Any Way You Want Me - By Jamie Sobrato Page 0,8
that snaked through the small, stark-white store and out into the mall. It took fifteen minutes to finally make it to the front of the line.
Yasmine requested a sample of her favorite food on earth, a See’s raspberry cream. “Mmm,” she moaned when she bit into it. “Chocolate-covered sex.”
The clerk behind the counter gave Yasmine a put-upon look, and since the line behind her was growing impatient to buy their yearly gift boxes and get the hell out of the mall, she said, “I’ll take a pound of these.”
Cass smiled. “You’re buying him a whole pound of nothing but chocolate-covered sex?”
“It’s a litmus test. If he gets what a great gift it is, then I take it as a sign he might be good in bed.”
Her eyes lit up. “I should start doing that with all my dates.”
And if all signs pointed to yes, then what? Did Yasmine sleep with the office hunk and risk ruining her long streak of good behavior?
She paid for her box of chocolates and headed out of the crowded store with Cass. “This is kind of a chintzy gift, though. Maybe I need a little something that declares my intentions subtly but clearly to go with it.”
“Right. Something that could be interpreted as completely innocent or down and dirty, depending on your mind-set.”
“What, like a jar of Vaseline?” Yasmine joked.
“Ew. On second thought, guys are kind of dense. Maybe you need to be loud and clear about your intentions. Maybe throw in a cute sex toy, and he’ll get the hint.”
“A nice big dildo?”
“Would you be serious for five seconds? I know a little sex shop a few blocks from here. How about a pair of furry handcuffs?”
Yasmine smiled. A quivery feeling was growing in her belly. It was the wild streak, rearing its stubborn head. And just this one time, she wanted to take out her long-ignored pet and play with it instead of keeping it hidden in the closet.
After so many years of being in control, Yasmine wasn’t sure she could deny herself one hot, adventurous night of rebellion.
CASS HOLBROOK had never thought of herself as being destined for a corner office with a view, but over the years somehow, without her having completely realized it until now, she’d become respectable. She’d learned how to command attention without taking off her clothes.
So as she and Yasmine approached the mall Santa, on their way to the car, Cass was a little shocked to realize she hadn’t done one of her infamous Santa stunts in years. She stopped a few feet from the velvet ropes that formed a line for waiting kids, and Yasmine turned, wearing a puzzled expression.
“What’s wrong?”
“Have you told Santa what you want for Christmas?”
She was looking at Cass as if she’d lost it now. “Um, no.”
“Then how do you expect to get what you want?”
“Have you been smoking something?”
“Don’t you remember in college how we used to stand in line to sit on Santa’s lap and tell him our naughty Christmas lists?”
Yasmine looked from Cass to the large man clad in red, and back again. “We were in college, and we were stupid.”
Cass headed for the back of the line, which was only about ten kids deep. “So maybe we need to do more stupid things.”
“Or not.”
She waved Yasmine over, but she stood her ground.
“Come on, don’t you want to see Santa’s expression when I ask him for a—”
“Stop it! There are underaged people present,” Yasmine said as she grabbed Cass’s hand, and started tugging her away from the line.
“You’ve turned into such a prude,” she said, letting herself be pulled toward the mall entrance.
Much as she loved Yasmine, Cass couldn’t deny that her friend had taken her attempts to be a good girl to the extreme. The result was a sort of constipated life, a life wasted worrying too much about what was the right thing to do, a life that gave up interest to avoid risk. Cass had always seen herself as the answer to Yasmine’s self-imposed uptightness, but now she realized she’d become just as uptight herself. Just as repressed. Not so much by shame over past misdeeds—although there were plenty—but by her focus on success. She’d been working so hard, she’d forgotten to have fun.
Now that Cass was coming out of the fog of her last dumping, she was beginning to notice some things about her life. Such as the fact that she was nearing the big four-oh and had managed to not acquire most of the