Authors: Faye Avalon
Bad in Bed
Evernight Publishing
Copyright© 2012 Faye Avalon
ISBN: 978-1-77130-163-3
Cover
Artist: Sour Cherry Designs
Editor:
Melissa Hosack
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING:
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is
illegal.
No part of this book may be
used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This
is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
For AJ, as always.
I'd also like to thank
my lovely critique partners, Lace Daltyn and Sadie Sinclair, who have made
this journey a whole lot of fun.
BAD IN BED
Faye Avalon
Copyright
© 2012
Chapter One
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon
not plunge fifty feet to my death.”
Up until the moment the elevator lurched to an
abrupt halt, Amber Green hadn’t realized quite how much she valued her life and
how, despite the events of the past few weeks, she desperately desired to carry
on living it.
The handsome occupant she’d been stuck in the elevator
with, who had promptly hoisted himself up through the roof hatch seconds after
they stalled, obviously didn’t share her aspirations.
“Have a little faith,” he called down cheerily.
“And it’s more like ninety feet.”
Amber’s stomach threatened to revolt. “You’re
not making me feel better.”
A chuckle echoed from somewhere in the lofty
heights, replaced by whistling and some banging. “Take off your stockings.”
Amber’s eyes rolled along with her stomach.
“Don’t you have better things to do right now?”
An amused pair of eyes stared down at her from
the hole in the ceiling. “You’re stockings, gorgeous. As much as I'm admiring
your legs, I need the stockings to secure this bolt.”
Her blood ran cold. “Secure? It’s loose?”
“Not for long.” He reached down his hand,
wiggling his fingers when she just stared up at him. “Give them up.”
The gleam of his eyes cut through the elevator’s
dim lighting and there was no mistaking the way his mouth turned up at the
corners. In other circumstances, Amber thought, in another life, maybe she
might…bloody hell, what was she thinking? They were about to plummet God knew
how far down the shaft and she was thinking about some man’s eyes and smile as
a possible antidote to the disaster that was her love life.
“Turn away.” She started to lift her skirt, but
noticed he made no attempt to avert his gaze.
Instead, he folded his arms along the ledge and
popped his chin on his hands.
The way his gaze fixed on her made her pulse
skip. “Do you mind?”
“Not in the least. Go ahead.”
Sensing he wasn’t about to budge, and feeling
at a distinct disadvantage seeing as she knew diddly squat about repairing
elevators, Amber admitted defeat and turned away. She raised her skirt hem only
as far as she needed to roll one stocking quickly down her leg. Knowing he’d
watched her, she was unable to stop the heat rising to her cheeks as she turned
back. Trying for nonchalance, she scrunched the stocking into a ball and threw
it up to him.
He caught it one handed, but continued his
unsettling perusal. “I’ll need the other one.”
She glared at him for a moment, then huffed as
she repeated the process. “Anything else?” Her voice was thick with sarcasm as she
threw up the second stocking.
This time he ran his fingers lightly along the
silk. “This’ll do for now.” Another drop-dead sexy grin and he was gone. Then
came more bangs, more whistling.
In the way people do when faced with impending
disaster, Amber offered up a silent prayer and promised to mend her ways if she
survived. She would call her mother every day and endure Sunday lunch with her
parents every week. And she would try and put the past behind her.
A vision of Trevor floated across her mind.
Treacherous Trevor and the Bimbo from
Childish, she knew, to succumb to name calling, but damn, it helped.
Before she could indulge in another
depression-yielding float down memory lane, another ear-splitting bang above
her head brought her whizzing back headlong into her present dilemma and the
imminent threat of plunging into oblivion.
For God's sake, why didn't someone do
something? Other than Lord Fix-It up there. Okay, he'd told her he was an
engineer, but did that make him an expert on stalled elevators? Bloody hell.
She should have taken the stairs. She always took the stairs. But this morning
she'd been suffering the effects of a rather raucous night out with the girls. It
was to cheer her up, they’d said. Well, maybe it had, but seeing as she didn’t
remember much of it, she couldn’t be sure. All she had now was a big, fat headache
and a stomach that threatened to relieve itself on the elevator floor at any
minute.
Anxious and frustrated, she pressed the
emergency call button again before remembering Sir Galahad was on top of the
car. She grimaced, pulled her hand away from the panel, and looked up at the
empty hole in the ceiling. “Do you think you should come down from there? God
knows what will happen to you if the elevator starts moving again.”
“When the elevator starts moving I'll be back
inside. A few more tweaks and I'm done.” Silence followed, punctuated by a few
discordant bangs as he thumped something. Then more silence. “Maybe you could
give me an incentive,” he finally called down, as another bang followed.
“Something to keep me positive.”
“Staying alive doesn't do it for you?”
Another sexy chuckle, followed by a thump.
“Dinner would be better.”
Off went her stomach again at the very thought
of eating. “How can you think about food at a time like this?”
“It's not food I'm thinking about. By the way,
you've got nice legs.”
Something warmed inside her, but she ignored
the compliment. Most virile men, driven by testosterone, would say anything to
get in a woman’s pants. And from the look in his eyes and that cocky grin,
relieving her of her underwear was likely high on his agenda.
Memories nudged again, but she pushed them
back. Hadn’t she just promised herself that she’d put the past behind her if
she survived? Well, baby steps and all that. “You owe me for the stockings.
They were designer.”
“I'm saving your life. In my book that says you
owe me. I'll settle for that dinner.”
He wouldn’t want dinner, or anything else for
that matter, if he knew about Trevor’s accusations. She tried to forget what her
ex had said, but her mind kept drifting back to the circumstances of their
break up. Four years. Jeez. You’d think she would have known, had some inkling.
“So when are you free?”
Not in this lifetime. “Look. Do you really
think you should be messing around with stuff you don't know about? What if you
twist the wrong wire, or bang the wrong nail? Won't you make things worse?”
Two feet appeared, suspended in the hatchway,
followed by a muscled specimen of prime male dropping back through the hatch.
He landed in a surprisingly graceful, two-legged hop right in front of her. Treating
her to one of his sexy, lopsided grins, he held out her stockings and dangled
them in the air. They were now no more than a network of holes and runs.
She grabbed them and inspected the damage. “You've
ruined a perfectly fine pair of stockings and we've nothing to show for it?”
“Sure we do, or at least I do.” His eyes,
deliciously dark blue, glittered back at her. “I got to see your legs.”
She narrowed her own eyes, ignoring the little
jump in her belly that had nothing to do with overindulgence of alcohol the
night before and everything to do with sexual attraction, interest. She ignored
that, too. “I'm starting to think I've got something more to worry about than
being stuck in an elevator. I'm stuck in an elevator with a voyeur.”
He moved slowly toward her, backing her up
against the far wall. She hadn’t realized he was quite so tall, so dauntingly
masculine, but then she hadn’t really looked at him when he’d stepped in the
elevator after her. She looked at him now and her blood heated off the scale as
her pulse kicked like crazy in her veins.
“A voyeur, eh? That’s not necessarily a bad
thing.” He placed his hands against the elevator wall on either side of her
shoulders. “Could be fun.”
“Could be.” Unconsciously, she tugged the front
seams of her navy suit jacket together. “If I wasn’t about to die.”
He laughed, leaned in, and then lowered his
mouth a few centimeters from hers. “Who says you’re going to die?”
His breath brushed lightly, potently across her
mouth, and while she knew he was playing games, enjoying a little flirtation,
something light and lovely whispered through her. It was good, if only for a
few moments, to enjoy a man’s attention and to feel wanted, desired again.