by Lisa Wells
She licked her lips—a nervous habit that caused her to go through a lot of lip balm. She stepped into his space, placed her hands on his shoulders, and stood on her tiptoes so she could see into his eyes.
Damn, they were a pretty blue. Like a field of cornflower bachelor buttons. She shrugged at her silliness. But, hey, if a romance author can’t think of her guy’s eyes as cornflower blue, who could? Not that Ian was her guy. Just her stud for a few nights.
And while she was waxing poetic, the pulse pounding in his throat reminded her of the romance heroes she loved to read about.
And the way he was staring back at her shouted I’m alpha and you’re mine.
She shivered. It was all about the fantasy—and he was quickly fulfilling hers.
She placed her lips against his ear and whispered, “I want to do what you want to do.”
He groaned, took her hand, and dragged her toward the elevator. She stumbled as she tried to catch up. High heels were great until you were being dragged behind a horny man and trying to not fall on your face. Then they were a horny fail.
To make things worse, those gathered in the piano bar watched. Some even hooted and hollered like they were still in middle school.
She decided she didn’t care. Qualms, anxieties, uncertainties—she didn’t care about those either. None of them stood a chance against the desire he’d ignited in her in the cab with nothing more than a blue-eyed glance and the rasping feel of his hand across her upper thigh.
They stepped into the elevator and moved to the back when a group of women got on with them. The elevator stopped on every floor.
Ian’s hand slid down her spine, until his thumb was hooked in the low back of the dress, and his hand was resting on the top of her ass.
She wiggled her hips, wanting to feel his hand in other places…like between her legs. She must have made a noise, because one of the women in front of her turned and pursed her lips.
Kinley bit her tongue and stared straight ahead.
Four women got off and three more got on.
Needing his arms around her, she tried to move back into his arms. Into his body.
He held her where she was. Not allowing her the comfort of his warmth. “Do you think they think you’re a hooker?” His whisper sounded like a growl in her ear.
The question sobered her, and she wrapped her arms across her middle. Did she look like a hooker? Was he turned on at the idea of her playing the part of a hooker? Of a little Pretty Woman action?
At the club, she’d been dressed okay. High heels and little dresses seemed to be the uniform de jour. But in the elevator, she was definitely under-dressed. Or overdressed, in the sense of plunging necklines and stripper heels.
She felt his warm breath against her skin. He was blowing on her neck. Teasing her with what was to come.
When they were the only ones left in the elevator, Ian yanked her back until she was leaning against him. She could feel the hard ridge of his cock pressed into her back. She wiggled.
He hissed.
She basked in the knowledge she’d done that to him. He’d come home with her—Kinley Foster—not the woman from the bar. Whoever she was.
The elevator reached their floor. He pushed gently on her shoulders and the intimate contact was broken. They walked to his room without talking.
He opened the door and softly pushed her inside his swanky hotel suite.
She grabbed the wall for support. Mmmm. Things were wobbly when you drank and wore heels at the same time.
He turned on the light.
She drummed her fingers against the wall. Now what should she do? Was she supposed to seduce him? Was he taking over? Was he going to seduce her?
As if picking up on her uncertainty, he grabbed her hand and led her to the bedroom. At the door, he picked her up, and walked to the bed with her. He laid her down on the fluffy white comforter. “Don’t move.”
“Okay.” There was something very sexy about a man taking charge. She watched as he loosened his tie and slipped it off. Then he unbuttoned the top several buttons of his shirt. She put her lips together to whistle but nothing came out.
Giving up on the whistle, Kinley watched in aroused awe.
He dropped down on the bed beside her and leaned up on an elbow so that he was looking down at her.
She reached out and brushed her fingertips over his scar and down the square line of his jaw. Did he know how much she hated her scar? It reminded her of him. Of—
He traced her scar. “I’m going to kiss you, Kinley. And when I’m done, it’s up to you to seduce me into taking this further.”
She grinned. Wasn’t he just the sweetest thing, telling her what he was going to do?
Ian Thompson, her first crush, was going to kiss her. Something she’d dreamt about so many nights. Her heart executed the whistle her lips hadn’t been able to manage. “Why are you doing the kissing? Aren’t I the seductress?”
He was wearing a white dress shirt. Open at the collar, rolled up at the cuffs. No jacket. She fought an urge to reach forward and finish unbuttoning his shirt.
“Because it will be our first real kiss. And I want to make sure ours is memorable.” His voice wasn’t the voice she knew when he was angry at her. Or the voice he used when he teased her. Or the voice he used when he told her she couldn’t write sex. Could this be his aroused voice? If so, she liked the thick vibrations of sounds.
Her brain told her to shut up and take what he was offering. Of course, her lips didn’t comply. “If I recall right, we already had our first kiss.”
He grimaced. “That didn’t count. You were sixteen, and I was a jerk. And you threw yourself at me the moment I opened the door.”
“It did suck,” she said. “But I don’t think it had anything to do with me being sixteen, but a whole lot to do with you being a jerk.”
He laughed. “It mostly had something to do with me not wanting to go to jail for having sex with a minor.” He leaned down—tilted his head. His lips touched hers, skimming against them in a soft, satiny touch.
She could smell his cologne. Something expensive. Something heavenly. Her alcohol-induced fog momentarily cleared. Just long enough to allow in a horrible thought. What if he told her she couldn’t kiss again? What if she did it wrong?
His tongue pushed against her closed lips. “Loosen up,” he murmured.
She gripped the comforter with her hands and screwed her eyes shut tight, parted her lips.
He pulled back. “What are you doing?”
She opened her eyes. “What do you mean?”
A tiny line appeared between his brows. “Are you afraid of me?”
She could feel her palms sweating. She was disappointing him. “What do you want me to do?”
“Participate in the kiss.”
“I’m afraid I’ll do it wrong.” She wanted to suck the words back in. They made her sound weak. She didn’t want Ian to know she had any weak spots.
“You can’t do it wrong. Just participate.”
She closed her eyes so he couldn’t see an emotion there she didn’t want him to see. Like pain. Or fear. Or like. “The last time I tried to participate in a kiss with you, you told me it was like kissing your grandma.” She’d been crushed to the core. Humiliated and hurt by a man she thought she was in love with. A man she wanted to introduce her to the art of lovemaking.
“God. Did you believe me? I didn’t mean it. But damn it, you were my best friend’s sister.”
She pushed the past to the basement of her brain, but it ran right back up the stairs. “And you had another woman in your bedroom.”
He sighed. “This isn’t going to work. Yes, you turn me on, but the problem remains of who you are.”
If she’d remained in a drunken stupor, what he said wouldn’t have mattered. But semi-sober Kinley realized he was turning her down. Again. “Are you backing out?” she asked him quietly.
He rolled on his back. Closed his eyes. “I’m just saying, I don�
�t see a chance in hell of you seducing me tonight.”
“Because you think of me as a little sister?” She resisted the urge to do something shocking. Like straddle him. Like…
He opened his eyes and rolled on his side to look at her. “Trust me. I don’t think of you as a little sister. Which means I have to keep reminding myself you are my friend’s little sister. But that’s not the real problem, the real problem is…” He sat up. “What you’re wearing is the problem.”
She slapped a hand over her mouth to keep a gasp from escaping. This was her at her very best. “You don’t like my outfit?”
He grabbed her hand and brought it to him. “My dick likes your outfit. And every other dick in the club liked your outfit.”
She yanked her hand away. Not so much because of his blunt words—Ian had never pulled punches with her—but because she didn’t understand. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
He ran a hand down the side of her face. “Yes. No. I don’t know. I just know your outfit pissed me off the moment you walked in. And don’t ask me why, because damn if I can explain it. I’ve never seen a sexier woman.”
He thought she was sexy. Wasn’t that a good thing? “You’re not making sense.”
“I know. It’s like this: in order to seduce me tonight, you had to get my brain to forget. You didn’t succeed.”
“Because of my dress?”
“Sure. Let’s blame the dress.”
She sat up and scooted away from him. There were a lot of things he could have said and she would have walked away with her tail between her legs. But not that. “Fuck you. I spent an entire day being groomed so I could seduce you. Fuck you. Fuck you.”
“You had to know it was a long-shot that you could make me forget who your brother is.”
Anger exploded inside of her. Burning, dangerous, engulfing anger. Her ears rang from the toxicity of it. She glanced around the room for something to throw at him. The best she could come up with was a pillow. She picked it up and swung as hard as she could at his head. Thwack. The momentum caused her to tumble face down into the mattress. “You’re impossible,” she said, her voice muffled. “My brother has nothing to do with what is going on between us.”
One moment she was swinging a pillow, the next she was sprawled across the bed.
A sharp slap on her bottom caused her to screech. “What are you—”
Another slap. The impact stung.
“Stop it,” she said. She tried to rise, but he placed his hand on the small of her back.
She felt her dress being shimmied up over her bare ass.
Slap.
“Stop.” He wasn’t supposed to do this. They hadn’t agreed to this. Had they? Well, maybe they had?
“You said you wanted sex. You wanted to learn about non-vanilla sex. That I should forget who your brother is. Well, you’ve been a very naughty girl dressing so sexy and flirting with men in front of me. You deserve a good spanking.” His hand landed on her bottom again. “If you want the truth, that’s why I didn’t like your dress. I wanted to claim you as my own, and I couldn’t because you were supposed to be picking me up.”
She rolled as hard as she could away from his reach and managed to get away from him. She jumped up and shimmied her dress down. “Does spanking me turn you on?”
“Your ass turns me on.”
“It does?”
He ran his hand through his hair. “When you’re being you, you’re hard to resist. When you’re being this—” he waved his hand in her direction— “you’re also hard to resist. You make a guy want…never mind.”
“You’re talking in riddles.”
“I know. Go take a shower. Take off all of that makeup. Put your good-girl pajamas on. Let’s call it a night.”
“Are you saying I really lost the bet?” What the hell? To her horror, a tear slipped down her cheek. She turned away so he wouldn’t see. She refused to make any sniffling noises.
“It’s not you. It’s me—” He sounded weary. As if the world was weighing him down.
As if she should feel bad for him.
Well too bad. He should feel weary. Weary of being an ass. She snorted so he would know her depth of disgust. “It’s not you—it’s me. What a line of crap. Of course it’s you.”
With her back turned, she couldn’t see his face. After what seemed like forever, he gave a harsh laugh.
“Yeah. Sure. That’s it. We’ll talk tomorrow about where we go from here.”
…
Ian paced the length of his suite. What in the hell had happened to him? He’d spanked Kinley Foster. And he’d liked it. So much that he was concerned his dick would never deflate. That he’d be walking around with a hard-on for the rest of the conference.
He hadn’t spanked her hard. Really just a few light swats. But making her glorious ass rosy while she squirmed did something to him. He hated her outfit. Actually, he loved it. But he hated how every cock in the club jumped to attention the moment she strutted through the doors like she owned the world. He hated that other men, besides him, wanted her to give them a view worthy of Upskirt Galleries. Every time she crossed and uncrossed her legs, all eyes were on her crotch. Hoping for a pussy shot. Jesus.
He hated that he wanted a reason to spank her again. Not in the same way he’d spanked other women he’d dated who were into the lifestyle—in a different way. He wanted to lay claim to her by spanking her ass. Not just turn her on.
Ian didn’t want to want her. He didn’t want to want anyone. He liked being in control of his life.
His lack of control tonight made him angry at her for having that kind of power over him—and furious with himself for allowing it. His plan had been simple. Give her a challenge. Let her fail miserably. Guide her into writing romances that were sweet.
Why sweet?
He didn’t have a clue. Why in the hell did he care if she wrote hot or sweet romance?
Was it possible he was jealous of the men she would write about? Jealous that she would be having hot book sex with them in stories where kinky would be the norm? Was it possible he didn’t want to share her with fictional heroes?
Of course not.
And yet the image of her ass taunted him. Even as the partying went on downstairs, and the shower surged to life in the en suite, Ian realized he was at a crossroad in his life.
He wanted Kinley Foster. He wanted to fuck her tonight.
She deserved so much better than him. She deserved a guy who wouldn’t eventually get tired of her and move on. That’s what he did. That’s who he was. The women he dated knew the score.
For all her big talk, Kinley wasn’t the type of woman who could handle that type of relationship. Of that, he was sure.
Chapter Eleven
Kinley stood under the showerhead and let the water beat down on her. Her bottom stung from Ian’s hand, and when she’d glanced in the mirror, she could see his palm print. She was appalled that he would treat her that way.
Okay, that was a lie. She was appalled that she wasn’t appalled. Appalled at herself for being turned on by the action. What was wrong with her? Being turned on by a man who didn’t want her enough to forget who she was?
Her brother’s fiancée had been woman enough to make him forget who she was. Why wasn’t she?
She stepped out of the shower. Slipped on an oversize nightshirt.
She discovered the bedroom empty. “Good.” She climbed into the bed that had been turned down. Had Ian turned it down? Or did the maid do it?
The door to the bedroom opened. “I’m going downstairs to meet with an editor. Don’t wait up on me,” he said, his voice back to normal.
“Don’t flatter yourself.” She stared straight ahead. At the wall. He hadn’t even said he was sorry for not wanting her enough.
She could feel his eyes on her.
When he made no move to leave, or say anything else, she glanced at him. Why wasn’t he leaving?
“I’m sorry,” he said in a cautious voice.
She caught her breath. Damn him. Did he read her mind? It was easier to keep her emotions at bay if he was an ass. She looked away.
After several more seconds, she heard the click of the bedroom door. “Ass, ass, ass.”
She sat staring around the quiet suite. Should she watch TV? Get dressed and try her hand at blackjack again? She thought about writing, but with her thoughts so jumbled she doubted she’d be able to string together a sentence, and she really didn’t want to sit and stare at a blank screen. It was early—by Vegas standards, anyway. Maybe she could go downstairs to see if there were any authors or interesting people in the lounge. Under no circumstances would she sit in this room and think about Ian. Nuh-uh. No way.
She grabbed her oversize purse off the floor to rummage for a comb. If she stuck to minimal makeup, she could be out the door in twenty. She unzipped her purse and discovered the boxes that held the items she’d bought from Charlie.
Curiosity took her mind off of Ian. Well, mostly.
She glanced at the front door, to make sure he was gone—it would be just like him to lurk in the hallway—then she dumped the boxes onto the bed.
She didn’t need him. She had all of this…stuff.
She picked up the first box and opened it.
A We-Vibe 4. The product was small; it fit in the palm of her hand. It was purple and shaped like a U. A remote control came with it. The product was made to be inserted so that one side of the U shape touched her G-spot and the other her clitoris. The clitoris side vibrated. It had different options to manipulate the speed and strength of the vibrations.
She opened the next box—a silicone sleeve with a vagina opening on one end. A product to be used on a man. One of the mystery prizes she’d won. She poked her finger inside and found it slippery. A man would feel like his cock was pushing into a woman. A man could use it on his own, or a woman could use it to help give him a hand job or a blowjob. That’s what the little card inside the box said about the product. Wow. Okay.
The next item was a long and skinny stick thingy. The rounded end tilted upward and was the size of a dime. That end vibrated. It was meant to be slipped into a woman to reach her g-spot, where the vibrating head would do the rest of the work.