A Stranger's Touch

“Ha ha,” Jena said. “I’m serious.”

Dulcy dropped her gaze and cleared her throat, then told a bald-faced lie. “What if I told you I don’t have one?”

Jena scoffed. “Everyone has a sexual fantasy, even Marie here. Don’t you, Marie?”

“Oh, yes. But we’re not talking about me. I still have plenty of time to fulfill mine. Dulcy’s the one getting married.”

Dulcy stared at them pointedly. She’d never been very comfortable discussing items of a personal nature. Being amused and sometimes appalled by Jena’s behavior was one thing. Telling her friends when she had her period or how frustrated she was that she and Brad hadn’t slept together yet…well, that was quite another. She knew her discomfort was due in large part to her upbringing. You could live in a conservative, emotionally repressed household for only so long before some of it rubbed off on you. In her case, it was talking about intimate matters.

She slumped back against the booth. “God. You’re not going to let me off the hook on this one, are you.”

“Uh-uh.”

“No.”

“Okay, then…” Resigning herself to the fact that putting them off would only make things worse, Dulcy searched her mind, trying to come up with something that would please them. “Okay. My secret sexual fantasy is a night of white-hot passion with an anonymous bad-boy.”

Jena grimaced. “Been there.”

“Done that,” Marie agreed.

Dulcy lifted her brows. “You have?”

Jena waved her away. “Never mind us. We’re talking about you. And certainly even you can do better than that. Half the female population has that fantasy.”

Okay, so she was a cliché. Wouldn’t be the first time. She twisted her lips and looked around the hockey-player-choked bar, then through the glass doors to the lobby of the hotel. The silhouette of a man seemed to appear out of nowhere. She swallowed hard. Boy, could her imagination work overtime with a little help from tequila. The silhouette moved closer to the club, then halted in the doorway, his face concealed, his body the stuff of which dreams were made. Tall. Broad shouldered. Long legged. Rock hard.

Every single last urge she had hoped she’d drowned with the liquor came rushing back tenfold. Especially when she realized the guy wasn’t an apparition at all, but a flesh-and-blood male who seemed to prowl rather than walk. His dusky skin hinted at a mixed heritage. The length of his longish black hair teased the back collar of his shirt.

All sorts of naughty thoughts popped to mind, suddenly making her task much easier. “Okay,” she said slowly, her throat mysteriously tight as she tugged her gaze away from the real thing and focused instead on imagination. “My secret fantasy is a night of white-hot passionate sex with an anonymous bad-boy…in an elevator.”

Jena’s gaze narrowed. Marie nodded encouragingly.

Dulcy’s pulse seemed to slow to a steady thrum as she worked her way through the vision. “I, um, would have on this short short skirt…and I wouldn’t be wearing any underwear. And he’d…um, he’d be wearing leather pants…black…” That was good. The guy who still stood at the door had on jeans. Close-fitting faded denim that hugged his crotch and thighs to perfection. “And he’d have leather straps in his pants pockets. Straps he’d use to tie my hands above my head….”

Dulcy couldn’t swallow, with the vivid pImages** in her head of open-mouthed kisses and soft moans; the glistening, silk-covered shaft of an erection pulsing in her hands; the scent of sex thick and musky, tanned skin pressing against her sensitive pale flesh.

Jena shifted, and Dulcy blinked her into view. It was the first time she’d seen her friend speechless. Afraid of how much she’d just revealed about herself, she curled her fingers into her palms and searched for a way out of the corner she’d painted herself into.

“Oh, and…there would be another hot guy standing in the corner of the elevator…watching.”

Judging by the way Jena’s brows shot up and the way Marie’s eyes bulged, she’d succeeded in her endeavor.

“You just made that up,” Jena accused.

Dulcy rubbed the side of her neck, glad she’d momentarily sidetracked her friends. The fact that the guy in her fantasies was real wasn’t improving her finely tuned condition any. “Okay, you’re right,” she lied. “But you have to admit, I had you two going.”

She’d also made herself more than a little hot and bothered. Not because she got into exhibitionism or S&M by any stretch. But the hot passion and the anonymous stranger part had long been a secret fantasy of hers. Ever since she’d graduated from ogling her high school P.E. teacher and had taken to privately rating men in public places on how she thought they might perform in bed. Like having coffee at the café around the corner from their office and summing up the young, athletic waiter in the tight black pants that left very little to the imagination. Or dining out at her favorite Mexican restaurant and watching the hot Latin dancer teach customers how to tango, making her wonder how he danced in bed. Or during lulls at work, eyeing the building’s new maintenance man, whose biceps practically split the seams of his shirt while he fixed the rash of broken light fixtures.

Dulcy twisted her lips. Curiously enough, all three examples were from the past week alone.

Her wedding—and wedding night—couldn’t come soon enough for her.

Jena folded her forearms on top of the table. “Okay, since you’re not interested in sharing your real fantasy with us…tell me, Dulcy, why did you say earlier that you have to lie to get married?”

Dulcy made a face. “I did not.”

“You most certainly did.”

Had she? She thought back and realized that, yes, she had, when she’d suggested that maybe Marie wasn’t married yet because of her inability to lie. “It was a joke,” she said.

“No, it wasn’t. You don’t make those kinds of jokes. Does it have something to do with Brad?”

“Jeez, Louise—Jena, give a girl a warning before you go back to something we talked about two days ago.” Had she really just said ‘Jeez, Louise’? Horrified, she realized she had.

“It was five minutes ago, not two days. And are you going to answer my question?”

Dulcy grimaced. “I plead the fifth.”

“It’s impossible to incriminate yourself with us, Dulc.”

When Dulcy merely smiled, Jena sat up. “Would you like me to rephrase the question in a simple yes-or-no format?”

Dulcy pursed her lips, then said, “Yes.”

“Okay. Did you lie to your groom, your husband-to-be, one certain Mr. Hottie,” she glanced at Marie, having used her name for Brad, “today?”

“Yes.”

“Did it have to do with sex?”

“No.”

Jena frowned. “Damn. Okay…did it have to do with your friends, one Ms. Jena McCade and Ms. Marie Bertelli?”

Dulcy went completely still, the question hitting a little too close to home. “Well…it’s more complicated than that—”

“A simple yes or no will do, Ms. Ferris.” Jena looked to Marie. “May I request Your Honor instruct the witness to respond in the manner requested and agreed upon?”

Dulcy looked to Marie, the session’s judge, hopefully.

“Answer the question, Ms. Ferris.”

Dulcy gaped at her. Marie never sided with Jena. “Okay, then…yes. Yes, the lie I told to Brad had to do with you two.”

She didn’t realize the weight of the question and corresponding answer until silence settled on the table. She blinked to stare at her empty shot glass, avoiding her friends’ curious looks.

Jena had warned her last month during a cocktail party at the Wheeler estate that Brad would try to break up their friendship after he placed the old rock and ring on her finger. Dulcy had laughed at her, thinking the prospect ridiculous…until Brad had asked her earlier today why only Jena and Marie were involved in her bachelorette party. And why his mother Beatrix—who looked remarkably like Betty White on steroids—wasn’t included, as she wanted to be. During the drive into town, she, herself, had begun to wonder whether or not Jena’s warning held any water. If Brad did disapprove of her friends now, what would happen after they were married? Would he begin by suggesting they leave one or the other of them off the list of dinner invites in deference to one of his friends or family members? Would he suggest they go to his family’s for the holidays, essentially banning her from spending time with Jena and Marie?

She’d snapped her mouth open to make it clear to Brad that her friendship with Jena and Marie wasn’t up for debate. But there weren’t enough words in existence to convey the special bond that had developed among the three of them when they were kids. A tragic incident with Jena’s parents had inspired in each of them an interest in law, and that interest had taken them through the bar exam and eventually to their recently formed law practice in partnership with Barry Lomax. Then she’d decided that she wasn’t going to be placed in the position of defending her friendship with Jena and Marie. It was a fact he’d just have to accept.

Concerning her mother-in-law to be, she’d told Brad that bachelorette parties were traditionally for the bride’s peers. Besides, Beatrix scared the living hell out of her.

As for the lie…she’d told Brad the three of them were going to dinner and a movie, then staying at Jena’s afterward.

“Let’s dance.”

Startled, Dulcy looked up to find Jena getting up from the booth. “What? Without—”

“Men? Absolutely.” Jena tugged on Marie’s hand; Marie in turn grabbed Dulcy’s.

Giving a protest yip, she found herself stumbling down the aisle toward the dance floor set up in front of the band. They were playing Seger’s “Old Time Rock ’n’ Roll” and the decibel level was ear splitting up this close.

Jena easily found her groove, shimmying and shaking in that spontaneous way Dulcy had always secretly admired. Marie began clapping her hands, not nearly as graceful and slightly out of step, but having a good time.

Dulcy shrugged. Why not? She could do this. After all, it was her last real night as a single woman. Surely even she deserved to cut loose and have a bit of fun with her best friends.

With that, she threw her hands up in the air and began shaking her hips in a way she hoped wasn’t too ludicrous.

GREAT. HIS FIRST NIGHT OUT in three months and he had to pick a gay bar.

Quinn Landis leaned against the highly polished bar and eyed three men standing nearby. They looked like models from a Gap commercial—as did every other male in the place—and they didn’t seem to mind that there was nary a female in sight. He frowned, then asked the bartender for a beer. When he was handed an ice-cold bottle, he leaned across the bar. “What’s going on tonight?”

“Sir?”

Quinn gestured with the neck of his bottle toward the guys.

The tender grinned. “Hockey team staying in the hotel.”

“Oh.” He paid the man, including a generous tip. “Thanks.”

Gripping his beer, Quinn made his way toward the only empty table in the place, a small one near the dance floor. He hooked his foot around a chair leg, pulled it out and sat. Okay, so the joint wasn’t a gay bar. But considering the low percentage of female clientele, he might soon wish he were anywhere but here. His odds of snagging a prime, long-legged woman interested in spending an hour between the sheets with him were looking slim, with all these jocks roaming the place. He glanced to where a waitress was taking a swat to the bottom from the guys at the neighboring table. Her grimace made him grin. Then again, maybe his chances weren’t that bad, after all.

Good. After three months on the range, with nothing but fellow weathered ranch hands as company, he needed to get laid. As soon as humanly possible. Tonight. It was the reason he’d stopped at the hotel for the night rather than heading straight for his best friend Brad Wheeler’s family estate. He needed the release before he could even think of facing his friend and hearing all the details about his upcoming nuptials. Besides, merely thinking of Brad’s mother Beatrix Wheeler made him roll his eyes. Would the self-proclaimed Queen of Albuquerque appreciate his having trimmed his hair for the occasion, rather than relying on a simple leather cord to hold it back? He doubted it. To her, he’d always been that offensive boy Brad had dragged home when they were kids, no matter the style of his hair.

Married.

Quinn settled back more comfortably into the chair. He couldn’t believe Brad was getting married. Of the two of them, he’d figured he’d be the one to settle down long before his restless friend. Well, he supposed he had settled before Brad, at least in an important way. Only, his lifestyle didn’t include a woman. Not many females were interested in life on an isolated ranch where you had to drive over an hour just to go to the market. He’d thought he’d roped one, once. He wasn’t about to make that mistake again. But Brad…

He shook his head and took a hefty swallow of beer. Since he was a kid, Brad’s mother had tried to force him into a mold that spoke of wealth, power and kowtowing…mostly to her. But while Brad could wear a tuxedo like he was born in one, he’d also thought nothing of hanging out with wrong-side-of-the-tracks Quinn. And while Brad had the latest model Jaguar, the fifth one he’d gone through since coming of age, Quinn still had the old Chevy in need of some TLC that he’d bought when he was sixteen with money he’d made breaking his back on his uncle’s ranch.

And while Brad had embraced the idea of running his family business, Wheeler Industries, Quinn was satisfied with the spread he’d bought from his uncle three years ago. He enjoyed getting his hands dirty—literally—and working a muscle other than his brain.

He peered through the scant couples on the dance floor toward the band. The sax player wasn’t bad. Hmm…neither was the female backup singer. He had just shifted to get a better look, when three women passed in front of him, blocking his view—correction—improving the view. Taking a long, slow pull from his beer bottle, Quinn considered the threesome, who were obviously minus three guys.

The black-haired one definitely had possibilities. She moved that slender body of hers in a way that virtually guaranteed she’d be killer in bed. His gaze slid to the redhead. She wasn’t bad. Obviously shy but with the pink tinge to her cheeks and a fire in her eyes that revealed she could be coaxed to take risks.

He put his bottle down on the table and sat up, trying to see around to the blonde’s face. She put her hands up in the air, attempting to emulate the brunette’s steps…then fell smack-dab in the middle of his lap.

He grinned.

Bingo.

2

ONE MINUTE Dulcy was dancing—at least she preferred to call it dancing while Jena called it clucking—and the next minute she was sprawled across the very warm, very hard lap of a guy sitting next to the dance floor.

Okay, no more tequila for her.

She laughed at her silent quip, then tried to gain a foothold. “I’m sorry. I…must have tripped.”

She twisted to get up, her bottom rubbing against the man’s…strategic area.

His groan caught her off guard and she blinked up into his face. Then blinked again. Not because she was having difficulty seeing. But because if she wasn’t mistaken, she had just landed on top of the star of her most recent fantasy—the guy from the door. And, oh boy, he was even better this close up. Not since she was a teen and had plastered pictures of Sting all over her room—posters her mother had immediately taken down—had she reacted so strongly to the mere sight of someone.

Either that, or she was completely smashed.

“No hurry,” her fantasy lover said in a deep baritone, drawing the words out, sounding better than even her imagination could have supplied.

A delicious shiver ran the length of Dulcy’s spine, then inched back up again, leaving her stomach quivery and her breasts achy. She brazenly allowed her gaze to flick over the guy’s features. Over his broad forehead and thick shoulder-length jet-black hair, the type of hair a girl could lose her hands in. She took in his strong, tanned silk-covered jawline and criminally generous mouth, the kind a woman might be tempted to run the tip of her tongue along the rim of. Then she skimmed her gaze up along the length of his nose to lash-rimmed eyes the color of the amber tequila she had just gulped down with her friends, the sort of eyes that should bear a warning Dangerous Waters Ahead.

She blinked, just then realizing he was returning her gaze with equal intensity, his strangely penetrating, predatory…hungry.

But it was his grin that made her stomach yo-yo to the floor right next to her high-heeled shoes, then bounce back up again.

He cleared his throat, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple mesmerizing. “I was just sitting here, trying to come up with a good come-on line to use on you and, bam, you fall straight into my lap.” He straightened her when she would have slid to the floor. “If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.”

Dulcy clutched his shoulder to straighten herself, intrigued by the rock-hard muscles she felt bunched beneath the soft, beige chambray of his shirt. Brad wasn’t exactly soft, but he wasn’t this hard, either.

She noticed she had a good portion of the shirt clutched in her fist. She set about smoothing out the wrinkles, her huge diamond engagement ring flashing in the lights from the dance floor.

She snatched her hand back as if scorched. “I’ll say it’s a sign. It’s a sign that me and tequila don’t mix.”

She finally struggled to a standing position, finding the strange thunk-thunk of her heart disconcerting, and the burning in her lower abdomen completely foreign and as intoxicating as the tequila. She felt as if she’d barely escaped being hit by a charging horse.

“You can dress her up…” Jena’s voice edged its way through the silken cobweb crowding Dulcy’s mind. “Well, since you’ve already been personal with the man, don’t you think you should properly introduce yourself?”

Introduce herself? What was Jena talking about?

The man stood. And it seemed her gaze had to travel up and up, and up again before she could see his grin.

“I’m Quinn.”

Dulcy made a face. “Quinn? That’s the name of my—” She yelped when Jena elbowed her strongly in the ribs, the words “groom’s best friend” effectively lost.

Not that it mattered. Even though she’d yet to meet Brad’s mysterious friend, no exclusive, blue-blooded Wheeler associate, much less Brad himself, would ever be caught dead in a meat market like Rage. And the connecting hotel didn’t have nearly enough marble to be considered fashionable, which was one of the reasons why Dulcy had given in so easily to Jena’s demand that they come here. For one last night, she wanted to be in a place where no one gave a hoot who the Wheelers were. And the man in front of her, with his longish wild hair, his brawny body and decadently suggestive grin, would not only not care who the Wheelers were, but also effortlessly make her forget about them.

“I’m Jena,” her friend said, shaking the man’s very tanned, very large, very fascinating hand, and shaking Dulcy out of her reverie.

“Hi. I’m Marie.”

Dulcy watched dumbly as Marie followed suit, then stood back expectantly. Another nudge. She glared at Jena, then smiled at the stranger. What had he said his name was? Oh, yeah. Quinn. “I’m sorry to have—” she looked around, but saw that the other chair at the table was empty “—to have interrupted your evening, Quinn.”

“No name?”

“Oh. I’m—”

“Dee,” Jena said quickly. “Her name is Dee.”

Dulcy made a face at her. Why would Jena give him a name that she and Marie had used when they were kids? God, Dulcy couldn’t remember the last time either of them had called her that. Of course, she’d been the one to insist on the nickname when she was a teenager, hating that her given name was so different from everyone else’s. Jena was a derivative of Jenny or Jennifer, Marie…well, it went without saying that her name, as well, was common. Only Dulcy had been stuck with a peculiar name solely because it had belonged to some dead ancestor and her mother had liked it.

The man’s large, rough-skinned hand completely dwarfed hers as he took it, knocking her train of thought completely off track. Dulcy felt a strange vibration move up through her fingers, swirl around her arm, then travel the entire length of her body. Good God.

“It’s nice to meet you, Dee.”

“Me, too. I mean, it’s nice to meet you, too…Quinn.” The song “The Mighty Quinn” popped into her mind. Oh, yeah…the Quinn standing in front of her would, indeed, be mighty in all the ways a woman needed. She started at the thought, then grimaced. “Um, if you’ll excuse me…I think I’m going to be sick.”

WELL, AS FAR AS COMEBACKS WENT, Quinn had to say that Dee’s ranked right up there with some of the most memorable. While he wasn’t arrogant enough to think himself capable of charming any woman, he could safely say he’d never made one feel sick before.

Still, he couldn’t help grinning, as Dee teetered back on her heels. He hoped she didn’t plan to be sick that moment. On him.

Only she didn’t look sick to him. She looked…well, damn good. Rather than being bereft of color, her cheeks were flushed, and while her eyes were bright, he suspected it was more a result of their very close encounter just now than from whatever she’d had to drink.

“Okay, I think I’m going to be all right now,” she said, obviously relieved as she pushed her blond hair back from her face. “Yes. I’m fine. I just got…a little dizzy, that’s all.”

Dizzy was good, Quinn thought. Dizzy was real good.

The redhead stepped up and wrapped her fingers around Dee’s arms as if to steady her. “Are you sure? Would you like some water? Maybe you should sit down.”

Quinn deftly pushed the chair opposite him out. “Be my guest.”

The blonde looked from the small table to the empty chair to his face again. “I couldn’t,” she said, trying to back away.

“You can,” Jena said and steered her toward the table.

Quinn noted the interesting behavior. The brunette pushed and the blonde skidded a couple of inches, then stopped again. “I can’t,” she said, staring at her friend.

The other woman rolled her eyes to stare at the ceiling and sighed gustily. “Talk about wet blankets.”

Oh yeah. Sheets…silk ones…black, to contrast with the paleness of the blonde’s skin. Quinn waved a hand toward the empty chair. “Please. At least until you get your feet back under you.”

The brunette grinned, the blonde grimaced and the other one… Quinn looked to see her pirating a glass of water from a waitress’s tray. With a tad too much enthusiasm, she plopped it down on the table next to his beer.

Interesting…the two women appeared to be trying to hook their friend up with him. Which should have pleased him, if solely because it would make his job that much easier. But somehow the obvious attempt left him feeling a little ill at ease. He squinted and looked at them more closely. What were they up to? The one named Jena gave him a catty smile, Marie immediately avoided his gaze and the blonde…

Jena grasped Dee’s shoulder and firmly pushed her into the empty chair. Dee appeared as mystified by her friends’ behavior as he was. Quinn slowly sat back down in his own chair.

“We’ll be right over there,” Jena said and smiled. “You two have a good time…getting acquainted.”

The blonde made a grab at her friend’s arm, but the brunette seemed to anticipate the move and maneuvered around it. The redhead followed quickly behind her.

Quinn shook his head, then glanced at the woman across from him. “I think we’ve just been hooked up.”

She stared at him as if now remembering he was still there. She nearly knocked the chair over in an attempt to get up. Quinn quickly grasped the back of it. “Whoa, there. I don’t bite.” The soft silk of her blouse was warm to the touch as he steadied her back into the chair. “Although I have been known to nibble a little. Upon a lady’s invitation, that is.”