Girl Gear 4: Striptease (17 page)

As much as she hated to do so, she released him and got to her feet, kicking out of her flats as she stood. He was so much taller than she was, his chest so broad, his legs so long, the way a man’s should be. And, like a man, he didn’t argue when she went to
work on the more intricate fastenings holding her clothing together.

Her skirt dropped to her ankles and her cardigan followed, and soon she stood in nothing but her camisole and lacy bikinis. But when she reached for the hem to pull off her top, Aiden stopped her.

“My turn,” he said, trading places. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her between his spread legs.

Her hands went to his shoulders, her gaze to his thick penis jutting upward so urgently. When he made no move to speak or to say another word, she returned her gaze to his face.

His eyes were so solemn and his expression intense with so much of what he seemed desperate to say. “Do you know how beautiful you are?”

She shook her head; her hair tumbled around her shoulders. “Not half as beautiful as you.”

His laugh was a scoff. “I’m scraped and scarred and held together by pins in one ankle and a rod in one hip. Hardly much to look at.”

“Beauty
is
in the eye of the beholder, you know,” she said, and slid her hands from his shoulders to cup his face. If he was scraped and scarred, she’d never even noticed. All she cared about seeing was his soul in his eyes.

He closed his eyes then, moved his hands from her waist up her rib cage and brushed his thumbs over her nipples, which were straining beneath the silk. And then one thumb was gone and, in its placed, his tongue. He lapped and suckled and drew her into his mouth, silk camisole and all.

Sensation descended, as if a line ran from his mouth to the core of her sex, as if his lips tugged there between her legs at the same time. She wiggled because
she couldn’t help it. And he moved his hands to her back, slid them down to her bottom and into her panties—panties that quickly found their way to the floor.

She whimpered, wanting his touch, wanting him to finish stripping her. But he simply moved to her other nipple, leaving the cool air to blow on the wet silk covering the one he’d so thoroughly aroused. This time her whimper came with a shiver, and the shiver only worsened when Aiden’s hands made their way up the backs of her thighs.

He reached the cleft of her bottom and urged her legs apart. She clenched her belly and opened, and he slipped his fingers between, seeking her moisture and growling in approval at the dampness he found. Dampness, ha! She was so incredibly wet and so incredibly ready, and she wanted out of the rest of her clothing now.

“Please, Aiden,” she begged, her hands moving to the camisole’s hem. “Let me get this off.”

With his tongue still circling her nipple, he looked up at her with a wild sense of discovery in his eyes. And looking down at him there, his mouth still on her breast, was almost more than she could take. She shoved him away and whipped off her top.

Before she even had a chance to look at him again, he’d grabbed her up by the waist and tossed her none too gently to the bed.

She bounced, and scrambled to the center, and barely a second passed before he’d covered her body with his. Her legs parted automatically; her arms went around his neck, and without asking for permission she brought his mouth to hers. His tongue slid over hers as he rolled on a condom and entered her. When she gasped, he swallowed her cry.

He moved his hands to cradle her head, and loved her with his beautiful mouth and body. She surged upward to meet each of his smooth, easy strokes, clutching him tightly, fearing to let him go and never again know such pleasure. Her body glowed with a heat that turned her inside out.

She wasn’t going to be able to wait. As much as she wanted to, as bitterly as she fought to hold off her completion, she failed. But the success that followed was worth letting herself go. She pulled her mouth free from Aiden’s and cried out, her arms around his back holding him pressed to her.

She wanted him there, needed him there, his solid strength grounding her as she shuddered through her release. He waited until she was done, kept up the rhythm she needed until she was splintered and exhausted and spent.

Only then did he drive himself downward with furious strokes, taking her apart a second shattering time as his orgasm ripped through his body. He continued to thrust, and she kept her legs wrapped around the backs of his thighs, her hands pressed there to the sensitive small of his back.

When he finished, when he slowed and shuddered, when he sighed and finally collapsed, only then did she let him go, moving her hands up and down his back in a soothing, loving caress. She whispered into his ear words that made no sense, that were sounds more than decipherable, intelligible avowals of what this moment meant.

In a language of her own making, she told him all the things that would come with time.

For now, however, this was enough.

S
ITTING IN HER OFFICE
late that evening, Melanie turned her chair to face the windows, and ignored the work on her desk. Except for the tech guys who always pulled strange hours, the place was empty. Her partners had long since gone home to their men.

Even Kinsey, another remaining holdout in the permanent mating game, was out to dinner and a movie with Doug Storey, Anton Neville’s business partner. Melanie didn’t know about Poe; the other woman’s private life was still an enigma.

Melanie’s wasn’t much better because…oh, wait. She didn’t have one. She had work and she had sex and she had exercise and she had sex. She had a man, one she could probably even go home to if she wanted, but she’d be going home to him solely for sex.

She just didn’t have the sort of
thing
going on with Jacob that Chloe did with Eric, or Sydney did with Ray, Macy with Leo, Lauren with Anton, ad nauseum.

And whose fault was that?
Melanie thought, twirling her pencil between her forefingers and thumbs.

Not that such a relationship was what she wanted. After all, she was the one so very happily married to her career.

She was also the one coming to realize that none of her worries over where the company was headed mattered to anyone else involved. Her partners were of
the “winds of change” attitude, bending and blowing in the breeze.

Melanie was concerned about the imminent break when the storms got too strong—a situation all too common in the e-tail market. Why was she the only one able to see that? gIRL-gEAR was not an indestructible force.

What the company was, however, was the investment into which she’d poured her entire life since that senior year at the University of Texas when the partnership inspiration had struck on a cold November night in a new Austin Starbucks.

Suddenly she was in a very bad mood.

Feeling betrayed.

Feeling resentful.

Feeling as if she was actually the one drifting while the others had dropped anchor in a port foreign to her, a port secure enough that none of them ever again had to worry about swimming in open shark-infested man-waters.

Fighting a sudden sting of tears, Melanie stared at the traffic sweating along on the Southwest Freeway in the heat and humidity that lingered at day’s end. She felt raw and exposed, but, unlike the earlier interview process, this disclosure of emotion was private, one she’d never thought she would make even to herself.

All this time she’d so proudly proclaimed her independence, the complete fulfillment she found through her work, when the brutal truth, the unvarnished reality, was that she wanted exactly what her partners had.

God, but she wanted what they had.

A reason to go home at the end of the day. To be
wanted, cherished, supported, encouraged. To have a best friend who was also her lover. As much as she longed to be the independent woman she’d been brought up to be, she wanted even more to simply be loved.

She sniffled and blinked, and then she got mad—at her partners and at Jacob and at herself and, oh, too many other things to list. Fine. She’d just call up
her
man and invite him over for a night of mindless oblivion. That was exactly what she needed, to sex her way into a better mood.

Lately, though Jacob had been as inspired and inventive as ever, she’d sensed a change in him when they were in bed. The last two nights he’d seemed especially distracted, as if his body was willing but he had too much on his mind.

The downside of a being workaholic. And the very reason a long, hot night together was just what Dr. Melanie ordered for the both of them.

She started to reach for her phone, then remembered the URL he’d sent her the day she’d stripped for him in her office, the link broadcasting the feed from the Webcam in his office. She pulled up the e-mail with the link to the page and clicked, tapping her fingers on her mouse as she waited.

If he was there—and no doubt he was—she’d send a text message to his cell phone and dare him to play the male stripper for her. It was about time turnabout turned into fair play. The stripping around here had not exactly been of the equal opportunity sort.

Yes! There he was! Sitting in front of his desk in one of the two visitors’ chairs, another man in the one at his side. Hmm. There went the stripping fantasy. Her excitement quickly became resignation. As adven
turous as he was, performing for a live male audience would be drifting into territory better left uncharted.

Both men sat forward in the chairs, Jacob with his elbow propped on the front edge of his desk, their attention riveted to the television sitting on the office’s corner credenza. The Webcam’s fixed angle allowed her to catch only flashes of movement and color—until Jacob’s visitor sat back and out of the way of the screen.

They were looking at a scene shot in the gIRL-gEAR office. There was no way to mistake that deep purple office decor. It seemed Jacob was sharing documentary footage he’d shot. Asking for input, perhaps? A second professional opinion? She leaned toward her monitor and squinted, adjusting her glasses as if one or the other of the actions might help clarify her voyeuristic curiosity.

Jacob was gesturing toward the television where—finally!—Melanie caught a glimpse of Chloe in her candy-heart pink office, sitting at her desk with her makeup mirror out and her train case of cosmetics emptied out onto her blotter.

Hmm. Melanie knew that her partner dolled herself up every night before heading off to meet Eric. And…now that she thought further, Melanie seemed to remember complaining about that very thing to Jacob. A funny feeling had her shifting around in her chair.

She propped her elbow on her desktop, leaned her chin into the palm of her fist and frowned as she watched Jacob and the other man exchange words before he fast-forwarded through that section of tape to another. In this scene, Lauren lounged in her desk chair, doodling on her desk blotter while chatting.

An intimate, very unprofessional conversation if her drowsy lids and half smile were any indication. Meanwhile, lights on her phone flashed unnoticed and unattended. Another complaint made in confidence to Jacob…

Melanie felt as if she’d been hit with a stun gun. She could not believe this was happening. This time the burn of tears was anger-driven, anger over Jacob’s betrayal and at her own naiveté. He’d told her the documentary was his best work ever, that this was the project guaranteed to bring fulfillment of his ambition.

Right now she was wishing her original character assassination of Jacob as a lazy bum had been dead-on. She didn’t want him to have anything resembling ambition. Not if this was the result.

He might benefit from what she was seeing, from exposing provocative office scenarios sure to spark questions and prurient interest, but this documentary would never take the company to a higher level. One that would reassure clients and an industry controlled by men.

It would totally devastate their image.

Especially the next scene, of Sydney in the conference room studying quotes from wedding caterers, honeymoon resorts and bridal magazines. If viewers realized that even gIRL-gEAR’s CEO rarely had a head for business anymore…Melanie couldn’t begin to fathom the imminent damage to their example as pioneering entrepreneurs.

She pressed her forehead into the X of her arms crossed on her desk. A strangled moan originated in the depths of her anguished heart. This couldn’t happen. Wouldn’t happen. She had to make certain no one ever saw this footage. The partners were scheduled to
visit the Avatare screening room as a group tomorrow. Jacob was going to show them a portion of the completed project.

Melanie wondered if that was the reason he and his buddy were sharing this little preview party, getting a good laugh out of the partners gullibility and preparing defenses against certain shock and accusations of betrayal.

She’d trusted him with confidences and concerns never before entrusted to a man, yet he was going to reduce everything they’d shared down to a career move that would leave her and her best friends if not ruined, then revealed by a cruel spotlight. Was this what career obsession did to a man?

Or to a woman?

The thought left her reeling. She never would’ve believed this possible of Jacob if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. She’d fallen in love with his artistic integrity, his sense of honesty in his work. He never compromised, making sure the work he did was real and faithful to the truth. He didn’t use or manipulate people for his own gain.

Or so she’d thought until now….

You were right, Mama. I won’t make the same mistake again.
So much for honor and integrity. Sniffling, she sat back up, then pushed herself out of her chair to pace. She had to think of a solution and fast. Her personal feelings she would deal with later.

She would not stand back and let Jacob destroy her friends. Before anyone else got a look at what she’d just seen, she and Jacob Faulkner needed to have a little talk.

J
ACOB SAT IN FRONT
of the editing equipment in the Avatare studio and wondered how in the world he was
going to deal with this fight between his heart and his head. Dealing with his dick was so much easier. Then again, dicks had a history of getting men and governments into a whole lot of trouble.

This was the very reason he found it so much easier to do his work on film. He could express himself precisely, exactly, and not have to figure out if he was making his point, if he’d screwed up, if he’d hurt feelings, if he’d forgotten to say something he should have. His heart and his head got along so much better that way.

Thing was, he’d become so intent on getting his vision perfected that he’d totally overlooked the need he really did have for including personal relationships in his life. Instead, he’d fallen victim to the very single-minded career obsession he’d sworn to steer clear of.

Hard not to when opportunities such as the one offered by Equity Beat were the result of his dedication.

He had no idea yet what he was going to say should they offer him a place on their production team. He didn’t want to borrow that trouble since he’d yet to meet with them. It was easier to think they might not want him for more than contract assignments, or that they might not want him at all.

That way he didn’t have to wonder what he was going to do without having Melanie in his life.

Ask him a month ago, and he’d have never thought it possible to reach an even higher level of excellence in his work. But he had, claiming on more than one occasion that it was the documentary making it happen.

Wrong-o, buddy.

It had happened because of Melanie Craine—not the same thing at all.

This wasn’t about Melanie as vice president of whatever kooky divisions she headed up. This was about Melanie as the woman who’d treated him as if he didn’t have any potential. He’d felt compelled to prove her wrong, and in doing so had opened a window his career’s forward motion had soundly closed at his back.

Never before had he captured such subtle nuances, such provocative images. And here he’d always thought a woman would hinder him and hold him down. The very opposite had happened. His focus hadn’t narrowed, his world hadn’t been reduced to limited choices.

It was as if she had opened his eyes to all that he could do, all that he could be. Then she’d fed his confidence by respecting what she’d expected of him all along.

And it wasn’t about what they did in bed. Sure, that was part of it. But it was about her incredible commitment and strength of purpose. Watching her at work, seeing how she calmed Kinsey’s panic over a vendor going belly-up, seeing the way she talked Chloe out of throttling more than a few of the girls who’d signed up for the new mentoring deal, inspired him to live up to the same standards for himself.

Humanity. She had it in spades. Hell, she’d even tucked Renata under her wing—as if his sister needed nurturing. He stopped, thought. What if she did, and had all this time? Maybe he’d never seen what Melanie’s brilliant female intuition allowed her to see.

“Hey, Faulkner,” Harry called from the editing room doorway. “Your girlfriends are here.”

“Be right there.” The documentary was nowhere near being finished, but Sydney Ford had asked if she and her partners could see an early cut. Jacob didn’t mind, since gauging their reactions would give him a better feel for how the project was coming together.

He shut down his work in progress and turned toward the door, stopping dead in his tracks when he looked up to see Melanie standing there.
Get a grip.
It’s not as if she’d had her ear to a glass pressed to his head, listening to his thoughts.

“Hey, sweetheart.” He grinned because his heart made him do it. “Had to get a few minutes alone with me before the big show?”

She didn’t stay a word, just stood in the shadowed doorway wearing black pumps, black pants and a sleeveless black top that came all the way to her hips. Her glasses were black, her jewelry onyx. Even her mood was dark.

Jacob walked toward her. Once in the hallway, he turned out the light, intending to lock the door behind him. But Melanie had other plans. She placed her hand in the center of his chest and pushed him back into the editing room, closing the door once they were both inside the space, now lit only by colored electronic lights beaming off various machines.

“I have something I need to say to you.”

And she didn’t sound as if it was something he was going to enjoy having her say. She was practically spitting, like a black cat with its hackles up. As much as he loved seeing her in red, he’d be hard-pressed to deny she did amazing things to all-black.

He stepped toward her; she stepped back. He continued, as did she until she had no farther to go. He, on the other hand, wasn’t finished, and wouldn’t be
until his body was pressed into hers. And he was just about there, just about ready to lean into her from knees to cheeks, when she put up a halting hand between them.