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And if he gave her something to come back for.
* * *
THIS WAS DEFINITELY a date that would go down in the Singlehood Hall of Fame.
After Leigh had finished preparing the rest of the dinner, she had expected Callum to come-out-come-out-wherever-he-was.
But...no.
He had asked her to set aside his meal in the oven for later and to fix a plate for herself so she could take it to the dining room, where a long mahogany table was already set.
Low light from a chandelier toasted the room as she sat down with her plate and her glass of wine. She placed the phone on another stand that was waiting at a setting next to hers.
What was Callum’s agenda? Yeah, she knew he must have planned some sort of scenario, but surely it couldn’t last all night. Or maybe he was gauging how far he could take this. She’d seen that movie 9½ Weeks, and she knew that there were men out there who didn’t do paint-by-number relationships or dates.
Was he one of them?
Another delicious shiver danced over her skin. What did it say about her that she wanted to see how far he would push this thing? And why did she want to start pushing it herself?
She leaned back in her chair, holding the wine in front of her as the aroma of all her honeyed dishes tickled her senses. She glanced around the room, wondering where he was, feeling the voyeuristic thrill of this game once again. It wasn’t all that different from being on TV, knowing people would be watching you, never being able to see their expressions.
Let’s see.... There was a darkened second story mezzanine rimming the room. Was he up there? Somewhere?
“Is there a peephole or something that you’re using?” she asked.
“No.” His laugh filled the phone speaker. “You make me sound like a bad man in a horror movie, Leigh.”
“Bad in what way?”
Their conversations so far hadn’t crossed any boundaries, but she knew that she’d just put out an invitation to do some testing.
“I’m not sure I should answer that.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not sure how much bad you can take. You were always a nice girl, weren’t you?”
“Isn’t that why you bid on my basket?”
He chuckled again, and she decided that it was really time to push back.
Putting down her wine, she leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table as she idly picked up a piece of bread. She’d set a bowl of honey nearby, and she dipped into it, letting the thick liquid drip.
“What kind of girl,” she said, her pulse tripping, “offers up the kind of basket I did to a total stranger?”
“Ah, but that was the genius of your basket. It was innocent, but...”
He trailed off when she took the bread and held it a few inches above her mouth, drizzling honey into it. Some of the liquid meandered over her lips, and she licked at it, then took a tiny nibble of bread.
Her chin was sticky with the stuff, too, but she let it stay there for now.
“You were saying?” she asked, barely recognizing her husky tone.
But she was delighting in the freedom of this night, being the only person in this room, with him far enough away that she wouldn’t have to see his face and know whether or not she was acting like a complete and utter fool.
Somehow she got the feeling that she didn’t look like an idiot at all—that he was enjoying the show.
She put down her bread, casually wiping off the stray honey from her chin, then sucking it from her finger. He’d stayed silent this entire time.
“You were talking about how innocent my basket was?” she asked.
His voice sounded gritty now. “It appeared that way at first.”
“And now?”
“Now,” he said, “I’m not sure what you’re about.”
She was actually good at seduction. Who knew?
She took it up another notch. “Turnabout is fair play, because I have no idea what you’re about, either.”
After rubbing her finger over her bottom lip, she used her tongue to coyly lick off more honey from that finger. He muttered something on the other end of the phone, and it sounded like an amused curse.
Good. Let him be just as thwarted as she’d been this whole time.
“You know,” she said, forgoing the rest of her meal and dipping her finger into the honey bowl this time, swirling the thick mass around, “I have to wonder why you won’t just come out here and sit with me. Is it because I do know who you are and you’re afraid I’m going to get turned off?”
“Why would you say that?”
“If you were someone I didn’t like in the fraternity, then it would make sense that you’d rather keep your distance and just play around with me from afar. It would be a sort of revenge for you.”
A pause, then, “You didn’t know me. No one really did.” His words sounded ominous until he followed them up with, “Besides, I don’t think you disliked anyone.”
She scooped out more honey, bringing it over to her plate, where she laved the bread with it just as if it were...well, not bread at all but a part of him.
As she smoothed the honey back and forth with sensual strokes, she smiled. “Is there something about you that’s unlikable?”
“I’m only a man who’s very happy with the way this date is going so far. That’s all.”
“And how is this date going?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, as if he was content with merely watching her play with the honey. As if he was imagining her finger on him, sliding back and forth, making him heat up.
Just the thought of getting a rise out of Callum sent prickles of desire through her, a wash of passion, coating her with thick dampness.
“This date is going perfectly,” he finally said.
“You like that I’m up for entertaining you?” Bold, she thought. And it feels awesome.
“I wouldn’t exactly reduce you to just being the entertainment.”
She took a different tack. “Why did you wonder when I’m going to be heading home, Callum?”
As she waited for a response, she pictured him as a lonely man. Or was he the opposite—someone who merely had a rich fantasy life that he didn’t want anyone to know about?
He spoke. “Beth might have mentioned to you that I’m vacationing here for the time being.”
“She did.” A tingle got her right in the belly. Did he have more plans for her? She laughed softly, helping him along. “Do you need a cook or something?”
“Not exactly, although you’re killing me with the smell of this meal.”
Good God—he was somewhere close. “Then come down here and eat it.”
“Later.”
Was he stringing her along, promising he was going to reveal himself if she came back another night? Lord help her, but she was so damned curious about him that she would return here again and again until she saw his face.
His voice was as smooth as the honey she’d been playing with when he came back on the phone. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
Nothing. But she wasn’t about to let him know that so easily. “I’ll have to look at my social calendar.”
“Then we’ll see if you’re free, and I’ll be in touch.”
And with that, he was gone, leaving her with a meal that she was too excited—and too calorie conscious—to eat.
Leaving her with the sense that, finally, after all these years, she could be as free as she wanted to be if she returned for some more playtime with her Mystery Man.
3
DANI COULDN’T WAIT a minute more to find out what was happening with Leigh, even if her friend might still be in the middle of her date.
Fifteen minutes ago she’d gotten off a catering job in Tulare, where she and Riley rented a house. The gig was for the same outfit she’d been with for years now—although she longed for the day when she could open her own small company. She’d headed directly for the lingerie shop nearby, browsing the massage oil and accessory section, but the whole time, she’d been obsessing about checking on Leigh. After all, what if the date was going badly? What if her friend needed an emergency call to end the night?
She decided to compromise with a text.
You good?
Dani didn’t get an answer right away, so she drove the short distance from the boutique to her little stucco home with its trimmed lawn, perennial flowers and bird fountain. Riley’s truck was in the drive, and she grasped her pink shopping bag and rushed into the house to see him.
Since he’d had the day off from his small-estate management job, he had prepped steaks for dinner, plus a salad, sautéed mushrooms and French bread. It all waited on the kitchen table for her. But when she saw her fiancé, his dark hair tousled, his blue eyes bright as he smiled at her, she dropped her bag and ran into his arms.
“Dinner smells great,” she said, nestling her face in his neck as she stood on her tiptoes. He always smelled so good, too, like laundry detergent. Clean and fresh.
He kissed the top of her head and murmured, “I was just about to put the steaks on.”
“You sure they can’t wait?” She drew back from him and dangled the pink shopping bag.
At first Riley got a look on his face that she’d grown all too used to since she’d been doing a lot of lingerie shopping after their fraternity/sorority reunion. She wouldn’t say it was sadness, exactly. Maybe just a second of resignation, of thinking that he missed the sweet, docile girl she used to be before she’d had her epiphany about being stronger and more adventurous.
Just as Margot had been with her basket, and now Leigh.
And maybe Dani had gone a bit off the deep end. She had taken a good look at herself after her friends had arranged that basket auction to raise money for the big wedding she’d wanted ever since she was a child. The one she and Riley couldn’t afford these days.
It was just that her friends’ gesture had rubbed her the wrong way. Had everyone always looked at Dani as if she was helpless? And how much longer was she going to be able to live with that?
So she’d decided that it was high time to grow up—to become a success like Margot and Leigh, not the contented former home-ec major who worked for a catering company she didn’t even own. Although she still had to work for someone else for a while, she planned to open her own catering outfit soon.
Best of all, she had started jazzing up her sex life with Riley, inspired by Margot’s steamy basket and how much it had turned on Clint Barrows, who was now the love of her life.
Dani and Riley never looked at each other the way Margot and Clint did. Why not? Dani had wondered. Why couldn’t they have combustible chemistry like that?
When she had started nudging Riley into more exotic intimate situations, he’d been surprised at first, wondering if she was just suffering from cold feet before their upcoming wedding. Wondering if she was freaking out because her parents had gotten a terrible divorce several years ago and she feared turning out exactly like them.
But he had decided that they should get to know each other all over again. He wanted to “court” her. It was a fairly sweet word for what they’d been doing.
Just as Riley was about to say something in response to her pink shopping bag, her phone rang.
“It’s got to be Leigh,” she said, dropping her purchases.
Riley merely smiled at her, then went to the patio door, no doubt to get their steaks going.
Dani watched him leave, her heart fisting in her chest as the phone rang again. She was going to make him happy tonight—and for the rest of their lives. She just had to figure out how to feel happy herself.
When he was gone, she grabbed her phone, looked at the ID screen, then put the call on speakerphone. “Are you alive?” she asked.
Leigh laughed. “No, I’m coming at you from the Other Side. Boo!”
“Stop it. I was just worried about you.”
“You shouldn’t have been. I’m outside Mystery Man’s house by the gate, waiting for Margot to pick me up.”
“And...?”
Leigh’s voice lowered. “It was...different.”
“How?”
“First off, he never showed himself to me.”
Why did Dani’s thoughts immediately go to somewhere horny? Probably because of what was in her pink bag.
“Do you mean that he kept being Mystery Man?” she asked. “The whole night?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
Dani started to hum the Twilight Zone theme until Leigh shushed her.
“The situation really wasn’t as oddball as it sounds.” Leigh skipped a beat. “I think.”
“You sound as confused as I am.”
“It’s just that I got used to the way he was running things. After Beth brought me up to the house, I did meet him. Sort of. He was on a phone.”
Dani frowned. “That’s how it stayed the entire time? With him talking to you on an electronic device?”
“It was fun. Like...phone sex. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“You guys had phone sex?”
“No.” Leigh laughed again. “He watched me cook dinner as we chatted—”
“Did he have a TV to watch you on? Is that how he was keeping an eye on you?” This was getting kookier by the second.
“I’m not sure how he was watching me. Anyway, after I cooked, I ate the dinner.”
“By yourself.”
“Right. Actually, I didn’t eat. I wasn’t very hungry.”
It was probably a rich meal anyway, and Dani knew that Leigh was always watching her intake. “Did he eat?”
“Not with me. A good way to put it is that while I was at the table, I ate the most of the honey and some bread while he watched me from wherever he was.”
Dani sucked in a breath, then whispered, “You did food sex?”
“I won’t get into details, but it actually was fun. And I think it was the first time I ever had any real fun on a date. Usually, you just go through the motions with a guy, trying to impress him, trying to be polite and not get food between your teeth or look like a pig at dinner. Boring as hell, right? Until now.”
Dani sat in a nearby chair. “You liked it. You’re into some kink and you never even knew it.”
Leigh got a teasing tone to her voice. “Maybe you’re right. Because I’m going back there.”
“You’re what?”
“I said I’m going back. I think. He pretty much invited me to the house again at the end of dinner.”
Riley ambled into the room with a plate of steaks in hand. Dani took in the aroma, along with the smell of mushrooms that already permeated the kitchen.
He nodded toward the phone. “Hey, Leigh, are you still alive or did the boogeyman get you?”
“Hah-hah,” Leigh said. “You two must share thoughts as well as everything else.”
He set the steaks down and began to put them on two plates. “I’m just checking up on you. We’d kind of like to have you around, in one piece.”
“That’s sweet, Riley.” Leigh changed topic. “Oh—here’s Margot. Talk to you all soon, okay?”
Dani shook a finger at the phone. “You be careful when you go back there.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
They signed off, leaving Dani and Riley at the table, alone at last.
He glanced at the pink bag on the floor but didn’t say anything about it as he sat, opening a bottle of beer for her, then one for him.
“I’m not even going to ask what happened on that date,” he said.
Even though she and Riley shared everything—as Leigh had pointed out—Dani hesitated to tell him the details of the night. They were just too...
She was about to say “insane,” but then she got that flippy-floppy turn of the stomach, telling her that Leigh’s date had actually captured her imagination.
Phone sex. A dark stranger.
Dani bypassed her steak and beer, pulling her chair closer to Riley’s and grabbing her pink bag on the way.
“Do you think we could hold off on the steak and take a little break before dinner?” she asked.
This time, instead of that sadness in his gaze, she detected a spark. And when she brought out the pair of blue fuzzy handcuffs she’d purchased, he put down his beer.
She got out of her chair and went to an odds-and-ends drawer near the oven, taking out a length of blue fabric she occasionally used to decorate the center of the table. She showed it to him.
“I wonder,” she said, “how it felt when Leigh realized that her date wasn’t going to show her who he was tonight.”
Riley cocked a brow. “He did what?”
“Long story.” She went over to him, then trailed the material over his shoulder. “I want to know what it feels like to have some mystery going on with us, Riley.”
He grabbed the material, wrapping it around his hand, and she knew that they’d started some courting.
Not long ago, when she had told Riley that she wanted to push their boundaries in the bedroom, he had asked her if she was unhappy in their relationship. She wasn’t. Hadn’t ever been.
But there were so many things she hadn’t enjoyed in life yet. Would she regret never exploring those things before they got married and then realize years down the road that it was too late?
She sat on his lap, snuggling her butt toward his groin, which was already straining against his button fly.
“Blindfold me,” she said.
He looked at the steaks, as practical a man as ever, until she cupped his chin with a hand and made him focus on her.
“Those can wait,” she said, already sounding like the type of woman who would go into a dark house to meet a dark man.
He grinned, and it wasn’t a carefree Riley grin, either. It was a hungry one, and it shocked her deep in her groin.
As he slid a hand up her ribs, over her breast, on his way to grab the material, she gasped. Then, almost roughly, he turned her around on his lap.
He wrapped the material to cover her eyes, tying it securely. “This is what you want?” he asked in a gruff voice.
He didn’t sound like himself, either, and her blood pushed through her veins as she tried to match the voice with her image of him. But even blindfolded, she still saw Riley.
She pointed toward the cuffs on the table. “You’ll want to make sure I can’t take off this blindfold.”
“Why?”
“Because even though you don’t want me to know your identity, I’m dying to see who you are.” Or who he was going to play at being.
She’d meant it teasingly, but was he thinking that she should know who he was by now? It felt as if a piece of her heart had crumbled because she wasn’t sure just how invested he was in all these games she was introducing.
Was she seeing how far he would go before he left her? Would she be getting a divorce from him before they were married thirty-seven years just like her parents had been, saving them the time and heartache?
As she felt Riley reach for the handcuffs, she remembered the first time she had seen him, during a party. He’d been leaning against the outside wall of the fraternity house by the pool with some friends, smiling and drinking a soda, and she had thought what a nice guy he probably was. She’d been a freshman who didn’t know much about boys, and she and Riley had ended up friends. It’d only been after college that she had met up with him again and the fireworks had started.
It had been smooth sailing ever since...until now, when she felt the handcuffs close around her wrists.
She turned her face to him, forgetting for a moment that she couldn’t see him from under the blindfold.
“This is how you want it?” he asked again.
She nodded, and he stood, taking her by the waist at the same time, then putting her on the chair and raising her hands above her head. She rested her palms on her head, feeling vulnerable, her breasts pushing against her sweater.
As her pulse flailed, he pulled up her skirt, and her first instinct was to close her legs. But he guided them back open.
Heat sang through her, but so did a little bit of fear, as her clit throbbed in anticipation.
“Do you like not being able to see me, Dani?” he asked. “Is this dangerous for you?”
“It’s safe enough.” Always safe with Riley.
At least, that was what she thought until he slipped his hand between her legs, touching her at her most sensitive point.
She made a desperate sound, and he tugged her panties away from her body. Air tickled her.
“Who am I tonight?” he asked, and she detected a trace of that sadness in him again. “Who do you want me to be?”
“I...”
She wanted to say “Riley,” but that didn’t go along with the dark-man fantasy.
When he eased his fingers between her legs and strummed her, she breathed in and clamped her arms around her head. He put his mouth close to her ear, and when he spoke, she startled.
“You need to think about who you really want, Dani,” he said softly.
Was he saying that she needed to name an identity for him so that the fantasy would work? Or was there something more important he wanted her to think about?
She bit her lip as he worked her with his fingers, pushing her toward a place where, hopefully, she was going to see the light.
* * *
DURING THE CAR ride to the Sea Breeze Suites where Margot and Leigh were staying for a couple of nights, Leigh answered every question Margot had about the date. Even when they’d gotten back to their room, camped out on their beds while hardly able to even think about getting to sleep yet, Margot didn’t stop her inquisition.
“Really?” she asked for about the twentieth time. “You’re going on another date with him?”
The more Margot disbelieved her, the more determined Leigh was to have her next encounter with Callum.
Leigh Vaughn, with her skinny jeans and a whole new attitude. She hadn’t realized how boring her life was until tonight, when she’d experienced a little bit of adventure.
And craved more.
“You bet I’m going back,” she said. “And you know what? If he can play a game with me, I can play just as well. You should’ve seen me at dinner with the honey. You would’ve been proud.”
Seemingly persuaded, Margot leaned back against the pillows she’d propped against the headboard. Then she smiled like a well-fed cat. “Leigh has arrived.”
Was that a blush she felt creeping up her face?
Nah. Women who flirted with unknown men didn’t blush.
After kicking off her hand-tooled red boots and putting her feet on the mattress, she leaned back against the headboard, too.
“I’ve been asking myself one question since I left,” she said. “What kind of man invites over a well-known cook he somehow knew from college and cuts out of the date as if his house is on fire?”
“You really want me to answer that?” In the car, Margot had compared Callum to everyone from Count Dracula to the Marquis de Sade. You just never knew, she said. But now she sighed. “I was on the computer while you were gone, conducting another search of Phi Rho Mu. But there’re no millionaires who matched the name Callum.”
“Whoever he is, I think he’s kind of shy.”
“Shy? Some of the things he said to you—especially that opening line about coming—aren’t the stuff shy men say.”
“Playing a game can make a person brassier than they usually are.” Leigh thought about the moment she’d licked the honey off her fingers and when she’d spread it over the bread with suggestive slowness. “I know that having him in the shadows did something to me. It gave me some...”
“Power?”
“Yeah.” Leigh turned her head so she could look at Margot. “I’ve never had power before.”
“Yes, you have. You’ve got a TV show. You’re a rising star, Leigh. That’s some power.”
“Business is different.”
They were both quiet for a moment. In fact, Margot seemed too quiet. And she had that expression on her face that she got whenever she and Leigh talked about their jobs.
Enough was enough. “What’s going on with you, Marg?”
It must’ve been the compassionate tone of her voice, because Margot closed her eyes, then put on an embarrassed smile.
“I was going to tell you sometime or another. Might as well be now.”
“Is everything okay?”
“More than okay. In most ways.” She tucked a dark strand of hair behind her ear. “Do you know why I’m not writing the ‘single woman on the go’ books anymore?”