Twenty Times Tempted: A Sexy Contemporary Romance Collection

by Petrova, Em

  When Dominic leaned in too close and she moved a corresponding few inches away, she heard a commotion at the door, signaling what she hoped was the arrival of the rest of the crew so she could get on with this thing. She smiled and sipped her beer, feeling more than a little out of place, kind of like a new zoo exhibit.

  “Antony, come on over here honey. I’ve got someone I want you to meet.”

  Dominic had kept flirting, paying her the sort of empty compliments she’d stopped listening to long ago, so she was grateful for the opportunity to break away from him. As she got to her feet, Margot spotted two men standing side-by-side, one was average height with light brown hair and seriously tempting boy-next-door good looks, complete with that male Love chin dimple. The other one ….

  She stopped, sensing her brain shutting down, not letting her do the usual quick, first impression cataloging.

  “Margot.” Lindsay’s voice broke through the fog that was slowly gathering, filling in all the empty spaces she’d recently developed, leaving her alone in the entire universe with nothing but the tall, unbelievably handsome man currently glaring at her as if she’d just run over his favorite dog. “This is my son, Antony.”

  His dark brows furrowed as he looked at his mother, then at her. The fog kept rolling in, clouding her thoughts and sending the most explicitly erotic visions skittering across her consciousness, she stumbled backwards. He—Antony—grabbed her elbow, steadying her and the single point of contact of his skin against hers made it a thousand times worse.

  I have to get out of here. This won’t work. I can’t help this man. Not the way I want to. He’s…

  “Oh, hey Rosie, come on over here and meet my new friend Margot,” Lindsay said, the sounds still fuzzy in Margot’s muddled mind. “Margot, this is Rosalee Norris, Antony’s girlfriend.”

  Margot gulped and forced herself to stop staring at Antony, willing herself out and away from this situation. “Hey there,” Rosalee said, holding out her hand to shake. Margot stared at it and then up into Rosalee’s pretty face. “Nice to meet you,” the woman continued, elbowing Antony who stood frozen by her side, seemingly fixated on Margot in a way that he probably didn’t understand.

  But Margot did, all too well. The very air between them crackled as if they’d dragged their feet across the carpet and then touched hands.

  Yeah. She knew what this meant. It meant she had to tell Antony’s mother that she couldn’t help him.

  “Hi, sorry,” Antony said, his voice croaky as if he had a cold. As he cleared his throat and licked his full lips, his eyes darkened. In that split second Margot made a decision that she sincerely hoped she would not regret.

  Chapter Three

  The dark room pressed against Margot’s skin, filling every sense she possessed with its gloomy, slightly musty-smelling omnipresence. She hated it but given the alternative, she’d have to take it. She put both her hands on the desk’s cool, wood surface in front of her and took long, deep breaths. It took everything she had not to let the threatening tears spill down her cheeks. But that would be too close to admitting weakness. And that was something she couldn’t do, not now.

  Not anymore.

  She had something she needed to prove today, to a man she had become unhealthily obsessed with, ever since laying eyes on him sitting next to his girlfriend—now his fiancée, she corrected herself with a grimace. Cursing, she balled her hands into fists and then released them with a long exhale.

  The candlelight flickered when her breath hit it, sending the long shadows thrown by the heavy furniture in her office dancing across the walls. The smell of wax sent a jolt of longing from her buzzy brain to the tips of her stiletto-encased toes. Her leg twitched. She forced it to still.

  Long, deep, cleansing, yoga breaths, she said to herself as she tried to take her own advice, only to find herself choking on them as her pulse raced at the sight of the time on her old fashioned grandfather clock. After failing in her attempt to drop into a semi meditative state to pray, she sighed and slumped down into her seat.

  “You’re a faker,” her ex-husband had said as he threw his clothes into one of the just-unpacked suitcases. “You wouldn’t know a real relationship if it stepped on you. You’re too busy analyzing every damn thing, always seeking weaknesses you can exploit.”

  Bastard.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, making dots shimmer behind her lids and forcing away memories of him—the man who’d been her willing submissive for five years—all in the name of research of course until he went and found some stupid, jock girlfriend and negated their marriage vows with one insertion of his stupid, cheating dick. She’d told him to his face that he’d been posing for her for years anyway—that she didn’t give a shit who he fucked or how once he’d just broken the news that he didn’t need her bonds, her candle wax, her blindfolds or cuffs to get off anymore.

  She had freed him, he declared. She made him feel like a real man and not a non-stop psycho-sexual science experiment. Not Margot, his Mistress, his wife, but…

  She.

  But Margot did care.

  Very much so.

  So much so she’d had to dismiss her remaining clients and check herself into a rehab clinic for a month to dry out. Turns out that a steady diet of red wine and Xanax did not really lend itself to ‘emotional healing.’ Something she’d stated more or less verbatim to countless victims. Because victims were what they had all been. She’d had no business counseling anyone who’d suffered real loss because she’d never suffered one—until the moment her tall, handsome, athletic, sexy, submissive spouse had looked her in the face and said “I don’t love you anymore. And my girlfriend is pregnant.”

  “Fucker.” She winced and glanced upwards. “Sorry,” she muttered as she clasped her now trembling hands in her lap, noting how pale her knees looked in the candlelight and coming within a split second of grabbing her phone and canceling her first session with one mysterious, brooding, suffering and needy Antony Love. The meeting with his daughter AliceLynn had been, in a word, frustrating. In three: frustrating beyond belief. Margot gave a brief thought to the fact that she may very well not have it anymore.

  But she knew what her problem was, and he was due at her doorway any second now.

  “You are pathetic,” she whispered, pressing a hand to her aching forehead. She stomped over to the closet and yanked it open, observing herself in the full-length mirror. In heels she towered at nearly six foot three, the perfect height for looking Mr. Love straight in his chocolate brown eyes. She wore her thick, blonde hair down, tumbling around her shoulders. The simple, cream, silk camisole brought out the light brown hue of her summer-tanned skin. The black leather skirt hit her at mid-thigh, highlighting the legs she worked hard to make highlight-able.

  “You’re just doing this because he reminds you of Gavin you know.” She spoke directly into her lightly made-up face. “Oh, God,” she whispered, still staring in the mirror. “Dear God, give me the strength to help this man. And to not fall for him like I did for Gavin—that shit-eating, limp-dicked, useless fucker of an ex-husband. Pardon my language. Amen.”

  She whirled from the vision of herself, irrationally furious at Antony for putting her in this position.

  Antony Ian Love—she wished she’d never crashed her cart into Lindsay’s at that damn grocery store now. This was crazy. This was a Bad Plan capital ‘B’ and ‘P.’ She flopped onto the couch near her bookshelf and kicked her heels off, wishing she had a bottle of wine, or a dozen beers.

  The day Gavin Hamilton had walked his hot self into the psychology grad office, clutching the flier she’d posted that morning asking for ‘study participants’ for her doctoral thesis, she’d looked up and nearly choked on her own spit at the sight of his masculine perfection. He’d filled out her first level of privacy forms, then the second, and then, when she’d handed him the Level Three Clearance form, he’d brushed her hand with his fingers, nearly making her fall to the floor.

  “Uh, I d
on’t think this is a good fit for you,” she’d said, jumping away from him.

  “Oh, I think it’s a perfect fit actually,” he’d claimed with a grin.

  Three years later she had her PhD and had explored pretty much every aspect of the BDSM lifestyle with Gavin, while observing six other couples in varying degrees of Dom and sub, Master and slave. The day of her graduation Gavin had gone down on one knee at the foot of the stage she was exiting with her degree and had asked her to marry him, to the delight of the huge crowd.

  She should have gone with her gut and said ‘No, thanks.’ But she’d been caught up, believing herself above it all. Then somewhere along the way she’d fallen deeply for him. Probably right about the same time he’d started fucking Kelly, the stupid soccer coach.

  She got up and flipped on both lamps, dispelling the gloom and the atmosphere she’d thought to create. It wasn’t a good idea coming at Antony full bore. What did she honestly hope to accomplish, other than to entertain a sick fantasy of reclaiming her ‘power’ over a man like him?

  No. He didn’t deserve to be manipulated.

  She grabbed the shoes she’d kicked off and tossed them into the closet, sticking her bare arms into a sweater as she blew the candles out and waved her hands, hoping to dispel the obvious scent. The last thing either of them needed was unnecessary tension.

  Antony’s mother had hired her to help him transition into a more mature relationship with his teenage daughter. Not to cure him of all his issues via the sort of fetish that she sensed he required—since at that first meeting it had been as if he’d worn a sign that flashed neon ‘Please top me Margot!’

  She groaned and dropped into her desk chair, buttoning the sweater and sliding her feet into the practical, clunky but comfortable shoes she kept under the desk. By the time the light knock on the door sounded, she was ready.

  “Come on in,” she called a little too loudly, trying to decide if she should stand, sit, or what. She went with sit. Clearing her throat, she said, “Antony? That you?”

  The familiar creak of the door’s hinges made her heart race. Even as she met Antony’s gaze she knew she’d never be able to carry through with it. He was too tempting, and the raw need that fairly shimmered in the air over his head caused sweat to pool in her armpits and her knees to shimmy under the desk. He stood, looking pissed off with his hands tucked in his jeans pockets, glaring at her.

  “Well, I’m here. Now what?”

  She gulped and got to her feet, noting the way he blinked and how his nostrils flared. He lifted his chin and squared his impossibly broad shoulders as if realizing that the something between them demanded that he ignore it.

  Good for you, she thought. At least one of us is going to be strong in the face of this thing.

  “Have a seat,” she said in her softest therapy voice. “Now, we talk.”

  “I don’t wanna talk, least of all with you.”

  “Well, your mother paid me in advance for four sessions and I am not cheap. So I suggest you park the stubborn at the door and join me in here, at least for a bit. I won’t…” she paused, mentally smacking herself, “bite.”

  A smile teased the corners of his full lips, and then retreated into a scowl. “Whatever,” he grunted then flopped into one of the large leather chairs on the other side of her desk. “Waste of my parents’ money, I assure you.” He crossed his arms, looking for all the world like a recalcitrant three-year-old.

  She smiled, and then as she realized she was still standing and gawking at him, sat down fast. After fiddling with a few papers, she leaned forward, her fingers threaded together on the desk in front of her. “So, tell me about Crystal.”

  Antony snorted and looked up at the office ceiling. “No. I don’t want to talk about her.”

  “Okay, tell me about AliceLynn.”

  “No.”

  “Well then, tell me about your business.”

  “My…what?”

  “Your business. The garage. How did you get that started?”

  “You aren’t gonna trick me into talking about my dead wife or my teenaged daughter.”

  She spread her hands out, thinking that perhaps this was going to be more difficult than what she’d bargained for, and smiled at him. His matching grin lit up the room, making her grit her teeth to keep from leaping across the desk and pinning him to the couch, blindfolding him and doing exactly the thing that he probably had no idea he needed.

  He was a hot mess.

  Problem was: She had a weakness for hot mess men. Frankly, they were catnip to her.

  And look how that turned out for you, Margot. Stop it. Talk to him, listen, nod your head, take his mother’s money, and send him on his grumpy, emotionally constipated way.

  He sighed again, dropped his gaze to hers and his jaw softened ever so softly.

  “This is…kinda weird.” His low, gravelly voice went straight to her heart.

  “You have no idea how much,” she said, standing again and moving around the large desk while he watched, as if he’d expected her to do that very thing.

  Chapter Four

  Antony stared into the depths of his third, or maybe fourth, cup of coffee. The early tendrils of dawn light had only just reached the edges of the woods bordering his property but his brain had forced him up and out of bed hours before. He sipped, cursing his life for the millionth time that morning. It was his usual wake-up routine but today it seemed tinged with something fresh and new—something he didn’t want, but that held an edge of promise his lizard brain had latched onto and held tight.

  He sighed and pondered a quick trip back to his bedroom, figuring that jacking off for the third time in a twelve-hour period might work.

  But then again, it might not.

  Damn woman. Damn stupid too-short skirt and too-long legs. Damn blue eyes and full lipped smile and her hands…and voice.

  He shuddered, glaring down at the fresh tent in his shorts.

  It wasn’t as if anything actually happened. She’d moseyed around to the side of her desk and leaned there, giving him a full view of her perfectly long legs ending in those frigging frumpy, stupid, clunky shoes and he’d relaxed for the first time in what felt like years. The realization of that had left him teetering on the edge of something familiar.

  “Tell me about your mama,” she’d said.

  He’d gotten to his feet, fury and a scary rush of lust pinging his nerve endings. “I’m not tellin’ you anything. I’m leaving. Thanks anyway.”

  He’d stood there a solid minute, listening to his heart beat and contemplating his options. The woman threw the sort of sexual vibe he’d once loved—the sort that had drawn him to Crystal. But something about Margot Hamilton was so very, very different from Crystal that he’d had no answer for it so he’d turned around, walked out the door, gotten into his car and driven straight to Rosie’s house.

  Rosie, the woman he’d been with for all intents and purposes since her Marine husband, and Antony’s best friend Paul had been obliterated by a bomb in some God-forsaken desert. He’d helped when her son Jeffrey was born, and ever since had propped her up in all the ways he knew how. They hadn’t been physically intimate however, until recently. And that had sent him over the edge, or brought him back from one, he wasn’t quite sure which it was.

  Once in her driveway he hadn’t gone inside. Instead, he’d jammed the truck into reverse and headed home, his head a muddled mess and his body so revved it actually hurt. Throwing himself into mucking out the horse’s stalls, he’d avoided thinking about anything for an hour or so. By the time he’d done everything possible in the barn and the yard, he’d had no choice but to sit, sweaty and filthy, sipping a beer and wishing he could just get drunk enough to pass out.

  The arrival of his youngest brother, Aiden, at the house meant he had an excuse to take out some of his frustration by being a dickhead for a while. To his credit, Aiden had taken it for a few minutes, and then had stomped out, declaring he needed to do some “apartment hu
nting.”

  “No, don’t … go,” Antony had whispered, but Aiden was already gone, squealing out onto the street behind the wheel of Antony’s truck. And honestly, he didn’t blame the kid. He’d run off from his own self, if that had been possible.

  Antony returned to his present reality, staring down at the empty cup, and then out into the yard his dead wife had maintained so lovingly and carefully for the few brief years they’d been allowed by fate or the Almighty to have together. He’d let her many flower gardens get overgrown years ago, leaving them that way as if in a big old ‘up yours’ to the universe.

  Lame, he thought as he got slowly to his feet and stretched, noting that for the first time in as long as he could remember he didn’t feel antsy or irritated. Getting laid must be helping. His phone buzzed across the table and he grinned at the sight of a text message from Rosie:

  Hey. You ok? Thought I saw your truck in the drive last night but Jeff was being a pain and when I looked again, it was gone.

  He replied quickly, already formulating how he would spend his day—reviving Crystal’s flower gardens. Yeah. Sorry. Had to do some thinking after the first therapy session. Thought some quality time with you would help but decided I wouldn’t subject you to me.

  You’re allowed to subject you to me anytime.

  Thanks. Gonna do some work outside. Dinner tonight?

  Yes. Aiden working in the garage today?

  Antony stopped, confused for a split second by her question. His face heated up and a strange sort of irrational jealousy spiked in his brain. He shook his head to clear it. He and Rosie were engaged now. There was no more reason to stress over his brother muscling in on the woman—if there ever had been.

  Yeah. He replied finally. He’s the man in charge over there today. Hope I don’t regret it.

  He waited, but she never responded to that so he shoved aside the lingering, illogical anxiety over her question about his youngest brother, cooked and ate some eggs without really tasting them and then headed outdoors, determined to dispel a bit of his near-constant list of things to worry about with a few hours of honest yard work. It took exactly three and a half hours to clear all the various flower beds and Crystal’s vegetable garden. That brought him up to noon, sweat-soaked and filled with the kind of pride in accomplishment he hadn’t experienced in years.