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“As long as I can see an end to it,” she replied. Her mind felt partially at ease as she hung up the phone. Knowing her stint with Zane Farrell was short-lived, she’d be just fine.
The black-tied maitre d’ approached Rachel as she entered The Wave Restaurant in Beverly Hills. The round tables were covered with mauve tablecloths and butterflyfolded napkins. Elegant black candles flickered on the tables like diamonds.
She hoped she hadn’t underdressed. Women were in sparkling sequins. Men in suave Italian suits.
Rachel had deliberately worn a beige silk blouse with lacy collar and sleeves and a form-fitting maroon skirt. Her hair was softly up in a bun with a wisp of bangs over her forehead. She felt conservatively businesslike, which was exactly the impression she wanted to give Zane Farrell.
As she followed the maitre d’, her breath caught in her throat. Zane arose from his table at the sight of her. A pinstriped black suit covered his muscular frame. His luminous blue eyes were focused on her as though she were the only woman in the galaxy.
Keep cool, girl, keep cool.
“Rachel,” Zane whispered as he gently took her hand in his warm palm. “You look lovely.”
“Thank you,” she replied, quickly slipping free of his electrically charged touch. Keep him physically away, she warned herself. Stay in one emotional piece.
Johnny couldn’t take his eyes off her. How could her face radiate more beauty than any female he’d ever met? She was even more gorgeous than the last time he’d seen her.
His focus slipped to her silken top, which feathered across her ample curves as she moved. The fabric was so fine that a trace of lacy bra peeked through. He could see a hint of her bountiful breasts puffing over the top of her lingerie.
He swallowed as he pulled out her chair. When she sat down, her skirt rose to the tops of her luscious bare thighs. She wasn’t wearing any stockings. His breathing quickened. He rapidly took his own seat before she caught him staring like a teenage boy.
Johnny had found The Wave Restaurant listed as one of Beverly Hills’ finest eateries. Since Mr. Farrell ordered in all meals to his mansion and never appeared in restaurants, Johnny didn’t worry about using the man’s name.
“About the incident in your gym,” Rachel began. “It shouldn’t have happened.”
“Why not?” Johnny asked.
“It was improper,” she replied.
“Improper?” Johnny repeated with a chuckle. “Come on, Rachel. The gym thing happened because you and I are very attracted to each other. Why can’t you admit—”
Johnny stopped when he saw the shocked look on Rachel’s face. He wanted to punch himself in the gut. Mr. Farrell was never coarse. But Johnny Wells was street-rough through and through.
“My focus is strictly on this research project,” Rachel said, looking him straight in the eyes. “Not on you.”
Rachel thought she saw Zane flinch. But she couldn’t let herself care. She had to keep the concrete wall up to protect herself from this man who possessed the power to bring out the achingly vulnerable part of herself that she vowed to keep concealed forever.
“Hey, no problem,” Zane told her, his voice dropping. He leaned back in his cushioned seat. “I’ll answer any question you ask. With one stipulation.”
“What’s that?”
“For every sex question you ask me, you have to respond to one of mine.”
“No,” she quickly said. “It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“Why not?” he asked. “You’re bold enough to probe my male psyche. Why can’t I explore the sex fantasies floating around in yours?”
Rachel immediately gulped down a long sip of sparkling water from the crystal glass. She couldn’t possibly accept his proposal. She couldn’t tell him her sexual thoughts. She couldn’t tell anyone. Yet, she had to make sure that Zane Farrell didn’t back out of the study. The chancellor’s potential upset threateningly stared her in the face.
“If you insist on mutual questioning,” she began in a strained voice, “I’ll go along with it. But if I don’t feel like answering, you bet I won’t.”
“Same here,” he said with a pleased grin that made her even more nervous about the whole matter. “Kick off the text.”
Just then, to her utter relief, the waiter brought their dinners. Zane ate his shrimp scampi with a conspicuous appetite. She barely took a bite of hers. She didn’t know how to begin her sex questions. As the dinner neared its end and she anxiously fiddled with her chocolate mousse, she noticed Zane placing a final forkful of creamy mousse into his mouth.
She caught a glimpse of his tongue licking off some excess chocolate on the fork. The sensitive area between her legs woke up. The thought of his mouth on her throbbing breasts—
Stop it! she silently scolded herself.
She struggled to ignore the arousing sensations sizzling through her body and pulled out the questionnaire folder from her briefcase. She stared at the first question. Oh, no, I can’t ask that one! she silently screamed. Don’t think about it. Just blurt it out.
“How often do you self-pleasure?” she managed to say, glancing away from his uplifted eyebrow.
“Play with my—”
“Masturbate,” she choked out. He was enjoying this. She was sure of it.
“You’re assuming that I do.”
“Don’t you?” she asked, a slow burn rushing to her cheeks.
“Do you?” he curiously inquired.
Johnny watched the skin on Rachel’s stunning face turn ashen. He didn’t mean to embarrass her. Yet, wasn’t that what she was doing to him? Was the masturbation question acceptable only if she asked it?
He noticed her nervously biting her lower lip, and for a moment, he hated that he’d probed. He impulsively touched her soft hand with his rough callused one.
“Hey, forget it, Rachel,” Johnny said. “You want to go for a ride in Mr. Fa—my Porsche?”
“Sure,” she whispered.
Johnny noticed that Rachel’s hands were trembling as she stuck the questionnaire back in her briefcase. He got up from his chair feeling confused. Something just didn’t click for him. Why would an academic doing a sexuality study be afraid to talk about sex herself?
When she rose from her seat, her briefcase slipped to the floor and papers spewed out. Johnny bent down to help her. As she crouched, he noticed her maroon skirt skidding up her naked thighs. Her bare legs spread slightly.
He sucked in his breath at the glimpse of pink lace panties covering the feminine mound between her velvety thighs. He wanted to press his hand intimately against the pink expanse and—
What the hell was he thinking? He shoved the loose papers into her briefcase and got to his feet. He was supposed to be acting like well-mannered Zane Farrell, not some lewd male with a hanging tongue.
The summer evening wind in the racing red Porsche convertible was undoing a part of Rachel’s bun. She grabbed the flying strands.
“Want the top up?” Johnny called above the whir of the freeway. Her hair was wildly blowing around her face. He imagined that was the uninhibited way she looked while making love.
“I’m fine!” Rachel yelled back as she struggled to get her hair into place.
She hadn’t been able to look Zane in the eyes since leaving the restaurant.
How could she tell him that, yes, she loved the titillating sensations she could create in her own body. And, yes, she had caressed her private areas many, many times before drifting to sleep at night.
But she didn’t dare. Because when she’d revealed her private moments to her about-to-be husband, Kent, months before their wedding, he’d stared at her in utter shock. He’d accused her of being sexually selfish and disturbingly obsessed with her own physical pleasure. And every time they were together after that, Kent asked if she’d caressed herself the night before. She was so haunted with guilt and shame that she hadn’t intimately touched her own body since.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to send you into shock back at the restaurant,” Zane shouted over the wind, cutting into her tortured thoughts. “Can I make it up to you by finishing the tour of my house for your interview?”
“I really don’t—” Rachel knew she didn’t dare return to the intimacy of his house at night. But with the roaring car engine and the wind whisking by, Zane didn’t hear her resist.
The Porsche zoomed through his King Kong gate and shot right to the curb in front of the mansion.
As Johnny led Rachel into Mr. Farrell’s palace, a twinge of sadness dragged at his heart. He wished he could take her to his small comfortable apartment in Santa Monica. He wanted to show her his vegetable garden. Maybe listen to a jazz CD and sip white wine while lying on pillows together on the floor.
He mentally kicked himself. Face reality, Johnny boy, he reprimanded himself. Professor Rachel Smith wouldn’t associate with a mediocre-incomed, uneducated engine fixer, even if he did have his own shop.
“Which room did we leave out last time?” Johnny asked as he removed his suit jacket and threw it on the sofa. He had to remind himself that Rachel was here to interview Mr. Farrell, not him. He was going to portray the man in neon colors. Just as long as his own street-level personality didn’t push into the frame.
“I believe you neglected to show me the master bedroom,” Rachel said. The sex questionnaire required it. But it was the room she most dreaded entering. The suggestive chamber that would surely tempt her wildest fantasies.
She lifted her chin, determined to be strong and not emotionally vulnerable again.
That is, until she hit his luxurious master suite. Her gaze settled on the exotic circular bed. The raven-black satin comforter and creamy vanilla pillows winked at her in greeting.
Zane rubbed a large palm across the softness of the glossy bedspread.
“Cool, huh?” he offered. “What does the bedroom decor say about me?”
“That you’ve got an excellent interior decorator.”
“That’s all?” he asked, sounding disappointed.
No, it wasn’t all. She envisioned herself tumbling nude with Zane into all that milky, silky satin.
She fought her fantasies and fumbled in her briefcase for her pad and pencil.
“Why did you choose a round bed?” she managed to ask as she steadied her quivering fingers to write.
Zane sat on the bed and patted the spot beside him, beckoning her to him.
“Why don’t you find out for yourself?” he suggested in a velvet murmur.
“I’d rather hear your thoughts on it,” she stated in a professorial voice. “I may interpret your bedroom accoutrements quite differently from the actual reason you purchased them. After all, what is sexy is purely subjective, isn’t it?”
“You tell me. You’re the lovemaking expert.”
His intense gaze caught and held hers. She was super-aware of being alone with him in his bedroom. Super-aware of the closeness she felt toward him. Super-aware of his circular satiny bed and wanting to make love with him.
Zane arose from the bed and approached her. “Are you afraid of me, Rachel?”
“Why should I be?” She struggled to ignore the charged currents shooting from his body to hers. She strained to get his attention off her.
“Is that your master bathroom?” she began, struggling to hold on, fighting to forget the humiliating truth about herself that she never wanted Zane to find out.
She entered the bathroom, which was the size of her entire apartment bedroom. Lavender and gray tiles. Recessed lighting. Gray porcelain Jacuzzi tub.
Her gaze stopped at the spacious clear-glassed shower stall with double chrome shower heads on either side. For two people. Scrubbing down each other’s hot dripping bodies. She bit down on her bottom lip.
Johnny followed her into the bathroom and leaned against the glass shower door. She wouldn’t even look him in the eyes. What was she hiding from? Had he said or done anything to trouble her? If he had, he’d take it back instantly if he knew what it was.
He could see her breasts heaving under the silk top. He wanted to pull her into his arms and smother his face between the softness of those warm swelling globes.
She fumbled with her questionnaire. “Have you ever taken a shower with a woman?”
“Have you with a man?” Johnny inquired. He had no right to ask, but he couldn’t stop himself. He wanted to know every intimate detail about her.
“I asked you first,” she insisted.
“I think sharing a shower with a woman can be great foreplay.”
“Is that a yes for the study?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he replied. “Have you, Rachel?”
“Have I what?”
“Taken a shower with a man.”
She nervously flipped through the printed questionnaire without answering.
“You’re breaking our agreement,” Johnny said.
“No, I’m not.”
“I’m baring all to you. Why are you keeping secrets from me?”
“I’m as open as you are.”
“Then answer my shower question.”
“I have never shared a shower. Happy?”
“Not if I was the man in your life.”
“Well, you’re not!”
“Good!”
“Fine!”
Before she could protest further, Johnny pulled Rachel’s trembling body to his. His mouth covered her rosebud lips. He could feel her palms against his chest.
“Rachel,” Johnny whispered in a gravelly tone.
