Take Me Twice

She snorted with surprised laughter, nearly losing the lollipop. He commandeered it and pushed it slowly into his own mouth. “Mmm, cherry. My favorite.”

“You are awful. Give me that.”

“Okay.” He took it out of his mouth, held it out of reach when she tried to grab it back. “Open your mouth.”

“Grayson…”

“Open.”

She stared at him for a second with an expression he couldn’t read, then opened her mouth. He licked the candy one more time, then painted it, sticky and wet, across her lips.

She sucked her breath in sharply and froze. Grayson suppressed a smile of triumph. He had her right where he wanted her. Remembering a certain other lollipop—grape, as he recalled—that he’d drawn over her lips just like this, then back into his mouth to moisten like a water-colorist dipping his brush into water. Then he’d painted the candy again over her nipples, around her navel, between her legs, leisurely sucking off the sticky sweetness after each application.

This time she licked her own lips clean and grabbed for the sucker, which he held out of her reach again.

“Say please,” he said in the low whisper he used when they were playing sex games, when he’d make her beg.

“No. Grayson…” She pressed back against the wall, eyes wide, face flushed, but not with pleasure. She looked confused, troubled.

Immediately he let her go, put the lollipop back in her mouth and held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry. Just playing.”

“I know. It’s just…” She laughed uneasily, grabbed the stick and crunched the lollipop into bits. “Well, how about that beer now?”

“Beer sounds fine.” He followed her to the tiny kitchen, uneasy, deflated, and perched on a stool across the tile counter. What was that about? She still wanted him, she’d responded, but something was keeping her back. “Are you seeing someone?”

She put two bottles on the counter and turned to fish through a drawer. He picked one, gave the top a mighty twist and let go in a hurry, shaking his hand to ease the sting.

“Opener?” She pushed one across the counter and leaned forward on folded arms. “No, I’m not seeing anyone…yet.”

Yet? “Ben.”

“No, not Ben. I told you not Ben.”

He shrugged with a nonchalance he didn’t feel, pulled open the top to her beer, then his and took a long swallow, watching the top of her bent head. “Then who?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He paused with the bottle against his lip. “You don’t know.”

“Well some friends and I…some online friends from this reading group, Eve’s Apple…” She gestured aimlessly, then clutched the beer bottle in both hands. “We split off from the main group and we’re…looking for Men To Do.”

“Men to do?”

“Men To Do Before Saying I Do.”

He lowered the bottle to the counter, his taste for beer gone. “Work with me here, Laine. What the hell are you talking about?”

“We want to find men who are totally inappropriate for marriage—or even relationships—and…” She waggled her eyebrows.

“Do them.”

“Yup.” She straightened suddenly and opened a cabinet behind her. “You hungry?”

“No.” He folded his arms across his chest. Call him a caveman, call him irrationally possessive, call him whatever you wanted, he did not like the sound of this. “So you haven’t found a man yet?”

“Not yet.” She brought down a bag of sourdough pretzels, her mood entirely too cheerful for his taste. “I’ve found some possibles, though.”

“Where? Wait, don’t tell me. Men To Do magazine? MenToDo.com? The Men To Do Show?”

She tore open the bag and rolled her eyes, then walked around the counter and sat on the stool next to him. “NYdates.com.”

“Okay.” He pictured her e-mailing furiously in her bedroom just now and felt vaguely sick. “So what happens next?”

She crunched on a pretzel. “I find someone I like, we write back and forth, and if he sounds good, then I go meet him for a drink or dinner or something.”

“And do him.”

She chased the pretzel with a swallow of beer. “Yeah, if it works out.”

“And will you tell this guy that you’re just ‘doing’ him and not interested in anything more than that?”

“Like a guy would care?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Okay, you got me on that one.”

She laughed and punched him playfully; he caught her hand and pulled her off the stool, opened his legs and brought her in just between his knees. “You sure this is a good idea?”

“It’s perfect. Just right for my summer of fun.” She tried to pull away, but he kept her there, hands at her slim waist, dying to pull her forward flush against him but not wanting to upset her again.

“What if you meet a psycho?”

“Honey, I already dated you, what’s a psycho going to do?”

“Ha.” He tightened his hold, pulled her toward him another inch, and splayed his fingers along the sides of her body. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She gave a forced laugh. “Too bad you didn’t feel that way when we were together.”

He started, shocked at the bitterness in her tone even though her expression stayed teasing. Okay. Maybe the past hadn’t been laid to rest on a lot of levels, but he wasn’t digging all that crap up now. “We’re talking about you and the Neanderthals of New York.”

“Getting hurt is not an option. These will be deliberately inappropriate men. The only thing involved will be my body.”

He suppressed a primal growl and moved his thumbs up and down her firm stomach, noting her sudden stillness with satisfaction. “So when you bring these guys home to do, can I watch?”

“Ha.” She gave a distracted grin as if she was responding on autopilot. “I don’t think so.”

He moved his thumbs up her rib cage, tugged her in even closer. “Maybe press a glass to the wall and listen?”

“Pervert.” She mumbled the word somewhat dreamily.