by Marie Force
“Shall I gift wrap it for you?” she asked, flashing a coy grin over her shoulder as she headed for the register to ring up her first sale.
“That’d be nice. Thank you.”
His reply threw her off stride. Tiffany began to wonder if she understood the rules of this game they were playing. Did he have someone else? Would he really come to her store to buy something for another woman? When it came right down to it, she knew nothing about him other than what he did for a living, he was a good friend of her brother-in-law’s and he was a god in bed. Beyond that, he could be just another sleaze for all she knew.
She tugged a sheet of tissue paper from the shelf behind the register, snipped the price tag from the bustier, wrapped it in the pink paper and sealed the package with a gold N&N sticker before slipping it into one of the red-and-white striped gift bags she’d designed herself.
His warm hands captured hers, startling her and stopping movements that had become jerky as she’d pondered the possibilities.
“There’s no one else, Tiff, so stop wondering if I’m screwing with you in more ways than one.”
Startled by how accurately he’d zeroed in on her thoughts, she pulled her hands free. “I wondered no such thing.”
Laughing in that gravelly, sexy way he did so well, he said, “If you say so.” He nodded to the beaded curtain that separated the main area of the store from a smaller second room. “What’s in there?”
Tiffany swallowed. “Other stuff.”
“Ah, the good stuff. Help me out, will you? I may have some questions. In fact, I’m sure I will.”
Was he serious? Apparently so, since he stepped through the beads into the more intimate area of the store.
“Well, well, well. What have we here?”
Tiffany’s entire body felt like it was on fire as she followed him through the curtain. Surely he didn’t mean to quiz her on the various items she’d stocked there, did he?
He picked up a multipurpose vibrator and examined it from every angle. Turning to her, he raised an eyebrow. “What’s this one’s claim to fame?”
Tiffany didn’t know what to do with her hands, so she crossed her fingers and squeezed. A riot of emotions and desires cascaded through her, tying her tongue into knots. “Um, the usual stuff. It, ah, vibrates and rotates.”
“Rotates, too, huh? That’s clever.”
She would’ve killed him for putting her through this torturous exercise except for the pesky fact that he was chief of police.
He pointed to the vibrator’s smaller arm. “What’s this little doohickey do?”
“That’s for the, um, back door.”
Blaine’s eyes widened with understanding. “You don’t say.”
To Tiffany’s enormous relief, he put the toy down and moved farther into the room to study the wide array of dildos, lubricants, vibrators, handcuffs, massage oils and other sensuous delights.
He zeroed in on the display of butt plugs the vendor had talked her into stocking against her better judgment.
“Speaking of the back door,” he muttered. “What’s the difference between these two?”
One was shorter and fatter, the other long and thin.
Tiffany wanted to expire on the spot. She’d never been more embarrassed or more aroused. The sound of his voice alone was enough to turn her on, but watching his long fingers touching and caressing the toys on the shelf had her soaked with desire. She had to fight off the urge to drag him to the floor and have her way with him.
Determined to answer at least one of his questions without stammering, Tiffany said, “One is for stretching, the other for stimulating.”
He scratched at the stubble on his chin. “Isn’t that interesting? I didn’t realize there were two different kinds.” Turning to her, he studied her with those eyes that seemed to have only one setting: intense. “Which do you recommend? Stretching or stimulating?”
“Oh, well, that’s an individual preference.”
He curled a lock of her hair around his finger, brought it to his nose and inhaled. “What’s your individual preference, Tiffany?”
“I, um, well…”
“Have you ever played with any of these toys?”
A flush of heat traveled from her face to her breasts to between her legs. “Of course I have. How else could I sell them?”
He gestured to the shelves of goodies. “Which ones?”
“I don’t recall,” she said haughtily.
How was it possible that her very first customer was discovering her deepest, darkest secret? After all the hours she’d spent studying the manuals that came with each and every item, that she could be found out so easily was unnerving, to say the least.
Blaine stepped even closer to her, so his face was an inch from hers. He was so close she could smell his cologne and feel the heat of his breath on her face. “Are you a sex toy fraud, Tiff?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I answered all your questions.”
She turned, intending to return to the main room, but his hand on her arm stopped her.
“Which one do you find most intriguing?”
She couldn’t possibly say all of them, could she? Jim would’ve died before he would’ve allowed any of the items in this room into their bedroom.
“I can see I’ve put you on the spot.” After pondering the selection for another long moment, during which Tiffany barely drew a breath, he reached for a set of velvet-lined handcuffs, a bottle of lube that heated on contact, massage oil and the first vibrator he’d picked up (with the special back-door attachment). When picked up the shorter and fatter of the two butt plugs, Tiffany put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“I’m not interested in that.”
Blaine studied her for a charged moment before he returned the plug to the shelf. “We’ve got enough to get us started.”
She stared at him. “Get who started?”
“You, me, us. You can’t sell this stuff if you’ve never used it.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.” He brushed by her on his way back to the main room, stopping to speak close to her ear. “Don’t try to tell me you’re not curious. I know you are.”
“I don’t want all that,” she said.
“How do you know you don’t want it until you’ve tried it?”
“Besides, that stuff is expensive. Did you even bother to look at the price tags?”
“You can’t put a price on pleasure, honey. Whatever it costs, it’s worth every penny.”
“And does this experimentation you’re suggesting work both ways?”
His brows narrowed. “Does what work both ways?”
“If you get to do this stuff to me, I get to do it to you, too.”
The very thought of what they were discussing had her teetering on the verge of an explosive release. Every nerve ending in her body was on fire, like it had been the night before, and he’d barely touched her. Words, she realized, could be a powerful aphrodisiac.
“We’ll negotiate terms during playtime,” he said with a suggestive grin as he dropped the items he’d chosen on the counter.
Three hundred and twenty-five dollars later, Blaine returned his credit card to his wallet.
Tiffany placed the large red-and-white bag on the counter. Not a bad first sale. “Thank you,” she said, embarrassed he’d spent so much money.
“My pleasure—and yours. Will your daughter be home tonight?”
Tiffany shook her head. “She’s with her father until tomorrow.”
He pushed the bag toward her. “I get out of work at eleven. I’ll be at your house by eleven thirty. Leave the front door unlocked. Put the black outfit on and lie on the bed at eleven fifteen with your legs as far apart as you can get them. Make sure the ceiling fan is set to high.”
A shiver of raw desire traveled through her at the power behind his softly spoken words. It had never occurred to her that being dominated, even lightly, could be such a turn-on.
“P
ut the other things in the bag on the bedside table so I can reach them. Do you understand?”
Tiffany had lost the ability to breathe, let alone speak, so she nodded.
He leaned over the counter as if he were going to kiss her. “One more thing. You’ll need to decide on a safe word.”
“Safe word?” she squeaked.
“A word we’ll use if either of us wants to stop whatever we’re doing.”
“Oh, right,” she said, swallowing frantically. “A safe word.”
“Whatever you want it to be.”
This time when he leaned in close, he kissed her long and hard and deep.
Tiffany’s legs buckled, and she gripped the counter, something she’d done more often since she met him than she had in her entire life before him.
His fingers sank into her hair, and he tilted his head to get a better angle on the kiss. Sweeping strokes of his tongue had her forgetting where they were and that anyone could walk in and catch them. Oh, who was she kidding? No one was going to walk in, except for maybe Patty.
That thought had Tiffany reluctantly withdrawing from the kiss.
Blaine reached for her hand and came around to her side of the counter. “That wasn’t enough, and eleven thirty is a long time from now,” he said, his voice husky and deep.
She reached up to comb her fingers through his hair and brought him down for another passionate kiss.
His hands slid down her back to cup her bottom. And then he lifted her and started walking toward the back room. Propping her against the wall, he arranged her legs so they were splayed open, propped on his thighs. Taking the hem of her dress with him, his hands traveled up her legs until her skirt was bunched at her waist.
“What’s this?” he asked, running his fingers over her panties. “White cotton? On the town’s new lingerie queen?”
“Sometimes white cotton is comfortable,” she managed to say.
“It’s better to absorb dampness,” he said agreeably, “especially a great flood of dampness.”
Moaning, Tiffany tilted her hips, begging for more.
Keeping her panties between them, he worked his fingers back and forth, giving fleeting glances to her most sensitive spot. “Do you want to come, Tiff?”
“Yes, yes!”
“Are you sore today?” he asked, gentling his touch.
“A little.”
“I’m sorry for that,” he whispered, his tongue skimming her neck and sending a shiver of goose bumps dancing over her fevered skin. “I never want to hurt you.”
She tightened the grip she had on his hair and jerked his mouth to hers for a fierce battle of tongues and teeth and lips.
His finger slipped beneath the elastic and into her slickness. He must’ve sensed her urgency, because he focused all his attention on the tight nub, circling and pressing until she came with a keening wail that he smothered with another deep kiss.
“I love watching you come,” he whispered, capturing her bottom lip between his teeth and rolling it back and forth. “It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Mortified to imagine what she must look like at the moment of liftoff, she turned her focus on him. “What about you?” she asked, as he let her slide down the aroused front of him until her feet were on the floor.
She started to press a hand to the bulge in his shorts, but he stopped her.
“Let’s save it for later.” He kissed her forehead, nose and lips. “You might want to take a little nap when you get home. We’ll be up late. Again.”
After another passionate kiss, he left her leaning against the wall, trying to recapture her equilibrium. If all her customers were even half as interesting as her first one, owning this shop was going to be one hell of a wild ride.
After the ringing bells on the door announced his departure, Tiffany ran her fingers through her hair, straightened her dress and went into the tiny pink restroom to freshen up. Staring at her reflection in the mirror, she thought about the instructions he’d given her. While part of her couldn’t wait to see him again, the other part—the part that still retained a shred of sanity—was filled with trepidation about what he had planned for her.
Chapter 5
When Blaine arrived at the police station for his three o’clock shift, Evelyn, the department secretary, handed him a message from the mayor.
“Did he say anything else?” Blaine asked after quickly scanning the summons.
“Just the ASAP thing—a few times.”
Blaine tossed the message into the trash and headed for his office.
“Aren’t you going to town hall?” Evelyn called after him.
“Eventually.”
He could only imagine what urgent matter the mayor wanted to talk to him about. Probably the shop at the bottom of the hill—and its owner—had finally caught the attention of town leaders. Easing into his desk chair, Blaine ached from the sleepless night and the sexual marathon. The last thing he felt like dealing with right now was a verbal spar-a-thon with the pain-in-the-ass mayor.
Evelyn came to the door. “He’s on the phone again. He knows you’re here.”
Blaine groaned and ran his fingers through his unruly hair. At their last meeting, the mayor had made a comment about Blaine’s hair that he’d pretended not to hear. He hadn’t gotten around to cutting it and didn’t want to hear about that, either.
“Fine,” he said. “I’m going. Tell him I just left.”
As he drove his department-issued SUV up the hill to town hall, he practiced the deep-breathing techniques the counselor had taught him in the aftermath of the Eden debacle. In through the nose. Hold it. Out through the mouth. Repeat. Usually the breathing helped to calm him, but as he parked in front of the redbrick building that housed the town offices, Blaine was still agitated. Not the best frame of mind in which to meet with one’s boss, he thought, as he climbed the stairs and headed for the mayor’s outer office, waving at the town clerk on the way by.
“Why, hello there, Chief Taylor,” said Mona, the mayor’s sixty-something executive assistant. She batted her false eyelashes at him as she did every time she saw him. “So nice to see you, as always.”
Blaine flashed his most charming smile, having learned long ago that the best way to get in good with the boss was to get in good with his assistant. “You’re looking lovely as usual, Miss Mona.”
“Oh well,” she said, blushing. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Are you doing something different with your hair?”
Her plump face lifted into a dazzling smile. “I had foils! They’re so expensive. Do you have any idea—”
“Mona!” The mayor’s bellow had her smile falling to a frown. “Send him in here right now!”
Blaine winked and shrugged on his way past, earning another furious blush from Mona. Inside the office, he glanced at the bald, red-faced, portly lump named Chet Upton. It was not for nothing that they called him Uppity Upton at the public safety building. His glance at Blaine’s hair was followed by a scowl.
“I need you to deal with the situation at the bottom of the hill,” the mayor said without preamble. “She’s causing a public menace, parading around half naked, not to mention she’s making a mockery of our decency laws.”
As Upton’s face took on an unhealthy purplish tinge, Blaine hoped he wouldn’t need his CPR skills before this meeting was over.
“She’s already caused an accident down there, and I witnessed her naughty-nurse routine yesterday.”
A flash of anger all but blinded Blaine. Even though he knew he had no right to feel possessive, he hated the thought of other men, especially Upton, ogling her luscious curves. He put the anger aside to be dealt with later. “Wearing a costume is against the law? Since when?”
“Calling it a costume is actually generous. It was tiny scraps of fabric that barely covered the good stuff.”
Blaine’s hand curled into a fist, and it was all he could do to keep from punching the lusty look off the mayor’s
face. “I’m surprised a happily married man such as yourself would look so closely at another woman’s tiny scraps.”
Upton sputtered. “Any healthy, red-blooded man would take a gander when a woman who looks like she does is prancing around barely dressed in public! Now, get down there and make it stop.”
“No,” Blaine said.
“No?”
“She’s not doing anything wrong. The council approved her application and gave her the right to open her business. I’m here to uphold the law, not harass hardworking, law-abiding citizens.”
His face still a startling shade of magenta, Upton sat back in his big chair and studied Blaine. “Do you know this girl?”
“I’ve met her.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What’s so great about her that you’re willing to stand here and defy your boss to defend her?”
Careful, Blaine thought. “I’d say the same thing about any other citizen who wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
After a long, pregnant pause, the mayor said, “Since you refuse to take action, I’ll place the matter on the council’s docket for the meeting on Monday. Perhaps they should reconsider her application. Until then, you make sure there’re no more accidents down there, or else.”
“Or else, what?”
“Or else you might be looking for a new job.”
Blaine placed both hands flat on the big mahogany desk and leaned forward. “Don’t you dare threaten me, Upton. I’ve worked my ass off for this town for two years. I haven’t taken so much as a long weekend off, let alone a vacation. And don’t tell me how to do my job. If you don’t like how I’m doing it, say the word, and you’ll see my taillights heading for the ferry.”
The mayor’s mouth hung open. “Now, wait a minute. I never said—”
“That’s exactly what you said.”
Blaine spun around and headed for the outer office. As he winked at Mona, the mayor got in one last bellow.
“Get a haircut!”
Tiffany was alone in the shop when the bells jangled on the front door. Since she figured it was Patty returning from lunch, she didn’t bother to look up from the checkbook register that refused to reconcile.
