A Stranger's Touch

Jena’s gaze narrowed. Marie nodded encouragingly.

Dulcy’s pulse seemed to slow to a steady thrum as she worked her way through the vision. “I, um, would have on this short short skirt…and I wouldn’t be wearing any underwear. And he’d…um, he’d be wearing leather pants…black…” That was good. The guy who still stood at the door had on jeans. Close-fitting faded denim that hugged his crotch and thighs to perfection. “And he’d have leather straps in his pants pockets. Straps he’d use to tie my hands above my head….”

Dulcy couldn’t swallow, with the vivid pImages** in her head of open-mouthed kisses and soft moans; the glistening, silk-covered shaft of an erection pulsing in her hands; the scent of sex thick and musky, tanned skin pressing against her sensitive pale flesh.

Jena shifted, and Dulcy blinked her into view. It was the first time she’d seen her friend speechless. Afraid of how much she’d just revealed about herself, she curled her fingers into her palms and searched for a way out of the corner she’d painted herself into.

“Oh, and…there would be another hot guy standing in the corner of the elevator…watching.”

Judging by the way Jena’s brows shot up and the way Marie’s eyes bulged, she’d succeeded in her endeavor.

“You just made that up,” Jena accused.

Dulcy rubbed the side of her neck, glad she’d momentarily sidetracked her friends. The fact that the guy in her fantasies was real wasn’t improving her finely tuned condition any. “Okay, you’re right,” she lied. “But you have to admit, I had you two going.”

She’d also made herself more than a little hot and bothered. Not because she got into exhibitionism or S&M by any stretch. But the hot passion and the anonymous stranger part had long been a secret fantasy of hers. Ever since she’d graduated from ogling her high school P.E. teacher and had taken to privately rating men in public places on how she thought they might perform in bed. Like having coffee at the café around the corner from their office and summing up the young, athletic waiter in the tight black pants that left very little to the imagination. Or dining out at her favorite Mexican restaurant and watching the hot Latin dancer teach customers how to tango, making her wonder how he danced in bed. Or during lulls at work, eyeing the building’s new maintenance man, whose biceps practically split the seams of his shirt while he fixed the rash of broken light fixtures.

Dulcy twisted her lips. Curiously enough, all three examples were from the past week alone.

Her wedding—and wedding night—couldn’t come soon enough for her.

Jena folded her forearms on top of the table. “Okay, since you’re not interested in sharing your real fantasy with us…tell me, Dulcy, why did you say earlier that you have to lie to get married?”

Dulcy made a face. “I did not.”

“You most certainly did.”

Had she? She thought back and realized that, yes, she had, when she’d suggested that maybe Marie wasn’t married yet because of her inability to lie. “It was a joke,” she said.

“No, it wasn’t. You don’t make those kinds of jokes. Does it have something to do with Brad?”

“Jeez, Louise—Jena, give a girl a warning before you go back to something we talked about two days ago.” Had she really just said ‘Jeez, Louise’? Horrified, she realized she had.

“It was five minutes ago, not two days. And are you going to answer my question?”

Dulcy grimaced. “I plead the fifth.”

“It’s impossible to incriminate yourself with us, Dulc.”

When Dulcy merely smiled, Jena sat up. “Would you like me to rephrase the question in a simple yes-or-no format?”

Dulcy pursed her lips, then said, “Yes.”

“Okay. Did you lie to your groom, your husband-to-be, one certain Mr. Hottie,” she glanced at Marie, having used her name for Brad, “today?”

“Yes.”

“Did it have to do with sex?”

“No.”

Jena frowned. “Damn. Okay…did it have to do with your friends, one Ms. Jena McCade and Ms. Marie Bertelli?”

Dulcy went completely still, the question hitting a little too close to home. “Well…it’s more complicated than that—”

“A simple yes or no will do, Ms. Ferris.” Jena looked to Marie. “May I request Your Honor instruct the witness to respond in the manner requested and agreed upon?”

Dulcy looked to Marie, the session’s judge, hopefully.

“Answer the question, Ms. Ferris.”

Dulcy gaped at her. Marie never sided with Jena. “Okay, then…yes. Yes, the lie I told to Brad had to do with you two.”

She didn’t realize the weight of the question and corresponding answer until silence settled on the table. She blinked to stare at her empty shot glass, avoiding her friends’ curious looks.

Jena had warned her last month during a cocktail party at the Wheeler estate that Brad would try to break up their friendship after he placed the old rock and ring on her finger. Dulcy had laughed at her, thinking the prospect ridiculous…until Brad had asked her earlier today why only Jena and Marie were involved in her bachelorette party. And why his mother Beatrix—who looked remarkably like Betty White on steroids—wasn’t included, as she wanted to be. During the drive into town, she, herself, had begun to wonder whether or not Jena’s warning held any water. If Brad did disapprove of her friends now, what would happen after they were married? Would he begin by suggesting they leave one or the other of them off the list of dinner invites in deference to one of his friends or family members? Would he suggest they go to his family’s for the holidays, essentially banning her from spending time with Jena and Marie?

She’d snapped her mouth open to make it clear to Brad that her friendship with Jena and Marie wasn’t up for debate. But there weren’t enough words in existence to convey the special bond that had developed among the three of them when they were kids. A tragic incident with Jena’s parents had inspired in each of them an interest in law, and that interest had taken them through the bar exam and eventually to their recently formed law practice in partnership with Barry Lomax. Then she’d decided that she wasn’t going to be placed in the position of defending her friendship with Jena and Marie. It was a fact he’d just have to accept.

Concerning her mother-in-law to be, she’d told Brad that bachelorette parties were traditionally for the bride’s peers. Besides, Beatrix scared the living hell out of her.

As for the lie…she’d told Brad the three of them were going to dinner and a movie, then staying at Jena’s afterward.

“Let’s dance.”

Startled, Dulcy looked up to find Jena getting up from the booth. “What? Without—”

“Men? Absolutely.” Jena tugged on Marie’s hand; Marie in turn grabbed Dulcy’s.

Giving a protest yip, she found herself stumbling down the aisle toward the dance floor set up in front of the band. They were playing Seger’s “Old Time Rock ’n’ Roll” and the decibel level was ear splitting up this close.

Jena easily found her groove, shimmying and shaking in that spontaneous way Dulcy had always secretly admired. Marie began clapping her hands, not nearly as graceful and slightly out of step, but having a good time.

Dulcy shrugged. Why not? She could do this. After all, it was her last real night as a single woman. Surely even she deserved to cut loose and have a bit of fun with her best friends.

With that, she threw her hands up in the air and began shaking her hips in a way she hoped wasn’t too ludicrous.

GREAT. HIS FIRST NIGHT OUT in three months and he had to pick a gay bar.

Quinn Landis leaned against the highly polished bar and eyed three men standing nearby. They looked like models from a Gap commercial—as did every other male in the place—and they didn’t seem to mind that there was nary a female in sight. He frowned, then asked the bartender for a beer. When he was handed an ice-cold bottle, he leaned across the bar. “What’s going on tonight?”

“Sir?”

Quinn gestured with the neck of his bottle toward the guys.

The tender grinned. “Hockey team staying in the hotel.”

“Oh.” He paid the man, including a generous tip. “Thanks.”