Tempt Me Tonight (7 page)

“I
liked
that girl. I’m pretty sure you’re still her.”

“In ways,” Trish admitted. “But I’m also a mature, confident chick who does
not
let herself be any guy’s conquest. And I intend to stay that way.”

“Your loss then, I guess.” In the sex department, she knew Debbie meant.

Unless…“Maybe not.”

Debbie drew back slightly. “Huh?”

Trish took a deep breath, then spit out the idea that had slowly bubbled up inside her over the last few minutes. “I’m going to seduce him.”

Debbie flinched. “What? I’m confused. I thought you said you couldn’t—”

“No.
I’m
going to seduce
him.
Which is completely different than letting
him
seduce
me.
See?”

“Not really.”

“Then you’re not paying attention. If I’m the seducer, then I win.”

Debbie pursed her lips, looking slightly confused. “And he loses?”

“No. We
both
win. But
I
don’t lose. As long as it’s very clear that I’m the one doing the seducing, making it happen—as long as it’s clear that he hasn’t persuaded me. Do you get it yet?”

Debbie nodded, although it was clear she still didn’t understand. “Only…if you’re so dead set on not being seduced, wouldn’t it just be easier to keep on saying no? Or better yet, just keep your distance from him?”

Trish raised a finger emphatically in the air. “Easier said than done. The fact is, I’m not that good at saying no anymore. And I’m afraid that if I’d been there with him much longer, or if we’d been alone, I’d have given in. He’s too hot. I can’t defend myself against that. So I figure if I seduce him first, if it’s my decision and not his—I won’t feel so much like a flimsy little pushover. If I’m going to have sex with him, I want to be the one to call the shots.” The truth was—now that she was forming a plan, having sex with Joe was back to sounding pretty darn good again.

“And when you’re done seducing him?” Debbie asked.

Trish hadn’t exactly thought through this part yet, but…“I leave.”

“You what?”

Yeah, that sounded good. “I leave. I just get up and go. I make sure he doesn’t think it means anything to me. I don’t give him a chance to patronize me in any way. I stay in control of this whole situation.”

Across from her, Deb’s eyebrows knit. Damn it—here she was, getting a good plan in mind, and Debbie still looked doubtful. “You sound kind of manic,” her friend said.

Trish gasped. “I am
so
not manic. I’m just aggressively solving a problem. And how I acted with him last night—all smitten and nervous—I didn’t like it. I want him to know that I’m an aggressive, capable woman.”

“That I get. But…”

“Yeah?”

“Just getting up and leaving afterwards…that sounds kind of mean.”

Trish blinked and stared at Debbie in disbelief. “
Mean
? Oh, like he’ll care. I mean, his apology was one thing—I didn’t particularly want to hear it, yet I could respect it. But trying to get me into bed two minutes later? That had conquest written all over it. It screamed selfishness. And like I said, I don’t think I can say no to him if we end up close again. And if anyone’s going to have a conquest and be selfish here, it’s me.”

Still, Debbie sighed, looking way too worried for Trish’s peace of mind. She leaned slightly nearer over the table. “Dare I suggest that this sounds sort of like revenge?”

Trish’s mouth dropped open. “
What?
How could seducing him possibly equate to revenge? It’s more like…a gift or something.” She widened her eyes for emphasis. “Like I said, we both win.”

“It’s not the seducing I was thinking of so much as the leaving afterward. It sort of sounds like you just want to show him…what it’s like to be hurt.”

The accusation stung. Trish was a lot of things, but vindictive wasn’t one of them. She softened her voice slightly. “Again, Deb, I don’t think I
can
hurt him. We haven’t seen each other for nearly fifteen years. Last night on the dance floor, that was sex. And tonight, me going to his place, that will be sex, too. Just sex, no feelings. I’m just beating him to the punch to save myself the embarrassment of being used.”

Debbie’s eyes flew open wider. “
Tonight?
You’re doing this
tonight?
”

Apparently she was. Now that she had a plan. “No time like the present.”

It would be just like the fudge. Now that she’d had some, she no longer wanted any more. Tonight she’d have Joe Ramsey once and for all, and then she could forget he’d ever reentered her life and get back to normal.

At dusk that night, Trish sat down to a home-cooked meal with her mom and dad and her sweet, gray-haired Aunt Alma, who felt well enough to come to the table. It was meat loaf and mashed potatoes and cornbread all around, and Trish served and cleared and dished up the apple pie her mother had made for dessert. There was something undeniably comforting about it—the familiarity of the home where she’d grown up, the aromas of her mother’s home cooking, the very concept of slowing down a bit, not being in a mad rush to do something or get somewhere.

By the time darkness fell, though, dinner and homey comforts were a distant memory—because she now stood in front of the mirror in her motel room looking like sex on a stick. She’d never
looked
like sex on a stick before, so it was hard to get used to. This afternoon, she’d driven over to the outlet mall less than an hour west in Columbus to procure a “seduction suit” and—yikes—she couldn’t believe the woman staring back from those heavily made-up eyes was her. She didn’t look like little Trish Henderson from Eden, and she no longer resembled Patricia Henderson, attorney-at-law, either. The chick in the mirror was…Trish the Vixen or something. And she had a feeling Trish the Vixen might be related to that inner biker chick she’d just found out about last night.

But this Trish wasn’t out for a day on a Harley. Nope, this Trish was all about the night.

She wore a low-cut black corset dress that hugged every curve, showed lots of cleavage, and stopped high on her thigh. Underneath, she’d kept it mostly basic, but also very hot—a dark purple demi bra with black lace trim, a matching thong, and a garter belt attached to lace-top stockings. On her feet she wore pointy black stiletto pumps with ankle straps.

She’d taken a thick curling iron to her usually casual hair, creating flirtatious curls around her face. And speaking of her face—she looked like she’d attended the French Whore’s School of Makeup Application. But in a good way, she thought.

She’d never known she could look so sexy.

Or feel so sexy.

Sex nearly hummed through her body like electricity. She wanted it. Needed it.

And she was going to have it.

Of course, she’d never actually seduced anyone before.

But as she got in the car—okay, she sort of
snuck
to the car, scampering like a squirrel in case anyone noticed her leaving—she decided she could do this.

Debbie’s last words from earlier still rang in her mind.
This is a bad idea.
But Trish thought it was the best idea she’d had in awhile. Everything else in her life suddenly felt a bit in disarray. She was worried now about her parents’ retirement and worried about when she’d get back to her job. Everything felt unsettled. Settle
this
and it would be one less issue clouding her mind.

And as she drove toward the small white clapboard house Joe had grown up in—which she knew from Debbie he’d bought when his dad had remarried—everything about this felt
right. Hot. Wickedly alluring.
From the snug, uplifting bra to the lace straps of the garter belt stretching tight across her thighs, she felt like a completely sensuous animal. For tonight and tonight only, she would make herself a part of Joe Ramsey’s sexual world—and she would relish it.

At first, she’d seen this simply as a defense mechanism. But now she had to admit, she really
wanted
it. She hadn’t dated anyone seriously in—dear God—nearly a year, which meant she also hadn’t had sex in that long! This was the first time she’d actually stopped to count the months, but now she figured her dry spell had surely added to her response last night. And if she was going to have meaningless sex for the first time in her life, it made sense to do it with a guy as totally hot as Joe.

Although she wasn’t really thinking of him as Joe. Not
her
Joe, the Joe she’d once known and loved. No, she thought of him only as New, Hot, Smooth-Talking, Smooth-Moving Joe—Man of Great Sexual Prowess. She was about to put her own prowess up against his, and she expected it to be a completely heated and pleasurable little battle.

Of course, her stomach rippled with a sudden onslaught of nerves when she rounded a bend and Joe’s house came into view, a porch light bathing the home in a soft glow. She hadn’t been here since that last summer before college. For some reason, her mind flashed on the day he’d shown her the kittens the Ramsey family cat had just given birth to. She’d immediately gravitated to the little orange one, the runt mewing its head off because its brothers and sisters had been hogging all the milking spots at the mama cat’s belly. Joe had brought the kitten over to her a few weeks later.

Crap. Quit thinking about the past.

In fact, just quit
thinking
and concentrate on
doing. Seducing.

Too bad pulling in the driveway felt a little like suicide.
But push that down. You can do this. Moreover, you
want
to do this. You are a sexual vixen. Go show him
.

Then it hit her—it was Saturday night. What if he wasn’t home? What if he was out taking her advice from last night—getting it someplace else? But that’s when she realized there were lights on inside and a vehicle in the driveway in front of her—her headlights shone on the tailgate of a big pickup with…oh my God, chrome women on the mudflaps!

She gasped. That truck had been
his?
What a Neanderthal he-man!

But it provided even more assurance that this would be nothing more than sex—and clear proof that he indeed wasn’t the guy she’d once known. Nope—the man in this house was just a hot, sexy guy whose bones she was going to jump, and then it would be out of her system, just like a nasty flu bug.

She killed the lights, then the engine. Took a deep breath. Realized the suicide feeling still lingered as Debbie’s words—
This is a bad idea
—were joined with her own—
Dear God, what are you doing?

But she ignored it all. She had to. She’d come too far to turn back—hell, she’d invested a small fortune in seduction-wear. And even amid the little bits of panic now assaulting her, desire still lingered. Actually, it did more than linger. It pounded through her veins like fast-moving blood. It urged her to be the strong, sexy, confident seductress she’d come here to be. She was going to have Joe, once and for all.

Getting out of the car, she slammed the door, looked to the house, and thought—
this is it.
And she was so ready for this, so suddenly, that it almost scared her because she felt like someone else. Vixen Biker Babe Trish. She drew in her breath and let it slowly back out, growing aware of the pulsing sensation in her panties.

Her heels clicked up the thin concrete walk as her body vibrated with heat. The sounds of tree frogs and crickets perforated the air as a hot breeze lifted the hair from the nape of her neck. She stepped boldly up onto his covered porch and, without allowing herself to hesitate, rang the bell.

Of course, she briefly considered running, leaping in the bushes to hide, but she forced herself to stay put.

When the door swung open, Joe stood before her wearing only a pair of blue jeans. A smattering of dark curls dusted his chest—just as broad and muscular as she’d suspected—and narrowed to a tidy, sexy little line leading right down to his zipper. His hair was messy, his chin covered with stubble. And his blue eyes shone dark and fiery as they narrowed on her. Oh my.

She waited for him to speak, but he seemed too busy taking it all in. She watched various forms of confusion and shock pass through his gaze until finally it filled with exactly what she’d hoped for: hard-core need. He slowly perused her body, from head to toe and back again, his look as potent as if he were touching her.

After a long, still, heated moment, she finally concluded that he wasn’t going to say anything. Fair enough, she supposed—the ball was in her court. “I changed my mind,” she said.

His eyes rose from her chest to her face. “About?”

She thought it was pretty obvious, but indulged him anyway. “Coming home with you. Here I am.”

Reversal:
the act of a court setting aside the decision of a lower court;
or
the state of acting in a manner that is opposite or contrary to the usual.

He gave his head a light shake as if to clear it. “Am I dreaming?”

“What if you are?” she asked smoothly. The very sight of him, it turned out, had transformed any doubt or nervousness into pure heat.

His gaze seemed to bore into her, then he spoke slowly, as if thinking through his answer aloud. “If I were dreaming, then…I wouldn’t ask you what the hell you’re doing here. I wouldn’t waste any time on how damn shocked I am.”

“What
would
you do?”

He lowered his unshaven chin. “I’d just take you.”

“Then take me.”

But no, stop.
As much as she wanted to be thoroughly ravished by Joe this very second, as silkily as the plea had left her lips, she had to remain the one in control. So she revised her instructions. “Better yet, let
me
take
you.”
As he stood there devouring her with his eyes, she pressed one palm flat to his chest and pushed her way past him into the room.

She moved with graceful purpose, rather liking the sound of her heels clicking across his hardwood, along with the feel of his gaze on her back. Walking to the coffee table, she snatched up the remote and turned off whatever old Tom Hanks movie he was watching, the action leaving the room illuminated by only the overhead in the kitchen, filtering in across the counter that separated the two rooms. Finally, she looked back up at Joe—whoa, it was easy to forget how hot he was until his eyes were glimmering on her—and curled one red-painted fingernail toward her, beckoning him.