get so hot and worked up over. She must despise him right now for blowing her off. Truth was, he’d freaked at how much he’d wanted to rip off that scrap of nightie and get his hands, mouth, and tongue on her luscious, soft skin.
Stop it. Jeez. Carefully he unzipped his pants and peeled them down to release his throbbing erection. Hell. He wasn’t going to get any work done with that bad boy making his presence felt. He stepped into the shower and winced as cool water pelted down on his shoulders.
Three minutes later, he was almost an ice block, but images of Cassy still filled his mind and his cock was still standing painfully at attention. There was only one thing to do…
Cassy’s soft curves flashed before his closed eyes as he stroked and pulled, one arm braced on the wet ivory-colored tiles, picturing himself pushing into her. In and out. Harder. Faster. A groan emerged with the last sharp tug and he spill
ed himself into the swirling water at the bottom of the shower. He stood there, panting, letting his heart rate slow. The awful truth sank in. While he’d gotten some physical release just now, it wouldn’t last, and the chaos in his brain hadn’t let up one iota. Instead of relaxing, he felt even more wound up.
There had been plenty of times over the years that he’d gotten hard because of Cassy, but he’d always been able to control it, to shut those urges and feelings away in a separate compartment of his brain. Since she’d come to live with him it was more and more difficult to thrust those feelings aside. And now she was saying she wanted to make love, openly offering herself to him. Just thinking about that was making him hard again already. This was what he’d been afraid of for years, that the day would come when work and other women and masturbating wouldn’t be enough for him. When he would need Cassy, and Cassy alone. When no one, and nothing else, would satisfy him.
It looked as if that day had come.
He dried off and put on sweatpants and a T-shirt, then went out to the sitting room.
Cassy was seated at the small round dining table between the couch and the window, her feet encased in bunny slippers and her tightly wrapped dressing gown covering her up to her neck. She didn’t glance up, just moved her laptop so he could sit down.
“Why don’t you practice giving me the pitch?” she said. “Pretend I’m Lorraine. Wow me with your amazing invention.”
He would rather wow Cassy with his prowess in bed. But that wasn’t going to happen. No sir, nuh-uh.
“I suspect Lorraine isn’t easily wowed.” Scott opened his briefcase and got out his notes scribbled on a piece of loose-leaf paper.
“Stand up,” Cassy instructed.
He rose, cleared his throat, paced away a few steps, and walked back. Even though it was just Cassy, the butterflies were beating their wings against the walls of his stomach. It didn’t help that his cock was half-erect and he worried she would be able to see it through the soft fabric of his pants. What a hypocrite. He wanted to get into her just as much as she wanted it. A whole lot more probably.
Cassy leaned back in her chair. “I’m ready.”
Trigger words. She hadn’t meant it sexually, but his dick didn’t seem to know that. Man, it was hard to concentrate. “I’ve created, um, a product so revolutionary that, uh, it will…”
“Stop there,” Cassy said. “Try not to say um and ah. They’re filler words. Speak as slowly as you like. Pause frequently to let your message sink in. If you get a brain freeze, stop talking, take a breath, and begin again. Likely she won’t even notice. Okay, go.”
He got halfway through his first page of notes with only a dozen or so ums and ahs before she stopped him again.
“I don’t understand. It’s too technical.”
“I can’t make it any simpler. The concepts require a basic amount of scientific knowledge of nanotechnology.”
“We don’t know how much background knowledge Lorraine has. For the purposes of this presentation, you should assume she has none.”
Cassy looked so earnest, so sweet. She wanted him to succeed so badly. He didn’t have a better friend in the world. But right now he wasn’t seeing her as a friend. She could cover up all she liked, but he couldn’t forget that beneath her dressing gown she wore a revealing nightie that tantalized with hints and glimpses of her soft, curving flesh.
He tried to dumb his presentation down. It wasn’t easy. He was used to talking about his research with people who knew all the jargon and who were well-versed in the concepts his ideas were based on, even if they weren’t familiar with his work in particular. Over the next hour, Cassy painstakingly stopped him and asked him to explain every word she didn’t understand and then translate it into layman’s language. When he reread the pitch, it sounded as if he were talking to a bunch of kindergarten kids.
“It’s too low-level,” he complained. “I don’t want to insult her.”
“Maybe you should focus more on the second half of your speech…how the Dreamcatcher will change people’s lives.” Cassy yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Once more from the top?”
“Forget it. We’re too tired. You’re ready to fall off your chair and I can hardly see straight, much less think.” Scott tossed his notes onto the table and stretched out his back. “I’m going to need some energy for mountain biking tomorrow, too.”
“I know!” Cassy said. “You could take Lorraine down a really gnarly trail so that she might crash and break her leg. While she’s in the hospital getting a cast put on, we would have more time to prepare.”
“Yeah, great idea. I love it when the ten-year-old in you comes out to play.” He tweaked her hair. “I remember when you dropped your book report in a mud puddle so the ink would run and Miss Thompson wouldn’t be able to read it and know how little work you did.”
“It worked, though, didn’t it? For a day, at least.” She grinned at him, looking exactly like that young girl who used to shock him with her irreverence for learning.
“I’ll never know how you even got to be an accountant.”
She flapped a hand. “Accounting is simple arithmetic. Easy peasy.”
“Right.” She might have been a slacker in high school, but her brain was a lot sharper than she admitted. She could have gone to Harvard, majored in mathematics, anything. Scott had no idea why she’d buried herself in Bellingham instead of finding a high-powered job on Wall Street. She always brushed the subject off if he raised it.
Silence fell. They both yawned. There was nothing more to say, no way to drag out the interval between work and turning back the covers.
“It’s late,” Scott said. “We should go to bed.”
“Right.” Cassy’s gaze drifted sideways to the bedroom and the piece of furniture in question. “We should be able to share that without touching. I won’t so much as get my baby toe near your shin.”
He sincerely hoped so or he wouldn’t be able to resist her. He hated that they were so awkward with each other. It was his fault. She’d come on to him and he’d rebuffed her, again. They’d been able to set that aside while they were working, but now she’d gone back to being prickly.
“Remember when we went camping on the Olympic Peninsula after we graduated from college?” he said. That had been one of their last close times together, before he’d gone off to Stanford to do a PhD. “Let’s light the fire and pretend we’re back there. The sound of the falls will double as the sound of the waves crashing on the beach.”
Cassy hesitated, giving him an odd look he couldn’t interpret. But she nodded and climbed into the high bed and sat up against the pillows.
Scott kneeled and struck a long match, touching it to the tinder beneath the carefully stacked logs. A yellow flame curled around the shaved wood and crackled into the splintered pine. He turned out the overhead lights, leaving only a table lamp to give the room a mellow glow and soft shadows. He slipped off his track pants, leaving his boxers and T-shirt on. Then he brought the champagne bucket and their glasses and got into bed. Three feet of mattress and decades of suppressed feelings separated them.
Cassy hadn’t taken off her dressing gown and the collar bunched up beneath her ears, making her look like a ten-year-old again. “Are we going to tell ghost stories?”
This was better. He sank into the pillows, making himself more comfortable. The fire had caught and flames leaped high in the stone fireplace. “Have you heard the story of the monkey’s paw?”
“That old chestnut?” She groaned and laughed, just as he’d hoped she would, then wriggled in anticipation. “Tell it to me again.”
“Outside, the night was cold and wet,” he began in a creepy voice. “Inside the cottage, in front of the fire, Mr. and Mrs. White were cozy and warm.”
“Too warm,” Cassy said, fanning her flushed face.
“That’s not how it goes.”
“I mean, I’m too warm. Sorry, but I have to take this dressing gown off.” She slid off the bed and facing away fro
m him, undid the tie belt on her blue silk dressing gown. “Don’t look.”
Naturally, he looked. What red-blooded man wouldn’t?
The dressing gown fell off her shoulders. The flickering fire lit her from behind, rendering her nightgown transparent. He could see everything, from the narrow dip of her waist, to the bloom of her hip, to the tender curve of a breast in half profile. His mouth dried. His cock, tamed and quiescent during the past couple of hours, jerked to life again, thick and hard and pulsing. Jesus! Why was he resisting making love to her? He was finding it difficult to remember.
Cassy climbed back into bed, one shoulder bared by the slipping, loose neckline of the negligee. Her hair had air-dried, and framed her oval face with soft waves. The flames from the crackling logs threw light and shadow across her face, putting a warm glow in her amber eyes. “That’s better.”
“Yes, better.” He swallowed. “Where was I?”
“Warm and cozy in front of the fire.” Her head on the pillow, she gazed at him. “If you had a monkey’s paw, what would you wish for?”
He studied her face in the flickering firelight, so dear and familiar, so sexy and sweet, for a long time. The balance of lust versus friendship had finally tipped. He was still afraid of what would happen to them, but right now, his desire for her was stronger than his concern about risking the status quo.
Very deliberately, he removed the ice bucket and set it on the floor. Then he pulled his T-shirt over his head. “Come here,” he growled. “I’ll show you.”
Chapter Six
Cassy pulled the comforter up to her neck and drew back a little, eyeing Scott warily. “A monkey paw wish always ends badly.”
Fair enough. He’d pushed her away, probably hurt her feelings as well as her pride. He would have to woo her.
“If it ends badly, so be it.” He inserted a finger inside the silky comforter and tugged it down a couple of inches. He was rewarded with a glimpse of smooth, tanned skin and the jut of her collarbone. “I can’t fight this attraction anymore.”
