Asking For It

by Alyssa Kress

  "I like you?" Her eyes flashed.

  "Well, okay, not personally," Griffith conceded. "But you are attracted." Why not go for broke?

  "Attracted!" She stood up so fast her chair fell over. "You are — "

  He was definitely getting to her, quicker and deeper than he could have dreamed.

  Glaring down at him, she carefully pronounced. "You are so wrong."

  About a second ago, he would have agreed, but now he wasn't so sure. She'd tugged her hand away and blushed. She looked like she was nervous, or excited. And all without his Porsche, his Century City office, or the view from his twentieth floor Westwood condo. Excitement of a novel, and possibly stupid, sort flashed through him. "Oh, wow," he whispered.

  "Yes, wow," she agreed in a scornful tone. "You're arrogant enough that I assume you're not only — I mean, you're clearly stinking rich."

  "I prefer calling it filthy." Griffith grinned.

  "And you're used to getting your way with women," she sniffed.

  "Sort of," Griffith admitted. Once they knew about Porsche, his Century City office and his view from the Westwood condo. "But you didn't know any of that," he told her.

  "And I didn't undress you!" Kate claimed.

  "Right." Beaming, Griffith reached for her hand. He wanted that sensation again, the one that had nothing to do with his money.

  But she snatched her hand away before he could connect. With a noise of disgust, she took a step back.

  "No — " Griffith said, stretching upward. The chair she'd knocked over was right behind her.

  "You — " Kate sneered, and took another step back.

  Shit. Adrenaline kicked sore muscles into high gear. Griffith lunged for her. Just as she was falling backwards, he managed to grasp her shoulders. With a shuffle and a hop, he found his balance and they ended in a clinch.

  Yup, there they were, in each other's arms. Eyeball to eyeball. Quite a bit more than Griffith had bargained for. She was wearing a shirt and jeans while he was stark naked. Had he been hard before? He was a rock now. They were man and woman. As elemental as it got.

  Then, as if she just had to make matters worse, she turned her eyes downward.

  Griffith's Commander-in-Chief stood at attention, even squished as he was against Kate Darby's waistband. If possible, the effect of her gaze on the thing made it grow even bigger.

  He felt her shudder: one complete, riveting vibration. Then her gaze snapped upward.

  Red flamed her skin, from her forehead to the collarbone exposed by her button-down shirt. Griffith felt just as hot as she was looking. He worked fast — you had to when you needed to find a new girlfriend as often as he did — but never, ever, had he gotten naked with a woman this fast, let alone had one see him aroused.

  And she was Kate Darby.

  "Okay, what," she asked distinctly, "is that?"

  He drew in a sharp breath. "I think you know."

  Her face did something indecipherable. "But what is it doing...here?"

  He paused, looked at her closely. Even now, especially now, he remembered the way he'd gotten to her. He had. "I think you know that, too."

  For an instant their gazes met. For an instant Griffith was sure he saw desire in her eyes. Reluctant, perhaps, but there. He knew it was genuine because he'd never seen it before, not the real thing. And it felt...deep. Rich. Endlessly exciting.

  Very deliberately, she pushed herself away from him. "I did not call that forth."

  Without the pressure of Kate's waistband, Griffith's Commander pointed eagerly in her direction, silently begging otherwise.

  He didn't know whether to feel embarrassed or triumphant.

  "I did not," Kate repeated, though her haughty gaze slid downward once more, effective as a caress.

  Griffith snorted. "Then why do you keep looking?" He didn't grab the blanket in hopes she'd do it yet again. He'd never dreamed how fantastic real desire from a woman would feel.

  "Oh!" Her face went red as a tomato. "You are — You are — " She whirled. This time she managed to avoid the downed chair as she stalked toward the door.

  What? Griffith wanted to ask her. He was what? Horny? Honest about it? Attractive, after all?

  But she was gone, slammed out the door, and he was left standing there feeling idiotically pleased. She had looked...with interest. Fascination even.

  He stood there a ridiculous amount of time before reality seeped in, trashing his stupid pleasure. He had no clothes, no telephone, and no car. All he had was a thoroughly useless hard-on.

  Hissing out an exasperated breath, Griffith grabbed the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around his waist. It might be two in the fucking morning, but he was determined to solve at least one of those three problems.

  He would find a telephone. Fascinating as Kate Darby was, aroused as she most certainly had been by him, he had to get as far away from her as possible — preferably in the direction of L.A.

  ~~~

  It was stupid to tremble. Kate stomped across the dirt yard and toward the closest of the two occupied bunkhouses. The night air was blessedly cool after a dry August day. Kate sucked it into her lungs and did her best to calm down.

  Her mystery patient had turned out to be crude. So what? Crude males were nothing new around here. She dealt with them nearly every day of the year. This one was no different.

  At Bunkhouse One, Kate slowed and climbed the wooden steps carefully. It was two in the morning. Everyone should be asleep.

  Everyone was. Bodies that had been whirlwinds of energy a few hours before were now still and quiet, curved lumps under brown blankets. Neither José nor Bill woke when Kate opened the door. They made their own, larger curves under brown blankets at opposite ends of the long bunkhouse.

  Kate backed out and quietly closed the door. She stood on the wooden porch in the quiet mountain air and released a long breath. But she still couldn't feel calm. Regular.

  Damn it.

  She took in another breath, determined to make this go away. Okay, what had actually happened in the infirmary, after all? She'd fallen asleep. A mistake, no doubt, but understandable. She'd opened her eyes to find the stranger was awake, and staring at her.

  Truly, the guy was a mess, cuts and bruises littering his torso. But in her weird, half-asleep state, it had struck Kate that his torso itself was a work of art: broad over the chest, tapering via visible abdominal muscles to a narrow waist. A soft covering of brown chest hair had completed the virile picture.

  Not fully awake, unguarded, Kate had felt...off balance. That was all. Off balance and kind of dazed.

  Obviously Griffith had seen that. He'd bide his time, and then he'd used it, to throw her even more off balance. Why he'd wanted her that way, Kate couldn't say. He was filthy rich by his own admission. Probably grabbing the power in a situation was a personality characteristic. Kate felt her face heat. Apparently this included grabbing sexual power.

  Not that he'd succeeded, she assured herself. He'd only tried — and failed.

  A large figure occupied the steps of Bunkhouse Two. Arnie sat there. Kate felt a ripple of alarm, then realized the groundskeeper would have come to fetch her if something were wrong with any of the campers.

  "What are you doing awake?" Kate asked, when she was close enough not to yell.

  Arnie held up a smoldering cigarette.

  Kate groaned. "You know that's not allowed. And I thought you'd quit."

  "I have." Arnie waved the cigarette. "I don't inhale, I just enjoy the second-hand smoke."

  "Is that a fact?"

  In the light from the fixture by the bunkhouse door, Arnie smiled dryly. "It's what I keep telling myself, anyway." He drew the cigarette toward his mouth in an automatic-looking gesture, then appeared to remember Kate, and held it away from his face again. "Taking a break from your vigil?"

  Kate felt her teeth set. "The vigil is no longer necessary." She paused, and made herself relax. "Our mystery guest woke up."

  "Oh?" With his eyes on
Kate, Arnie tapped ash off the end of his cigarette. "I take it he's okay, then?"

  Kate nearly snorted. Okay? He'd been healthy enough to jump out of bed. Naked. He'd been healthy enough to display — No.

  Shaking her head, Kate stopped her own thoughts. "He didn't complain." No, come to think of it, he hadn't. Kate lifted a shoulder. "So that's why I'm out here now, checking up as usual."

  "Uh huh. Well, everything's all right in Bunk Bunko." Arnie raised both hands. "Don't look at me, that's what the kids voted to call it."

  Kate smiled.

  "So who is the guy?" Arnie asked, nearly bringing the cigarette to his lips again, but remembering Kate in time to wave it away. "Does he have any idea what happened?"

  Kate felt her brows snap together. She didn't want to discuss their visitor, but it was natural Arnie should ask. "His name is Griffith Blaine." She did her best to sound bland as she planted a foot on the bottom step of the porch. "Says he runs some kind of bigshot business in Los Angeles."

  "Yeah, he looked like a boss type," Arnie remarked. "Does he know what happened to him?"

  Kate waved an arm in the air. "He thinks a business rival wanted him to disappear and hired some thugs to kidnap him. By the way, you were right. He said they stuck him with a needle. A tranquilizer, he thought."

  "A business rival," Arnie repeated. He paused. "But why bring him here?"

  "That I don't know." Kate averted her eyes, remembering it was when she'd asked the very same question that Griffith had taken hold of her hand. Such a simple thing that should have been. Instead it had set free a bewildering host of responses: increasing heart rate, rising body temperature, and shaky limbs.

  "We're kinda off the beaten path," Arnie mused. "Maybe one of the thugs — " He stopped abruptly. A strange expression crossed his face.

  Reading that expression, Kate stilled. "You think one of the thugs who kidnapped Griffith has been here before...as a camper."

  Arnie's expression closed. Slowly, he lifted a shoulder.

  Oh, no. What Arnie said could be true. In point of fact, given the kind of kids who came to Camp Wild Hills, discipline problems some of them, some already involved in gangs back home, it was the most probable theory going. "We aren't going to go there," Kate pronounced, fighting down dread.

  "Of course not," Arnie immediately agreed.

  "We have no idea who kidnapped Griffith Blaine. We don't even know if he's telling the truth about having been kidnapped at all. He didn't want me to call the police."

  "No?" Arnie's eyebrows jumped.

  "Said he wanted to handle this business rival personally."

  "Huh." Arnie waved his cigarette, frowning. "Think he could be — well, involved with the mob?"

  Kate laughed.

  "I take that as a 'no.'"

  "Solid corporate America." Even without the costume, the guy screamed power breakfasts and a Blackberry nursemaid. Utterly entitled. Her jaw tightened as she remembered his crack about do-gooders. As if people like him were necessary for the world.

  "And yet, he didn't want the police." Arnie pursed his lips. "Interesting." He stubbed out his cigarette. "Well, what's your take?"

  Kate blinked. "On Griffith?"

  Arnie gave her a strange look. "Uh... Right."

  She shook her head. Her take. She tried to put together those Ferragamo loafers, and his disinclination to call the police. Instead, she relieved the sensation of his powerful arms, strong enough to pull her from falling. She felt the hard masculine body pressed against her own, and the faint stirring of something she'd thought long dead and buried.

  Warning bells clanged in her brain. The last time a man had had this sort of effect on her...

  She flattened her lips. "He won't be a problem." Now would not be like the last time.

  Arnie seemed startled. "Oh."

  Kate smiled thinly. "Oh, no." Privileged Griffith Blaine had been determined to take charge of the situation, to take charge of her. And he'd thought he could make fun of her and the kids while he did so.

  Little did he know that Kate was the last woman to let a man have any kind of power over her whatsoever. Or let down her boys.

  "Uh huh," Arnie said, and squinted.

  Kate glanced toward her groundskeeper. For a second, an image of Griffith's very male naked body flashed in her brain, briefly disturbing her certainty. She shook her head and breathed deeply. "No kind of problem whatsoever." Indeed. Mr. Blaine had made a serious error, thinking he could manipulate Kate Darby.

  She began to smile. "In fact, I have a feeling that rather than a problem, Mr. Blaine is going to become a tremendous help to the camp."

  "Uh huh," Arnie said again, and squinted harder.

  Blaine thought he held the world in his palm. He thought he could put Kate there, too. With sex.

  Oh, he was going to find out what a mistake he had made. Kate's smile broadened as she strode toward her own cabin.

  Boy, was he ever.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Deirdre Marshall was one of those unfortunate women who seemed to have everything necessary: reasonably good looks, good grooming, an excellent job — and yet she couldn't get a date with a decent guy to save her life.

  In high school, long-limbed and gawky, Deirdre had never even been asked out. That changed in college, though the improvement hadn't been much. Deirdre's dates had included a thin string of oily-haired, autistic math majors. And now, busy with her career at Blaine Development, she hadn't much time to try meeting men. The result was that, in her whole life, Deirdre could count on one hand the number of good boyfriends she'd had.

  None.

  Not even now. No, not even in the gray of dawn right that minute in her bedroom with a magnificent male body above her, his slick member sliding in and out of her, his skin velvet over steel beneath her fingers, and his breath rough near her ear did she dare claim a single decent boyfriend.

  Because she wasn't sure this marvelous creature was her boyfriend. How could he be?

  Deirdre clutched his shoulders. His actions caused pleasure to streak through her, but that didn't mean he was hers. Come on. How could a man who was this good-looking, with his jet-black hair and his coffee brown eyes, possibly be her boyfriend? How could a man this successful, with his job at a big-name law firm — a man even her mother would approve of — own any real interest in perennial wallflower Deirdre?

  Yes, he was in her bed, and he'd been there sporadically for the past three weeks, but Deirdre wasn't ready to call him a boyfriend. Nor had he declared himself the title. Certainly, Deirdre had been much too shy to ask.

  "Deirdre." Her name was a husky whisper, followed by the nip of his teeth on her earlobe. One of his hands cupped her breast, his fingers teasing her nipple, even as he kept up the powerful, pelvic rhythm. Deirdre felt her concerns disintegrate before a rising wave of pleasure.

  "You are so — " she muttered, pumping now with her hips.

  "Good," he encouraged.

  The sensations overtook her, lifting, reaching. Her knees clutched him, his movements went frantic, and then she was sailing, oh, floating in an ecstatic cloud across the universe, pleasure and joy exploding in a climax she was too experienced to take for granted.

  Above her, a long male groan attested to his own pleasure, and then his tensed body relaxed on top of hers.

  Deirdre closed her eyes and held him close. It was one of the few times she felt comfortable doing so, confident of his response.

  His stomach muscles vibrated against her belly as he chuckled. "Now that's what I call a positive way to start the day."

  Deirdre smiled. "I'll second that."

  He chuckled some more before lifting off of her. "I'd go for a second round but I have to be in the office by seven."

  "I'll take a rain check, then." Deirdre began lifting her hand toward his face; her palm longed to connect with the faint beard on his jaw, but she stopped the movement quickly.

  Did she see, or just imagine, his fleeting expression of r
elief?

  Before she could worry about it, he bent to kiss her nose. "I'd better take a shower."

  Deirdre forced a smile. He didn't want to be touched in tenderness. Still, he was here. He'd been sleeping with her for three weeks now. He even felt comfortable enough to use her shower and leave a few shirts in her closet. "Since I've discovered you're a speed demon in the bathroom," Deirdre told him, "I'll let you go first."

  He glanced her way as he rolled off the bed. "You're going to work early, too?"

  "Ah — We've got a hot project in the works. Lots to do." Most of what she had to do was worry, but Deirdre wasn't about to say that. "Go. Shower."

  Completely unself-conscious, he grinned and then strolled his beautiful naked body toward the bathroom. He was not a particularly tall man, but his muscles wrapped around his chest and abdomen with graceful economy. He went through the bathroom door and closed it.

  On the bed, Deirdre sat up, wrapped the sheet over her breasts, and bit her lower lip. Obsessed as she was about the new man in her life, her other worries now crowded round her, since he'd brought them up.

  She was going to work early today for the same reason she'd arrived at the crack of dawn yesterday: because she hoped her boss, Griffith, would walk through the door.

  If only he would walk through the door, she could stop worrying, she could stop wondering if she was supposed to be doing something more than wait with bated breath.

  Nobody else at the office seemed to find anything amiss. Project managers sat in their cubicles and went over their numbers, Helen in accounting went on writing checks, and the messenger boy came by twice a day with the in- and out-going mail.

  Deirdre almost felt nuts for thinking something was wrong.

  But she knew she wasn't nuts. Griffith had woken her up at five on Tuesday morning to get ready for the meeting with GoldFed Financial. All day long he'd pestered her about various graphs and renderings he'd wanted printed and mounted. He'd even taken the PowerPoint presentation home to finish himself.