Seductive Reasoning (9 page)

That’s what he was afraid of. All
those experiments and research. God help him.

Kate located a large pasteboard box
that had arrived in the mail earlier that day from her sub-contractor in the
small storage room. She opened the box, pushed aside some tissue paper, and
removed something flimsy and see-through. She held the garments up against her
body. “This is one of my latest creations. It’s a flyaway babydoll with a satin
tie closure and matching bikini panties with side ties. It’s daring,
provocative and the perfect subject for a more involved experiment. Besides, it
will prepare us for tonight.”

Prepare? Tonight? Damn, he’d
forgotten about tonight. The movie. One bed.
Focus. You’re a scientist. You
do experiments all the time.

He hoped to God she only touched
him for a minute.

Kate slung the garment over her
shoulder and stepped behind a rack of clothing. She slipped off her shoes to
reveal a pair of very feminine feet with toenails painted a delicate pink. They
were connected to shapely calves and toned thighs. She pulled her dress over
her head and tossed it on top of the rack. Then her bra and panties followed.
Bare shoulders and the slopes of her breasts gleamed in the overhead light.
Before he could get his mind around the fact that she was naked and only a few
feet away from him, she donned the lingerie and stepped from behind the rack.

Seth stepped backward as she moved
toward him. Thank God the lingerie wasn’t too sheer. It teased with a kind of
now-you-see-her-now-you-don’t without looking slatternly or wanton.

“What’s the matter? Afraid you
won’t be able to resist?”

Another challenge. Running away was
not going to get him the money. He had to stand firmly and not touch her, no
matter what she did to him.

Kate threw him a secretive smile
and moved in closer. Her scent, musky with a hint of vanilla, curled around
him, slowly, erotically, like a misty fog. He wanted to start at her toes and
lick his way up.

Concentrate. Distance yourself. How
the hell was he supposed to do that when she just kept moving closer?

She moved closer and closer until Seth
felt her body heat, until the seductive light in her eyes, the soft pink of her
mouth filled his vision. He was afraid to look down at the rest of her body
because he might lose his concentration. He might reach out and touch her.

He needed to win this bet. Not to
mention control his libido. A libido that only now, with Kate, raged out of
control.

Kate stroked the tip of her finger
over his lips leaving a trail of searing heat behind. “What are you feeling?”

What was he not feeling?

“Do you want to touch me?”

Hell, yes, he wanted to touch her.
He wanted to do more than touch. He wanted to put his hands and his mouth on
every sweet inch of her. If he couldn’t control himself when they weren’t in
the bedroom, what the hell would happen when they went upstairs? She could make
him lose control. She could cause him to lose the money. All he had worked
for--gone.

In one hot supernova of sexual
release.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

He kept his eyes on hers, afraid to
look away, afraid his gaze might rest on the sweet curves of her breasts, hips
and lower. Oh God. “Yes, I want to touch you.”

She caressed his jaw and smiled.
Then she draped her other arm over his shoulders, teased the back of his neck
with her fingertips and slid her fingers through his hair. “You haven’t really
looked at my new design. I need to know what you think. Is it sexy enough?”

Seth skimmed his gaze from her head
to her toes and back again. Another minute of this and he would combust like a
shooting star. “It’s sexy. But I can definitely resist.”

He held his arms rigidly at his
side.

He clenched and unclenched his
hands to keep from touching her.

“Really. Well resist this.”

In a heartbeat, she clasped his
hand, brushed aside the front of the thing she had called a babydoll and placed
his hand on her silky, bare skin just below her breast. Feminine heat and
softness suffused his palm, his fingers, and glided up his arm. He wanted to
kiss her and suckle her lips, until a moan of pure pleasure ripped from her
sweet throat. Afterward, he would strip her slowly and take her inch by
delectable inch. What an experiment.

Kate leaned closer and placed an
open-mouthed kiss on his neck. Heat plunged to his gut and lower. He wanted
desperately to move his head to give her better access, but if he did he would
touch her and then-- She was killing him. Slowly.

Her body caressed his from chest to
thigh. Kate slipped her knee between his legs and pressed her soft breasts
against his chest. The soft, sweet part of her that nestled between her legs
nudged his crotch. The top of his head nearly flew off and his bones melted.

Seth concentrated harder than he
ever had in his life. Under his breath, he recited declinations and ascensions
of every star he could think of, trying frantically to calm the race of hot
blood through his veins. He had to make her stop. He had to make himself stop.

Seth removed his hand from the bare
skin of her chest, grasped her upper arms, and set her gently away from him.
“All experiments should be carefully controlled. You have to modify data and
move slowly. If you move too fast, you may draw the wrong conclusion.”

Some odd emotion Seth couldn’t
fathom flashed in her eyes and blanketed her face. She backed away from him as
if his presence were abhorrent to her. What the hell was going on? One minute
she was all over him, and now she couldn’t get away from him fast enough. Her
nipples peaked through the lace of the top and a shadow of dark curls showed
through her panties.

“I’ll change and we’ll get
something to eat. You can wait for me in the kitchen.”

Kate fought back tears as she took
off her latest creation. She held it in her hands for a moment, her body still
stark naked, the chill of the air conditioning blowing over her skin. For a
moment, she thought about ripping the garment to shreds.

Instead, she hung it on a spare
hanger and shoved it onto a rack. The knot in her throat pushed harder. She
felt the heat of humiliation burn over her skin.

Why did she think she could get a
true reaction out of Seth Fallon? He wanted his money. He’d told her that was
the only reason he was here. But she thought just for a second he might really
touch her. Only he didn’t. He had resisted just like he said he would. He’d
looked at her with complete indifference like a slide under a microscope, a phenomenon
of nature to be examined and recorded. Kate swiped a stray tear from her cheek.
Okay, so she wasn’t the sexiest thing around, but she thought with the help of
the lingerie, seeing her in it, in the flesh, he might give in, not be able to
resist.

She was wrong.

But she wasn’t giving up. The week
had barely begun. She finished dressing, glanced at her reflection in the
mirror, and pasted on a smile. She would get through this week and win her
prize money even if it killed her. She had wanted to seduce him then and there
in the storeroom and get it over with. If she had, he would be gone from her
life. He would go back to the university, and she would still be here. Alone
and still trying to get a man to see beyond her packaging to what lay inside. But
at least, the men in her past didn’t invade the empty crevices of her heart.

After dinner, Kate settled with
Seth in the study, where he sat rigidly on the sofa. The smell of freshly
popped popcorn wafted through the air. A bowl of chocolate kisses and two
glasses of iced tea sat on the coffee table.

Kate swung her legs up onto the
sofa, scooted close to Seth, and rested her hand on his shoulder. The muscles
under her hand felt hard and very male. She smiled sadly, unsure if her next
attempt at getting Seth to notice her would work.

With a little luck, a few more days
of this and he would explode right into her arms. At least before the week was
done, she would know what it felt like to have him give in to his needs, and
she would experience his loving firsthand.

And then he would leave.

What if he didn’t manage to resist?
She would win the wager. But at what price? She would be right back where she
started essentially, because she still wouldn’t have a man who loved her and
appreciated her for who she was. A shiver of heat and need trembled through her
body.

“Are you cold?” Seth reached for
the crushed velvet throw on the back of the sofa and spread the blanket over
her legs.

Kate shoved it aside. When she did,
her dress hiked up a bit giving him a generous view of her legs. She watched
the Adam’s apple in his throat move up and down. Good, she was getting to him.
About time. He’d been getting to her since she first saw him again at the
television station. “Are you ready?”

Seth jerked his head in her direction.
“Ready?”

“To watch the movie.”

He swallowed. “Oh that. Right.
Yeah.”

Kate pushed the play button and
tossed the control on top of the coffee table. The movie started. Kate had
deliberately set the bowl of popcorn out of her reach so she would have to lean
over Seth to reach it. She pressed her body against his side and scooped out a
handful of popcorn. While still leaning against him, Kate looked at him. “Would
you like some?”

An adorable blush pinked his face.
He blustered and cleared his throat. “Look Kate, I don’t think that--”

“Popcorn. Not me. At least not yet.
Unless you’re ready.”

“No.”

“No, you don’t want popcorn? Or no,
you’re not ready?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, which?”

“Popcorn. I’ll take some popcorn.”

Kate straightened from where she
rested against his shoulder and cupped his hand. She dropped a few kernels of
popcorn into his palm and let the tips of her fingers caress his skin.

Absently, she brushed the back of
her hand against his neck. God, he felt good and he smelled good, too. He had
that Seth scent mixed up with a tangy no-nonsense aftershave. No designer
fragrances for him. He was so big, so male sitting there beside her. He made
the room into what it should be, a cozy nook where there had been only
loneliness before. Now, she had a man in her life. At least for a while. She
intended to enjoy it while it lasted.

She wished he would touch her.
Really touch her.

Frustration raced through her until
she thought she would die. Finally, the movie came to the scene with Clark
Cable and Claudette Colbert in the hotel room. Kate hit the pause button and
turned her attention to Seth.

“Why did you stop the movie?”

“Because I think it’s time for
another experiment.”

Seth rose from the sofa before she
could stop him. He paced to the window and back with his hands in his pockets.
“Look, Kate, I think we’ve experimented enough for one day.”

Kate refused to give up. She had to
get some kind of definitive response from him before the end of the day. If not
for the money, then for herself. She had to know beyond a doubt that she was
attractive to him, that the tools she did have, her own personal tools, did
work. “I disagree. The more experiments we conduct, the more data we have to
draw our conclusions from.”

She pointed to the chart he had
made and displayed on an easel in the study. “Besides, we’ve barely begun to
fill in the chart, to draw the graph. If we don’t have data, how will we ever
finish?”

He looked at her, then back at the
chart. “Okay, one more.”

She intended two more before the
clock struck midnight, but he didn’t have to know that. “One more.”

He removed his hands from his
pockets, straightened, and faced her. “What did you have in mind?”

“A kiss.”

“A kiss. This was all about
resistance, remember?”

She smiled. “I remember. I’d like
to see if you can resist a kiss from me. If you can resist responding.”

“But--but, this was about resisting
sexy lingerie. You’re not wearing lingerie.”

She snapped her fingers. “I can fix
that.”

Before he could respond, Kate
slipped from the den, ran to the bedroom, and put on a simple chemise in a
floral print with spaghetti straps.

When she came back to the den, Seth
was in the exact position she’d left him. She picked up a pad and pen from a
side table and walked to his side. “Here. You can record your reactions and
observations on this pad, then transfer the data to the chart.”

Seth took the objects from her
hand. She noticed he tried hard not to really look at her body in the chemise.
He looked at her feet, a spot over her shoulder, anywhere but directly at her.
“Let’s see. Subject, meaning you, is aware of the lingerie and me, but is
trying desperately not to be. I think our experiment needs a catalyst.”

“A catalyst?”

“Uh, huh.” Kate stood on her
tiptoes. She felt the hem of the nightgown slip up her thighs. She wrapped her
arms around Seth’s neck and let her breath waft over his mouth. “The kiss.”

Slowly, she brushed her mouth
lightly over his, just a test to discover texture and softness. His mouth was
neither soft nor hard, but somewhere in between. Just the right amount of
softness combined with just the right amount of firmness to drive a woman mad.

Gradually, she increased the
pressure and her boldness. She nipped first at his lower lip, then his upper,
all the while keeping her eyes on his. His eyes were open, a deep ocean of
intense blue staring back into hers. There were no chips of amber or green in
his iris, just pure color.

Tentatively, she slipped her tongue
from her mouth and ran the tip over his lips. She heard him suck in a sharp
breath. Good. She rubbed her tongue over the seam between his lips tempting him
to open his mouth. She eased back a little. “Open your mouth for me. We need to
do this for the experiment. We need to let things just happen.”