by Lori Wilde
Madison saw him watching her with heavy-lidded eyes and she knew he felt it, too
This urging, yearning to be joined.
Jake’s eyes danced with inherent naughtiness and when he dropped his backpack, she dropped hers. Then he slowly stripped off his black T-shirt and when she got a good look at his honed, muscled chest, her heart slammed into her rib cage.
“C’mere,” he murmured.
In a dreamlike state, Madison moved toward him, pulled by a force she didn’t understand and could not resist.
He slipped his arms around her, pulled her down on the grass in the clearing, kissed her tenderly as if she were as rare and precious as the orchids around them.
Madison’s cell phone rang, the sound echoing in the forest.
“Your friends,” he said. “What about the bet?”
She crawled across the grass, fumbled for the cell in her backpack, answered it and gasped, “I’m out.”
Dear Reader,
Normally my Blaze heroines are rather inexperienced and looking to stretch their sexual wings, but with Sweet Surrender, I asked myself, what if there was a group of friends who’d all had their hearts broken the previous summer and swore this year would be different? What if they even made a bet that they could stay celibate during their summer vacations? That’s how the idea for this book was born. Four friends, three stories, no sex on their vacations, winner take all.
In the first novella we travel to sexy Rio de Janeiro with Bianca St. James as her job puts her in close quarters with playboy Thomaz Santos. The second novella features brainy, introverted Madison Garrett who’s certain she’s going to win the bet in the jungles of Costa Rica. What she doesn’t count on is gorgeous orchid thief Jake Strickland…who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Then it’s down to Emma. But what she’s surprised by is sexy wilderness guide Trent Colton—the one who once got away. The same guy who’s now sending Emma sizzling looks over the campfire underneath the Colorado night sky.
I hope you enjoy Sweet Surrender. And don’t forget to check out all the other great Blaze novels available this month.
Much love,
Lori
Lori Wilde
SWEET SURRENDER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lori Wilde is the author of forty books. She’s been nominated for a RITA® Award and four RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards. Her books have been excerpted in Cosmopolitan, Redbook and Quick & Simple. Lori teaches writing online through Ed2go. She’s also an R.N. trained in forensics, and she volunteers at a women’s shelter. Visit her Web site at www.loriwilde.com.
Books by Lori Wilde
HARLEQUIN BLAZE
30—A TOUCH OF SILK
66—A THRILL TO REMEMBER
106—PACKED WITH PLEASURE
123—AS YOU LIKE IT
152—GOTTA HAVE IT
175—SHOCKINGLY SENSUAL
230—ANGELS AND OUTLAWS*
260—DESTINY’S HAND*
346—MY SECRET LIFE**
399—CROSSING THE LINE†
411—SECRET SEDUCTION†
423—LETHAL EXPOSURE†
463—THE RIGHT STUFF††
506—ZERO CONTROL
518—HIS FINAL SEDUCTION
To my most loyal Blaze reader, Laurie N.
Thank you so much for reading.
Contents
Prologue
Night Whispers 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Never Enough 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
No Turning Back 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Epilogue
Prologue
Once upon a time there were four sexy single women in the city looking for love in all the wrong places…
“A MODERN-DAY chastity belt? You gotta be freakin’ kidding me.” Izzy Montgomery hooted and stabbed her fingers, adorned with numerous rings, through a mass of loose blond curls. “You’ve got the coolest job in the world, B.”
“Well,” said Bianca St. James, “it’s not so much a chastity belt as a sex toy.” She and her three best friends, Izzy, Emma and Madison, had met for their last girls’ night out before they all dispersed to various parts of the globe for their summer holidays. Bianca’s trip was more of a working vacation. But then again, she’d never had a vacation, vacation and that’s the way she liked it. She didn’t know what to do with herself when she wasn’t working.
They were dining at Jackdaw’s, midtown Manhattan’s latest “hot spot.” Izzy had picked the restaurant. Trust her to go for loud, flashy and overpriced.
Accompanied by the throbbing beat of hip music from the sound system, they’d already slurped down a pitcher of pomegranate martinis and noshed their way through pan-seared black truffles and quail grilled with an orange fennel glaze. They were all feeling a little tipsy and making fun of the item sitting in the middle of the table.
Everyone that is, except for Bianca. She’d expected jokes, yes. But this was her livelihood, and she took it very seriously, even if the product in question was of a frivolous nature.
“So honestly, would you buy this? And if not, what would make you buy it?” Bianca asked, trying to keep them on task. She held up the silky lingerie fitted with a GPS tracking device and an electronic sensor that measured the body temperature and pulse rate of the wearer.
The lingerie came as a set that included a lace bodice, sexy string-bikini bottoms and a faux pearl belt where the body temperature sensor was sewn in. The tiny GPS device lay nestled against the waist in the gossamer part of the see-through bodice. This model was purple and white, but it came in four different colors.
Madison tilted her head and looked over the top of her snazzy red-framed spectacles, eying the garment with studious intent. She had coal-black hair and smooth porcelain skin. She’d make a perfect Goth girl, but she was simply a total brainiac with a sharp appreciation for heavy-duty sunscreen. “No way. I sleep in Tshirts and boy shorts. That thing would cramp my style.”
“The point of this…um…thing,” Izzy interjected, “has nothing to do with sleeping and everything to do with sex.”
“Or the lack thereof,” Emma added.
Emma took the last bite of quail from the communal appetizer plate and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. With her petite frame and soft, caramel-colored curly hair that fell to her waist, in the dim lighting—and through the haze of a couple of pomegranate martinis—Emma looked as if she could have stepped out of a renaissance painting. Although she had an Austen-like belief in romantic love.
“What woman would get that for herself?” Madison arched her ebony eyebrows. “It’s something an insecure guy gives to his woman because he’s terrified she’s going to cheat on him.”
“A girl would only buy that if she was in a relationship,” Emma said. “It’s not like the undies come with handcuffs, Mace and a rottweiler to fend off attackers.”
“It’s not really a modern-day chastity belt,” Bianca reiterated, gently trying to steer them back to her question before they got sidetracked by rottweilers or something equally off-topic, as their conversations tended to do on girls’ night outs. “That’s only what naysayers have dubbed it, and because of the misleading nickname, people have gotten the wrong idea about the Catch Me if You Can lingerie line. In Brazil the product is jumping off the shelves, but our billionaire client is upset by dismal US sales and he’s hired Stillman, Burke and Hollister to find out how we can change the trend. Hence my bit of marketing research with three potential customers in our target demographic—single,
young, urban professionals.”
“If you threw in an R word, you’d have the acronym SYRUP,” said Madison, who loved word games.
“Randy,” Izzy readily supplied. “Single, young, randy, urban professionals. We’re syrups.”
“Speak for yourself,” Emma muttered. “If I never have sex again it will be too soon.” She was in the dumps because the guy she’d been dating on and off since their hot fling on a Greek cruise the previous summer had abruptly broken things off with her and gotten engaged to a woman who was Emma’s polar opposite.
Izzy slung an arm around Emma’s shoulders. “Ryan was a jerk, okay? I didn’t want to say anything at the time because you really seemed to be into him, but he was cruel to string you along. At least my summer fling told me right off the bat he was only interested in sex. That way, I didn’t get emotionally invested.”
“You never get emotionally invested,” Bianca pointed out.
Izzy waved a hand and took the last swallow of her martini. “That’s beside the point.”
“It’s precisely the point,” Emma argued.
Izzy ignored her and reached out to stroke the glamorous lingerie Bianca passed over to her. “So tell us about the dude from Brazil who came up with this thing.”
“You’re letting your fantasies run away with you,” Madison said. “Chances are he’s old and wrinkled or he likes men.”
Izzy raised an eyebrow. “Whoever designed this lovely piece of fluff definitely likes women. Look at the detail in the cup of the bra and the expert stitching.” She switched her gaze to Bianca. “Is he hot?”
“Thomaz Santos?”
“Is he the designer?”
“Yes. He is young, however, only thirty-one. He inherited his grandmother’s swimwear company and he’s branching out into lingerie.”
“Thomaz Santos,” Madison mused. “Where have I heard that name?”
“Polo,” Emma said. “He used to play at a professional level and from what I’ve heard, he’s also something of an international jet-setting playboy.”
They all looked at her and said in unison, “How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “Ryan was a polo enthusiast.”
“Don’t get started on him again,” Izzy said to Emma, and then remarked to Bianca, “This is quite promising indeed. Rich and powerful and clearly a master of a woman’s body—”
“And he’s a spoiled playboy,” Bianca said. “Not my type. You know how I feel about men who’ve had everything handed to them.”
Izzy covered her ears. “Yeah, yeah, you have no use for guys who didn’t have to scratch and claw their way to the top. You’re a reverse snob. You do know that, don’t you?”
Okay, so Bianca did have a prejudice against rich, lazy, immature men who lived off family money. She wasn’t going to deny it. Bianca had a nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic. She set a high standard, both for herself and others, and she wasn’t going to apologize for it.
“I hear that in Brazil,” Izzy said, adding a phony Latin accent to the last word, pronouncing it Braaazil. “The men are muy macho.”
“That’s Spanish,” Bianca corrected. “In Brazil they speak Portuguese.”
“Really?” Izzy looked surprised.
“Why do you think my company put me on the account?” Bianca asked. “I’m the only one at the agency who speaks Portuguese.”
On Monday, Bianca’s boss had called her into his office to give her the account she’d been working toward her entire career. If she could make a success of Thomaz Santos’s lingerie in America, she’d be in line for a promotion to head of marketing, making her the youngest female department head in the history of Stillman, Burke and Hollister. Just thinking about it made her shiver. And the opportunity was due to the fact she had Brazilian blood running through her veins. Way to go, Mom. Bianca had to remember to give her mom a big kiss when she saw her on Sunday to thank her for being born in Brazil and making sure Bianca knew how to speak Portuguese.
But her boss had also made it clear that if there was a repeat performance of what had happened to her the previous summer, not only would she not get the promotion, she’d lose her job. It was a test, really. To see if she’d shored up her flaws. Remembering the Big Mistake of last summer sent a flush of embarrassment running though her.
But they were giving her a second chance. They were sending her to Brazil for however long she needed to nail the account. Santos Enterprises was their largest and most lucrative new client, and her firm was banking on this campaign leading to more business in Brazil and South America.
“So how do you say muy macho in Portuguese?” Izzy asked.
“Muito macho.”
Izzy rolled her eyes. “Oh, it’s so the same thing.”
“The difference may be subtle, but it’s important,” Bianca said.
“That makes me want a mojito.” Emma hiccuped and then giggled.
“No more alcohol for you,” Bianca warned. “Ryan’s not worth the price of a hangover.”
“Besides, mojitos are Cuban.” Izzy shifted in her seat.
“In French,” Madison added, apropos of nothing. “It’s très male.”
“In Italian it’s molto maschio,” Emma piped up.
“Show-offs, the lot of you. Not everyone could afford to go to college and study foreign languages.” Izzy pretended to pout.
She might be teasing in that devil-may-care way of hers, but street-savvy Izzy had come up the hard way and she’d never let her lack of a formal education stop her. After years of struggling, she was finally gaining the reputation she deserved as a syndicated cartoonist.
Bianca was so proud of her. Personally, she’d put herself through college, working two jobs and still graduating with a 3.8 GPA, but she knew not everyone was as driven to succeed as she was, and Izzy had come from a truly impoverished background. “Yes, but how many people can say they make a living as a cartoonist? You’re one of only a handful of people in the world.”
“You do have a point. My cartoon alter ego, Cherry, gets to do everything I don’t, including owning a summerhouse in the Hamptons. So.” Izzy propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her palm. “Back to the guy. Do you suppose Thomaz Santos is muito macho? He sounds like he’s muito macho. Maybe I could use him as a new love interest for Cherry.”
Bianca snapped her fingers. “Forget about the guy for a minute and concentrate on the lingerie. What could provoke you to buy it?”
“Let me get this straight so I can make an informed comment.” Madison pushed her plate aside, sat back and looped her elbow over the arm of her chair. As the scientific one in the group, she was always the first to apply analysis and logic to a topic. “This tiny bit of lingerie comes equipped with a vital-signs sensor and GPS tracking. So if you’re getting all hot and bothered, your lover will know what’s going on with your body and come looking for you with a sexual tryst in mind?”
“Exactly.” Bianca nodded.
“What if he doesn’t come looking?” Izzy asked.
“Then I guess he’s just not all that into you.” Madison canted her head.
“Or what if he comes after you and catches you with someone else?” Emma asked breathlessly.
“Why are you worried about that?” Izzy snorted. “You’re loyal to a fault.”
“I’m just asking on general principle,” Emma retorted, “and maybe I’ve just decided loyalty is for the birds.”
“Well, there’s the rub,” Bianca interjected. “That’s why some people are calling it a modern-day chastity belt. But in reality, all a woman has to do is turn off the device if she doesn’t want to be found. It’s really about sex games, like Izzy said, not preserving one’s chastity.”
“But you could use it that way,” Izzy postulated. “If you wanted.”
“I suppose.”
“How much does it cost?” Madison inquired.
“She’s always so practical.” Emma shook her head.
“Which is why she has money in h
er savings account and we don’t.” Izzy passed the lingerie to Madison.
“Two hundred dollars,” Bianca supplied.
Madison’s eyes widened. “It would take a lot for me to spend that kind of money on what’s really nothing more than a glorified sex toy.”
“Ah,” Izzy reiterated, “but what a way to go broke.”
“There’s two opposing options for marketing this product,” Bianca continued. “We either pitch it to women as a sexy nightie that enhances foreplay, or just go with the nickname that’s already out there and admit that, yeah, it’s a modern-day chastity belt and market it to guys. If you want to keep tabs on your woman, buy this lingerie and you’ll sleep better knowing that she’s not sleeping around.”
“Do they make a male version of this?” Emma asked. “’Cause I sure would have loved to strap one on Ryan. Then it might not have been such a shock when he suddenly told me he was getting married. Now that product, I’d pay for.”
Bianca shook her head. “No male version yet. But maybe I’ll bring that up to Senhor Santos when I see him.”
“You know what would make me buy it in a heartbeat?” Izzy mused.
Something in her voice caught Bianca’s attention. Something told her for once, Izzy was being serious. Bianca sat up straighter and studied her friend. Izzy had a wealth of sexual experience. On this particular topic, her opinion was the most valuable. “What?”
“If I had some assurance that it could really work as a chastity belt.”
Bianca, Madison and Emma stared at her with dropped jaws.
“What?” Izzy frowned. “Why are you all staring at me?”
“You? Not wanting to have sex?” Emma said. “Since when?”
“When it lands me into trouble like last summer. How was I to know Jackson was married to a congresswoman?”
“Um, you could have had a long conversation with him before popping into bed,” Madison pointed out.
Izzy snapped her fingers. “Exactly. When I get aroused there’s no stopping me. It’s as if hormones switch off my brain and caution flies right out the window.”