Rescued by the Woodsman

  "I'm all ears. Just what would you like to know?" As if he'd sensed the tenor of my questions had abruptly changed, he straightened in his seat, and I lost the reflection again. He flagged down the bartender. After he'd ordered some ice water, I felt the intensity of his stare settle back on me.

  I managed to force out all of two questions before a whole new sort of distraction dropped into my lap.

  The furor started up behind me, quiet at first, then spreading through the room until I couldn't hold back my curiosity anymore. I shifted around to toss a look back at the door, expecting another D+ list celebrity or one of the socialites who kept appearing in the papers.

  Instead, I was treated to the full glory of the current Hollywood heartthrob who'd just racked up three Golden Globes – and his date.

  She looked bored.

  But he had a smile on his face that made him look as open and endearing as he'd been when he'd accepted one award after another. Something that might have been excitement crashed inside me.

  "Son of a bitch," I whispered, wishing I'd brought one of the photographers with me. "That's...oh, man. Do you see who that is?"

  "Yes." He sounded bored.

  I started to shoot him a quick glance, but froze half way in place and he caught me with a hand between my shoulder blades. "Remember the rules, sugar."

  Instead of looking at him straight on, I focused on the ground in front of me – and the cowboy boots he was wearing. Black, tooled leather, a pair of faded jeans, what looked like an incredible pair of thighs, muscled and lean and long...

  My heart was racing when I finally swung my head back around to look at the heartthrob of the month. "You think they are really a thing, the way the tabloids say they are?"

  "No," he said softly.

  "Why not?" Watching as the movie star leaned in to kiss his date in a way that was decidedly intimate, I studied them with more clinical interest than I liked.

  "Because she's bisexual and expects all her partners to share...male, female, doesn't matter. He doesn't play that game. He couldn't care less about her sexual preferences, but when he's all in, he expects the same from his partner. This is convenience, nothing more."

  My jaw fell open. "What...how do you know that?" I demanded.

  "Tricks of the trade. It would ruin her if anybody knew, considering how she sells herself." There was something cool and measuring in his words.

  A split second later, I understood.

  He was trying to determine if he could trust me or not. Waiting to see if I'd push for more details, or maybe even trying to decide if I'd go public with the information.

  Fat chance.

  She wasn't my story.

  He was.

  I said nothing though. Keeping my attention on the couple who had just walked inside, I said softly, "That has to be lonely, picking your dating choices based on who will notice you."

  A bright light flashed, and I flinched, lifting my hand to block it instinctively, not quite reacting in time.

  Brilliant lights flashed in front of me, alternating with little black dots, and I blinked, trying to clear my eyes. "Whoa," I muttered, trying to clear my head. "Paparazzi. Stage left."

  The noise level multiplied by the second, and the flashes became so common, they developed a strobe-like effect.

  "There goes the neighborhood," I muttered.

  I turned back, and my mouth dropped open. He'd left.

  Panic welled inside me, but I battled it down. I was panicking – I had to be. He hadn't given me anything. So...he wasn't gone. He'd gone to the restroom or something. Surely, he'd said something, and I just hadn't noticed over the chaos.

  He'd be back in a few minutes.

  But then I noticed the slip on the bar.

  The tab.

  Swallowing, I picked it up, ignoring the bills that fluttered off the side. He was a generous tipper, that was pretty clear. He'd paid for my wine and left a tip that cost as much as the single glass – and he'd scrawled a note at the bottom for me.

  I'll be in touch.

  "Yeah," I muttered, growing more disgusted by the minute. "Sure you will."

  * * *

  Just over an hour later, clad in super soft pajamas and smelling of my custom blend of lavender and vanilla body lotion, I stood at the window, staring outside.

  I'd been had.

  Or conned.

  Something.

  Okay, so it wasn't like he ended up stiffing me with a bill for an expensive meal – or even a drink since he paid for my wine. But I hadn't gotten anything useful out of him.

  Sure, I was no Gina Goddard, but I knew how to interview people.

  I had dozens of interviews under my belt – close to a hundred by now, probably. But as I played that interview back through my mind, I knew there was nothing at all usable in the information I'd gotten from him. Or rather, the information I hadn't gotten from it.

  Getting more aggravated by the second, I went back to my purse and pulled out my phone, tapping on icons until the digital recording app opened. I hit play and listened as it started to play.

  "Shit!" Twenty minutes later, I threw the phone down on the couch, ready to rip my hair out.

  There was nothing worth putting in an interview unless I planned to write a piece about myself. And even that would be about as boring as could possibly be.

  There was nothing at all usable.

  Burying my face in my hands, I muttered, "My aunt is going to kill me." A split second later a worst thought occurred to me. No, Gina is going to kill me. She had turned over a prime source, and instead of getting anything from him, I had wasted the entire meeting, letting him distract me.

  "How could you be so stupid?" With a groan, I tried to figure out if there was any way I could sell this stuff, but there was nothing I could do except own up to the mistake.

  Forcing myself to accept that, I moved over to the computer and clicked on the icon to open my email. With my eyes closed, I sat there for a good five minutes, trying to think through the best way to approach the email I had to write.

  Aunt Blair wouldn't wash her hands of me, I knew that. But it would be awhile before she would trust me with a job like this again.

  And I would have disappointed her too. She had trusted me to do this, and I hated disappointing people, especially those who had put their faith in me.

  Finally, unable to figure out anything I could say except the honest truth – he had a sexy voice and he flustered me and I fucked up – I opened my eyes and focused on writing what I had to write.

  Then I just sat there, staring.

  I had an email.

  Actually, there were several.

  But the most recent one was from a J. King and the subject had my heart pounding.

  For your article

  Nervous as hell, I clicked on it and started to read.

  Then, once I was done, I sat there for a full minute, hardly able to believe what I'd read.

  My heart was racing.

  My head was spinning.

  I didn't know what part of me was more excited.

  The writer...or the man.

  Who in the world would have guessed that just reading an email could be so erotic? Everything I needed was in that email...including his name, which I'd forgotten to ask.

  He'd signed it simply.

  Jake.

  3

  Jake

  She wasn't beautiful, but she was pretty and the blushes that kept coloring her cheeks were pretty damn cute.

  One thing was certain – she wasn't what I'd been expecting.

  But then again, I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting. When a woman contacted me out of the blue about an article she wanted to do with Jake King, the King of Multiple Orgasms – shit, what a name – I'd been tempted to say no.

  But I'd been tempted to say no to a lot of things in the past decade of my life, and I hadn't. All for one reason. If it could serve as a mean to an end, then I wasn't saying no.

  And while I
wasn't sure if somebody who wrote for a woman's magazine like Coterie was considered a reporter or a writer – was there a difference? – one thing was certain. Anybody who worked for an outfit that big would have connections. I'd spent my entire adult life cultivating any and every connection I could get.

  Why stop now?

  I'd been right though.

  The woman who'd requested the interview was Gina Goddard, one of Coterie's top writers.

  The woman sitting next to me had nervously given me her name – Michelle.

  They were two different people. There was no doubt in my mind. Different styles, different approaches. I didn't even have to ask. Gina Goddard wasn't a woman who'd blush about asking a man how he'd gotten his start at fucking women for money.

  The woman next to me with her pretty blushes and her uncertain glances was a different matter entirely. And those blushes were proving to be far more enticing than I'd imagined possible, and I wanted to see just how far down they went.

  Finally figuring out the right way to approach all of that, I studied the interior of the tequila bar where we'd agreed to meet and decided that the ideal way to handle this – her – was to tell her we needed more privacy.

  That plan got dashed to all hell less than five seconds after I hatched it.

  The last thing I needed was to see a movie star come in.

  No, the last thing I needed was to get intrigued by the cute little redhead conducting the interview. But that was what happened. And it had been followed by the second to the last thing I needed to happen – the entrance of a movie star followed by paparazzi.

  Now I was stuck in this damn bar with a writer, paparazzi, and the problem of how to get out. I never should have agreed to this damn interview. Women didn't need to read articles on how to achieve multiple orgasms. They needed a really good vibrator, or better yet, a really good partner.

  That's where I came in.

  With the right dollar amount, I would give a woman as many orgasms as she wanted.

  Sometimes, I didn't even need the dollars thrown in there.

  I dated, had sex off the job. A busman's holiday, maybe. I didn't need to get paid to get off. It was just...what I did. It was what I was good at. And it was a means to an end.

  Michelle wasn't exactly the sort of woman I would have sought out on my own, but having her dropped into my life was...well, who turned down such a sweet surprise?

  Granted, there was nothing about sitting there with Michelle that was helping me accomplish that end I'd set for myself a long time ago, teasing and flirting with the sexy redhead who had actually come out in the freezing weather wearing a strapless dress under a coat that had almost convinced me she wasn't the woman I was looking for. Right up until she shrugged out of the coat to reveal that dress, and that body.

  All those curves had been perched on a pair of fuck-me heels, done in a shade of blistering red – the high heels sans pantyhose and a pink miniskirt. It was possible there could be a woman wearing that same get-up but nobody else but the woman I needed to meet would be likely to be alone as she approached the seat my bartender buddy always kept open for me on the nights I told him I had a meet.

  Now, here I was with a woman I wouldn't mind being alone with, but the one thing I didn't have time for was convincing her of that – not when the camera flashes were getting as consistent as lightning during a summer thunderstorm.

  Michelle crossed her legs, murmuring something under her breath, and I was acutely aware of the way one shoe dangled off the tip of her toes.

  I had to get the hell out of here, or I wouldn't care enough to do it later.

  Buck, my faithful bartender sidekick, glanced my way and I gestured toward her glass, already knowing how much the wine would cost – and calculating how much of a tip I should leave to cover his trouble.

  He glanced at Michelle, but gave a single nod.

  I had the money out before he even reached me and took the pen from the little leather folder as he laid it on the counter.

  Scrawling her a note, I left the bills, making sure I took the business card she'd fished out of her purse earlier.

  I hadn't seen the last of Miz Michelle.

  But I wasn't seeing her here.

  That was for certain.

  * * *

  Back at my apartment, simple, sparse and spartan, I looked up Miz Michelle Nestor.

  I had more interest in her rather than finding out why she'd been at the restaurant rather than Gina, but I did take a few minutes to research the popular writer from the women's magazine.

  Her accident had actually made a couple of the local news outlets, so it was pretty easy to understand why she had somebody else filling in for her.

  Finding out information about Michelle wasn't quite so easy.

  She had a Facebook page, but it was locked down tight.

  She had a LinkedIn page, but it was locked down even tighter.

  No Twitter that I could see.

  The only online presence that held any really hint of her was a brief online website for freelancers, and all I could see from that without having an account was a headshot and a few reviews and references.

  "You're not making this easy are you, sweetheart?"

  I studied the headshot, taking in the smile that was both polite and warm, but distant somehow. I didn't like it.

  It wasn't really her.

  "I guess I'm not going to find out much about you online, am I, sugar?" I touched a finger to the curve of her cheek and leaned back, head cocked as I continued to ponder her face.

  Plucking the card from the pocket of my jeans, I eyed her email, then opened the email app on my laptop.

  "I wonder if I can make you blush from just a message."

  * * *

  An hour later, I locked the door behind me, leaving the warmth of the apartment behind yet again. I had an appointment in Manhattan at a boutique hotel where anonymity was just as much a selling point as the lush, 1920s art-deco style rooms.

  My client was waiting for me, lying in bed naked, sipping from a glass of wine and checking her email.

  "Can't you take a night off, darlin'?" I asked.

  She glanced at me. "I am. That's why I'm here...darling." She gave me a slow smile and dropped the phone on the nightstand before taking a sip of her wine, smiling at me over the rim as she swallowed.

  Alicia was one of my favorite clients. I'd almost even call her a friend, if I allowed myself to have friends.

  But friends weren't exactly something I liked to put my trust in. I'd done that before, and it had fucked me over good and proper. I wouldn't let myself get in that position again.

  Still, I liked Alicia.

  She was easy to talk with, easy to please, she was a good bed partner, and she paid well.

  What wasn't to like?

  "Are you in the mood for anything specific?" I asked, moving to the foot of the bed.

  "Just you." She gave another smile and crooked her finger at me.

  I approached, and she offered me her glass of wine. I put it on the table for her instead of drinking and bent down low, kissing her soft lips. She tasted of the chardonnay she'd been drinking, and I had a brief moment to wonder...how would the zinfandel Michelle had been drinking taste on her lips?

  Then I jerked my attention back to the job.

  Alicia moaned as I covered her body with mine, deliberately dragging my chest against her breasts so that the cotton of my sweater rubbed over her nipples.

  "I changed my mind," she said against my lips. "I do want something specific. Hard and fast."

  "As you wish."

  I flipped her over onto her belly and brought her up onto her knees. As she braced herself on her palms, I pulled a rubber from my pocket – it would be the first of three we'd use, although I carried a couple extra just in case.

  By the time she had herself steadied on her hands and knees, I had my cock sheathed in latex, and I grabbed her hips again, hauling her back and half lifting her slim form.
I had another flash – rounder hips, because Michelle was a powerhouse of curves and lines, her pale flesh glowing like a pearl against my darker, rougher skin.

  Groaning, I thrust deep.

  Alicia cried out my name, and I forced myself to think, to focus. "Rough?" I asked.

  "Please...yes. Hell, yes."

  I caught the thick weight of her hair in my hand and made a rope of it, pulling her back until her spine arched as I rode her. "Come for me, you sexy little bitch," I said as I palmed her breast with my free hand, tweaking her nipple.

  Alicia whimpered and pushed against me, butt and breast, and I shoved all thoughts of everything else from my mind.

  After all, I had a reputation to uphold.

  4

  Michelle

  "I will be allowed to speak, correct?"

  "Maybe...if you say please."

  With my feet kicked up on the desk, I pondered the stamped tin ceiling tiles overhead and replayed those few moments over and over through my mind.

  Was it me or had there been something sexually charged in that?

  Was he into bondage?

  The master and slave stuff?

  That idea freaked me the hell out, and not in a good way, but there was something about his teasing voice when he'd said it.

  Maybe...if you say please. The memory made me shiver.

  There was some unfamiliar part of me that was already willing to say please to Jake in a number of ways. For a number of things. It was embarrassing to acknowledge it, but more than once, I found myself wondering how one might handle approaching a man in his position.

  Not that I enjoyed sex really.

  I actually kind of sucked at it.

  I could get myself off with a vibrator just fine, but if I had a guy with me, once we got past the petting stage, things got really, really boring. And awkward.

  That being the case, I didn't understand why I kept thinking about all the petting...and the more stuff. The stuff that usually made my brain freeze up.

  His hands sliding my clothes off.

  His hands sliding up and down my body, between my thighs, or cupping my breasts...his fingers...