Pleasure for Pleasure (12 page)

“Me, too,” Josie found the sense to say just before her muscles began to contract around him.

She held on tight to him, crying out, insensible, lost.

His climax came then, too, and he muffled their gasps with another kiss, this one desperate and searching.

After their release, they sat, still locked together, Josie draped over Trent's shoulder, their bodies spent.

She'd been right all these years. Making love to Trent was everything she'd been afraid of. It was a complete loss of control, even when she had him bound to a chair.

And it was better than she could have imagined.

When they recovered, she let him out of the handcuffs and he led her to the bedroom. As they explored each other's bodies together this time, equally in control, Josie marveled that Trent seemed to be a fast learner. He knew his way around her body like an expert, not a fumbling novice in need of sex lessons.

She deserved some sort of teaching award, if all Trent's newfound skills were thanks to their few lessons together. She was one heck of a sex instructor. But she had a nagging feeling that wasn't the whole story. There was something Trent wasn't telling her. Whatever it was, she'd get it out of him eventually.

There were always the handcuffs.

They made love slowly one more time, and once more after that, then fell asleep in each other's arms.

She awoke later to the sound of a cat howling outside somewhere. She watched Trent sleeping, tried to imagine what it would be like if they were there as two people in love, not as a student and instructor. An emptiness filled her chest, so she forced her thoughts to something more positive.

She'd done it!

The fact that she and Trent had finally made love was hard to completely wrap her mind around, but still, she'd gotten past that fear. There was no stopping her now. Josie smiled and stretched. Finally, her dry spell had come to an end. She had a sex life again, one better than she'd ever imagined.

She slipped out of bed and padded quietly across the floor to the bathroom. Trent's steady breathing was the only sound in the darkened apartment. She flipped on a light and closed the door quickly and silently to avoid waking him.

In the mirror, she saw that her lipstick was gone and she had a faint red rash around her mouth from Trent's five o'clock shadow. Her hair stood out around her head, giving her the mussed look of a mental patient, and a little voice in her head shouted,
That's exactly what you are!

Reality came crashing in. She'd just traded sex for the
rent!
She could hardly recognize herself as the woman she'd been earlier, clad in black lace and bent on seduction. Somewhere along the way, between gathering up her “lesson materials” and handcuffing Trent to the chair, all her common sense had flown straight out the window.

Yet her body felt intensely relaxed. She would have loved to curl up with Trent and sleep until morning, but that would require her to face him in the clear light of
day. She wasn't ready to face the man with whom she'd had to take such extreme measures to get into bed.

Josie turned the faucet on low and splashed cold water on her face. The icy water sent chills through her. When she felt sufficiently alert, she dried her face, switched the light off and ventured out into the apartment to search for her discarded clothes.

The garments formed a trail across the living room, leading Josie closer and closer to the door as she gathered up the lingerie. Pulling a street outfit out of her duffel bag to wear home, she finished dressing and carried her bag to the door.

When she unlocked it and stepped into the cold night air, she felt a momentary urge to stay. But no, she had to go.

The clock in her car read four minutes past midnight. Time for her to go home to rest up for work the next day. But Josie knew the wired feeling she had now meant insomnia, and there would be no point in trying to sleep. She'd left her laptop at work, and on it were her spreadsheets and other business documents. She could use her sleepless night to get some work done, so she made a right turn and headed toward the center.

When Josie pulled up to the curb, she spotted a light on in the hallway of the building. She didn't remember leaving it on, but it wasn't unusual for Erika to leave a light on at night to discourage burglars. Not that they had anything there worth stealing, Josie mused as she unlocked the front door and locked it again behind her.

Inside, Eros was nowhere in sight. She slipped off her shoes to avoid frightening him into hiding at the sound of her footsteps on the hardwood floors, then padded quietly down the hallway.

Her breath caught in her throat when she reached the
doorway of the office. There, sitting at the desk, was her mother.

“Wha—!” Josie shrieked, not even sure what she meant to say.

Rafaela, who'd had her head bent as she read a document on the desk, started and let out a gasp.

“What are you doing here?” Josie found the sense to ask.

“Josephine! You scared me half to death.”

“Mother! Why aren't you in Prague?”

Rafaela leaned back in her chair and placed a hand on her chest, then exhaled noisily. “I decided to come back early, that's all.”

“Without telling me? When? How? What happened?” Josie's mind raced as she sat on the sofa opposite the desk.

Eros sat perched next to Rafaela, a smug cat smile plastered across his mouth. No one was ever happier to see her than him.

She noted that her mother looked a little tired and puffy—natural side effects of the long flight back from Prague—but even after such a grueling trip, she was still unmistakably attractive. Her wild curly mane of nearly black hair was pulled back into a thick ponytail at her nape, and her pale skin, barely wrinkled after a lifetime of avoiding the sun, practically glowed in the lamplight. Even on a bad day, her mother could turn heads with her dancer's figure. And when she set her stunning blue gaze on a man, she could usually be assured he'd fall to his knees.

Rafaela removed her reading glasses and rubbed her eyes. “I'm afraid things didn't work out between Peter and me. It was better that I just leave immediately. There was no time to call you.”

“But when did you get home?” Relief flooded Josie now that she'd recovered from the shock.

This meant her mother could take over the center again, get business back to normal. It meant Josie could look for another marriage counseling job, and she could call off her lessons with Trent immediately. That was all what she wanted, wasn't it? Of course it was.

“I just flew in this evening. I wanted to come by here and check on things. I hadn't anticipated your showing up and scaring me half to death.”

“Why didn't you call me to come pick you up?”

Rafaela dismissed that idea with the wave of a hand. “I didn't want to bother you.”

Josie smiled. “That's silly, but it's great to have you back. When do you plan to come back to work?”

Her mother frowned and stroked the cat. “Dear, I don't think I'll be coming back to run the center again.”

“You mean, for a few weeks or so, right?”

“I mean, ever. I've spent a lot of years running this place, and frankly, I'm burnt out. I'd hoped you'd develop an interest in carrying on with the business without me.”

Josie blinked, and blinked again. This was all wrong. Her mother couldn't be abandoning the center completely. She'd been working nonstop for three months now, hoping to salvage her mother's legacy, and for nothing?

“You can't just quit!”

“I'm fifty years old. I've earned the right to do whatever I want to do. Even if it means retiring early.”

“But you'll get bored. You'll whither away. You'll hate retirement.”

“I didn't say I wasn't going to work at all. I just don't intend to run this entire business any longer.”

Josie slumped back into the couch, the wind knocked out of her. All this time she'd assumed her mother would come back and take over again. And now, the future of the center rested entirely on Josie's feeble shoulders.

 

T
RENT STARED
at the note, barely legible in Max's shaky script. MegaBooks had called again about buying the property. “We're prepared to increase our offer,” the note read, followed by a phone number. The MegaBooks offer was a proposition he'd carefully avoided thinking about in the past few days, as complex as the implications were.

And now…

It had been two days since he and Josie had made love. Two days he'd spent examining the emotions that had sprung up in his chest since he'd begun spending time with her. Those emotions had only deepened with their lovemaking. It still seemed impossible that they'd finally done it. All his fantasies paled in comparison to Josie, live in the flesh and in his bed.

He'd tried to call her after she'd sneaked out of his apartment, but she hadn't returned his calls. He'd tried to stop by to see her, but she'd always managed to be out.

Okay, so his revenge plot was pretty much a failure. He had lost his will for it, anyway. It was hard to exact revenge on the woman he was falling for.

There. He'd let the thought form completely in his brain. He was falling for Josie again. God help him, but he was. Maybe he'd never gotten over his feelings from years ago. That would explain why her rejection of him had hurt so much.

If he could only figure out what to do with his emo
tions now. Josie didn't seem to be interested in anything more than a sexual relationship, but his heart was telling him there was something between them worth exploring.

All of a sudden the idea of leaving San Francisco and leading adventure tours full-time wasn't so appealing, if it meant never seeing Josie. He couldn't even think about the MegaBooks offer without getting a sick feeling in his gut.

“Dude, you look like you've got some deep thoughts rolling around in there,” Max said.

Trent shook his head. “Just spacing out, that's all.”

He tucked the note under the edge of the cash register, then came around the counter and turned his attention back to adjusting the brakes on a mountain bike he'd just sold. The customer was supposed to come back in an hour to pick it up, just as soon as Trent fitted it with the extra equipment the man had bought.

Max kept staring at him. “Hey, man, you just get laid recently or something?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You been acting like you've had your brain fried by a hot piece of ass.”

Trent tested the brakes. “That's a classy way of putting it.”

“Watch out, dude. Let a woman get control of you, you're a goner.”

“Thanks for the advice. Now could you go see if that customer needs help?” Trent nodded at a teenager near the front of the store.

“Already checked. He's just looking.”

“Then how about you go restock water bottles or wander out into traffic or something?”

“Man, you are whipped, aren't you?” Max grinned
and took a seat on the counter, settling in to annoy Trent some more.

Trent scowled at him. “Last time I checked, you didn't exactly have women lined up to take control of your life.”

“Hey, at least I admit I'm a fool for women. But I'm twenty-two years old. What guy my age isn't?”

“I see, and as an old geezer of thirty years, I should have all women figured out by now.”

“You shouldn't have that whipped look in your eyes—that's all I'm saying.”

Trent bit his lip, unable to think of a smart-ass comeback. How had he, in a matter of days, gone from having his life under complete control to looking so pitiful that even Max, who was normally about as perceptive as a rock, could see there was something wrong?

Josie Marcus had walked back into his life—that's what had gone wrong.

As if on cue, someone walked into the store. Trent looked up to see Josie. In a sort of lavender-colored suit, with her wild, wavy hair pulled back into some kind of professional woman's hairdo, she looked like every man's boardroom fantasy, the sex-pot CEO.

“Max, get lost.”

The store clerk eyed him, then Josie, with interest as she made her way down the aisle toward them. “Ah, so she's the one,” he said in a stage whisper.

Trent glowered and Max got the message. He hopped off the counter and disappeared into the stockroom just as Josie stopped on the other side of the mountain bike. She stared down at Trent as he kneeled on the floor, making one last adjustment to the brakes. When he finished, he stood and officially acknowledged her presence for the first time.

She smiled tentatively. “I know my timing is awful, but we need to talk about the other night.”

It's about time.

“How about we go for a walk?” he said.

Josie nodded, and Trent called to the back for Max. When the clerk appeared in the doorway of the stockroom, Trent said, “I'll be back in a little while. Can you take care of everything until I get back?”

“No problem, man,” Max answered. When Josie turned toward the front door, he eyed her and smiled, then nodded knowingly.

Outside they made a left and walked toward the Pacific, which was more than twenty blocks away. It could still be seen on high ground, though, glinting in the distance. And the smell of it always permeated the air. Trent couldn't think of many things he loved more than the scent of the ocean.

“So…” Josie said, clearly hesitant to dive into a discussion of their newfound sexual relationship.

“So.” Trent didn't intend to let her off the hook easily after she'd snuck out of his bed without saying goodbye.

“Did you know my mother is back from Prague?”

“Rafaela's
here?
”

Trent went numb at the thought that his sex lessons with Josie could be over for good.

“She showed up unannounced the other night, claiming things didn't work out between her and Peter.”