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Her eyes popped open as the sucking sound of his mouth brought her starkly back to reality. She looked down, assaulted by the sight of her bare breasts illuminated by the evening sunlight, the sheen of wetness on her thighs, sprawled wide and still halfway over Joe’s shoulders. Her stomach bottomed out as she realized what she had just done.

Oblivious, Joe rose up and put one knee on the couch, moving over Taylor with the look of a hungry wolf after a juicy steak.

She needed to get out of there before things got completely out of hand.
Like letting him go down on you in his living room doesn’t count?

He reached out for her hand, pressing it to his fly as he leaned in to kiss her. The heat and size of his erection pulsed against her palm, and as much as she craved the feel of the hot, thick, length inside her, some force of common sense propelled her off the couch. She hurriedly yanked her dress up to cover her breasts and down to cover her legs as Joe sat back, looking so bewildered that Taylor nearly hurled herself back down on top of him. “What’s wrong?” he asked, reaching out as though to pull her back down on the couch.

She jumped back as though scalded, nearly falling on her backside as her high-heeled sandal twisted under her. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. I just remembered I have a”—she wracked her brain for a plausible excuse—“a meeting tomorrow. Early.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” he said with a sexy little flick of his eyebrows that made her nearly lose all resolve.

She started backing toward the door. Joe got up to follow her, slowly, like a killer in a horror movie who has every confidence he’ll catch his prey. “Yeah, but you know these high-tech executives, always trying to cram everything in.” She was nearly to the door of his kitchen.

His hand slid down his bare stomach, coming to rest as his thumb hooked into the belt loop just to the right of his zipper. Drawing Taylor’s gaze inexorably to the bulge that didn’t seem to have diminished in the least.

Her eyes widened and moisture flooded her mouth, and suddenly all she wanted to do was get down on her knees and spend the evening finding out what Joe Tierney tasted like. She swallowed hard and took another step back, knocking her shoulder into the door frame. “Anyway, gotta go. Thanks for the drinks and the…” Her cheeks felt like they were erupting into flames as she waved her hand in the general direction of the couch.

His eyebrows raised in disbelief, and she could tell he was a millimeter away from writing her off as a crazy bitch.

She made a break for it before she could make matters any worse.

N
ot wanting to get caught in a lie, Taylor got out of bed at seven
A.M.
on Sunday and took off for her “meeting.” Though she had no idea if Joe was even paying attention, she took her briefcase just in case. She filled the rest of the day with unnecessary errands, waiting until well after dark to return home, lest she run into Joe and his massive garden weasel. Not exactly how she’d planned to spend her weekend, but she had found some gorgeous matching bra and panty sets at the Stanford Shopping Center.

Not that there would be anyone to appreciate her sexy new lingerie anytime soon, even if she had imagined Joe’s appreciative face as she carefully folded and put it away amid her more practical wear.

What in the world had she been thinking, letting things get so out of hand with him? Sure, he was incredibly hot, but Taylor was never the sort to let something like raw lust and alcohol overpower her good sense. Come to think of it, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt anything remotely approaching raw lust, until she met Joe. Maybe that was her problem.

Well, now that she’d gotten it out of her system, she could simply go on as before and forget that she lived next door to possibly the hottest man in the entire universe.

Apparently her subconscious didn’t get the memo. Sunday night she woke up sweaty and unsatisfied, her sex and nipples throbbing, her brain awash in scorching fantasies of Joe’s hands, Joe’s lips, Joe’s cock easing the hot ache between her legs. That same lusty, sex-crazed being who had taken possession of her on Saturday night urged her to call him to see if he was still hard from the night before, but Taylor wisely resisted. It simply wouldn’t do to hit Joe up for a booty call.

It was probably best to avoid him as much as possible. A strategy that got very old very quickly, as Taylor spent a good half hour Monday morning keeping their paths from crossing as she left for work. She was all packed up and ready to head out the front door when Joe appeared and put something in his truck. She paused, watching and waiting for him to get in and drive away. Instead he made something like a million trips into his garage for more landscaping equipment, until finally fifteen minutes had passed and he still seemed no closer to leaving. Was he messing with her? It seemed like a strange coincidence that after almost six months of never seeing him, suddenly Joe’s departure time for work would so closely coincide with hers.

Taylor watched from her living room, admiring the way his muscles pulled against the thin cotton of his T-shirt even as she impatiently watched the minutes tick by.
Better enjoy it now. Nothing but flat butts and paunchy middles for the rest of the day.

Mentally she scolded herself for her uncharitable assessment of her male colleagues’ physiques. After all, ambition, intelligence, and a well-paying professional career were worth infinitely more than a perfect butt and ripped torso.
Steven had all those things, and look how he turned out,
an insidious voice whispered. She firmly pushed those thoughts aside. True, Steven had turned out to be a thoughtless, selfish, unfaithful jerk, but that didn’t mean she should throw away all of her dating standards.
But the ripped torso definitely has its merit….

Finally, Joe backed out of his driveway, allowing Taylor to make her short commute. Apex Ventures was located on Sand Hill Road where all the venture capital firms were clustered like a little cash colony at the foot of the Santa Cruz mountains. She murmured a polite hello to her assistant, Mary, as she walked in and started up her computer. Usually the second she walked in the door she was focused, knowing exactly what she had to get done, who she had to call, whose chops she needed to bust, whose ego she needed to stroke.

But this morning she was discombobulated and out of sorts, and by ten
A.M.
she still hadn’t started on her update for the weekly partner and associates meeting. So when Jenna, Apex’s entrepreneur in residence, popped her head in and invited her to get a cup of coffee, Taylor welcomed the distraction.

Since she was the only other single female under the age of forty in the office, Jenna had immediately latched on to Taylor when she’d started working at Apex. While Taylor had welcomed the opportunity to make a friend at the office, at first she’d tried to discreetly brush off Jenna’s attempts to get closer outside of work. In the course of Taylor’s career, she’d been careful to keep details of her past and personal life private, lest anyone identify any issues that might make them question her capabilities or commitment to her career.

But in the year that Jenna had worked at Apex, she’d slowly worn Taylor down, sharing her own confidences and slowly drawing Taylor from her reserved shell. It helped that as an entrepreneur in residence, Jenna was essentially enjoying a paid sabbatical as she awaited the right opportunity at one of Apex’s portfolio companies. The fact that Jenna presented no competition in Taylor’s quest to become the youngest partner in Apex’s history made her that much easier to love.

“How was your weekend?” Jenna asked as she handed Taylor a mug of French roast.

“Fine,” Taylor said as she poured in creamer—that is, if you counted catching your boyfriend cheating and nearly sleeping with your younger neighbor “fine.” “Yours?”

Jenna pulled a face. “Nothing to write home about. Went to Spellman’s for dinner on Friday. The usual. I really need to get myself a husband and kids.”

Right. Marc Spellman, one of the managing partners, had invited Taylor to the dinner party, too, but she’d declined since Steven was going to be out of town.

“I wish you had gone,” Jenna continued, “without Steven. At least then I would have had a partner.”

Taylor picked up a spoon and absently stirred her coffee. “I hate going to those things alone. I always get a weird vibe from the wives.”

Jenna sat down at one of the small café tables in the break room. “That’s because they’re intimidated by you.”

Taylor rolled her eyes and sat down. “I think it’s because we have so little in common.”

“Or because you look like Grace Kelly’s more beautiful twin. They don’t like to think of their husbands working with someone beautiful, brilliant, and single, not to mention completely dialed into their husbands’ daily lives. Most of them gave up their own high-powered careers to focus on little Jimmy’s private school applications and Suzie’s soccer practice. They’re afraid you’re going to lure their men away with your looks and intellect,” Jenna said with a teasing wink. Much of Taylor’s success depended on networking with her colleagues both inside and outside Apex, but she’d found that if someone’s wife took a disliking to her, the husband became less enthusiastic to work with her. Taylor and Jenna had often commiserated on how difficult it could be as single women trying to negotiate the social demands of their careers.

But today Taylor was in no mood to joke about it. For two years, Steven had been her perfect social foil, the kind of man she could confidently take to business functions and know that he would reflect perfectly upon her. Of course, he was out of town more often than not and had been increasingly unavailable. It had nearly killed her to turn down Spellman’s invitation, as Taylor knew it was a vital step in the direction of making full partner. Instead, she would have to continue to outperform the rest of the associates at the office, since she would be dateless for the foreseeable future.

“What is the matter with you?” Jenna asked.

Taylor looked up from her coffee, which had turned into a light brown whirlpool from the force of her stirring.

“You’re distracted. Didn’t you just close a big deal on Friday? Why aren’t you talking my ear off about how significant it is in your quest to become partner?”

Taylor sighed. Where to begin?
I’m dejected because I caught my boyfriend doing his assistant in a sexual position that I particularly loathe, and less than half an hour later I found myself with my thighs around my neighbor’s neck like a drunken sorority girl.
She blew out her breath and quickly filled Jenna in about Steven, leaving out the part about the sexual position and omitting Joe entirely.

“Oh, my God, why didn’t you call me?”

Because I was too busy coming on my hot neighbor’s face?
Taylor felt her cheeks heat at the crudity of her thoughts. She finished her coffee and stood up. “I didn’t want to dwell on it, and I still don’t.”

“Good riddance,” Jenna said. “I always thought he was a pompous asshole anyway.”

Taylor didn’t have enough energy to argue, especially when Jenna was probably right. “Even so, I’m back to square one. Almost thirty-three and not a man in sight.” An image of Joe, shirtless, sweaty, green eyes gleaming in a sexy grin popped into her head, making her thighs clench and her nipples peak beneath her silk blouse. An underage gardener didn’t count, she reminded herself fiercely.

“Better no man at all than a man like Steven,” Jenna said, emptying the dregs of her coffee into the sink.

Later, as Taylor stared at her computer screen and tried to focus on her status report, she wasn’t so sure she agreed. Okay, infidelity aside, Steven was the perfect man for her. Ambitious, successful, and intelligent, he had understood the demanding nature of her career. Basically a male version of herself, Steven had seemed the perfect addition to her career-driven life.

Until, of course, she had found him naked and heaving over Annemarie.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus on committing the details of the latest series-B financing she had negotiated at a start-up medical device company. Never in her life had she let her personal life distract her from her work. And here she was, zoning out and completely unprepared for the meeting she had in less than forty-five minutes.

Worse, it wasn’t even sadness over her breakup with Steven that had her fading in and out. No, it was Joe who tormented her, making her wish she hadn’t stopped him in his tracks Saturday night. Making her wonder what he looked like naked, what he would look like when he came.

She put on her glasses and pulled out her profit-and-loss spreadsheets to get herself back on track. Never in her life had she been so obsessed with sex. Sure, she’d been known to enjoy it, but like one might enjoy a good steak. Every once in a while she really craved it, but it was so rarely done exactly the way she wanted it, the fantasy was usually better than the reality. But Joe, he’d done things with his hands and his tongue that she’d never even thought of.

Taylor shifted in her seat, her eyes drifting closed as she again felt the hot, wet tug of his lips around her clit, the firm thrust of his fingers against the knot of nerves inside her she’d never known existed. She felt like a molten chocolate cake, all hot and liquid at the center. She swallowed hard, knowing she should stop this fantasy in its tracks before it burned out of control, but she was unable to do so. Did Joe actually have a map to the elusive G-spot? And could he easily find it again, this time with his cock?

“Taylor, are you coming or not?”

Almost,
she thought as Jenna’s urgent voice poured a virtual bucket of cold water on Taylor’s increasingly pornographic musings. Somehow she managed to muddle through the weekly meeting, providing a relatively cohesive update about her latest investment; she even managed to offer intelligible feedback on new prospects.

“This is ridiculous,” she muttered hours later as she sat parked inside her garage, waiting for Joe to finish unpacking his truck. As luck would have it, he’d driven up about two seconds behind her, even though Taylor had purposely waited until well after dark before leaving the office. She’d figured that since Joe required light to do his work, he’d be home shortly after sundown.

She’d figured wrong, and so here she sat, trapped in her garage for the second time in two days, trying to avoid the only man to have appreciated her Brazilian bikini wax up close and personal. It was stupid, avoiding him like a child. She was an adult, fully capable of controlling her baser instincts. She’d never let herself get carried away by any irrational need or emotion, and she wasn’t about to now. Best to get out of the car, face him like a grown-up, and prove to herself and him that what they’d done was no big deal. Just a random, meaningless, sexual encounter between two consenting adults.

An amazing, erotic, intense, sexual encounter. But meaningless. Completely meaningless, with no more significance than a handshake. And, she reasoned, the sooner she actually saw him again, the sooner she’d be reminded that though attractive, Joe was far from the man of her dreams. And the reason her orgasm had been powerful enough to make her nearly faint was that she hadn’t had one in so long. So, really, nothing to do with Joe at all and everything to do with an obnoxiously long dry spell. Once she got that straight in her head (not to mention her other parts), she could stop fading into the lust-induced fugue state that had plagued her this afternoon.

So there was no reason she shouldn’t be able to walk out of her garage, offer a friendly hello, and make it to her front door unscathed. Yet, just as she stepped out of her garage, she nearly wilted with relief as Joe entered his and lowered the automatic door.

Tomorrow would be soon enough to mend fences with her neighbor.