Suck and Blow: Party Games, Book 1 (2 page)

He wasn’t going to let his memory of The Gun affect him. He wasn’t. Ten years had passed since he’d seen her last, and he’d moved on. Gotten over her. Grown up.

Sure, there was that time he’d read about her opening her own public relations and management business in the paper—Kerpow Talent Management—and had the horniest friggin’ wet dreams about her for nights after. Then there was the time one of his clients had talked about his agent and Alec had discovered it was Frankie. It had stirred emotions in him that he’d tried his bloody hardest to bury, but apart from those two times, he’d put the woman from his mind.

Yeah, right. And pigs have grown wings and are preparing for imminent flight. Not a day goes by when you don’t think of Francesca Win—

He killed the thought. It served no purpose tonight. Tonight he was here to have fun, and thinking about The Gun was not fun.

Bullshit.

He ignored
that
thought. Facing the way he had entered, Alec returned through the crowd. Mac was somewhere in the house, but his big brother could wait for a while. What he wanted to do was find the brunette and hit up a conversation with her. He’d been in the US for too long on his last trip—six months to the day doing the promo-gig for Going Bush Landscape and Design’s latest range—and he desperately needed to hear some Aussie accents. Something about the way the woman moved told him she’d have a sexy voice. What better way to reacquaint himself with the local vernacular than to hear it fall from the lips of someone who made him thing of Frank—

“Fuck.”
He let out a ragged sigh. The persistent thought of Frankie knocked him off kilter. Damn it. He had to get his act together. He wasn’t planning to pick up a woman tonight, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to maintain a conversation with a woman if he kept thinking about the one person on the planet who reduced him to a hormonally preoccupied imbecile.

He maneuvered his way through the packed living room, searching the throngs of people as he went. The low but insistent beat of the music emanating from the house’s stupidly expensive sound system vibrated through his body into his still-tight groin. He quickened his pace, the sudden flash of untamed curls entering the house’s media room catching his eye. Passing off his mysterious drink to a bikini-clad woman tottering past him, he ducked to the left, taking the long route through the kitchen to the massive room he knew Mac and his housemates had set up as a private home theatre. From the sound of the cheers and guffaws coming from the supposedly sound-proof room, whatever was going on in there, it wasn’t watching a deep and profound drama, that was for certain.

All but jogging down the four steps descending into the media room, Alec crossed the western threshold. His gaze fell on the brunette in the skin-tight black leather and Han Solo T-shirt just as she was inching her way between two men roughly the size of a small office block each, looking over her shoulder as if searching for someone herself.

Him? If it was Frankie, would she want to talk to him? Or would her flight-or-fight instincts kick in? To be honest, the last time they’d seen each other, she’d been less than impressed with him. If he stepped in front of her now, would she try and, well, fight him?

He frowned at another possibility. Would she try and flee from him? Is that what the mad dash through the party had just been?

Another laughing cheer rang out. The crowd around Alec jostled forward and instinctively, he jerked his stare from the disappearing woman to what was causing all the raucous joviality.

A line of laughing people snaked its way through the room, an alternating pattern of male/female dissecting the floor almost in half. On either side of the line, a small crowd watched, their calls of encouragements egging on the activity of two of the people somewhere near the front. Two people who, at first glance, seemed to be locked at the lips in a rather awkward kiss.

“Suck, suck, suck!” a chant rose beside Alec.

“Blow, blow, blow!” another chant came from the other side.

Alec narrowed his eyes and studied the kissing couple—a short man who looked suspiciously like Australia’s latest cricket captain and a willowy woman he could have sworn was Kylie Minogue.

Except the kiss looked wrong. They weren’t kissing. There was something between their puckered mouths. Something thin and blue and…

“Ahh.” He nodded, finally recognizing the playing card mashed between the man and woman’s mouths. “Suck and Blow.”

Another cheer rippled through the room, followed by a hitching giggle from the possible pop-sensation as her cheeks concaved a little and she pulled away from the possible cricket captain.

A tense hush fell over the room, peppered by the occasional “is she going to do it?” as the blonde slowly—gingerly—turned a complete one-eighty on her heel and leant towards the new man now standing before her, his face lowered to hers, his lips puckered, his eyes grinning.

The room grew quieter, everyone holding their breaths as they watched the two drew their faces closer together. Closer…closer…closer…

Bam
. Their mouths pressed together, separated only by the thin rectangle of gloss-covered cardboard.

“
Yeah!
” The cheers and laughs erupted again just as the guy sucked on the card and pulled it from her lips. The willowy blonde stepped backward in a fit of giggles, her bright blue eyes crinkling at the edges.

Alec chuckled, shaking his head. He’d never played Suck and Blow as a teenager. When his parents had won the lottery and sent him and Mac to study at Knox Grammar, the most exclusive private boys’ school in Sydney, he’d never been invited to these kinds of parties because he was, to put it bluntly, cheap money.

Another whoop of delight filled the room, snatching Alec from his wry reverie. He returned his attention to the line, his stomach knotting immediately. Two things became perfectly clear. One, the woman he’d followed to this part of the house was joining the game, and two, there was no question or denying who she was. This close, he could see the tiny smattering of light brown freckles across her fine, upturned nose. This close he could see the stormy-blue clarity of her eyes through the thick tumble of ringlets hanging over her forehead. This close he could see the straightness of her dark-brown eyebrows under that unruly fringe. This close he could see,
see
, the supreme confidence radiating from her in crashing waves. Couldn’t miss it. And it had the same effect on him it always had. His groin tightened and his balls throbbed.

He let out a low groan, the sound swallowed by the new round of cheers filling the room.

Frankie Winchester.

The Gun.

His long-denied sexual fantasy was all of about three sucking-and-blowing moves away from having her face plastered up close and personal with a guy dressed in designer jeans while another waited his turn behind her.

Fuck.

Join in.

He stood still. Long enough to watch the playing card be passed from a tall guy with a tattoo of a black dragon twisting up his arm to a laughing woman who Alec was sure read the news on the leading morning variety television program. For a quick moment, the card seemed glued to Mr. Tatt’s lips then, just as his head drew closer to Miss Morning News, it fluttered downward, passing his chin in a twirling flash of red hearts and blue herringbone.

The newsreader’s smiling lips pressed to Mr. Tatt’s, her eyes widening as he obviously gave her more than she’d anticipated.

The watching crowd burst out laughing, as did Miss Morning News and her tattooed partner. “Scull! Scull!” came the chant as a beer glass was handed to Mr. Tatt. He threw back his head and swallowed the amber beverage in three gulps, then held the empty glass above his head to the cheers of the room before stooping to retrieve the dropped playing card from the floor.

A husky chuckle played over Alec’s ears, making his breath quicken, and he slid his stare to where Frankie stood waiting in line for her turn. God, he remembered that laugh. It had driven him mad as a teenager. It was low and throaty. Confident and knowing. It said that she’d
done
things he couldn’t begin to imagine. It said that she could do things to
him
that he couldn’t even
hope
to imagine.

For a split second, he was back at high school, sitting in the audience of an inter-school debating contest, listening to Frankie laugh at something one of her teammates had whispered in her ear. He’d squirmed in his seat, his trousers suddenly uncomfortably snug in the groin. And her eyes had slid to him, looking at him for the merest beat of his heart before sliding off him. His breath had caught in his throat, his trousers growing tighter in the crotch.

“Don’t be a fucking loser, Harris,” the kid beside him—a fellow student from Knox Grammar—muttered, jabbing Alec in the ribs with his elbow. “Frankie Winchester’s not in your league. Shit, the chick dates movie stars. You’re nothing but cheap money.”

He’d ground his teeth, his gaze fixed on Frankie where she sat a world away from him. She’d laughed again at whatever her teammate had written on a palm card, and then given Alec a quick glance from the corner of her eye. Just one. But he’d sworn to God her cheeks had filled with a faint pink tinge and her smile had reached her eyes for the first time since walking into the room.

He hadn’t had the courage to approach her after the debate, slinking out of the room with his hands shoved in his pockets, hoping to hide the embarrassing effect she had on him, but he’d never forgotten that smile in her eyes. Nor her laugh.

He looked at her now, noting with a sharp sense of irony how she seemed completely unaware of his existence in
this
room. Did she even remember him? Or was he just the geek from her past who kept defeating her?

Find out. Now.

Without letting himself contemplate his next move or question his motive behind it, he pushed his way from the crowd and stepped up to the line, coming to stop directly before the guy on Frankie’s right. “Heya, big guy,” he said with a grin. “Mind if I cut in?”

Chapter Two

Frankie stared up at Alec, her heart thumping into her throat. So much for running away from him. She’d thought she’d lost him in the house. She thought she’d given him the slip.

She’d thought he hadn’t come after her in the first place. Why would he? In all the years they’d known each other, they’d never shared anything more than a stilted word after whatever event or competition he’d thoroughly trounced her at. Why on earth would he follow her?

It didn’t matter though. Rational thought had deserted her the second she’d laid eyes on him. Deserted her, and here she now was, hiding out in a game of Suck and Blow with Alec bloody Harris standing before her, showing her once again, how monumentally stupid she was. Damn him.

It’s been ten years, Francesca. It’s time you grew up, don’t you think? Besides, he may not even remember you.

She gazed up at him and her breath stuck in her throat. Did he remember her?

Brilliant blue eyes moved to her, direct and way more confident than they’d been as a teenager. “Hello, Francesca.”

Her sex constricted, an involuntary response to his stunning good looks and the sinfully sensual way he murmured her name. Had to be involuntary. Why else would she be feeling all squirming and…and…

“Fuck off,” the guy beside her growled.

Alec gave him a wounded look. “C’mon, mate. This is my old girlfriend from school. I haven’t seen her for ten years.”

Frankie’s mouth fell open. Okay, that’s not what she expected him to say. What the hell?

With a lopsided smile, Alec raised one sublimely muscled arm, pressed one straight finger gently underneath her chin and, his grin growing wider, slowly closed her mouth.

And she let him.

She let him. What the hell was she doing? She let him?

The guy standing beside her, a bit-role actor if she was correct—and she always was about this kind of thing—slid his own striking blue eyes in her direction.

“C’mon, mate,” Alec said and, God help her, Frankie’s pussy constricted some more at the languid confidence in his voice. “Help a bloke out.”

Before Frankie could say anything, or
do
anything—like, hmmm, slap Alec’s hand from under her chin perhaps—the guy on her right let out a disgruntled snort and stepped out of the line, holding out his arm for Alec to take his place. He gave Frankie a steady look. “I’ll be at the Twister station if you’re interested.” He flicked Alec a glower. “
After
Mr. Ex is done no doubt reminding you why he’s Mr. Ex.”

“Oh, he was a witty one,” Alec commented, watching the man shove his way through the crowd. He swung his attention back to Frankie, giving her a wide smirk. “But a little too tame for your standards if I remember rightly?”

Frankie opened her mouth again, a searing heat flaming through her. Just as Alec nodded toward something behind her back. “Head’s up, Francesca,” he murmured with a grin, closing his fingers around her shoulders just as gently as he’d pressed his finger to her chin. “It’s our turn.”

He turned her around, in time for her to see the man next to her in the line lean forward, the ten of hearts stuck to his lips.

She blinked, her ears roaring. Alec’s fingers held her shoulders with steady pressure, the warmth of his tall, lean body licking at her back.

A prickle of something far too unnerving washed over her, something too aware of his maleness, his nearness, and then the man with the playing card on his mouth was pressing his lips to hers as Alec’s hands smoothed down her arms to come to rest on her hips.

She sucked in her breath, the sudden gasp fixing the playing card to her lips. His fingers scalded her through the supple leather of her pants, his grip loose and relaxed and far from suggestive. So why was her heart thumping so hard? Why was her pussy fluttering like a psychotic horde of ADHD butterflies?

The man currently nose-to-nose with her pushed his face a little closer, an over-powering smell of Jean Paul Gaultier’s
Pour Homme
slipping into her nostrils and she staggered back, Alec’s hips brushing her backside as she did so.