Bad Boys Online (16 page)

“It wasn’t any trouble.”

For a man who claimed not to get embarrassed, he was doing a pretty good imitation of just that.

It just made him all the more gorgeous.

Jared was wearing casual black pants and a sky blue shirt, which made his blue eyes even lighter against his dark hair. He had a smooth, understated style, always looking good but never veering into the female world of primping.

He picked up a remote control and turned the stereo on. Jazz music she didn’t recognize started playing softly. Her legs threatened to give way. He’d even remembered the jazz.

When he held her chair out for her, she looked at the pasta sitting in a covered bowl ready to be served. If he had cooked food that was edible, she might just never want to leave. “Did you cook this?”

He snorted. “Hell, no. I don’t cook. I ordered it from an Italian restaurant around the corner.”

Then he sat down across from her. He sounded oddly eager when he said, “Do you cook?”

“Not unless you call pb and j sandwiches cooking.”

“I can make omelets,” he said.

She was impressed. Scrambled was the most she could manage. “I can boil hot dogs and heat up canned corn.”

They both laughed while he poured the wine and served them pasta and bread. She took a steaming bite and silently thanked the unknown chef. Having spent a good portion of her lunch hour holed up in the ladies room, she was now starving.

After a few bites, Candy said, “We’re not going to get to any work on Chunky Chocolate, are we?”

Jared looked up from his plate. “We’ll get to it.” He grinned. “Sometime before it’s due on Harold’s desk.”

She was afraid he would say that. Or really damn pleased was probably the more honest answer.

“Jared, we should at least try and work on it.” Candy tried to sound firm, but she knew she was failing miserably.

He kept smiling. Geez, she loved his smile. He didn’t ever look so relaxed at work and she felt a giddy pleasure that she could bring that grin to his face.

“Alright, let’s think up some slogans while we eat.” Jared took a sip of his wine. “What rhymes with chunky?”

“Monkey. Punky. Funky.” She leaned back in her chair and nibbled on her bread. “So, how about a monkey at a club eating chocolate?”

He shot her a withering look.

She giggled. “Hunky rhymes too.”

“We’re talking about the ad, Candy, not me.”

His deadpan expression made her laugh out loud. “Hunky and modest, huh?”

“I’m a pretty good catch, aren’t I?” His serious expression cracked a little, his lip twitching up in a smile.

“I know you are. Didn’t I ask why no one’s caught you yet?”

“Maybe I’ve been waiting for the right woman to figure out how to catch me.”

A fishing net? Handcuffs? With fantastic sex?

Candy wished she knew, because she was starting to think she’d like to snag Jared for herself.

“So say a woman wanted to catch you. What would be the best way to do that?” She tried to keep her voice light, but a quiver crept into it.

Jared put his fork down and gave her a searching look that made her want to squirm. He said, “I think by just being herself, and letting me be myself.”

Then he shrugged. “It sounds like an after school special, but it’s true. I don’t want games, I want a partner, a friend.”

He raised his wine glass in mock salute, and his voice lightened. “Sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it?”

“No.” Candy shook her head rapidly. “No, it doesn’t. I… I was married once.”

Jared’s eyes bulged. “You were?”

“Yeah.” She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite force it. “Dean was my boyfriend in high school. It was never a good relationship, not even then. We broke up when I went to college, but when I came back home, he came on strong, said all the right things.”

Yet to this day she couldn’t imagine what she had been thinking when she had married him. “As soon as we were married, I knew it was a mistake, but I didn’t want to admit that.”

Jared was gripping his glass tightly. “What did he do to you?”

Startled, she said, “Nothing. I mean, he didn’t abuse me or anything horrible like that. We just had nothing in common, we didn’t talk. He was violently jealous of guys looking at me, and it just got worse. He had to control everything with our money, where I was going, what I was doing. He didn’t want me wearing make-up or nice clothes.”

No, Dean had never hit her, but he had made her life miserable, and had stripped her of her dignity. He had humiliated her in front of people she cared about. “He said it was my fault men looked at me, that I was a flirt, a tease.”

“Jesus, Candy. How long were you with him?”

It wasn’t pity in Jared’s voice, just honest concern. It made her feel better about blurting out her past business to him.

“Three years.” Years that she had accepted were gone and she couldn’t get back.

“That’s a long time to live like that.”

“It is. But I got away as soon as I was ready, and thank goodness we never had any children together.”

“Are you divorced then?”

His hand had snaked across the table and was holding hers, stroking with a light touch.

“Oh, heck yeah. He tried to fight it, but the judge was friends with my stepdad and he wasn’t having any of Dean’s crap. Judge Anderson pushed it through nice and fast, and I moved to Knoxville. But it still felt too close to Dean, so I picked up and came to Chicago. My roommate from college lives here.”

She waited for the apology that was sure to come. The pity or even the recrimination. If Jared thought there was an ounce of truth to Dean’s accusations of her being a dick-tease, she would either die from mortification or impale him with a salad fork.

He didn’t do what she expected at all.

Instead, he squeezed her hand hard and said, very matter of fact, “Your ex sounds like a big pussy.”

“Jared!” Good gravy, she couldn’t believe he’d said that. She’d never heard him swear before.

But then Dean inspired those feelings in her too.

“Well, he is.” Jared was unrepentant. “Any real man would be proud to have you as his wife. He’d want you to dress up and look all sexy, so he could stroll into a room and let every guy there know that he had managed to marry a hot woman like you.”

Candy flushed with pleasure.

“So I think your ex had issues about his manhood. That’s the only explanation for treating you like that.”

Candy had issues with Dean’s manhood now too, since Jared had managed to make her moan squished up against a mahogany office desk. Dean had never inspired anything more than a pleasant sigh from her, and that was on his best days.

“He wanted to own you, didn’t he?” Jared had pushed his chair back, but hadn’t let go of her hand.

Candy’s arm was stretched clear across the table, but she never even noticed the awkward position. Jared’s words sliced something deep inside, touching a raw spot she hadn’t known even existed anymore.

“What do you mean?” She thought she knew precisely what he meant.

“That your ex wanted a pretty wife on his arm, like a cool car or a great stereo system. Then when he had you, he worried about losing you to someone else who might want you.”

Maybe she had suspected that all along, but she had never discussed it with anyone. To have Jared guess what might be the truth was a new humiliation. “Probably,” she choked out.

Then she spoke in a rush. “Listen, Jared, I don’t… I’m not… my ex wasn’t right about the tease thing. I…”

Crud. Candy trailed off, mortified beyond words. She had sashayed into Harold’s office and wiggled her rear in Jared’s face. There was no reason for him to think anything other than that she was a flirt who got around.

“Come here.” Jared patted his knee like he was Santa and she was a naughty little girl who needed reassurance.

Common sense told her not to do it. But of course she did.

And Santa had never had thighs that muscular.

Nor had Santa ever asked her about her sex life. Jared did.

He asked baldly, “When was the last time you were with a man? Before today, that is.”

She swallowed hard and studied the buttons on his shirt. “It was Dean. Three months before I left him two years ago.”

“So you haven’t been with any man since your divorce?”

“No.”

“Until today.”

“Yes.”

He frowned. “I screwed up then, Candy. I shouldn’t have lost control like that.”

His eyes dropped to her lips. A finger stroked her chin briefly. “You deserve better than that.”

Candy was shocked that he could even think for one minute that it had been less than perfect. It had been wild, yes, and the opposite of what she had thought she wanted, but it had been the most erotic experience of her life.

So far. She was hoping they could expand on her portfolio here soon.

“Jared. It was just right. See, I had to know that I could let myself go like that. I was starting to think there was something wrong with me because every man I’ve dated since the divorce made me feel about as sexy as a fish carcass.”

Jared’s mouth fell open. “That’s not very sexy.”

She giggled. “No. But I wanted it to be different with you. And it was.”

Jared’s hands rested against the small of her back and he had managed to slip under her sweater to touch her skin. “So I made you feel sexy?”

“Oh, yes.”

His lips brushed her neck. “Do I make you feel sexy now?”

“Yes.”

“I can make you feel sexier.”

Jared moved up her sides, causing a shiver to pass through her. “But what about Chunky Chocolate?”

Candy’s eyes fell closed as Jared reached her breasts and slowly made his way around to the front to caress her nipples.

“Chocolate is a replacement for sex. You don’t need it.” His tongue teased her, slipping into her ear then back out.

She tried to laugh, but it sounded like a wheezing moan. It felt right sitting in his lap, his erection pressing against her and his hot breath pushing down her neck.

Jared murmured, “I’ll never try to possess you. I’ll never do anything you don’t want. I’ll listen.”

Candy put her hands on Jared’s shoulders and knew that she’d gone and done the stupid. She had fallen in love with Jared and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it now.

Her brain, which she had been touting all these years as something to everyone who thought her a ditz, had decided to abandon her. Her body was betraying her by quivering like a Jell-o mold under Jared’s touch, leaving her with the damp panty problem all over again.

Which left her heart on its own to tumble straight forward into idiocy.

It was her heart that was responsible for her blurting out, “I don’t want this day to end.”

Jared’s mouth stilled at the corner of hers. “It doesn’t have to. Spend the night with me.”

It wasn’t a good idea. It was a bad, you’re going to wake up and be really damn sorry, idea, but Candy didn’t give a rat’s patootie.

She kissed him, savoring the taste of the wine on his lips. “I didn’t bring my pj’s.”

Jared’s eyebrows raised. “Candy, you do not need your pj’s.”

“They’re cute,” she teased him. “Pink with white kitties on them.”

“You’re cuter naked.” His hands were on the bottom of her sweater, ready to shuck it off of her.

She gripped his shirt. “You’ve never seen me naked. Not really.”

“All the more reason to hurry.” He tugged her sweater, yanking it up to her breasts. “Lift your arms.”

Jared’s voice was hard and urgent. Candy did as he requested and said, “Okay, but I get the top.”

He stopped tugging on her sweater. “Top what? I don’t have any bunk beds, sugar.”

Candy’s arms were still in the air and the neck of her turtleneck sweater was inside out over her face. “On top of you.”

She wiggled, red fuzz clinging to her lips and her eyelashes matting. “Now get this sweater off of me. I can’t breathe or see anything.”

Jared pulled until her head popped through, her hair flattened into her eyes. She waved her arms around in the air. “My hands are still stuck.”

But Jared was too busy unhooking her front clasp bra to help her out. When his mouth closed around her nipple and drew her towards him, Candy found she didn’t give a darn if she was tangled up in cable knit.

Flinging her sweater trapped arms over his head, she arched her back and let him at them.

Jared sucked on Candy until she was squirming and calling his name. Her arms were still trapped behind his head, her cherry sweater rubbing against his neck, and it kept her from moving very far.

A hand on her back and one on her breast and she was stuck firmly in place, despite her wiggling around on his lap. He was enjoying her growing desperation. It was close to matching his.

Pulling back he stared at her rosy nipple, shiny from his mouth and firm like a plump grape. He couldn’t resist a little nip.

Candy jerked forward. Somehow she managed to yank her arms free and he felt the sweater trail down his back. She pushed her hair back off her face and slid her bra down off each shoulder and onto the floor.

Then she sat back, taking her nipples out of his reach, making an enticing picture as she arched her back topless. It took him two seconds of gazing at her naked breasts to beg, “Take your jeans off.”

“I still get the top, remember?” she warned as she shimmied back and stood up.

Even if he had forgotten, his boner would have reminded him. He nodded. “Oh, hell, yeah, I remember.”

She smiled and he just about came on the spot. If he had been falling for her before, he was gone now that he had heard about her shit-for-brains ex-husband.

He had liked her before. He had respected her. Now he admired her too. Despite her overt femininity, Candy was a strong woman.

The woman for him.

Candy undid the button on her jeans, then the zipper, with all the speed of an anemic turtle, a mischievous grin on her face.

“Hurry up,” he said, no shame whatsoever. “Or I’m going to rip them off of you.”

“You would not.” Her hand stopped moving altogether.

“Do you want to find out?”

She laughed. “No, not really.”