Forbidden Fantasies Bundle(17)

He could see her in just that, all right, feathers brushing her nipples, reaching down to her soft thatch—dark red like her hair?—leading him where he wanted to touch, kiss and stroke her…. Her gaze locked on his—she’d read him—and heat snapped so sharply between them he felt scorched.

“After this maybe we should have…dinner?” she asked, the last word as flirty as hell.

Screw dinner. Let’s go straight for dessert. But he knew better. He had to control this right now for the case, so he said the only thing he could. “Looks like we’ll be working through it, huh?” He lifted his armload of S and M gear as proof and started toward the windows, but not before he’d seen disappointment flood her features. He hated undercover work.



SAMANTHA BLINKED, startled and stung. Rick had said no. His hot emerald eyes had swirled to cool jade like mood rings dropped into a freezer.

Get over it, she told herself, following him to the front windows with her armload of lingerie. He wanted the job and wasn’t interested in overtime. Okay. Made sense.

She’d overreacted to the situation. And no wonder. She’d just spent two hours fondling lingerie, sex screaming from every hanger, rack and shelf, with an extremely hot man who gave mixed signals. Of course she’d end up pulsing with lust.

Bummer, though, that she’d finally decided to go for it with a guy and wound up hiring him out of the running.

Something in her felt relief at the turndown, she had to admit. She’d been going too fast, as if she’d hiked some dangerous hill, then looked down and realized how high she was, how precarious her footing, how easy it would be to fall.

She set her items in the larger window and let Rick help her up into the smaller one with two naked mannequins. Rick was so big, the window seemed as cramped as a jet’s lavatory when she stood beside him, still feeling the chemistry between them.

Her knees jiggled and her heart banged her ribs and where had all the oxygen gone? But she took the leather bustier from him and, cool as could be, held it against the naked mannequin, who stood with her legs spread, hips thrust forward, black wig pulled severely back. “For Donna?” she asked.

Rick’s eyes skimmed the clothing, the mannequin, then her face. “Looks right.”

“If you’re into that, huh?” She had her tie-up fantasy, after all. But it was all pretend, she realized. She’d never have the nerve to say to Rick, I want you. You want me. Let’s go for it.

In her soul, she knew she wasn’t equipped to just pick up a guy. Her mother’s words were a red-hot memory, as fresh as yesterday. Don’t be a slut, Samantha Kay.

She unzipped the bustier and loosened the laces so she could put it on the mannequin and made a joke. “This looks ridiculous. By the time the guy gets the thing pried open, you’ve given up and gone to asleep.”

Rick laughed, then bent to the shoe box at the mannequin’s feet, leaving Samantha to her painful memory. She’d been sixteen at the time. Tutoring the cool clique at Copper Corners High in trig had gotten her in their good graces and they’d helped her spend her hoarded allowance on a trendy black dress, then donated their cast-off cosmetics to her—dark shadow, goopy mascara, pale foundation and red gloss so wet it nearly dripped.

She was to meet them at the Bowl-A-Rama, so she’d dressed, put on the makeup, sprayed her hair wild and bounded into the living room to show her mother. Ta-daa.

The stunned gasp stopped her mid-spin. You look like a slut. The dress wasn’t short or tight. Maybe she’d gone a little overboard on the eye stuff, but everyone was wearing it heavy—pop stars had set the pace.

I thought we raised you right. Her mother’s eyes filled with tears and she sank into the chair. Thank God her father had been away on business—his reaction would have been worse.

Maybe if her mother had yelled at her, demanded Samantha wash her face, change out of that hooker outfit, Samantha might have slammed out of the house, made fun of her mother the way the cool girls did of theirs, smoked cigarettes and shoplifted lipstick from Dina’s Shop ’N Go just like they did. Instead, her mother had seemed devastated, heartbroken, bereft.

Don’t be a slut, Samantha Kay. It was a plaintive cry.

Samantha had rushed to the bathroom, expecting to see the cute, sexy girl who’d just left there, but what looked back at her was a cheap, trashy fool. Try as she might, she couldn’t get back that glow, the sparkle she’d seen as clear as day.

“Can I help?”

Rick startled her back to the moment and she realized the mannequin was rattling on its posts as she struggled to adjust the bustier in place.