Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me Read online

  “Oh.” Min reached up for him, and he remembered the bet and sat up, hating to let her go.

  “Starting at nine-thirty.” He looked at the clock. “Which is in seventy minutes. What do you want to do for seventy minutes, Minnie? Got a Scrabble board?”

  “I’ll use dirty words,” Min said.

  “Yeah, like ‘spread,’ ” Cal said, and laughed.

  Min looked at the ceiling. “See, this is one of those things that doesn’t matter, I love you anyway.”

  “I love that part,” Cal said. “So what’s new with you?”

  “That would be saying ‘Yes, you can have me any way you want me’ to you.” She sat up and pulled him to her again, and he shifted on the couch to make room for her and felt something dig into his hip. Min kissed his neck, and he shivered as he reached behind him and pulled out her coat belt, buckle first. Then she bit him, and he said, “Ouch,” and she leaned back and smiled at him.

  “You’re going to win the bet with David and lose the bet to me, hotshot,” she said. “Think of it as breaking even.”

  He looked at her and thought, She’s right, and then looked at the belt in his hand. “Just for the record, no matter what I do, you’ll love me?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Good.” He tipped her back onto the couch and stretched her wrists over her head. “I like being in control, Minnie.”

  “I know.” Min smiled up at him. “I can work with that.”

  He kissed her again, and while she was distracted, he wrapped the belt around her wrists.

  “Hey,” she said, breaking the kiss, but he’d already wrapped the ends of the belt around the arm of the couch.

  She stretched up to see her wrists as he tied the knot. “This is a little kinky, Calvin.”

  “Not really,” Cal said, getting up. “You know, I had a dozen doughnuts to bring over here, and then you cried wolf, and now we don’t have them. But I forgive you because that’s the kind of relationship we have.” He moved to the kitchen alcove. “So what do you want to talk about for . . .” He stretched to see the clock. “. . . sixty-seven minutes?”

  “Cal,” Min said.

  There was a familiar green and white sack on the kitchen counter. “Krispy Kremes,” he said. “Great minds think alike.” He brought the sack back into the living room. “You know, Minnie, you tortured me for a month, looking so good I lost my mind every time I saw you. I wanted you so much I was insane from it.” He looked down at her, tied to the couch. “Still am, evidently.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry about that,” Min said, tugging on the belt.

  “So now it’s your turn.” He sat down across from her. “Now I’m going to torture you.”

  Min stopped tugging. “This could be good. What are you going to do?”

  He took a Krispy Kreme out of the bag.

  “I’m going to eat this in front of you,” Cal said, and bit into the doughnut.

  David went down to the street to the pay phone on the corner because damn near everybody had caller ID these days. He dialed Min’s parents’ number, and when the phone stopped ringing, he said, “You should know this,” only to be overrun by their answering machine. Well, that was all right, they never stayed out longer than nine anyway. Plenty of time. When he heard the beep, he said, “You should know this. Calvin Morrisey is seducing your daughter to win a bet. They’re at her apartment right now.” Then he hung up and considered what he had just done. As far as he could see, it was flawless.

  Feeling pretty good about himself, he began to look through the directory wired to the pay phone for the Morriseys’ number.

  Min scowled at Cal, but all the bastard did was grin back, looking desirable as all hell while he finished his second doughnut. Slowly.

  “And you wonder why I wouldn’t sleep with you,” Min said. “It was because I sensed the sadist in you.” She shifted to get more comfortable and watched his jaw tense. Hello, she thought, and shifted again.

  “I haven’t seen Elvis for a while,” he said, watching her. “He must have gone out the window again. What are the statistics on outdoor cats?”

  “You know,” Min said, trying a new strategy. “This is scaring me. There’s a strange man in my apartment, and I’m tied to my couch. I’m terrified.” She tried to put some fear into her voice, but it was hard since it was soaked with lust.

  “Funny, you just look pissed off.” Cal picked up the remote. “TV?”

  Min gritted her teeth. “Men get arrested for this.”

  “Only if they get caught. I usually check CNN about this time.” Cal looked down at her. “Of course, I usually don’t have something better to look at. You have a great body.”

  “Oh, please,” Min said. “I know you want to get laid but—”

  “Guys buy magazines to look at breasts like yours,” Cal said, “and here I am with a pair tied to a couch.” He tossed the remote back on the coffee table. “CNN has lost its appeal.”

  “If I ever get off this couch,” Min said through her teeth, “you’re never seeing these breasts again. Now untie me.”

  “You didn’t think that through,” Cal said. “Try again.”

  “Calvin—”

  “Do you have any idea,” he said conversationally, “how hard it is for me to keep my hands off you?”

  “So untie me and let’s go,” Min said, starting to feel cheerful again.

  “Forty-five minutes,” Cal said. “What do you want to talk about?”

  Okay, Min told herself. You’re not thinking. You have the upper hand here, aside from being tied to the couch. He wants you. He can have you. He just needs jump-started. “I’ve wanted you, too,” she said, relaxing back against the pillows.

  “Right,” Cal said, picking up another doughnut. “That’s why you kept walking away.”

  “That was the bet,” Min said. “Remember that picnic in the park? I wanted to knock you down and rip off your shirt and bite into you.”

  Cal stopped with the doughnut halfway to his mouth.

  “I used to close my eyes and imagine you naked against me, all the things you’d do to me.” He drew back a little and she said, “Especially my breasts. I have really sensitive breasts, did I mention that? I could almost come just imagining your mouth on my—”

  “You don’t play fair,” Cal said.

  “I don’t?” Min said, trying to rise up. “I’m tied to the couch. How is that fair?”

  “It’s not,” Cal said. “One of the many reasons I like it.”

  She exhaled in frustration, and he watched her, and then he got up and moved around the table to sit beside her. He scooped some chocolate icing off the doughnut with his finger. “Do you know how many fantasies I’ve had about your body?” He drew his finger around the slope of her breast, smearing the chocolate under the lace, and Min sucked in her breath. “This wasn’t one of them,” he said, marking her other breast the same way. “But it should have been.”

  “Sticky,” Min said, complete sentences escaping her for the moment.

  “Not a problem,” Cal said, bending over her. “It’s coming right off.”

  “Pervert,” Min said, closing her eyes as she felt his tongue on her.

  “Yep,” he said, moving the lace lower. “But you like it.”

  “Ha,” Min said.

  Cal straightened enough to look into her eyes. “Want me to stop?” he said, and Min felt his hand under her breast, felt his thumb move across the heat there to the edge of the lace.

  “I want everything you’ve got,” Min said and watched his eyes darken as his hand tightened on her. “Untie me.”

  “Nope,” Cal said.

  Min arched against him and he pushed her back, his breath coming faster, and bent down to her again, and this time he pulled down the lace, and when she felt his mouth on her, she arched as every nerve she had flared in relief.

  He pulled back as she jerked, and looked down at her, breathing hard, and just as she realized he was staring at her naked breast, he