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  But I was there, and I’d put my little game into motion already. Besides, I didn’t really think that I was in danger—if he’d wanted to hurt me, he’d have done so already. So I growled lightly, almost under my breath, to show my displeasure before lapsing into a sulky silence. As I continued to watch Brody out of the corner of my eye, I felt a bead of sweat trickle down my back, following the sinuous curve all the way down to the crack of my buttocks. I shivered as it splashed there, and the wetness created a moment’s relief against the unbearable heat. I sighed, but every breath that I took was like swallowing a mouthful of warm syrup.

  “Can’t we roll down the windows or something?” I was uncomfortable enough in the sticky heat to swallow my pride and speak. “Get some air flowing?”

  “It’s raining.” As if I didn’t already know. I rolled my eyes at him.

  “I’m aware of that.” My words dripped with a frost so cold that I was surprised icicles didn’t hang off my every word. “But I don’t see what harm opening them a tiny crack will do. I need some air, and I need it now. I feel like I’m suffocating.”

  I was sure he thought about telling me that, if I needed some air, I could feel free to step outside, where there was plenty, instead of ruining his upholstery. But if he had learned anything in the past hour, it was that the difficult woman was always right.

  The difficult woman. Me.

  Turning his key so that the power windows could be used, a sliver of wind sliced through the inch that Brody allowed between the glass and the doorframe, and the relief on his face admitted that the wind and rain felt amazing. Tilting his head back against the seat, he let the air rush over his face—his temperament visibly improving.

  Watching him, I remembered, vaguely, a study I had read in my first year of college, something about heat increasing aggression. Recalling his fit of temper when he dragged me into his lap, I decided that the researchers must have had it right.

  I was further convinced when, in a much-lighter-seeming mood, he asked, “What do you do, Holly?”

  I didn’t reply. I was still pissed off about his condescending comments from moments earlier. Even if he was, maybe, a little bit right.

  “For a living?” he prodded, but I was still feeling too stubborn to reply even though I knew that it was ridiculous since this whole situation had been my idea. Rolling my eyes at myself, I wondered if the yin and yang of nonstop chatter and stony silence was typical of all women, or if I was just extra perverse.

  “What about hobbies? What do you do for fun?”

  I pretended not to pay attention, resting my head against the cool glass. It left smudges wherever it touched, as if reinforcing the fact that I was, indeed, there.

  That I was affecting Brody, in some way. Leaving some kind of mark on his life.

  The silence inside the car was so loud that my ears rang with it. Reaching forward, I tried to turn on the radio. It didn’t work, and the silence inside the vehicle combined with the never-ending noise made by the onslaught of the storm was starting to drive me slightly wild. When he answered his own question, just to hear a voice, it seemed, I wondered if he felt the same way.

  “I like to read, myself. I mean, I know that I’m a doctor and all, but really, all day I deal with science. It’s all a bit dry, but I’m good at it.”

  Did he do it because he was good at it, and only for that reason? Or did he like what he did as well? I shook my head, releasing the thought so that it would melt away into the heat. What did it matter to me, after all?

  “I like to read fantasy, mostly. I’m actually kind of a geek about it.” I caught him sneaking a peek at me and made a show of still not listening. Subsiding into silence, he chugged more wine, probably wishing that he had a book to pass the time with rather than an emotional, confusing female.

  Nausea rolled through my gut as I remembered why I was feeling so emotional. I was so angry, nearly blind with it, and layered on top of that anger was betrayal. I needed to release it all somehow, or I would explode. What kind of person was I, though, to take it out on somebody else rather than on Kyle, the bastard who had started it all? Would continuing on this path make me feel any better at all, or would I just feel worse for destroying another as I felt so destroyed?

  That I had to weigh these emotions at all brought my anger to the surface again. Though my temper hadn’t factored into my earlier planning, the confusion that I was causing him had. And in a snap decision, I decided to throw another twist into the night—to begin to speak again, pretending nothing had happened.

  “And dirty magazines, of course.” My voice startled Brody, and he started sharply; he hadn’t thought that I’d been listening. He chuckled at my wry tone of voice.

  “Of course.” He rubbed a hand through his hair, a surprised smile lighting up his face.

  The smile sent a sudden flash of heat straight to my cunt. Genuine lust, hot and tempting. It’s not what I wanted to feel, not what I expected to feel, so I shot him a sultry look from under my lashes as a cover for my baffled pleasure.

  Flushing slightly at the look, he busied his fingers by picking at a corner of the label on the wine bottle.

  “I’m a stripper.” I wasn’t, of course—I was a student— but he nearly dropped the bottle as his nerves jerked in response. He blinked at me, frozen to his seat.

  “My job,” I reminded him, nibbling at my thumbnail. “You asked what I do. Now you know.”

  He was silent. I didn’t blame him; there wasn’t a safe response for a man to make to that statement. But I pretended to misinterpret his zipped lips.

  “What, you think I’m a slut?” He shook his head furiously, not wanting to start an argument, probably, but I was into it by then.

  He was playing right into my hands. If all went according to plan, the do-or-die moment of this elaborate scenario I had concocted was only moments away.

  “It’s honest work, I’ll have you know.” I bared my pearly teeth slightly, thinking of a wildcat, ready to pounce. “And you, you’re a man. You’ll never know the power, the sheer power, of standing naked in front of hundreds of men at time, knowing that they will do anything to have you. To touch you. To fuck you.” My words were deliberately slow and hung low in the air, pregnant with promise.

  “Come here.” I ignored my own words as soon as I’d spoken them, choosing instead to swing myself into his seat. Before he could think twice about my order, I arranged myself over his hard, well-muscled lap. I leaned back, and whispered in his ear, “Let me show you.” Nipping at the lobe, I began to move. I couldn’t see him but hoped that he was held, spellbound, as time stopped inside the car. “Watch me.”

  He could hardly do anything else—I was, after all, grinding on his lap. My eyes closed, my body began to sway to a song that neither of us could hear. But the rhythmic twitches of my hips emphasized the beat, and soon the notes of a sensuous melody filled my head, flowing along with my internal rhythm. I’d always felt too inhibited with Kyle to try something like this, but tonight I wasn’t myself. I was Holly the Stripper, Holly who was seductive, and I had nothing to lose.

  My head tilted back, and I could smell a hint of my shampoo, teased out by the dampness that the rain had wrought. My hands fisted in the long titian red strands, and I had a sudden mental image of my hair, like pieces of silk, playing over his skin as I rode him.

  Holding myself mere inches above him, my thighs quivering with the strain, I gyrated, making love to an invisible man, to a ghost, a spectre. Brody groaned as he watched my hand move lightly down my torso, as if guided by someone else.

  The tips of my fingers, the delicate, shell pink nails, flicked over my nipples, dark red circles that I could see clearly through my sheer dress, under which I was quite obviously not wearing a bra. Lower, down over my belly, then lower still they moved, coming to rest just inches above my sex.

  Playing the seductress was hot and made me feel like I was burning alive. I hoped Brody felt the same way.

  “Holly,”