Hot Under Pressure. Kathleen O'Reilly

they’ll meet—” she held up quote fingers “—the One.”

      David still didn’t look convinced. “A dating service. It sounds painful.” For women, yes, for men, ha. “Go for it. Women would jump all over you.”

       Like you did, Ash.

      “You really think it’d be okay?”

      Ashley nodded.

      “And you swear that normal people sign up?”

      “On my honor as a fashion professional.”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Try it,” she urged, because he needed to find that perfect petite blond, black-dressed New Yorker who would appreciate a man who was simply…nice. That, and a pile driver in bed, which made for a nifty combination.

      After a moment of consideration, he sighed, but then nodded. “I’ll do it. Just a test. You’ve given me courage.”

      That out of the way, his eyes skimmed over her, and she felt the tingles again. That wasn’t courage. No siree, that was lust. She gave him courage. He gave her lust. There was something wrong with that equation. “You should do it, too,” he added.

      “Oh, no. It’s not for me.”

      Ashley didn’t want to date. She didn’t need the hassles, the aggravation, or the neurosis. Nope. Everything she longed for was right there. Long, lean, stranger man, naked in her bed. She hadn’t known she could do this. “I don’t want a date. I want an affair. An exotic, femme-fatalish affair. Doesn’t that sound perfect?”

      “You should live in New York,” he said, possibly reading her mind. “If you lived in New York, I’d give you an affair.”

      “No, thank you, Yankee man. I’m staying right here in the Windy City. Well, actually, I’m leaving in the morning for L.A., but I’m coming home here. To Chicago.”

      There was a momentary silence as she contemplated that statement. They were complete strangers, didn’t even share the same state. One more plane ride to L.A., and then she’d never see him again. It made the night seem…alluring, adventurous. The lady and the tiger, and tonight she wasn’t the lady.

       Become the tiger, Ash.

      David propped up on one elbow. “You want to get dinner in L.A.?”

      “Aren’t you tempting fate?” she asked, tempted to tempt fate herself.

      “By eating?”

      “By having a date. What if that destroys the bam, the zing? What if the only way we can have this is by meeting in hotel rooms and losing our exterior selves in a moment of wild abandonment?”

      David looked at her, slightly awed. “You came up with all this from one shot of tequila and sex?”

      “No. I’ve been thinking.”

      “You could think?” he asked, his eyes narrowed. “I couldn’t think. Why could you think?”

      “Not then. Now.”

      He rapped a hand against his heart. “Good.” Then he looked at her in that way she was learning to recognize. “Do you honestly believe all that?” he asked seriously. There were two David McLeans. One, resident goofball, but the other was hardcore analyst. He was probably excellent at his job.

      “I think it deserves some consideration,” she replied, but honestly, she did believe it. It explained everything.

      And he didn’t look at her like a crazy person, which made her like him more. “Okay, meet me in L.A. In a hotel room. Chateau Marmont. We can be Mr. and Mrs. Jones. We’ll test your theory.”

      “We’d just…exchange a room number and then I knock three times on the door, and…?”

      “Yeah, or we could just meet up in the lobby,” he explained in a practical voice.

      Ashley sighed. “It’s easy to tell you’re Mr. Bottom Line. No sense of adventure at all.”

      “This from a woman in bunny slippers?”

      She held up a naked foot. “Not a pink floppy ear in sight.”

      His eyes crinkled. “Bare flesh. Seductress.”

      “You think?” She held up her foot again, watching one of his long, lean thighs dig itself into the covers until it was buried completely. She was going to miss that naked thigh, that firm flank, that stellar ass.

      “You have very sexy feet. I was watching them on the plane.”

       Feet? No. It would have been better if he were a serial killer.

      “You think my feet are sexy? You’re not gonna get weird and suck toes, are you?”

      He must have some flaw. This one would explain it.

      Thankfully, he looked horrified. “No. But I could, you know, start at the arch, work my way up, see where I land…” And she could see the gears turning in his head…all because of a foot. Her foot.

      Ashley stared at the appendage of interest, considering the possibilities. “That sounds…decadent.”

      “Bam?” he asked, raising a brow.

      “Definitely.”

      “Good. I didn’t push any buttons before, and I’m sorry about that, but you felt so good. I got carried away, and I feel like I have shirked my manly duties.”

      She wiggled her toes. “Go forth, and unshirk, my devoted slave of pleasure.”

      He pushed down her body, and his mouth pressed against her arch, and the first time it tickled, causing her to giggle. But then he moved up her calf, and it still tickled, but a different tickle. A warm tickle, a tickle between her thighs.

      “Oh,” murmured Ashley, then she shot upright, horrified by a new thought. “You have more condoms?”

      “A whole box. Now let me get back to my unshirking.”

      Ashley fell back against the pillows, and his mouth touched the inside of her thigh, and there were no more giggles. Only the sighs and ragged breathing of a woman having her buttons pushed. Every single one of them. Sometimes twice.

      “I’m very glad you went for the box, rather than the travel size,” she told him.

      “Bam?” he whispered, his mouth unshirking behind her knee, and moving north at a steady, yet wholly orgasm-inducing speed.

       Ash, you’re way too easy.

       Shut up, Val.

       4

      THEY HAD GONE through four more condoms, and the 5:00 a.m. wake-up call hadn’t even been necessary.

      Ashley was dog tired. She hadn’t been this tired in years. Thirty-two-year-old women did not stay up all night having sex with strange men in airport hotel rooms.

      Or at least not every day of the year.

      “We can’t do this again,” she told him, her face buried in the pillow.

      He chuckled, an exhausted chuckle, but a chuckle nonetheless. “Eighteen was a long time ago. You can sleep on the plane. I can sleep on the plane. I need to sleep on the plane.”

      She lifted her head from the pillow. “We shouldn’t do this again.”

      Comprehension dawned. “Oh.” He waited for more of an explanation. Ashley gathered her meager, yet dog-tired courage.

      “Tonight was fun. Like being somebody whose life I’ve secretly always envied. But if we go out to dinner, or meet in a hotel, I’m afraid I’ll lose this fantasy,