Champagne Rules. Susan Lyons

what she saw. Her slim arrow of a body arched above him, those gold curls tumbling past her shoulders, and all the time he was buried to the hilt inside her. Burning with the desire to move, to make her shudder and moan, to find his release. But holding back, wanting the impossible, wanting to stay forever hard, forever inside this woman.

      Even now, thinking about it, he was hard. The memory always had that effect on him. Even in the days when he and Tonya’d been making love daily, there’d been something extra-sexy about the thought of that afternoon on Crete. About that particular woman. He ran his hand down the front of his fly, remembering her touch.

      Then he gave a growl of frustration and strode back to his desk. Where had he got to in his research?

      He tried to force his attention back to the screen, but damn it, his brain wasn’t functioning. What he wanted at this moment was to dream about hot sex in a cool cave.

      He reached for the mouse, and gave in to his secret hobby.

      In the time since he and Tonya had split up, he occasionally surfed the net, hunting for his sex goddess. He was a pro with internet research—enough to know his chances of locating her were slimmer than the odds of finding a needle in a haystack. The needle, at least, was actually there; diligence and persistence would turn it up. The woman existed, true, but she might not be in the haystack of the internet. The uncertainty somehow made the hunt even more compelling.

      If he’d only asked her name, he’d have increased his chances a hundred percent. But at the time he hadn’t wanted to know. She’d been a one-afternoon stand; the less he knew about her, the easier she’d be to forget.

      What a pile of crap that had turned out to be.

      With a combination of mouse clicks and keystrokes he Googled the words “Crete,” “cave” and “sex.”

      Every time he did this he got hits: travel notes, personals ads, even the occasional erotic blog. He and his blonde weren’t the only ones who’d indulged in cave sex on Crete. But the details and tone of the postings had never rung a bell, so he hadn’t pursued any of the leads.

      This time he skimmed the list of hits, clicking on one, then rejecting it, and going on to the next. Another sounded possible, so he followed the link to a personal ads website. On his screen, words appeared.

      Are you the man who shared sizzling sex with a hot blonde in the cave above the nude beach on Crete four years ago? If you feel like another erotic escapade, drop me a line. Be sure to tell me what you remember about that afternoon, so I’ll know it’s really you.

      outrageous69

      Adrenaline hit in a surge that had him leaping out of his chair. Goddamn! He thumped his fist against the desk. It was her!

      Then practicality took over. Maybe it was her. His lover had definitely been a hot blonde, and the time frame was right. Why hadn’t she given more details, like the color of his skin, the people on the beach below?

      He sat down again, drumming his fingertips against the frame of his keyboard.

      She hadn’t given details because she wanted them to come from him, so she’d be sure of his identity. It could be dangerous for a woman placing an ad like this.

      But then it could be dangerous for a woman walking off with a complete stranger to a cave in the hills. Having unprotected sex.

      Yeah, like his hot blonde would worry about a little danger. She was gutsy, into excitement and adventure. Reckless. Outrageous. Outrageous69.

      Sixty nine. Oh man, they’d sure shared some crazy fun.

      His gaze snagged on the piles of paper, file folders and accordion files that littered his desk. What would she think of him now, with the brilliant but utterly conservative career he was so busily pursuing? She wanted a guy who was sexy, exciting, adventuresome. And he wasn’t.

      What he was was a lawyer obsessed with piling up more billable hours, impressing the partners, kowtowing to old clients and hustling new ones. Oh yeah, he could guess how outrageous69 would view him. Sexy? Not a hope in hell.

      Though his swollen cock was definitely ready and willing to perform.

      Unable to resist the memories, he unzipped the fly of his jeans. She had stroked him with slender, deft fingers, and he’d felt huge in her hand.

      Jax closed his eyes as his hand remembered her rhythm. She had stroked and teased, then she’d leaned down and all that sun-kissed hair had tumbled across his belly as she’d opened her lips and taken him in. She’d only managed to surround the first few inches of his length. But she’d compensated by caressing and licking, working her way down and back up, then down again, tonguing his balls until they tightened and clenched and he was ready to explode.

      Then he’d grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her away from him, thrust her onto her back. And he was on top of her, inside her, swallowing her cries with his mouth even as his own climax shrieked through him.

      Oh shit!

      Jax pulled his wet hand away from his body. It wasn’t the first time he’d come, remembering her. But usually it happened in bed at night, or in the shower.

      Thank God the office was deserted. Thank God he was wearing jeans rather than one of his good suits.

      Praying the security guard wouldn’t pick this moment for a surprise check, he stumbled on shaky legs to the men’s room to clean up.

      Back in his office, the message glowed at him from the computer screen.

      He grinned and sat down in front of the keyboard.

      3

      Suzanne’s friends had made her swear a vow in retsina not to check her outrageous69 e-mail until Monday afternoon. Then she was under strict instructions to print the replies unread and bring them to Maria’s, the Greek restaurant the Awesome Foursome had chosen for dinner.

      She could have cheated and they’d never have known. She was tempted many times, never more strongly than Saturday night when she had another orgasmic dream, but she resisted. For her, a promise, even a silly one, was a bond.

      When she rushed home from the vet clinic on Monday and accessed her outrageous69 account, she was astonished to find almost fifty replies. “Don’t people have anything better to do with their time?” she muttered as she clicked PRINT over and over again. Damn, she was going to be late for dinner.

      As each new message came on screen, tantalizing words tempted her to stop and read: Hot time…sugarpie…most beautiful thing…caveman. She summoned her will power, averted her eyes, kept clicking PRINT.

      Fuck me, baby!

      “I don’t think so, baby,” she muttered. “Good old outrageous69 is a perv magnet.” And what had she expected, with the wording her tipsy friends had come up with?

      But her nerves zinged at the thought that, maybe, in those four dozen sheets of paper, she would find her mystery lover. Now that she actually held the replies in her hand, she was seriously tempted to flop down on her couch and read them.

      “The girls would kill me.” She stuffed the papers into a canvas tote and grabbed her car keys.

      Ann was running late too, and they met on the street outside Maria’s Taverna, under the blue-and-white awning. Ann ran a hand through her hair and said, “I swear, sometimes I wonder why I chose law. The clients are a pain, the partners are a bigger pain and the secretaries have chips on their shoulders the size of a Douglas fir.”

      “Bad day?”

      Ann heaved a deep sigh. “Yeah, but what’s new? One sort of highlight, though. Brad sent me a red rose with a card saying he was looking forward to our next date.” She chuckled, though the sound was ragged. “I’m looking forward to it too, but with both of our crazy workloads, we’ll be lucky if we can coordinate schedules before the new year.”

      “It’s only July.”

      “And