Playing With Seduction (13 page)

His reasoning made perfect sense and eased her mind. “Okay.”

He skimmed the pad of his thumb along her jaw, his expression reflecting his relief that she understood. “All that being said, go out with me this weekend.”

She blinked at him. “Go out with you?”

“Yeah,” he said with a persuasive grin. “On a date.”

She experienced a moment of panic. Their agreement back at the bar,
a fling
, hadn’t included time together outside of the bedroom. “This affair isn’t about
dating
.” Dating implied a courtship, the start of an emotional relationship. All the things she knew she couldn’t have with Jase, so why put herself in that kind of position?

He gave her a smile that was both adorable and unwavering. “If you want sex, then I want something in return. A date.”

She arched a brow. “Quid pro quo?”

“Tit for tat,” he replied with a shrug.

She laughed, even knowing that Jase was winning the debate. “That sounds dirty.”

“I can make it as dirty as you want it to be,” he promised with a flirtatious wink. “But before we get to the dirty stuff, I just want to spend a few hours with you with our clothes
on
. We’ll go and do something fun during the day, and then I’m all yours for the night.”

Kendall bit her bottom lip, so very tempted by his suggestion. She knew it wasn’t a smart idea to mix play with pleasure when it came to Jase, but it had been such a long time since she’d done anything for the sheer fun of it, or allowed herself to be carefree. Work and responsibilities were all she’d known for years, before and after her divorce. Didn’t she deserve a day to indulge and enjoy whatever Jase planned?

Yes, she did
, she decided, and embraced her decision.

“Okay, you win again,” she told him, and didn’t miss the triumphant smirk on his lips. “I work all day Saturday at the studio, but I do have Sunday off.”

“Saturday isn’t great for me, either. Mac and I have an appointment with a consulting firm in L.A. to discuss improvements on their computer network and server efficiency, which will take most of the day,” he said. “So Sunday is great for me, too.”

“Then consider it a…date.” Now that she was all in, she was anxious to see what the day would bring and what Jase considered fun.

Sunday night, however, he was all hers.

*     *     *

Saturday at Pure
Bliss passed quickly for Kendall. With three boudoir sessions set up throughout the day, she’d been incredibly busy, and she’d booked four other appointments for later on in the week with new clients. With all the referrals and her rapidly growing business, she was considering hiring a front-end girl. Someone to answer phones and schedule appointments and greet customers as they arrived. Someone to help her tidy up the studio at the end of the day.

Handling all aspects of the business was becoming a bit overwhelming, and Kendall was grateful that she was at a point where she could finally afford to bring in her first official employee. She’d worked damn hard to get to this point, and she was proud of her accomplishments and success and just how viable her company had become. Next week, she’d post the job position in the local paper and online and go from there.

Her last appointment of the day was Stacie, the woman who’d come into the studio the previous week to view her boudoir photos and place her order for what she wanted. She was alone again and without the older gentleman who’d accompanied her to the initial photo session. Kendall wasn’t sure what their involvement was, since neither of them had put a label to their relationship, but the fact that they were adamant that their faces be concealed in the photographs Kendall had taken made her curious about the couple. Then again, maybe they wanted to display the portraits in a more public way, without their identities being obvious to others.

The reasons didn’t really matter, and they weren’t any of her business. What her customers wanted, she gave them. What they did with the photos, or how they displayed the pictures, was up to them.

Kendall quickly went to her office and picked up the glossy-handled bag with the platinum package that Stacie had ordered, which included a collection of enlarged photos that had been mounted and framed, another collection of standard-size prints, and the red leather-bound photo book filled with over two dozen provocative shots of the couple. Stacie was waiting in the sitting area where Kendall met with clients to set up appointments and to deliver the photos they ordered, and she greeted the pretty, auburn-haired young woman with a smile.

“Hi, Stacie,” Kendall said as she walked into the room. “How are you today?”

“Just great.” Stacie’s light green eyes were filled with excitement as she watched Kendall set the compilation of photos on the table in front of her. “I’m so anxious to take a look at the finished product. I’m seeing Richard tonight and can’t wait to surprise him with the portraits and photo book.”

“Well, here they are.” Kendall was always a little nervous herself until she had her client’s final approval. “I hope you like them.”

Stacie perused all the pictures and flipped through the photo book, her expression delighted and thrilled with the final delivery. She turned a page in the leather-bound book and bit her bottom lip as she stared at one of the more suggestive images of her and Richard that Kendall had taken on the cream-colored silk lounge chair in the studio—with Stacie on her back and Richard’s head down between her thighs, his hands tugging away her panties. The younger woman’s face was turned away from the camera, her body arched in passion, with one hand buried in her lover’s hair. The lavender silk robe she’d worn had fallen off her shoulder, exposing the soft curve of her breast.

Kendall remembered that shot—and just how into the moment the couple had been.

“He might be an older man, but damn, he’s so freakin’ hot,” Stacie said, her full mouth curving into a sly smile. “I’m such a lucky girl.”

Kendall smiled and gave in to her curiosity. “Have you been dating long?”

Stacie thought for a moment as she viewed another glossy photo. “We’ve been seeing each other for about a year now.”

“Ahh, so it’s serious.”

“I’d like to think so.” The other woman exhaled a small, disheartened sigh and held up her left hand, bare of any jewelry. “But until I have a ring on my finger, nothing is guaranteed, is it?”

“No, that’s true,” Kendall agreed. Hell, even
with
a ring nothing was guaranteed, as she well knew.

“I just keep waiting for Richard…to get his shit together,” Stacie said, suddenly sounding frustrated and irritated.

Sensing that whatever Stacie was
waiting on
was a big source of contention between the couple, Kendall let the conversation go. She wrapped up the appointment within the next twenty minutes, and was relieved when Stacie expressed her full satisfaction over the photos.

Once the other woman was gone, Kendall cleaned up, then shut down the studio, her mind drifting to Jase and their date tomorrow. She had to admit that she was excited to see him and curious to find out what he’d planned for the day. She was already filled with anticipation, like a young girl with her first boy crush. Except Jase was all man—every single inch of him.

But before she saw him tomorrow, she had one more important thing to do. After locking up Pure Bliss, she headed down the street to Raina’s shop, Sugar and Spice, to purchase some sexy, risqué toys and pretty lingerie. If she was going to make the most of her affair with Jase, then she intended to shed all her sexual inhibitions and be as bad and naughty as she’d always secretly wanted to be.

J
ase headed up
to the apartment number that Kendall had texted him last night and knocked on her door. She lived in a gated and guarded complex, which appeased the security guy in him. He liked knowing that she was safe and secure when he wasn’t around.

Possessive much?
Yeah, so he was a little—okay, a lot—protective of Kendall. She was a woman who could clearly take care of herself, but since the moment he’d met her a month ago, then learning about her shitty marriage, he’d felt the inexplicable urge to be the guy who gave her a sense of security and showed her through his actions that not all men treated women as badly as her ex had.

The more time he spent with Kendall, the more those attentive feelings grew. And as much as he knew that what she wanted out of life
now
didn’t mesh with his own aspirations and timeline for marriage and kids, he couldn’t bring himself to walk away from her, either. But right or wrong, he just wanted to enjoy his time with her, and hopefully at some point, they’d come to some kind of compromise in their relationship—even though they were at different points in their lives.

He shook his head of those discouraging thoughts, refusing to dwell on something that wasn’t an issue right at this moment. All he could do was keep things in perspective, take things one day at a time, and today was all about having fun together—outside of the bedroom.

He lifted his hand to knock again just as the door flung open. Kendall stood there, breathless and smiling—and so completely, stunningly beautiful she made his heart trip in his chest. Her hair was in a high ponytail, and she was wearing minimal makeup, just mascara and gloss on her lips from what he could tell. She looked youthful and pretty and happy to see him, and witnessing how excited she was about today was exactly what he needed to see to make him fully relax.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, pressing a hand to her chest, her cheeks pink from being so flustered. “I was finishing getting dressed when you first knocked and had to scramble to get the rest of my clothes on.”

He smiled slowly, wickedly. “I would have been more than happy to come in and help.”

She laughed and shook her head as she stepped back to let him into her apartment. “Somehow I think your idea of helping would have been more of a hindrance, and we’d probably end up spending the day inside instead of out.”

“You’re probably right,” he admitted. He would have been stripping her out of her clothes rather than putting them over her sexy curves.

She gave him a chastising look that was more playful than stern. “You’re such a bad boy,” she said as she walked toward an adjoining room in her small apartment. “I just need to get a few things and I’ll be ready to go.”

She sashayed her way to what he assumed was the bedroom, and he watched her go, resisting the urge to follow her and strip her out of her clothes, anyway. Yeah, he
was
bad. Unapologetically so, when it came to her.

She disappeared from his view, and he pushed his hands into the front pockets of his khaki shorts and glanced around. Her place was small. Real small. Only a few steps inside the apartment and he was literally standing in a kitchenette with just enough room for a table that could seat two, which connected to a tiny living room with a couch and coffee table and a TV mounted on the wall. There wasn’t room for anything more.

There were two other doors, one leading into a half bathroom and the other her bedroom. The place was sparsely decorated with a few framed pictures on the wall that looked as though she might have taken them herself. But everything else was just the bare minimum, and he wondered if it was by choice or because she’d had to start from scratch after her divorce. He had a feeling it was more the latter.

But despite that setback in her life, she’d clearly made her boudoir photography and studio a priority over living space. She’d learned to be economical during her marriage—a person didn’t pay off two hundred thousand dollars in debt in ten years if they weren’t exceptionally thrifty—and how to tightly budget and prioritize spending. It was a trait that he admired. Kendall was so much stronger and resilient, emotionally
and
mentally, than she probably realized.

A few minutes later, when she came back out carrying a large straw purse and wearing a pair of flip-flops, he realized he’d never seen her dressed so casually before. She had on white shorts that drew his gaze to her lean thighs and slender legs, and a light pink tank top—he was beginning to think pink was a favorite color of hers. Beneath the outfit he could see the outline of a bikini top and bottoms, which was exactly how he’d told her to dress, with the ability to strip off the outer layer and be beach-ready in seconds.

“Okay, I think I’m good,” she said as she started for the door.

He gently caught her arm as she passed by, bringing her to a sudden stop, and she looked up at him with wide, startled eyes.

“I think you forgot something,” he said, and stroked his thumb along the soft, sensitive flesh of her inner arm.

She frowned, as if mentally reviewing the list of items she had in her head that she needed to take with her today. “What did I forget?”

“To kiss me,” he murmured, then waited to see what she would do, because the sexy part of this date was all on her.

She didn’t disappoint him. With a sultry smile, she closed the distance between them, skimmed her hands along the T-shirt covering his chest, and looped her arms around his neck. She lifted up on the tips of her toes, pressing her body even closer, and brushed her lips across his with a soft sigh he felt all the way down to his groin.