Indecent Suggestion - By Elizabeth Bevarly Page 0,16

awaiting a reply—not that his comment really needed one—he spun on his heel and went back into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

It was all Becca could do not to follow him. And not because she feared he might light up in secret, either. But because she felt hungry and wanton herself. So she inhaled deeply on the cigarette again, waiting for the familiar sensation to calm her down.

But for the first time she could ever remember, smoking did nothing to soothe her nerves.

IT WAS AFTER ELEVEN that night when Turner finally gave up all pretense of being unaffected by the day’s events, and surrendered to the urge to smoke. Because even at that late hour, he knew sleep was a long way off, and he’d spent most of the day feeling half-crazy as it was. The craziness had resulted less from going smoke-free, however, than it had from watching Becca move about his life as if she belonged there.

It wasn’t that they did anything unusual together, but that was just the point. They spent the day doing the most mundane things two people—two friends—could do. They ate lunch together at a nearby fast-food restaurant, and they had dinner at a favorite pub near Englund Advertising where they had had dinner together a million times before. In between, they went to a home improvement store so Becca could look at paint chips and other items because she was thinking about redecorating her condo.

Normally, Turner loved home improvement stores. Normally, he could pass an entire day in one without ever marking the passage of time. Normally, he experienced an almost erotic gratification at handling power tools and light fixtures and PVC tubing. But normally, he wasn’t with Becca when he was visiting one. Throw her into the mix, and suddenly one of his favorite activities felt totally abnormal. Well, except for the part about experiencing erotic gratification. Because having her hovering over his shoulder while he handled power tools and light fixtures and PVC tubing just made all of those items seem overtly sexual somehow. So by the end of the day, his nerves were frazzled to bits.

Even so, he managed to make it through the day without lighting up. Without lighting up a cigarette, anyway. His libido was another matter. It raged completely out of control. Especially when Becca had been bent over to inspect the color on a can of paint, and her round, firm ass brushed against his hip, and he’d wanted nothing more than to bury himself in her from behind. Still, he had survived. Even more difficult, he had kept his hands to himself.

The clincher came after they arrived back at his apartment and were settling in for another movie marathon—this time with his choice of cinema. Because just as he was popping a copy of Mothra into his DVD player, Becca exited his bedroom dressed for spending the night again, because she didn’t want to leave until morning, to witness him falling asleep, thereby proving he hadn’t lit up from the moment he awoke until the moment he fell asleep.

The problem for Turner, however, wasn’t that he had to watch Becca exiting his bedroom alone when he’d rather see her entering it with him. Still, seeing her anywhere in the vicinity of his bedroom certainly wreaked havoc with his carnal appetite. Of course, seeing her breathe today had wreaked havoc with his carnal appetite. No, the problem was, and the thing that really sent his carnal appetite into overdrive, demanding some kind of, ah, nutrition—and if it couldn’t be sex, then it had damn well better be nicotine—was the fact that when she emerged from his bedroom, she was wearing nothing but his old college football jersey and a pair of knee socks.

Turner had to do a double take to be sure he wasn’t seeing things. And when he realized he had actually seen what he thought he saw, he could only sit on the sofa staring openmouthed at the vision. Never mind that the jersey fell to midthigh on Becca and covered everything that needed to be covered. That was beside the point. The point was that the outfit she had on was the one she always wore in his second favorite sexual fantasy about her, the one where she got stranded at his apartment in a snowstorm, and all she had to wear was the very thing she had on now. And the realization that sexual fantasy number two was about to