His Style of Seduction

  His smile came from deep inside, from his chest, from his soul. But then it faded. How could he ever let her go?

  Half an hour later he dragged a blanket and four of Deuce’s best imported lagers out of the Monroes’ brand-new family-friendly SUV to what Lily had dubbed “the sacred salon.”

  As he laid out the blanket, she popped a brew and did a little twirl to check out the deserted beachhead and the natural rock jetty that stuck like one long finger into the water, worn smooth from a few millennia of waves.

  “So how long have you believed in all these gods?” she asked. “The advertising gods. The parking gods. The hair gods. You have a deity for everything.”

  “They live inside me,” he said. “They are the source of my personal power. The power to create good ads. The ability to find the killer parking spot. The confidence to wear my hair however the hell I want. The stamina to rebel. They’re all here.” He tapped his head. “And here.” His chest.

  She opened another beer and gave it to him, a wary look on her face. “So what about the relationship gods?”

  He took a swig of the beer, swallowing slowly. “They’re all devils,” he finally said. “But the sex gods have been kind.”

  A flicker of something crossed her features. Disappointment? Surprise? Disdain? “They have this week,” she said.

  He took another drink, studying her over the bottle. “This hasn’t just been all sex, Lil. I got to meet the makeover gods. Didn’t even know they existed.”

  “The makeover god,” she said, holding her bottle up for a mock toast, “is a goddess.”

  He dinged the bottle. “Is she ever.”

  She smiled at the compliment. “All right, then. What’s the ceremony?”

  “First I strip.”

  She looked to the heavens. “I should have known.”

  “All good pagan rituals are performed naked,” he countered.

  She took a deep drink of the lager, then screwed the glass bottle into some soft sand to hold it upright. From her jacket pocket she pulled out the washcloth-swaddled scissors.

  “All right. Let’s get this ceremony started.” She cleared her throat and pointed straight ahead. “Stand in front of me, pagan. I need to strip you naked.”

  “These gods really like me.”

  She put the scissors on the sand, then unzipped his jacket and pushed it off his shoulders. “Everyone really likes you, Jack. That’s your gift.”

  “Do you?” He knew she did. But he wanted to hear. Wanted to see how far she’d go in admitting her feelings.

  “Well, I don’t know.” She tugged at the bottom of his T-shirt and he helped her pull it over his head, the autumn chill doing nothing to cool the blood that was already making a U-turn from his head and causing a distinct rise in his jeans. She placed both hands on his bare chest, splayed her fingers and caressed his hair and hardened nipples. “I don’t know if I’d call it ‘like.’ Maybe tolerate.”

  His jaw unhinged. “You tolerate me?”

  Slowly she unsnapped and unzipped his pants. “I also lust for you. That’s it. Lust.”

  “This is more than lust,” he said huskily, the tug of arousal already starting to squeeze his lower half.

  “You’re right. This is lust plus.” She glanced down at his feet. “You didn’t wear shoes.”

  He wiggled his toes. “I don’t need no—”

  “Stinkin’ shoes.” They finished it together, laughing as she pushed the jeans over his hips and he sprang free.

  “And no stinkin’ underwear, I see.” Her gaze moved to his erection, reminding him of the first time they’d made love, of how she’d tasted him, how instant the connection had been between them. In the past week it had only increased exponentially.

  She pushed the jeans all the way down and for a minute he thought—hoped—she would drop to her knees and take him in her mouth. But she just helped him kick them off with her own feet, then bent to pick up the scissors.

  Putting both hands on his shoulders, she said, “Kneel down.”

  He did, placing his face directly in front of her zipped hooded sweatshirt. He could slide that puppy down using nothing but his teeth. However, he remained still.

  She lifted one strand of hair, the tendril that fell over his eyes and grazed his jaw. The one he knew she liked the best.

  “Close your eyes,” she ordered.

  He did, and heard the sound of metal scraping metal as the scissors opened.

  “Here you go, ye gods of hair. Gods of beauty. Gods of ridiculously sexy, hot, attractive, ought-to-be-illegal long-haired men put on earth to make women weak and helpless and panting for more.”

  He bit back a laugh. “You should be in advertising.”

  “Shhh. This is serious.”

  “So is advertising.” He squinted through one eye, directly at her zipper.

  “This hair we thusly sacrifice so that the uptight, ultraconservative, colorless owners of Anderson, Sturgeon and Ignoble will sign the contract to make Reggie Wilding happy and subsidize a cure for Sam and transform one of the hair gods’ greatest creations, Jackson Locke, into a picture-perfect ad agency president.”

  The shears snapped and a single golden strand floated in front of him and landed on the curve of her breast. He opened his eyes and reached for it, but instead of brushing it off, he unzipped her sweatshirt. She let him, and in a moment it fell to the ground, taking the hair with it.

  She snipped another, with no funny prayer this time, more intent on doing her job right. While she did, he unbuttoned her blouse. She started on the other side, pausing long enough to let him take her shirt off.

  She clipped around his ears.

  He removed her bra.

  She trimmed some from the side.

  He opened her jeans and slid them down.

  She layered along the other side.

  He took her panties off.

  And just as she finished trimming the front and sides, the moon slid out from a cloud and spotlighted her, with the same sucker-punch impact he’d felt the first time she’d stepped out of that shower bathed in lightning.

  “Lily,” he whispered, tracing one finger along the delicious rise of her hardened nipple. “You really are gorgeous.”

  “Turn around,” she said softly.

  “No way.” He closed his fingers over one breast, leaning forward, openmouthed, to taste the other.

  She dipped out of reach. “I have to do the back.”

  With a sigh of resignation, he turned on his knees and let her finish with fast, sure clips as featherlight hairs drifted over his bare skin, until the blanket he knelt on was a field of gold.

  “All right, you can turn around.”

  He did, and she gasped a little. “Oh.”

  “Oh horrible or oh okay?”

  Wordlessly she knelt in front of him, tossing the scissors aside. “Oh…perfect.”

  He wanted to remind her he was so not perfect, but she cupped his jaw with two hands, tunneling into what was left of his hair.

  “You’re still the best-looking man on the planet, Jack.”

  Her eyes were nearly black with arousal, her cheeks flushed, her lips slightly parted with breaths that were already as tight as his.

  “C’mere.” Pulling her body into his, feeling her heart hammer the same tattoo as his, he kissed her forehead, her eyes, and whispered in her ear. “Love me, Lil.”

  She closed her eyes and just before he kissed her, she whispered, “I do, Jack. I do.”

  The words kicked him in the gut and he almost grunted, but her kiss drowned out the sound as they tumbled onto the blanket and rolled over the remnants of his hair, instantly on their way to a familiar ecstasy.

  Like a magician, she produced one of his condoms. Had that been in her jacket pocket? The echo of her two words hung on the salty air as she slid it between her teeth.

  I do.

  What exactly did she mean by that?

  “Lily.” He murmured her name, rolling her one more
time so that he was on top of her. She looked up at him, strands of his cut hair caught and tangled in the thick black locks of hers.

  She tore the condom wrapper open like a tigress and placed it on the edge of her tongue. Heat shot up his erection in anticipation of her mouth.

  “Wait,” he said.

  She looked surprised, but he leaned closer and plucked a single blond hair from her eyelash. “That’s about to blind you.”

  “Sit up,” she said. He knelt and she crunched forward, used her mouth to put the condom on him and her lips to slide it down. He couldn’t help smiling.

  And wondering if this was the last time she’d referred to that morning. The last time.

  Wasn’t that the inevitable?

  Wasn’t that the curse of the relationship gods…if there were such a thing?

  She lay back, inched her knees higher and offered him her body. “Please, Jack. Love me.”

  The response was on his lips, in his head, screaming out from his heart.

  I do. Oh, God, I do.

  “Lily,” he said instead, his voice raw with need and desire and way too much emotion.

  She glided her hands up his arms, over his shoulders, to his head, feathering his new short hair with gentle strokes.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, as though she could read his mind and sense his torture. “This is enough.”

  Was it?

  Locked on her gaze, he slowly entered her, then lowered his head to kiss her and match the movement with tender strokes of his tongue.

  He watched his reflection in her dark eyes, the image of a new man with strange hair and an even more unfamiliar pressure in his heart.

  But the other, far more familiar pressure built gradually, without frenzy, without the fury that usually accompanied their orgasms. Tonight they rocked slowly, their breathing labored but rhythmic, their kisses slow and passionate, their pleasure completely mutual.

  He felt her tighten around him, clasp his arms and arch her back.

  “Now, Jack, now,” she whispered, tightening her envelope around him. “Love me now.”

  The plea put him right over the edge. His climax started from so deep that it racked his whole being, shook him, shattered him until all he could do was cling to Lily and let out a long, helpless moan of pleasure and satisfaction and love.

  Mostly love.

  He dropped his head onto her chest, her pulse hammering against his ear, her frayed breaths torn from her lungs.

  Love?

  Man, he had to give her credit. The Agent of Change had certainly done her job.

  Lily gave the umbrella a quick shake as she and Jack hustled into the lobby, out of the downpour that soaked Manhattan. She eyed his suit critically. She could see that it pulled a little across his back. Still, the designer threads fit well enough, and he looked every bit the agency president she’d groomed him to play.

  He guided her through an unassuming lobby to a bank of older elevators, his hand on her shoulder.

  “I feel like we dressed up like Deuce and Kendra for Halloween,” he said, stabbing the call button. “Reggie owes us so big.”

  Lily smoothed Kendra’s dark skirt and glanced at the open-toed heels she’d barely squeezed into. “Reggie owes you,” she corrected. “He’s already paid me.”

  “You get extra for agreeing to come to New York with me,” he said as the elevator doors opened to a small, empty car.

  It hadn’t taken much convincing. It had been simple enough to borrow some of Kendra’s clothes and get on the plane in Boston, telling herself she was there because she wanted to see her job through to the end.

  The truth, however, was that she wanted to postpone saying goodbye to Jack as long as humanly possible. The real truth was that she harbored the secret hope that they wouldn’t have to say goodbye at all. That somehow there was a way for him to be free and her to be secure. Together.

  In the cold, fluorescent light of a rickety elevator, that dream seemed impossible. But last night, in the moonlight, under the stars, out in the wide open night, in Jack’s strong arms with his heart matching hers beat for beat, absolutely anything had seemed possible.

  He raked his newly shorn hair one more time and clenched his jaw.

  “You’re going to do fine,” she said with a low dose of comfort in her voice.

  He threw her a surprised look. “I’m not worried about this meeting.”

  She touched his shoulder, feeling the tensed muscles under the wool of the high-end suit. “Then what are you worried about?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, then gave her a hard look. “If this works, you get something you want. A lot. And so does Reggie. That’s good. People I…people I care about are happy.”

  She searched his face, waiting for the “but” that she knew was coming. He said nothing, stabbing the ninth-floor button again.

  “But if it works,” she finished for him, “you have a job you don’t want.”

  The car dipped to a stop, taking her stomach on a little ride while she waited for his response.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly, then he lightly grazed her chin with his knuckles, his expression softening. “But that’s not your problem, Lil. You’ve done your job. Come on,” he said as the doors opened to a narrow hallway. “I’ll show you Wild Marketing.”

  At the end of the hall, double glass doors bore the engraved insignia of a W and the word wild in all lowercase. Inside a spare and hip-looking lobby, a young woman wearing a wireless headset sat at a sleek oak-and-smoked-glass counter, tapping a computer. She turned when Jack opened the door, her face blank for a second before her mouth opened so wide her chin practically hit her keyboard.

  “Oh, my God! I didn’t recognize you, Jack!” She stood, shock registering on her face as she pushed the headset closer to her mouth. “Wait until you see Jack Locke. You will absolutely die. He looks like another man.”

  Lily’s heart tumbled around and landed in the vicinity of Kendra Monroe’s borrowed shoes.

  But Jack just cocked his head in acknowledgment. “Don’t make me show you my tattoo to prove it’s me, Ev.”

  She looked a little relieved at the crack, as though it really proved he wasn’t an impostor.

  “Lily, this is Evelyn Simons, office manager extraordinaire.” He breezed across the lobby, peeked over her desk and grabbed a stack of messages, then indicated Lily with a wave of his hand. “Ev, meet Lily Harper, consultant without equal.”

  The women exchanged greetings, then Jack whisked Lily through a set of double doors, where the sparse decor continued into a small sea of cubicles and a glass wall of enclosed offices.

  “This is where account managers work,” he explained.

  One by one, people stood to see over the cubicle walls, phones were dropped and gasps were heard and a palpable rumble of shock waves rolled through the agency.

  Jack seemed totally unfazed, greeting a few people with knuckles, nodding in recognition of his changed look, but he slowed as they reached another set of double doors, and he looked expectantly at Lily.

  “Reggie’s office?” she asked.

  “The creative department. Brace yourself.”

  He pushed open the doors, and instantly everything transformed. Gone was the clean, crisp atmosphere of professionalism. Gone were the cubicles and neatly lined desks and button-down collars.

  Everything was bright, loud, chaotic and, well, wild. Music blared from a boom box, every surface was covered with art and color. A twentysomething girl with blue streaks in her dark hair looked up from a drafting table and blinked at Jack.

  “Holy sh—”

  “Shhh,” he finished for her, a finger to his lips.

  After more greetings, high fives, bad jokes and introductions to a staff of nine that had about sixty earrings between them—in various locations—Jack led her down one more hallway.

  “Party’s over now,” he said as the walls changed from pale to paneled and the hardwood floor was hushed by thick beige carpeting.
“This is Mahogany Row.”

  Here there were not only walls, there were doors. Closed doors. Brass nameplates with titles such as Chief Financial Officer. Vice President of Human Resources. And at the far end in a large corner office, President.

  Lily almost stumbled as she took in the severe surroundings, the plush, quiet seriousness so shocking after the chaos that was the creative department.

  Jack could never work here. He belonged in that zoo full of music and color.

  But he was going to work here. And Reggie would be happy. And Lily would have more work. And Samantha Wilding would have her husband and a chance at a rare treatment for her disease.

  But Jack would be in jail for at least a year. And she was partially responsible for that imprisonment. Lily swallowed at the thought, and refused to look up at him for fear she’d beg him not to go through with it.

  A severe-looking administrative assistant sat guard outside Reggie’s office, but before Jack introduced them, the heavy office door swung open.

  “Jack!” Reggie burst from the doorway, taking in the changes in Jack with obvious approval. “I’ve already heard the buzz from account management and creative. It’s true. You’re a new man.”

  “No, he’s not.” At Lily’s emphatic interjection, they all looked at her questioningly.

  “I mean, he’s changed on the outside and…” she said quickly, knowing her fate for a juicy consulting contract hinged on how she handled this aspect of the job, as well. “He’s polished, yes.” She reached out to greet Reggie with a handshake. “But not completely changed.”

  “She’s being modest,” Jack said, slipping past Reggie into the office. “Bring on the Brits, Reg. I’ll knock their socks off. In fact…” He tugged at the knee of his trousers to reveal a dark wool ankle. “I’m actually wearing some for the occasion.”

  Reggie’s bushy brows shot skyward as he shook Lily’s hand. “Well done, Miss Harper. Well done.”

  Just as they settled at the round meeting table in Reggie’s office, the door opened and the administrative assistant popped her head in, a worried look adding wrinkles to her brow. “Mr. Wilding. They’re here.”

  “Thank you, Jennifer.” He turned to Jack, surprise in his eyes. “They’re an hour early.”