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  “Thank you, ma’am.” He ran his finger beneath the tie. “Believe me, this is strictly in your honor. I don’t know who invented these things, but if you ask me they oughtta be shot.”

  She laughed. “Poor baby,” she said without an iota of sympathy. “But you’re a gambling man. I’ll see your necktie and raise you the average bra anytime. You dragged that out for a special occasion? Try wearing something that digs grooves in your hide twelve to eighteen hours a day, every day of the week.”

  His gaze dropped to the wide scoop of her bodice where it culminated in a deep V between her breasts. “Not a particular problem for you tonight, I see.”

  Doing her best to ignore the sudden heat flashing through all her secret places, she shot him a grin. “Yeah, well, if only one of us gets to be comfortable, I vote it’s me.”

  “That seems fair.” He took her elbow and escorted her out onto the street. The night sky was a rich midnight blue, and a balmy desert breeze whispered gently through the palms. “Now, this is more like it,” he said in satisfaction. “I’m afraid I’ve lost my ability to adapt to triple-digit-degree weather.” He looked from the neon-lit Strip to her tall-heeled, strappy sandals. “What do you think? Can you walk to the Aladdin in those things? I can always call for a car.”

  She made a rude noise. “Please. I can play basketball in these. Walking a few blocks is a piece of cake.”

  “If you say so,” he said skeptically. “Forget the necktie and bra. If you ask me, those have gotta be the real torture device.” Then his gaze rose slowly from his contemplation of her ankles, grazing her calves, her knees and her thighs, before continuing higher. His eyes were an intense and brilliant hue that pinned hers in place when they finally reached her face. “But I have to admit they make your legs look fabulous.” He glanced down at the fringe that swung against the limbs under discussion. “Or maybe it’s your legs that make the shoes look sexier ’n sin.”

  “Oh, man, you’re dangerous, you know that? I can see I’m going to have to stay on my toes if I want to avoid getting swept right off my feet.”

  He arched a brow. “Like you don’t come equipped with an arsenal all your own? What do you call those shoes, that dress, those lips? Honey, I have a feeling you were born loaded for bear. I’m the one who’d better stay on my toes here or I won’t stand a chance.”

  His voice went flat on the last sentence, but when she shot him a questioning glance, he gave her a rueful smile and shrugged. “Sorry. Had a sudden flashback there to my geeky, gawky teenage years.”

  “Oh, sure,” she said doubtfully. “Like I’m supposed to believe a big, good-looking guy like you wasn’t overrun with more girls than you knew what to do with? You were probably captain of the football team, beating off perky little cheerleaders with a stick.”

  Jax couldn’t stop his sudden bark of acrimonious laughter. “Captain of the football team?” he said, images of being a fourteen-year-old in an eighteen-year-old’s world looming large in his head. “Hardly.” When she just blinked at him, he admitted, “I gained my full height around the time I turned twelve, but I was in college before I developed the coordination to go with it. Hell, regular girls thought I was a nerd—never mind the most popular girls in school.”

  Arriving at the Desert Passage shopping center adjacent to the Aladdin Hotel, he looked down at Treena as he opened the door for her, taking in her pretty whiskey-brown eyes and mass of Pre-Raphaelite curls. “Believe me,” he said drily, “I admired girls like you from afar.”

  She shot him a startled glance as they walked into the North Africa setting that hosted the shops and restaurants of Desert Passage. “Like me?” Stopping beneath the twilight-blue domed ceiling, with its streaky clouds of gold and pink, she laughed up at him. “Trust me, you wouldn’t have admired me, from afar or otherwise. I wasn’t part of the in crowd. I was the tall girl with the unruly carrot-colored hair who only wanted to learn to dance well enough to get out of town. And since the school I went to had a student body whose biggest ambition was to kick Lehigh Valley High’s ass at football or be voted Homecoming Queen, Miss Popularity I wasn’t.”

  So she’d been a misfit like him as a teen, he thought as the maitre d’ at the Commander’s Palace perused the reservation list, then summoned a waiter who led them to their table. Big deal. She’d sure as hell clawed her way to a better place since then, hadn’t she?

  Her little tease of a dress was a prime example of just how much she’d changed her image. If he didn’t drag his gaze away from her breasts pretty damn soon, his pants weren’t going to fit.

  She had the prettiest tits he’d clapped eyes on in a long time. They were small, yet round and high, and the way her outfit’s neckline flirted with her cleavage threatened to give him the granddaddy of all hard-ons.

  Which was nuts. What was he, seventeen? He’d made a cold-blooded decision to check into the Avventurato rather than the Bellagio where the tournament would take place simply because Treena Sarkilahti McCall worked there and he’d needed the advantage of propinquity in order to carry out his plan.

  He knew he could see her breasts buck naked five nights a week at the ten-o’clock show if he wanted. So what was the big deal about seeing them partially exposed now?

  Something, he admitted grudgingly. There was just something about the sight of her pale smooth curves straining against black fabric that he could not ignore, game plan or not.

  “This is lovely,” Treena said, glancing around the dining room with its green walls and harem-tent ceiling. “I’ve heard a lot about this restaurant but I’ve never been here before.”

  “I haven’t been to this one, but I’ve been to the original in New Orleans. I thought you’d enjoy it.”

  “Oh, I will. I love eating out.”

  “Do you? And here I’d kill for a home-cooked meal.” So invite me over, sweetheart. He gazed at her expectantly.

  She merely gave him that knowing, one-sided smile. “Are you nuts? I’d eat in restaurants every day of the week if I could afford to.”

  “Trust me, it gets old.” But he could see he was going to have to work harder than he’d expected to elicit the invitation he desired. He got down to some serious wooing.

  But it didn’t reap him the reward he’d hoped to harvest, and by the time he walked her back to her car, frustration was eating him alive. He could tell she liked him. They’d talked and laughed for two and a half solid hours. In fact, he’d had to remind himself several times that he wasn’t there to have a good time. He’d redoubled his efforts after each reminder, but no matter how slickly he’d maneuvered the conversation, she hadn’t extended an invitation to her place.

  He had to work to keep his voice light when they arrived at her car. “This is for the birds,” he said, when she’d opened the driver’s door and turned to look up at him. “I don’t like dropping you off in a big, empty parking garage. The next time we go out, I’m picking you up and delivering you back to your door.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Assuming there is a next time, of course.”

  “Oh, there will be.” He shot her a cocky smile. “You dig me. Admit it. You really dig me.”

  She gave him a cool-eyed up-and-down. Then she caved and flashed him a wide white smile. “I might dig you a little.”

  “No, you dig me a lot.” He took a step forward, crowding her. “The way I dig you.” The latter was a little too close to the truth for comfort, and he lowered his head purposefully. This seduction would come off the way it was intended, dammit—with one-sided precision, uncluttered by messy emotions.

  He congratulated himself for kissing her exactly that way, with cool, calculated expertise. Plunging his fingers through her soft hair, he held her in place and treated her to a sample of his best work.

  The only problem was, she treated him right back to some damn fine work of her own. Her lips were soft and supple and they clung to his. Then they parted beneath the press of his kiss, and when he took her up on her invitation and s
lid his tongue across her teeth and into her mouth, he discovered flavors that were dark and addictive. When she moaned, the sound seemed to have a direct line to his cock, and he pressed closer. Her legs parted as much as her snug little dress would allow, and he pressed his pelvis forward to fit his erection against the warm, sweet notch between her thighs. But it simply wasn’t possible to get close enough.

  Her hands slid up his chest, her arms wrapped around his neck, and those enticing breasts that had been provoking him all night long flattened against his chest. He groaned, finding himself suddenly unable to breathe.

  He ripped his mouth free. “God,” he said, his chest heaving. He pulled her away from the open car door, slammed it shut and, wrapping his hands around her hips, hoisted her up onto the hood. Bunching the material of her skirt between his fingers, he eased it up around her waist, glancing in admiration at the skimpy scrap of lace he exposed for the second it took to knee her legs apart. “You. Are. So. Hot,” he growled. Then he stepped into the space he’d made for himself, plunged his fingers back into her curls and slammed his mouth over hers once again.

  He couldn’t get enough. Not of her taste, nor the elusive scent that wafted off her skin, nor the firm, warm feel of her in his arms. Holding her in place and oscillating his hips, he just about came unglued when the sweet mound he rocked against became damper and damper against his fly. He raised his head, his breath sawing in and out of his lungs, and stared down at her.

  Her eyes were slumberous, the sexily shadowed lids heavy as she stared back at him, the clear honey color of her irises nearly swallowed up by her dilated pupils. Her lips were red and swollen from the pressure of his kisses, and as he watched she smiled lazily and slicked her tongue over the full bottom curve. He lowered his head to bite at the damp, plump lip.

  “Ooh.” Treena’s head dropped back.

  He sucked her lip, then let it go and kissed the corner of her mouth, the angle of her jaw, and then just beneath it. Kissing his way down her long, smooth throat, he smoothed his hand along her neck as he moved to her creamy chest and pressed his parted lips into her shallow cleavage. Then he cupped her breast in his hand, reveling in its warm weight as he kissed his way down to her nipple.

  Reaching it, he pressed a gentle smooch on its rigid tip, then opened his mouth to suck the tiny morsel inside.

  She inhaled sharply and thrust her breasts up for closer attention. Almost immediately, however, she slid her hands down to his chest and thrust him away. “Too much,” she panted. “Oh, God, Jax, too much, too soon.” She slid off the hood.

  He begged to differ. He thought the time was absolutely right to lay her back and rip those little panties aside.

  “Forgive me,” she panted. “I’ve never—” A wild laugh escaped her and she shook her head, sending her soft curls floating in a wild nimbus around her head. “Oh, man, I can’t believe what I was about to do in the middle of a parking garage.” She sidled skittishly toward the car door.

  An image of the two of them humping on the hood of her car flashed through his head. She had a point. This was hardly the place for his big seduction. He was stunned at how quickly he’d lost control of the situation.

  Remember the plan. He sucked in and blew out a quiet breath. Staring at her, he licked his bottom lip, tasting a weak reminder of her flavor. “Take me home with you.”

  She was tempted; he could tell she was. But she shook her head. “I can’t,” she said, edging closer to the driver-side door. “I’m sorry—you must think I’m such a tease, but I just…can’t. I’ve only known you a day.” She pulled the door open and climbed inside.

  He resisted swearing a blue streak and said mildly instead, “I’ll call you,” as she pulled the door closed.

  She nodded, but started the engine without further comment. And the next thing he knew, he was standing in an echoing, concrete cavern, sporting a raging hard-on and the beginnings of an equally raging headache as he watched her taillights blink red before disappearing up the ramp.

  “Shit,” he said, thrusting his hands through his hair. “SHIT!”

  God, he was a chump. Such a big agenda, and all he had to show for it was the need for a cold shower and the sound of his own voice as it bounced back at him off the walls.

  His mouth tightened as it dawned on him that he’d just been played. “You must think I’m such a tease,” he said in a vicious falsetto. His voice dropped back down into its normal register. “No shit, baby.”

  She’d sucked him in, turned him inside out, then left him twisting in the wind. Shoving his hands deep in his pockets, he stalked toward the elevator.

  It damn well wouldn’t happen again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TREENA POUNDED ON Carly’s door. Excited barking immediately commenced within the condo and she winced, giving her wristwatch a guilty glance when her friend’s voice called out with patent irritation, “Knock it off, already—I’m coming! Rufus, Buster, be quiet!” When the dogs continued barking she heard Carly’s frustrated snarl and an exasperated, “Oh, for God’s sake!”

  The door whipped open.

  Her friend’s blond hair looked spikier than usual, and her face was scrubbed clean of all makeup. With her big blue eyes flashing fire, she opened her mouth to say something that Treena didn’t doubt for an instant would be rude and to the point. But after a quick look at her, she merely said, “Whoa. Come on in.” She pushed the two mutts dancing around her feet aside to make room.

  “I’m sorry,” Treena said, following them into the short entryway. “I know it’s late.”

  “Forget it.” Carly led the way into her colorful living room. “Have a seat. You want a cup of tea? Or a shot of tequila, maybe? Here, let me get Rags out of your way.” She studied Treena as she swept a long-haired black cat off an overstuffed chintz-covered chair and dumped the feline on the floor. “I gotta say you look like you had a much more interesting night than I did.”

  “Oh, God.” Treena laughed wildly and collapsed onto the chair. “I came this close to having sex with Jax Gallagher on the hood of my car!”

  Her friend blinked. The corners of her mouth twitched. Then her incipient smile blossomed into a full-fledged grin. “Way to go, Treena!”

  A three-legged cat leapt up into her lap, and she buried her hand in its soft gray-and-white fur. “This is not a good thing, Tripod,” she bent her head to tell it sternly. “Tell your person that. I’ve known the man, oh, gee, what’s it been now? Twenty-four freaking hours!”

  Apparently Tripod didn’t care. He circled twice, then settled down on her thighs. A second later, he butted his head against her hand to get her petting again and purred when she complied.

  “Yeah, well, you’re a guy. No one expects better from you,” she muttered, then looked at Carly, who had flopped down on the couch across from her and was watching her with interest. “You, on the other hand, are another story. This isn’t a good thing.”

  “Sez you. Sex alfresco strikes me as a very good thing.”

  “Alfresco my butt. This wasn’t on a soft blanket beneath the desert moon, Carly. It was in the middle of a concrete parking garage!”

  “Okay, not real romantic. Still, you get points for spontaneity.”

  “It was spontaneous all right. God, it was just totally out of control.” And if there was one thing that fired Treena’s determination, it was the need to stay in control. She still didn’t understand what had come over her, but she felt like an idiot, not just for the way she’d gone crazy on top of that car, but for her inane chatter once she’d finally come to her senses. She cringed at the remembrance of sounding more like a junior high school airhead than a grown woman.

  “Ooh.” Carly executed a little wriggle of delight. “I love out of control.” Then she sobered, shooting Treena an apologetic grimace. “But I’m sorry, Treen, I can see you’re upset. It’s just that it’s been awhile since I’ve had sex of any sort, so it all sounds pretty exciting to me.”

  “Believe me, I unders
tand,” Treena agreed. “It’s been a while for me, too.”

  Carly laughed. “Yeah, right. At least you were getting it on a regular basis before Big Jim got sick. I can’t even remember the last time—” she broke off to stare at Treena. “What?”

  Oh, shit. She blinked innocently. “What, what?”

  “You had a look on your face. Now, I know Big Jim was too ill to do the hootchie-kootch for most of your marriage, but…” She hesitated, studied Treena’s expression closely, then, eyes narrowing, asked, “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

  No. But this was her best friend, and outright lying didn’t set well on her conscience, either. “We, um, never did the hootchie-kootch. At least not properly.”

  “What?” Carly laughed. “Of course you did. Big Jim was a sex machine before he got—” She broke off, looked at Treena. “He wasn’t?”

  “No. Look, it’s kind of complicated. One of the first things that attracted me to him was the fact that he wasn’t looking for a quick roll in the hay with a showgirl.”

  Carly nodded. “Sure, I get that. Lord knows we get enough of those kinda guys hitting on us.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Jim was different?”

  “Very. Of course I didn’t know at the time that he was in remission from his prostate cancer. He thought he’d beat it for good, but the downside was that the meds he was taking messed with his ability to have sex. I can’t exactly claim love, or even lust, at first sight on either side. I liked that he wasn’t all over me like so many of the hot-handed Harrys I’d met, and he probably liked the fact that his pals thought I was Grade A arm candy that he was screwing up, down and sideways. I mean, you bought it, and you’re not that easily fooled.”

  “And that didn’t bother you?”

  “No. He cared a lot what his friends thought, and I think the mere idea of them knowing he couldn’t get it up—or sustain an erection when he did manage to get one—was about the worst-case scenario he could imagine.”