The Mandy Project Read online

  “Why am I crazy about you?” Warmth filled his expression, and his eyes seemed to pin her in place with their intensity. “Let’s just say you’ve reminded me what I’ve been missing—that all work and no play makes Benton a dull boy. You make me feel more alive than I have in years.”

  She held in her gasp, and just said, “Really?”

  He gave a firm nod, his voice coming deep. “Really.”

  She bit her lip and tried to hold back her emotions. She could easily cry. Because this was obviously continuing to get even more serious for him at an alarming rate. She was actually changing him, changing the way he lived, the things he thought about, the ways he acted and reacted. And because…well, she was afraid it could get pretty serious for her, too.

  Maybe it had gotten that way already—after all, she never went to bed with men she didn’t know, yet something had made her sleep with Benton on their first date. She’d thought it was the atmosphere, the role she was playing, Mandy’s fake seductiveness. But only now as she gazed into those captivating eyes did she begin to recognize that maybe she actually liked the wilder, more adventurous woman she became with him—even if she hadn’t lasted long in the sex shop. It was exciting to see how it felt to wear more daring clothing, not to care what anyone thought of her, to experience these little snippets of life she never would’ve otherwise. And most of all, it was exciting to share every bit of it with Benton.

  So she pushed back the urge to weep—because she could also just as easily kiss him, and that sounded like a lot more fun. “Kiss me,” she whispered without ever considering the words.

  “Gladly.” His voice came breathy and hot as he lifted both hands to her face and brought his mouth down on hers. Closing her eyes, she got lost in the lush emotions, the night air, the moonlight, the man. One soft, warm kiss dissolved into another until they grew deeper, tongues twining, hands roaming.

  She never planned to climb into his lap, and she certainly never planned to get her dress hung up on the gearshift—“Ow!”—but a swift move from Benton disentangled the fabric and she looped her arms around his neck, sinking into the heaven of his embrace. When his hand slid over her breast, the sensation washed fiercely through her. She kissed him harder, panting with pleasure as he stroked his thumb over the hard bead of her nipple.

  As she shifted to straddle him—which was no easy feat in that dress—his hands seductively slid up her thighs. He gazed heatedly into her eyes, and when his palms pushed their way through the snug sheathe to her hips, he cast a wicked grin. “You’re wearing lace.”

  “It’s not black,” she warned.

  “Who cares?”

  When he began kissing her breasts through her dress, she groaned, and when he began to rub between her legs over the lace, she moved against his oh-so-welcome caress. But it was when he deftly pulled the lace barrier aside and she knew that he would touch her, flesh to flesh, any second now, and then there would be no stopping, that four hideous words pounded through her brain—and worse yet, they were spoken in Jane’s voice. Stick. To. The. Plan.

  “Stop!” she screeched.

  He flinched, releasing her breast from his mouth and her panties from his fingers in one fast move. “Huh?”

  Cringing at the loss of pleasure, she peered down at him. “We can’t do this!”

  He looked bewildered. “We can’t?”

  She shook her head. “We absolutely can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Good question. She had no sensible answer. “Because…because…this is your friend’s car, that’s why.”

  He gave a sigh of concession. “True.”

  “And he said you could take it for a ride, but he didn’t say I could take you for a ride in it, so…”

  He nodded. “You’re right.”

  Whew, she was glad to see he hadn’t lost all his Benton-ness. “So we should take the car back…”

  “And then we should get in my car and do it.” He flashed an enormously tempting grin. Who’d ever have guessed Benton could be this utterly hedonistic?

  It was a major turn-on and she started to say Okay! with the same enthusiasm—but she stopped. The plan, the plan. It was not to have sex with him tonight under any circumstances. “No,” she replied.

  He blinked. Apparently, the habit truly was catching. “What?” And the look in his eyes was so…hot and delectable and at the same time sweet and loving. She couldn’t imagine explaining why she was turning him down, or why it might seem like she was playing games with him, so she quickly evaluated her options.

  She could stick with “no” and tell him the relationship was moving too fast, that sleeping together on the first date had been a mistake, that it would be smart to take a step back, get to know each other better, then ask him to take her home, concluding the evening with a chaste goodnight kiss.

  Or she could forget all that and share one last, final, blinding night of passion with him.

  “The thing is, Benton…”

  “Yeah?”

  “We can’t have sex in this car, or in your car, or in any other car tonight.”

  His warm embrace stiffened before he pulled his arms away, and his magnificent erection began to fade beneath her with the rejection he could apparently feel coming. It was agonizing, not only because his sexy midnight-colored eyes brimmed with disappointment, but because she immediately missed the erection and decided she must be crazy to turn away from this kind of desire.

  “We should go to your house instead,” she continued quickly, “so we can do it all night long without interruption.”

  Benton lay in bed naked, covers pulled to his waist, hungry anticipation humming through his veins. When Mandy’s eyes fell on him upon exiting the bathroom in her sparkly dress, she gasped, and like earlier, he enjoyed surprising her, even if in a much different way.

  He leaned against the headboard, hands behind his head. “Figured I’d save you the trouble.”

  Her face colored slightly. He liked it. “Thanks. All those buttons were pretty pesky last time.”

  She started toward the bed—until he said, “Stop.”

  She stilled in place. “Why?”

  Reaching to his bedside table, he pushed a button and the first funky notes of Hot Chocolate’s “You Sexy Thing” echoed through the air and her eyes went wide.

  “You…”

  “Bought it after the other night,” he said, still grinning. “Couldn’t get it out of my head, and I can’t get the way you danced to it out of my head, either.”

  She looked embarrassed at the memory and, despite himself, he liked that, too. He couldn’t get a firm bead on who exactly she was, the prim woman Mindy had paired him with or the much freer girl he kept catching sizable glimpses of—but the one undeniable thing about Mandy was that she wore her heart on her sleeve. He never found it difficult to discern her emotions, and after years in a stiff business environment where image was everything, it turned him inside out to be with someone so utterly genuine, whichever side of her was currently on display.

  “Show me your lace,” he prodded lowly.

  A bit of fire filled her eyes at the request, reminding him of her expression that night at the retro club. He let it rush through him and knew she’d understood his request perfectly—that he was asking for more than just the lace.

  Even so, she shook her head, her blond locks prettily mussed from their earlier ride. “Sorry. I’m afraid the near-death experience on Columbia Parkway sobered me too much for that.”

  Okay, he got the message. She didn’t want to dance for him the way she had at the club—no big deal. It had just been a thought—a very sexy thought—something he’d thought might turn them both on. Not that they needed any help in that department. He was already aroused again just looking at her in that incredible dress. “All right. Then turn down the lights a little,” he said, pointing to the dimmer switch behind her, “and come let me make you feel good.”

  The rollicking song played on as Mandy twisted the
indicated knob, shrouding the room in shadows.

  And then, with her back still to him, her hips began to sway gently to the beat.

  He felt a slow smile unfurl across his face.

  Spinning suddenly, she looked him straight in the eye and broke into song with wild gusto. She took sexy steps toward him, then backed up, teasing. She fell off her shoes once, interrupting the lyrics with an “Oh!” but got quickly back into her dance. Coming closer, she grabbed onto the bedpost with one hand, arching her back as she executed a wild dropping-then-pulling-herself-upright-again movement worthy of a stripper, a curtain of long, blond waves swinging behind her. Of course, the second time she did it, she nearly lost her balance, but he smiled when she regained it.

  Letting loose of the post, she raised her arms over her head, falling into the same seductive moves he recalled from the last time they’d heard this song together. And when she reached behind her back, he heard the slide of an invisible zipper he hadn’t noticed hiding in the flesh-tinted fabric. His mouth went dry as she crossed her arms over her chest, then slowly, seductively began peeling her bodice down over her breasts. “Stuck,” she muttered at one point, struggling to free herself from it, but she soon stood bare to the waist before him, still swaying to the beat, and he only stifled a moan. Then finally—oh yes, the moment he’d been waiting for—she reached down and began to playfully lift the hem of that sinful dress.

  He watched impatiently as she painstakingly revealed inch after slow inch of thigh, and just when he was about to lose his mind…she inched the dress back down.

  That was when he realized he’d had enough dancing for the evening, no matter how sexy she was. “Oh no you don’t,” he said, then tossed back the covers. She gasped, which he took as a compliment considering where her eyes fell, then tugged her down onto the sheets with him, quickly rolling her to her back.

  “Oh, Benton,” she breathed as his hands molded to her thighs.

  “I’m ready for that lace now.”

  “I’m ready, too.”

  Having been repeatedly tormented by the lifting of the sparkly fabric tonight, he smoothly slid his palms upward, taking the thin material with him until the entire dress rested at her hips, revealing a tiny swath of the promised lace, just a shade darker than her skin. Gliding his touch around to her bottom, he realized just how small her panties were.

  “Sorry there’s not much lace,” she whispered, as if he’d be disappointed.

  A laugh echoed from his throat. “The less the better. So, tell me, do you always wear things like this?”

  “No, but with this dress, any other kind of underwear would just be panty lines waiting to happen.”

  “Then I think you should wear this dress a lot.”

  Benton ran his fingers lovingly over the lace, listening to her soft, sensual sigh, then slid his thumbs beneath the elastic and drew the underwear down and off, over her shoes. Next, he said, “Lift up,” and pulled the dress off over her head, although—as expected from his experiences with the dress by now—the removal was no easy feat.

  “Now,” he said, casting his most devilish smile, “lie back and enjoy.”

  He’d never seen a more beautiful sight than Mandy lounging naked, nestled in his pillows, her lips lush and full, her eyes shut in sweet abandon. After their last night together, when things had repeatedly stayed so hot and frantic, he wanted to take things slower this time, wanted to make things last.

  Running his hands the length of her body, he followed with his mouth, kissing his way down her neck, across her breasts. “Oh,” she moaned.

  He lifted one hand, pushing her hair aside to whisper in her ear. “Relax, honey. We’ve got a long way go yet.”

  Resuming his kisses down her body, he stopped at her navel, then caressed her inner thighs, glancing down to see an adorable little birthmark shaped something like a heart, just inside her left knee. He gently stroked his thumb over it before easing his hands downward, following with his mouth. Blood thundered through him by the time she climaxed.

  After that, he couldn’t wait anymore—he entered her easily, and as he moved inside her, he knew he’d never experienced such a powerful connection with another person. He’d felt it the other night, too, but had perhaps forgotten the strength of the emotion. He’d been with plenty of women, and had often been with the same woman for months at a time, the whole while just waiting, hoping he would begin to feel something as intense as he felt with Mandy. Now he held back for as long as he could—but soon groaned as the pleasure rumbled through him, heightened by a deep sense of attachment.

  I love you. He started to say it, but stopped. Because it was too soon to tell her. And also because he’d just glimpsed something odd, and focusing on it stole all other thoughts.

  Was he imagining it or was there suddenly a clump of short red hair jutting through the blond around her face?

  Chapter Seven

  Usually, Mindy was behind her desk by eight A.M., even though Mates By Mindy didn’t open until nine. So when she left her house around ten the next morning, feeling like a semi-truck had mown her down, it was a bit of an aberration in her routine. Then again, being Mandy was a bit of an aberration, too. And having lots of fabulous sex with a man who could qualify for Greek god status was also rather out of the ordinary.

  What a night—and she wasn’t even thinking about all the stuff that had happened before she’d gotten to Benton’s house.

  They’d made love over and over again. She was beginning to believe maybe he really was a superhero. And unlike the last time she’d been in his bed, she didn’t even think about sneaking out before morning. For one thing, having to explain such behavior twice would only complicate things further, if that was even possible. And for another, she liked being in Benton’s bed. In between sex, they’d talked and laughed and she’d felt so incredibly close to him that it had made her skin tingle just to look into his eyes. They’d traded memories from childhood, tales from their teenage years, and confessed to their earliest ambitions—Benton had wanted to be an astronaut when he grew up, Mindy a princess. They’d also talked about past lovers, and without quite saying it, it was clear they considered each other the most phenomenal they’d had.

  So her reason for staying the night was the same reason she kept sleeping with him in the first place—she just couldn’t seem to stop herself. So much for sticking to the plan.

  Of course, she’d still woken up with one primary thought in her mind. What have I done?

  After all, it was very risky business to keep getting naked with him.

  For one thing, he’d kept playing with her hair. She’d kept subtly moving his hands away and smoothing the long locks around her face to make sure it was still covering everything it was supposed to. The wild ride in Benton’s friend’s car had been stressful enough on her wig, and having him pull her dress off over her head had nearly given her a heart attack until she’d realized he hadn’t taken her hair off, too. So despite the snug fit she’d previously praised to Jane, having him repeatedly run his hands through it or twirl it around his fingers had kept her on edge through the entire passionate encounter.

  And, of course, the big issue still loomed, getting bigger with each passing day, each passing lie. She’d set Benton up with an imaginary woman.

  She came dragging into the shop around ten-fifteen. Jane sat behind her desk, elbow propped next to an open bag of M&Ms, chin resting in her fist. She gave Mindy a long once-over and said, “Do you have the flu or just a long story to tell?”

  Mindy settled behind her desk, stowed her purse in a bottom drawer, powered up her computer, and quickly checked her calendar to see she had a lunch date with a new client, and after that a debriefing with a woman who’d gone on her first Mates By Mindy date just last night. Then she turned her chair toward Jane, slanting a look that warned her to tread lightly. “It would seem I have a hangover.”

  Jane’s gaze dropped from Mindy’s, suddenly drawn to something lower. She gasped, poi
nting to Mindy’s knees, visible below the hem of her short rust-colored skirt. “What happened?”

  Mindy knew dark brown bruises crowned both kneecaps, but she’d forgotten about them because too many other parts of her body hurt just as badly. “I took a pretty nasty tumble.” Similar bruises colored the back of each elbow, and a smaller greenish one hid beneath her chin, but she’d concealed that one with makeup.

  Jane hesitated, popped a red M&M into her mouth, then spoke with advisable caution. “Dare I ask where?”

  “Expensive restaurant,” Mindy said, keeping her voice void of emotion. “And I suppose I’m lucky there was a rug or the injury could have been a lot worse.”

  Jane’s head tilted slightly, as if trying to piece the puzzle together. “And this is one of the things you did to drive Benton away from you?”

  Mindy sighed. “Sadly, no.”

  “And did you drive Benton away from you?”

  Mindy let out an even heavier sigh, then turned back to her desk. “Sadly…no.”

  “I’m guessing,” Jane said pointedly, “this means you didn’t stick to the plan.”

  Mindy turned on her, exasperated. “But how could I? He’s too sweet, too wonderful!”

  Jane knit her brow, pursed her lips, and shoved a lock of shoulder-length hair behind one ear, understandably confused. “Is this the same man who came in here making ridiculous, exacting demands and doubting your ability to do your job?”

  “Purportedly. I mean, he doesn’t seem the same, but…”

  Jane raised her eyebrows in sarcasm. “Hey, maybe he’s masquerading as someone else! Or maybe he has a secret twin!”

  “Very funny.” Then Mindy reminded Jane of something. “You wanted me to have adventures with men, you know. You wanted to live vicariously through me.”

  “Well, stop the ride—I want to get off.”

  Mindy slanted Jane a look. “Easier said than done, it would appear.”

  “I guess now would be a good time for me to mention he came in looking for you this morning.”