"I was starting to wonder if you had even noticed I was shaking my tail at you," she said, stretching her arms over her head. "I kept dangling bait, and you wouldn't take it."
"Is that what you were doing?" His hands landed on her breasts and massaged. "But why were you baiting me?"
"I thought if you and I… well, that I would enjoy it. And I have."
"Then enjoy it again."
Before she could even moan out a yes, Jared had picked her up in his arms and tossed her a little to get a better grip.
"Oh! Well, aren't you the man."
His left hand was under her bottom and his right wrapped around her back, holding her without strain. Lord, she knew she wasn't that light, but he made it look effortless.
"Your man," he said, and rubbed his nose along the side of her face.
The words were spoken lightly, but Candy heard something there that was not her imagination. It was there in Jared's eyes, and in the soft touch of his nose and lips along her cheek.
He sounded as intrigued as she was by their new relationship.
The bedroom wasn't far. Jared laid her down in the middle of the big bed and laced his fingers with hers.
"This time let's take turns being on top. Who should go first?"
Candy thought about getting a good grip on the sheet and really working Jared. She didn't bother to mask her enthusiasm for the idea. "Me."
A second later she thought to add, "Please."
Jared laughed. He rolled over onto his back and reached for her. "Since you asked so nice."
Chapter Eight
They were lying in bed a couple of hours later, Candy safely tucked in the crook of Jared's arm. He stared at the ceiling, yawning in contentment.
"Do you think this is what Harold had in mind?"
Candy stirred a little. "I really don't think so. But you know, we should go back and finish the counseling. Otherwise Harold might find us out."
Jared wasn't exactly shaking in his boots. "So what? As long as we get Chunk o's ad done, then why would he care?"
"It will take five minutes. We'll do it on your PC here at home."
Five minutes? Please. Once they started answering those questions, they'd wind up right back in bed again. "Let's just look at Internet porn instead," he joked.
"Jared!"
She sat up and gave him a stern look. "And by the way, I bared my soul to you about my ex-husband."
"You bared a lot of things." His hand drifted to her behind.
"I'm serious. I told you everything, and you didn't tell me anything. When was the last time you were with a woman?"
He hated these kinds of questions. They were designed purely to get men in trouble with women. Next she'd be asking him if she looked fat.
"Why does it matter? I'm with you now."
The tight press of her lips together showed him that wasn't the answer she had wanted. "I still want to know."
"You were my first time. I was a virgin." He started to grin, then stopped when her face flushed pink. And not from embarrassment.
"See, Candy, this is why I told you I just tell women what they want to hear. Everything I say is wrong." Annoyed, he pulled away from her and put his hands under his head.
"Just tell me what you want me to say and I'll say it."
"What you say is not wrong. I'm sorry." She tried to snuggle back into his arms. "I'm just jealous, that's all."
Jealous was good. As long as it was the mild, healthy kind, not the intense, bunny-boiling kind of jealousy.
"You've got nothing to be jealous of. Most of my relationships have been casual." He relaxed again, enjoying the press of Candy's breasts against his side.
"And Jessie was a mistake. I never should have gotten involved with a coworker, and getting hot and heavy in the office was downright stupid."
The minute the words were out, he realized something about that didn't sound quite right. Candy thought so too, since she stiffened against him.
Before he could babble some kind of apology/explanation, Candy spoke. "You had sex with a coworker in the office?"
The warm bed had suddenly turned Alaskan cold. "No, no, we didn't have sex."
"Sort-of sex?"
"Yes. No! It was just some kissing and you know… groping and stuff." Holy hell, he was making this worse.
She jerked away from him and sat up. "So do you limit yourself to just one office fling per job, or should I look forward to watching you screw your way through Stratford Marketing?"
There was no way to answer that question without finding his nuts jammed in a meat grinder.
But he gave it a shot, wishing he were wearing a protective cup. "I don't have office affairs. It was a five-minute mistake with Jessie, and I don't consider you a fling anyway."
She gasped. "Oh!"
Tears rose in her eyes as she gathered the sheet around her, jumped off the bed, and prepared to flee. Oh my stars. She didn't even rate as a fling, that's how little she meant to Jared.
Trying to rationalize her way out of a broken heart, she told herself that she'd gotten what she had wanted. A night of passion that had proved there was nothing wrong with her. She was just as capable of multiple orgasms as the next girl.
But somehow that didn't make her feel any better.
Jared said, "Where are you going? I'm trying to tell you how I feel."
"I don't care." She jerked back as he stepped in front of her, blocking the bedroom door.
He was big, imposing. Naked.
"You're not going anywhere until you hear what I have to say."
"I do not want to hear you describe to me what a great one-night stand I was. Thanks, but no thanks." She'd crawl between his legs to get out if she had to.
Astonishment crossed his face. "Is that what you think I'm going to say?"
Brushing tears away, she struggled for composure. If he sent her bawling, she'd never forgive him. "Well, you just told me I don't qualify as a fling, so I guess that makes me a one-night stand."
His jaw snapped shut. He reached for her. Candy sidestepped away from his touch.
"Oh, babe. That's not what I meant. I meant you're more than a fling. You're important to me. You're my future. I… I think I could fall in love with you."
Good gravy. Why didn't he just say so in the first place?
Candy said, "Oh."
Followed by a sniffly, "Really? Are you sure?"
"Yeah. I want us to be together if that's what you want."
This time when he reached for her, she let him wrap his arms around her and squeeze. She laid her head on his chest and sighed. "That's what I want, because I think I could fall in love with you too."
"I've never cared about a woman the way I care about you. I'll try not to screw this up, Candy."
She looked up into his sincere dark eyes. "I don't think we'll screw this up. We'll just take it slow."
"And if there's ever a problem, we can always go back for more online intimacy counseling." She gave him a grin.
Jared had a vision of Candy spread across the desk in his home office, while he counseled her intimately. He dropped back and tugged her hand.
"I think we should go do it now. Proactive counseling, before there's a problem." All it took was a little yank with one finger and her sheet plunged to the carpet.
"Oh, you think so?"
"I do." He nodded down the hall. "The computer's right this way. It will help us to get to know each other really well."
There were still a few spots on her he hadn't explored with his tongue.
Candy smiled, that full, open-mouth smile that he loved so much. "I want to know everything about you. We only got to question eleven before."
He tried to look sincere. "Babe, you can ask me anything, or touch anything that you'd like."
She laughed. "How generous of you."
He had her moving down the hall with him. Almost there. "I hope you weren't planning on going to bed early tonight."
"No. Why?"
&n
bsp; He paused in the doorway of his home office, glad he had furnished it with a wide couch. "Because we're not leaving this room until all the questions have been answered to my satisfaction."
Her eyes went wide with lust. "If I answer the questions slowly and thoroughly, will you give me a certificate of completion when we're done?"
He'd give her more than that.
As he leaned forward to kiss her, he said, "Oh, yeah. Signed and notarized."
A sassy grin crossed her face as she put her fingers on his lips to stop him from kissing her. "Do I have to do all the videos and romance tips too?"
He pictured Candy covered in chocolate sauce while he licked it off her inner thighs. "I insist that you do all the extras, yes."
She dropped her fingers down to his leg and licked his lower lip. "So what are we waiting for?"
Hell if he knew.
Jared scooped her up again while she shrieked in surprise. His arms full of warm and willing woman, he kicked open the door to his office and moved inside.
Now he was going to show her that sex, love, and romance were best when done all at the same time.
Naked.
User Friendly
Chapter One
"I've been hacked!" Halley Connors stared at her computer screen in shock. She prayed she was having some sort of hallucinogenic episode brought on by lack of sex, or from the dangerously high level of caffeine in her bloodstream.
Normally the picture on her website showed her wielding a tray of hors d'oeuvres for her catering business. Today the tray was gone. So was her dress.
"What?" Her assistant, Nora, came up behind her.
Halley couldn't answer. She was sick. No, this picture was sick. She hadn't been this grossed out since walking in on her parents horizontal on the kitchen table when she was sixteen.
"You're naked!" Nora exclaimed.
Very. And that body wasn't even hers. She'd never seen those breasts in her life.
And what was that blob between her legs? She peered closer. It was a cherub with wings, leaning forward and… "Eew! That's disgusting!"
"That's Cupid," Nora said in awe.
"Ohmigod, call Evan." Halley grimaced at the screen and hoped like hell Evan, her webmaster and best friend, would know how to fix this. "We've got to get this off."
Nora hustled off to her desk and started dialing while Halley's shock was replaced by fear. This could ruin her business, send it straight into the catering toilet where many a good company had landed due to the occasional cockroach or salmonella outbreak. Those were inherent risks in the business and well understood.
But this was unfathomable. She was naked with a perverted cherub between her legs. Even one day of an image like this on her website could have disastrous effects on her bottom line. It had to go, and pronto.
"Evan's not answering."
Halley groaned, a mental image running through her head of one of her conservative clients like Mrs. Brockmorten catching a glimpse of this debauchery. A sweat broke out.
"Who else can we call?"
"We have a couple of backup firms we could call, but do you have the passwords to allow access to your site?"
"Passwords?" Was that something she was supposed to know? "Uh… Evan takes care of all that stuff."
And she had been spending as little time as possible with Evan for months, having come to the shocking realization that she wanted his body. Best friends weren't supposed to lust after each other, and he would probably laugh hysterically or blanch in horror if she told him, so she had taken the easy way out.
Total avoidance.
Her naked image grinned at her. She looked really happy with that Cupid down there. She shuddered. Geez, she was going to have to find Evan. Without her knowing the passwords, he was the only one who could restore her catering dignity. Not to mention her clothes.
With that lowering thought, she flipped off her computer with a trembling hand and headed for the door. "If anyone calls about this, explain we've been the victim of a hacker."
"Okay." Nora looked at her wide-eyed, her red hair tumbling around her face. "Where are you going?"
"To Evan's. He's probably sleeping and not answering his phone." Since Evan had starting doing consulting and web de-sign work, he had taken to working in the evenings and sleeping until noon or so.
Which meant he would be sleepy, adorable, and pissed off at her for waking him up. Which was good. If she was fending off angry barbs, she wouldn't be thinking about how perverted she was to be wanting to see him naked.
The mere thought of him without clothes set her nipples standing on end in a double-gun salute. Crossing her arms over her chest, she frowned in annoyance. It should be illegal to react like that when thinking about someone you had known for years, who trusted you not to act like a girl and get delusions of relationship grandeur.
Forcing her mind off Evan and her nipples' reaction to him, she left the office wondering who could have done this to her. She was a really nice person, dammit. She treated her employees well, never succumbed to road rage, and gave mittens to the homeless shelter. It wouldn't qualify her for a halo, but she didn't think she was doing too badly.
Halley didn't see how someone could be so deliberately cruel, and by the time she found herself pounding on Evan's door ten minutes later, she was on the verge of noisy tears. All her years of hard work in the catering business could disappear faster than it took Cupid to shoot his arrow.
Not that she wanted to be reminded of the naughty Cupid between the legs that weren't even hers. But frankly, right now not much could make her forget him.
The door opened.
She forgot Cupid.
Evan Barrett blinked at her, his chocolate eyes heavy with sleep and his caramel hair tousled. He wasn't wearing a shirt, showing off his summer tan and broad shoulders. His hand lazily scratched his chest.
Halley's mouth went dry. Her eyes lowered to his hunter green boxer shorts, which weren't pulled up nearly as far as they could be, revealing that soft tuft of chestnut hair that went down to that fabulous…
Damn. He was gorgeous. And while technically not naked, he was close enough to set her, uh, skin on fire.
"Halley?" He squinted and leaned forward a little, as if the lighting was bad.
God, what was she wearing? She realized she hadn't seen Evan in a few weeks, and she had just stormed over here without even doing a makeup check. Glancing down, she gave a sigh of relief. All right. Khaki Capri pants and an aqua blue tank top. Not the stuff of fantasies, but not cellulite-displaying running shorts either.
Then she concluded her mental inventory by reminding herself that until six months ago when she had lost her mind and starting panting after him, she would have thought nothing of letting Evan see her wearing bulky flannel pajamas and a serious case of bed head.
Little reality check. She could be wearing a toga and it wouldn't be relevant to the situation at hand. Which was her catering-in-the-nude website.
Her anger returned, plus a little irritation just because Evan looked so good. If he wasn't so damn cute, none of these confusing feelings would ever have surfaced and their relationship could have stayed on solid, nonnaked footing.
Evan looked confused. "Am I dreaming?"
"What? No, you're not dreaming." And she knew she wasn't either, because if she were, he would be all over her like a cat on tuna right now.
His eyes raked over her, sharpening as the sleep receded. "Damn, that's weird. This is exactly like the sex dream I've been having lately. I open the door, and you're standing there… only you're usually wearing a bikini and high heels."
Her jaw dropped. Was he serious? A sex dream? About her? Of course he wasn't serious. He was joking, something he did a lot with her. Which was what friends should do. Not lust after each other in secret.
In fact, a lot of his teasing was sexual in nature, but until recently she had never even noticed. But now it had the effect of a furnace turned on full blast. Sweat popped up in unp
leasant places.
She tried to smile and forced a rusty laugh past her lips. "Sounds like a nightmare to me."
He shook his head, a slow sexy smile crossing his face. "Not the way I had it playing out."
Her eyes rolled so far back in her head she practically fell over. It wasn't funny as far as she was concerned. Because she really wanted him to mean it. And he didn't.
"Dreams are often better than reality."
Evan laughed and ruffled the top of her hair like she was his favorite terrier. "I've missed you lately. Where have you been hiding?"
At work, far, far away from him and his lethal grin. Away from Evan, she could pretend her feelings were the result of not having had a date in two years. Standing in front of him, she knew better. She had inexplicably developed the hots for her best friend.
"Business is crazy. You know what this time of year is like." She breezed past him into his apartment.
Evan grinned, pushing his hair out of his eyes as he followed her. "So if you're not here to act out my recurring sex dream, what can I do for you? And just in case you were worried, I don't mind that you woke me up. It wasn't a late night last night, I stayed home alone."
Halley hid a grimace behind her hand, pretending to scratch her lip. Yuck. She hadn't even stopped to think about the fact that Evan might not be answering his phone because he was with someone. Having walked in on that twice in the past, she was glad she had been spared that kind of vomit-inducing scene today.
Not that she had seen Evan with a woman lately. In fact, it had been months since he had mentioned dating anyone. What a shame. It was wrong to be thrilled at that thought, but there it was.
"I wasn't worried about it," she shrugged. "Because I had to see you."
"Missed me, huh?" he teased.
If he only knew. She whirled around to face him, hands on hips.
"I've been hacked," she said in an outraged voice. "Can you believe it?"
The corner of Evan's mouth pulled up. "That sounds like a personal problem to me, sweet stuff."
The amusement in his voice didn't bother her nearly as much as the silly nickname he used, with no idea whatsoever what it did to her. He'd been calling her that for almost ten years, and now unexplainably, it had the effect of a blowtorch between her thighs.
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