Stripping It Down (8 page)

Not that she thought of Jake that way. Unfortunately, despite Kit's assertions to the contrary, Elizabeth had started referring to them as a unit, inviting them out as a pair, even going so far as to change Kit's hotel reservation for the wedding so she and Jake could stay together.

Even her editor at Bustout had gotten on the bandwagon. "What does your boyfriend think of these columns?" she'd asked Kit just last week.

"He doesn't," Kit had replied, "because he doesn't know about them. Besides, he's not my boyfriend," she'd said tersely, "he's research."

"Damn, you're cold." Tina laughed. "I almost feel sorry for the poor guy. Whatever he is, try to get him to stick around for a while, because thanks to you, the site's never been more popular."

At the time, Kit had been surprised not to feel the expected elation at her column's popularity. It was true though; her column – and consequently Bustout.com – had experienced a surge in readership over the past three weeks. And Kit had even received e-mails from her friends with copies of her own column, exclaiming over this hilarious, clever column that she just had to read.

Instead she'd been brooding over what Tina said. She tried to convince herself that C. Teaser was just a facade, a persona she put on for the entertainment of women everywhere. But when she thought about how she was using Jake for material, she wondered if that cold, calculating man-eater was the real Kit after all.

As she felt Jake's hands reach up to stroke her forearms, she tried to banish the guilt that snuck up on her more and more frequently these days. As though to remind herself not to get foolishly caught up in the haze of great sex and warm emotions Jake awoke in her, she had taken on a particularly harsh tone in "Stripping It Down" in the past couple of weeks. She'd purposely made Jake out to be a sex-hungry, pussy-whipped idiot held firmly in her thrall.

Which was so far from the wickedly intelligent, funny, charismatic, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous man that he was.

She buried her face in his hair as a voice whispered, not for the first time, that she was on the verge of completely screwing up her relationship with the one man she could spend the rest of her life with.

She banished the thought before it could take root, reminding herself of her purpose. She was with Jake only to further her writing career. And if she got some great sex and nice dinners out of the deal, hey, she'd take the perks.

"Ouch," Jake winced, tugging her hands away from his chest.

Kit didn't realize she'd been unconsciously digging her nails into his skin. She muttered an apology and made to move away, but he grabbed her wrists, staying her. "What are you doing tonight after work?"

"I was planning on working on a freelance project." Truth was, the latest edition of "Stripping It Down" was due tomorrow, and she hadn't been able to come up with anything good.

"Any chance you could join me for a work dinner?"

Kit stiffened and straightened. Going out together with their mutual friends was one thing. In her world, at least, you brought a date to work functions only when you were ready to admit to the world you were using the "BF GF" words. Which was why in the three years she'd worked at the Tribune, she'd never had a date to the holiday party.

"I don't know if that's such a good idea," she hedged. "I mean I'm not, we're not," she stammered. Crap. The last thing she wanted was to get roped into one of those "state of the relationship" talks.

Jake managed to completely distract her simply by standing up. He was so much taller that her braless breasts were pressed against his abs, and against her stomach she could feel the bulge in his boxers stirring in interest. Her body responded like Pavlov's dog, even though he'd woken her up this morning with his tongue buried between her legs.

"It's not a big deal, Kit. Everyone else is bringing their wives and girlfriends, and I'll stick out as the odd guy if I go alone. Don't read anything into it."

His green eyes were bright with amusement, and she saw nothing in them to make her doubt his assertion that this was nothing more than a casual favor to him.

Damn, if she really wanted a relationship with him, her heart might actually break right now.

"Fine," she agreed, resigning herself to a long evening with stuffy venture capitalists and their trophy wives and girlfriends. "Tell me when and where."

***

Surprisingly, the dinner wasn't nearly as hellish as Kit had feared. Jake's surprised delight at seeing her hadn't hurt. After taking in her tight navy turtleneck sweater, chocolate brown pencil skirt, and knee-high chocolate suede boots, he'd pressed a kiss to her ear and murmured, "You look great."

Which made her glad she hadn't gone with the deep V-neck blouse and red ankle-strap fuck me pumps she'd been tempted to wear just to shake things up.

It was clear Jake was the baby in his firm, as most of the West Coast partners – the "younger crowd," Jake had assured her – were at least five years older than Jake's thirty-four. She couldn't help but be a little awed by his undeniable success at such a comparatively young age.

Not that it surprised her. Even back in high school, Jake had exuded that certain something, like a pheromone, something that assured the world that he would never be average. It was what had made her fall in love with him in the first place.

What kind of a moron had she been, thinking he would find her equally special?

The thought drew her up short. Since when did she succumb to feminine insecurity? Besides, the woman she was now was twelve years and miles away from caring about whether any man – Jake Donovan included – found her "special."

Still, she was enjoying the solicitous boyfriend act he was putting on, holding her hand under the table, making sure her wineglass was full, smiling admiringly as she spoke intelligently about many of the companies the firm had invested in. It was rare that her business reporting background felt like a social asset. Most of her friends weren't particularly interested in tech trends and the latest CEO shakeups.

The only black mark on the evening was the fiancée of one of the other partners, a shrill, skinny woman around Kit's age. Once Amy, a junior PR exec, had heard Kit was a business reporter, she'd immediately launched into a list of her clients and all the reasons Kit should write feature stories on each and every one of them.

That is, when she wasn't drooling over Jake like she wanted to spread death by chocolate icing over his body and lick him clean.

"You must work out," Amy said to Jake, her eyes flickering hungrily over him from across the table. Her fiancé; a stocky dark haired man with a thick neck and well-developed paunch, didn't seem to notice.

Jake smiled uneasily. "I get to the gym when I can."

"Come on," Amy said, fluttering her eyelashes as though a grasshopper had just landed on her eyeball, "you don't get a body like that with occasional trips to the gym. What's your secret?"

Kit's fingers tightened around the stem of her wineglass. Of course she wasn't jealous. She never let herself care enough to be jealous. But she did believe in a code of conduct among single women. In Kit's world, one did not flirt with another woman's date.

The wicked devil who'd urged Kit to dress like a slut made another appearance on her shoulder. Leaning over the table, Kit said in a low voice so the rest of the table couldn't hear, "I'm very demanding. I keep him in shape with our marathon fuck sessions."

Amy's mouth sagged open, and her fiancé , who'd apparently been paying attention to the whole exchange, laughed so hard he shot wine out of his nose.

Almost immediately Kit wished she could take it back. It was a special talent of hers, having a few glasses of wine and making some scathing or inappropriate remark. In situations like this, her internal editor clicked off and she forgot that not everyone thought she was funny, even if she found herself hilarious.

For all that she tried to convince herself she didn't care, she didn't want to embarrass Jake in front of his coworkers.

Kit turned to Jake, almost afraid of what she'd see. There was no shock, anger, or even embarrassment on his face. His expression was one of smug pride that said he was the luckiest man in the room and he damn well knew it.

"What can I say," he said, sliding a hand across her shoulders. "If she put out a workout DVD she'd be richer than that Tae Bo guy."

Oh. My. God. She froze in shock, wineglass halfway to her lips.

He gets me. This man who I've written off as the first and worst dog in my life understands me better than anyone I've ever met. She felt like she was falling headfirst into the mischievous warmth of his eyes. Not only that, he's actually charmed by me. A panicky feeling swelled in her chest, and she was saved from having to analyze this new, terrifying revelation by the announcement that after-dinner drinks were now being served in the bar.

She caught Jake's hand before he could follow the others. "Come with me," she said, tugging him down the hallway toward the restrooms.

She was suddenly edgy, restless, compelled to show him that she felt...something. Something she was in no way prepared to put into words.

She pulled him into the women's restroom and shoved him into the handicapped stall.

"Kit, we shouldn’t –"

Pushing his back against the door, she sank to her knees and ripped open his fly. "Don't tell me," she whispered, pulling his pants and boxers below his hips, "that an experienced, sophisticated man such as yourself would let something like getting caught stop him."

He laughed softly to hear his words thrown in his face, the sound morphing into a moan as she grasped his pulsing erection in her fist and ran her tongue down its entire length. Grasping him around the base, she rasped her tongue along the underside, lavishing special attention on the spot just below the velvety plum-shaped head. He tasted so good, like salty man skin and earthy musk. The feel of him throbbing against her tongue made her thighs squeeze against the aching pulse of her sex.

Big hands threaded in her hair, guiding her motion as she sucked him as deep as she could, feeling him against the back of her throat, fingers coming up to tease his sac. In the past three weeks she'd come to know his body as well as she knew her own, knew exactly how to touch him to bring him to immediate, explosive release.

Now she used every trick in the book, trying to convey without words that despite all her efforts to the contrary, she'd actually come to care, that he was amazing in so many ways, that this month with him had brought her more happiness than she'd ever thought possible.

His groans echoed off the tile as her fingers cradled his balls and her fist pumped him hard and fast. Her lips sucked and teased the head, and just when she knew he was on the very brink, she sucked him deep, relaxing her throat muscles as he exploded into her mouth. She milked him of every last drop of come, kissing the tip one last time

before tucking him back in his boxers.

Jake pulled her gently to her feet and closed his mouth over hers, groaning into her mouth as his hand started to draw her skirt up her thighs. She gently brushed him off.

"Don't you want me to?"

She pressed a finger against his lips, unable to stifle the tiniest of moans when he sucked it into his mouth. "That was all for you."

His slow, crooked smile was worthy of a toothpaste ad. "I need to know what I did to deserve it, so I can do it every day for the rest of my life."

Even though she knew he didn't really mean anything by it, she was stunned that his use of the phrase "the rest of my life" in relation to her didn't send her into a tailspin of panic.

***

Kit woke up early the next morning to check her e-mail. For the first time ever, seeing all the praise for "Stripping It Down" didn't fill her with thrilled pride. Instead she felt a little nauseated. Last night she'd been forced to acknowledge that what she and Jake shared was special, beautiful even, and it wasn't right for her to denigrate it for

the sake of entertainment.

She comforted herself with the knowledge that, at the very least, neither Jake nor any of her friends knew of her bitchy alter ego, and if she stopped now Jake would never know how she'd used their relationship to boost her column's readership.

As though reading her mind, Tina called at that very moment. "Kit,

I'm sorry it's so early, but you'll never guess what happened." Even through the phone, Kit could hear Tina quivering with excitement like a Chihuahua.

Kit cut her off. "Actually I'm glad you called. I need some help brainstorming column ideas. I have to stop writing about Jake."

Tina was completely silent for several moments. "No, Kit, you can't stop now. That's why I called. An editor from Hardin Publishing just called me. She got a hold of your column and wanted to know if

we, that is, you and Bustout, would be interested in putting together a collection of columns for a “Stripping It Down' book."

The handset slid from her numb fingers.

"Kit? Are you there?"

Kit fumbled on the floor for the phone. "A book? Are you serious?"

"Not only that," Tina said, "she said she has a friend at Bella magazine who might be interested in buying the rights and giving you a monthly spot."

A monthly column in a national magazine? And a book? This was better than she'd ever dreamed.

"I'd hate to lose you," Tina was chattering, "but if they buy the rights we can expand the editorial staff. The only thing is,” Kit braced herself for the catch,” she wants to see more. She really likes the work you've done in the six months that you've been writing for us, but she thinks the last month's worth has been really stellar, and she wants to be sure you can keep writing at that level."

Kit squeezed her eyes shut as her stomach clenched. The last month. The Jake Chronicles, as she'd started calling them in her head. She looked at the door of the bedroom, behind which he slept in blissful ignorance, having no clue that to thousands of readers, he was the anonymous, brainless dick attached to a body being sorely used and abused by one C. Teaser.