STORY EXCERPT

She crooked a finger at him and then walked toward the hallway, her hips swaying seductively, her legs endless in three-inch gold heels.

It occurred to him that he should be more turned-on than he’d ever been in his life, but he wasn’t particularly. Feeling confused—and insulted, although he wasn’t clear why—he followed her into her bedroom. He blinked, adjusting his eyes to the darker atmosphere. There was enough light for him to see the white flash of her teeth. Her shadowy form bent over the nightstand, then straightened and came toward where he’d paused, a single step into the room.

“Come on, Seth. Don’t tell me you’re getting shy in your old age.” Tucking a hand in the front of his pants, she yanked him toward her. He bent his head to kiss her, but she wrenched her head away. “Undress.” Her command was breathless and too harsh for his taste.

He reached forward, sifting his fingers through the thick silk of her hair and turning her face to his. Again, she evaded his kiss. “Evie, I…”

“Shh.” She worked her hand between the buttons of his shirt, scraping her nails across the leaping muscles of his abdomen when she encountered bare flesh. He tried to speak again, but she silenced him with a hot, open-mouthed kiss. Her tongue insistently wound around his, but when he cupped her face in his hands, she shifted away, once more intent on removing his clothes.

He felt like she’d instigated a dance he didn’t know the steps for. When he tried to speak, she kissed him. The minute he kissed back, she pulled away.

She succeeded in opening his shirt, and her fisted hand traveled up his chest. He jerked in response when she flicked her thumbnail over his nipple, but when her other hand tugged open his button and began to slide his fly, he gripped both her wrists.

“Eva, stop.”

Her smile mocked him. “Don’t tell me Mr. Eveready Edwards isn’t ready.”

Eveready? What next? Some juvenile, insulting name for his penis? He wondered how insane he’d look if he actually voiced the question running through his head. Who are you, and what the hell have you done with my sweet, sexy, Evie?

Before he could ask, she freed her hands, splaying them across his chest. He glanced down when he felt the scrape of a sharp-cornered object. The sight of the condom package in her hand caused his already faltering hard-on to wither more. He decided the odd flash in her eyes was definitely damn you.

He gripped the condom between his fingertips, like the damning object he thought it was. He tried to smile, but the stiff twist of his lips felt anything but natural. “Only thing that ever came between you and me was the sweat we worked up, Evie.” He flicked the package aside.

She bent to retrieve it and pressed it into his hand. “That was then.”

“Care to tell me what’s changed in the last six months that makes this an issue now?”

She lifted a single shoulder. “I don’t know, which is the whole point. I don’t know what—or rather whom—you’ve done in the last six months. Or the six before that, for that matter. Have you been celibate?”

He couldn’t have been more surprised—or insulted—if she’d slapped him. As he thought about how to answer her, he decided he would have preferred the slap. There’d been women. None who mattered. None he’d seen often enough to reach a stage where he’d forgo protection.

“Condoms are for other people, Eva. Not us.”

For a second, he saw a flash of vulnerability soften her sharp expression, but she chased it with another bitter smile. “You didn’t answer the question. Have you been celibate?”

“N—o, but…”

“Exactly. No buts. We’ll go with that old public service announcement. No glove, no love. If I’m one of many, I’d sooner be treated like the masses.”

“Masses? What the hell is this, Eva?”

She walked away from him, sprawling on the bed in an evocative pose that would have boiled his blood at one time but only served to turn it to ice water today.

“This is what we want. Sex, Seth. Plain and simple sex. Hard. Hot. Fast. Dirty and with no consequences.” She stretched a gold-sandaled foot toward him, trailing a hand suggestively up her inner thigh. “I want you inside me. I know that’s where you want to be. You really going to let a little latex come between us?”