Excerpt
Sophie was already at the club when Kara arrived a l ittle while later. She’d made a start on opening the stock boxes, and was kneeling on the floor surrounded by scanty lingerie and sex toys.
“Just a normal day at the office I see.” Kara dropped her bag down on the floor with a grin.
“Free samples,” Sophie said, holding up an edible, erect penis with a look of barely disguised horror.
“Classy,” Kara laughed. “Lunch?”
Sophie made a ‘no-way’ face and put the choc-cock back in its box.
“Where did you get to?”
“Just giving the old Mustang a good airing,” Kara said, aware she sounded vague but reluctant to mention her visit to Dylan.
“Just don’t get yourself arrested,” Sophie said.
Kara faked offence. “As if.” They both knew she was perfectly capable of it, and she’d only wriggled off the hook one time back home because she happened to have been pulled over by a cop who’d had the hots for her in college.
“It’s just that I noticed that Dylan’s jacket had gone out of the hallway.” Sophie didn’t look up from the box she was slicing open, but Kara heard the speculative hint behind her words all the same. There was no getting anything past that girl.
“Mm. I dropped it back for him while I was out.”
Sophie glanced up, her eyebrows high above questioning eyes.
“What?” Kara rolled her eyes. “You asked me to be nice to him. I was being nice.”
“No, it’s nothing,” Sophie pulled open the carton in front of her. “It’s just…”
Kara dropped down on her knees beside Sophie and reached for an unopened box, already knowing exactly where Sophie was heading with this conversation.
“Soph, don’t worry. The last thing I’m interested in is getting involved, especially with some guy who we don’t know from Adam. He could be a mass murderer for all we know.”
“He doesn’t strike me as a mass murderer,” Sophie said neutrally. “I like him, actually. Easy on the eye, too.”
“You think?” Kara studied the inventory list for the box she’d just opened without really taking in the details. “He’s okay, I suppose.”
“You suppose.” Sophie smiled. “You suppose?”
“What do you want me to say? He’s hot? Okay, I suppose he’s hot. Kind of. If you like that sort of thing.”
“You like that sort of thing.”
“Are you telling me or asking me?”
Sophie placed the handcuffs she’d been examining for quality back in the box and twisted to face Kara, her hands on her knees.
“Kara. We’ve been friends for more than half of our lives. I know you well enough to know that Dylan Day is exactly your type, so don’t even bother denying it, okay?”
Kara sighed. “Soph, I know what you’re thinking, but trust me on this. I’m not about to have a holiday romance and end up broken-hearted again. See these fingers?” She held out her hands. “Burned. After what happened with Richard last year, I’m well and truly off that whole romance shtick.”
“I seem to remember us having a conversation very similar to this when I separated from Dan,” Sophie said, referring to her childhood sweetheart and ex-husband. It seemed bizarre to imagine that she’d ever truly loved him now, because her feelings for Lucien were so much bigger. All-encompassing.
“Yeah, but you had the delectable Lucien to pick up the pieces. There aren’t enough Viking sex gods out there to go around for the rest of us.”
“Or American surf dudes?”
“Whichever. My point is that after being left standing at the fucking altar in a wedding dress I didn’t even fucking like all that much, I’m not about to jump into fucking bed with Dylan-yankee-doodle-diddle-Day!”
Sophie put her hand over her mouth, but the laugh came out just the same. Kara swiped her on the shoulder then burst out laughing too.
“You ladies sound hard at it.”
They both looked up as Lucien appeared in the doorway with yet another box in his arms, his eyes taking in the two laughing women surrounded by handcuffs and chocolate erections. Handcuffs. Erections. Sometimes, it just wasn’t possible to keep work and pleasure totally separate. Lucien placed the delivery down next to Sophie, and pocketed a set of handcuffs at the same time. She caught his eye fleetingly and then dropped her gaze with a discreet smile.
“Sophie, could I see you in my office in five minutes, please?”
She caught the emphasis absolutely clearly, and entered Lucien’s office seven minutes later, deliberately missing his deadline.
“You’re late.”
“I was busy.”
“Not just one minute late. Two.” He lounged against the edge of his desk and touched the back of the swivel chair beside him, turning it slowly to face her. “Sit down.”
Sophie closed the door behind her with a click and crossed the room. Lucien watched her closely, his eyes all over her. She’d dressed for him that morning, knowing full well that her feminine, not-quite demure, lace-trimmed sundress played to his cave-man instincts, and that the almost indecent underwear she’d chosen to team it with turned him hard on sight.
His hands moved warm and heavy to rest on her shoulders. Kind of loving, kind of clamped. Only the slow stroke of his thumbs on her neck beneath her ponytail betrayed him.
“Put your hands behind the chair, Sophie.”
A shiver ran from Sophie’s scalp to the base of her back. She swallowed, and slowly obeyed his demand. Lucien clipped the cuffs around her wrists, taking care to shackle her in place by threading the chain behind the post of the chair.
“A lot can happen in two minutes, Princess,” Lucien said, letting her hair free from its band before swinging the chair around to face him. He knelt before her, checked his watch, and spread her knees.
Sophie held her breath, never sure with Lucien what would happen next.
She gasped when he rucked her dress up her thighs, his hands firm as he yanked her hips forwards on the seat. Once she was exposed from the waist down, Lucien stopped for a second.
“These are some of my favourites,” he murmured, massaging a firm hand over the scrap of white lace between her legs.
“I wore them for you.”
He nodded briefly, his eyes hot on hers. “I know.” He gripped the edge of the delicate lace and pulled it aside, parting her thighs even wider with his shoulders as he dipped his head. He paused, his lips a whisper away from her skin. Both hands buried between her thighs, he opened her with his fingers and blew lightly over her flesh, a cool breeze to heighten the heat of his tongue.
Sophie watched him, her hands desperate to be tangled in his hair rather than behind the chair. He raised his eyes to hers and kissed her clitoris, and her body arched in response. He lifted one eyebrow, and kissed her there again. Slower, longer, with tongues, the most erotic of French kisses.
“Not just one minute late, Princess,” he said, stroking one finger along her thigh. “Two.”
He pushed two fingers inside her at once and fastened his beautiful mouth over her sex, his hot, wet tongue making her cry out. He mouthed her, delicate and then not so, teasing and then sensationally not so. He knew her body so well now. How to build her, how to hold her right on the edge, and how to plunge her all the way over whenever he wanted to. He wanted to. Her hips jerked and he followed her movements with his mouth, not letting her miss a thing.
Sliding his fingers slowly out of her, he dropped a kiss on her thigh as he straightened her clothes and checked his watch.
“One minute fifty five.”
Sophie stretched when he unlocked the cuffs, and Lucien caught hold of her wrist and massaged it.
“Next time, be more punctual.”
Sophie ran a hand over his crotch. “Maybe,” she massaged his erection and stretched up to lick her tongue over his lower lip. “Maybe not.”
She stepped away and skipped to the door, laughing when someone tapped the other side of it.
“Dylan,” she smiled in welcome, straightening the skirt of her dress, opening the door wide. “I hope you’re not late too. Lucien’s feeling quite the slave driver today.”
One day, on her way home from work as a sales manager, A. M. Hargrove, realized her life was on fast forward and if she didn’t do something soon, it would quickly be too late to write that work of fiction she had been dreaming of her whole life. So, she rolled down the passenger window of her fabulous (not) company car and tossed out her leather briefcase. Luckily, the pedestrian in the direct line of fire was a dodge ball pro and had über quick reflexes enabling him to avoid getting bashed in the head. Feeling a tad guilty about the near miss, A. M. made a speedy turn down a deserted side street before tossing her crummy, outdated piece-of-you-know-what laptop out the window. She breathed a liberating sigh of relief, picked up her cell phone, called her boss and quit her job. Grinning, she made another call to her hubs and told him of her new adventure (after making sure his heart was beating properly again).
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