Sexting the Limits

Sexting the Limits

Remy Richard

Celeste Benning loses her phone—the lifeline that connects her to everything social.

Luckily, she‟s able to retrace her steps and find not just her phone, but a hot bartender

who leaves her head spinning
and
a mystery man who sends her sexy text messages

that leave her phone smoking.

When a gorgeous woman comes into his bar looking for her phone, Grant is only

too happy to save the day…and ask her to go out with him the next night. Then he

impulsively sends her some anonymous text messages designed to tease and titillate,

realizing only too late that he‟s just become his own romantic competition.

While Celeste wonders how to choose between the sexy, exciting mystery man and

lovable, gorgeous Grant, Grant wonders how Celeste will react when she realizes both

men are the same person…and how he can convince her to stay with him forever.

Ellora‟s Cave Publishing

www.ellorascave.com

Sexting the Limits

ISBN 9781419934858

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Sexting the Limits Copyright © 2011 Remy Richard

Edited by Meghan C. Conrad

Cover design by Syneca

Photography: Syneca; Wallenrock/Shutterstock.com

Electronic book publication October 2011

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SEXTING THE LIMITS

Remy Richard

Remy Richard

Celeste Benning had lost her lifeline.

She could have been more dramatic and said that she‟d lost her reason for being,

but that would have been a tad too drama queen for someone not starring in a teen

show on the CW. In actual fact she‟d lost her phone two days ago and she couldn‟t find

it anywhere. She‟d turned her purse, her car and her apartment upside down. She had

recruited friends to help look and to call her cell over and over in hopes that she‟d hear

it ringing from under a mound of clothes or a car seat or something. She had heard the

question, “Where was the last place you had it?” more times than anyone should have

to and she‟d squelched the urge to say back, “If I knew where I left the phone it

wouldn‟t be lost!” with an almost-hundred-percent success rate. Almost.

Celeste sighed as she shelved the stack of books that had fallen during the latest

frantic search. Her apartment looked like a disaster area and that was a kind

assessment. She felt as if she‟d turned everything over at least five times. The phone

wasn‟t in her purse, it wasn‟t in her car and it wasn‟t in her apartment. She was finally

ready to accept that it was no longer in her possession. Which meant that she needed to

start retracing where she‟d been on the day that she lost it. A sick feeling clenched her

stomach.

Her friends had all been joking about how crazed she was over losing her phone.

How it had become so much a part of her that she didn‟t know what to do with herself

when it was missing. That wasn‟t true at all. It was what was
on
the phone that made

her so worried about finding it sooner rather than later.

She‟d been a fool to keep the text messages. Since she was pretty close to fanatical

about keeping her phone near at all times, there was very little chance of them being

seen, she had reasoned. So she‟d kept the messages from her ex-boyfriend David.

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Sexting the Limits

Messages of a racy variety, at that. It wasn‟t something that she did all the time, only a

few times toward the end of their relationship. A last-ditch effort to revive a dead

romance. When it had become clear that no amount of effort was going to save the

relationship, she‟d cut her losses and moved on. Except for those text messages, which

kept her warm on the lonely nights.

She was a reasonably attractive twenty-five-year-old woman, after all. She‟d had

her fair share of experience. But for some reason she couldn‟t seem to throw herself into

the dating scene with as much enthusiasm as before. It helped to be able to pull out her

phone in times when she felt completely unsexy and undesirable, and see that someone

wanted her. To be honest, the words they had exchanged weren‟t even that titillating.

Mostly it was her describing how she‟d go down on him. Those text messages she

didn‟t save. Only the ones from him to her about what he‟d do to her if they were in the

same place.

She‟d known that most of what David said he planned to do to her would never

have happened. Follow-through had never been his strong suit. He had been selfish in

everything he did, including sex. Truthfully, he was no great loss, either as a lover or a

boyfriend.

And after all, she had the part of him she wanted most in the saved texts.

Stupidly, she‟d kept them for far too long and now she ran the risk of someone else

finding the phone and her secret shame. Plus there was the fact that she definitely

couldn‟t afford a new phone since the replacement ones tended to cost an arm and a

leg. But since that phone served as her home line, her work line and her lifeline to all

things social, there was no way she could wait to have a phone until she saved up to

buy a new one. That would take a couple of months at best. There was no other option.

For her bank account and her sanity, she had to find this one.

She plopped down on the one clear cushion on her sofa and surveyed her wrecked

apartment. She‟d pulled out the contents of shelves and drawers, lifted up cushions and

curtains and rearranged furniture, but she still hadn‟t found it. Which meant that she‟d

6

Remy Richard

lost it somewhere on Friday night and she had to go out in the world to find it. And

hope to God that someone hadn‟t already found it and started snooping. Or if they had,

hope to God that it wasn‟t someone she knew.

Celeste sent her mind back to Friday, trying to remember the last place she‟d used

her cell. She remembered having it that afternoon and talking to her mother while she

was at the grocery store. She remembered having it in the early evening when her

friend Mac had called looking for help getting ready for a big date.

Celeste sat up straight. Then she‟d gone to The Lucky Stripe, a local bar, because it

had seemed much too early to go home to an empty apartment on a Friday night. So

she‟d had a short drink with Noah Sellig, a distant but very cute friend, before calling it

a night and heading home. The next morning when she was getting ready to meet Mac

for their traditional Saturday morning brunch, she‟d discovered that the phone was

missing. And it had still been missing after multiple searches of her purse and car.

She‟d already scoured every inch of the apartment looking for it, so that left only one

place it could be—at the bar. And since she‟d scoured every inch of the apartment

looking for it, that only left the bar.

Celeste levered herself off the sofa and gathered up her purse and keys. There was

very little possibility that her cell hadn‟t already been taken but she had to try. The visit

would at least give her the chance to comb the gravel parking lot. After hours of feeling

hopeless she finally had an action that might bring some results. At least she hoped so.

* * * * *

Grant Morgan was taking inventory of his liquor stock when trouble walked into

his bar.

Of course, trouble is a relative concept and his idea of trouble took the form of a

gorgeous brunette wearing very little clothing and striding right up to him. He took a

moment to admire her curves, showcased in some sort of stretchy fabric, while she

stood in front of him, impatiently tapping a toe.

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Sexting the Limits

“Hi! Can you help me?” she asked.

He brought his focus back up to her face and watched as she tried on a sweet smile

that looked like it didn‟t belong. Her face was too pinched and worried for a smile to be

anything other than out of place. She looked tired, too, although the shadows under her

eyes didn‟t detract from how beautiful they were. Grant squelched a smile of his own

and replaced the bottle he had been looking at before she walked in.

“What can I help you with, miss?”

“I was in here on Friday night and I think that I left my cell phone. I‟ve been

looking everywhere for it and this is the only other place that it could be.”

The poor thing looked a little desperate and she was clenching her hands together

in a way that gave him a very nice view of her cleavage, so Grant was more than happy

to put a little time into helping her out. Even if it would be a pointless endeavor.

Something about bars and personal items didn‟t mix and Grant had a box full of things

that people had left at the bar at one point or another. But more often than not when

people came looking for any of their valuable stuff they had either lost it someplace else

or someone else had helped themselves to it long before Grant would have had a

chance to find it while cleaning up.

He stepped over to the bar and laid his clipboard down before slipping behind the

tall, mahogany fixture. When she didn‟t follow him, he gestured to the stool on the

other side of the bar.

“What‟ll you have?”

She looked at him with a tinge of confusion. “Um, it‟s like three o‟clock in the

afternoon.”

Grant put a finger to his mouth and used the other to point to the other patrons of

the bar. “Let‟s not scare off the paying customers. And you know that water or a soda

can be an option, right? Me, I‟m going to have a root beer. Would you like anything, on

the house?”

8

Remy Richard

She nibbled her bottom lip and Grant had to restrain himself from jumping over the