Beyond Seduction. Kathleen O'Reilly

could hide from the rest of the world. She leaned her head back against the ancient cast-iron tub and closed her eyes. Her dreams weren’t easy ones. She wanted to hit the New York Times list, somehow, someway, somewhere.

      She supposed her life would be less stressful if she wasn’t so ambitious but her mother had always encouraged big dreams. Mercedes had always wanted to be a writer, to explore the depths of humanity. The good, the evil, and the sexual. When she started the sex blog, the Red Choo Diaries, it’d been a lark. A way to make a name for herself without having the publishing credits that were required, and make a name she did. The blog had gotten her an agent and a two-book deal. And as a bonus, her brothers had found true love because of the blog. Everyone was happily involved except for her.

      The water enveloped her, and she tucked a warm washcloth over her eyes, breathing in the gentle scent. Eventually her body was in another place, a place where her stories lived. That dark, mysterious world were lovers had no faces, and fantasy sex would always be better than reality sex.

      Her fingers began to explore the map of her body she had memorized early on. Hiding beneath the bubbles, she could soothe the place between her thighs. While she pleasured herself, she didn’t think of Andreas, or Nick, or Alex or any of the lovers she’d had.

      Her lover didn’t have a name, only the hard hands that she wrote about in her book, the long body she yearned to explore, and the intense eyes that made her want. They would be hazel eyes, green and brown swirled together like watercolors in the rain. Eyes that flashed gold when impassioned, and calmed to the color of summer leaves when they were at peace.

      Her body rose in time with his, and the soothing lavender scent only sharpened the molten throbbing at her center. He moved faster within her, a quicksilver image that was not quite real, yet more than a dream. She wanted to touch him, wanted to kiss his mouth, test the heat of his skin, but he was always just beyond her reach.

      Right then the phone rang, and Mercedes almost didn’t bother, but an unanswered phone was like an unscratched Super Match For Millions ticket.

      “Hello,” she answered, trying not to be peeved. The person on the other end didn’t need to know they’d interrupted a climax in progress. Although if it was a telemarketing call, her peeve was going to be out in full force.

      “Mercedes Brooks?” asked a voice. A resonant, confident, sexy voice.

      “Yes?”

      “Sam Porter.”

      Sam! Mercedes fumbled to keep the towel and the phone in place. “Hello, Sam,” she purred, sounding completely poised. Mercedes could fake it like the rest of them.

      “So, has your brother hit anybody else recently?”

      Oh. “I was hoping you’d forgotten.” It’d been almost a year since her brother, Jeff, had punched Sam out on live TV when she’d been a guest on his show. A few mistaken impressions, a bunch of wrong words. Not a high moment in her life.

      “No, the jaw still aches sometimes.”

      “You’ll never let me forget that, will you?”

      “Probably not.”

      “You insulted the woman he loves. What would you have done?”

      “The celebrated gossip of tawdry celebrities was the topic of the show. I don’t pull my punches.”

      “Neither does he,” Mercedes said proudly. “So why did you call?”

      “We’re shooting in San Francisco next week, and I was wondering if you’d want to come on the show.”

      Ca-ching! Mercedes squeezed her fingers on the towel to keep from squealing. Never a smooth move. He wanted her on the show? Not the perfect audience for erotica, but hey, she wasn’t going to complain, with her book just hitting the shelves. Mercedes did a short happy dance before regaining her poise. “What day were you thinking?”

      “We’d have you on Thursday night. Fly you out there on Thursday, fly back on Friday. The show would pick up the tab.”

      Such mundane words, in such a lustrous voice. Soft, intimate, infinitely warm. Jeez, he was talking travel arrangements and she was getting seduced. “What do you want to talk about?” she asked, trying to keep all those seduce-me fixations out of her brain.

      “It’s only a short segment. The meat of the program is going to a judicial scholar who just published a book on the Ninth Circuit’s influence on the Supreme Court, so we’d only have about ten minutes. The topic would be how the white noise of sexual messages is negatively affecting the libido.”

      “I’m assuming that I’m the face of the sexual white noise?” she asked dryly, no longer full of seduce-me fixations.

      “Uh, yeah. Not me.”

      She sighed heavily into the phone, disappointed because, well, she didn’t want to analyze why she was disappointed that Sam Porter wasn’t murmuring erotic nothings over the phone.

      “You’ll do it?” he asked.

      Like she would say no. “You’ll send me the travel arrangements?”

      “Charlie’s assistant will call you.”

      “Thank you for thinking of me, Sam.”

      “It wasn’t hard. You’re not easy to forget.”

      Mercedes pumped a fist into the air. “Twelve months is a long time to sit idly by.”

      “Yeah, congratulations, by the way,” he said, easily slipping back to his smooth, melodious television voice. No intimacy, all professional.

      “For what?”

      “The book.”

      “You knew?”

      “I do read.”

      “You read it?” she asked, not bothering to hide the surprise. Sam’s political leanings didn’t lend themselves to erotica. Damn it.

      “No, but I have been spotted in bookstores before, Mercedes.”

      “You don’t approve, do you?”

      “It’s not my place to approve or disapprove. Free country. Free speech. That’s what makes America great.”

      She laughed softly, sensing the truth. “You hate it.”

      “No. Honestly.”

      He was a liar. But what was the point in calling him on it? “How are you doing? The show’s ratings are through the roof.”

      “You noticed?”

      “I do watch TV.”

      “My show?”

      “Sometimes,” she answered, not wanting to tell him that she taped his show and watched it before bed. She liked listening to him at night, and his opinions weren’t that kooky. At least most of the time. Sometimes, when she was really, really tired, she even agreed with him. But she would never tell him that.

      “I need to go. Thanks for doing this.”

      “Sure.” Mercedes hung up the phone, and returned to the bathroom. The water was cool to the touch, so she ran a brand-new tubfull, making it warm and soothing. She touched herself again, her fingers taking up where they had left off, and she returned to the dark, mysterious world where her lovers resided. But this time, her lover had a face and a voice.

      Hazel green eyes, firm lips, a nose that looked like it’d been broken once, and silky, tawny brown hair that fell any way but straight.

      As she slipped into the last wake of her climax, she thought of Sam and smiled.

      BERGEN COUNTY, NEW JERSEY, was as close to nature as a man could be, yet still be less than thirty minutes from Manhattan. Sam owned three shaded acres of towering Douglas firs, and grass growing as it was meant to be, not trimmed into some geometrical hoodoo. His