Double Dare

Author's Note

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

About the Author

Also By Karin Tabke

Copyright

hank you again to my amazing village: Tina, Virna, Martha, Victoria and Catherine. Couldn’t have done it without you!

Hubby, thank you for honing my texting skills.

And thank you to my readers who have fallen as hard for Simon as I have. Simon says, he sends his love and gratitude.

id you think I’d let you get away?

Stunned, Katy stared at the words on her iPhone. Anxiety fluttered through her. Fear prickled along her spine. Anger swelled in her chest. But overriding those three very profound emotions was pure, unmitigated joy. Breathless, she pressed her hand to her thumping heart.

Simon hadn’t forgotten about her.

Her hand shook as she read and reread the text. His handcuff icon stirred her womb. Her breasts grew heavier, her nipples so tight they ached. Katy squirmed in her seat, and groaned at the friction.

Yet even as her desire flared, so did her anger. Had she thought he’d let her get away?

Damn straight.

He’d been with another woman when she’d left! Even if he hadn’t been, he was out of her league.

They,
even if
they
had ever been a
they,
were over. They’d had a one-night-one-morning stand—the most amazing sex of her life, but also the most embarrassing episode of her life.

She still wasn’t sure why she, Dr. Katrina Winslow, a renowned geneticist, had taken her ex-boyfriend’s dare to pick up a man in a bar, bring him up to their room, and proceed to have a threesome.
Who did that?

Apparently she did, and the more she thought about it, the angrier and more ashamed she became. Because a threesome had only been the tip of the iceberg.

After the crazy threesome, and her first-ever orgasms, Evan, the man she’d
thought
she was falling in love with, dropped the
I’m married
bomb on her. Oh, and Katrina the Pathetic would not have been Katrina the Pathetic if she hadn’t drowned her shame and sorrows in a bottle of tequila and then, once she was thoroughly tanked, allowed hot cop Simon to have his way with her
again
.

It was the last thing she wanted, but her body did a happy dance as she remembered Simon handcuffing her to his showerhead and … oh, good God, giving her even better sex than the sex they’d had with Evan. Hell, she thought, biting back a gasp, they’d actually busted the showerhead. “Epic,” she breathed.

Do not attempt to contact me again!
she hurriedly texted back, afraid that if she waited, the idea of having sex with him just one more time would chip away at her resolve.

She jumped in her seat when her cell phone pinged.

Are you serious?

Yes.

Is this the douche bag?

No, it’s me, Katy.

Did I misinterpret your level of enjoyment, Kat?

My enjoyment or lack thereof has nothing to do with anything.

Then why are you still texting me?

She stared at his words. Why indeed? Because, despite her emotional fallout over taking that walk on the wild side with him, he was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. Because his words on a screen were enough to get her hot and bothered. Like a cat in heat, she wanted to claw and scratch and rub her aching body parts all over him.

Her entire body twitched. She wanted Simon in a very bad, very immediate way, but she’d been smart enough to end things between them that morning. She wasn’t going down a dead-end road with him. Not even for mind-blowing sex. Because Katrina Elizabeth Winslow knew if given the chance, she would fall head over heels in love with Simon, the green-eyed hot cop, and when he walked out of her life, she would never recover.

Self-preservation, baby.

Katy shut off her cell phone and padded into her lonely bedroom. The day had started with her attending the San Diego Symposium, moved on to amazing sex, then blown up in her face when she saw Simon with his girlfriend. Then, after her lousy flight home, Simon had obviously felt compelled to text her and tease her with the idea that their two episodes of debauchery were going to turn into something more.

As in more of her for him.

Yeah right.

She glanced at the suitcase she’d tossed on the bed and decided she’d unpack in the morning. She was too tired and, frankly, too down in the dumps to do it now.

Sometime during the night she woke up, turned her cell phone on, and texted her reply
:
Because you’re my kryptonite. Please, leave me alone.

When she woke, the first thing on her mind was her cell phone. She slid her glasses on quickly and frowned as she picked up the phone from her nightstand when she saw that it was already on. Her frown deepened when there was no flashing green light signaling she had a text, or a voice mail. Monumental disappointment settled heavily in her chest.

“I guess he really wasn’t that into you after all,” she muttered to herself.

Who are you kidding? Of course he wasn’t!

Glutton for punishment that she was, she tapped the stream of texts between them last night to make sure she hadn’t missed anything, and gasped when she read what she had texted at— she squinted—oh dear lord, 3:23 A.M. Had she texted in her sleep?

Humiliation crashed through her.
Please,
she prayed,
never let our paths cross again. Ever.
Thank you, universe, for a non-responding text. She cringed. Maybe he hadn’t seen it yet?

“Ugh,” she groaned and slapped her hand across her forehead; it was 8:32. Of course he’d seen it. Simon wasn’t the kind of guy that lounged lazily in bed. He had no doubt already kissed his “bed-warmer for the night” good-bye, and told her to lock up on her way out.

She tossed the phone onto her nightstand and hurried to get ready for work.

An hour later, Katy strode into her lab office. It wasn’t until she spotted Evan’s gift, a little black box of Recchiuti chocolates he’d given her after she returned from her New York trip last week, that she realized she hadn’t given him or his cheating ways a single thought since she and Simon had their little one-on-one tryst in his shower. So when he suddenly appeared, lightly tapping on her glass door, she was relieved to feel nothing for him beyond indifference and more than a little self-loathing.

“Dr. Scott,” she said, motioning him in.

When he closed the door behind him, she leaned back in her chair and said, “Unless you’re here to tell me you’ve discovered the cure for cancer, there is nothing you have to say that I want to hear.”

“Katy—” he began.

“No,” she stopped him by putting her hand up. “I mean it. I’m not mad. I’m—nothing except relieved. Please just go and forget we were ever more than colleagues.”

When he just stood there staring at her, she snapped her fingers. “Earth to Dr. Scott, do you read me?”

“Just like that, Katy? After everything we’ve—”

She stood, irritated by his gall. She snapped her fingers again, this time just beneath his nose. “Yes, you cheating bastard,” she seethed. She snapped her fingers again. “Just.” Snap. “Like.” Snap. “That!” Snap. “Now get out of my office.”

“I saw you come out of his hotel room yesterday, Katy.”

He meant Simon’s room, of course. And he actually had the colossal nerve to sound accusatory. “I would have thought your
wife,
” she shot back, “would have been keeping you too busy for you to be snooping around.”

Leaning toward her, Evan shook his head. “Guys like that run through girls like you,” he said as if she were to be pitied for her naïveté.

That stung, but only because it was probably true. To hide her hurt, she smirked and turned the knife on him. “Guys like that give girls like me orgasms. Something a guy like you never could. I’d say I got the better part of that deal.” She walked past him to her heavy glass door and jerked it open. “Go home to your wife, Dr. Scott. Don’t bother me again or”—she cocked a brow—“I’ll call my cop.”

She wished she could. But that was living on Fantasy Island.

“If you tell anyone about us, Katy, I’ll make sure you never work in a legitimate laboratory again,” Evan threatened.

Katy’s hands shook. “How dare you threaten me? How dare you threaten me when it was
you
who relentlessly pursued
me
!” she hissed, causing heads to turn. Lowering her voice she continued, “Had I known you were married I would not have given you the time of day in that regard.”

“Tread lightly, Dr. Winslow. Tread lightly.”

After Evan walked out of her office, she stood there for a moment, shocked by his audacity. How dare he threaten her? How dare he? He was a piece of work, that one. Though she would take his advice and tread lightly. Any time she saw him or any man coming, she was turning and walking the other way. Because he had nailed Simon. Guys like Simon
did
run through girls like her, and she felt all the more foolish for falling at his feet like a giddy schoolgirl crushing on the quarterback. Her humiliation galvanized her resolve.

Men in general were bad news. Simon the green-eyed cop was deadly. If she lived up to her IQ, she’d forget the last forty-eight hours of her life and move on.

She put Evan’s threats aside, knowing she had nothing to fear because she had no intention of outing him, even as infuriated with his threats as she was now.

The morning dragged by painfully. Not because she was dwelling on Evan’s threats. But because despite her resolve to not think about men—okay, one specific man—she obsessively checked her cell phone. Fixated, she waited for it to ping with a text or vibrate with a call. But no matter how many times she checked to make sure it was on and her battery was charged, there was nothing.

Not even spam.

This was ridiculous. She had work to do. Granted, having just come off a major lab bender, she was at the beginning of the mindless administrative aftermath that came with the patenting of her coding process, but it was work that needed to be done nonetheless. She shrugged her lab coat on, turned her cell phone off, and got to it.

An hour later, she was in front of one of the lab computers googling the conference hotel. Then she called the hotel’s event coordinator, asking about the law enforcement meeting that had taken place there. He said he couldn’t give her information about anyone who had attended. It wasn’t like she was going to stalk anyone; she just wanted to know more about the cop she couldn’t stop thinking about.

She hung up and chewed her bottom lip. Then duh—why not do a reverse on Simon’s cell phone number? Her heart beat a little faster as she stared at the area code and it clicked that it was a South Bay area code.

He was closer than she imagined he would be, but he could still be anywhere from Gilroy to Santa Clara, and Santa Clara was a straight shot down 101 from the city. Maybe an hour in light traffic?

Once again, she tried six ways to sundown to find a last name and address for him online, but the information repeatedly came up private. Hmm, maybe Rosie’s husband, Elliot, could run it for her? He had access to that kind of information.

And why, Katy, are you doing this? If you want to get in touch with him, just text him.

I don’t want to talk to him, I just want to know who he is.