Naughty List

Naughty List

By

Willa Edwards

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Naughty List

Copyright© 2010 Willa Edwards

ISBN:
 
978-1-60088-624-9

Cover Artist:
 
Cris Griffin

Editor:
 
Lynne Anderson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

Cobblestone Press, LLC

www.cobblestone-press.com

Dedication

To all those I love. Those that are still with me and those I have lost. Thank you for all you’ve done to help me become the person I am, and all the love and support you’ve given me to fulfill my dreams.

Chapter One

“This is really what you want to do with your birthday?” Callie asked, looking up at Giselle with a quizzical stare. Personally she’d rather be in a bar, drinking peppermint martinis, but it wasn’t Callie’s choice.

“Yes.” Giselle responded quickly, handing out holiday pens like she did to the children in her classroom. Grabbing a sugar plum ballpoint for herself, Giselle dropped down on the cream-and-rose-striped couch beside Callie.

Giselle’s elaborate ranch-style home, decorated in every shade of beige, was at least much quieter and less crowded than a bar. And due to the crystal bowls filled with potpourri upon every end table and bookcase in the house, with the smell of pine and cinnamon to celebrate the season wafting from each dish, it probably smelled better too.

“How exactly does this work?” asked Amy, their friend and the drama teacher at their school, her bright smile infectious as she helped propel the gathering forward.

“Write down what you want you want in a partner on the page.” Giselle motioned to the elaborate holiday paper stacked on the Chippendale coffee table around which Callie and their three best friends sat. “Once you have the determination to ask for what you truly want in a man, the universe finds a way to guide him to you.”

Callie sucked on the end of her silver bell pen, thinking of the different traits she wanted to write down. Caring, empathetic, loves children, crystal-blue eyes, soot-black hair. There was no point in writing any of it. The man who fit that description felt nothing for her. Why seek to guide him her way?

“Like what kind of characteristics?” Mallory asked with a devilish glint in her almond eyes. “Big cock. Talented tongue. Stamina.”

Amy giggled. Giselle scowled.

Callie admitted the idea had promise. Her body heated as she fantasized of a thick cock buried deep within her, a black head buried between her legs, a warm, wet tongue stroking her sensitive flesh. She’d always been bored with a man buried between her thighs before, but with her Mr. Right she’d be willing to try again.

“If that’s all you want in a man,” Giselle snapped, and Mallory nodded enthusiastically, a large artificial smile spreading across her face at Giselle’s biting tone, “then yes.”

“How does it guide him to you?” Krista asked, hazel eyes bright with curiosity. From anyone else the question would have sounded sarcastic or insolent, but Krista’s tone was straightforward, the mathematical part of her incapable of discounting any theory without testing.

“Through positive thinking,” Giselle responded, as if such information were common knowledge.

Callie huffed out a breath. She’d always considered herself optimistic, but where had that gotten her? A bitter broken engagement, robbed of confidence, and in love with someone else who didn’t want her.

Mallory turned toward Krista, cupping her hand around her mouth to mimic whispering a secret. The words projected loud and clear from her lips. “Otherwise known as magic.”

Giselle rolled her eyes, her hands fisted on her hips. “Not all of us can spend our days sleeping around with rock-and-roll trash.”

Mallory only smiled, her lips turned up in malicious glory. “Maybe you should give it a try. It might loosen you up a bit.”

Giselle’s jaw clenched, her face as bright red as Santa’s suit.

With such polar opposite personalities, Giselle and Mallory hardly ever agreed, but were still close as sisters. They came to each other’s aid whenever needed. Just as they had when Callie’s lying ex-fiancé Josh’s secret was discovered.

“Where’d you get this idea?” Amy shouted across the circle, attempting to distract the group, always the peacemaker. Her normally small, soft voice paralleled her slender, short frame.

“Oprah, of course,” Giselle respond, to no one’s surprise. Giselle worshipped at the shrine of Oprah and Martha Stewart.

“Of course.” Mallory swallowed her red wine, using the glass to camouflage an exaggerated eye roll.

“It’s my thirtieth birthday, and you all agreed we could do anything I wanted tonight.” They hadn’t actually agreed, but Amy had, dragging everyone else along with her.

“I don’t get it. What’s the point in making a list for only one type of guy? There are tons out there.” Mallory shifted her long black hair streaked with green stripes, the ends dangling below the waistband of her dark jeans.

“It’s not for finding ‘a’ guy.” Giselle arched one golden brow. “It’s for finding ‘the guy’. Your soul mate.”

Mallory brushed away the ancient notion of loving, long-term monogamy with a sweep of her hand. “What’s the point? Guys are like Christmas toys. What’s all the rage this year will be thrown in the garbage by Easter, and then you’ll be looking for something new.”

“Some of us are just looking for a toy worth playing with.” Callie chuckled.

Around her, her friends’ faces dropped, laughter and jokes ending on a deep sour note Callie hadn’t intended to play. She meant to sound like any other single thirty-year-old woman, but instead everyone still saw her as a betrayed, wounded soul, nursing a broken heart.

“Don’t worry, you’ll find someone.” Amy’s eyes glowed with concern, bordering on pity.

“Someone who deserves you,” Mallory added, placing her hand on Callie’s with a comforting squeeze.

Callie bit down on the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from groaning, the sympathy around her so thick it was choking.

Everyone forgot she’d called off the engagement. The discoveries of Josh’s life on the road, released to the paparazzi days after she’d returned the gaudy ring, overshadowed that truth.

Callie refocused on her paper, the pressure of her friends’ concern weighing on her neck, forcing her to stay harnessed to her pain, like a reindeer to Santa’s sleigh. She wrote “What I Want” across the top of the page, nibbling on the end of her pen as she tried to envision her perfect man. But every physical attribute she considered, every personality trait she desired, returned to one man. Eric.

She’d been in love with Eric for longer than she could admit. He’d been caring, sweet, and devoted since she’d called off her engagement, but that wasn’t what she wanted. Not anymore.

She wanted red, hot, raw. Her fantasies about Eric were dark, uninhibited, and rough. Exactly how Eric would never see her. To him she was a good friend—sweet, not sexy. She couldn’t be in another relationship like that, even if he set her heart flying and her stomach tumbling.

She gripped her pen tighter, staring down at her paper, visions of Eric and her tangled together dancing before her eyes. Their bodies twirled in every position she’d ever heard her friends mention, and some she’d even researched online. All the fantasies Josh hadn’t been interested in fulfilling, too busy satisfying his own. Her heart pumped heavily as she turned back to the title of her page, finishing the sentence with “Eric to Do to Me”. Her pen flew across the sheet, detailing every erotic fantasy she conjured up around her best friend.

She smiled as Giselle gave her a nod. If her friend had any idea what she was asking the universe for, it might cause her perfect bobbed hair to stand on end.

* * * * *

“Ready to go?” Eric smiled at the small sneer covering Callie’s lips as she stood posed in the entryway of her home, blocking him from the warmth within. Her dark red hair tousled about her head. He fisted his hands at his sides to stop his needy fingers from smoothing down those silky waves, stroking their long, coiled length.

They had plans to go to the local theater and see
It’s a Wonderful Life,
a favorite Christmas tradition of theirs. Callie said a theater was the only way to appreciate such a movie. All Eric cared about was spending time with Callie.

“I thought we were meeting there.” Her eyes gleamed like emeralds, sparkling in the elaborate Christmas lights she’d arranged around her door, regardless of the irritation curling her lip.

Callie loved Christmas. She decked her small Cape Cod cottage each year, turning it into a Christmas wonderland complete with a porcelain snow-capped village and Mariah Carey singing about what she wanted for Christmas. The entire house smelled like pine, sugar cookies, and home. Warmth and comfort radiated from every corner, just like Callie.

“We were, but I thought you’d like a ride.” He knew she hated it when he tried to take care of her, even with a simple ride to the theater, but he couldn’t help it. She might try to deny it, reassuring everyone that she was fine, that she’d healed from what happened with Josh, but he knew better.

He noticed the crinkles around her mouth, the heaviness of her brow, and the dull pain that always rung in her voice, regardless of how happy she appeared on the outside. She still held the incident with her, tucked in her heart, where she wouldn’t allow anyone. The urge to go to the ballpark and bash Josh into mincemeat grew stronger every day. And he would have to, if Callie hadn’t made him promise to leave the bastard alone. She claimed she only wanted to move on, but she hadn’t.

Besides, a few more minutes with Callie, or seeing the way her eyes lit up for a special gift, were well worth her prickliness.

Callie put up a hiccup of a fight before holding the door open, allowing him into her cozy home. “Fine. Come in. I was just about to get ready.”

He snorted. Knowing Callie, she hadn’t been planning on getting dressed for another fifteen minutes.

Most women, if ambushed early, would be half dressed, maybe hair up, or makeup half done. Not his Callie. She was still in her pajamas. More annoyed that he’d deprived her of a few more minutes in her comfy flannels than her prep time.

“You don’t have to change on my account. I think you look quite festive.”

Callie smiled, twirling in front of him to show off her cuddly Christmas pajamas. Reindeer with bright red noses, long flirty lashes, and gigantic pursed lips molded around her legs as she spun. Red ribbons and sparkling snowflakes curled around the most gorgeous heart-shaped ass he’d ever seen.