Megan Hart: An Erotic Collection Volume 1 Read online

  “I don’t need to ask how you knew I was online this week, do I?” Eve said.

  Lane shook his head.

  “It’s the same way you knew it was me all along, wasn’t it? From the time when you left the coffee.”

  He nodded.

  She let her gaze cover him from head to toe, every inch, and if her scrutiny made him uncomfortable he didn’t show it. At last she looked him in the eyes. He was the same Lane she’d known for years, the guy with the smile, but he was more than that now.

  And it wasn’t what she wanted.

  “Thanks,” Eve said coolly and turned back to her monitor. “I’d better get back to work.”

  She sensed him hesitating in the entrance to her pod, but he said nothing, and when she looked up, he was gone.

  * * *

  Gone. All of it was gone. All the entries she’d spent so many hours crafting. All the comments, the compliments, the conversations. She’d deleted all of it with a few keystrokes, even her instant-messaging account. Eris Apparent was gone.

  She hadn’t been to work for the past few days. She wasn’t sick but had called in anyway, unable to face him. Unable to give him what he wanted.

  “You let me down,” she scolded her computer in an attempt at levity she didn’t feel. “You were supposed to protect me.”

  At least it would help her find a new job. Getting away from Digiquest couldn’t be a bad thing. She’d already sent in applications to two other, larger support firms where the pay and benefits were better. It would be good to make a break, she thought as she clicked through to another job listing. Two years was a long time to be stuck in a job she didn’t really like.

  She’d ordered pizza, so when the doorbell rang she thought nothing of it. She should’ve known better, of course. Wasn’t a hot pizza delivery boy one of those clichéd fantasies she’d never written?

  “Can I come in?” Lane leaned in her doorway looking more deliciously edible than any pizza ever could.

  “No.”

  “Eve.” If he’d tried to wheedle or charm her she’d have sent him away at once, but against his quiet plea she could do nothing. “Please.”

  She stepped aside, granting him entrance without saying a word. He pushed past her, looking too big for her living room. He turned to face her, his hands in the pockets of his faded jeans. Damn him, the ones she liked.

  “You haven’t been to work,” he said.

  “I took some personal time.” She didn’t sit or offer him a chair.

  “Because of me?”

  She meant to deny it, but instead a sigh slipped from her mouth. “Yes. Because of you.”

  “You deleted your blog, too.”

  “You should have told me it was you!” she cried suddenly, and he stepped back.

  “Would you have replied if you’d known?” Lane challenged her.

  “No!”

  He smiled. “I thought you’d figure it out.”

  “I did,” Eve said in a low voice. “I just didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Why not?” He sounded curious. For an instant she saw the words on a screen as if she were reading them. How much of a difference his voice made.

  “Because...” She trailed off. “The blog...it was a way for me to be someone else. And I really wanted to be someone else, Lane.”

  “I like who you are, Eve.”

  She laughed, scornful. “You liked Eris.”

  “And you liked Tell_me.”

  “It wasn’t real!” she shouted. “None of it was real!”

  “Is this real?” Lane demanded, and kissed her.

  She melted into him. His mouth parted, and hers did too. He tasted exactly how she’d always known he would. He felt even better than she’d ever imagined.

  “This isn’t going to work,” she warned, voice hoarse, but made no move to step out of his arms.

  “It will,” he promised, his fingers already going to her buttons. “I promise?”

  “How?” Eve gasped when his bare skin touched hers.

  Lane’s slow smile went straight between her thighs as usual. “Easy. Tell me what you want.”

  She gulped in a breath at hearing him say it aloud. Something flickered in his gaze when she didn’t respond at once; she felt the reflection of it in her own eyes, just before she took the chance and took his hand.

  “This is what I want,” Eve said, and led him into the bedroom to make all their fantasies come true.

  * * * * *

  Indecent Experiment

  A thousand dollars. That was a lot of money, Melissa Standish thought as she looked over the notice board again. Then one more time. She’d already walked past this notice about four times today, each time stopping to stare and ponder what a thousand dollars could do for her bank account.

  She didn’t need new shoes or some fancy designer dress. She wasn’t even going to use it to take a trip, though heaven knew she needed one after almost twenty nonstop years of school. No, Melissa’s needs were far more practical than that. More urgent.

  She needed food, rent, electricity. Just for another couple of months, until the semester ended. After that she’d be off to her paid internship with Triple Smith and Brown. She’d already put a deposit down on an apartment, booked her flight and arranged for her stuff to be shipped. In just a few months she’d be on her way to a guaranteed weekly income and the possibility of even more.

  But until then, a thousand dollars would stretch a long, long way.

  She’d done crazy things for money before. Sold plasma, which left her so weak and sick she didn’t think it was worth it. Waited tables. Delivered balloons in a tap-dancing gorilla costume. Nothing had earned her the type of quick and easy cash she was looking at right here on the board.

  The drawback? PSYCH DEPARTMENT EXPERIMENT in big, red letters. That could mean anything. Melissa had once participated in an experiment in which she’d been hooked up to a lie detector machine and forced to watch porn while she answered questions about whether or not she was turned-on. That had only paid a couple hundred bucks and had been an easy enough few hours. Another time she’d agree to be in the control group for a new allergy medicine that had turned out to give her hives. That had been a profitable but seriously itchy couple of days. On the other hand, she’d also been paid less than a hundred bucks to test out the efficacy of underarm deodorant on people diagnosed with hyperactive sweat glands, and that had been disgusting.

  Overall, though, Melissa had earned quite a number of paychecks from the psych department over the past four years here in grad school at Winchester University and never had a truly bad experience. On the other hand, she’d never been paid more than three hundred bucks for whatever she’d agreed to do.

  They were now offering a thousand.

  The number, a nice, sleek ONE with three fat zeroes behind it, kept calling to her. She was going to be late to class if she kept this up, and Professor Spane was notorious about his lack of patience with students who arrived late. He might not dock her grade for it—but then again, he might.

  Melissa grabbed one of the tabs with the number on it and tucked it into her pocket. For a thousand bucks, she’d be willing to do most anything.

  Anything at all.

  * * *

  Matt Ingram looked again at the ATM receipt in his fist. Dammit. How could he have insufficient funds? Surely he hadn’t spent that much over the past two weeks, which was how long it had been since the last time he’d checked the balance. The machine couldn’t tell him what had gone wrong, of course, just that the forty bucks he was trying to withdraw so he could go grab a couple of beers with some friends didn’t exist. Not in this world, anyway. Maybe in some alternate universe where Matt wasn’t broke.

  “Shit,” he muttered, stomach sinking.

  No night out with the guys, no beer and wings. He might as well go home and study, and by this point Matt thought if he had to face another evening hunched over the books, he might just jump off a bridge, instead.