The Challenge Read online

  Dean caught up to her in the kitchen. He trapped her between his body and the counter as she reached for a glass. “I mean it, Katie.”

  She paused. “Dean, it’s no big deal. Really.”

  “It’s a big deal to me.”

  Before she could answer or protest, her cell rang. She recognized the ringtone. “That’s Jimmy.”

  Dean frowned and stepped back. “Guess you’d better answer, then.”

  “Is this going to make trouble between us? Because I’d never have agreed to it if I knew that.” Katie grabbed her phone but didn’t answer it. The call went to voice mail and beeped while she waited for Dean’s answer.

  “No trouble. I’ll see you at work tomorrow, okay?”

  “Dean–”

  “Hey,” he said, frown erased by a classic, sunny Dean grin. “This isn’t over, Katie. Don’t worry, I’ll let myself out. See you tomorrow.”

  Her phone beeped with a text message. Also from Jimmy. Katie looked at it, then at Dean, who was already waving goodbye as he ducked out the door. “Dean!”

  But he was already gone.

  It hadn’t been the best hand-job he’d ever had, so why the hell couldn’t he stop thinking about it? Her hands had been small and soft, her mouth soft and sweet, her curves sweet and lush. Katie was a gorgeous woman and he liked her. Being queer didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate her attributes, but until she put the blindfold on, he hadn’t been able to really get into what they were doing.

  He was more determined than ever to prove her wrong.

  “Your face is going to stay that way,” Katie said serenely from behind him.

  She was the one who’d brought the coffee today, two paper cups of it bearing the familiar logo of The Green Bean from down the street. She handed him one and sipped from her own. She looked fresh and bright-eyed, a habit that annoyed him most days but particularly on this one.

  “You couldn’t even see my face. My face is fucking fabulous,” Dean said.

  “Your eyes are squinty,” she said in a low voice as she passed him, like she was sharing a secret though there was nobody around to hear them. She bumped him with her hip.

  He followed her into her office and closed the door. She looked up with a sigh and set her cup down. Dean didn’t sit.

  “We didn’t even fuck,” he told her.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Are you still on that?” Katie flipped her fingers at him and leaned back in her chair.

  “We said we were going to have sex.”

  “We did have sex. Sort of.” Katie crossed her legs and her skirt rode up, giving him a flash of thigh and something that looked suspiciously like pink satin panties.

  “I want to try again,” he said.

  He’d known Katie for a long time. She often had a witty comeback or a response as subtle and effective as a raised brow. He got her, that was the thing, and knew she understood him, too. It was what made them great partners and better friends. Now, though, he could read nothing on her face, nothing in her eyes.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Katie said after a minute.

  “What? Why not?” He wasn’t used to this, someone turning him down. That was a cliché and arrogant, but true. Mostly because Dean had a finely honed sense of who to hit on, not necessarily, as Katie had so often said, that nobody ever wanted to refuse him.

  Dean had been refused before, all right. He knew how it felt. It sucked.

  “Because we’re friends, Dean, and I don’t want to mess that up.”

  “You agreed to it before.”

  “That was before,” Katie said calmly enough, but he didn’t have to hear a tremor in her voice to see she was sort of upset. He could tell by the way she didn’t drink her coffee.

  “Hey. What’s going on?” Dean slid into the chair across from her and moved forward, forcing her to uncross her legs so his knees could press hers. “Something up with that douchebag Jimmy or whatever the hell his name is?”

  “Nothing’s up with Jimmy. That’s the problem.”

  “Forget him,” Dean said. “If he can’t see what’s right in front of him…”

  She laughed at that. “Right. Because you’re the expert on seeing what’s right in front of you?”

  Dean frowned and stood. “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

  Katie shrugged and swiveled her chair back and forth. “Maybe I want more than a quick fuck from him, that’s all.”

  “Isn’t the problem you’re not getting any sort of fuck?”

  She sighed, her shoulders lifting and dropping with the force of it. “Forget it. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “So…the challenge is off?”

  Katie eyed him, one eye squinting and her head tilted as though she were seriously studying him as something foreign. Incomprehensible. “Why do you have such a bug up your ass about this sex thing?”

  “You said I couldn’t,” Dean told her.

  And that was the truth, mostly.

  His phone rang, the ring tone a snippet of classical music he’d assigned to Jacob. His fingers slipped a little on the phone’s glass face as he looked, anyway, to make sure that was the number. He didn’t answer it.

  Katie was smiling at him when he looked up, her smile half-quirked. “Was that him?”

  “There is no him,” Dean said.

  Her grin got a little broader. “Right.”

  She swiveled again, kicking her foot up and down, showing off an expanse of shapely thigh he knew she’d never have revealed to anyone else in the office. Katie didn’t do shit like that, use her tits and ass to get attention, even though she could. She was always more comfortable with him than with the other men in the office, and for the first time, this stung a little.

  “Is it because you don’t think I’m manly enough?”

  Her grin wavered, her brow furrowed. “What?”

  “You don’t think I’m manly enough,” Dean said, convinced.

  “Oh, Dean. Really? C’mon. You should know better than that.”

  Her scoffing didn’t make him feel better, especially when she turned her chair to face the computer, dismissing him. Dean spun her around to face him again. Katie looked as surprised as he felt.

  “I want to do it,” Dean said in a low voice.

  Katie drew in a breath. She smelled good. She always did, but today he seemed to notice it more. He seemed to notice everything about her more than usual today, most of it accompanied by the memory of her hand on his cock.

  “Would it change your mind,” Katie murmured, her gaze bright, her voice throaty, “if I told you I absolutely believed you could make me come?”

  “I’ll prove it to you.”

  Her laugh this time snagged, rough and sultry. He’d never heard her sound that way before. “Fine. Prove it to me if it’s so important to you.”

  “Done,” Dean said as his phone rang again, the same bit of classical music. “When?”

  “Tonight? There’s no point in waiting.”

  “Your place?”

  “Be there at eight,” Katie said. “I don’t want to be up all night.”

  “Oh, you’ll be up all right,” Dean said. “Maybe until tomorrow morning.”

  It was no big thing, Katie told herself. It wasn’t like she’d never thought about what Dean would be like in bed, or that she’d never gone to bed with a friend before. As a matter of fact, a few years ago she’d had quite a successful “friends-with-benefits” experience with a man she still kept in touch with, unlike many of her friends who’d tried that sexual experiment and had it end badly. So it was no big thing, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. How he’d smell and taste and feel, if he could indeed get her off the way he promised.

  Katie was sure hoping he could.

  Distracted by thoughts of Dean’s hard cock, she nearly got hit in the face by the door to the coffee shop as she was heading in and someone was heading out. An old woman, layered in scarves and carrying a monstrously large cup of coffee, barely even