Indecent Suggestion (20 page)

Oh, hell. He still didn’t care how he looked.

He did, however, unlock and open the door to Becca, whose appearance was infinitely more attractive than his own. Her tawny hair hung loose past her shoulders beneath a cuffed knit cap the color of a ripe apple. A matching scarf was wound around her neck what appeared to be two or three times, disappearing into a halfway zipped leather bomber jacket. Her blue jeans, as always, were snug and
faded, ending in hiking boots that should have looked incongruous on her, because they were so masculine, but instead just made her seem that much more feminine.

“Hi,” she said, smiling.

Turner tried to smile back, but couldn’t quite manage it. “Hi,” he said quietly.

“We need to talk,” she told him, echoing his words of two days before.

Frankly, Turner was of the opinion that they’d said more than enough on Saturday, and, speaking for himself, he had nothing left to say. Except maybe a few words that weren’t fit to see light anywhere but the men’s room at the bus station.

“So talk,” he told her, hoping his gruff delivery would make her go away.

Instead, she only smiled more. “What a lovely invitation,” she said. “I think I will come in and stay for dinner. Thank you so much for asking me.”

Before Turner could stop her, she was pushing past him, much the same way she had that night she’d spent at his place a month ago, when she’d wanted to make sure he stuck to the terms of their bet, and she’d come out of his room wearing his football jersey and knee socks, and he hadn’t been able to help smoking, and then he’d lost the bet and had to go with her to see a hypnotherapist.

And, hell, look how that had turned out.

“Becca, what are you doing here?” he asked defeatedly as he closed the door behind her.

His gaze dropped to her hand, though, when he saw that she was carrying the same oversize bag she’d been carrying that other night, when she’d had it filled with enough stuff to last the entire weekend.

And, hell, look how that had turned out.

“We need to talk,” she said again. “Or, at least, I need to talk. I need to tell you something very interesting that Dorcas told me about hypnosis.”

Turner held up a hand in a silent plea for her to go no further. “Don’t,” he told her. “I don’t want to hear another word about hypnosis, or hypnotherapy, or barking like a dog, or flapping my arms like a chicken, or Vegas lounge acts, or red crushed velvet. I don’t want to ever hear another word for the rest of my life about any of that stuff.”

“Okay,” Becca said agreeably. “Then I’ll just tell you this. I love you, Turner McCloud. And I have for a long, long time. And if you don’t make love to me soon, I’m going to have to wrestle you to the ground and have my way with you.”

Okay, since that wasn’t exactly what he’d expected Becca to say, then maybe he should let her clarify herself. Even if it meant bringing hypnosis into the conversation.

“Come again?” he said.

She smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

She dropped her bag onto the floor, tugged off her cap, unwound her scarf and started to unzip her jacket. But even after she’d tossed the jacket onto a chair, she didn’t stop. Instead, she went to work on the buttons of the flannel shirt she wore beneath it, tugging it free from the waistband of her jeans to finish the job, then tossing it, too, onto the chair. Beneath it, she wore a long-sleeved T-shirt, so Turner figured she just must have been overwarm with the flannel one, too, and now she would sit down.

But she didn’t sit down.

Instead, she pulled the T-shirt free of her jeans, too, crossing her arms over her midsection to grab the hem on
each side, then pulled the shirt up over her head to reveal a rather ravishing bit of black lace beneath. It was one of those bras whose cups came to a stop when fully half of a woman’s breasts were still showing, the kind that was worn not for support—about which he’d learned more than he cared to know, working on the Bluestocking account—but for seduction.

Then she went to work on the fly of her blue jeans.

Turner watched her activity with much puzzlement. Well, not
just
puzzlement, of course, but he was definitely baffled by her behavior. Had he said the word
underwear
since she’d arrived? He thought back. Nope. Not even a variation thereof. Had Becca used the word
underwear
? he wondered. But nope, she hadn’t, either. So why was she taking her clothes off, as if she intended to engage—right away, by the looks of it, since she’d dropped to the couch to wrangle off her boots—in some wild monkey lovin’?

“Becca?” he said. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing, Turner?”

He took a moment more to watch her, just in case, you know, maybe he had the wrong idea. She pulled off one boot and tossed it aside, then bent over to unlace the second. When she did, her breasts spilled a little more out of the black lacy bra, pushing against her thighs in a way that made him want to walk to where she was sitting and stoop between her legs and run his mouth over all those body parts that had so conveniently moved into such close quarters. Before he could take a step toward her, however, she was plucking off the other boot and pitching it to the side, then standing again to peel off the blue jeans that had gotten caught around her ankles.

Yeah, he was pretty sure now that she was getting undressed.

“It, um, it looks like you’re taking your clothes off.”

She beamed at him as she stomped out of her jeans and kicked them away, too. “Oh, I do so love a man who’s got smarts.”

Turner suddenly had something else, too, when she straightened and he saw the black lace panties that matched the bra and which were—almost—there. His mouth went dry as other parts of him started to catch fire.

“Becca?”

“Do you like it?” she asked when she saw where his gaze had fallen. Then, before he had a chance to reply, she added, “Look, it’s a thong.” And she spun around to give him a rear view. In more ways than one.

“Becca…”

“I never wore one before today,” she continued blithely, her back still turned to him, as if she were talking about something as harmless as a Scooby-Doo Band-Aid. “It’s a Bluestocking product. It’s amazing how comfortable it is. I think we should make it a focal point of the campaign. What do you think?”

What Turner thought, he should probably keep to himself. Because it mostly involved, um, focaling Becca’s, uh, point. And bluestocking her product. That kind of thing.

“Turner?” she asked, looking over her shoulder.

But still not turning around. And the sight of her bare ass beckoning to him that way just made him want to walk over there and cover it with both hands. Among other things.

“Don’t you like it?” she asked.

It occurred to Turner then that he had no idea what she was talking about, whether it was the garment she was—almost—wearing or the body part she was—almost—wearing it on. No matter. He knew the answer.

“Yeah, I like them… I mean it…a lot,” he said. And then some semblance of reason returned to his fuzzy brain—dammit—and he remembered that he was supposed to be objecting to what she was doing because…

Well, he couldn’t remember why at the moment, because she moved her own hand to her backside, splaying it over one ivory cheek. But he did know he was supposed to be objecting to…something.

Wasn’t he?

Becca sighed impatiently as she looked over her shoulder again at Turner and wondered what the hell was taking him so long. She’d gone so far as to reach out and grab it herself. How much more incentive did a man need? Fine. Then she’d just go over there and give him a helping hand. Literally.

Straightening, she turned around and covered the short distance between them in three easy strides. Dropping her gaze to his shorts, she saw significant—very significant—evidence of his interest. In fact, that evidence was
so
significant, it was going to become documentation if it got any bigger, because it would be right out there in the open where no one could deny it.

Not that Becca wanted to deny it. No, she had other plans for Turner’s evidence, if he’d just get with the program.

Dropping her hands to the hem of his T-shirt, she tugged upward very insistently, so insistently that he had no choice but to raise his arms over his head so that she could strip the garment off of him completely. She then hooked her thumbs into the waistband of his boxers. But she paused before jerking those down.

She met his gaze intently. “Have either of us used that word that was causing me to behave like a shameless hussy around you?” she asked him.

He shook his head, but said nothing.

“And yet, here I am, behaving like a shameless hussy around you,” she told him.

This time he nodded, but he still said nothing.

“Why would I do that, do you think?” she asked.

He shrugged, then said, “Have you been under a lot of stress and pressure lately?”

This time Becca was the one to shake her head.

“Been working on any racy lingerie accounts?”

“No more than usual,” she told him.

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “And I know you haven’t gone too long without sex.”

Well, that was debatable, she thought. It had been
hours
since the two of them were last together.

“Then I’m stumped,” he said.

She looked down at the documentation between his legs. “Oh, I don’t know about that….”

“I mean I’m out of ideas,” he said, his documentation growing larger at her compliment. “I don’t know why you’re behaving this way,” he added.

Becca smiled and looked at his face again. “I do,” she said. “It’s because you turn me on. And it’s because I love you. And it’s because I want to spend the rest of my life loving you and being turned on by you.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Come again?”

She expelled an exasperated sound. “I’m
trying
to.”

“No, I mean… How can you know that?” he asked. “Dorcas hypnotized you and—”

“She did,” Becca agreed. “This morning, in fact. And she took away the posthypnotic suggestion about that word, which I don’t want to say, because I don’t want you to think I’m responding to that, when what I’m really re
sponding to is you, and when what I’ve been responding to all along is you.”

Before he could ask more about that, Becca told him about her exchange with Dorcas, and how the hypnotherapist had told her it was impossible for anyone to be hypnotized into doing something they didn’t want to do in the first place. And with every new word she spoke, Turner’s expression changed, going from wary to cautious to hopeful to ecstatic to totally and completely aroused. And then to something else, something Becca recognized, because she felt it, too: love.

“Dorcas took the suggestion away?” he echoed when she was finished talking.

“Yup.”

“You’re not responding to…that word…right now?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“You’re responding to me?”

“Yah-huh.”

“You’ve always been responding to me?”

“Yepper.” Becca pressed a quick kiss to his mouth, then added, “And I’m responding to my love for you, too.”

She started to tug down his boxers, but he pulled away from her, saying, “Hold that thought.”

His retreat caught her off guard, but the next thing she knew he was disappearing into his bedroom. “But it’s not the thought I want to hold!” she called after him.

With a sigh of frustration, she followed him, halting in the bedroom doorway when she saw him turn away from the closet holding a little red bag that she recognized from a downtown jeweler.

“What’s that?” she asked.

He withdrew a little red box from the little red bag and
opened it, then crossed the room to show it to Becca. Nestled in a crush of red velvet was the most beautiful diamond ring she’d ever seen in her life. She gasped with delight when she realized what it meant.

“I bought it just before running into Dorcas,” he said. “That’s why I went downtown Saturday. I wanted to give it to you Saturday night. But then—” He halted, because they both knew what had happened to prevent him from going through with the plan. “You like?” he asked.

She shook her head, happiness welling inside her to near overflowing. “I love,” she told him.

His relief was almost palpable. “Then you’ll wear it?” he asked.

“Only if it means what it traditionally means to wear a ring like that,” she told him.

He smiled. “It means that sixty years from now, you’ll still be putting on stuff like that and we’ll still be smoking up the sheets together. Only we’ll be doing it as randy old married people instead of randy young single people.” He thought for a moment before adding, “And when we come home from work at night, it won’t be Englund Advertising. It’ll be Mercer-McCloud Advertising. A Fortune 500 company we started up shortly after our wedding.”

Becca plucked the ring from the box and put it on her left ring finger. It fit perfectly. “A Fortune 100 company,” she corrected. “Mercer-McCloud,” she murmured as she turned the ring one way, then another, admiring the sparkle. “I like the way those two names go together. A lot.” She looked at Turner again and grinned. “And I like how those two people come together even better. So I’ll wear this ring for the rest of my life,” she promised. “Now let’s get smokin’.”

He pulled her to himself and kissed her deeply, lifting his hands to palm her breasts as she moved hers to the opening in the front of his shorts. Each of them growled in satisfaction at the touches, and for a long moment, they only stood there, kissing and caressing each other.

Becca pulled away first, pushing down Turner’s boxers as she sank to her knees. When she knelt before him, she curled her fingers around his cock and guided it to her mouth. First, she only teased him with the tip of her tongue, gliding it down one side and up the other, circling the taut head with hasty, butterfly touches. Turner groaned aloud and wove his fingers into her hair, lightly nudging her head forward, silently urging her to take him more deeply. So Becca did, sucking him into her mouth with gentle pressure, pulling him back as far as she could. He moved his pelvis forward, propelling himself deeper still, and she opened her mouth wider to accommodate him, loving the way he filled her.