KeyParty

Jayne
Kingston

Book 1 of the Mischievous Matchmaker series.

After years of living abroad,
Rachel has returned to Chicago. As a welcome-home present, one of her best
friends throws a seventies-style key party. A night of mingling and anonymous
sex with one of Petra’s hunky friends seems perfect.

Petra knows about the crush Rachel
had on Ben in college, and she rigs the game so Rachel ends up with the very
fine young doctor. But Petra doesn’t know the whole story. Rachel never told
her friend about the scorching-hot make-out session that is now Rachel’s go-to
sexual fantasy.

And neither of them could know Ben
is more than looking forward to showing Rachel every carnal moment she missed
when she left without finishing what they’d started that night.

A Romantica®
contemporary
erotic romance
from Ellora’s Cave

“Exactly what does one wear to a key party?”

Rachel stood in her closet wrapped in a towel, hair still
wet, looking through the meager selection of her clothes that made it back to
Chicago from London.

“What do you have that’s sexy?” Petra asked, joining her in
the narrow space. She curled her lip as she flipped through hangers. “Nothing.”
She gave an impatient snick of the tongue and shook her head. “We should have
gone shopping days ago,” she muttered.

“The last thing I need is to buy more clothes. Just wait
until you see how much I have when my boxes finally get here.” Some moron with
the shipping company she’d used had mislabeled her boxes. They were currently
on their way to Illinois from Washington—the state, not D.C.—where they’d been
sent by mistake. “I may have to rent a second bedroom from you.”

“Darling, the whole floor is yours.”

She was staying in the nearly empty third floor of Petra and
her boyfriend Jude’s Lincoln Park graystone until she found a new job and a
place of her own. Petra had recently inherited it from an uncle who’d
permanently retired to Florida, and hadn’t quite decided what to do with the
extra space.

Rachel had barely gotten the words “I want to come home” out
of her mouth before Petra offered her the use of the rooms for as long as she
needed them.

Rachel sat on the edge of her brand-new sleigh bed.

“I should sit tonight out anyway,” she said with a heavy
sigh. A weariness that was becoming all too familiar threatened to cast a
shadow over the good mood she’d managed to maintain all afternoon. “I mean,
really? A key party? This isn’t the swinging seventies, you know.”

“Busha always says the best way to get over one man is to
get under another.
Ooh
, I love this,” Petra breathed, emerging from the
back of the closet with an ultra-short sheath dangling from a hanger.

“That’s from a flapper-girl costume I wore for Halloween
three years ago.” How that had made the trip when not a single pair of her
jeans had, she’d never know.

“It must have been a pretty swanky Halloween party. This
thing is gorgeous.”

“Thanks.” She had to admit she loved the dress, and the way
her legs looked in it. “I’m sure your sweet little grandmother would never
recommend anonymous sex with a stranger as therapy for getting over a jerk
boyfriend.”

“Hey, don’t knock Busha’s advice. She’s very progressive.”
Petra gave the dress a little shake, making the metallic, cream-colored
material shimmer. “And it’s not exactly anonymous. Everyone who’s coming
tonight is a friend of ours. A
good
friend of ours in one way or
another.”

“Well, I’m not exactly brokenhearted either,” she countered,
knowing damn well she wasn’t fooling anyone. Especially not Petra, who proved
it by rolling her eyes.

To say that Rachel’s relationship with Neal had been
whirlwind was putting it mildly. Her job as a massage therapist on a cruise
ship took her out to sea for eight months at a time, leaving her with four
months between contracts to do whatever she pleased. During her breaks, when
she hadn’t gone home to visit her parents, she’d shared a flat with two other
girls who worked for the same London-based company.

On the last break she’d had before deciding to come home,
she’d met Neal while she and her friends were out getting their land legs back.
He’d been a new bartender at their favorite local pub—it being their favorite
because it was within staggering distance of their flat. She’d been drunk and
feeling bolder than usual. He’d invited her back to his place after hours and
she was living with him by the end of the break.

He’d been sweet, funny and charming, and the most gorgeous
man she’d dated. They’d spent his days off in bed, cooking or seeing the city,
but mostly in bed. On his nights off from the pub they usually went to
underground clubs and listened to up-and-coming indie bands. When he worked she
was content to spend the evening in his flat reading, catching up with her
family and friends back in the States or going out with her friends.

At the end of her break he’d driven her to the cruise ship,
kissed her goodbye and promised he’d be waiting for her when she returned.
She’d believed him right up to the end of her next contract when she’d called
to tell him what time she’d needed to be picked up and a woman answered his
phone and then demanded to know why Rachel was calling her boyfriend.

Her flatmates tried to console her, but she knew they
weren’t a bit surprised that he’d moved on while she’d been gone. When she
thought back on how quickly Neal had gotten involved with her Rachel thought
maybe she should have seen it coming as well, but she’d been completely
blindsided.

Heartbreak only compounded a homesickness she could no
longer ignore. Having to change her lifestyle so completely over and over again
every time she moved from ship to shore had become exhausting, physically and
emotionally. She wanted to be near her parents again, no matter what kind of
relationship she’d had with them before she left. And yes, she’d adored her
flatmates, but they were not Petra and Bree.

“You should definitely wear this tonight.” Petra held the
dress toward Rachel and squinted as though she were imagining her in it. “It’s
perfect with that sassy short haircut of yours. Have I told you today how much
I love it?”

“Not yet today.” Rachel touched her wet, dark-blonde hair.
She’d had it cut into a short, angular bob by one of the new hairdressers on
the last ship she’d worked on. The cut was perfect for her big, unruly
curls—off her neck in the back and slightly longer in the front. All she had to
do was wash it and let it do its thing as it air-dried.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for this.” She took the dress
from Petra and laid it next to her on the bed.

“Honey, if you’re worried someone is going to treat you like
the odd girl out because this is your first time, don’t. Everyone coming has
been in your shoes at one point or another. Do you really want to sit up here
by yourself all night listening to everyone else having fun downstairs?”

“I am in the middle of a really good book.”

“No.” Petra put her hands up. “Every single one of the men
coming tonight is hot as hell. And seriously, is your vibrator that good that
you no longer need to get laid?”

Rachel flopped back onto the bed and groaned.

“My vibrator is still on its way back from England.”

God, she did need to get laid.

She did the math counting back from the two weeks she’d been
back in Illinois to the last time she and Neal had been together and nearly
choked on how long it had been. On top of that, the goodbye sex hadn’t been
anything special.

If she was going to be honest with herself, sex with Neal
had never been all that special, even if it had seemed as though he couldn’t
get enough of her at the time. Sure, he’d been underwear model hot, but when it
came right down to it, hot didn’t equal skill, and quantity was not quality.

Petra leaped onto the bed over Rachel, the bangles on her
wrists jingling as she landed on all fours with her hands on either side of
Rachel’s head and her knees squeezing her hips.

“Is a vibrator better than being wrapped naked around a
grunting, sweating man while he drives his big, hard body into you over and
over again?” she asked, thrusting her narrow hips for emphasis on the words
big, hard and body.

“That was really graphic,” Rachel said, laughing even as her
body started to tingle a little at the thought. No, she was not going to sit
the party out.

“I promise you, there isn’t one man coming tonight who won’t
be able to live up to the image I just put in your head,” Petra breathed, her
long dark hair falling on either side of Rachel’s face like a curtain as she
leaned in.

Rachel sighed, feigning reluctance. “Fine. I’ll get dressed.”

“Good girl.” Petra kissed her on the mouth and hopped off
the bed. “I’m going to see if I have a dress that’s even remotely as sexy as
yours.
Oh
,” she turned in the doorway, “wear those sky-high black heels
and the little white lace bra and panties you bought the other day.”

Rachel looked at her upside down. “The back on the dress is
too low for a bra.”

Petra’s eyelids dropped to half-mast and the corners of her
mouth curled.

“Even better,” she purred, and disappeared from view.

“Hey, Pete,” Rachel called, rolling onto her stomach.

Petra poked her head back into the room.

“Thanks.”

“Oh darling, the night hasn’t begun yet.”

* * * * *

It was another hour and a half before Rachel joined the
party. She’d taken her time, steadying her nerves through the ritual of getting
ready. Her whole body had been treated to the shimmering, spicy scented lotion
she only used on special occasions. Her makeup had been carefully applied, and
she’d actually styled her hair instead of just letting it go wild and untamed.

The time and care she’d taken didn’t completely subdue her
nerves. She still felt the bottom drop out of her stomach as she paused on the
first-floor landing and took a deep breath before heading down the last flight
of stairs.

The party had started while she’d been getting ready. The
ground floor of the long, narrow house held about a dozen or so young medical
professionals from Jude and Petra’s circle of friends. And they were all
beautiful, just as Petra promised.

Heads turned as she descended, and for a moment she panicked
at having so many new people looking at her the way they were. She didn’t
harbor any delusions that she was pretty—she had a funny, upturned nose, and
her fat bottom lip was so different from the thinner, curvy upper it looked as
though she’d borrowed it from someone else. She’d heard how pretty her green
eyes were enough times to get the idea there might be something to that, but
she knew the real reason everyone was looking.

At five foot ten in her bare feet, she was tall for a woman
and not delicately built by any stretch of the imagination. In four-inch heels
she was a giant.

The first floor of the house was one long room semi-divided
by gorgeous wooden archways. A person could stand at the front door and look
all the way through the living and dining rooms to the back door. There was a
half bath tucked under the stairway and a small pantry and laundry room off the
kitchen, but it was otherwise fairly open, and beautifully decorated in rich
blues and grays, the lines as modern and sleek as the home’s owners.

Rachel found Jude and Petra both at the makeshift bar in the
dining room.

“Jesus, you’re a knockout,” Jude said, his eyes twinkling.

Jude and Petra both had an androgynous look about them, but
he was definitely the softer of the two. Both were long and willowy, but Petra
was made of angular lines, unnervingly pale-blue eyes and dark hair. Jude on
the other hand was a sunny blond with warm, chocolaty-brown eyes and an almost
feminine mouth that was hard to resist watching when he talked.

“Honey, are you sure we can’t play tonight?” he asked Petra.

Petra smiled appreciatively. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and end
up with an odd number of people so we can tag-team her.”

Jude held up one hand, fingers crossed.

“I’m nervous as hell,” Rachel said, taking the whiskey and
Coke Jude handed her. “I don’t know anyone here but you two. And Bree,” she
added, catching sight of the third of her and Petra’s trio across the room.

“It’s like being a kid in a candy store with a fistful of
birthday money, isn’t it?”

“If you say so,” she muttered skeptically, watching Bree
flirt with a big blond.

Bree caught Rachel’s eye and winked at her across the room,
tossed her curly brown hair over her shoulder and turned her huge doe eyes back
to her companion.

Rachel flinched when Petra clinked their glasses together.

“Welcome home,” Petra said, and sipped.

Rachel watched a tall redhead nearly fill the foyer as he
came in the front door. Her heart just about stopped. He was ruggedly
beautiful, with bright, coppery-red hair pulled into a short ponytail and eyes
that were a rich, vivid blue she could see all the way across the room. He was
huge, broad-shouldered and long-limbed—just the kind of man who could make a
tall woman like herself feel like a delicate flower.

No sooner had she opened her mouth to tell Petra she hoped
she got his keys later that night than he stepped sideways out of the foyer. He
turned to laugh with the guy behind him and the words froze on her tongue. The
blood rushed from her head and her heart really did stop for a moment.

Ben Richards—not quite as tall or broad as the redhead but
long and great shouldered just the same—said something that made them both
laugh harder as they made quite the entrance into the room.

Just like that, seven years vanished. Rachel could vividly
remember what it had been like to be pinned beneath him on his couch, drowning
in his mouth—both wildly lush and utterly masculine—as he kissed her freakin’
socks off. She shivered as she recalled the way his thick black hair felt
clutched in her hands, and how he hadn’t closed his rich gray eyes but watched
her while they kissed. And the way his long fingers had felt sliding under the
hem her sweatshirt to skim over her skin had been something she would never
forget.

They’d been studying so long that night the sun had started
to show through the window of the tiny apartment he’d had just off campus.
After hours of trying everything he could imagine to help her understand
something, anything, about the chemistry class she was failing, work devolved
into her collapsing in a fit of delirious giggles. He’d grabbed her, probably
out of frustration and his own need to blow off some steam, and kissed her.

It was still the single hottest make-out session of her
life.