Striptease. Alison Kent

make this work. I intend to see that it does.”

      “The very reason I’m here, sweetheart.” Again he waved her back before bending to check hidden wires and connections. “Six steps is all I need. Think of it as earning that trust.”

      Melanie pressed her lips together and held her tongue, an act that required more effort than she’d expected. Why were men so threatened by a strong woman’s input, forget ever taking one’s advice? No. They had to establish dominance and power and all other matters by penis size.

      Frowning, Jacob straightened and resumed viewing the camera’s display. “How tall are you?”

      “Five-eight, but what my height has to do with anything—”

      “Same as the bride. Heels look to be about the same, too. Once you’re in place, I’ll have a better idea of what I’m working with here.”

      Shoving a hand through hair that had to look like a mop by now, Melanie gritted her teeth. Compromises rubbed against her grain when it came to boys who thought they were the boss. But this wasn’t about her. This was about Lauren.

      So Melanie offered the only concession she was willing to make. “I know you can control the zoom remotely, but I’m worried the cameras are too far off center.”

      “They’re not.”

      “So you say. I want to see exactly what you’re seeing. Then I’ll decide.”

      Blowing out an aggravated breath, Jacob glanced halfway in her direction. “Look. You’ve got control issues. That’s cool. But could you save it for another guy? I’m not really into being whipped.”

      Melanie sputtered. Control issues? Whipped?

      He straightened suddenly and met her eyes. “Hey, sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

      Not “Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean that.” She crossed her arms and waited.

      He gestured to his camera. “It’s just that there’s no way you can see what I’m seeing, even looking at the same view screen. We’d focus on different things.”

      “And how do you know that?”

      “I’ve been at this for a lot of years. Time and experience have changed what I see, what I look for,” he said. Then he added, “Besides, you’re a girl. And I’m a guy—a very intuitive type, mind you, but still a guy.”

      “Intuitive. Really?”

      “Really.” He pressed his lips together in a cocky, bad boy sort of grin before adding, “Kind, considerate and sensitive, too.”

      She snorted.

      He offered a modest shrug. “Hey, it’s what all the women tell me.”

      Bonehead. “Right. You’re not into being whipped.”

      Jacob’s mouth quirked. A nice mouth, Melanie hated to notice. His burgeoning smile showed off great teeth and deep dimples, and hinted at a charming sense of humor. Just not enough of a hint to counter the black marks he’d racked up with his control issues remark.

      Still…Lauren. Think about Lauren.

      “Okay, here’s an idea.” Melanie uncrossed her arms. “Not an order, mind you. Simply a suggestion.” She backed up three steps. “I’ll stand in as the bride for you. You play the groom for me. How about it?”

      “Hmm.”

      The unholy gleam in his eyes should’ve warned her.

      “Sure you don’t want to be the groom?” Jacob asked.

      Melanie changed her mind. It was a smart mouth. A smart-ass mouth. There was nothing nice about it. “Yes or no?”

      His smile widened. “Three more steps, sweetheart, and you’ve got yourself a groom.”

      This man was like no groom she would want, sweetheart. But she went ahead and stepped back to the spot where Lauren would be standing later that night. “Do you work this hard for all your comebacks, or am I just inordinately lucky?”

      “I don’t work hard at too much of anything,” he said, making such a minor adjustment to the tilt of the camera that Melanie wasn’t sure whether to believe what he’d just said or the contradiction of what he’d just done.

      She preferred to believe her head and keep her distance from this one. His cavalier attitude, whether real or perceived, was totally beyond her ability to fathom—even as she recognized that her own obsessive and occasionally compulsive tendencies weren’t the norm.

      Detail-oriented, that’s all she was. And right now, she was cranky. And considering that state of aggravation, she would have loved to believe that Jacob Faulkner was as lazy as he claimed. But she knew Avatare Productions hadn’t come by their reputation employing bums.

      And so she didn’t. Believe it, that is. Especially since he hadn’t stopped working long enough to pay attention to much of anything she’d said. “Well, maybe this once you’d make an exception and give it the ol’ college try? I promise it won’t go any further, you making an effort, cross my heart and all that.”

      He finally stepped back from the camera and straightened to his full height, his full breadth, giving her his complete attention and the up-front impact of his grin, his focus and his deep, dark eyes.

      Whoa! Melanie blinked, caught again between his actions and words. Not that he’d said anything that registered. Or was doing much of anything at all—at least nothing to merit the two-left-feet trip her heart had just taken.

      All he was doing, in fact, was looking at her. Looking into her. Looking beyond her defenses with an intensity that chiseled out a great big chunk from between the bricks of the wall that protected her from bad boys.

      “And what’s a promise you make worth, Miss Craine?” He shook his head. “Never mind. With that control thing you’ve got going, you don’t break promises, do you?”

      “Of course not.” Control? What control? And forget calling on her usual self-discipline.

      She couldn’t even think of a retort, what with flutters of pleasure flitting in and out of her belly. She was not the type of girl taken to mooning over a man’s biceps and pecs and nice tight ass.

      Sure, she appreciated beefcake as much as any of the women she worked with, but this…this was not simple appreciation. This was the sort of bone-jumping desire she’d always risen above.

      For the life of her, she couldn’t remember why.

      Or how.

      He started toward her, across the dais and down the first step, the second, his stride lazy and loose, his chest a broad landscape in a black cotton T-shirt, his dark indigo jeans slack on his legs but snug where the waistband rode low.

      Nothing had changed from five minutes ago except now he wasn’t looking at her pixilated image but at her flesh-and-bone body. Yet everything had changed for that very same reason, and Melanie could barely breathe.

      He was seeing her both mentally and physically disheveled, not to mention at her absolute worst in terms of stress working her nerves. Her attitude was in the toilet. And her drive to mow down anyone in her way had no doubt made quite the unattractive impression.

      And yet he still had that look in his eye. A look that spoke of all those unspeakable things that went on in cocky, bad boy minds.

      Things she’d experienced only in her imagination since she avoided the type and stuck to men who were safe. Who presented no challenge. Who bored her to tears but shared her work ethic and professional drive.

      She lifted her chin and retrieved her pride, then crossed her arms over her middle, hating how body language supposedly revealed one’s state of mind. She felt vulnerable and exposed, and was angry at herself for the weakness. This reaction was not in her man-response repertoire and she did not like being put on the spot.