Striptease

“Repeatedly.” Jacob grinned.

“You’re talking about having an affair.” Melanie stared at him, not sure what to think.

“Is what we’ve done together so far nice?”

She glanced down, picked at a knotted thread on her linen top. “I’m not sure I’d call it nice.”

“Then call it not-so-nice. But not-so-nice in a way that it’s so hot, so tight, so—” Jacob clenched one hand into a solid fist “—so genuinely real that even if you do go back to the way things were before, nothing will seem the same.”

Melanie looked into his eyes, listened to his voice, loving every second of what he was making her feel. Never in her life had she felt this sort of connection that went far beyond anything she’d ever thought of as sexual. This, this…untamed sense of being ruled by her body instead of the mind, the intellect she’d cultivated all her life. What was wrong with her?

He wanted to continue what they’d started. He wanted to call it an affair.

She said the only thing she could, a very simple “Yes.”

Dear Reader,

I’ve had such a great time with the women of gIRL-gEAR, creating their stories and getting to know these heroines along with the rest of you. After reading the first three stories in early 2002, many of you wrote to ask the fate of the remaining gIRLS: Melanie Craine, Kinsey Gray and Annabel “Poe” Lee. So let’s get started.

In Striptease, we find techno-wiz Melanie Craine dealing with her worst nightmare—a man who challenges her need for order and control while being guilty of the very same thing. Sparks definitely fly—and not only from the video equipment! Striptease defines the concept of high-tech romance!

I hope the wait for Melanie’s story has been worth it. And I hope meeting Jacob Faulkner has you pulling that videocam out of storage to explore all the possibilities it offers! I’d love to hear what you think of Striptease.

Visit me on the Web at AlisonKent.com or gIRL-gEAR.com! And stay tuned for Kinsey’s story, Wicked Games, coming in October, followed by Indiscreet, Poe’s story, in January.

Enjoy!

Alison Kent

Striptease

Alison Kent

For all the readers who continue to ask

after the rest of the gIRLS. This one’s for you.

A big thank-you to Larissa Estell,

Jill Shalvis and Donna Kauffman for the daily whine fest.

That’s what friends are for!

And to Jan Freed.

I owe you, bud, for fixing the parts I knew

were broken as much as for repairing what I couldn’t see.

A girls’ night at the movies to celebrate sounds like a plan!

The gIRLS of gIRL-gEAR

by Samantha Venus for Urban Attitude Magazine

Samantha Venus, intrepid reporter, insatiable gossip, back at long last with news about our favorite fashion divas. They soon won’t be only our hometown honeys, but national—dare I say international—treasures.

My favorite L.A. production company and my favorite television show hostess with more mostess than most, Ann Russell, will pry out secrets even my bloodhound nose has not been able to divine. And the prospect is just that. Divine.

Even better is this little tidbit Samantha has scooped for all you darlings. Ann and the gIRLS will be baring all, so to speak, for our local Avatare Productions’ deliciously dishy videographer Jacob Faulkner.

This reporter, for one, can only hope for a bit of reciprocal baring. We all know that there is nothing quite as yummy as a man stripped to his bare essentials!

Until that blissful day, dear readers…Samantha Venus signing off for Urban Attitude Magazine.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

1

June…

MELANIE CRAINE ENTERED the sanctuary of the neighborhood church two blocks from the Hollisters’ home. Three quick steps into the air-conditioned interior and she thudded to a stop.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered, knowing he wasn’t kidding her at all.

What he was doing was ignoring every word of this morning’s phone conversation during which she’d told him—yet again—where she wanted the cameras located for tonight’s taping of Lauren and Anton’s wedding.

Melanie jammed her pocket PC’s stylus into its slot, then zipped the whole device into the pale yellow case at her waist. She was not about to let down the bride or the groom. Especially not after the honor of being asked to handle their wedding video details.

Setting her videographer on the straight and narrow had just become job one.

Her status as gIRL-gEAR’s resident geek gave Melanie the inside scoop on the city’s best in high-tech photographers and video firms. And Avatare Productions had been the obvious choice.

Or so she’d thought until she’d been stuck with the company’s hard-headed, opinionated and—yes, okay—admittedly hunky crew chief.

No doubt about it.

Jacob Faulkner had been put on this earth to ruin her life.

But she’d be damned if she’d let him ruin her day.

Marching down the aisle to the raised dais, she stood on the first step, watching him tilt one of the remote-controlled cameras he’d mounted on either end of the choir box railing.

“Back up about three steps,” he ordered her without looking up.

Melanie took three steps toward him instead. “What are you doing?”

“The job I’ve been hired to do.” Frowning at the camera’s LCD screen, he gestured to a point behind where she stood. “Not forward. Back. About six steps.”

She shoved hands to hips and dug in her heels. She so did not want to fight with this man. Not today. “I thought we agreed the planter boxes were situated in the best spot for filming the wedding party.”

Jacob continued to check the LCD image. “You suggested the planters.” He shrugged. “I considered the suggestion.”

Obviously for about as long as it had taken him to throw it away. She, on the other hand, had checked out the angle at least a dozen times and knew she was right. She tightened both hands into fists.

“Look, I know you’re doing your job, but the bride is one of my business partners and a very good friend. She and the groom have put their trust in me to make this work. I intend to see that it does.”

“The very reason I’m here, sweetheart.” Again he waved her back before bending to check hidden wires and connections. “Six steps is all I need. Think of it as earning that trust.”

Melanie pressed her lips together and held her tongue, an act that required more effort than she’d expected. Why were men so threatened by a strong woman’s input, forget ever taking one’s advice? No. They had to establish dominance and power and all other matters by penis size.

Frowning, Jacob straightened and resumed viewing the camera’s display. “How tall are you?”

“Five-eight, but what my height has to do with anything—”

“Same as the bride. Heels look to be about the same, too. Once you’re in place, I’ll have a better idea of what I’m working with here.”

Shoving a hand through hair that had to look like a mop by now, Melanie gritted her teeth. Compromises rubbed against her grain when it came to boys who thought they were the boss. But this wasn’t about her. This was about Lauren.

So Melanie offered the only concession she was willing to make. “I know you can control the zoom remotely, but I’m worried the cameras are too far off center.”

“They’re not.”

“So you say. I want to see exactly what you’re seeing. Then I’ll decide.”

Blowing out an aggravated breath, Jacob glanced halfway in her direction. “Look. You’ve got control issues. That’s cool. But could you save it for another guy? I’m not really into being whipped.”

Melanie sputtered. Control issues? Whipped?

He straightened suddenly and met her eyes. “Hey, sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Not “Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean that.” She crossed her arms and waited.

He gestured to his camera. “It’s just that there’s no way you can see what I’m seeing, even looking at the same view screen. We’d focus on different things.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I’ve been at this for a lot of years. Time and experience have changed what I see, what I look for,” he said. Then he added, “Besides, you’re a girl. And I’m a guy—a very intuitive type, mind you, but still a guy.”

“Intuitive. Really?”

“Really.” He pressed his lips together in a cocky, bad boy sort of grin before adding, “Kind, considerate and sensitive, too.”

She snorted.

He offered a modest shrug. “Hey, it’s what all the women tell me.”

Bonehead. “Right. You’re not into being whipped.”

Jacob’s mouth quirked. A nice mouth, Melanie hated to notice. His burgeoning smile showed off great teeth and deep dimples, and hinted at a charming sense of humor. Just not enough of a hint to counter the black marks he’d racked up with his control issues remark.

Still…Lauren. Think about Lauren.

“Okay, here’s an idea.” Melanie uncrossed her arms. “Not an order, mind you. Simply a suggestion.” She backed up three steps. “I’ll stand in as the bride for you. You play the groom for me. How about it?”

“Hmm.”

The unholy gleam in his eyes should’ve warned her.

“Sure you don’t want to be the groom?” Jacob asked.

Melanie changed her mind. It was a smart mouth. A smart-ass mouth. There was nothing nice about it. “Yes or no?”

His smile widened. “Three more steps, sweetheart, and you’ve got yourself a groom.”

This man was like no groom she would want, sweetheart. But she went ahead and stepped back to the spot where Lauren would be standing later that night. “Do you work this hard for all your comebacks, or am I just inordinately lucky?”

“I don’t work hard at too much of anything,” he said, making such a minor adjustment to the tilt of the camera that Melanie wasn’t sure whether to believe what he’d just said or the contradiction of what he’d just done.

She preferred to believe her head and keep her distance from this one. His cavalier attitude, whether real or perceived, was totally beyond her ability to fathom—even as she recognized that her own obsessive and occasionally compulsive tendencies weren’t the norm.

Detail-oriented, that’s all she was. And right now, she was cranky. And considering that state of aggravation, she would have loved to believe that Jacob Faulkner was as lazy as he claimed. But she knew Avatare Productions hadn’t come by their reputation employing bums.

And so she didn’t. Believe it, that is. Especially since he hadn’t stopped working long enough to pay attention to much of anything she’d said. “Well, maybe this once you’d make an exception and give it the ol’ college try? I promise it won’t go any further, you making an effort, cross my heart and all that.”

He finally stepped back from the camera and straightened to his full height, his full breadth, giving her his complete attention and the up-front impact of his grin, his focus and his deep, dark eyes.

Whoa! Melanie blinked, caught again between his actions and words. Not that he’d said anything that registered. Or was doing much of anything at all—at least nothing to merit the two-left-feet trip her heart had just taken.

All he was doing, in fact, was looking at her. Looking into her. Looking beyond her defenses with an intensity that chiseled out a great big chunk from between the bricks of the wall that protected her from bad boys.

“And what’s a promise you make worth, Miss Craine?” He shook his head. “Never mind. With that control thing you’ve got going, you don’t break promises, do you?”

“Of course not.” Control? What control? And forget calling on her usual self-discipline.

She couldn’t even think of a retort, what with flutters of pleasure flitting in and out of her belly. She was not the type of girl taken to mooning over a man’s biceps and pecs and nice tight ass.

Sure, she appreciated beefcake as much as any of the women she worked with, but this…this was not simple appreciation. This was the sort of bone-jumping desire she’d always risen above.

For the life of her, she couldn’t remember why.

Or how.

He started toward her, across the dais and down the first step, the second, his stride lazy and loose, his chest a broad landscape in a black cotton T-shirt, his dark indigo jeans slack on his legs but snug where the waistband rode low.

Nothing had changed from five minutes ago except now he wasn’t looking at her pixilated image but at her flesh-and-bone body. Yet everything had changed for that very same reason, and Melanie could barely breathe.

He was seeing her both mentally and physically disheveled, not to mention at her absolute worst in terms of stress working her nerves. Her attitude was in the toilet. And her drive to mow down anyone in her way had no doubt made quite the unattractive impression.

And yet he still had that look in his eye. A look that spoke of all those unspeakable things that went on in cocky, bad boy minds.

Things she’d experienced only in her imagination since she avoided the type and stuck to men who were safe. Who presented no challenge. Who bored her to tears but shared her work ethic and professional drive.

She lifted her chin and retrieved her pride, then crossed her arms over her middle, hating how body language supposedly revealed one’s state of mind. She felt vulnerable and exposed, and was angry at herself for the weakness. This reaction was not in her man-response repertoire and she did not like being put on the spot.

She especially did not like the sense of anticipation slipping between her clothing and her skin. Too aware, that’s what she was, feeling the fabric against her body in a way that had nothing to do with comfort or fit but was all about sensation and sexual heat.

Jacob stepped from the dais into the aisle, his slow rolling stride bringing him closer, closer still, until he circled around and into her personal space. He moved to stand behind her, breathing, hovering, threatening, giving her cause to wrap her arms even tighter over newly budded nipples. Ridiculous, she thought, the warmth she felt sluicing over her at having him near.

He took another step and reached the groom’s position. The thud of her heartbeat climbed to the base of her throat, and Melanie turned her head slowly. She lifted her gaze to meet his, which was even more disturbing from this distance—really no distance at all.

Oh, no. This wouldn’t do. She was not going to stand here where she could smell a hint of the soap on his skin and the shampoo he’d used and the fragrance of the detergent with which he washed his clothes.

He was way too close, and his T-shirt revealed more than it covered. His stomach was flat, his chest sculpted and hard, his shoulders rounded with muscle, his biceps tightening the fit of his sleeves. He looked down at her from beneath a sweep of black lashes. She looked up and swore she was not going to take off her clothes.

He inclined his head, lifted a dark brow. “So?”

“So…what?”

With a tilt of his head, he gestured toward the dais and the choir box. “The cameras are all yours.”

“The cameras. Right.” Could she be any more of a moron?

And why weren’t her legs longer so she could kick herself in the butt? Or steadier, at least, so she could make it up the two short steps of the dais without falling on her face?

As it was, she’d never been more aware of the swing to her walk, or the shape of her legs from the hem of her short, pale yellow skirt to her matching faux crocodile slides. Even her lemon-chiffon poet’s shirt had become too revealingly sheer.

Her brainstorm to dress early for the ceremony, allowing more time to see to the video details, no longer seemed like the same stroke of preparatory genius. She’d much prefer to be wearing baggy khakis and a huge oversize camp shirt while under Jacob’s scrutiny. What he made her feel was too…itchy and unfamiliar and…real.

But when she reached the choir box railing, she’d never in her life been so glad to be female, itchy or not. Because looking into the LCD screen, she saw things that a real man could never understand about another man’s beauty and carnal appeal.

Hands at his hips, standing where Anton would stand to wed Lauren, Jacob Faulkner looked nothing like a groom, looked insolent and arrogant, looked like a model for DKNY or Calvin Klein. Or better yet, like a brooding hustler chalking a cue, waiting for a sucker to challenge his game.

It was an attitude, an aura, a sense of self more than it was the way he wore his dark wavy hair or the way he appeared to lounge like a lizard soaking in the sun. Melanie blinked, wet her lips and watched his other eyebrow lift in question.

If only she could remember the answer he was waiting for.

“Everything meets with your approval?”

You have no idea. Though, of course, she would never say anything so leading because she knew, any minute now, she’d get over this ridiculous and latent hormone attack. So she nodded, because he’d been right, after all.

The camera angle was perfect. And as hard as it was to admit after jumping to her earlier opinion, the man knew his business as well as she knew hers.

She moved to check the second camera, though really needn’t have bothered. Where the first had shown Jacob from his left side, this one gave her the full treatment of his right. Both sides were equally devastating to her ability to disassociate her body’s response from this man. She didn’t want to react to him in any sort of physical way.

He was annoying and bossy and way too…observant for comfort. All he had to do was stand there and stare at her and he made her unbearably hot. And now, during tonight’s wedding, she’d be sitting in the sanctuary, witnessing the ceremony, her attention drawn from the bride and groom to the cameras, with Jacob looking on.

He’d be sitting in the van in the parking lot. Studying the panel of monitors on which he could so easily watch her. And she would never know if he was looking at her or not.

Melanie ran a hand along the back of her bare neck and into the riot of spiky chunks she’d tamed into curls above her nape. Her gaze moved from the display screen to the floor, to the toe of her right shoe, where her skin, bare and only lightly tanned, contrasted with the yellow. Such a strange thing to notice in the midst of her meltdown.

“This will work,” she finally admitted, because there was nothing else she could think of to say. Not when her thoughts had taken off in directions she didn’t even recognize. Directions that were definitely not refined or genteel, or even logically intelligent. Directions that had her showing him the way to her bed.

She wondered what Jacob would think if he knew she’d undressed him a dozen times already, stripped him where he was standing and taken, uh, matters into her hands. That thought brought a grin; there was no need to wonder. He was a man, and the scenario she’d painted so typical of a male fantasy.

Guys were so simple, really. Wanting nothing more complicated than what it took to keep their urges satisfied. Discounting the fact that it had been a long time since she’d responded to any man the way she’d responded to Jacob, he was no different than the others. She refused to believe he was different.

Except he was. And understanding why would take more than their temporary working involvement. She just didn’t have the time.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, and she realized she still wore a smile.

Then she noticed he was now standing beside her on the dais. She looked at him over the narrow black rims of her funky rectangular glasses. She had to go. She really had to leave. This insanity had gone on far too long. “Funny? Nothing, really.”

“Then why the smile?” He moved closer, forcing her to tilt her head back, making her feel uncharacteristically small and deliciously feminine. “Come on, sweetheart. Tell me. You don’t want me to have to get rough, do you?”

She stepped back an arm’s length. “Sorry. Intimidation doesn’t work with me. But it does raise an interesting question.”

“Shoot.”

“Just who exactly is dealing with control issues here, Faulkner. Me?” She arched a cool brow. “Or you?”

August…

“OKAY, LADIES. Let’s hurry this up. We need to get back to business.”

CEO Sydney Ford’s admonition to the gIRL-gEAR partners had become as much a part of their weekly meetings as had the gossip that precipitated the warning.

But with Lauren so recently back from her honeymoon to Ireland, the seven girls had much catching up to do, multiple trip photos to pass around and many souvenir gifts to unwrap.

Lauren had already given Melanie an extravagant thank-you gift of a bed-and-breakfast weekend for managing the details of the wedding video.

So being handed a tiny box wrapped in silver paper came as an unexpected surprise.

“Lauren, you are totally out of control,” Melanie said, while pulling the tape from one end of the neatly wrapped package. “I didn’t expect you to bring me back anything.”

Sitting to Melanie’s right, Lauren leaned back in the conference room chair like a blue-eyed, blond elf on a mission from Santa himself. A huge marquis diamond glittered from her platinum wedding band when she waved an encompassing hand over the rest of the women in the room. “Just spreading the joy of the season.”

“What season? It’s August. It’s Houston. And I don’t find the combination particularly joyous,” Melanie said, cringing as Kinsey Gray, gIRL-gEAR’s fashion authority, squealed from the other end of the table.

Lauren crossed her legs and admired her wedding set against the background of her cream linen slacks. “The bridal season, of course. A June bride. A July honeymoon. And now an August newlywed. A wife.” Lauren sighed.

Her marriage-induced bliss had Melanie rolling her eyes as she pulled the gift box free from the tape and the paper. “Not trying to burst your euphoric bubble here, but the newlywed part will eventually wear off and you’ll be a wife long past August. At least I hope that’s the plan.”

“Are you kidding? Anton is stuck with me for years and years to come.”

Kinsey’s squeals grew louder as she scurried to Lauren’s end of the table to deliver a personal hug and thank-you for the delicate Celtic Claddagh pendant draped over her hand. “Lauren, you’re the best. I can’t believe you were shopping for us when you had Anton all to yourself. I never would’ve left the room. Shoot, I’d have kept Anton tied naked to the bed.”

“Who said he went shopping with me? Or that I even let him borrow more than a corner of my suitcase?” Lauren’s grin was as prurient as it was wide. “All he needed was room for a few nice strong silk ties.”

“Don’t listen to her.” Macy Webb, content editor for the gIRL-gEAR Web site, showed off a toe ring and matching ankle bracelet with green stones in their Celtic knot centers. “Anton obviously did the shopping and only let Lauren borrow a corner of his suitcase for her battery supply.”