Triple Play

“So you think they’re real, not plastic?”

“Must we talk about the handcuffs?”

“Let’s just say you’ve aroused my...curiosity.”

“Well, you’re welcome to satisfy your...curiosity once I’m out of here. Despite the faux fur lining, they are not toy handcuffs and they’re still dangling from your headboard.”

“Fur-lined but still real? I doubt it. Show me where they are and I’ll try to open them.”

She rolled her eyes, wondering if he believed her a total sucker. Then again, her boss had made it pretty clear that she had to make Rand happy. If word got back to Dawn that a pair of handcuffs had been left for a valued customer to find and a staff member had refused to help remove them, the general manager would make good on her threat to fire Emily.

“Fine,” she snapped, heading toward the bed. He followed her, and she forced herself not to dwell on his being behind her. She didn’t want to remember the wild, angry, erotic thoughts she’d been having as she crawled out from under the bed, torn between humiliation, fury and the same crazy desire she’d felt for Rand from the day they’d met.

Dropping to her knees on the bed, close to the headboard, she bent over and reached her hand between the frame and the mattress. The metal cuffs dangled near the bottom of one slat, and she hooked her fingers into the free cuff and began to tug the set up. “I tried to open them from up here but it’s a pretty bad angle, which is why I was under the bed when you arrived.”

“I see.”

She looked over her shoulder and found him eyeing her backside. Yeah, he saw all right.

“Didn’t you get enough of an eyeful a little while ago?”

“No such thing as enough of an eyeful at something that great.”

Again torn between the anger and embarrassment and pleasure reactions, she turned and plopped her butt on the mattress. He sat beside her, watching as she drew the cuffs up the slat. Metal jangled as she lifted them as high as they would go. He reached over her lap and took the wrist cuff from her, which left both their hands hovering over her lap.

Heaven help me.

He examined the cuffs, testing the weight and the locking mechanism. “Pretty real, I’d say. There’s no matching one on the other side?”

Confused, she scrunched her brow.

“Well, one set wouldn’t do you much good. Unless you could somehow attach the chain part to the bed, leaving both wristcuffs free to be used.”

Now she got the picture. Oh, boy, did she ever get the picture. Being kept helpless on the bed, both hands restrained, able to do nothing but accept the pleasure a lover—Rand—wanted to give her...what woman wouldn’t immediately let her imagination drift?

But she couldn’t afford to drift and she certainly couldn’t afford to imagine. She wanted to get off the bed, remembering all too well that the last time she and Rand had been together, it had also been in a bed. A much smaller one, in a faraway state, but she’d certainly never forgotten the incident.

Unfortunately, his cuff-laden hand still blocked her path. If she lunged up, she’d be pushing her hips up against him in a way that would say anything except get off me.

“Wait a second,” he said. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a key chain that held a small utility knife. “Hold the cuff while I try to open the lock. If I can figure out how this side opens, I can climb under to get the attached side.”

That made sense, she supposed. No use breaking a wrist trying to open the attached side by shoving his big, powerful arm down behind the mattress. And no use crawling under the bed until he knew if it could be done. “Okay,” she said, watching as he bent to the task.

“You’re absolutely sure there’s only one set attached to the bed?”

“There’s only one.” The other one was in the bathroom drawer. “Even one is too many. Handcuffs definitely aren’t a hotel perk.”

“No, I suppose not. Glad you spotted them,” he said, an amused twinkle in those green eyes.

“I was double-checking the room to make sure it was ready for a guest; this one is usually not rented.” Realizing she hadn’t totally explained, she added, “I work here.”

“I know.”

Obviously he’d figured it out from their conversation and her attire. Yet, something in his expression made it seem like more than that, as if he’d been aware of that even earlier.

Ridiculous. He couldn’t have.

“Small world,” he said.

She grunted. “Too small.”

This had to be the most unlucky coincidence anyone had ever experienced. Okay, maybe getting engaged to a guy and then finding out you were twins separated at birth would be worse. But this was pretty damn bad.

“It’s been a long time, Em.”

“Not long enough.”

“Ouch.”

She was being bitchy, but she couldn’t help herself. Of course, considering that she hadn’t heard word one from him in years, even after the way they’d spent their last moments together, he deserved a little bitchiness.

In fairness, she’d been young and stupid and had instigated something she wasn’t ready for. She’d blamed herself a lot over the years for the way things had turned out. But Rand’s hands weren’t lily white. His falling-out with Seth hadn’t been entirely her fault.

“How’s your brother?” he asked, as if reading her mind.

“Fine. Married.”

He looked surprised. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Anybody I’d know?”

“His old high school sweetheart. They’d lost touch, but met up again at their ten-year reunion a couple of summers ago.”

His brow furrowed. “Hmm...Laura? Lauren? He talked about her once.”

Her turn to look—and feel—surprised. Not only that Seth would have told Rand about Lauren Desantos, but that Rand would remember her name so many years later.

“We were tight once, me and your brother, even before I became his client,” he said by way of explanation.

He didn’t continue, didn’t say the next logical sentence: Until you came between us.

She had, which was her biggest regret of all. And, possibly, one reason she was being so nasty to Rand. Her own sense of guilt and responsibility still weighed on her.

Rand and Seth had been friends in college, Seth being only three years ahead of the star athlete. And when their business partnership broke up, their friendship had, too. All because Seth’s horny, pushy little sister hadn’t been able to keep her hands to herself. And because Rand hadn’t seemed to mind all that much.

“So you haven’t spoken to him since—”

“No. I see him once in a while, at banquets and events, but we don’t speak.”

Her heart clenched in her chest and she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. Regret choked her, and she acknowledged again just how selfish she’d been.

“I’m really sorry about that, Rand,” she murmured, aware that the words were long overdue. She’d said them in the letters and messages she’d sent him after their last encounter, but they deserved to be spoken out loud. “I never meant to come between you two. I wouldn’t have...”

“It’s okay. Besides, it wasn’t all your fault. It takes two to tango.”

“Yeah. And you danced that night, too.”

He didn’t smile, that sexy grin didn’t flash, he simply stared at her, his eyes intense, as if he, too, recalled their last night with utter clarity.

“My turn to say I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I shouldn’t have let things go so far.”

She stiffened. “Don’t try to claim you weren’t interested.”

“Oh, I was interested,” he insisted. “Way too interested than I was supposed to be in my friend’s baby sister.”

“I wasn’t a baby!”

Well, she’d been kind of a baby.

They had met a month before Emily’s eighteenth birthday. She’d just graduated from high school and was primed to have a fun visit in SoCal with her big brother. She’d been thrilled to get away from her overprotective grandfather, who hadn’t let her even talk to a guy on the phone, much less actually go out with one. Having been a good girl for so long, she’d dreamed about getting a little wild even before she’d met Rand McConnell.

Once she’d met him and gotten to know him as an amazingly smart, funny, nice guy who was also über-hot, she’d been a goner.

“I was too old for you,” he said.

“Three years...”

“Is nothing now. But then? There’s a big difference between just-turned-eighteen and twenty-one, and I should have known better.”

Rand had graduated early from UCLA—he was gorgeous, talented and smart, talk about a triple threat—and had been expected to land in the big leagues. Everyone predicted he’d be a big star. Seth had signed him, worked with him, helping plan his career, which was supposed to be brilliant.

Well, his career had been brilliant, but Seth hadn’t taken him there. Because her brother had caught Rand and Emily in bed together and not only sent Emily back to their grandfather for the rest of the summer, but had dumped Rand as a client.

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