With His Touch

With His Touch
Dawn Atkins

Литагент HarperCollins EUR

The best thing about turning thirty-five? Having the greatest sex of your life! Now that Sugar Thompson has hit the big 3-5, she knows exactly what she wants. She's got big dreams to take her resort to the next level. But her plans slide off the rails once her business partner, Gage Maguire, targets her as the object of his seduction. Who knew that the simmering attraction between them would lead to sex this hot! Too bad the sensual fulfillment is creating havoc in the boardroom.Their competing goals for the business are spiking tensions between them and driving them apart. Will she be able to stop the best sex of her life from ruining everything else?

WITH HIS TOUCH

Dawn Atkins

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

To David…for taking the risk

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Coming Next Month

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe unending gratitude to Laurie, Laura and Suzan for showing me that I was limping on a broken leg, introducing me to Ms. Free To Be, and helping me see my way to a new writing life.

Prologue

“HERE’S TO THIRTY-FIVE and our sexual peak!” Sugar Thompson tapped her prickly-pear margarita against her two friends’ wide glasses. The burgundy liquid sloshed against the prickly-pear jelly on the sugar-dusted rim before she brought it to her lips for a tangy slurp.

“Hey…” Autumn Beshkin hesitated, glass in midair. “But you said women get several sexual peaks, Sugar. Only men spike at nineteen and decline from there, right?”

“That’s true.” Sugar had been a couples’ therapist before she opened her sex resort with a partner five years ago, so she served as the intimacy expert for the trio of friends who celebrated their birthdays together each year.

As a stripper, Autumn knew a thing or two about sex herself, though from a different angle than Sugar’s. Sugar valued Autumn’s down-to-earth practicality, a trait they shared. Both believed what they could see, taste, touch or smell over anything emotional or theoretical or certainly romantic.

“The point,” said Esmeralda, “is the seven-year lunar shift.” A nail tech, Esmeralda McElroy also read palms and studied all things psychic. Sugar thought her theories goofy, but she loved Esmeralda’s big heart and generous spirit. She was always helping her clients with loans, a place to stay or a shoulder to cry on. Sugar could tolerate a ton of woo-woo for a few minutes in the warm sun of Esmie’s kindness.

It was Sugar’s secret weakness.

“We’re thirty-five. Our fifth cycle. A biggie and it’s palpable. Can’t you feel it?” Esmeralda closed her eyes and took a yoga-style breath.

“Cycle, schmycle,” Autumn said. “I’ve already changed my life.” She’d gone back to school the previous year to become an accountant, since she had a gift for numbers. She was still dancing, but the shift to school had eased her gritty defensiveness, made her more sunny and hopeful. Sugar was happy for her.

“Here’s to becoming a CPA.” Sugar lifted her glass again. Under Autumn’s bravado, Sugar sensed a core insecurity that even top grades in her first year hadn’t eased.

“Here’s to all of us,” Esmeralda, ever the mother hen, said.

Sugar clicked glasses, then gulped the rest of the icy drink so fast she got brain freeze. Damn. Her partner, Gage, was always after her to slow down. But that’s not how she worked. Progress was her mantra, movement her mode.

She was desperate for change at the moment. Spice It Up, their sex resort in San Diego, seemed stagnant and she had a proposal to shake things up that she intended to spring on Gage at the Sex Expo this upcoming weekend. Unlike Sugar, Gage wasn’t big on change.

“Tea leaves, Tarot or a Chinese reading?” Esmeralda asked. A psychic encounter was one of Esmie’s contributions to their birthday celebration, a tradition they’d kept up even after Sugar had moved to San Diego, leaving the other two in Phoenix.

No matter what, Sugar made time for the gathering. She counted on her friends as her private pep squad, her sounding board, her heart’s voice, which was the role she served for them, too.

“Tea leaves,” Sugar said. “Never done that before.”

“Doesn’t matter to me.” Autumn shrugged. “Read my roots for all it will mean.” Autumn’s cynicism hid a fear of disappointment. Sugar hoped school and whatever wonders befell Autumn this year would resolve that pain.

“Tea leaves it is, then,” Esmeralda said, and fetched a baggie of tea from her huge satchel, which clunked with whatever she had in there. Chicken bones? Tibetan bells? A crystal ball?

Sugar smiled, but kept an open mind. When Esmie had read Sugar’s palm, she’d accurately interpreted the meandering lines as proof of her restless nature, so she had something going on.

“Chinese tea,” Esmie said, waving it under their noses for a sniff. She ordered a pot of hot water and instructed Autumn and Sugar to sprinkle the loose leaves into their cups, then sip slowly to the dregs, swirling the leaves so they made patterns she could read on the sides and bottom of the cups.