Tease

That had scared her a little. Still did. Especially given that just thinking about it made her hot and twitchy. Like now.

“Enough, Tess,” she warned. “You’re not a college kid anymore, and Danny Gabriel is not an incarnation of Wiley.” Despite the sensual features and the seductive ways. All Gabriel did was kiss her.

She got up from her desk and went over to the water dispenser, hoping a cold drink would put out the fire. On the way she passed the Messerschmitt mounted on the wall. “Give it your best shot,” she said softly. “I’m pretty fast.”

She drank several tiny paper cups of water and went back to her desk. This wasn’t her first time dealing with sluice gates. She was a healthy thirty-two-year-old woman, who’d been celibate for a very long time, and she’d had to find creative ways to deal with the situation. Quite by accident, she’d discovered a certain yoga position that had brought about some spontaneous relief. It might even have made the Cosmo orgasm quiz.

She needed to start doing yoga again. Quickly.

She was thinking fondly about her version of the full lotus position when the phone rang. It was the landline, which reminded her that her PDA was still missing. She’d looked everywhere, including the lost and found in the coffee lounge. She’d stopped by security this morning and reported it. She’d also picked up a replacement phone, but it contained none of her vital information, of course.

She went back to studying the glossies as she picked up the receiver. “Tess Wakefield,” she said.

“I know who you are. I just don’t know why you’re not here.”

Tess had a moment of confusion. The male voice struck a familiar chord, but she didn’t know how to respond. It had to be Danny. “Where are you?”

“Waiting for you down here in the Sandbox.”

“The Sandbox? Why are you there?”

“Tess, hello! It’s Andy. We’re all waiting for you down here in the sandbox. You called a team meeting this morning, remember?”

Tess fell back in her chair. Suddenly her heart was pounding when before it had been utterly still. She’d just daydreamed her way through fifteen minutes of the session she’d scheduled with her team. And after all the peptalking she’d done, trying to impress upon them how important it was for them to be prepared. Oh, yes, she definitely needed to get busy with those naughty fingers.

“Okay, this is major,” Carlotta told the team. “We choose one man and one woman with tremendous potential, and we call them Faustini spokesmodels. We create images for them that are totally distinctive, maybe something like Darth Vader for the man.”

Tess had been hoping for something other than Darth Vader, but Carlotta clearly loved the idea. Her expression said she was waiting for affirmation, applause, something. Her shapely butt was perched in a belt swing that hung from the ceiling on chains. Andy had taken the other swing, right next to her, and the rest of the team was sitting around the conference table, which was an old-fashioned picnic table.

Of all the agency’s themed conference rooms, the Sandbox was the favorite, probably because it suggested a day at the beach. Only a wall-size wipe board and a flip chart said business as usual. Otherwise, the wedge-shaped room was lined with real bamboo in naturalistic planter boxes, and the floor was exotic pink sand, imported from somewhere in the South Pacific. The rustic table could have been found at any state park, and the ceiling was painted sky blue. Several large skylights washed the room in sunny yellow.

Natural light, bare feet and sifting sands were supposed to inspire greatness, apparently. Mostly, they inspired Tess to nap like a cat in the sunshine, but that was about it. All this outer pressure and inner tension was getting to her.

“Batman and Catwoman?” Andy suggested.

“That’s distinctive?” Carlotta’s tone dismissed him. “With my idea, we save the client money because the spokesmodels do the entire campaign, and we create magnificent brand identification.”

“Only if the models are magnificent,” Tess countered.

“They will be—”

“Listen to this,” Brad cut in. He rose from the picnic table, his bare feet squishing in the sand. “We set the photo shoot in one of those hot new S&M clubs in the city. We’ll find ourselves the fucking Prince of Darkness and outfit him in Faustini.”

“I love it!” Carlotta squealed.

Tess wasn’t thrilled with the concept, nor did she think Faustini would be, but she was curious where her team might take it. “What about the woman?”

“Streetwalker chic? Gothic glam?” Brad offered his suggestions with a shrug. “I disagree that we need to be distinctive. Faustini already is distinctive. We need to get low-down and dirty. Make people notice.”

“What’s wrong with pulling women’s underwear out of a briefcase?” Andy said, apparently referring to his idea from yesterday.

Tess reached for her tote, where she’d put the manila envelope with the glossies. A moment later she had the pictures fanned across the picnic table like a large deck of cards.

“Good luck finding Darth Vader in this bunch” she said, “and by the way, I’m not sold on the club idea.”

Jan Butler got up from the table and went over to the wipe board, where she grabbed a grease pen and wrote two words.

“Performance advertising,” she said, turning to the group. “We hire actors in all the major cities to walk around in their underwear carrying Faustini cases, chanting ‘Clothes don’t make the man, Faustini does.’”

“And get our client charged for indecent exposure?” Tess shivered.

“Or,” Butler said, not giving up, “we could hire the actors to be human billboards, print Faustini across their foreheads and send them into the streets. It worked for a company named SnoreStop.”

Everyone laughed, but it didn’t work for Tess. “Sorry,” she said, “it’s back to the drawing board, everybody. I really am sorry.”

Andy fell out of the swing and onto his knees, pretending to collapse as he sank into the sand. His meaning was obvious. Tess was asking too much. It didn’t escape any of them. Nobody looked happy about her announcement, and neither was she. They were working 24/7 now, and they were running out of time. The meeting with Faustini was scheduled for late next week, but prior to that there was a dress rehearsal for Erica. If the boss wasn’t happy, Tess was screwed.

Tess quelled the urge to end the meeting with a pep talk. She couldn’t very well whip the group into shape when she’d just nixed all their ideas and didn’t have anything to offer herself. It was up to her now.

“He’s hot,” Mitzi said as Tess came out of the stall.

“Who’s hot?” Tess straightened her jeans and cashmere turtleneck as she walked to the counter, wondering if the sweater’s oatmeal color was washing her out a bit. She used to be a blue-eyed blonde. In this light everything looked dishwatery, even her eyes.

She glanced over at Mitzi, startled to see the washroom attendant holding up a glossy of one of the male models from the stack Tess had left on the counter.

“That’s my work you’re going through,” Tess said.

“Of course.” Mitzi seemed confused. “That’s why you left it out, isn’t it? A lot of the creatives consult me on their ideas, and I assumed—What? You didn’t want me to look at the pictures?”

Tess felt as if she should be angry, but she didn’t have the energy. “I was in a hurry. I left it on the counter because it was awkward taking it into the stall.”

“I see. Well, if you don’t want my input, that’s strictly up to you.”

Mitzi was quiet for exactly two seconds. Tess counted. One one-thousand, two one-thousand.

“But if I were you—” Mitzi flapped the picture, a young stud in a black biker’s jacket and low-slung jeans, “I’d give this cutie a Faustini briefcase with fake dials and have him turn it on like it was a boom box. He could be walking down the street with it, bopping along, and suddenly there are a bunch of tall sexy women coming his way, and they surround him and make him dance with them.”

Tess cocked her head. The idea had some originality at least. “How did you know who the client was? Did you read my notes, too?”

“Well, sure, I thought that’s why you left the envelope. The slogan could go something like ‘Faustini makes you feel like dancing.’ You know, from the song? But, it’s up to you. If you don’t want my opinion, I’ll keep it to myself.”

The slogan wasn’t too bad, either, Tess allowed. Of course, she couldn’t steal Mitzi’s ideas. It wouldn’t be ethical, and she really couldn’t blame Mitzi for looking at the pictures. If Tess didn’t want people messing with her stuff, she shouldn’t be giving them the opportunity, which included the information on her PDA.

Meanwhile, Mitzi looked wounded, and Tess felt guilty.

“I really should hire you,” Tess said. “Your ideas make more sense than a photo shoot in an S&M club, which seems to be the way my team wants to go.”

“S&M? For Faustini?”

The voice came from one of the stalls. It was followed by the music of a flushing toilet, and then the door opened, and Danny Gabriel appeared.

The man had amazing timing. If eavesdropping were an Olympic event, he’d take the gold.

His hands lifted away from his fly, and the graceful movement drew Tess’s gaze directly there. Fortunately, he was already busy tucking his tuxedo-front white dress shirt into his pants and didn’t notice her gawking. He wore old-fashioned blue jeans, but the fit was killer. The waist was low and the legs were high, stovepipes that shot all the way to his crotch, creating a cupping effect.

She could almost imagine placing her hand there…and squeezing.

Good grief. She would need a lobotomy to remove the image from her brain.

Mitzi slipped off her stool, scurrying to turn on a faucet for him and get a towel ready. Tess moved away from the counter, making way for Mr. Hot Pants. It was clear who got the royal treatment around here.

Tess would have to be very sure not to bow and scrape. “Why didn’t you let somebody know you were in there?” she asked him.

He shook water droplets from his hands and took the paper towel Mitzi offered. “Is that a new rule?”

He glanced over his shoulder, as if expecting an answer. She’d forgotten what she said. The jeans worked from this angle too. The back pockets cupped the part of him that seemed to be the birthright of the male gender. A great tight smackable butt.

“I wasn’t serious about the S&M,” she told him quickly. She didn’t want that getting back to the client.

“I was. It’s a great idea.” He caught her reflection in the mirror.

She didn’t look away, but she wanted to. He was so fucking confrontational. She debated telling him it wasn’t his campaign to be serious about, but her covert mission was to teach Mr. Gabriel to play nice, so she held her fire. There would be plenty of opportunities to enlighten him.

In a calm, neutral voice, she said, “In my first meeting with Faustini’s head of North American operations, he told me that he didn’t want sex, drugs and rock and roll. He was very clear about Faustini’s parameters. No nudity, profanity, silver studs or whips.”

“Then you have to give them nudity, profanity, silver studs and whips because that’s exactly what they do want. They’ve just given you a glimpse of their libidinal desires. They’re telling you what’s forbidden to them—and down deep everybody wants what’s forbidden, including Faustini’s customers.”

“You’re telling me to try and convince Faustini that an S&M club should be their new image? Who should I suggest as their spokesmodel? Satan?”

His expression brightened. “Can you think of anybody better? However, I’d call him the Prince of Darkness. It’s more romantic.”

“Now we’re romanticizing Satan? Pratt-Summers already has a reputation of not being sensitive to the client’s needs,” she reminded him pointedly, “and it’s losing the agency business. Clients know they can go elsewhere and be heard. And given the cost of advertising these days, they want to be heard. Faustini has hired us to do a job. They’re our employer.”

“Exactly, they hired us to do our job. We don’t make leather goods. That’s their job, and we don’t try to tell them how to do it. They shouldn’t tell us how to do advertising.”

Tess was momentarily stymied. “Okay…but there’s a significant difference. We’re not buying their leather goods. They’re buying our ads, and they should get what they want.”

“What they need, yes. What they want? Never.”

Tess sighed. It was axiomatic that you couldn’t succeed in advertising by ignoring the client, and yet Danny Gabriel had been doing it very successfully for years. He probably would have gone on doing it had Erica Summers not decided to change the game plan. These days Erica was more interested in expansion than in awards and prestige. She wanted Pratt-Summers to have a global presence, and that meant they needed to attract more traditional clients, like financial institutions and insurance companies, the type who would be terrified of putting their image in the hands of Danny Gabriel.

The hands of Danny Gabriel.

He touched her ankle, innocently positioning it, and streamers of light shot up her thighs, straight to her—

Tess tried to block the image, but she’d had far too much personal experience with his hands. They’d burned sensory impressions into her brain that replayed at the slightest provocation, like now. She felt like a post-trau-matic stress victim.

She looked up to see him looking at her too, but not her hands. Her eyes. He was gazing into her washed-out eyes with abject interest.

“Did you know that women can have orgasms that last up to an hour?” he said, his voice dropping to an intimate whisper. “And they stop breathing for minutes at a time, like a deep-sea diver.”

Jesus, no wonder he reminded her of Wiley. That could have been straight out of her professor’s mouth.

“Well, thank you for sharing,” she said, trying to keep her composure. “No, I didn’t know that. I doubt if Mitzi did, either.”

Mitzi was looking through the pictures and making notes on them with Tess’s grease pen. “Of course I knew that,” she said, not bothering to look up. “I had one this morning. Forty-five minutes, but who’s counting.”

What was it with this agency and orgasms? One would think they had the Viagra account. Mitzi spoke from proud personal experience. Tess wondered if Gabriel did, as well. Everyone in the place seemed to have the most incredible sex life. Was it something Mitzi was selling?

“If we’re going to talk business,” Tess said to Gabriel, hoping to steer the conversation back to exactly that, “maybe we should go somewhere else.”

Danny smoothed back tendrils of dark hair, tucking them into his ponytail. “I’m sure Mitzi doesn’t mind. She knows everything there is to know about this place, anyway.”

“Hopefully, she’s not a spy,” Tess said under her breath.

“Here’s a thought.” He glanced at his watch. “You know about our massage room, don’t you? I have one scheduled in ten minutes, and the room has two tables. I could ask the masseuse to work on both of us. She won’t mind. She can switch back and forth, and we can talk.”

He liked the idea. She could tell by his smile.

“A couples massage,” he said.

Tess thought about that. She really did. Naked in the same room with him, sharing the same masseuse, a woman who would be moving back and forth between them, her hands all over him and then those same hands rubbing all over Tess. Something about that made her nervous.

“I’ll pass,” she said. “Massages put me to sleep. I’d never be able to concentrate.”

“In that case, sit and talk to me while I have a massage.”

Somehow that option didn’t make Tess any less nervous. “Not this time,” she said.

“Rain check, then?”

“Oh, right, definitely. For sure.”

Gabriel took a money clip from his pocket. He pulled out a couple of bills that looked suspiciously like fifties, walked over to Mitzi and tucked them in the pocket of her navy blue duster coat. He thanked her without saying what for, nodded to Tess, and left.

As soon as the door closed, Tess turned to Mitzi. “What the hell was that about?”

“The one-hour orgasm?” Mitzi grinned. “One of his accounts is a pharmaceutical giant that’s developed the female equivalent of Viagra. Danny’s doing his research.”

So, Tess hadn’t been too far off about the Viagra. But she hadn’t meant the orgasm question. She’d meant the money. Was that an exorbitant tip, or was Gabriel paying Mitzi money owed for something he’d bought? It smacked of something more clandestine, like a drug deal or a bribe, but he’d hardly do those things in front of Tess. Was he buying her cooperation, maybe her silence?

Tess got closer to Mitzi, speaking in whispers. “You said something about Danny Gabriel having a secret.”

“I also said I couldn’t reveal it.”

“Name your price. I’ll pay.” If Mitzi was an information broker, Tess wasn’t above greasing her palm.

Mitzi just smiled. “Here’s your dominatrix for the Faustini ad,” she said, handing Tess the stack of glossies. “She’s right on top.”

The model Mitzi had picked was a long-lashed beauty with cat eyes, black-cherry lips and an evil smile. She would be the perfect Mistress of Pain, if Tess were going that route. But she wasn’t.

She thanked Mitzi, but did not slip any money into her pocket. The information broker would have to do better than that.

Chapter Five

Tess stood on the corner, clutching her tote to her body for warmth as she waved at the cabs sailing by. Someone should have warned her that a standard-issue quilted coat wouldn’t cut it this time of year. Was this New York or Antarctica? It was so cold her breath had created an impenetrable fog bank, which might be the reason cabs weren’t stopping. They couldn’t see her.

It was nearly midnight. She’d just finished working on the Faustini campaign, and her next mission was to get home. Not as easy as it sounded for a native Californian in New York. She’d decided to hail a cab rather than take the subway at this hour. Her furnished two-bedroom condo on the Upper East Side was owned by the agency and used for consultants and commuting executives, but Erica Summers had promised it to Tess, rent free, for as long as she was with the agency. That had cinched the deal for Tess. Finding an affordable apartment in Manhattan was not unlike a quest for the Holy Grail.

“Help the crazy freezing woman!” White steam plumed from Tess’s mouth. She had little personal cab-hailing experience—people drove their own cars in L.A.—but she’d been coached by Andy to be aggressive. Curse at them, he’d said. Flip them the bird. Speak their language, and they’ll stop every time, out of respect.

Tess might have to throw her body in front of their wheels to get respect tonight. Interesting that she was feeling almost ballsy enough to do it. She’d made some incredible progress in the last several hours. She’d actually come up with a concept and roughed out the print ads for the Faustini campaign.

Her imagination was still soaring. Brad Hayes had inspired the idea when he’d suggested goth glam, which didn’t quite cover all the bases, in Tess’s opinion. She’d tweaked it a bit and come up with Elegant Goth, reasoning that elegance would satisfy the loyal Faustini customers, and the gothic touch would attract the new young, hip crowd they wanted. It would either be the perfect crossover, or it would miss both markets and totally tank.

But Tess had a good feeling about it. And her team had liked the concept too, at least the ones she could reach. She’d arranged an emergency after-hours conference call to brainstorm the idea, and she, Andy, Brad and Carlotta had patched together a print layout with the Elegant Goth theme. Tess had been refining it until moments ago.

“Over here!” she yelled as a cab veered toward her. It rolled past her at a good clip and stopped up the street, brakes screeching. Tess broke into a run, struggling with her coat and bag, and praying the cab wouldn’t take off without her. The back door opened magically as she reached the car, and she piled inside. The only thing on her mind was escaping the cold.

She gave the driver her address as she pulled the door shut. Panting, she turned to throw her tote on the seat beside her and saw that something was already there. Or rather, someone. A man.

“Oh! I didn’t know the cab was occupied—” Several startling truths hit Tess all at once. She couldn’t get out of the cab. The driver had already taken off. They were speeding down the street, and beams from the streetlights illuminated the other passenger’s face. His shadow-carved features were disturbingly familiar. She could even see the scar.

“Danny Gabriel? What are you doing?”

The very slowness of Gabriel’s smile made it seem sinister. Tess sprang up to get the driver’s attention, but Gabriel blocked her. He clamped a hand over her mouth and pulled her back with him, mauling her in a way that would have been quite obscene, if not for the quilted coat.

“The Marquis Club,” he told the driver. To Tess he said in a low, mock-menacing voice, “You’re coming with me. Don’t say a word, and you won’t get hurt.”

Tess pried his hand off her mouth. “You’ve been watching too many movies. All I have to do is scream, and the driver will call the police.”

Gabriel shook his head in slow motion. “Not after the wad of cash I gave him. Besides, I told him we were regulars of the club, and we’re playing out a little fantasy. It happens all the time.”

It was beginning to dawn on Tess that this had to be a joke. Coworkers didn’t take each other hostage in taxis in the middle of the night.

“The Marquis Club?” she said. “That’s at the Marriott Marquis Hotel, right? On Forty-second Street?”

Danny just laughed. “Sweetheart, it’s marquis as in Marquis de Sade, and it’s the perfect backdrop for the Faustini campaign.”

“But that sounds like—”

“An S&M club. You’re going to love it. But don’t feel like you have to thank me. We all work for the same agency, right?”

“But we’re not all on the same team. How did you know I was working late? Are you spying on me?”

“Mmm.” His voice dropped low. “Your every move.”

Okay, maybe this wasn’t a joke. Tess weighed her options. She didn’t lack nerve. She’d moved to New York on her own, but going to an S&M club with him was about as safe and sane as flipping off a cabdriver. In other words, not.

“Pull over,” she told the driver. “I’m getting out here.”

The driver glanced into the rearview mirror, apparently humoring her with his quick nod and smile. He did not pull over.

“He thinks it’s part of the game,” Gabriel said.

“Well, game’s over!” Tess tapped at her watch. “Do you realize what time it is? I scheduled a run-through with Erica Summers tomorrow at eight-thirty.”

“That’s why we’re hitting the club tonight. You have to see this place to believe it.”

“Hey, I already have the concept for the ad, and I’m not changing it. I want to go home and sleep.” She shot him a hard stare. “Why do you care what I do with the Faustini account? Unless you want me to make a wrong move and fall on my face.”

“That’s cold,” he said. “The account was supposed to have been mine, and I put in a lot of time thinking about it.”

“Sounds like a reason to want to sabotage me, not help me.”

“It would be, if I worked that way. This is a concept you might have learned in kindergarten, Tess. It’s called sharing.”

Conviction again. And it was very convincing when he decided to turn it on. A shock of dark hair had worked its way free from his ponytail and was flirting with his jawline. He didn’t bother with it. She wanted to. It was difficult not to wonder what he’d look like with his hair loose and flowing. Way out of style these days, but probably wildly sensual on him. The man could have invented sex. It was that bad.