On the Edge

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  The women in the spa began bouncing in the churning water, as if they were in a water aerobics class.

  “So if I was paying you to be my relationship counselor, you’d want me to put my body on display? Improvement in my sex life corresponds to how much skin I show? Dooley would be so proud.” Maddy rested a hand on her camera, longing to turn it on and capture the anger hovering on Blue’s brow. “The Rules of Attraction aren’t about the external. They’re about the heart. You have no clue, do you?”

  Blue groaned. “I should have seen it earlier. You’re one of those.”

  “One of those?” Maddy’s cheeks felt hot. Those who were repressed? Those who didn’t turn Blue on? Those –

  “Women who bought into the Rules of Attraction. Women who use my father’s principles to attempt an orgasm orchestrated by some scam artist with a fake accent. Not that I’m specifically referring to Senge.” He grinned, letting her know he was referring to Senge. “Sex isn’t about relationships and freedom. It’s about being greedy and taking what you want. Tomorrow what you want and who you want it with may be different, and that’s okay. But covering up…” And here Blue gestured once more below his collarbone. “That’s not going to get you any freedom.”

  He was maddening, so hot even when he was being annoying. And all his talk about sexual repression and freedom and being greedy only made her want to be greedy with him.

  “I am not repressed. I am not…Oh, hell.” She grabbed onto Blue and kissed him.

  Her lips were tense. Her tongue was tense. Her mind was tense. The kiss took repression to an awkward, modern art form.

  What was she doing? There was more at stake here than proving she had a sex drive.

  Maddy pushed Blue away. “Damn it, that was stupid. I don’t know what came over me.”

  Bad kissing karma, that’s what. She was like some form of playboy kryptonite.

  “Jesus, it was just like Senge said. We’re incompatible. That’s so weird.” His gaze categorized her faults, from her tennis shoes to her covered cleavage. “It must be you.”

  It was maddening, the way he annoyed her and made her want him at the same time. But it was better to realize he was all-show-and-no-go to her libido now before she did something stupid, like peel off her clothes and spread her legs.

  Blue held out a hand in invitation. “That can’t be right. Let’s try again.”

  Hell, yes.

  God, no.

  When she didn’t budge, he took a step toward her. “In the name of science. In the name of proving Senge wrong.”

  Maddy rolled her eyes. “I don’t care about Senge’s opinion – ”

  But Blue cared, and he kissed her.

  This time it wasn’t a surprise invasion. This time they were both ready. His tongue coaxed. His lips enticed. His hands molded her body to his.

  Subtly, something in her body shifted, heat sparked in her veins, promising fire. For a moment, Maddy luxuriated in the feeling, because – let’s face it – she’d never been with a guy with so many notches on his belt. She’d never been kissed like this. Like the man was hungry and she was a five star buffet. It made her light headed. It made her giggle.

  “I must be losing my touch,” Blue murmured against her lips.

  Reluctantly, Maddy edged free. No sense in telling Blue he hadn’t lost anything. “I think we just proved everything Senge said was true.”

  Blue’s brows furrowed.

  The kitchen door slammed open. Senge burst in. “You have destroyed my energies. I must go.”

  Blue side-stepped, blocking the sex guru’s escape. “Tell me you freed those women.”

  “It is impossible. They want you. They desire you. Stupid when what they could have is so much richer and deeper.” Senge looked at Maddy with unnerving intensity. “If you follow me now, I will show you the deep spiritual pleasure you seek.”

  “Get out.” Blue stepped between them before Maddy could draw a breath to retort.

  Senge shrugged. “She will realize she needs me soon enough.” And then he left, sandals slapping marble.

  Maddy had no need of Senge. That kiss of Blue’s would keep her imagination humming along with her vibrator for weeks.

  “Blackie! Blackie!” Winnie called. “We need you outside. Now.”

  The women huddled in the spa, faces turned to the kitchen, all except the blonde.

  Eyes wild, Blue grabbed Maddy’s shoulders. “Do you know what a Freedom Transformation is beyond an orgasm? Because I don’t.”

  She wasn’t surprised that he didn’t know. What surprised her was that he’d admitted it. Maddy opened her mouth to tell him how the exercise flowed, and then decided she couldn’t so easily give up her only bargaining chip. “I’ll walk you through it if I can film.”

  “Shit. I promised myself I’d never do this.” He closed his eyes tight, like a little boy who was scared of monsters beneath his bed. “Earlier you said…Tell me something that happened tonight was real, before I go out there and prostitute myself. Tell me you felt the earth move when we kissed.”

  “I…” She wanted to deny it, but then he opened his eyes and the vulnerability was there. “Yes.” And then firmer. “Yes.”

  “Thank, God.” Blue’s grip on her slackened. He took a breath, released her, and headed toward the door. Then stopped, pinning her with the hard gaze of the Blue she was used to. “Am I going to get arrested for this?”

  The women were chanting his name.

  Maddy grabbed her camera. “On one end of the spectrum you’ve got hookers – definitely illegal. In the middle there’s phone sex – not illegal in most states. And on the other end, there’s you and Senge, delivering release in the name of self-discovery. I think you’re safe.”

  “I hate my father.” His control slipped. His Adams apple bobbed. “Don’t turn on the camera.”

  “Like hell I won’t. You know you can’t do this without me.”

  He shook his head. “I’m serious. It’s porn.”

  “Uh, no. I’ve filmed porn. This wouldn’t even get you on HBO.”

  “Blackie!” Winnie again.

  Blue’s eyes looked haunted. “I can’t do it.”

  Career goals battled empathy. But filming the transformation would be a coup, regardless of how uncomfortable it would make Blue. Clearly, a little reverse psychology was called for. “You’re right. It takes cajones to pull this off. Your dad had them, and you don’t. It’s why you’re in trouble with the Avengers. You avoid confrontation. You avoid messy emotions. You avoid life.”

  His jaw clenched. “You’re saying I can’t do it.”

  “No. I’m saying you won’t. Big difference.” Take the bait, Blue.

  His gaze narrowed. “How do I know you know what you’re doing?”

  “One of my earliest jobs was working on a porn project. It’s where I picked up the Freedom Transformation DVD – meant for in-person coaching clients only.” He’d freak even more if she told him his dad’s client was a porn superstar, greatly helped by the Freedom Transformation. Maddy put a hand on his arm. “Relax, will you? I met eight women yesterday who thought you were a rock star in bed. You want me to believe you can’t talk these women into the Big O when they’ve got jets aimed at their ju-ju?”

  “This is different.”

  “It’s not. I’m sure you’ve had phone sex before. Draw on that.”

  Something dark and dangerous sparked in his eyes. “If I free these women, you owe me the chance to give you a Freedom Transformation of your own.”

  Telling herself the excited pound of her pulse was only due to what she was about to film, Maddy gestured toward the door. “Gotta cook the pudding first, lover boy.”

  “It’s a date.” He spun away, grinning.

  “It’s not a date,” Maddy grumbled, but she was smiling.

  “Blackie, oh, good. Here you are. Ladies, we have the privilege of being filmed tonight for the Dooley Foundation. Is everyone in agreement that we’re doing this for the sake of the
science of the mind?” Winnie didn’t wait for a response. She lowered her curvy self down, until only her head and silver turban bobbed above the water. “Senge was a blowhard, but now we have the real thing.”

  Blue doubted he was the real thing, but he was a man with a goal – get Maddy in bed. And to do that, he needed to talk these women to orgasm.

  His clients each turned to face the side of the spa, each jet bubbling up between their legs and presumably hitting them in their nether regions. The blonde still faced away from Blue.

  “Breathe in.” Winnie instructed. “And out. Again. In. And out. You may begin now, Blackie.”

  Blue glanced at Maddy, just a few feet away. She watched him through the camera with an oh-no-he-can’t expression.

  “On a path to discovery,” she said. “This is going to be good.”

  Discovery. It was a rule that Blue paid little attention to when he’d been poking around his father’s books and DVDs. And he’d never seen a Freedom Transformation DVD, had never known one existed.

  He turned back to the women, who were breathing deeply, eyes half closed, bodies rocking up and down. He’d brought plenty of women to orgasm, just not so many at one time, as if he was leading an orchestra. He’d much prefer to play Maddy solo. She was infuriating, with her subtle sexuality and snappy wit.

  “Blackie,” Winnie chastised. “We’re ready.”

  Air left Blue’s lungs in a whoosh. How was he going to begin?

  Bluff. Phone sex.

  He drew a blank.

  “What would you like to discover?” Maddy murmured near his shoulder. They were far enough back from the spa that the rumble of the jets covered anything she said and the shadows of the night masked her face.

  A vague memory rushed back of his father speaking to a small group of women lounging in his hot tub. Blue had been trying to sneak in past curfew, and was forced to wait in the side yard until his father’s guests went home, apparently transformed.

  The camera made him nervous, but then Blue realized that this was essentially Maddy’s home movie. Why not give her something to make her think? About sex. With him.

  “Ladies, what would you like to discover tonight?” He pitched his voice deeply across the water, belatedly wondering again about the identity of the younger woman in the spa. “It’s in your power to achieve anything you want.”

  “Anything,” Winnie echoed. “God, yes.”

  How had the rest of his dad’s spiel gone? Oh, yeah. “Focus on the feeling we’re searching for tonight, focus on one point in your body. All your good tension goes to that part of your body.”

  “Feel the push and pull of attraction,” Maddy prompted.

  She’d gotten his father’s DVD on the set of a porno. She’d filmed porn. He was hard just imagining her watching strangers get it on.

  “Feel the push and pull of attraction, ladies.” And then Blue improvised. “Feeling is about taking. I give you permission to take whatever the water has to give. To let go.” Was this how Senge made his living? Suddenly Blue didn’t want the camera on. He half turned to Maddy. “Shut that off.”

  “Not on your life,” Maddy whispered back. “This is Emmy material.”

  “Blackie! I’ll double your monthly retainer if you can set Eleanor free.”

  “Me, too,” Mary piped up.

  Nine months. One hundred thousand dollars. One tenth of the sales quota he needed to meet to earn his inheritance. A man had to take what he could get when he could get it.

  Maddy angled the camera lens toward him.

  Without waiting for her to prompt him, Blue stepped into the light around the spa. “All right, ladies. Time to free your mind and get serious. The water is your lover…Your lover is at your command, obeying your will, freeing up twisted chakras.” Thank you for the vocabulary, Senge. “His caress is encompassing, and yet it is that one sensitive nub where his caress is most firm.”

  Yes, it was cheesy. If this was going to become a regular offering, he needed to read some romance novels for inspiration.

  The bobbing seemed to have settled into a regular rhythm in the water. The moaning built.

  Blue half turned away from the women so he could see Maddy. She’d moved to the edge of the shadows. He directed his words to her. Made love to Maddy with his voice. “Your hands guide your lover’s lips to the pulse point beneath your ear. He nips. He tastes.” How he wanted to taste Maddy. “Your hands guide your lover lower to the sensitive flesh at your breasts. He pinches and rolls your tips into tight buds.”

  Maddy shifted her weight, shifted her grip on her camera. He was turning her on.

  She wasn’t like the women he usually dated. She was softer, more giving, more accepting. More authentic. She didn’t wear a brand of shoes because they were in fashion. Or go to a certain restaurant because she wanted to be seen.

  He wanted to know what obligations made her worry. He wanted to know what she’d put up as collateral at the pawn shop for her camera.

  He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted her to beg him to kiss her again. He wanted to sink into her and feel that he was authentic, no longer a man bluffing his way through a job at his father’s company.

  He picked up the pace. “And yet your lover is always touching you in a more important place. Lower…Steady…Urgent…Insistent. He’s at the threshold of sliding inside…but not yet...Not yet…Not until you’re ready.”

  The spa’s water churned, mixing with the moans of its occupants. On and on, Blue made verbal love to Maddy, talking as if his hands were on her body, his lips on her skin, his rhythm urging her closer to release.

  The women in the spa rode in the wake of his seduction, giving him an odd sense of power, filling him with an even odder sense of commitment. These were his women and he wouldn’t let Senge belittle their sexual power.

  “Feel the stroke of your lover…Feel his breath in your ear, telling you now…Now! Reach for it. Breathe through the tension. Tighten…Clench…Climax…Now!”

  One by one the women collapsed in the spa, even the blonde who wouldn’t show her face.

  Grinning, Blue stepped closer to Maddy, wanting to kiss her to completion.

  “Cramp,” Mary moaned.

  And then they all dissolved into laughter. The women gravitated toward the center of the spa, hugging each other.

  Maddy remained in the shadows, clutching her camera instead of him.

  “I told you it would work if we just got the right man.” Winnie rose out of the water with a confident shimmy. “I feel so alive.”

  And then the blonde turned her head.

  It was Jack Gordon’s wife.

  Chapter 18

  Maddy had very nearly orgasmed without so much as a touch from Blue or a water jet. The man had a dangerous power. And despite him freeing Winnie and her friends, Maddy knew he’d been directing his sexual power toward her.

  Maddy needed to go home and use her shower nozzle or her vibrator. Alone.

  And yet a part of her kept whispering: remind him of his promise.

  She was owed a Freedom Transformation. A one-on-one, personal session with a sex god.

  She shouldn’t collect. She wouldn’t collect.

  But she hadn’t left Winnie’s kitchen.

  Winnie had switched out her body hugging robe for a thick terry cloth one, but retained her silver turban. “He was phenomenal. Could you feel him through the lens?”

  “Uh, yes.” An understatement. His voice. So intimate. As if he’d been seducing her in the privacy of a bedroom, not some movie star’s backyard from ten feet away.

  “He’s just like his father.” Winnie ran her hands down her rib cage. “When Dooley coached me, I felt as if any dream was within reach.”

  Her comment, so like the Avengers’, gave Maddy pause. What was it about Blue that made his lovers feel invincible?

  Winnie pirouetted. “I’ve waited months for Blackie to come around. It was worth the wait.”

  A diminutive, ancient woman with lim
p blue hair tugged on Maddy’s shirt sleeve. “Can I see what you filmed?”

  “I’m sorry. I just put the camera away.”

  “I haven’t let go like that since 1992 when Norman Plessman and I were in the same rehab hospital.” She leaned conspiratorially close. “He’d fallen, but he could still get up.”

  Winnie glowed. “I told you Norman wasn’t your last, Mama.”

  “I sure would appreciate a gander at myself,” said the other blue haired woman. “Hard to believe we came without a man’s touch. Maybe I do need one of those vibrators. Where’d Blackie go? I’ll ask him what he recommends.”

  Blue was nowhere in sight. Neither was the slender blonde. Maddy didn’t want to leave before talking to him – not to ask for what she was owed, but to tell him nice job.

  “Can we see?” Winnie smiled. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen myself on camera.”

  Maddy gave in. “I’m not sure you can make it out on the playback screen. It’s only a few inches wide.”

  “You can hook it up to my kitchen TV.” Winnie gestured to a flat screen mounted on the far wall.

  “Let me get my bifocals,” Winnie’s mother said.

  A few minutes later the three women were seated on bar stools, drinking wine and cheering themselves on.

  “Look at that!” Winnie’s laugh was husky. “You got some moves, Eleanor.”

  “Winnie has too much air time,” Eleanor said. “Next time I want to be in front.”

  “Can I have a copy?” Mary put a delicate hand over Maddy’s. “I want to show the ladies at the actor’s home how it’s done.”

  Eleanor grinned. “My granddaughter knows how to post it to YouTube.”

  Maddy wished she could film their glowing faces. This was the power of the Rules of Attraction. This was Dooley’s legacy brought to life. These women were more alive than most celebrities a third their age.

  Maddy wished Blue were there to hear their praise. She left the women to replay the video and wandered around the house looking for him. She shouldn’t have been surprised to find him outside with the blonde, who was just his type.