Forbidden Fantasies Bundle(82)
“Just a few more…” she teased, shivering with desire.
“One request? Can we skip the cop-and-suspect one?”
“Too close to home?” She laughed. “No problem. Actually, I’m excited about just plain us, fantasies not required. I think we’re pretty damn sexy all on our own.”
“Whatever you need me to be, Samantha, I’ll be,” he said in that low, steady way she loved.
“I’m counting on it. We’ll take it slow, okay? Not get carried away.”
“Whatever you need.”
She loved when he said that. “What I need right now is you, Rick. The rest I can build again.”
They stood together, in the messy wreck of all she’d built, but she’d never felt happier in her life. Her work would go on. Her studio was in her heart, in the way she saw the world through her lens. She’d bring her dream to life again.
She was enough just as she was. She didn’t need a photo of her sexy side on her bureau or around her neck to remind her. She could be a small-town girl, shy and repressed, or a sultry temptress, wild and wanton, or anything in between. She was all that and more, under the skin and in her soul. And she’d found a man who loved her for it.
And, more importantly, so did she.
TWO HOT!
Cara Summers
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
To Donna and Salvatore Buffa.
Thank you for all your support
(and for reading every book I’ve ever written!)
Most of all, thank you for being such good friends.
I love you both!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
1
I WANT JED CALHOUN.
Zoë McNamara drew her bottom lip between her teeth and studied the words she’d just written on the first page of a fresh notebook. From the time she’d been a very young girl, she’d developed a habit of writing down her thoughts and feelings. Doing so had always helped her keep her focus and work through problems.
Jed Calhoun definitely qualified as a problem. She’d only known the man for two weeks, yet he could scramble her nerves with nothing more than one of those mocking looks of his. And when he touched her, even in the most casual way—the brush of his arm against hers as they entered a doorway—he sent her pulse rocketing.
Then there was the kiss.
Frowning, Zoë tapped her pen against the edge of the page. It hadn’t been a kiss at all, not really, but it had stirred up desires she hadn’t acted on in a very long time.
The problem was Jed Calhoun made her want to act on them. Ever since that “almost” kiss, he’d haunted her dreams, waking and sleeping. He was even beginning to interfere with her work. All she thought about was what it might have been like if he’d really kissed her.
Zoë badly wanted to pick up the notebook and throw it at the wall of her office. Better still, she wanted to go after Jed Calhoun and demand that he finish what he’d started. But she’d learned that giving in to what her parents referred to as the “wilder” side of her nature, especially with men, never solved a thing. She’d been there, done that her freshman year in college, and she’d learned her lesson. Hadn’t she?
When the phone rang, Zoë jumped. A glance at the caller ID had her stomach knotting. It was her mother, no doubt wanting a progress report on her work.
Letting the call transfer to her voice mail, she rose and circled her desk, then began to pace the small Oriental rug. Lately, her parents had been pleased with her. She was a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at Georgetown University. The current research she was doing with Dr. Sierra Gibbs on the dating and sexual practices of urban singles would be published, and that together with her degree would ensure her the kind of academic career that her parents felt was right for her.
Genetically, she was very suited to the kind of work she was doing with Sierra Gibbs. Her father, Dr. Michael McNamara, held a chair in theoretical physics at Harvard, and her mother, Dr. Miranda Phelps, was the dean of the engineering school at Stanford. But while raising her they hadn’t been content to trust in genes. They’d schooled her at home, providing her with private tutoring and special classes.
Stifling a little sigh, Zoë glanced around the small, meticulously neat office. This was the kind of world that her parents had raised her to fit into. And she was very good at what she was doing. So why did she feel so…trapped?