Bad Boys Online (20 page)

Halley needed to get away from Evan. The feel of him, the sound of his voice, the sleepy morning smell that surrounded him, was driving her crazy.

Not batty like her Aunt Ginny. But wild kind of crazy. Really achy kind of crazy.

She hadn’t been with a guy since that fiasco she had called a relationship with Lewis, the human plunger.

Given the heat in her Capri pants, it seemed a safe bet that two years was too long to go without a little woohoo.

“Can I borrow your phone?” She backed up slowly, one, two. There, that was better. She couldn’t smell him anymore. “I want to call my office and let them know what’s going on.”

“Sure.” His voice was already distracted as he peered at the computer screen. He started moving the mouse, clicking on things in rapid succession.

Halley was relieved to leave her problem in capable hands and retreat to his kitchen, which still had last night’s dinner dishes in it. Dinner looked to have been Cheetos and a frozen burrito.

She shuddered. His eating habits were abysmal, and in the last few years she had taken to cooking for him a couple of times a week. But since she had been avoiding him he had obviously resorted to barrel scraping.

She could cook something for him a thousand times better than a frozen burrito in ten minutes. A nice fluffy omelet would be ideal, she thought as she picked up the phone and dialed her office.

Nora picked up.

“Hi, it’s me. How are things going there?” She held her breath waiting for the answer.

“Well.” Nora hesitated.

Halley’s stomach did a hokey-pokey imitation, shaking and churning. “Tell me.”

“Okay. We’ve had sixteen calls requesting nude catering jobs. Three callers wanted to know if you could serve penis shaped hor d’oeuvres, one thought he could order a prostitute complete with her own cupid sex toy, and you remember Mr. Benjamin, that sweet old man whose eightieth birthday we catered last month? He wants a refund since we didn’t serve nude at his party.” Nora took a deep breath. “And I caught three of our servers printing fifty copies of the home page with your picture on it.”

“Oh, no!” Halley sagged against the counter. She was ruined. Completely and utterly ruined. She might as well pack up and go back to the trailer park she had grown up in.

As a total failure.

Nora said in bewilderment, “Who would have thought so many people in suburban Pittsburgh want naked catering?”

That was a question for philosophers and Jerry Springer.

“Evan says he can fix it, so just try and stay calm. You’re doing great.” Which was more than she could say for herself since she had the urge to collapse on the kitchen floor in a fit of the screaming mimmies.

“I shredded the copies the servers printed, but there’s nothing to stop them from making more. You might want to reprimand them, it was…”

Halley quickly cut her off. “No, that’s okay.” She really had no interest in which of her male employees had found it necessary to put on paper fifty copies of her naked body.

Which was not her naked body at all. Geez, that was the worst part of the whole thing. They had given her one of those figures that looked like it was three or four different bodies welded together. Huge breasts, hourglass waist, curvy behind, and chicken legs.

Naked Catering Barbie. Complete with tray.

Besides, she had a hard time visualizing calling three men into her office and telling them to stop printing out nudie shots of her on company time with expensive office supplies. It sort of shot her advantage as their intimidating boss.

“One last thing,” Nora said, her tentative voice betraying the casual words.

“What?” Halley paced back and forth in Evan’s kitchen, skirting his overflowing trash can. Whatever Nora had to say, it couldn’t get any worse.

She was ready.

“The church charity group called.”

Oh, no. This was going to be worse.

“And?”

“They’re canceling us for their five hundred seat event.”

What would Evan do if she suddenly starting screaming “bloody hell” at the top of her lungs?

That charity dinner was five hundred times nineteen ninety-five a plate, which meant she was out a hell of a lot of money.

“They didn’t even want to talk to me?” Maybe if she threw in free wine…

Nora said, “I tried to talk them out of canceling, I told them it was a hack job, but they didn’t care.”

She squeezed her eyes closed. “That’s okay.”

Her life was over, but it wasn’t Nora’s fault. Nora was clearly upset and Halley didn’t want her to feel she was to blame. The Three Commandos were the ones to blame, and they were smarmy elusive Internet surfers, hacking their way through decent hard-working people’s lives.

“I’ll call you later.” She hung up and ran a mental list of all the events they had coming up during the busy August and September wedding season. If even a fourth of them canceled, she was going to suffer from excess inventory, an unnecessarily large staff and decreased income.

On a shaky sigh, she let the tears break free and roll down her cheek.

“Holy crap, you’re not going to believe this.” Evan came strolling into the kitchen, a grin dancing across his face.

Halley turned to hide her tears, but the smile collapsing into concern showed he had already seen them.

He stopped dead. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Stupid man. What did he think was wrong? That she’d missed the JCPenney white sale?

“I have perfume in my eye.”

“Perfume? In your eye?” He was coming closer to her, frowning like he was doing some serious thinking.

“Yes. Perfume. In my eye.” She bent over the sink and pretended to be rubbing around in her eye, and tried to swipe away any remaining signs of her wimpy breakdown. His hands landed on her upper arms as he came up behind her.

Touching was bad. It was very, very bad. Touching meant that he was close to her and that with one little shift back, she could be flush against him, her curves melding into his hardness, his breath rushing past her ear. She could press her backside along his pants and feel him swell with arousal.

Wait a minute. He wouldn’t swell with arousal. He would he shocked and horrified at her unfriend-like behavior, and she would lose the best friend she’d ever had.

“Let me see.”

He was right there. On top of her, cutting off her air and sending her into full-fledged panic. If he would just call her sport or give her a noogie, she’d be fine, but this sweet soft concern was more than she could handle.

“I’ve got it.” Her voice wobbled a little.

Those strong hands forced her to turn around. She blinked like a myopic deer caught in the headlights. Turning her head a little, she tried to lean back away from him, not wanting to smell him or feel him, so she wouldn’t embarrass herself by begging for a kiss.

“You’re crying,” he murmured, his thumb reaching up and wiping the last wet streaks from her cheeks.

“No, it’s watering because I have an eyelash in it.”

“I thought you said it was perfume.”

Was he writing this stuff down? Geez. She glared at him. “Evan, I’m fine.”

Then he kissed her nose. A sweet gentle dusting.

A funny little sigh came out of her mouth.

“I’m sorry about your site, you don’t deserve that.”

His lips brushed across hers, a soft caress that made her feel warm and gooey.

“What are you doing?” she whispered as his arms came around her back and drew her up against his hard, very uncovered, chest.

“Comforting you.”

It was working. She was so comforted her bones seemed to have dissolved like Alka-Seltzer in water. His thumbs rubbed her waist, his hip pressed against hers, and his mouth came towards hers again.

Evan had kissed her before in the past, and she was sure this wasn’t any different. Light brushes for hello and goodbye, a full mouth kiss when she’d graduated from college. Hugs when her grandmother had died. It was no big deal at all… no different.

Except this time his tongue was in her mouth.

Yowsa, that felt good.

It had started out the same, but now it was sweeter, deeper. Wet. A kiss that required open mouths, gripping hands and rapid breathing.

Slow and steady, he dipped and tasted her, and Halley clung to his chest, too stunned to do anything but lie across him like a limp noodle. This was the last thing in the universe she had expected Evan to do, and even though it felt so damn good, she hesitated.

Evan’s hands were in her hair, and he tilted his head to gain better access to her. Halley wondered briefly if this was how he comforted all his friends. Then she reminded herself she was his only female friend, and she didn’t really care why he was kissing her, just that he was.

Her mom always said don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. She had never known what in the hell that really meant, but she thought in this case it gave her permission to make out with Evan.

So she threw her arms around him and kissed him back for all she was worth.

Their mouths slid and pressed together, tongues intertwining in wet passion as they moved from soft to deep to reckless. It was the fullest, most meaningful kiss she’d ever had in her twenty-eight years and when Evan’s hands cupped her behind, she moaned into his mouth. Oooh, that was nice.

And it made her press against his penis, which was hard and ready to go. No need to wait for the sixty second inflate time. Evan must have already pulled the rip cord.

Light little kisses fell on her mouth, hard enough to feel him and taste him, light enough to make her want more, deeper and fuller. A whimper dragged out of her. He kissed her jaw, and licked a wet trail down her neck as she tossed her head back.

Worry over her catering business was long gone. Only to be replaced by a new tension, tight, burning sexual tension rising from the center of her body.

“I have an idea,” he murmured.

She was getting one too. One that involved no clothes and she and Evan doing the dirty here on the kitchen floor.

She shivered as he breathed into her ear, anticipating a suggestive overture from Evan. A confession of deep desire and longing, a demand that she make love to him. A sensual coaxing that she was the best friend he’d ever had and could be so much more…

Evan said, “Let’s do a little hacking of our own.”

Hacking?
Evan wanted to hack her. Huh. Was that a computer geek’s way of saying sex?

Halley didn’t think it sounded all that great. Hacking away at her, I got hacked last night, you make me so hot and hacky… no, it was pretty much a bucket of cold water as far as she was concerned.

Maybe this was why they’d never gone beyond friendship.

“What do you mean?” She licked her lips and leaned back in his arms as he continued to rub the most delicious circles across her backside, his thighs moving to enclose hers while his tongue made swirlies on her neck.

Maybe she could put up with hacking, after all.

“Revenge. I’m talking about revenge on the Three Commandos.”

What? Wrong. That’s not what he was supposed to say. If she had time, she would write a handbook on things men should not say while getting a woman all hot and bothered.

After mentioning an ex-girlfriend or a change in sexual orientation, revenge would be at the top of the list.

“Revenge?” She tried to pull back. This was weird, with a capital W. God, what the hell had she been doing anyway?

His tongue dipped into her ear as he held her tight.

Getting horny, that’s what she had been doing.

Was still doing, despite the potential disaster factor being huge. She quivered in his arms, breathing hard as he nuzzled into her neck, sucking lightly, pulling her skin forward with his hot mouth.

Evan didn’t seem to be struggling with this baffling change in their relationship. In fact, he was acting like he had his hands on her ass on a regular basis.

Halley wondered if it were possible to have fallen asleep standing up.

His thumbs drifted up from her waist and brushed across each of her nipples, a tentative quest for permission.

“Oh,” she groaned, arching her head back, inviting him to pursue touching her.

“Is this comforting?” he murmured, his head bending in front of her as he slid down her chest with his moist mouth.

Evan dragged her tank top down to expose the tops of her breasts and she could see his pink tongue heading for the nearest curve.

“I do feel better,” she said truthfully. She was also feeling hot, damp, and achy with tight need that snaked around her insides.

Two years worth of hormones flooded up and out like the Hoover Dam had been compromised on a massive scale.

Evan seemed to be experiencing similar feelings. Halley could feel his hardness pressing into her, as he rocked forward with the full length of his penis. With a desperate ferocity that startled her, Halley dropped her hands to his waist and helped him grind.

It might be wrong, but it sure felt good.

Evan groaned, a little throaty aching moan that gave her a burst of triumphant pleasure. He was stroking the length of his erection between her legs, pulling in and out, as Halley wrapped her thighs around him and clenched.

She could hear his breath grow shallow as he thrust with a quick rhythm, and his moans were stifled in her neck as he buried his head. There was no thought of anything but the throbbing strokes of intimacy between them, strokes that mocked the movements of him actually plunging inside her moist body.

Eyes half closed, she gripped his shoulders and wondered that even with his boxer shorts and her pants, she could feel the heat between them. Panting and beyond rational, she thrust her hips to meet him, causing another full moan to rip from Evan.

Then he misjudged and nudged her a little on her inner thigh.

Wait a minute. Her eyes flew open. Something didn’t feel right. This felt too real.

She glanced down and saw smooth golden skin before Evan pushed forward and buried himself between her covered thighs. She wasn’t supposed to be seeing skin.

That lion was out of his cage.

His boxers had sprung a leak.

“Evan.” She tried to maneuver backwards out of his way, but another thrust made her groan and freeze where she was. Oh, my.