Don't Tempt Me...

“Look at the time!” Valerie’s voice made him jump. “Lindsay will kill me. Can you two manage the windows without me, Sammi?”

Before either of them could reply, Valerie thrust a shoe box at Rick, then piled on some red filmy items followed by a black leather corset covered with zippers and grommets. “For the small window,” she said. “Think Donna Dominatrix.”

“Donna what?” he said.

But Val had turned to Samantha and had plopped a load of pale silk stuff and a long strip of feathers into her arms. “Velma Virgin and the Pastel Posse in the big display.” Val looked from one to the other. “I owe you two big. Make a list of what you want. I’m serious. Or charge me more for the catalog, Sammi. I’ll do the finishing touches in the morning. You’re angels. Kisses.”

And she was gone, leaving them blinking at each other in the empty underwear store. “I hope you know what goes where,” he said, looking down at his armload of lace, leather, zippers and boots.

“You mean you’ve never outfitted a dominatrix before?”

“This will be my first. Be gentle with me.” The joke came out so easily. Samantha made him feel the way he had before his brother had died, as if life were a blast and a good laugh was worth everything.

“We’ll just have to learn together,” she said. She tucked her items under an arm and picked up the dangerous-looking corset on top of his pile.

“That’s gotta hurt to wear,” he said.

“I know.” Samantha traced her finger along the curve of the thing, giving him a different kind of pain—sweet and hungry. “Women cut off their circulation, choke off their breathing, pinch their toes and make their arches ache just to please men.” She lifted her gaze to him. “Does it work? Do these clothes turn you on?”

He didn’t need a thing past her for that. “I think women are sexy enough just as they are,” he managed to say.

Her mouth stretched into a slow smile. “But don’t clothes add to the effect?” She dropped the torture vest back in his arms and shifted the pile of soft things from under her arms to the front. She fingered the feather strip. “I don’t like being cramped or pinched, but I like soft things. Silk and velvet and feathers.” She ran the feathers between her fingers until he wanted to rip the thing away with his teeth.

He could see her in just that, all right, feathers brushing her nipples, reaching down to her soft thatch—dark red like her hair?—leading him where he wanted to touch, kiss and stroke her…. Her gaze locked on his—she’d read him—and heat snapped so sharply between them he felt scorched.

“After this maybe we should have…dinner?” she asked, the last word as flirty as hell.

Screw dinner. Let’s go straight for dessert. But he knew better. He had to control this right now for the case, so he said the only thing he could. “Looks like we’ll be working through it, huh?” He lifted his armload of S and M gear as proof and started toward the windows, but not before he’d seen disappointment flood her features. He hated undercover work.

SAMANTHA BLINKED, startled and stung. Rick had said no. His hot emerald eyes had swirled to cool jade like mood rings dropped into a freezer.

Get over it, she told herself, following him to the front windows with her armload of lingerie. He wanted the job and wasn’t interested in overtime. Okay. Made sense.

She’d overreacted to the situation. And no wonder. She’d just spent two hours fondling lingerie, sex screaming from every hanger, rack and shelf, with an extremely hot man who gave mixed signals. Of course she’d end up pulsing with lust.

Bummer, though, that she’d finally decided to go for it with a guy and wound up hiring him out of the running.

Something in her felt relief at the turndown, she had to admit. She’d been going too fast, as if she’d hiked some dangerous hill, then looked down and realized how high she was, how precarious her footing, how easy it would be to fall.

She set her items in the larger window and let Rick help her up into the smaller one with two naked mannequins. Rick was so big, the window seemed as cramped as a jet’s lavatory when she stood beside him, still feeling the chemistry between them.

Her knees jiggled and her heart banged her ribs and where had all the oxygen gone? But she took the leather bustier from him and, cool as could be, held it against the naked mannequin, who stood with her legs spread, hips thrust forward, black wig pulled severely back. “For Donna?” she asked.

Rick’s eyes skimmed the clothing, the mannequin, then her face. “Looks right.”

“If you’re into that, huh?” She had her tie-up fantasy, after all. But it was all pretend, she realized. She’d never have the nerve to say to Rick, I want you. You want me. Let’s go for it.

In her soul, she knew she wasn’t equipped to just pick up a guy. Her mother’s words were a red-hot memory, as fresh as yesterday. Don’t be a slut, Samantha Kay.

She unzipped the bustier and loosened the laces so she could put it on the mannequin and made a joke. “This looks ridiculous. By the time the guy gets the thing pried open, you’ve given up and gone to asleep.”

Rick laughed, then bent to the shoe box at the mannequin’s feet, leaving Samantha to her painful memory. She’d been sixteen at the time. Tutoring the cool clique at Copper Corners High in trig had gotten her in their good graces and they’d helped her spend her hoarded allowance on a trendy black dress, then donated their cast-off cosmetics to her—dark shadow, goopy mascara, pale foundation and red gloss so wet it nearly dripped.

She was to meet them at the Bowl-A-Rama, so she’d dressed, put on the makeup, sprayed her hair wild and bounded into the living room to show her mother. Ta-daa.

The stunned gasp stopped her mid-spin. You look like a slut. The dress wasn’t short or tight. Maybe she’d gone a little overboard on the eye stuff, but everyone was wearing it heavy—pop stars had set the pace.

I thought we raised you right. Her mother’s eyes filled with tears and she sank into the chair. Thank God her father had been away on business—his reaction would have been worse.

Maybe if her mother had yelled at her, demanded Samantha wash her face, change out of that hooker outfit, Samantha might have slammed out of the house, made fun of her mother the way the cool girls did of theirs, smoked cigarettes and shoplifted lipstick from Dina’s Shop ’N Go just like they did. Instead, her mother had seemed devastated, heartbroken, bereft.

Don’t be a slut, Samantha Kay. It was a plaintive cry.

Samantha had rushed to the bathroom, expecting to see the cute, sexy girl who’d just left there, but what looked back at her was a cheap, trashy fool. Try as she might, she couldn’t get back that glow, the sparkle she’d seen as clear as day.

“Can I help?”

Rick startled her back to the moment and she realized the mannequin was rattling on its posts as she struggled to adjust the bustier in place.

Now he was so close that arousal replaced sadness, tingling through her like a tuning fork continually struck. She finished the ties and they both moved back.

“You okay?” he asked gently, his gaze on her, not the mannequin.

“I’m fine.” She glanced at him. “I was just thinking that my folks would be shocked if they saw me now.” Her parents only knew she had a portrait studio, not that she took intimate photos. Eventually, she’d have to tell them, but not until she was confident of her success.

“They might surprise you.”

“I don’t think so. Small towns are small in lots of ways.”

“At least you know where you stand.”

“Or where everyone wants to lock you and throw away the key. I didn’t have the courage to rebel like you did.”

“It wasn’t courage, trust me. I just did what I pleased. My brother Brian had the grades and the ambition. That meant I was free to hang loose.” Rick shrugged, but she could see he had regrets. And he didn’t really strike her as a hang-loose kind of guy. He seemed serious and conscientious to her.

“I didn’t have any brothers or sisters to distract my parents. I was the center of their universe—total focus of their hopes and dreams.” And probably a disappointment, though they never said anything during formal family visits, polite smiles covering the tension of questions unasked, answers withheld.

“They don’t understand why I’m not living in Copper Corners, leading the church choir, growing tomatoes, married with two kids. I mean, I’m already twenty-seven. What’s the holdup?” She sighed and tried to smile.

“But you want more than that.”

“Lots more.”

“To splash around and almost drown?” He smiled.

“Exactly. I have to have something to settle down from.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

It was strange. They’d known each other such a short time, but she felt as though she’d shared a lot with Rick. He watched her so carefully, listened so closely, asked good questions. He seemed to really want to understand her.

Rick crouched to lift the boots out of the shoe box. They were vinyl platforms with stiletto heels and tons of laces. “Now these?” he asked, holding one up.

“Perfect for Donna D.,” she said, turning one plaster leg so Rick could tug up the boot, his tan a delicious contrast to the pale limb. He yanked the laces tight and she could picture him doing the same thing to a velvet tie around her wrists. Oh, my, make it tight.

“Got it,” he said softly, telling her she could let go.

“Sure, sure,” she said, moving to the other leg, determined to focus on the work at hand, not the hungry fantasies that danced at the edge of her awareness.

With Donna dressed in leather and vinyl, they moved to her submissive partner, for whom Val had selected the red see-through open-nipple bra and matching thong Samantha and Rick had first opened. Rick knelt below her and pulled the thong into place while she attached the bra above him.

This was such a suggestive activity it felt like pure torture to Samantha, made worse because as he worked, Rick brushed against her calf below her capris. His gaze kept touching hers, then jerking away, and the mannequin rattled on its moorings from their shakiness. He seemed as unsettled as she was by the task.

When they finished, Samantha moved Ms. Nipples so that her arms overlapped Donna’s, creating a unified picture, then backed up to survey the effect, Rick at her side.

Very hot. The open bra seemed to serve up the pale plaster nipples, carved to look very natural. The black bustier and boots made Donna seem darkly erotic.

“I think that does the trick, don’t you?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, then shook his head, hands on hips.

“What?”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this, that’s all.” He waved at the mannequins. “Dressing dolls in underwear.”

“Does it threaten your masculinity?” She quickly added, “Because it shouldn’t.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Let’s just say a man’s big hand on a shred of red lace has a certain…je ne sais quoi.”

“Je ne sais what?”

“It’s hot, okay? Let’s go with hot.”

“I’ll take it.” He held her gaze for a long moment, his mood-ring eyes swirling, all right, but murky, as if he planned to hold back at all costs. “Shall we start on the next?”

He stepped down, helped her to the floor and up into the bigger display window, which held two standing mannequins, a blonde and a brunette, with a third, honey-skinned, in a black Afro, lying on her side between them.

Samantha handed Rick a mint-green camisole with delicate straps for the standing blonde and she dressed the lounging woman in a butter-cream satin teddy. Finished, she reached for the third outfit and stopped short. “Oh.”

“What’s wrong?” Rick said, looking down at her.

She stood, holding the teddy. “I have this same one.”

“Yeah?” He moved closer.

“I wore it for my first bedroom shot.” She fingered the shimmery fabric with both hands.

“Your first shot? And it was of you?”

She nodded. “It was for my boyfriend Barry. We were taking each other for granted, so I thought…why not?”

She’d thought all they’d needed was to relight the spark, so Val had helped her gather an outfit and she’d intended to march into the bedroom wearing it. In the end, taking a photo to show him had made her feel less vulnerable. Which should have been a clue to the outcome, but she hadn’t been ready for the truth.

“How did it turn out?” Rick asked softly.

The story was embarrassing, but it had been a turning point in her life. Something about Rick’s gaze—as if nothing in the world mattered more than what she had to say—made her want to tell him.

“The photo turned out great.” In it, she lay on her side, one leg bent, lace garters and white fishnets showing, her auburn curls cupping her cheeks, a white feather boa teasing her jaw and her breasts swelling out of the gleaming teddy. She’d been so excited by how she looked, couldn’t wait to show Barry, to read the pleasure in his face.

“I can imagine.” Rick’s words sent a wild thrill through her. He was picturing her in the teddy she was holding by its straps. His Adam’s apple dipped in a slow, painful-looking swallow. “Did your boyfriend like it?” he asked hoarsely.

“He thought it was a joke.” The old hurt filled her heart. “He said, ‘It’s not you, Sam.’ But it was. At least the me I wanted to be.” Still wanted to be.

“The man was an idiot,” Rick said, shifting his body closer, as if he thought he could shield her from the memory.

“I was the idiot. I settled for Barry for too long.” Right after that incident, she’d broken up with him and decided to go for what she wanted from then on.

The emerald heat was back in Rick’s eyes and his breathing was rough and tight and he stood so close. That control she’d seen before had been burned away. He wanted her. She wanted him.

Go for it, girl.

They were alone in the window, surrounded by women in lingerie, who seemed to invite her to take action. Beyond them, the security lights in the Mirror, Mirror lobby glowed golden. Do it. Do it now.

So what if Rick worked for her? They could deal with that. The minute she’d seen him she’d known he was her fantasy lover. Everything in her was telling her to go, go, go.

She wasn’t going to wait for what she wanted any longer, dammit. Taking a shaky breath, she dropped the teddy between them, rose on tiptoe and pressed her lips to Rick’s.

He froze, shaking with intensity, then grabbed her upper arms and kissed her hard, angling his mouth to get closer. Their tongues met and stilled, as if surprised at how easy it had been to get what they wanted. Rick tasted of mint and man, and he used the exact right pressure—hinting at hot urgency, but not overwhelming her—as he deepened the kiss.

This is it. What I want.

Heat rose, energy crackled and her body went liquid so that it was only Rick’s firm grip on her forearms that kept her from sinking to the floor.

At the same time she wanted to rub herself against him like a wild animal in heat. She wanted clothes to disappear, Rick’s fingers to stroke and slide and coax and enter, his strong lips and hot tongue to seek her hot center and nuzzle and lick her to climax. She wanted the kiss to go on and on and on.

She wanted—

Rick ripped his mouth from hers and lifted her away from him, as if she presented some terrible temptation.

“What…?” Samantha wobbled, fighting for balance, and bumped into the lounging mannequin. Rick caught her before she tumbled out of the display and, in the process, knocked an arm off the blond mannequin. Flailing for balance, Samantha knocked down the other doll.

Rick steadied her, holding her at arm’s length, as if he feared she might spring at him. “I’m sorry I did that.”

“Don’t be sorry. And I was the one who started it. I know we work together, but we’re adults. We can handle this.”

“But I can’t.” The words were hard and sharp.

A throbbing silence hung between them until the truth struck her like a slap. “There’s someone else,” she said softly. “Isn’t there?”

Guilt and relief flickered in Rick’s face. “Yeah. There is.”

Damn, damn, damn. She’d geared up the courage to go after a man and he turned out to be taken. “I see. Now I’m sorry.”

“You had no way to know.” He bent to pick up the doll she’d knocked over.

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