Double Exposure

Emma had never really given much thought to her body and how it controlled her. She glanced over her shoulder to Kyle. Except when Kyle was around. Then it definitely controlled her. Her desire had a vicelike grip on her nipples while her lust lobbied between her legs for a free market.

“You’re right,” she told the woman, suddenly feeling energized and determined. “Thanks. I want to feel liberated.” She no longer wanted to be the boring office workaholic who couldn’t even get a second glance from Kyle, the serial flirt. She didn’t want to be Corporate Emma, cell phone and sensible pumps included, all the time. Sometimes she wanted to be Easy Breezy Emma, who had a social life and got laid.

So she took a deep breath. And peeled off her T-shirt.

Kyle turned, a grin on his face, slapping his baseball cap back on his head. “Hey, Em, look at me—”

She popped her bra and let the girls out before she changed her mind.

The grin fell off Kyle’s face. He made a strangled sound in the back of his throat.

Her fingers went for the button on her jeans.

No turning back now.

But given the look on his face, she didn’t have any interest in turning back. She wanted to take it all off for Kyle.

The question was, did he feel the same way?

2

KYLE FORGOT WHATEVER stupid crack he had been about to make about feeling green. He forgot that the paint covering him from head to toe was cold and itchy. He forgot everything.

Because Emma Gideon, his extremely businesslike and uptight coworker, had just taken off her bra, revealing a pair of perfect C-cup breasts, their tight rosy nipples winking at him. He hadn’t thought she would go through with it. It didn’t fit what he had seen of her personality, and he couldn’t say he really blamed her for not wanting to participate. There was more to show for a chick than for him. He was just in his underwear, no big deal. Hell, he took his garbage to the curb in his boxer briefs. But given the male obsession with breasts, he could fully understand why a woman might hesitate to expose hers in a tent with a few hundred people.

But he was oh so glad Emma had, because she had just given him fodder for a thousand fantasies. Not to mention it had answered the pressing question that had plagued him at work for the past several weeks: Was that perfect shape created by a push-up bra or was it all Emma?

It was Emma. No doubt about it.

The bra had just been a boulder holder, not the creator of the magnificent cleavage she tried to cover up with thin sweaters.

Aware that he was beyond the acceptable span of time for not speaking, he forced himself to tear his eyes off her breasts, concentrating on her hand, where the red bra she had discarded dangled perilously from her thumb. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look up into her eyes, knowing she would recognize the jackrabbit lust written all over his face.

“So you’re going for it,” he forced himself to say, hopefully cheerfully. “Cool. It will be fun.” God, he sounded like an idiot. But he was getting desperate because her fingers were now undoing the snap on her jeans, and he was standing only in his skivvies. Green paint may cover up a freckle, but it couldn’t do a damn thing to mask a giant boner.

He should look away. He really should look away. But that zipper was moving down now, inch by glorious inch, and he was drawn to it like a fly to honey. Really sexy honey. He couldn’t look away. Not when Emma was the only woman at the paper who had never shown an ounce of interest in him. Had never shown an ounce of interest in men or sex, period.

This could be his only chance to ever see what delights she was hiding, and while he wrestled with his conscience, at the same time he wanted desperately to catch a tiny glimpse of her forbidden fruit. A scrap of white lace was bared to him and he instantly changed his mind. Time to look away. There would be no hiding his reaction if he saw any more skin, or gave himself any more time to contemplate the soft folds hidden behind that semisheer lace, or thought about the various parts of him that could sink into that very soft, moist part of her.

He looked up, but got halted en route to her face at her chest when she started to peel down her jeans and her breasts bounced from the effort. Jesus. He was trying, damn it. But it was like laying a feast in front of a starving man. His mouth actually watered. As for the fears of tenting his briefs? They were most definitely realized. He had an erection the size of the Sears Tower.

Then Emma bent over, which put her face in close proximity to that erection, and she shoved her pants past her luscious hips. He was not going to think about what could be happening in this same position under different circumstances. Kyle went to shove his hands into his pockets to prevent himself from touching her, only to remember he had no pockets.

Emma made a small sound of distress as she lost her balance trying to withdraw her foot from her jeans, and Kyle reached out and grabbed her so she didn’t fall in a heap of denim and bouncing breasts. Though he would have enjoyed the view. But he wasn’t sick enough to want her injured so he could have middle school fantasies.

“Thanks,” she breathed, glancing up at him, her amber-colored eyes hooded. He couldn’t read her expression.

Emma stood and clutched her jeans to her chest, covering her breasts. The pants, shirt, bra and plastic bag covered the majority of her bare skin. The majority of the good parts, anyway. Kyle was simultaneously relieved and disappointed.

“Here, stand in front of me until you get sprayed. I’ll block you from view,” he told her, because it was clear she wasn’t comfortable with her nudity. Her cheeks were pink and she had inched closer to him, farther from the room at large.

If she was going to go through with this, he wanted to help her. He wanted her to trust him. And now that he thought about it, he didn’t particularly want just any guy in the room to have the same view he’d had of her breasts.

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s the catch?”

He held his hands up. “None, I promise. I’m just trying to be a nice guy. So sue me.” He was being a friggin’ Boy Scout here, with his eyes trained on her face, and she was sure he had an angle? He was insulted.

“I’m just making sure I’m not about to become a punch line.”

“What kind of a-hole do you take me for?” Kyle moved around behind her and glowered at a guy he suspected of checking out Emma’s butt in her—dear God—bikini panties. It wasn’t a G-string. It covered her cheeks, but not much else. And those were some perfectly curved, smooth ass cheeks. No wonder the guy was staring. Kyle swallowed hard and crossed his green arms over each other, knowing his shoulders and hips were broad enough to block a good portion of Emma. He’d played hockey in high school and he’d kept up with his weight training. There were no skinny jeans in his future and he wasn’t afraid to play the muscle if need be.

The guy immediately stopped his ogling. Kyle thought so, the sick bastard. Of course he wasn’t sure he was much better, as was confirmed by Emma.

“I don’t think you’re an a-hole. But I do think you’re the office flirt and quite the prankster,” Emma said, her voice dry. He couldn’t see her since he was behind her and facing away, but he could hear the plastic bag rattling as she stuffed her clothes into it.

Sometimes Emma sounded like she had fallen out of the forties. “Prankster?” Kyle snorted. “Flirt? Why, because I like to enjoy myself at work?”

“Oh, you definitely enjoy yourself when you’re sidling up to Gina in accounting and her cleavage. Usually when you’re an hour late on your deadline.”

Kyle was actually shocked. He now understood exactly why it seemed that Emma didn’t like him. It was because she didn’t like him.

Which was fine. Not great, but fine. She was entitled to not like him, even if he was harboring a serious case of lust for her. But she had no right to insult his professional integrity. “I’ve never been late on a deadline. And for your information, I have never noticed Gina’s cleavage. Her husband is a good friend of mine, so Gina and I are friends. That’s all there is to it.”

“Never late? Are you kidding me? And are you seriously trying to claim you don’t flirt with every woman in the office?”

“Never late. Not once,” he insisted. He and Claire had worked out a deal where he started at eight-thirty instead of eight Monday through Thursday and then on Fridays he came in an hour early and left an hour later. Maybe that had created a perception of tardiness, but he wasn’t sure why he had to explain that to her.

He added, “I’m friendly. I like people. Since when is that a crime?” It was actually the main reason he loved his job. He got to interact with both people in the office and out in the field. It was an industry of meetings, social gatherings, sporting events and fund-raisers. He covered them all, and enjoyed all of it. He may have lost his spot covering sports over a little press-pass snafu, but in the end he had given a longtime buddy who had cancer a once-in-a-lifetime shot at meeting the Cleveland Browns football players, and so he couldn’t regret his demotion.

If anything, writing his arts and entertainment column had opened up a whole new part of the city to him. And he was doing a damn good job, thank you very much. None of that seemed to matter to Emma, though.

It bugged the crap out of him that she made it sound like he was on the verge of violating sexual harassment laws. “And I don’t flirt with you,” he pointed out.

Her gasp of outrage indicated that wasn’t perhaps the best argument he could have used. The woman standing in front of him, who had originally been in line behind Emma, gave him a look confirming this. She shook her head slightly in what was clearly a friendly warning.

“Because I respect you,” he added. Usually that response could get a guy out of a veritable ton of trouble. It was akin to whitewashing graffiti in his experience.

“You’re a douche bag,” Emma said succinctly. “Respect that.”

So Emma definitely wasn’t like other women. While most ladies he knew thought he was charming, Emma read it as bullshit. That was something he wasn’t sure how to fix. Nor was he sure why he cared, but for some reason he did. For months it had been bothering him that Emma hadn’t warmed to him, and now it felt like a twofold mission—to force her to appreciate his good qualities and to determine why she thought work and fun had to be mutually exclusive.

“Maybe I don’t flirt with you because you’re mean to me,” he told her mildly, figuring arguing back was a tactic that wouldn’t work with Emma. It would just give her an excuse to stomp away from him indignantly. If he were calm, maybe it would calm her down.

She snorted. “I am not mean to you.” Weighted plastic hit him in the back. “Hold my bag,” she demanded.

Kyle figured that was an invitation to turn around.

So he did.