“Okay, the berries are pretty, but I’m bored,” Jake announced, then flashed Carly a playfully seductive expression. “Want to break out the handcuffs?”
“Who’s on top?” she asked, meaning the question more figuratively than literally.
He just shrugged in reply. “Whoever gets the other one locked up first, I guess. Race ya.”
And with that, they both ran down the hall to the bedroom, soon indulging in a heated and mischievous little wrestling match that they both knew would lead to good, hot, naughty sex, no matter who ended up in control.
Read on for a peek at the next novel in
Lacey Alexander’s H.O.T. Cops series,
Party of Three
Available from Signet Eclipse in March 2012
“H
appy birthday, honey. Ready for your present?”
Mira lifted her head from where it lay resting on Ethan’s shoulder in the hammock they shared. “My birthday’s not until tomorrow,” she reminded him with a playful smile.
“Yeah, but . . . don’t you want your present
now
?” His blue eyes sparkled as he tilted his head to one side in the netting, and something in his look made the juncture of her thighs spasm, just lightly. Then again, it had been doing that a lot lately. In anticipation of this weekend.
“I thought my present was
this
,” she said, motioning around them.
He’d brought her to a secluded cabin in the woods on the north shore of Michigan’s upper peninsula for her thirty-second birthday. To make up for some things. To start treating their relationship differently. And, of course, for some hot sex, which her body currently hungered for.
“It is,” he confirmed. “But . . . there’s more.”
Hmm. “More? Really?”
He nodded, yet added nothing.
So she leaned closer, lacing her voice with flirtation to ask, “Well, don’t you want to save it until my actual birthday?”
“Can’t,” he told her simply.
And she narrowed her gaze on him. Her boyfriend wasn’t usually a man of so few words, so this conversation was beginning to feel downright cryptic. “Um, why not?”
That’s when he began to look more hesitant, his expression transforming into a mixture of hope . . . and uneasiness. It was the look someone wore when they’d worked hard to find you the perfect gift but were still waiting to see your reaction when it was opened. Only Mira didn’t see any sort of gift bag or box anywhere. “I can’t save it,” he told her, “because it’s sort of . . .
starting
tonight.”
Her birthday present was
starting
? Okay, he must be talking about the sex portion of the gift. Yet . . . why would he need to announce it if he was just talking about sex? Because, yeah, she was good and ready for that, but . . . they’d had plenty of sex already during their four years together. “The sex, you mean,” she said anyway to clarify, though she knew she sounded confused.
“Sort of,” he said, and now he looked just as uncertain as she felt. Not nervous—Ethan was never nervous—but he’d slowed down on this presentgiving thing and she sensed him wading through it gingerly now, and definitely holding something back.
She lowered her chin, met his gaze. “Sort of?”
“Okay, wait,” he said, holding his hands out before him. “I should have thought through how to tell you about this, because now that it’s time, I don’t quite know how to say it. So . . . give me a minute to think about the best way.”
Mira just looked at him. How complicated could this present be? He needed a “best way”? He sounded more like someone about to break bad news than a man giving a birthday gift to his girlfriend. “You’re starting to make me worry,” she admitted, still peering into his handsome face.
“The thing about your gift,” he began, “is that I want you to love it, really love it. But . . . I’m not sure how you’ll take it.”
She blinked, thoroughly perplexed now, then finally laid her head back on his shoulder, drinking in his musky, masculine scent as she silently gave him that minute he’d requested. A bird twittered in a tree somewhere to her right and the late-afternoon sun warmed her face as she looked out over Lake Superior in the distance. Blue skies and unseasonably warm June temps in northern Michigan made the scene complete. And, up until a minute ago, she’d felt relaxed, happy, like he really
was
making up for the troubles they’d endured since last fall, and even before that. But right now she didn’t know
what
to feel—and the uncertainty turned her thoughts unwittingly back to what had led them here, to this moment.
Ethan had been a workaholic since they’d started dating, and while she admired a strong work ethic—and particularly admired the pro bono legal work he’d embraced—over time she’d started feeling like she came in a distant second behind his career. And when he’d canceled their Labor Day weekend boating plans with friends at the very last minute, she’d realized her life with him was starting to be . . . well, not all she’d hoped.
He was hot. Sexy. And great in bed. He was a good guy, a sincerely good man. In fact, Ethan West was the man she wanted to marry, and she’d known that almost from their first kiss. But then things had changed. He’d left the Charlevoix Police Force to study for the bar exam around the same time she’d moved into his condo. And as soon as he’d passed the bar, he’d opened a small office not far from her shop, and business had been booming ever since for the quaint lakeside town’s newest young lawyer. Life had bustled along, and they’d been fine. Until his work had started taking priority over
her
.
And things hadn’t improved since Labor Day—and, in reality, they’d gotten worse. More late nights, more lost weekends. And the truth was, right up until two weeks ago, she’d been seriously considering moving out. The only thing preventing it was the fact that she loved him, and that when he
was
there for her, things were amazing and the chemistry between them—both physical and emotional—was intense. She connected with Ethan in a way she never had with anyone else. And yet lately she’d been asking herself: Can I give my life to a man who doesn’t put me first? Is that what I want, forever?
And then—like some kind of miracle—he’d taken her to lunch at her favorite waterside bistro one day and told her he’d rented a cabin upstate for her birthday weekend. He’d said he knew he’d been neglecting her, and that he was going to change. Flashing a seductive grin, he’d told her he wanted to spend her birthday making it up to her by “Doing hot, nasty things to you in the sun. Then doing more hot, nasty things to you in the moonlight. With maybe a little sleep in between before we start over again.”
She’d bitten her lip, given him a sexy smile across the table, and reached out to take his hand. This was the old Ethan, the Ethan who’d swept her off her feet.
And now here they were, alone in the woods, and she’d begun to think that maybe he really
could
repair what he’d broken between them. He hadn’t so much as mentioned a case or a client since they’d left Charlevoix that morning. He’d even brought a few bottles of her favorite wine, one of which they’d opened to drink with dinner a little while ago. Ethan had grilled burgers—saving the steaks he’d brought for her birthday dinner tomorrow night—and they’d eaten at the picnic table just off the small cabin’s porch a stone’s throw from where they now lay. “I know wine doesn’t really go with hamburgers,” he’d said with a slightly sheepish grin, “but . . .”
She’d just replied with a happy laugh. “Who cares? I like wine and I like burgers. And I especially like how thoughtful you’re being, Mr. West,” she’d added teasingly.
Normally, she wouldn’t have thought of renting a remote cabin as the way she wanted to spend her birthday, but the sentiment had touched her and now that they were there, she realized it was the perfect setting for a weekend of nonstop fucking. Since that was what she suddenly realized she wanted to do. Fuck him from now until Sunday, when it was time to leave. Their sex life was the one part of their relationship that hadn’t suffered over the past year. She supposed it was the wine that now had her feeling amorous, and even though they were outdoors, no other house lay within sight, and the wooded landscape added to the sense of isolation, so it felt as private as their bedroom at home—just a little more exciting.
Of course, she wasn’t the sort of girl who usually thought of their sex as
fucking
. A little dirty talk in the bedroom was fun, but it almost surprised her for that particular way of describing it to enter her mind.
I must really need this. I must really need to let go this weekend and just let my body have him the way I want him, with no inhibitions, nothing held back.
No, their sex life hadn’t suffered because of his work, but . . . maybe she
had
held part of herself back lately, due to resentment, to not feeling totally connected to him anymore.
Well, this weekend, no holding back. This weekend, he gets all of me. Maybe even more than he’s ever had before.
She bit her lip, feeling naughty, aggressive.
And as for this mysterious gift of his . . . well, it would just have to wait, because she’d just decided there was no time like the present to have her way with her man. She sat up boldy, turned, and straddled his thighs. “Uh, what’s going on?” he asked, clearly jarred—but still a small, sexy smile reshaped his face as his hands came to rest on her denim-clad hips. She liked the feel of his eyes on her.
All of me. I want you to have all of me.
The words echoed through her as she spontaneously stripped her tank top off over her head, revealing a pale yellow bra with peach polka dots. “I think I’m ready for some of that hot-andnasty I was promised,” she replied, assuming a sexy pout.
In response, Ethan’s fingers splayed across her hips, then glided smoothly downward to stop high on her blue jean–covered thighs. She felt each fingertip like a pinprick of electric heat.
“Mmm, I like when you get aggressive,” he said. “And I hope you still feel just as ready after I tell you about your present.”
Oh, so he was back to the mystifying present again, huh? But she refused to let that get in the way of what she wanted right then, so she ran her palms up under his T-shirt, onto his muscled stomach, even as she asked, “Ever gonna end the suspense on that?”
When he squeezed both her thighs, she felt it between her legs. And his eyes twinkled warmly as he said, “Why don’t you lie back down with me for a minute and I’ll fill you in.”
She lowered her chin, slanting a questioning look in his direction. This required lying back down? Stopping her midseduction?
A sigh left her, and yet—even as stopping killed a little of her arousal . . . the strange secrecy going on here kept the spot between her thighs humming with anticipation. Anticipation of sex mingling with anticipation of the unknown.
Ethan eased her back down beside him, soon cradling her in his arms, and then he said, “Do you remember that night last summer . . . that night when we had too much to drink and started talking about fantasies?”
She nodded. It had been an evening a lot like this one: warm weather, good wine, and a quiet dinner for two that had led them on a walk to a park, where they’d ended up cuddling on a bench. Intoxication had had them laughing at first, and then touching and kissing—and then Ethan had asked her what her most secret sexual fantasy was. “It’s okay, whatever it is,” he’d told her.
And she’d slowly, quietly admitted that in the darkest, most private parts of her mind . . . she sometimes wondered what it would be like to be with two men at the same time.
He’d asked her questions. “Do you want to have two cocks inside you at once?” “Do you want to be the one in control or do you want to have that taken away?” “How much have you thought about this?”
And she’d answered—with vague replies mostly, because her fantasies had been just that, vague. Not fully formed. Not detailed. The truth, she’d told him, was that it had started with a dream—she’d woken up remembering she’d dreamed about a threesome with two guys. “And sometimes I think about it because it turned me on, but at the same time, I’m not entirely sure I’m
comfortable
thinking about it. You know?”
He’d grinned, clearly pleased, aroused, by her sharing that. “Think you’d ever really want to do it?” he’d whispered.
“Only . . . under some perfect circumstances that I can’t even really imagine,” she’d told him honestly. And that had pretty much ended the conversation. Though they’d had really good sex afterward, back at home.
So now, after a long hesitation, she finally answered his question. “Um, yeah, I remember. Why?”
“Well, what if I told you,” he answered slowly, reaching to skim his knuckles ever so lightly down her chest, between her breasts, “that for your birthday, I’m giving you your fantasy?”
Mira’s mouth dropped open as the blood drained from her face. “You’re what?” she whispered.
He spoke low, direct, but kindly. “You heard me.”
Lying on her back on the thick netting, with Ethan peering down on her, she simply blinked, still not quite able to believe her ears. She felt like someone else, in some other place, time—her whole world transformed into something surreal she didn’t quite recognize. “But . . . but . . .”
Yet her lover only smiled down at her. It was perhaps the surest, most confident and in-control smile she’d ever seen on his face. “Don’t freak out, hon,” he said softly. “Just trust me.”
But Mira suddenly couldn’t breathe. And the sun that had lulled and relaxed her all afternoon now began to make her sweat, even as it began to dip quietly toward the horizon through the trees to her left. Finally she managed three words. “I don’t understand.”
At this, Ethan bent to lower a kiss to her forehead. And despite everything, even just that one chaste little kiss made the juncture of her thighs tingle hotly. “Listen, relax,” he told her. “Relax and let me explain.”
He sounded so calm, so rational, that it
did
relax her. A little anyway. Maybe she’d misunderstood what he was saying. Maybe he meant something else entirely.