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Riding the Waves
Tawny Weber
All uptight workaholic Drucilla Robichoux wants is to experience incredible sex, at least once in her life. So she heads off to Mexico for some sun, sand and sin. And she finds the perfect playmate in sexy surf instructor Alex. Her temporary boy toy teaches Dru to ride the waves, all right……right into the most intense climaxes she's ever had!But all vacation flings must end. When Dru heads home, she buttons up tight again. Might as well keep this delicious fantasy right where it belongs… in her naughty memories.So it sure is a shock when she walks into work Monday morning and finds her secret fling is her new boss! And he's definitely still interested in catching the big one with Dru.
Praise for Tawny Weber
“Sexy, hot, intriguing as well as fun are all hallmarks of a Tawny Weber tale.”
—CataRomance
“If you like laugh out loud tales laced with spicy scenes, I recommend Tawny Weber. I look forward to reading more from this talented author.”
—Romance Junkies
“Tawny Weber delivers a story that is sexy, romantic, and inspirational. I will be very much looking forward to more from this talented author.”
—Wild On Books
“Feels Like the First Time is scandalous fun for the voracious reader. The story moves quickly, smoothly, and with enough heat to burn your fingers as you turn the pages.”
—A Romance Review
“Snappy, young and hip, Tawny Weber’s fresh voice pops with energy!”
—New York Times bestselling author
Julie Elizabeth Leto
Dear Reader,
I’m a big fan of dreaming. I dream up stories. I dream up excuses. I dream up wild scenarios in which delicious chocolate is fat-free, killer heels don’t hurt my feet and money really does grow on trees.
In other words, I spend a great deal of time in a fantasy land. Which is why I was so excited when my editor suggested I write a Forbidden Fantasy. What’s better than a fantasy, after all? Especially a fantasy that’s naughty and off-limits….
And that’s exactly what Drucilla decides her vacation-fling fantasy will be—very, very naughty. Especially when she meets surfer boy Alex, a guy who’s so much more than he seems.
If you’re on the Internet, please drop by my Web site at www.tawnyweber.com and let me know what you think of Drucilla and Alex’s story. While you’re there, check out my blog, vote for the hunk of the month or enter my current contest. I’d love to hear from you.
Enjoy,
Tawny Weber
Riding the Waves
Tawny Weber
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tawny Weber is usually found dreaming up stories in her California home, surrounded by dogs, cats and kids. When she’s not writing hot, spicy stories for Harlequin Blaze, she’s shopping for the perfect pair of shoes or drooling over Johnny Depp pictures (when her husband isn’t looking, of course). Come by and visit her on the web at www.tawnyweber.com.
A huge hug and lots of thanks to Nancy Haddock for the surf instructions and to Lisa Spindler for being my science go-to gal.
And, as always, thanks to Elaine English for the great direction and advice.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
1
“SOOO? How was your date?”
Drucilla Robichoux froze, her spoonful of lemon yogurt halfway to her mouth. She’d been dreading this question.
Wrinkling her nose, she shot a quick glance around the lab’s lunchroom. Sunlight, filtered through typical San Francisco fog, dully lit the empty space. Seeing no escape—and fortunately nobody to overhear—she sighed, licked the tart yogurt from the spoon and prepared to confess.
“I think I’d be better off giving up on men,” she admitted to her best friend and fellow scientist, Nikki Hanson. “This is the sixth failed dating experiment this year. And it’s only August.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised. I still can’t believe you went on more than one date with Dr. Uptight,” Nikki said as she polished off her pastrami sandwich. She meant Bryan Smith-Updike, a physicist from the Lawrence Livermore Lab and Drucilla’s companion the last four Saturday nights. The first three, they’d attended the theater, the opera and the California Academy of Sciences. She’d been bored to death, but not nearly as bored as she’d been during the sex that’d marked their fourth weekend.
“It wasn’t much of a date,” Dru admitted. “The guy was a gasper.”
“That’s even worse than the wheezer. What was his name? Mad-scientist Maxwell?”
“No, he was the counter. You know, in-two-three. Out-two-three. The wheezer was that biochemist I dated last year.”
“Maybe gasping is a step up?” Nikki asked, her doubtful wince making her dimples flash. “But at least Uptight finally dropped drawers, right?”
“Unfortunately,” Drucilla confirmed with a grimace. She puffed out her cheeks, contemplated the last few bites of yogurt, then shoved it aside and opened her bag of cut vegetables.
She lamented the sad truth…. Her love life was in an unending downward spiral of suckiness.
Drucilla wanted to love sex. Better yet, she wanted a sex life worth loving. She was a firm believer in maintaining a healthy balance between mind and body. Her mind was top-notch and she worked to keep her body the same. Good food, regular exercise. And sex, dammit. She’d read plenty of studies that claimed that regular, satisfying sex was important to good health. And she was missing out.
Maybe self-gratification would be enough if she increased her beta-carotene intake?
“So the date didn’t go well?” Nikki nudged, obviously wanting all the dirty details.
Drucilla popped a cherry tomato in her mouth and debated blowing off the question. Then, realizing it couldn’t sound any worse than the wheezer confession—always nice to have a rock bottom—she shrugged.
“Oh, sure, it went well for him,” she said after she’d swallowed. “Peachy, in fact. Remember how I told you that Bryan’s been frustrated with the calculations he’s been working on?” Drucilla waited for Nikki’s confused nod before continuing. “Well, he’s had a breakthrough. Mid, shall we say, thrust, he yelled ‘Eureka!’ rolled over and scrambled for his pants, where he apparently always carries a notepad and pen.”
Dru smirked at the shocked, slack-jawed look on Nikki’s face. “Yep, he was so thrilled to have broken that mathematical code, he didn’t even grumble when I shoved him out the door before he could finish zipping his pants.”
Mouth still agape, Nikki shook her head in pitying shock. “How on earth do you find these guys?”
“It’s a gift,” Dru mused.
“I think this guy’s worse than that Nobel laureate you went out with who carried a picture of Einstein in his pocket along with a condom.”
“And insisted on both during sex,” Dru agreed, wrinkling her nose at the memory. “The condom was welcome, but sadly, the only one of the three of us to end up with wild-sex hair was ole Al.”
And only to Nikki would Dru confess such a thing. Years of moving from town to town—her parents usually on the run from creditors—on top of Dru’s own innate shyness, had made it difficult for her to make friends. Even college, or colleges since she’d attended four, had been spent on the move, with Dru having to hold down three jobs to pay for school and living at home to cut expenses.
But when she’d come to work at Trifecta, Nikki had taken Dru under her wing. Now Nikki was her best friend and one of the few people she worked with whom she also saw socially. The lab, National Physics Trifecta, was a brain trust that specialized in the three branches of physics: astro, nuclear and quantum. While Dru was all about the astro, Nikki—despite her sweet dimples and luxurious black curls—was nicknamed the ball breaker of the quantum physics lab.
Not only was she in a different department from Dru, Nikki was almost a different species. Optimistic, upbeat and outgoing, with a curvy figure that turned men’s heads, the brunette was Dru’s polar opposite.
Blond, cool and contained, Dru knew she put off a don’t-touch-me air. She didn’t mean to, but couldn’t seem to change it. So she’d had to find a way to make it work for her. She’d finally figured that if she held her head high and remembered to make at least one friendly comment a day, she was fine. Now everyone at the lab thought she was just reserved, offering respect and a level of deference she knew was rare, given her age and nonleadership position.
And to keep that respect, it was vital that any and all details of her miserable love life remain private.
It helped that the lab had very stringent interpersonal-relationship rules. Friendships were fine, but dating was frowned on. Not that Dru would ever date anyone she actually had to work with. She’d seen too many relationships crash and burn. And somehow, while the guy managed to waltz away with his career intact, the woman always paid a price.
Because nothing, not even her bashfulness or a lack of partner-generated orgasms, would get in the way of her career security. She couldn’t afford to let it. And so far, that strategy was working quite well.
Now to figure out how to make her love life work, too.
After years of bad dates, she’d finally decided to approach dating as a hypothesis. She carefully chose men who were her intellectual equal based on the premise that all men had the same basic equipment and drive. Given that the brain was the largest erogenous zone, she was sure intellectual stimulation was just as vital as clitoral stimulation in achieving sexual satisfaction.
At least, she’d been pretty sure. It was damn hard to test a theory if all the guys she dated had the sexual skills of a ninth-grade nerd with a National Geographic fetish.
It was enough to make a woman question her hypothesis. To say nothing of her ability to ever have a decent sex life.
“Okay, so the sex has been a little, well, lousy. But don’t give up on men,” Nikki said, breaking through Dru’s dismal realizations with forced cheer. “What about Kyle, that new guy in the lab? He’s cute, in a horn-rimmed sort of way.”
Dru was shaking her head before Nikki even finished the sentence.
“He’s also a coworker. You know how Dr. Shelby feels about fraternization. If I started dating, or worse, having lousy sex, with the guys here, word would get around. It’d haunt me. My private life would be fodder for the water cooler chitchat. And any success I have, people would wonder who I slept with to get there.”
Nikki gave her a long look, trying to poke a hole in that excuse. Finally she shrugged and said, “We don’t have water coolers.”
Dru rolled her eyes.
“Look, why don’t you quit the geeks and go for a hottie?” Nikki suggested, wiping her mouth before opening a bag of corn chips. Dru’s mouth watered. Whether it was over the chips or the visual of hottie-sex, she didn’t know.
Ignoring the drool collecting in the corners of her lips, she reminded herself of the five pounds she’d been trying to lose since New Year’s and said, “Because boredom makes for poor foreplay?”
Which she knew firsthand, since the last three guys she’d dated had almost foreplayed her to sleep. And God knew she’d be the ultimate snoozefest to some poor guy who didn’t talk science. It went back to that shyness thing. If she was talking shop, she was fine. Social chitchat? Zzzz.
“Oh, my God, Dru. What does a guy have to do? Discuss the theory of relativity while going down on you? You need to disconnect your brain from your—”
“Okay,” Dru interrupted before Nikki could start naming parts of her anatomy. “I get your point. But I don’t agree. I really believe that unless we have common interests, there’s no point in dating or having sex—albeit lousy sex—with a guy.”
“There are other things to talk about than science, you know,” Nikki snapped, the frustration creasing her brow echoed in her tone.
Dru wasn’t about to open the door to another conversation about her social skills. The last time she’d cracked it open by mentioning that she didn’t know how to dance, Nikki had forced her to spend twelve Saturdays at dance clubs. Talk about misery squared.
“Look, even if I wanted to research alternate dating pools, when do I have time?” she protested, her tone making it clear she’d rather be staked naked to the astronomy tower during a public meteor-shower tour.
“You know I’m already working fifty hours a week. I help my mom on weekends. The cosmic string project starts next month and as soon as—” not if, she refused to consider failure “—I get the grant, I’ll be so busy I won’t have time to masturbate, let alone date.”
“A woman always has time to masturbate,” Nikki intoned.
Dru shrugged, waving her carrot stick in surrender before snapping off a bite.
“Sooo…” Nikki drew the word out as she carefully wiped her fingers on a napkin.
“So… What?” Dru asked, not liking the glint in her friend’s chocolate-brown eyes.
“So, I have an idea.”
Just as she would if a student was about to pitch a half-baked astrological theory, Dru folded her hands on the table, arched her brow and gave Nikki a patient, you-are-probably-insane look.
“Take a vacation.”
The knots in Dru’s shoulders unwound. Well, that wasn’t too crazy.
