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  Ben's fingers twined with mine, and I confess, I felt a wildly bizarre attraction to him in light of the fact we were talking about my fantasy to bang some other guy. I wasn't sure what was happening between us, but I loved the woodsy scent of him, something between pine and cedar. And I loved the brush of his stubble against my ear when he finally said, "There's gotta be more to it. What aren't you telling me?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "If that's all this fantasy is about, you could've done it by now. You're a completely gorgeous girl and an actress. You could convince a stranger that you were a high priced call girl if you wanted to…"

  He thought I was gorgeous? "Maybe I don't really want to do it," I said, having told myself this all along. "Maybe it's just the kind of thing I only want to think about when I touch myself."

  The mention of touching myself elicited a growl of approval. "Becca, I think you want to do it. I think that's why you're shaking like a leaf."

  "I'm shaking because it's cold and you won't let me back inside…"

  "Still a bad liar," he said, taking my hand in his, and putting it between my knees, forcing me to squeeze the heated place between my own thighs.

  Jesus. Where'd he learn to do that? "Ben!"

  "What? You said it's something you like to think about while you touch yourself. We're thinking about it so I want you to touch…"

  Oh. Oh, wow. So not what I ever imagined Ben saying… or wanting… but somehow the fact that he wanted it, and the fact that I was turned on, made me want to do it. Still, I hesitated. "Someone could come out—"

  "No one's gonna catch us," he said, nuzzling my neck with his lips and sending a shiver of pleasure down my neck. "Door opens out. My back's against it. And Becca, believe me when I say that I'd fight off a battalion to keep you in my arms now that I've got you here."

  Who said shit like that? Sappy, earnest, glib—

  "So, tell me why you haven't pimped yourself out yet?" he asked, wiping the notion of glib romance out of my mind. "You could go up to any guy in any bar in the city and proposition him, and only a blind, impotent idiot would say no."

  "Um…because I don't want to get arrested. It's kind of illegal, you know."

  He snorted. "Not really. Not everywhere."

  "It's dangerous," I countered, outrageously aware of my hand between my thighs, and his on top of it. Disbelieving that the boy next door was taking liberties with me in my mom's garage. Shocked to the core that I liked it. "Some guy could hurt me. Kidnap me. God only knows what."

  It wasn't the whole reason I'd never done it, but it was close enough.

  "I'd never let anybody hurt you," Ben said, very seriously, his breath warm on my ear. "I can make your fantasy come true and keep you safe. And I want to. Hell, I'd love to do that for you."

  As if he'd drawn some invisible guitar string on my body and plucked it, something tugged at my clit and my nipples at the same time. It was temptation. But it couldn't be real. Not with this guy. "Why would you want to?"

  "Because I want to turn you on," Ben said, squeezing more insistently.

  Gasping at the pleasure of being made to touch myself with a houseful of people not far away, I asked, "You want to turn me on by helping me fuck some stranger?"

  "Do you like that word?"

  "Oh, god, yes," I whimpered, my breath puffing steam into the air.

  Fuck, I loved that word.

  He took my admission as an invitation, tugging at the zipper of my jeans, and slipping his hand into my panties. It happened as simply as that. We hadn't even kissed yet, but he was suddenly fingering me, and I was letting him! More than letting him. Encouraging him with every little motion of my hips.

  "You are a bad girl," he said, obviously delighting in finding me soaking wet.

  I couldn't hide it or deny how turned on I was. Especially when he shifted me in his lap and felt—well, let's just say he was either rock hard for me or had a very big candy cane in his pocket.

  Meanwhile his thumb circled through the wetness between my legs and threatened to turn me into a puddle. What the hell had I gotten myself into?

  Even working my way through a string of bad-boy boyfriends in the city, I'd never felt so bewitched by a guy. "Not a bad strategy for seduction," I whispered, panting a little bit, afraid of where he was going with this. More afraid that he'd stop. "Corner a girl in a freezing garage, get her talking about her fantasies, pretend like—"

  "I'm not pretending anything," Ben said, so seriously it made me swallow. "You wanna fuck for money, Becca, and I'm gonna make it happen for you if you let me. But right now, I want to get you off."

  I'd never imagined Ben could even say something dirty, much less put such sex-appeal behind it. He was pressing all my buttons—literal and metaphorical. And I could no longer remember why I ought to resist. Moaning, I pushed back against his lap to feel his erection. He slipped his free hand over my shirt, capturing my breast in his hand and squeezing it. Oh. I didn't expect how pleasurable it would be to have his entire palm close over it—and I pressed my back tight against his strong chest.

  "Oh my god," I whispered as he fingered me faster, slip-sliding expertly over my clit, the rough pad of his finger skating between my soft folds. "Ben…"

  "What?"

  "I dunno. Nice guys don't do this kind of thing."

  "Yes, they fucking do," he said, biting the soft flesh below my ear and holding me tight against him. "But just how bad of a girl are you? Are you gonna scream, so that everybody inside knows you came for me under the mistletoe? Or are you going to beg me to cover your mouth?"

  I was going to come for him. I couldn't hold it back even if I'd wanted to, and I didn't want to. I was insanely turned on. "C-cover," I stammered, sweat breaking across the back of my neck. Every muscle tensed in my body and I felt entirely at his mercy, in his lap, in his arms, being brought off by a guy I'd known all my life, but who was apparently a complete stranger.

  He rubbed in just the right way, urging me to roll my hips, pinching my nipple through my shirt and bra, nibbling down my neck to my shoulder. Moments later, the first wave of pleasure began to peak. I yelped just before it hit me full force, and he released my breast to yank my head back.

  He covered my scream with his mouth, which closed over mine in a kiss. A firm kiss. A capturing kiss with firm lips and a conquering tongue. A kiss that tasted like cinnamon cookies and eggnog and burned hotter than a Yule log. A kiss that went on and on, stealing my breath and swallowing my orgasmic screams as pleasure washed over me.

  A kiss that didn't let up until after I'd shuddered the last spasm…

  My eyes blinked slowly open to find his face near to mine. His eyes disarmingly adoring. I didn't know what to say, so I just panted.

  He grinned. "Still think I can't handle you?"

  Oh. He'd handled me. But a girl has her pride. "Could've been a fluke."

  "Not a fluke."

  "Prove it," I said, twisting around in his lap so that I could kiss him without getting a crick in my neck. I wanted him, now. My sex drive was raring to go. I wanted to rip his clothes off, so I started right in on his zipper.

  But he caught my hands. "That's probably not a good idea…"

  He was probably right, but given my state of arousal, it was the only idea. "You started this, Ben. And now you're wussing out?"

  "Oh, I'm not afraid to take it all the way." His breath puffed out, a flush on his cheeks as he angled me so that I could feel just how ready he was to do just that. "But when we kissed just now, you tasted—well, awesome—but a lot like rum. I think you're a little drunk and I don't want to take advantage of that any more than I already have."

  Ug. Goddamn it. Of all the times for him to revert to type! Didn't he know that I was turned on by the risk, the recklessness, the sheer unexpected heat of our random encounter? "Thanks Dad, but I can hold my liquor," I said, freeing one of my hands so that I could tug on his tie. Sure, I blamed the eggnog for getting myself into this, but now that
I was in it, I wanted more. "And by the time I climb off you, maybe you'll think I'm the one taking advantage of you."

  He grinned at that, and nipped lightly at my bottom lip. "Trust me, I want you. Pretty much more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. But it's going to have to wait until after our reindeer game."

  "What reindeer game?"

  "I've got a sexy call-girl fantasy to put together for you, remember?"

  Chapter Two

  That can't have happened, I thought, helping my mom to sweep up cookie crumbs and gather empty plastic cups into the trash. My whole body was still burning with the sexual heat that had awakened inside me.

  And that was Ben White's fault.

  Ben. The boy next door. The kid who once had an Honest-to-God paper-route. The guy whose churchgoing mom said gosh, and golly, and—if she was really mad—fudge. In fact, his mom made fudge! The Whites and their fudge were sweet enough to give sane people a toothache. Unfortunately, Ben's mom was also my mom's best friend—which was always surprising because they were so different. My mom was a divorcee with fairly indifferent parenting skills, whereas Ben's mom was a widowed happy homemaker. I never really got their friendship, but maybe when your town is so small that it's zip code ought to be a fraction, you don't have a lot of options.

  That's why I got out of Geece Grove the first chance I got. In a town where dancing was still thought to be a bit scandalous, I'd never fit in here. But Ben had always fit in perfectly. He was wholesome as a glass of milk. Or at least, he had been…now he was the kind of guy who could rattle off every kink imaginable and unearth my secrets in a way no other guy ever had.

  And he'd also agreed to play my pimp…

  Still buzzing by the time we turned off the twinkling lights of the tree, I made my way up to my old room, which was now a shrine of adolescent folly with band posters tacked to the wall. I found myself staring out the window at Ben's icicle-covered house. We hadn't been close as kids; hadn't rode our bikes together or strung paper cups on a string between our bedroom windows to chat late at night.

  But now I kind of wished we had.

  Staring at his frosty window and its drawn shade, I waited for the lights to flick out. Ten o'clock sharp. That'd been his annoyingly predictable routine. But maybe we'd both changed, because his shade suddenly lifted. There, across the short but snowy distance between his house and mine was Ben, in the window, wearing an army green undershirt and jeans.

  He looked up at my house, our eyes met, and my breath caught. Slowly, he grinned and shook something in his hand. I squinted trying to make it out. Then I realized it was a cell phone. Oh. Crap.

  He wanted me to call him?

  Ping.

  The text message startled me. I went scrambling for my phone in my pocket, then grinned at Ben's message.

  WANNA MAKE THIS A NOT-SO-SILENT NIGHT?

  We ought to have been ashamed of ourselves. It was Christmastime. Children were dreaming about sugar plums. Stockings were being hung with care. But all I could think about was how well-hung Ben might or might not be…

  So I dialed the number.

  "Hey," he answered, leaning casually against the frame of his window—the view obscured only a little bit from the old oak tree.

  "Thinking better of having turned me down?" I asked, suggestively. "I might still be game if you want to take me for a ride on your sleigh…"

  Ben laughed but didn't jump at the chance.

  "So what was that today anyway?" I asked.

  "A perfectly executed mission," he said, a little smugly.

  "Your mission was to convince me that you're all talk?"

  "It was to prove that I'm not all talk. Which you'll only believe after the commencement of our reindeer game."

  "You're not serious about that," I said, my throat swelling a little at the idea. Both with fear and excitement.

  "Totally serious," he answered. "Or are you the one who is all talk?"

  "Ben," I said, more sharply than I intended.

  "Yes?"

  I wet my bottom lip. I wanted to tell him that we'd taken that part of our flirtation too far. That I didn't want to do it. That all I wanted right now was to fuck him and get this insane fling out of my system before going back to college. But the truth was, my whole body was on fire thinking of playing out my naughty call-girl fantasy, with him helping me to do it.

  Besides, after all my trash talking, I couldn't be the one to chicken out, so I blurted into the phone, "Have you always been this way?"

  "What way? Handsome, charming, and irresistible?"

  That made me laugh. "You know what I mean…" Grabbing a fuzzy knitted blanket from the bed, I tucked myself in the window seat. "Kinky, I guess?"

  He breathed a puff of air into the phone, and I watched him settle into his own window seat across the way. "You're my biggest kink."

  I groaned. "Lame."

  "But sweet?"

  "Enough to give me a toothache. If I believed you. Which I don't."

  "Ouch. I thought you said I was trustworthy? I told you, Becca. I've been crushing on you since forever. And I tried a lot of crazy things to get your attention—"

  "If you count the parade of bubbly blond cheerleaders you brought home."

  "That was to make you jealous."

  I curled tighter into the blanket. "Bullshit."

  "Making out with bubbly blond cheerleaders was just a fantastic consolation prize."

  I rolled my eyes. "So this is just another crazy thing you're doing to get my attention?"

  "I've already got your attention," Ben said, just cocky enough to pull it off. "I'm doing this to keep your attention. Because you've got me running so goddamned hot that I feel like I need to roll in a drift of snow just hearing your voice. It's a winter wonderland out there and I'm walking around the house in an undershirt because every time I remember how it felt to have my hand in your panties, it makes me want to spontaneously combust."

  Little spirals of arousal sparked and burst into flames inside me at me as I remembered, too. "You have surprisingly dextrous fingers, Ben."

  "My basketball practice pays off at long last…"

  I grinned. "I'm never going to look at my mom's garage the same way."

  "I'm not seriously the first guy you've fooled around with there, am I?"

  "Yeah, but the rest of the house is already christened. I was a wild child."

  "I remember," he said with a chuckle. "And just for the record, I really didn't rat you out when you climbed out of your window and down that tree at night. But I was jealous of every one of those huge losers you used to date."

  "Those guys were losers, but you couldn't have handled me back then…"

  "Maybe not," he admitted. "But I can handle you now."

  "Remains to be seen," I shot back. "So what's your fantasy?"

  "Hmm?"

  I wrapped the blanket tighter round me. "I told you mine. I wanna know yours."

  "I've got too many to count, but at the moment I'm fantasizing about watching you bring yourself off. Think you could do that for me?"

  My mouth actually dropped open a little bit. One glance at the window told me he was deadly earnest. "Wow, give you an opening and you just smash right through it."

  "That's what I do."

  "Since when?"

  "It's kinda my job in the military. Look for openings. Exploit them ruthlessly. Turns out, it's good practice for women, too. See, in ten years of living next to you, I never once peeped in your window to get a glimpse of anything you didn't want me to see. Because I'm a gentleman. But now I've got the opportunity to ask you to show me, and I'm taking it, because I'm a gentleman who wants to fuck you."

  Every time he dropped the F bomb in that deep voice, it made me shiver. And this time, that shiver made my toes curl. "Mmm. Okay, I'll show you if you show me."

  I loved hearing that intake of breath on his end of the line, but he recovered quickly. "You want to watch me stroke my cock and see how hard I am for you? Is
that what you're saying, Becca?"

  I let the blanket slip playfully from my shoulders. "Or you could just come over and let me stroke it for you…"

  "You're one of those impatient girls who opens her presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day, aren't you?"

  "Busted. I'm not big on delayed gratification."

  "Do you always come as easy as you did today?"

  Should I be embarrassed about that? Maybe I should play it cool and act like it was no big deal. But, in truth, he'd taken me from zero to sixty in no time flat, so I had to throw him a bone. "Not quite that easy, but I'm pretty responsive."

  "Great, then let's up the stakes," he suggested, peeling his undershirt off to show off a finely sculpted chest. And I gulped. God, he was built. When did that happen? The military had been seriously good for him. "I touch," he suggested. "And you touch. But neither of us gets off until I say so."

  "Why do you get to say so?" I asked, but truthfully, I liked this new, slightly bossy Ben. The military had been good for more than his looks. "Nevermind. It's fine. It's a deal," I said, stripping down to my tank top and panties with another little shiver that had nothing to do with the cold.

  "Niiiice," Ben said into the phone as he watched me undress. "I could stare at you for hours. Wanna show me that tramp stamp you mentioned?"

  I turned with a saucy grin, showing him the pretty tattoo at the base of my spine. And was rewarded with a groan. "I want to kiss you right there…you were so slippery and smooth under my fingers today. Are you still wet? Touch yourself and tell me."

  One hand trailed down my body, and slipped into the soft warmth of my soaking panties. "Yeah. I am."

  Ben growled with approval into the phone.

  "Now you," I whispered. "I want you to touch too."

  He angled himself in the window, one foot up on the ledge, a hand reaching to unzip and pull himself free. I silently cursed at the distance that kept me from seeing clearly. But I could see enough to confirm that he was more than a handful. Which meant it was my turn to growl with approval. "You're not bad looking, Ben."