Champagne Rules (5 page)

Expecting one man, somewhere in the world, to see and respond to her ad was sillier than casting a fishing line into the ocean in hopes of luring one particular salmon. If that very special fish even existed. . . . Jaxon yawned and rotated his head, trying to ease the ache in his neck and shoulders that had settled in an hour ago. What kind of guy had nothing better to do than sit at his desk doing research at eleven o’clock on Saturday night?

Answer: A lawyer who wanted to score brownie points with the senior partner. So here he was, spending his weekend researching a complicated point of antitrust law, so he could have a memo on Trent Jefferson’s desk before Monday morning—a memo outlining a strong argument they could make to the charge that their client had violated the laws governing unfair competition.

Besides, what would he rather be doing? Sitting in a bar, making meaningless conversation? Twiddling his thumbs in front of a television? No, he was right where he wanted to be, plodding steadily forward on the fast track to success. 

Plodding on the fast track. What was that, an oxymoron?

Who cared? It was the life he’d chosen.

He stretched and took two steps to his office window. Outside, the city twinkled with moving lights. San Francisco was alive, but here on the thirtieth floor he was insulated from it. No sound reached his ears, and he viewed the world through tinted glass. When had he last had a date? There’d been the lawyer he met at the continuing-ed course on intellectual property litigation. After they’d had to reschedule their first two dates, they’d both laughed ruefully and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. That had been . . . what? Three or four months ago?

A date. He couldn’t even organize a date. Yeah, he knew he couldn’t afford the time for a relationship, but he wouldn’t mind a date.

He chuckled at his reflection in the glass. “Fuck, man. What you really want is down-and-dirty sex.” He was a physical guy, with physical needs. Putting in fourteen-hour workdays tired out his brain, but his body had a deep-down craving to get sweaty and satisfied.

Oh yeah, he was definitely horny. That dynamite blonde from Crete was back in his skull. Christ, it must have been, what? Four years? And it had only been one afternoon. Since then he’d fallen in love, been married, got divorced. But still, that blonde had a grip on him that had never let go. He thought of her at the oddest times, as well as the completely predictable ones like alone in his bed in the middle of the night. Gazing down at San Francisco, he remembered how she’d stared out of the cave and down to the beach, describing what she saw. Her slim arrow of a body arched above him, those gold curls tumbling past her shoulders, and all the time he was buried to the hilt inside her. Burning with the desire to move, to make her shudder and moan, to find his release. But holding back, wanting the impossible, wanting to stay forever hard, forever inside this woman. 

Even now, thinking about it, he was hard. The memory always had that effect on him. Even in the days when he and Tonya’d been making love daily, there’d been something extrasexy about the thought of that afternoon on Crete. About that particular woman. He ran his hand down the front of his fly, remembering her touch.

Then he gave a growl of frustration and strode back to his desk. Where had he got to in his research?

He tried to force his attention back to the screen, but damn it, his brain wasn’t functioning. What he wanted at this moment was to dream about hot sex in a cool cave. He reached for the mouse, and gave in to his secret hobby. In the time since he and Tonya had split up, he occasionally surfed the net, hunting for his sex goddess. He was a pro with internet research—enough to know his chances of locating her were slimmer than the odds of finding a needle in a haystack. The needle, at least, was actually there; diligence and persistence would turn it up. The woman existed, true, but she might not be in the haystack of the internet. The uncertainty somehow made the hunt even more compelling. If he’d only asked her name, he’d have increased his chances a hundred percent. But at the time he hadn’t wanted to know. She’d been a one-afternoon stand; the less he knew about her, the easier she’d be to forget.

What a pile of crap that had turned out to be. With a combination of mouse clicks and keystrokes he Googled the words “Crete,” “cave” and “sex.”

Every time he did this he got hits: travel notes, personals ads, even the occasional erotic blog. He and his blonde weren’t the only ones who’d indulged in cave sex on Crete. But the details and tone of the postings had never rung a bell, so he hadn’t pursued any of the leads.

This time he skimmed the list of hits, clicking on one, then rejecting it, and going on to the next. Another sounded possible, so he followed the link to a personal ads website. On his screen, words appeared.

Are you the man who shared sizzling sex with a hot blonde in the cave above the nude beach on Crete four years ago? If you feel like another erotic escapade, drop me a line. Be sure to tell me what you remember about that afternoon, so I’ll know it’s really you.

outrageous69

Adrenaline hit in a surge that had him leaping out of his chair. Goddamn! He thumped his fist against the desk. It was her!

Then practicality took over.
Maybe
it was her. His lover had definitely been a hot blonde, and the time frame was right. Why hadn’t she given more details, like the color of his skin, the people on the beach below?

He sat down again, drumming his fingertips against the frame of his keyboard.

She hadn’t given details because she wanted them to come from him, so she’d be sure of his identity. It could be dangerous for a woman placing an ad like this.

But then it could be dangerous for a woman walking off with a complete stranger to a cave in the hills. Having unprotected sex. Yeah, like his hot blonde would worry about a little danger. She was gutsy, into excitement and adventure. Reckless. Outrageous. Outrageous69.

Sixty nine. Oh man, they’d sure shared some crazy fun. His gaze snagged on the piles of paper, file folders and accordion files that littered his desk. What would she think of him now, with the brilliant but utterly conservative career he was so busily pursuing? She wanted a guy who was sexy, exciting, adventuresome. And he wasn’t. 

What he was was a lawyer obsessed with piling up more billable hours, impressing the partners, kowtowing to old clients and hustling new ones. Oh yeah, he could guess how outrageous69 would view him. Sexy? Not a hope in hell. Though his swollen cock was definitely ready and willing to perform.

Unable to resist the memories, he unzipped the fly of his jeans. She had stroked him with slender, deft fingers, and he’d felt huge in her hand.

Jax closed his eyes as his hand remembered her rhythm. She had stroked and teased, then she’d leaned down and all that sun-kissed hair had tumbled across his belly as she’d opened her lips and taken him in. She’d only managed to surround the first few inches of his length. But she’d compensated by caressing and licking, working her way down and back up, then down again, tonguing his balls until they tightened and clenched and he was ready to explode.

Then he’d grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her away from him, thrust her onto her back. And he was on top of her, inside her, swallowing her cries with his mouth even as his own climax shrieked through him.

Oh shit!

Jax pulled his wet hand away from his body. It wasn’t the first time he’d come, remembering her. But usually it happened in bed at night, or in the shower.

Thank God the office was deserted. Thank God he was wearing jeans rather than one of his good suits. Praying the security guard wouldn’t pick this moment for a surprise check, he stumbled on shaky legs to the men’s room to clean up.

Back in his office, the message glowed at him from the computer screen. He grinned and sat down in front of the keyboard. 

Suzanne’s friends had made her swear a vow in retsina not to check her outrageous69 e-mail until Monday afternoon. Then she was under strict instructions to print the replies unread and bring them to Maria’s, the Greek restaurant the Awesome Foursome had chosen for dinner.

She could have cheated and they’d never have known. She was tempted many times, never more strongly than Saturday night when she had another orgasmic dream, but she resisted. For her, a promise, even a silly one, was a bond. When she rushed home from the vet clinic on Monday and accessed her outrageous69 account, she was astonished to find almost fifty replies. “Don’t people have anything better to do with their time?” she muttered as she clicked PRINT over and over again. Damn, she was going to be late for dinner. As each new message came on screen, tantalizing words tempted her to stop and read: Hot time . . . sugarpie . . . most beautiful thing . . . caveman. She summoned her will power, averted her eyes, kept clicking PRINT.

Fuck me, baby!

“I don’t think so, baby,” she muttered. “Good old outrageous69 is a perv magnet.” And what had she expected, with the wording her tipsy friends had come up with?

But her nerves zinged at the thought that, maybe, in those four dozen sheets of paper, she would find her mystery lover. Now that she actually held the replies in her hand, she was seriously tempted to flop down on her couch and read them.

“The girls would kill me.” She stuffed the papers into a canvas tote and grabbed her car keys. Ann was running late too, and they met on the street outside Maria’s Taverna, under the blue-and-white awning. Ann ran a hand through her hair and said, “I swear, sometimes I wonder why I chose law. The clients are a pain, the partners are a bigger pain and the secretaries have chips on their shoulders the size of a Douglas fir.”

“Bad day?”

Ann heaved a deep sigh. “Yeah, but what’s new? One sort of highlight, though. Brad sent me a red rose with a card saying he was looking forward to our next date.” She chuckled, though the sound was ragged. “I’m looking forward to it too, but with both of our crazy workloads, we’ll be lucky if we can coordinate schedules before the new year.”

“It’s only July.”

“And that tells you how busy I am.” She raked her fingers through her hair again. Thanks to the short, practical style she wore, the locks fell back in place. “Sometimes I think the Foursome’s Monday nights are the only thing that keep me sane. Definitely better than yoga. So, anyhow, Suzie, how did outrageous69 do?”

Suzanne patted her bulging tote. “The lady’s hot.” She only wished she, plain old Suze, was half as hot. Perhaps Ann heard the ambivalence in her voice. She patted Suzanne’s shoulder. “Honey, that lady is you. You were the girl in the cave, right? I mean, it wasn’t Nicole Kidman.”

Because of her hair, height and creamy skin, Suzanne often got compared to Nicole Kidman. Not that she saw much resemblance herself. The actress’s features were sharp and pointy, her eyes blue rather than greeny-gray.

But had the Cretan god seen a resemblance? Maybe that’s why she’d turned him on.

Ann poked her shoulder. “Stop it right this moment, Suze. I swear, you’re as insecure as an articling student going to court for the first time. You’re much prettier than Nicole is, and it’s you the man wanted.”

Feeling slightly cheered, Suzanne followed Ann through the blue-painted doorway. Jenny and Rina were settled at a table by the open French doors, with a large carafe of Greek wine. A waiter hurried over to fill two more glasses and ask if they’d like to order appetizers.

“What do you say, gals?” Ann said. “That gigantic appie platter, to share, plus a large Greek salad to make sure we get our veggies?”

They’d been to Maria’s enough times that no one needed to open a menu. Everyone nodded approval, and the waiter said,

“It’ll only be a few minutes.”

Jenny turned to Suzanne. “Well? How’d we do?”

Suzanne reached into her bag, brought out a small handful of papers and handed them to Jenny.

“Crap, I expected more.” Her friend scowled at her suspiciously. “Did you read and pre-screen?”

Suzanne shook her head, fighting back a smile. She reached into her bag and withdrew another batch, which she handed to Rina. Another handful went to Ann, and she kept some for herself. By this time everyone was grinning. Jenny rubbed her hands together. “Okay, that’s more like it!

Now we read them aloud. We’ll each take a turn. I’ll start.”

Suzanne took a deep breath. Glancing around the room, her gaze snagged on the paintings and photos of Greece. Sun drenched white buildings, fishing boats on a beach, yes, they called up memories. Was her Greek god a true memory? Would she find out tonight?

“Hey, Suze?” Jenny was waving a piece of paper in her face.

“You with me?”

“Go ahead.”

“Okay, this one’s from ‘imahottie.’ ” Jenny wrinkled her nose. “Tell me this isn’t your guy.”

“Better not be, or my fantasy will be ruined.” Oh my God, she’d never thought of that. What if the guy did answer, and he was some kind of jerk, not the sex god she dreamed about? She wanted to grab those e-mails back from her friends, but knew they’d never let her.

“So,” Jenny went on, “imahottie says, ‘Hey blondie, if you’re looking for a hot time, I’m the guy for you. I’ve got a seven-inch dick—’”

Jenny broke off, hooting with laughter as the others joined in. When they calmed down, she said, “Someone ought to tell dickhead what he can do with his seven-inch dick. Anyone want to hear the rest of this one?”

They shook their heads, and Ann took her turn. “This is from ‘johnboy.’ He says ‘I’m a sensitive new-age guy—’”

“Groan,” Jenny broke in.

“ ‘ . . . new-age guy,’ ” Ann persisted, “‘who loves Greece and good sex. I’ll be up front and say I’m not the man who shared that cave, but it sounds like fun. I’ve been told I’m a good lover, and I believe in always satisfying my partner. How about giving me a chance to satisfy you?’ ”

She turned the paper facedown. “Give the man points for trying.”

“I wonder how big his dick is?” Jenny said. Rina swatted her with another sheet of paper. “My turn. This one’s from ‘sugarpie.’ ‘If you think sex with a man can be good, just wait until you’ve tried it with a woman.’ ” She broke off. “Oh my, I do believe you’ve hooked yourself an inhabitant of the isle of Lesbos, outrageous69. And that island was in Greece, right? Anyhow, sugarpie says, ‘No man can ever understand your body the way I can. No man will ever respect and worship it as I will. No man will—’”