On the Loose
Breathe, before your lungs collapse. “Suck them dry, do you?”
“Oh, yes,” she purred in his ear. “And they love every minute of it.”
Need sang through every vein and he forgot dance steps, propriety, everything but getting her alone. Then he remembered the private dining rooms, big enough for half a dozen—or two. With any luck, one of them would be empty. He slid his arm closer around her waist so that her hips ground against his and danced her over to the dark side of the room.
THE UNIVERSE WAS LAUGHING at her, Lauren thought, trying to talk sense to herself when her body and her runaway mouth definitely did not want to be sensible.
Yes, she was dancing to something very sexy and slow with a man who turned her knees to butter. Yes, her deprived libido had taken over and given him a shameless come-on.
She was behaving like the notorious Lorelei, the woman who chewed social commentary and pop culture for lunch, the woman the male sports writers loved to hate. Why, oh, why, did she have to be unlocked by a staff writer from Left Coast magazine, the very place she’d give her eye teeth to write for?
She’d laugh about this with Rory and Mikki tomorrow, over a latte and at least two of Rory’s blueberry-cheese croissants. But for now she was going to steal these lovely moments and enjoy the heck out of them for as long as they lasted.
Because of course they wouldn’t last. She couldn’t afford to keep him around, looking gorgeous and sounding sinful and jeopardizing her career with every breath he took.
The music merged into something just as slow and sexy, some Latin love song that picked up where the gypsy blues left off. Josh’s arm tightened around her and their haphazard direction took on purpose. Lauren brought her mind back from the hazy place where it was thinking about truffles and sex to the clear place where it thought about danger and realized that Josh had danced her into one of the club’s private dining rooms.
“Now, then,” he murmured, and pulled her flush against him. They might have had to be socially acceptable on the main dance floor, but in here, it appeared, all bets were off.
Yes, it was dangerous. But, oh, Lord, it felt so good. The two White Knights she’d consumed earlier had made her low opinions of key parties and her determination to work go all blurry and insubstantial. And who wanted opinions, anyway, when reality had eyes like this and a mouth to die for? What she wanted was Josh, and he was pressing against her at this moment as though he meant business. She slid her arms around him and let her body melt into the hardness of his.
Really hard.
Her knees, which had begun to get their strength back, weakened as her body welcomed the bulge behind the button fly of those black jeans. Desire spangled her blood with tiny little rockets, all going off at once.
“Josh,” she managed to get out, “what if someone comes in?”
“We’re slow dancing,” he murmured, his lips brushing her ear, his hips suggesting illicit things against hers. “Nothing wrong with that, is there?”
She shivered. If his mouth could make her body react like this when he spoke, what would happen if he actually kissed her? And those hips—they promised paradise. “Not as long as you stay between me and the door over there.”
“What is it about you that has this effect on me?” he whispered. His tongue touched her earlobe and she closed her eyes as the little rockets went off again, trailing fire from her ear to her belly.
“My razor-sharp intellect?”
His hands slid over her skirt. “Mmm. That’ll do for a start.”
She couldn’t stand it one more second. Leaning into him, she backed him against the wainscoting and took his mouth with hers.
He made a little sound of pure male pleasure in his throat and his lips opened. His mouth wooed, his tongue seduced and, before she knew it, it was she who was backed against the paneling, hanging on to him for dear life, because by God, if she let go she’d fall. She put everything she had into kissing him because he demanded no less.
Somehow he knew when to release her and let her breathe, dropping his lips to the neckline of her tank top and tracing kisses over her collarbone, working his way along her throat.
If it were possible for a man to seduce and worship at the same time, Josh was doing it.
When one hand slid up and cupped her breast, Lauren was sure she would come just from the fire of sensation in her nipple under his teasing thumb. She felt barely contained, ready to erupt. She was so ready, in fact, that if he even—
The other hand slid under the hem of her short, black chiffon skirt. Her thigh muscles, which under any other circumstances would have tightened in preparation for fending off the attack, relaxed and said, “Oh, yes.”
“No stockings,” he whispered in her ear, setting off a host of goose bumps. He touched her thigh, then cupped her bottom again, with no fabric between her skin and his bare hand this time. A brief exploration gave him his answer. “A thong.” His voice held pleased discovery. “What color?”
What color? The color of flushed skin, the color of ripe fruit…oh, that was it. The color of her tank top.
“Peach,” she managed to say.
“I love peaches.” He slid one finger under it in back.
“Josh,” she sighed, “someone’s going to come…”
“I certainly hope so,” he said, and slid the finger over her hip under the satiny cord, then down the front. His hand flattened against her pelvic bone while his finger found what it sought.
She moved her feet apart just enough to give him access and hung on as his finger slid into her folds, soft and swollen and wet, waiting for him. In three slow strokes he had her whimpering for release, and with one more it happened. An urgent orgasm exploded under that clever fingertip and spread through her belly, legs and all the way out to her fingers.
Silently she convulsed against the wall, head thrown back, body a river of sensation, while he dropped her skirt and pressed her against the wall in a hot, demanding kiss.
Seconds later Maureen Baxter walked in with half a dozen investors.
From Lorelei’s blog
Before I went to the key party at Clementine’s, I wasn’t keen about just any random guy opening my lock. After all, how realistic is it to expect that you’d find the person who’s right for you that way? The chances of winning the lottery are better. But now I’m reconsidering. The bash itself was a smashing success, and I don’t just mean Baxter House, which now has enough in donations to commence building again. I mean that I met someone. Maybe it’s only reasonable to expect the love of an evening. Or an hour. But, as the tag line on the tickets said, I unlocked a few possibilities, and for fifty bucks you can’t ask for more than that.
For more on key parties, speed dating and other postmodern social customs, pick up San Francisco Inside Out and check out Lauren Massey’s article in the Scene section. She was at Clementine’s, too, in the company of the beautiful and scary Michaela Correlli, local child advocate, and the divine Aurora Constable, proprietor of Lavender Field. Did I mention the blueberry-cheese croissants?
Lorelei
3
AT THREE IN THE MORNING, Lauren uploaded “The Key to a Girl’s Heart” to Inside Out’s FTP site so the production team could transfer it into layout for this week’s issue. Lorelei’s blog was already posted, ready and waiting for the regulars on her bulletin boards to sign on with their morning latte and read about her experience at the key party. Having Lorelei reveal something as personal as not only going to a local party, but meeting someone there, was an unusual enough event that a couple of thousand hits and some lively traffic were guaranteed. And if even a small percentage of those people went out and bought the paper to read her article, the Q of P would leave her alone. Maybe for as long as a week.
It was a good article. She might even be able to use it in her clip portfolio if she ever landed an interview at Left Coast.
Left Coast.
Josh.
Lauren’s concentration shattered. Again.
The locks rattled and Vivien slipped through the door, looking a little disheveled. Lauren glanced over her shoulder and smiled.
“Hey, girl. Want a nightcap? Rory scored me some of the Chardonnay left over from the party. Not to mention two boxes of yummies from Lavender Field.”
Viv smiled weakly. “No, thanks. I’m going to hurt enough in the morning as it is.”
“It is morning.”
“I rest my case.”
“Poor baby.” Lauren shut down her laptop. “How’d it go?”
Viv kicked off her high heels and reached around to unzip her dress. “I met someone.” She stepped out of the little turquoise-silk number and padded into her room to hang it up.
“Did you? Your key partner? Damn, I should have waited. I could have used you for a before-and-after scenario.”
“I did what you said.” Viv came back wrapped in her bathrobe and sank into one of their retro kitchen chairs upholstered in yellow vinyl. “I found someone who wasn’t looking for a female partner and traded my key for his lock. But it took some doing.” She sighed and cocked an eye in Lauren’s direction. “Life would be so much easier if you were a lesbian.”
“Sweetie, you know we’d make a terrible couple. I’m hardly ever here, for starters.”
“I know, I know. But my grandma likes you.”
“One of these days you’re going to have to tell her.”
Vivien laid her flushed cheek on the cool Formica-topped tabletop. “I can’t. She was born in Shandong province, as she never misses an opportunity to remind me. They don’t have gay people there, apparently. She’s still very traditional, and all her friends do nothing but talk about marrying off their kids and grandkids. The disgrace would kill her. Not to mention there’d be no hope of a great-grandson to make up for me being such a flop as a granddaughter.”
Viv had come out in their senior year, a miserable year during which Lauren stuck by her through a heartbreaking romance, idealistic campus activism, and her growing inability to communicate frankly with the matriarch she both adored and feared. In Lauren’s view, good friends were a rare commodity. Once she gave her loyalty, it was given for good, and she and Vivien had come out on the other side of that year as women instead of girls.
“It would end your having to go to the Saturday night suppers she sets up with eligible Chinese boys from good families,” Lauren pointed out gently.
“Those dropped off after I started school again,” Viv said into the table. She lifted her head. “Grandma doesn’t want me to be a software geek like Dad, but it’s going to happen anyway. I think she’s giving up on that part.”
“But you came out to him last year and he was fine with it. Maybe he could do the deed.”
Viv sat up and leaned her chin on one hand. “It’s not Dad’s problem. I have to do it, and I can’t. But the alternative is waiting for her to die, and she’s in way too good a shape for that. She teaches Tai Chi to old people, for God’s sake.”
“Seventy-two isn’t old?”
“Not in her book.” Vivien sighed. “Maybe I’ll have some of that Chardonnay after all.”
While Lauren uncorked the wine, Vivien told her about the girl she’d met and how they’d gone somewhere else for a quiet supper. Vivien took the glass and sipped gratefully. “So what about you? I saw some tall guy with a terrific butt move in on you but didn’t see the end result. No pun intended.”
Lauren sank onto their secondhand couch with a sigh. The wine was excellent—much better than she could usually afford. Bless Rory’s heart for keeping an eye out for her.
“The end result was orgasm. And a fine example of its kind, too.” The corners of her lips turned up in a smile at the memory.
“What?” Viv clutched the lapels of her robe together and looked around a little wildly. “He’s not still here, is he?”
“No, no.” Lauren waved her into her chair. “He’s never been here.” She grinned. “We never even left the restaurant.”
Her roommate stared. “Tell all. And quick.”
When Lauren finished the story, Vivian grabbed what was left of her glass of wine and drained it. “Do you mean to tell me—”
“Yup.”
“Right there in the—”
“Yup.”
“And then Maureen—”
“Oh, yeah.”
“But then what—”
“All she saw was two people kissing in an empty room, and she took it as a personal triumph. Big success for the key party idea and all that.”
“Do your sisters know about this?”
After a moment Lauren admitted, “No.” Mikki would think it was a hoot, but Rory, though she embraced life with gusto in other ways, was cautious to a fault about relationships. Lauren wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what Rory thought of a man who could literally make a woman come with a kiss.
“I tried calling her earlier, but I think I’m going to wait until things are a little further along before I say anything,” she said at last.
“Speaking of a little further along… So that was it? He lights your rocket and then kisses you good-night? Where is he? Or maybe I should ask why you’re here?”
Lauren had been asking herself that for the past two hours. The left side of her brain had been busy writing copy while everything else had been permeated with Josh—the scent of him, the heat, the way his hands had felt on her skin. Everything added up to one grand, orgasmic total. Lord only knew what would happen if they actually managed to make love somewhere horizontal.
Vivien was still waiting for an answer.
“I had to get this story in.”
One of Viv’s eyebrows rose. “And this is a reason to not go home with someone you’ve actually had a chance to test drive first?”
Lauren made a face at her. “Does your grandmother know you talk like this?”
“Don’t try to distract me. Come on. ’Fess up.”
She tried to arrange some words that would make sense and finally gave up. “I don’t know. I kind of freaked and took off afterward. I mean, he was like this tidal wave of sensation and when it was over it left me feeling kind of…”
“Washed up on the beach?”
“Nice metaphor. What am I, a whale?”
“Nah. One of those little transparent things that wiggle.”
“A jellyfish. Thank you so much.”
“No, not a jellyfish. Those little silver fish you can never catch because they’re too fast. An apt metaphor, I would say, for someone who runs away and chooses work over doing the horizontal boogie with Mr. Come As You Kiss.”
“Ow.” Lauren winced. “I hate when you do that.”
“What, tell the truth?”
“You and Mikki. Between the two of you, I can’t get away with a single thing.”
“My purpose in life is to keep you honest,” Viv said virtuously. “You’ve got to stop doing this, you know.”
“Doing what?”
“Backing away when things get interesting.”
Lauren was beginning to feel a little cornered, but if she showed it, Viv would pounce. “I had to work. Besides, it puts me in control. Leaves him wanting more.”
“Leaves him wondering what the hell happened, you mean. What are you going to do now?”
“I’ll call him, of course.”
“He gave you his number? That’s a step in the right direction.”
“Not exactly.” She’d been so dazed by what they’d done and had had such an attack of second thoughts that she’d dashed off. “I left before I got it.”
“That’s okay. He’s probably in the book.”
“I didn’t get his last name, either.”
Viv raised her eyebrows. “Geesh. And here I thought you were the detail girl. The one with all the sources and resources. The one who follows up her follow-ups. What happened?”
Josh had happened. Like a tsunami or something that had tossed her around and thrown her up on a strange beach, with no footprints on it to guide her.
“I was busy coming,” she said airily. “Besides, he works at Left Coast. I know exactly where they are. How hard can it be to find him?”
MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, Josh didn’t know what to do with an in-between kind of day like Saturday. As a venture capitalist, he’d scheduled them much the same as he might a regular weekday. He’d rent a boat and take a client sailing out of the Santa Cruz yacht harbor, or he’d book a conference room at an airport hotel and catch an Asia-Pacific exec between flights to negotiate funding. Sundays were reserved for family, such as it was. His mother cooked a roast beef on Sundays, with regal disregard for heat and mad cow scares alike. But Saturdays were still a loose end.
He’d come home from the party horny and unsatisfied, but with the same sense of triumph as when he’d inked a deal. Call him kinky, but making lovely Lauren come in public had been one of the high points of his life. He wanted to do it again. Well, maybe they could choose their locations better, but a repeat was definitely on the agenda.
As soon as he could find her.
He couldn’t remember a single day in his life when emotion had gotten in the way of rational behavior. Getting a name and phone number would have been rational. But amid the laughter and noise of Maureen Baxter and her crowd surprising them in the private room, Lauren had taken the opportunity to disappear. And though he’d hung around for an hour afterward, trying to find her, he’d had no success.
Yes, it was clear he was rusty in the romance department. It wasn’t that he hadn’t had his opportunities. In fact, Elena Vargas had made it more than clear that she and her winery had no problem taking him on as a partner in both business and love.
He had thought she was “the one,” and given that relationship his best, but he’d been wrong. Still she had taught him what his limits were. And when it came down to giving all you had only to have a woman as emotionally exhausting as Elena demand more time, more money, more attention, more sex, he’d realized that there had been nothing left for him. After that he’d found himself pulling back when he started to get to know someone better. He’d been briefly interested in one of the developers in a little company that he’d funded, but even though Maddie was smart and fun to be with, it seemed that Elena had sucked out of him all the desire to get close to a woman again.
Until Lauren. He hadn’t felt this sense of excitement and anticipation in a long time. Maybe never.
He stretched in his chair and tilted up his coffee cup, only to find it empty. The fog that shrouded the windows of his condo told him it would be sunny later, but he didn’t mind fog. It helped him focus, and he needed to do that if he planned to put together three thousand words for Left Coast.
He poured the last of the coffee into his mug and rinsed the carafe, dumping the old grounds into the trash. Then he padded back to his desk and the laptop that hummed happily on it.
Buying an interest in the magazine had been easy. Being one of its contributors was not. His managing editor had told him once that part of what made him successful was his voice—a little cynical, a little deadpan, like Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.” Readers ate it up, and he was proud of the stories under his byline.
This one was a little different, though, probably because it was turning out to be permeated by a certain long-legged blonde in a black skirt. Oh, he wasn’t telling tales or anything. But the key party was a kind of test case for a pet theory he had about a society with what he thought of as “Social A.D.D.” A society that went for short-term solutions such as speed dating and Internet clubs instead of good, old-fashioned relationships that took a long time to develop.
Right, his inner cynic scoffed. That little interlude with Lauren sure took a long time to develop.
He still could hardly believe he’d done it. Maybe that was why he was thinking about her so much. She’d driven him into behavior that was so unlike him it was almost freeing. And the problem with things that set you free from your own constraints was that sooner or later you landed with a thud.
But he wasn’t going to think about the thud. What he needed to do was to finish up this story, ship it and break out his research skills to find her.
At noon he saved the file up to the magazine’s server in John Garvey’s review folder. His managing editor had a blurry definition of “weekend,” too, and would appreciate having a look at the copy in advance. Then he picked up the phone.
“Garvey.”
“Hey, it’s me. I just put my story on the server.”
“That’s what I like about you, McCrae. You, like me, have no life.”
“I have the perfect life. And it just got better.”
“What? I heard the lottery was up to eight million.”
“Nah, not that. You should have come to Clementine’s last night.”
“Oh, right. A meat market by any other name is still a meat market.”
“It isn’t a meat market. It was a charity function with benefits.”
“And you got some, from the sound of it. I heard they were giving away some nifty prizes. Maureen hit me up for a year’s subscription as one of them.”
“We got theater tickets.”
“‘We’? This is not a pronoun I usually hear you use. Wasn’t there some kind of goofy matchmaking thing going on?”
“It was a key party. My key unlocked the lock of the most beautiful girl you ever saw.”
“So why are you uploading articles and calling me? Why aren’t you spending this fine foggy morning with this girl?”
It would sound pretty lame if he said he’d lost his head and lost her.
“I lost my head and lost her.”
John was silent. “Lost her like she had a boyfriend already or lost her like she dumped you on your head and left?”
“Neither. I think she got cold feet. But I’m hoping you’ll call Maureen and get the guest list out of her. Lauren’s a freelance reporter. That should narrow down the possibilities.”
“I’ll say you lost your head. Jeez, Josh, getting the girl’s name and number is like Dating 101.”
“Yeah. So I was in detention the day they had that class. Are you going to help me out or not?”
“Of course I’ll help you. I needed to do a good deed today anyway. Call you back in ten minutes.”
Josh hung up and gazed out at the view. The fog was lifting. He’d get the number. And then he was going to see if lovely Lauren wanted to have a repeat of last night.
At a party just for two.
From Lorelei’s blog
Do you believe in love at first sight (LAFS)? I don’t, either. If you go for the romantic theory, two people can meet at, say, a key party, feel an instant connection, and somehow know that they fit together as well as his key fits into her lock. But if you’re not a romantic, you laugh at LAFS. Love, you say, is a series of chemical connections and neural synapses and is built up over time, so it’s pretty much impossible for LAFS to be real.
Sure, Man sees Woman and says, “Ugh. Must have sex.” Woman sees Man and says, “Hmm. Lots of tools and good cave. Make strong children. Possibilities there.” But LAFS? Uh-uh. Not gonna happen. Feel free to disagree with me.
Lorelei
4
“OKAY, SO IT ISN’T LOVE.” Lauren poured herself another glass of orange juice and offered the ceramic jug to her foster mother, Emma Constable, who smiled and shook her head. “But damn, the guy gave me an orgasm with our first kiss. I have to follow up.”
Michaela and Aurora exchanged amused glances. Contrary to what Lauren had expected, Rory made no wry comments about her instant lust with Josh. Was she too preoccupied with an unexpected attraction to her own key partner? With Rory, it was sometimes hard to tell.
“So what are you going to do?” Michaela cut a piece of their mother’s amazing tourtière from the ceramic pie dish and dug into it. Mikki enjoyed food the way she consumed life—with enthusiasm and complete disregard for such consequences as weight gain and cholesterol. “You don’t even know his last name. Honestly, girl, maybe you’d better stick with motorcycles.”