After Hours

by Jodi Lynn Copeland

  “What do you find attractive in a man?”

  “A pulse.” Tawny gasped at her automatic response. She hadn’t been expecting the question, let alone to have an answer for it.

  “Excuse me?”

  No, by all means, excuse her enormously huge mouth. “Impulse,” she improvised. “You know, like, spontaneity.”

  Blowing out a breath, he ran a hand through his hair and sank back on the sofa. “Uh, yeah, I’m not very impulsive.”

  Covered in gray slacks that looked more appropriate for his grandfather, Andrew stretched out his legs. It had to be a universal male position, because every guy Tawny had ever known sat that way at some point in time. Even the geeks.

  She really had to stop thinking of Andrew that way. Not all IT guys were geeks, even if this one did happen to have the fashion sense God gave a goat.

  Fashion could wait for another day. Tonight was about the basics and brevity, which was why she hadn’t offered him a drink. He’d be out of there before he could even realize he might be thirsty. “Don’t worry if you’re not naturally impulsive. It’s pretty easy to learn, or at least fake.”

  “Okay, so what else?”

  “A nice body never hurts.” Unlike her mouth. The damned thing appeared to be set on high tonight. Clearly a guy like Andrew didn’t have a nice body hidden behind his burgundy cardigan and seventies slacks.

  He straightened and nodded. “I think I’m okay there. I’ve been working out.”

  “Running?”

  “I generally do a mile or two after the weights.”

  Chalk one up to the mouth because Tawny couldn’t stop another gasp from coming out. “You lift?”

  He smiled. “Does that surprise you?”

  “Well, yeah. It does.” A lot like his smile did. She’d thought it was decent upon opening the door, but nothing like the one he aimed her way now. This smile was genuine and brought a dimple to his left cheek and warmth into his eyes that even foot-thick lenses couldn’t hide. There was definitely hope for this guy.

  “I go to Mark’s Gym three mornings a week,” he said.

  “So do I. I wonder why we’ve never seen each other?”

  He shrugged. “The place is pretty big. Statistically, the odds we’d run into each other aren’t as good as what you would think.”

  And just like that all his newfound potential was gone.

  Tawny sighed. She didn’t want to think of him as a geek, she really didn’t, but he’d brought statistics into what should have been a perfectly normal conversation about exercise, for God’s sake.

  Andrew nodded. “Okay, so we have impulsive and a nice body. Anything else?”

  “A good sense of humor never hurts.” Maybe he had one. Maybe he’d been using it a second ago, when he’d dragged out that statistics comment. Right. And maybe she’d wake up soon and discover her agreeing to help him out was nothing more than a bad dream.

  “That could be a problem. I’m not funny.”

  Yep, the bad-dream angle was definitely her only hope. “You don’t have to be funny, Andrew. You just have to know when to laugh.”

  “And you can teach me that?”

  He looked hopeful—too hopeful for her to discourage. “I don’t see why not.”

  “What about sex?”

  “You want me to teach you how to have sex?” And he’d said he wasn’t funny!

  He laughed, and the smile that warmed his eyes and dimpled his cheek returned. “What should my feelings be on it? It seems like most of the guys my sisters bring home want it as soon as they can get it. I’ve never been one to push for it too early, but maybe—”

  “Don’t push.” And please don’t tell me about your sex life. It was more than enough to know he’d found his handful of past experiences and the women he’d shared them with lacking, which was the reason he’d enlisted Tawny’s help. “It’s okay to be a little forceful at times, but only when you know your partner’s comfortable with it.”

  “So I should wait until the woman says she’s ready?”

  “Not if you want to come across as a master of carnality.” Ick, wrong word choice. It made her think of sex and handcuffs and Andrew reciting statistics while he wielded a flog. Not a pretty picture.

  She struggled to maintain a serene expression. “Give her a half dozen dates, feel her out, and if she seems cool with you and like the sort of sexually adventurous gal you’re after, try making a move.”

  “Define making a move. Do you mean kissing or groping?”

  “Definitely groping.” And they were definitely back to a subject she didn’t want to discuss with him. “We’re talking about a modern woman. If she seems like she’s into you by the end of the first date, there’s no reason to hold off kissing any longer. I’m not suggesting you play tonsil hockey the first night. Give her just enough to make her want more. Something else you might consider is your name.”

  His eyebrows came together and he frowned. “What’s wrong with my name?”

  Guilt struck Tawny for pointing out all those things that stole from his potential dream-lover image. She pushed it aside. He wanted her help and no matter how much the truth might sting, she had to give it to him.

  Sinking into her brazen persona, she rolled her eyes. “Exactly how many studs do you know named Andrew? They might really be named that, but they go by something else, like Andy or Drew. I could see you as a Drew.”

  Andrew looked thoughtful and then nodded. He repeated the name a few times. “Yeah, I like it. It has a certain ring.” He picked up the cordless phone that rested on the end table at the head of the sofa and ran his hand over the mouthpiece. “Ring. You know, like a phone.”

  Uh, was that a really bad attempt at humor? She didn’t know and wasn’t about to ask. Instead she clapped her hands and stood, breathing a sigh of relief when the waistband and seat of her jeans gave way slightly. “Wonderful!” She moved to the closet. “That’s your lesson for the night, Drew. I know it isn’t much, but I don’t want to burn you out on the first day. There’s a whole lot more to be learned.”

  “That makes sense,” he agreed, sounding like he didn’t think it did at all. She grabbed his trench coat and turned back to find him giving the phone another peculiar rub. Sending her a sheepish look, he set the phone aside and stood. His tone brightened a little as he said, “So, should I start applying what I learned immediately?”

  “Sure, if you’re comfortable with it.” As if he actually thought he could find someone to try it out on tonight. Just in case he did…“Not the actual dating part, but I don’t see how the rest can hurt to try.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “See, that right there was a start.” Tawny moved to the front door. “You don’t normally use slang.”

  Andrew joined her at the door. Taking his coat, he shrugged into it. “Mmm…maybe not. I guess I’ve never really paid attention to the way I talk.”

  “You should.” Along with the way he dressed, she thought, giving the faded coat a last once-over.

  She hadn’t wanted to bring up his far from fashionable wardrobe so soon, but maybe tomorrow night they could cover it. If she got home from work early enough, she could pull some pictures out of the J. Crew catalog as an example.

  God, how sad was that? Her life was so pathetic, she had nothing better to do than plan tomorrow night’s lust lesson with Andrew.

  They reached the door and Tawny opened her mouth to ask what time tomorrow worked best for him. Not a single part of that question made it out, which probably had a lot to do with the fact that Andrew’s mouth was covering hers. He had her pinned against the wall and she couldn’t even remember him moving.

  His lips moved against hers stealthily, testing, teasing, nibbling. His hands coasted along her back until they were firmly cupping her ass. The sides of his coat parted, and the press of his chest against hers as he used his grip on her bottom to haul her up his body ensured he hadn’t been lying about the weight lifting.

  He felt solid, stro
ng—nothing like an IT guy should. Sure as hell nothing like a nerd liable to start talking statistics at any given moment. He also felt hard. The swollen length of his cock against her belly was undeniable. Shockingly, so was the moisture that gushed in her panties.

  She had to stop this!

  Andrew was nowhere near to her type—she might not be a brazen bad girl who saw a man she wanted and demanded he come to her, but naughty-thinking bad boys were the type of guys she went for. No matter how good of a sexual education she gave him, Andrew would never be that type, and she shouldn’t lead him on for so much as a second. Tawny knew that. Yet the instant he slipped his tongue into her mouth and along her teeth, she was powerless to do anything about it.

  He tasted of mint and male. As his tongue found and tangled with hers, the part of him that was most male twitched against her stomach, as if anxious to get past her tight-fitting jeans and bury into her sheath.

  It had been months since she’d had anything more substantial than battery-operated plastic inside her body. Clearly, too many. With a single stroke of his fingers against the rear of her sex, her pussy pulsed with hungry need and a sound that was half moan, half sigh erupted from her throat. Andrew’s tongue went wild, lashing out, stabbing deep, daring hers to do the same. She’d never been good with peer pressure. It seemed she was going to fall victim to it this time, too, because her tongue obeyed, darting, feasting, consuming.

  Heat rushed into her face and down to her groin. Her breathing came in harsh pants. She wanted more. So much more.

  Tawny reached past his coat for the waist of his cardigan, needing her hands beneath it, on the hard muscles of his abdomen and chest, and then in far more intimate places. She wanted to feel the strength of his cock throbbing in her fist, taste his essence on her tongue. She had to have—

  “So how was that?”

  An arrogant look claimed Andrew’s face as he released her and stepped back. On any other man and at any other time, the look would have either heated her further or cooled her off completely. On Andrew, it had Tawny’s mind screeching to a halt and her common sense returning with a jolt.

  What in the hell was she doing?

  It wasn’t enough that she’d allowed the kiss to continue after telling herself not to lead him on, but she’d thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it, would still be taking part in it and quite likely much more if he hadn’t stopped her.

  The arrogant look faded and he tipped his head to the side. “Hey, are you okay? You look sort of strange.”

  Not surprising, since she felt a whole lot strange. Strange in a way that had everything to do with lust. Strange in a way that had her nipples hard and her pussy pulsing with cream. The real question here should be, why wasn’t he acting strange, too? Unless he did this sort of thing a lot—grabbed a woman and kissed her senseless. If he did, then they seriously need to think about changing roles in this whole learning how to fill your date book and notch your bedpost experience.

  “Tawny?”

  Right. He expected an answer. “Uh, it was…” Shocking. The last thing she’d expected. And yet amazingly good.

  “Impulsive? Or did I totally misunderstand what you meant by that?”

  What she’d meant by…

  Oh! He’d kissed her as a way to try out being impulsive, not because he was attracted to her and hoping to get somewhere. And she sure as hell wasn’t attracted to him, even if for a few seconds there she was pretty sure her heart had stopped. As for the stimulated body thing, it was a fluke. One brought about by sexual deprivation. One she wasn’t going to think about a second longer—a lot like his unexpectedly clever tongue and the impressive length of his cock against her belly.

  Tawny pushed forth a broad smile and willed her voice not to give away her heated state. “I’d say you have the impulsive thing down well. Some lucky woman’s bound to be naked, sweaty and tangled in your sheets before you know it.” She meant every word in a way she never would have meant a half hour ago.

  Andrew—make that Drew Korben—might be a computer geek, but he also knew a thing or two about kissing a woman until her knees were weak and her panties wet. It was a good thing she wasn’t going to waste any more time thinking over the way he’d all but gotten her socks off with that kiss, because if she did, she might wonder what else he was good at getting off.

  “Whadda you got for me?”

  As he drove away from Tawny’s subdivision, Andy popped a mint in his mouth and grimaced at the sound of his brother-in-law Rick Donovan’s voice coming through his cell. He’d never cared for the man—something about his personality was off—but Andy’s sister Joyce loved him. For his sister, he abided by Rick, and for his sister’s welfare, he was providing his PI services to the man free of charge. Rick believed that Joyce’s naive nature had allowed her to befriend a woman who was using Joyce to attain inside information on the business strategy of Rick’s fledgling advertising company, and then sell that information to a higher-up at Neilson & Sons. The woman in question was Tawny.

  Andy had spoken with Tawny a number of times since hiring on at Neilson under the pretext of an IT specialist. At work she came off as a hardworking, fast-talking, barely clothed babe. He’d believed spending time with her and seeing her in her natural environment might hint at an immoral side. So far the only thing she’d done that even came close to immoral was succumb to the kiss of a guy she thought was a complete nerd.

  A kiss that could’ve led to more if he’d allowed it.

  He’d been tempted. Damned tempted to tear off that flimsy little breast-hugging shirt, right along with those indecently snug jeans. The way she’d responded to the simplest squeeze of her ass and touch of her sex, he had no doubt he could be inside her house right now, screwing her gorgeous brains out.

  Instead he was en route to his home, fighting off a major hard-on and talking to one of his least favorite people. Yeah, that was some kind of trade-off.

  “Not much,” Andy said, adjusting his erection while reminding himself he didn’t mix business with pleasure. “Her home’s in a decent neighborhood, but nothing she couldn’t afford on her salary at Neilson. From what I could see in the living room, she doesn’t have any new appliances. TV’s only a twenty-inch and the furniture’s pretty well used.”

  “Then she’s saving the cash, banking it for a trip to Hawaii or a boob job or some shit like that. C’mon, Andy, you gotta find me something to work with. I know my gut, and my gut isn’t wrong on this one. This chick’s got something to do with the info leak; the timing of her making friends with Joyce is too convenient.”

  “I don’t know. I’d say her biggest concern, outside of putting everything she has into her ad designs, is what guy she’s going to bag next.” Whoever that guy was wouldn’t be thinking she needed to invest in a boob job, either. He’d seen plenty of her breasts, felt them pressed up against him. They were real, firm and plentiful.

  “So she dolls herself up nice. That’s gotta cost some bucks.”

  “I wouldn’t say nice. Trashy maybe.” In a way that spoke directly to his dick. His shaft, which had only begun to relax, threatened to harden again at the thought of her scanty clothing and spicy cinnamon scent. Had they met under other circumstances, she was exactly the kind of woman Andy went for. The sort of bad girl who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to go after it.

  Rick’s snort reverberated through the phone line. “My sister used to say it costs a lot of money to look trashy. She’s already worked her way through three ex-husbands’ settlement checks, so I’d say she knows a thing or two on the subject.”

  Andy remembered the man’s sister Amanda. Her version of trashy went to a whole different degree than Tawny’s. Amanda reeked of sleaze. Tawny reeked of…hell, sex appeal. The kind that made a man want to toss her up against a door and bury his tongue in her mouth.

  Shit, he really shouldn’t have done that, but the opportunity had been too much to let pass. And he’d pulled it off well enough. Left himself with
an aching cock because of it, but still…

  He shook his head free of the vision of Tawny standing before him, her eyes dark blue with lust and her nipples erect and stabbing into his chest. The only place an image like that would get him was in a cold shower, giving himself a hand job. It might have been a while since he’d taken time out of his schedule for sex, but he wasn’t quite ready to resort to masturbation.

  Andy turned down the street that led to his apartment complex. One thing he’d learned in his eight years of being a PI: Going along with the client’s claim until fact proved otherwise was easier. “I planted a mini recorder on her phone that’ll pick up her calls and any conversation that happens within thirty feet of the receiver.” And, as fast as his hands were, had damned near been busted before he could get the cover back on the mouthpiece. “If the cash is going to her looks, we’ll find out soon enough. I need to get going. I’ll check in later in the week.”

  “You do that. And this time have something. The company can only stand to take so big of a cut before investors are gonna start getting nervous. I need those investors, Andy. I need this info leak taken care of now, by whatever means necessary.”

  The sudden chill in Rick’s voice stirred Andy’s temper. He might not care for the guy, but he’d never come across as aggressive before. Andy would likely say something similar, were he the one in Rick’s shoes, but the idea that Rick might use that tone with Joyce had Andy’s temper flaring to high.

  His sister was too trustworthy. It was the reason he’d bought into Rick’s claim of her talking about his company to a near stranger. It was the reason he’d be lucky to get any sleep tonight, for worrying over how Rick might take the loss of company profits out on his wife. Hell, it was probably better that Andy didn’t sleep. He had a sinking feeling that the moment he closed his eyes, his mind would be filled with thoughts of a brassy redhead and exactly what she could do with those delectable, tasty lips of hers.