All Tied Up Read online

  She exposed a whole lot of belly in the process, but managed to get the bra into place without too many awkward movements. All that was left now was to wiggle one arm, then the other, back through the T-shirt’s armholes and, ta-da!

  He didn’t move a muscle. Not so much as an eyelash. No tic in his jaw or fingers clenched on the chair arms, nor was there any other dead giveaway of a man holding his fierce lust in check. Then again, what was there for him to lust over?

  Wait a minute. What in the world was she saying? She had plenty to lust over. Yet she was thinking like…like a man instead of like a woman who knew size didn’t matter.

  Milk came in everything from gallon jugs to coffee cream thimbles. It was still milk. Just like the dimensions of the banana found in a man’s pocket mattered less than the way he peeled his fruit.

  The blinders on Leo’s eyes had to go.

  She took a step closer, and closer still, until her knees bumped into his. Bracketing his legs with hers, she scooted aboard the chair. Her knees sank into the cushions on either side of his hips. Her lap sank into his.

  The move put Peter Pan and Tinkerbell level with Leo’s eyes, though the perky little characters were safely covered by her shirt. “Anything else?”

  “Well, now that you mention it,” Leo began, his voice less Prince Charming and more husky frog, though he met her gaze directly, his intent as evident in his expression as it was beginning to be in his lap. “You can take off your shirt.”

  She knew she ought to probably put more effort into resistance. But she was putty, soft and malleable, made for easy play. And for hours now, she’d wanted to feel the touch of his hands. “You first. Take off your tie.”

  He hesitated a nanosecond. Then he loosened the knot, slipped the strip of colored silk free from his collar. She reached for the tie at the same time she took hold of his free hand, and before he could prepare an argument, she started binding his wrists together.

  He studied her ongoing handiwork. “Bondage? This would be the dirty little secret you’ve never shared with your best friend? The one I need to find and mark off my list?”

  She pressed her lips together because she so wanted to blurt out that he’d just lost his edge, breaking the rules of the game like that, telling her point-blank one of the items he’d be working to discover.

  Instead, she concentrated on making another loop, another knot, totally ruining a designer accessory that had to have cost a small fortune.

  “Are you done?” he finally asked when there was only an inch or two of tie end left hanging.

  Pleased with the results of her efforts, and even more so with the progression of the game, Macy dropped his bound hands into his lap. “Just making sure you’re not tempted to get all hands-on here.”

  That she would kill to feel his hands on all parts of her body wasn’t the point. The point at this point was…She had absolutely no idea of anything except that she wanted to get naked with Leo Redding.

  “Macy?”

  At his softly spoken question, she met his gaze. “Yes, Leo?”

  “I’ve changed my mind. I’d rather you leave your shirt on.”

  He’d rather, would he? He’d seen enough of what wasn’t there to see, was that it? No, that wasn’t it. Because just as she’d started to reach defiantly for the hem of her shirt, she realized that was exactly what he wanted her to do.

  “You’re a sneaky one, aren’t you? Using reverse psychology on a psychology major won’t earn you any points, mister.”

  “I don’t need help earning my points. I’ll talk you out of anything I want to know.”

  “Is that so?” Ooh, he was so close to crossing the line to her bad side. “Then what’s with the shirt on, shirt off business if you’re not trying to sneak past my defenses and get a head start on your list?”

  “There’s a lot to be said for a man’s imagination.”

  “I thought men were from Mars. That you preferred relying on all those eyes you have instead of flexing your imagination.”

  Leo lifted his glasses, lowered them back into place. “I am using my eyes.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Not that I’ll stop you if you’re determined to lose your shirt.”

  Now she was battling confusion as well as hormones. Did he want her? Or was she imagining the activity of his third Martian eye?

  “I think I’ll leave it on.” She gave her answer with utmost ambiguity.

  “Good. Because that’ll make doing this a whole lot more fun.” Leo looped his bound hands behind her neck. He held her still and his eyes flared sharply. The corner of his mouth lifted with the secret he was thinking.

  And then he leaned forward and gave Tinkerbell a tongue-lashing.

  Oh and my were the only two words Macy could remember. The rest of the noise in her throat was either a moan or a groan. Leo’s mouth covered her breast until her T-shirt and bra were as wet as he’d find her panties.

  He pulled on her nipple with his lips, scraped the tip with his teeth, then moved to Peter Pan, leaving damp circles of cotton and nylon and skin. He traced the line of her tattoo with the flat of his tongue, circling the tip over the Celtic knot that dipped between her breasts.

  Macy’s own fingers gouged into her thighs because she was afraid she’d reach for the buttons of his shirt, or the hem of her own, or his head to better guide him, or his other head to see exactly what he had to offer.

  Why was she wearing anything at all? Why weren’t they both naked and in bed?

  Okay. This madness had to stop. She pressed a hand to Leo’s chest and pushed him away from the grand work he was doing. His eyes were brighter than she’d ever seen them. His mouth was damp, and red from the contact with the fabric of her shirt.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he grinned. The impish, devilish, cocky grin of a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Or his mouth in the make-believe cleavage of a woman he didn’t know. Hmm.

  “Leo? What are we doing?”

  “Breast-feeding?”

  At that, she cuffed the back of his head. “An Eric Haydon comment if I ever heard one. Hey, what are your hands doing untied?”

  “Doing this.” One hand held her nape. “And this.” The other hand he splayed flat across her collarbone, his palm resting on her cleavage, which was still damp from his mouth.

  Macy knew he was taking the measure of her heartbeat, her arousal in reaction to his touch. Men enjoyed that, knowing they held a woman’s orgasm in the palm of their hand. “Are you thinking of snapping my neck? Tossing my limp rag-doll body down the elevator shaft?”

  One hand slid up toward her throat. “Why would you think I’d do that?”

  “Easiest way to eliminate the competition.”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute, then murmured, “Rag doll?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be getting any ideas.”

  “I don’t know. I like the idea of having my own personal plaything.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “The idea does have merits. I could use a boy toy of my own.”

  One brow went up, came down. “Boy toy? I guess I could live with that.”

  “I’m sure you could, but don’t think you’ll be so lucky. We’ve fraternized enough for one night.”

  “I thought fraternization was the secret to your scavenger hunt. Best way to learn all about one another.” Leo laced his fingers behind his neck and leaned back, knees spread wide as he considered the wet spots he’d left on her shirt.

  “I never said I was going to make this easy for you.” She backed off his lap and onto her feet. “We’re going to be at each other’s throats before the end of the month, you know.”

  He studied her over the rims of his glasses. “Throats? I can’t say that would be the first thing I’d go after.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re actually considering sleeping with the enemy.”

  For a moment he remained silent. Unmoving. Then the slow blink of his eyes, plus the
rapid tapping of a single index finger along the outer edge of the chair arm, suggested conflicting thoughts must be running through his mind.

  Finally, he pushed to his feet and reached for his cell phone. A self-directed shake of his head offered little insight into what decision he’d reached.

  His voice, as he ordered a cab, was calm and collected, unlike the look on his face, which had Macy wondering what part of her comment, the sleeping or the enemy, had switched the thermostat from sauna to freeze.

  He snapped the phone closed and returned it to the case at his waist. Then he moved toward her. She refused to back away. Instead, she lifted her chin and the stakes of this game.

  “A tactical retreat? So soon? Why, Leo, you surprise me.”

  “Sleeping with the enemy is against my code of ethics.” He ran the tip of one finger the length of her tattoo.

  A shiver reached her bare toes. “You’re a lawyer. I didn’t think you had a code of ethics.”

  “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be leaving.”

  So he did want to sleep with her. “So you do want to sleep with me.”

  The words hung in the air as he wrapped one hand around her waist and used the pressure of the other on her backside, pulling her up and into his erection.

  Oh, he was gloriously huge, gloriously hard, and Macy could barely find her voice to say, “Is that a subpoena in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

  The tic at Leo’s temple twitched with the grinding of his jaw. “Is everything a joke to you? Or only the things the rest of us tend to take seriously?”

  “Laugh and the world laughs with you,” Macy said, her breath coming fast, in heated bursts.

  “I’m not laughing.” He let her go. “I’m leaving.”

  “What? You’re not interested in finding out the truth about the dirty little secret I’ve never even shared with my best friend?”

  “The scavenger hunt can wait. I’ve learned enough of the truth for one evening.”

  And then he left, walking to the elevator, a scene that was becoming all too familiar and predictable. The lift came and went, taking Leo bodily away, leaving behind the picture of his backside on the balcony, of his hands spread wide on the arms of the chair.

  Of his mouth making wet and wild with her chest. Of his cocky attitude and his cocky grin and his cocky, er, okay, his cock pressed like a probe to her belly.

  Too bad she couldn’t toss the memory of the night after him down the shaft.

  5

  LAUREN LAY ON HER STOMACH on the soft navy sheets covering Anton’s mattress, her fingers laced, her forehead resting in the cup of her hands, her body bare but for the comforter draped over her lower legs.

  She alternately winced and groaned, depending on which group of muscles Anton worked with his fingers, which he dug into with the heels of his palms. He’d been manipulating her body long enough that her tension should have eased.

  But how was she supposed to relax when his fingers were walking the length of her spine, reaching her tailbone and exploring lower, dipping between her legs to make her ready, only to pull away as she lifted her hips?

  She whimpered when he returned to her shoulders to begin the process again. With soft brushes of lips to skin, he eased her back from completion, working the stress from tendons and muscles as stiff and unyielding as the part of his body pressed firmly to the crevice of her bottom.

  A quiet laugh escaped as she worked her legs farther apart. She may not have intended for her mind to wander, but she couldn’t help entertaining the fleeting thought that maybe, by the end of the month, Macy would be lying this way beneath Leo Redding, his erection sliding over her bottom as he moved.

  Oh, but Lauren liked the way Anton slid over her bottom as he moved. Forward as he pressed down between her shoulder blades, back as he kneaded his way to the base of her spine. Eyes closed, she allowed a smile to touch her lips. Her limbs became jelly, then melted like butter, and she no longer knew the difference between the sheet and her skin.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  She couldn’t think clearly enough to speak. His fingers grazed her sides, teased her breasts. Her nipples puckered into the sheet; his erection probed between her legs. Deeply aroused, Lauren inhaled the aroma of the citrus and vanilla massage oil enhanced by the mating of skin.

  Coils of tension unwound, only to tighten anew at the feel of Anton’s heavy sex stroking to the rhythm and the motion of his hands. She wanted him inside her, and reached back with one hand to measure the soft weight of his testicles, to run her thumb over the wet tip of his glans.

  He moved away as she did, and even her soft plea didn’t bring him back. Lauren closed her eyes briefly, steeling herself before she rolled onto her back and propped herself up on her elbows. She wanted to ask why he’d stopped, what she’d done.

  Why did she always jump to the conclusion that it was something she’d done?

  But one glance at Anton and she couldn’t think of anything but the way his skin looked in the room’s candlelight, how the soft fuzz on his chin caught the glow from the flames, as did the blond curls in disarray on the top of his head, the bare dusting of hair that covered his torso.

  He’d sat back on his heels, his hands on his thighs, his sex strong, hard, jutting upward. She wanted him. Desperately. She’d always thought men possessed the more powerful sex drive, but with Anton, she could never get enough.

  Tonight, however, before he’d take her, before he’d allow either one of them the climax to which they’d been building, there was something else he wanted. She knew that about him after all the time they’d been together. Knew, too, the power she held over him with the satisfaction he found in her body.

  Strangely enough, right now, she didn’t care what he wanted. She wanted to be the one in control, to experiment with that power, to discover exactly the depth of that hold. She wanted to stir in Anton an emotional response, to see if he felt any of the unease she was feeling after reading Macy’s list.

  That list…that list had jarred Lauren deeply.

  Out of the dozen items she should know about the man in her life, she couldn’t name but two. She knew him sexually, but intimately? The question prodded her conscience to answer. She refused, and she didn’t like what that refusal said about her commitment, what it said about her as a lover, as a friend.

  She moved up and around on all fours, and she didn’t miss the flare in Anton’s eyes as she crawled behind him, draped her arms over his shoulders and pressed her breasts to his back.

  She moved her hands over his collarbone, rubbed light circles over his chest with her thumbs. “I was thinking about your hands.”

  She nipped at his earlobe, slid her palms with tormenting leisure down his torso. “Thinking how much I enjoy your touch.”

  She reached down, teased his erection with fluttering fingers. “Thinking how lucky I am to have you in my life.”

  Anton’s shoulders remained rigid under her ministrations. He didn’t believe her. She was going to have to confess the error of her ways. “And I was wondering how long it would be before Macy ended up in bed with Leo.”

  Anton turned his head, his chin brushing her cheek. “Macy and Leo? Are you serious?”

  She slowed for a moment, then picked up her stroking rhythm again, her fingers moving up to tug lightly at the hair covering his chest. “It was just a random thought, so no, not really. Why? You don’t think they could get something going?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  Lauren’s hands stilled. Her fingers slid up and off his shoulders. She sat back and crossed her legs, wondering if he didn’t know she would come to the defense of her friend. “I think you’re jumping the gun. From the way things looked earlier tonight, they seemed to be hitting it off without a snag.”

  Anton turned to face her, pulling her crossed legs forward and into his lap. “Don’t take this as a slam against Macy, Lauren, but you’ve seen the women Leo dates. Macy’s not in his social le
ague. She’s not his type physically. And she doesn’t exactly come equipped with the résumé he’s used to.”

  “I don’t really care what the man’s used to.” She couldn’t help but be protective of Macy. Lauren didn’t take her best friend’s best-friend rules lightly. “Leo’s way too narrow-minded. I mean, does he really think he’ll find what he’s looking for bedding only designer labels in his designer label bedding? Give me a break. I think Macy and her scavenger hunt might be just what he needs to change his way of thinking.”

  Anton studied Lauren’s face intently. “Do you think it will change my way of thinking?”

  This was what she’d been waiting for. This feeling of losing her footing at the first beckoning finger of dread. “What do you mean?”

  “If you think the scavenger hunt could change Leo’s mind about Macy, what’s to stop it from changing mine about you?” He reached up to toy with a long strand of her hair. His eyes finally softened. “Or yours about me, for that matter?”

  So her fears weren’t entirely unfounded. Anton shared her concerns…as if that were any sort of consolation. She smiled sweetly, refusing to let him see how the evening’s events had left her unsettled.

  “C’mon, baby. You and I both know that Leo has no idea who Macy really is. His opinions aren’t based on anything substantial.” Lauren ran fingertips up and down Anton’s outer thighs, moving her teasing touch into the pit of his knee before working her slow way back toward his groin.

  “You, on the other hand, know me. You know me very—” her fingertips grazed the base of his softened penis, delved below the heavy sac beneath “—very well.”

  “Are you sure?” He held her hands and halted her arousing progress. “I’m serious, Lauren. This game of Macy’s that you think capable of changing lives…Have you looked at your list?”

  She nodded and, working her captured hands free, shared an idea that had been forming. “You know, we could cheat. I’ll fill you in on anything you don’t know about me, you claim the prize, and we’re off for a week of fun.”

  This time he took hold of her wrists and pulled one hand close, grazing her wrist with a nibbling, calming kiss. “Instead of cheating, we could actually give it a shot. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”