Striptease

His brow furrowed. “Hell, if you’re so busy fighting the current—” he took a step closer “—how do you expect to enjoy the ride?”

Melanie swallowed hard, resisting the tug of a current, all right. The man’s magnetism was potent, his attention heady, his impression provocative. When he reached to cup a hand around the sculpture where it sat behind her on the bookshelf, her heart lurched.

His gaze cut back and forth between the nude and her face. “So, I’m guessing to you this piece isn’t about the total concept. It’s more about analyzing the details. The woman’s posture. The way she has her hands spread and her fingers flexed to hold herself back.”

Back from what? When he turned to look at her, his eyes seemed to answer the unspoken question, and Melanie’s heart kicked hard in her chest. It shouldn’t have. He was only telling her what he thought she might see. Nothing more. Nothing leading.

Nothing sexual.

“And to you?” she managed to ask.

“To me this is all about interpretation. What the woman wants. What she’s looking for. Waiting for.”

Melanie had to be imagining his suggestion that it was her and not the figurine who was the one looking, waiting. She hadn’t revealed any of those truths in the little bit of time they’d spent together.

And she wouldn’t. Because they weren’t truths at all. “Okay, so, you take in the overall picture. I work my way up through the elements. In the end we both see the same thing, don’t you think?”

“I’m not so sure.” He blinked, his lashes making a slow lazy sweep up and down. “We didn’t see the same thing looking at the view screen the day of the wedding.”

Well, he had her there, didn’t he? Except she’d never told him what exactly it was she’d been seeing. And he certainly hadn’t bothered to share any details about what he’d been looking at when her image had appeared on his screen. Neither had he mentioned anything about where his focus had been while facing that bank of monitors in the van.

She’d wondered about that. The wedding was two months past, and she still wondered if the position of the cameras had anything to do with what they’d been looking at that day. Or if that afternoon had been all about the tension, the same one thrumming between them now like a deep techno beat.

She wanted more than anything to ask him to dance, to hold her close, to slip his hands underneath her sweater and strip her bare. She wanted his hands and his mouth on her body. She wanted to touch him, to smell him, to taste him in intimate ways. And she could barely breathe.

She smoothed the hem of her sweater and took a step closer to him. A step that was so much longer than the distance she actually covered. Screw it. She wanted this. Why was she holding herself back? “Listen, Jacob—”

“Yo, Mel,” Chloe called from the hallway outside the office. “You’re still coming to the barbecue on Saturday, right? I really need your help. And Sydney wants to know—” Chloe stopped short just inside the doorway. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you were busy.”

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Divine intervention when needed most. See? They weren’t even yet working together, and she’d already gone mad.

Melanie shook her head. “I’m not busy at all. Jacob, this is Chloe Zuniga. She heads up the gUIDANCE gIRL mentoring program. Chloe, this is the Avatare Productions cameraman who’ll be working on the documentary. Jacob—”

“Faulkner,” Chloe finished. “You’re Rennie’s brother.”

Jacob turned his smile on Chloe. “You know Renata?”

A blond brow lifted. “I know Rennie. Her friends knew better than to call her Renata.”

“Is that right?” Jacob said, and laughed.

That damn laugh again. The echo lingered in the deepest part of Melanie’s belly. She pushed off the wall, away from Jacob, and moved to the front of her desk, hoping that, with distance, the echo would fade. But then he laughed a second time, and she was sunk, wanting him out of her office more than she’d ever wanted him to stay.

Mad as a hatter and Hannibal Lecter to boot.

And then, almost as if Melanie had totally left the room, Jacob turned and gave Chloe his full attention. “Trust me. Renata’s friends still know better. And she doesn’t hesitate to correct them. Even in public. I keep waiting for her to snap and bite off an ear.”

“Is she still in town?” Chloe asked.

He nodded, gestured over his shoulder with a tilt of his head. “Out on the west side, actually. She’s a counselor at one of the Memorial area high schools.”

“I had no idea. All she talked about in school was moving to Arizona or New Mexico to teach.” Chloe frowned, pursing pouty pink lips. “I don’t think I talked to her but once or twice after I was in Austin. I knew she’d planned to take off a year before going to school.”

Jacob nodded. “She did, then went to Baylor and made up for it. Went year-round for five years and earned her Master’s before moving back here.”

“So she never left the state?”

“Nope. Decided she could kick ass and take names here as well as anywhere.”

Lame, lame, lame, Melanie thought, and rolled her eyes.

The other two continued their conversation, leaving her to wonder if she should just abandon her office and give them time to catch up; she obviously wasn’t needed. And just as obviously, she’d been imagining all the tension simmering between her and Jacob. Except she knew that she hadn’t been.

She’d seen his pulse beating there in the hollow of his throat.

She arched a brow. “I hate to interrupt you two, but I’m wondering if what Sydney wants might be something I need to take care of.”

Chloe blinked. “Shit. I mean, shoot. I totally forgot. She wants us in the conference room. You, too, I imagine,” she said to Jacob. “The producer and the show’s host want to meet the rest of us and go over the taping schedule.”

Jacob headed toward the office door. “Give me five. I need to grab my notebook from the van.”

“Hey,” Melanie said, and he turned back, frowning. “I think you’re forgetting something.” She held up and waved the video cassette he’d left on her desk.

It took him a long moment to decide whether to go or to stay or to answer. A moment during which his expression shifted, his eyes, having darkened, flashed. And his smile nearly brought her to her knees.

He nodded toward the tape she held. “Actually, I brought that for you.”

Melanie watched him go, shrugged, slid the cassette across her desk before curiosity had her shoving it into her office VCR. She turned her attention to Chloe, whose attention was way too rapt.

“I can’t believe you know him,” Melanie said.

At the exact same time, Chloe asked, “Did I interrupt anything? It looked like something steamy was going on between you two.”

“Steamy? Hardly. He’s too annoyingly self-important to inspire steam,” she lied.

“C’mon, Mel.” Chloe narrowed her eyes. “I know you better than that.”

“Okay. He’s cute enough, but nothing was going on. Nothing is going on.”

“He’s more than cute, and you know it. He’s all that stuff dreams are made of.” Chloe backed toward the office door and peered down the hallway in Jacob’s direction.

Melanie found herself itching to do the same. “I think you’ve confused Jacob Faulkner with Eric Haydon.”

“Nope.” Chloe shook her head and motioned Melanie toward the door. “Eric’s a total jock. Jacob’s much more…I don’t know. Provocative. Evocative. I can’t explain it. You tell me.”

“Tell you what? That he drives me totally insane?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Chloe spoke with the authority of a woman having been there. “Remember Macy’s scavenger hunt? When Eric and I first hooked up? It’s amazing the man lived to learn a single thing about me.”

“Speaking of the scavenger hunt, I really ought to give Jess Morgan a call,” Melanie said, changing the subject like the avoidance pro she’d never realized she was. “I can’t remember the last time I saw him.”

“Right.” Chloe’s huffy inflection screamed, Wrong. “Listen, Jess is a doll. But you’ve never been hosed up with nothing to say when he’s been in the room the way you were just now with Jacob.”

“What’re you talking about? You’re the one who interrupted our conversation.”

“Uh-huh. You couldn’t find your tongue, and I think Jacob’s the cat who had it.”

Melanie shoved Chloe out into the hallway. “You’re as cornball as he is.”

“I knew it!” Chloe laughed. “He gave you that look, didn’t he? That one where his eyes get all dark and your panties melt.”

Melanie shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You are such a liar. And you’ve obviously forgotten that I knew him way back when. In high school? Half the fun of hanging out with Rennie was getting to see her sexy big brother. Jacob Faulkner is still as sexy as it gets.” Chloe’s grin reached new prurient depths. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and find out if he’s as big as rumor had it.”

“Oh, honestly.” Ignoring Chloe’s snicker, Melanie dropped the subject and headed for the conference room at a brisk walk.

She might as well look no-nonsense and eager to get to the meeting because, after that rumor remark? Her mind was destined to stay in the gutter.

3

HE WAS SO GOING TO PAY for this! Oh, but he was going to pay! Did he really think two couldn’t play his stupid video game?

And why had she thought she needed to rush home and watch his little film production, anyway? She hadn’t even taken time to work out or shower or eat or unwind with a beer and The Simpsons.

Nope, she’d walked through her front door, tossed her keys and tote onto the table in the entryway and headed straight for the entertainment center and the VCR. Big mistake. That had been an hour ago and still she was fuming.

And so what if she was? She damn well deserved to fume considering she’d wasted twenty good minutes of her very short evening viewing Jacob’s collection of outtakes from the day of Lauren and Anton’s wedding.

The sneaky bastard.

He’d taken every incident where she’d lost her cool, lost her head, lost all semblance of professionalism, and made himself the perfect little movie short of a shrew needing to be tamed.

Like she really needed the up-close, live-action and full-color keepsake of her behavior that day.

Uh, no. She didn’t, and would’ve been quite happy to live her life without the reminder, thank you very much. No wonder he’d laughed in her face this morning when she’d claimed to be self-disciplined.

And now, with this latest stunt, Jacob had guaranteed their relationship would never again be strictly business. Because not only had his video compilation reminded her of their disastrous work-related interaction, he’d caught her off guard with the way he’d managed to digitally capture the lust she’d felt in places other than her heart.

Even while her taped image had complained about the way Jacob had decided to set up his cameras, her eyes had been flashing and brightly focused, her body language signaling her awareness of the attraction simmering between them. An attraction as real as anything in her experience.

An attraction she wished she could toss into the Dumpster with the rest of her trash because, now that he’d be working with her both in and out of the office, the chemistry between them was going to be in the way, getting on her nerves, aggravating her until she did something really dumb.

Like sleep with the man.

The itch was there. A nice itch that she wouldn’t mind him scratching. Except she could hardly sleep with him and work with him. That was a no-no and a no-win. Seeing him on a daily basis meant living with the increased frustration.

And since no one had ever said all was fair in love and sex in the city, she wanted him as hot and bothered as thinking of him made her.

If anyone was going to hold the upper hand here, it was not going to be Jacob Faulkner.

Working up a sweat while adjusting the lights and camera equipment she kept set up in her condo’s spare bedroom, she pressed her lips together, stepping back to eye the layout. At least now, after an hour of pacing and therapeutic scrubbing of toilets and tubs, she’d finally managed to settle on a payback certain to burn off her adrenaline-laced energy.

Yep. Two could definitely play this warped show-and-tell game. She headed for the kitchen, returning with the bar stool she needed as a prop for her sound stage. She might not work as a videographer, but she could just as easily put together a production to suit her needs.

Right now her needs were all about assuaging her pride and about setting her course through the next few sure-to-be-turbulent weeks. She’d have him eating out of her hand, even if she had to play dirty.

And making use of the stripper’s pole she’d had installed in the room for exercise was about as dirty as it got.

She stepped back, checked out her setup. The lights were hot, but working up a sweat wasn’t going to be a problem. It was, in fact, inevitable and a very good thing. Crossing the room’s hardwood floor in bare feet, she moved to the computer station and launched the system’s media player.

She chose a file of dance-appropriate MP3s, adjusting the equalizer until the floor fairly thrummed beneath her feet. And then she smiled. He thought he knew the real Melanie Craine? He thought he’d capture the undisciplined truth? He didn’t know half of who she was. No one did. Even her partners. At times, she hardly knew herself.

She knelt on the floor in front of the light she’d positioned to cast her shadow onto the wall. Her silhouette faced that of the glass sculpture in a mirrored pose, the sculpture she’d brought home from work and placed on the bar stool. The shadow of the pole ran down the wall in a line between the other two shadows.

Jacob’s fascination with the female nude had inspired her, had made her want to show him that she was much more than the single fraction of her personality he’d seen. His harping-shrew video of her was totally skewed. As skewed as the sexed-up version she was about to make.

Satisfied with the placement of the shadows, she closed her eyes, splayed her fingers low on her belly and got into the music. Feeling it first with her head and her shoulders, she nodded and swayed to the bass in the beat. She kept her eyes closed as her torso began to move and the first tingling waves of excitement tickled the base of her spine.

Whenever she danced, she forgot everything but her body. Her brain lost all ability to handicap sensation and she melted into what felt like pure liquid motion. She felt that way now, sliding her hands from her thighs to her knees, dipping forward before raising her arms overhead with sinuous grace, stretching high, grasping for something that remained out of reach.

Something like Jacob Faulkner.

Instead she took hold of the pole.

The thought of Jacob brought another tingle, this one centered lower in her body, deep between her legs. Slowly, she got to her feet, shoulders rolling side to side as she pushed up from the floor, her hands sliding high on the pole again. She turned, faced the room and arched her back, tilting up her pelvis and lifting one knee waist high.

Oh, yeah. She loved the feel of her body when she danced. The stretch of muscles, the pull of tendons, the strength in her abs and her arms. So sensual, so…sexy. An arousing awareness of all the things that made her a woman. The very things she wanted Jacob to know.

Swaying to the music’s rhythm, she spun to face the pole and hooked her knee behind it. She secured her hold with one hand and leaned back, the fingers of her free hand brushing the floor before she slowly rolled back up. Her lower body undulating, she twined both legs around the pole, moved her hands to the hem of her cropped T-shirt and pulled it over her head.

She still wore her bra, the lacy push-up cups giving her the figure she wished she had naturally. The figure her mind’s eye pictured Jacob seeing. And wanting. Desperately wanting and aching to touch.

She smoothed her hands up her stomach to her breasts, cupping their light weight and tossing her head back with the pleasure invoked by imagining his hands covering hers. His hands moving to her shoulders and pulling down the straps of her bra.

She left them dangling there and turned to face the wall, taking in the shadowed ridge of material against her arms as her body continued to sway. Oh, but she wished she could see his face when he watched her undress just for him.

While her own nerve endings prickled and teased, she wondered how dark his eyes would grow, how hot they would flash, how long it would take him to get hard. How hard he would get. She wanted to stand behind him, run her hands from his shoulders to his wrists, wrap her arms around his waist and slide her palms down the bulge behind his fly.

Instead, she slipped her fingers between her own legs, pressing and pulling slowly up the front seam of her leggings until she reached the elastic waistband.

Then she began to sweat.

She felt the first buzz along her hairline, the second between her breasts. She imagined the feel of Jacob’s mouth nuzzling her there, breathing in the scent of her skin perfumed with nothing but arousal. Her breathing quickened.

She wanted to cup his head close, to guide his mouth to her taut nipples still covered by padded lace, to thread her fingers into his hair, which she knew had to be the texture of exquisite silk…

…as would be the soft skin between his legs that covered his testicles, and the skin drawn tight along the shaft and over the head of his penis. She moaned deeply in the back of her throat, where she imagined holding him, sucking him.

She wanted to take him as far into her mouth as he wanted to go. Her groan became a desperate whimper and, as she shimmied off her leggings and kicked them into a corner of the room, she imagined her tongue swirling up and down and around his cock.

She was unbelievably wet. The scent of her arousal was musky and mingled with that of the sheen of clean sweat now covering her skin. She stood in nothing but her bra and bikini panties. Even the soles of her feet were damp against the hardwood floor. The music swept her along, the notes reminiscent of the feel of hot sex, erotically potent, electrically charged.

She reached back and released the catch of her bra, all too aware that the video continued to capture her every move. Moves she’d never anticipated, spurred on by feelings she’d never expected to experience when she’d set her plan into motion.

She’d gone too far to stop, but she was not about to share the rest of this intimate dance. As the soft ivory satin and lace slipped from her arms to the floor, she took hold of the pole, swinging around and switching off the videotape.

She watched the garment fall in shadow, realizing that would be the last movement Jacob would see. But she continued to watch. To watch and to imagine that Jacob was doing the same. That he was watching, was touching, was the one bringing his hands to her breasts, tugging at her nipples. Oh, how she wished for his mouth.

With her bottom lip caught between her teeth, she massaged and kneaded until her touch became unbearable and her arousal equally in need of relief. She spread her legs, her hips working the music’s rhythm, rocking left, right, pumping forward, back. Bending at the waist, she drew her hands from her ankles to the crease where her hips met her thighs. And then, hooking her fingers into the elastic leg openings, she tugged her panties down and stood there, totally uninhibited and completely nude.

She splayed her hands over her abdomen, sweeping her palms down over the soft line of dark hair until she captured her swollen clit between the tips of her index fingers. She couldn’t help it; she cried out, the pressure sending her close to the edge. But she wasn’t ready to come. Not until she’d imagined Jacob’s deeper exploration.

She reached between her legs, her flesh swollen and bare, soft and sensitive beneath her practiced stroke. This is how I like it, she wanted him to know. Right here, softly, touch me, tease me, circle here, then slip inside. And she did, crying out at the penetration of one finger, then two.

She moved to the music and to Jacob’s imagined caress. Her body responded, and she took herself over, shuddering, shivering, wishing, oh, how she wished Jacob were here to physically finish what his image had started. Instead, she finished herself, released a final trembling sigh and pulled her hand from her body with a last lingering touch.

Several deep breaths later, she doused the hot lights, stopped the music and ejected the tape from the camera. Then she slipped back into her clothes. Jacob wouldn’t be in the office again until Monday, she realized, tugging up her leggings. That gave her time to concoct a clever comeback should he ask her what she was trying to prove.

She wanted to watch the tape, to see what he was going to see, but knew she’d never have the guts to send it off if she witnessed herself baring all. No, she thought, tucking the tape into the padded mailer she’d addressed earlier.

As much as she’d rather have Jacob discover the rest of her personality’s facets one-on-one, he’d made the first move in this sex, lies and videotape business.

Her striptease was simply move number two.

IF NOT FOR THE CHANCE to spend time with Renata, Jacob wouldn’t have come. It was August in Houston, and it was too friggin’ hot for a cookout. Damn fool thing to do, he grumbled, forgetting where he’d put his cajones. That particular forgetfulness made it hard not to be whipped and dragged around by Chloe’s sugary-sweet pleas.

He grumbled again and exited the Southwest Freeway into the historical neighborhood where she and Eric lived. The woman had better make good on her promise of free-flowing beer. That was all he had to say. And Renata damn well better show. Those were the only reasons he was here.

Well, those and the fact that, thanks to Melanie Craine, he’d been walking around for two days now with a World Series bat between his balls. More than once on the way over, he’d had to shift and adjust the goods just to be able to drive comfortably.

The way this group of women stuck together like racked billiard balls, he figured Melanie would be here today. And he had a payback to deliver. In the end, that had been the deciding reason he’d blown off a Saturday afternoon baseball game at Minute Maid Park.

Yeah, that’s why he was here. To even the score.

Not because he couldn’t wait to get a look at what she was wearing and spend the rest of the afternoon trying to get her out of her clothes.

He pushed away the thoughts long enough to navigate the narrow streets without running his truck up onto a curb. He wouldn’t think about Melanie’s amazing body again until he’d parked. He’d think, instead, about a lesser reason he’d come: Chloe’s claim that the party was a bribe to get Renata to join gUIDANCE gIRL as a consultant.

His sister said she never saw him often enough, so Chloe had begged him to come. Not that he minded being used by a gorgeous woman—witness him offering himself for more of Melanie’s games—but Jacob didn’t think his sister needed much in the way of persuasion.

She was an expert at dispensing advice, having done so since grade school when she’d been eight, he’d been eleven and she’d told him to always have extra change for the ice-cream man in case Kelly Sims was broke. Renata, champion of the weak and wounded, crusader for a woman’s right to have her ice cream and eat it, too, would fit right in with the rest of the gIRL-gEAR women.

Even recognizing that female bonding potential, he wasn’t having an easy time figuring out the dynamics of the group. He was hoping today he’d pick up a few clues. Most of his video work didn’t require personal involvement with clients. But this assignment was different.

Documentary or not, if he made this show work, he could write his own career ticket. Any number of NYC-based production companies would wet their proverbial pants after seeing a show of this caliber on his résumé. The inheritance he’d received from his paternal grandmother had allowed him to outfit his own studio and perfect his craft on top-of-the-line equipment. And getting to know the women away from the office would go a long way to making sure the shoot turned out to be his best ever.