All Tied Up

by Alison Kent

  With a yelp, she tumbled into his lap. Anton chose that moment to start up the music, a sexy, heavy-breathing number that sent Sydney into a scramble away from Eric, who’d started to bump and grind beneath the heap.

  Turning to Macy, Lauren asked, “Who invited him, anyway?” And Macy could only roll her eyes.

  “Attention, people.” Lauren clapped her hands again. “The time has arrived for one of you to test your powers of self-preservation while our resident spider weaves her web. For those of you unfamiliar with the rules—Leo—don’t despair. All you have to do is resist her demands.”

  “Easy enough,” said the bane of Macy’s evening.

  She didn’t even bother acknowledging his insult. She was not about to give him an edge when she had a game to win.

  “For any of you thinking of cutting out early, we have a special incentive for you to keep your butts parked exactly where they are.” Lauren’s announcement served its purpose. The gang perked up. “But I’ll let Sydney do the honors.”

  Sydney, being the perfectionist she was, checked for misbehaving strands of hair and smoothed both her narrow denim skirt and burgundy silk tank before she spoke.

  “A week or so ago, Macy warned me that this month’s game was more involved than previous versions. So I decided to add a participation incentive.”

  “Incentive?” Eric stuffed an extra-large red corduroy bolster behind his head and laced his hands together in his lap. “You mean bribe, right?”

  “Bribe, bonus, compensation, prize. Whatever. I think it’ll be worth your time to pay attention.”

  “That means shut the hell up, Haydon.” Egged on by jeers and wolf whistles, Ray did little more than wink and return the floor to Sydney.

  Daring anyone else to interrupt, she took a deep breath. “Here’s my winner-take-all deal. My father, who many of you know, has made me an offer I should refuse. But I won’t.”

  Macy waited for reactions as the out-of-left-field comment sank in. She wasn’t disappointed. Those who’d met Nolan Ford were curious, and said so. Those who hadn’t still wanted to hear what the millionaire venture capitalist had to do with the evening’s game.

  “Nolan’s going to pay us to play?” Anton made the crack while sorting through Macy’s CDs.

  “No,” Sydney answered. “But he’s selling his ketch and giving me the final week to use it. Full crew of sailors included.”

  “What I want to do is donate the week to the winner, who is then welcome to choose a destination, within reason, and take along as many guests as the yacht can handle.”

  Anton applauded. “All right, Sydney.”

  “Oh, my God! Are you kidding?” Melanie’s eyes grew wide.

  And at that, Macy leaned over and kissed Sydney’s cheek. When she smiled in response, Macy wrapped an arm around the other woman’s shoulders and whispered, “You don’t have to do this.”

  Pressing her forehead to Macy’s, Sydney returned the hug. “Yes. I do. You know how things are with Nolan.”

  Macy had more to say, but now wasn’t the time. She left Sydney with another quick peck and addressed the crowd.

  “Hey, people. No one is going to be sailing anywhere if I don’t get my way. Anton.” Macy pointed, and he pumped up the volume. “Lauren.” Lauren held Macy by the shoulders and, once Macy had covered her eyes, twirled her to the rhythm of the beat.

  Macy barely had time to decide what she was going to ask from Leo before she was pulled to a stop, turned to the right, then back to a stumbling, feet-tangling left.

  A deep breath and…it was time.

  She lifted her chin, ran her fingers into her hair, her tongue over her lips. Then, with her imagination wearing the underthings she’d failed to wash in time for her body to wear, she looked Leo Redding in the eye.

  Big mistake. Big, big mistake.

  She’d forgotten about his eyes. How he seemed to see more than a near stranger should see. How what he saw was intimate, private, not at all what she wanted to reveal.

  With each step she took toward him, her pulse quickened.

  At every bluesy note, her heart beat harder.

  From the roots of her hair to the tip of her toes, her blood ran hot, raising a flush on her skin. Leo never looked away, stirring her further. Macy would swear she felt her nostrils flare.

  And then she knew what she wanted. To see him smile. To make him smile. As much to prove that she could, that she possessed the stronger will and the necessary feminine wiles, as to add fuel to the fire of her fantasy.

  Having drawn even with his widespread knees, she wedged her legs between, leaned forward and planted both hands on the flat arms of the chair. The tips of her fingers brushed the insides of his elbows. His only move was to reach up and remove his glasses.

  She angled in closer, lifted one hand and touched a finger to his cheek. “I want you to do something for me.”

  Leo raised a brow. In the background, an anonymous hand clapped to Eric’s mouth muffled a smart remark. Macy gathered her wits and her courage and climbed into Leo’s long-legged lap.

  “I want you to smile. Can you do that? Can you smile for me, Leo Redding?”

  Moving even nearer, she twisted around and settled her seat in the natural dip of his thighs, draped her legs over the arm of the chair, her elbow crooked around his shoulders.

  He smelled wonderfully warm and male, and she snuggled up to his body, which felt…oh, he felt like nothing she’d ever known.

  His legs beneath her bottom were hard. His belly at her hip was hard. The muscles across his shoulders were solid and hard beneath her forearm. Even the hand, the very large hand resting on her shins, was a study in masculine strength.

  Lips parted in seductive invitation, she stroked an index finger over Leo’s cheek and shivered at the prickle of evening beard. She trailed the same finger down a path to his collar, worked loose the knot on his tie.

  “C’mon, Leo. I know you can smile. You’ve got all the right muscles.” She toyed with the top button of his shirt, poking the bare tip of her finger beneath the placket to his collarbone.

  Still no response. Nada. Nothing. Ignoring the murmurs of the audience, she whispered directly into his ear. “I’ll make it easy on you. A quick grin and we’ll call it a night.”

  She pulled back to look at his face, expecting a gradual capitulation. But no, he was stoic to the core. It was time to get down and dirty.

  Pouting always worked for Chloe, so Macy gave it a try at the same time she lightly touched her thumb to the edge of Leo’s mouth, drawing the corner upward.

  No reaction. Macy held back a scream.

  She plied her final weapon, running her fingertips in feathery movements over his tightly drawn lips, begging, with her mouth only inches away, “One smile. Please?”

  And then she felt it. A shift. A change. A flare and a flash in Leo’s eyes, and a new sense of his body hardening beneath hers.

  A part of her wanted to extricate herself from both his lap and a situation as awkward as any she could recall sharing with a man. A part of her wanted to wiggle, to experience and explore this private intimacy.

  She managed, instead, to sit very still and avoid disclosing to the rest of the room what was now so impressively, so solidly pressed to the back of her thighs.

  Leo reached for her wrist, removed her motionless fingers from his lips. She blinked slowly and smiled, a smile meant for Leo only, Leo alone. She wanted him to know that, between the two of them, they’d get out of this with no bloodshed, go on to live another day.

  And then the man blew the wind from her sails.

  He smiled.

  Not a humorless grin. Not a slight curl of his lip. Not a sneer or a snarl, but an ear-to-ear, start-my-heart-beating smile. Yet that wasn’t the worst part. The best part. The worst. Because once he’d released her wrist and she’d made ready to hop up from the chair, he cupped the back of her head.

  And he kissed her.

  Oh, hallelujah, the man could kis
s. He tasted like beer and smoky barbecue and a man aroused, and she was starving. She couldn’t get enough when he teased her mouth with the tip of his tongue, rubbed his lips softly, then roughly, over hers.

  It was a complicated kiss, meant for show and to prove that he was not relinquishing the win. Mentally, she fought back. Physically, she surrendered.

  Desire took full advantage, reaching between her legs to remind her how long it had been, how good it could be. Oh, this wasn’t supposed to happen.

  She silently grimaced and broke the kiss—to cheers and applause and ear-piercing whistles. She pulled back far enough to meet Leo’s gaze.

  His mouth was slightly reddened and still smiling. But his eyes sparkled with fireworks that were less a celebration and more a signal of an incoming salvo.

  Hey, now. She wasn’t the one who’d done all the kissing, much less the one who’d started it. The seduction she’d admit to, and she was willing to be a big girl and swallow her medicine. But she would not take all of the blame.

  She shoved a hand back through her hair and kept her voice low when she said, “I’d say that makes me the winner.”

  Leo chuckled—a sound deep in his chest that rumbled through his muscles, through his bones and into Macy’s body. “The winner? You’re kidding, right?”

  Hmm. That wasn’t what she’d expected. “Why would you think I’m kidding? I got what I wanted, didn’t I? You did smile.”

  “No. You got what I let you have.” His smile had totally vanished. “I got what I wanted.”

  Is that so, Mr. Hotshot, Esquire? “And what was it that you wanted?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Macy’s subtle shift of weight prompted a convincing surge of pressure beneath her thighs. “Yes. It is. Quite obvious, as a matter of fact.”

  Holding his gaze, she waited until the gleam in his own turned smug. She would never let this man have the last word—or the upper hand—again. No matter how strong the physical pull heightening every one of her senses.

  With a pat delivered to the center of his chest, Macy hopped off the hot seat. “Unfortunately, Leo, the obvious isn’t…well, much of a challenge, if you know what I mean. Sorry, but I just don’t think I’m interested.”

  Watching Leo’s startled disbelief fade into grudging respect, Macy turned quickly, lest the moment be spoiled.

  No sense wondering if her fleeting triumph was worth the promise of retribution she’d just seen in his eyes.

  THE FAJITAS WERE HISTORY and the conversation had returned to a low drone by the time Leo Redding recovered. He didn’t think he’d given up such an inappropriate hard-on his entire adult life.

  And Macy Webb wasn’t even his type. His reaction had to be rooted, so to speak, in that very contradiction. She wasn’t what he was used to, so in effect, he was responding to the mystery of the unknown.

  She had this mass of unruly hair, a dark caramel-brown color, streaked to vanilla cream on either side of her face. It was short, hitting her neck between the base of her skull and her shoulders and causing a riot around her heart-shaped face. Last year, when he’d seen her that first time in his office, he’d thought she’d been working on dreadlocks.

  But tonight his fingers had slid through the strands without hitting a single snarl. The entire wild-child look was one-hundred-percent natural. He hadn’t expected that, any more than he’d expected her eyes to be so clear, so golden. So compelling and candidly open.

  Her weight was as substantial as a miniature marshmallow. But the soft press of her bottom had been plenty enough to get a rise out of his, uh, lap. That and the curve of her mouth. She knew how to kiss, how to use her lips. His primitive side had imagined hearing the slide of his zipper, feeling the slide of her tongue.

  If she hadn’t broken his hold when she did, he wasn’t sure he would’ve had the willpower to keep his hand safely in her hair. He’d wanted to explore her body, find out exactly if quality, not quantity, was the myth he believed it to be.

  He upended his Corona and drank. He never should’ve come here tonight. He’d spent the afternoon looking at the neighborhood condos and lofts Anton’s architectural firm, Neville and Storey, had restored and designed. He and Anton had been out longer than either intended and, when Anton suggested they join the gang for fajitas, he’d agreed.

  He should’ve gone home, but his car was parked at Anton’s Galleria office, and the thought of taking a cab, only to reheat Chinese take-out or order fresh once he arrived, held little appeal. He usually didn’t hang with the guys away from the soccer field. But tonight he’d thought, why not?

  Emptying the longneck he’d spent the last ten minutes nursing, Leo leaned back on a tall green pillar half as wide in the center as it was on either end. His vantage point near the kitchen kept him out of the way, but gave him a very clear view of Macy’s goings-on.

  He’d overheard fragments of her post-kiss conversation with Lauren, and apparently his arrival had complicated her plans. He couldn’t say he was overly concerned. But, after hearing that, he’d thought about skipping the rest of the evening.

  He’d even pulled out his phone to dial Yellow Cab until he’d realized exactly how far out of her way Macy was going to avoid him. When he’d brushed up behind her to reach for this beer, she’d stiffened, then scurried off to organize the game that was apparently the purpose of the evening’s get-together.

  Interesting, for a woman not attracted to his…challenge.

  “Don’t sweat it. She always wins, you know.”

  Leo spared Anton a brief glance before returning to his study of Macy. Why was everyone so sure she had won? It wasn’t as if Leo had cried uncle. “She’s done that to you?”

  “Not the smile thing, but, yeah. She convinced me I had a mosquito buzzing around my face. Her deal was that I’d scratch this one spot at the corner of my nose. By the time she was finished, I’d damn near clawed my eyes out.”

  Leo chuckled under his breath. “She does have…something, doesn’t she?”

  Shoving both hands down in his pockets, Anton nodded. “Most of that something never gets noticed until she climbs up into your lap, if you know what I mean.”

  Leo knew exactly. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, it’s been fun, but I’ve got a load of work waiting at the office. I think I’ll get the hell outta here.”

  “Think again. Stick around here and you may get a second chance to give Macy Webb a taste of her own medicine.”

  “Isn’t that what I just did?”

  Anton laughed and leaned one shoulder into the same green pillar. “I wouldn’t go that far. But I gotta say, you’re the first one to shut her up using your own mouth.”

  “Hmm.” A murmur was all Leo could manage without Anton’s comment bringing to mind the taste of Macy’s lips and tongue, the smooth edge of her teeth, the warmth of her body in his lap.

  “Yeah, Lauren was freaking out. I don’t think she’s ever seen Macy kiss anyone quite like that.”

  “Like what?” Leo absently asked, then wished he hadn’t.

  “The woman looked like she wanted to swallow you whole, man.” Anton lifted a brow as the conversation took a turn for the prurient. “And I don’t think she planned to stop with your tongue.”

  “Hmm.” This time Leo’s reticence to respond was rooted in an irritation he had no reason to feel. The kiss had been public; Anton had been a witness. The other man had every right to his curiosity.

  It was Leo’s strange desire to retain his privacy that gave significance to an act that had none.

  None. The kiss had been nothing but part of a game.

  “I gotta say, seeing Macy come unglued like that…” Anton shook his head. “That was some serious shit.”

  Leo’s beer bottle was empty. He needed to make up his mind. Should he stay or go? He glanced toward Macy, watched her expression, the childlike enchantment as she joked with Sydney and Lauren. “She doesn’t look old enough for serious.”

  “I think that’s
a big part of the problem.”

  “Her looks?” Leo frowned. Until tonight, until he’d seen her up close and gotten personal, he would’ve agreed. She’d been just another face, one he’d never noticed because he’d always gone for striking instead of subtle, obvious instead of rare.

  “No, man. Not her looks. Well, yeah. I guess it is her looks.” Anton shrugged off the quandary. “She’s cute and all that, but she doesn’t look like she’s older than eighteen.”

  Leo nodded in agreement and forgave himself the silent lie. After all, he’d just looked into the wild child’s eyes, and what he’d seen was as old as the Garden of Eden, as seductive as the serpent, as ripe as the forbidden fruit.

  He made his decision. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  Not just yet.

  3

  WHILE LAUREN ADJUSTED one row of track lighting to spotlight the loft’s hardwood floor, Macy prepared to distribute the sheets of pink and blue paper she’d printed earlier today.

  Five for the girls, five for the boys. Ten unique lists for her newest gIRL gAMES adventure.

  A scavenger hunt.

  An after-hours, adults-only, you-find-mine-I’ll-find-yours kind of contest.

  Macy was certain she’d never conceived a more brilliant idea. And if all went according to plan, this month’s edition of gIRL gAMES might possibly be the best yet.

  Which would mean more reader feedback. More assignments from Sydney. More input from Lauren on column design.

  Hmm. Hoist with her own petard.

  Well, she couldn’t worry overly much at the moment. Her focus group had to first pull off this game without killing each other. And she had to remember that tumbling Leo Redding was not the point of play.

  It didn’t matter that his hands were the hands of her fantasy. Or that she’d never been more thoroughly kissed. Physical attraction wasn’t the problem. She was still trying to decide if she liked the man. A decision that would have to wait, because it was time to get on with the evening’s main game.

  Careers left all of her crew, herself included, little time to party. Her column, gIRL gAMES, was meant to provide the Web site’s readers with social alternatives to bars and clubs.