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  “You aren’t going to let this drop,” Georgina asked, her gaze focused on the hand he had wrapped around her wrists. “Are you?”

  “Nope. Spill it. You’re going to tell me everything about Abby, and you’re going to do it right now.”

  Fine, she’d made her bed, but she wasn’t going to lie down in it alone. She wanted something in return, some piece of him he didn’t hand out to the general public. Maybe it was the firelight or maybe it was the booze, but somehow Georgina found the courage to say, “I’ll tell you about Abby if you tell me something not everyone knows about you.”

  “There isn’t much to tell. My life is an open book. What you read is what you get,” Simon replied with a smug grin she was coming to know and loathe.

  “Yeah, right. Tell me another one,” Georgina said, annoyed that he would try to evade her. “Something really personal or no go.”

  “Okay… you’re on. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me

  yours.”

  “After a fashion,” Georgina hedged. What did he mean, he

  would show her his?

  And then he let go of her wrists and, before she could even think about bolting, began unbuttoning his shirt.

  “Where did Abby come from?” he asked, sliding buttons free of their holes with quick, impersonal efficiency.

  “Why are you unbuttoning your shirt?” Georgina squeaked, taking a quick step back.

  “I’m asking the questions here. Tell me about Abby.”

  The phrase Keep your shirt on popped into Georgina’s head but she shook it off and tried to give him the shortest, most impersonal answer she could think of.

  “Uh… I… um… sublimate all my sexual energy into my writ-

  ing,” Georgina said, trying desperately not to peek at the thin strip of chest revealed by his now open shirt.

  “Duh,” Simon said. Shrugging out of his shirt, he balled it up and tossed it over his shoulder. “I could have told you that.”

  Georgina nodded but she wasn’t really listening.

  Oh my, will you get a look at that.

  ***

  Simon had a rope tattooed on his body. It started at his wrists, twined up both arms, thickening as it went then draped across his back in an elegant sweep, giving the impression that, should the mood strike him, he could simply lift the rope away and be done with it.

  Simon hated it, wished he’d never gotten the stupid thing and kept it hidden as much as possible under long-sleeved shirts.

  “Stunning,” Georgina murmured as she approached him. “What does it symbolize?”

  “Nothing but a guy that had way too much money and free

  time,” Simon replied, giving her the same pat answer he gave everyone.

  Georgina rolled her eyes. “That’s worse than my answer. Come on, did you go through a martyr phase or something?”

  “Hardly. It’s just a tattoo. I got it when I was twenty-five, which, before you ask, was seven years ago. It means nothing. I’d just signed a lucrative syndication deal and I was flush with cash.

  That’s it.”

  “If you say so,” she murmured, taking a step closer to him, studying him as if he were a painting rather than a living breathing man.

  “When did you write your first story?” Simon asked. She was almost too close now, and he was having trouble distracting himself from the feel of her breath fanning across his bare chest.

  “In college. I was twenty-one,” she replied, gently tracing the strip of black that crossed over the inside of his elbow.

  Simon sucked in his breath at the contact. Who knew that patch of skin was so sensitive?

  “Why erotica?” he asked, even as he clenched his hands into fists at his sides.

  “Because good girls don’t go out and have sweaty, steamy sex with strangers. According to my Psych 101 class, reading and eventually writing erotica acted as a safe outlet for my decidedly un-ladylike urges.”

  “You aren’t a virgin, are you?” Simon asked, hoping she didn’t notice that his voice went up about three octaves.

  Please say no, please say no, please say no.

  “No. Nice girls can have sex.”

  Simon let out his breath in a relieved rush as Georgina muttered something under her breath.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “They just can’t have good sex,” Georgina replied but she didn’t look up from his shoulder as she said it.

  “That’s because you’ve been having sex with guys that think you’re a nice girl.”

  “If you say so.”

  Simon recognized a brick wall when he ran into it. Georgina wasn’t going to tell him anything else about her sexual history, not that she needed to. He’d heard it before. She’d probably had a few fumbling sexual encounters with a few shy, nice young men that believed her too respectable for the dirty stuff. Based on that small and limited sample, she had judged the experience wanting. He’d read Abigail Scott and knew her famous refrain. ‘The fantasy is always better than the reality.’

  If he had his way, he’d show her that his reality was better than any fantasy.

  “When did you first publish?”

  “Three years later. Valerie and I had too much to drink one night, to celebrate something or other, I can’t remember anymore, and I showed her some of my work and she dared me to send it to an editor.”

  “And you did?” Simon asked, surprised.

  “I have trouble saying no to a dare,” Georgina said, sliding just the tips of her fingers up his arm to rest on his shoulder. “Especially when I’ve had too much to drink.”

  “I’ll have to remember that,” Simon murmured, losing sight of her as she slipped behind him.

  Georgina hummed absently in response, and Simon realized

  she was so absorbed in studying his tattoo that she wasn’t paying attention to their conversation. He was used to his tattoo getting a lot of attention from women. Some of them even traced the line but it never felt like this, as if they weren’t aware of the man wearing it. From Georgina there was none of the usual coy eye contact and little oohs and aahs about how much it must have hurt.

  No shit, it had hurt but never like this, a dull ache where she’d touched and a prickling anticipation where she hadn’t.

  “Uh…would you say that your stories are your fantasies?”

  Simon asked, hoping she didn’t notice that he again sounded like Peter Brady.

  “Absolutely,” she said, as she came around from behind him.

  “Not that anyone will believe it. I only ever told one man I was dating about Abby and he automatically assumed that my work was autobiographical. Before I could assure him that he couldn’t be more mistaken, he was crossing himself and calling me a modern day Jezebel. Needless to say, I’ve never made that mistake again.”

  “That guy was beyond gay,” Simon muttered.

  Georgina shrugged. “Not necessarily. The men that are attracted to me are really conservative, and they’re pretty up-front about the fact that they’re looking for a woman that won’t embarrass them in front of their boss or their mother. I figure it’s obvious that they’ll be horrified when they find out about Abby so I just sort of gently hint that things aren’t going to work out between us and—”

  “So basically, you drop them before they can dump you,” Simon surmised, frankly amazed that some guy had yet to call her bluff, chase her down and sit on her until she coughed up exactly why things weren’t ‘working out’. And the guy that had crossed himself and labeled Georgina a Jezebel had been gay or crazy. What man wouldn’t get down on his knees and thank God that his girlfriend wrote erotica?

  An insecure moron that you should be grateful for. If that guy had been thrilled about Georgina’s secret career, she might not be here with you tonight. She might be happily married with two kids and a mortgage, spinning her raunchy tales in private for a grateful audience of one.

  Simon silently gave thanks for all the uptight morons Georgina had dated over th
e years then gently cupped the side of her face in his hand, his thumb caressing the underside of her jaw. Her skin was unbelievably soft, warm, vibrant with her accelerated pulse.

  “What are you doing?” Georgina asked, shying away.

  “Touching you.”

  Georgina shivered, wrapping her hand around his wrist. “Please don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I am fairly certain you are not prepared to deal with the consequences of your actions.”

  Simon lowered his head until his lips barely brushed the side of her neck. Oh, he was more than prepared to deal with the consequences. The scent of her skin alone was enough to make him dizzy.

  “Mr. Campbell,” she breathed. “I will answer any question you have. It is no longer necessary for you to torture me.”

  “So,” Simon hissed, wrapping one arm securely around her

  waist. “You can’t stand me touching you. That kiss in the gallery was—”

  “An honest reaction to a wholly false seduction,” Georgina said, shoving at his chest.

  “Honest my ass,” Simon grunted. “At least I admitted I’m a liar but you—”

  “What do you want from me?” she whispered.

  “A little honesty would be nice.”

  “Honesty? You want honesty? Fine! I should have slapped you up in that gallery. That would have made sense and it would have given you the revenge you’d so obviously come looking for. Admit it, that’s exactly what all of this is about, revenge for the awful way I treated you at Valerie’s party.”

  Simon clenched his back teeth together to keep his jaw from dropping open. Magnificent didn’t even begin to describe Georgina Kennedy in a rage. Her eyes flashed, her pale cheeks flushed and her mouth, that lush sensuous mouth… was still moving.

  “Stupid, clueless man, thinking to use that body and that voice as weapons of revenge, trying to goad me into reacting like the frigid, judgmental bitch you believed me to be. Thinking I would scold and reject you,” Georgina pointed at him. They were so close the tip of her finger nearly poked out his eye. “Or, and this is more likely, given the way you crowded me, fall into a fit of the vapors and faint dead away at having all that lovely male flesh shoved so near to my own, so close I could almost taste your intent, dark and rich, intoxicating…”

  ***

  Simon made a strangled sound of disbelief and let her go.

  Georgina stumbled back, feeling the fight drain out of her. He was disgusted to discover that she was so twisted as to find his version of revenge a turn-on. And how could she blame him since she was pretty much disgusted herself?

  It was probably pointless to go on but if she told him everything maybe he would let go of his petty revenge/investigative report and leave her in peace. “You wanted to know why I singled you out at Valerie’s party. Well, the truth is I wanted you from the second I saw you, wanted you under me, over me, however I could get you as long as it ended with you inside me and it scared me so badly,”

  Georgina laughed, a dry, self-deprecating sound, “Shocked the hell out of me so completely that I drove you away to keep from lunging at you and embarrassing us both in the process.”

  Simon’s mouth fell open. More abject horror.

  “Apparently, my efforts were in vain,” Georgina said, rubbing her forehead. “I have to get back to work. Enjoy the rest of your evening, Mr. Campbell.”

  Georgina turned and walked back over the unforgiving sand

  towards the stairs, dodging clutches of party-guests as she went.

  “What a disaster,” she mumbled.

  Yeah, but at least you got to see Simon with his shirt off.

  “Ah… the voice of reason returns. Where the hell did you go off to? I could have used you back there.”

  He took his shirt off.

  Remembering the sight of Simon without his shirt, looking way better than any man that made his living sitting at a computer had a right to, Georgina couldn’t argue. “Fair enough. What next?”

  First, find a camera. Then, go back to the beach and take a picture of Simon without his shirt so that when you include him in your next story and your editor says to tone him down because no one man is that delicious, you can hand her proof.

  “If you don’t have anything useful to add just pipe down,”

  Georgina muttered but she was smiling when she said it. A camera… Ha! As if she would ever forget what he had looked like in the firelight, with those elegant black lines snaking across his skin, shifting and slithering like a living thing when he had reached for her. Not that he’d ever be reaching for her ever…hang on a second.

  Now that she thought about it, writing a story about Simon was an excellent way to work out the frustrations of this evening. She’d come up with some scenario where Simon was the one out of his mind for her rather than the other way around and then she would be the one that mocked and teased, using his passion against him until he was willing to do just about anything to have her.

  And when she finally gave in and let him have her, she could add in all the delicious details she had learned about him tonight.

  The intoxicating taste of him, the firm texture of his skin as she’d traced those sinister black lines, the feel of his body heat penetrat-ing the fabric of her dress as his mouth barely brushed her neck.

  As those thoughts tumbled through her mind, a wave of heat swept over her skin, tightening her nipples as it moved between her legs, creating a sharp, prickling need that caused her pussy to throb once, a slow, deep pulse. Georgina stumbled, shocked by the strength of her reaction.

  You might want to stop thinking about this until you’re alone and can, you know, do something constructive about it.

  Oh, there was no two ways about it, she was so going upstairs to do something. And then she was going to sit down and write out a story starring an intelligent librarian and an empty-headed playboy but, in Abby’s world, the playboy was going to be doing a lot of begging.

  Georgina snickered.

  And groveling, don’t forget the groveling.

  Georgina giggled. By the time she’d reached the foot of the stairs, she was laughing so hard she had to hold onto the banister to keep from falling over into the sand.

  ***

  And that was how Simon found her a few minutes after she had

  struck him speechless and left his ass…again. After a few failed attempts, he’d managed to get his feet moving and staggered after her.

  Simon came to an abrupt halt at her side. Her head was bowed, her shoulders shaking.

  Aww, hell… is she crying? Make her stop, say something nice…

  pat her shoulder. That always works in the movies.

  Georgina turned, saw him standing there and laughed.

  Right in his face.

  Yikes!Even you don’t deserve this.

  “Yes, I do,” Simon muttered.

  Georgina got herself under control enough to say, “Would you like to know what I am going to do when I get upstairs? Well, more like what Abby is going to do. I think your readers will be impressed, it’ll definitely make a good ending for your expose about Abigail Scott.”

  “Sure, let me have it,” Simon replied, expecting her to say something along the lines of ‘Call everyone I know and tell them what an asshole you are’ so he was wholly unprepared when she said, “Masturbate.”

  Simon damn near swallowed his tongue.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Georgina said, sounding anything but. “Has my clinical language offended you? Should I have gone for something more delicate? Let me see…how about take matters into my own hands? Self-gratification, that’s a good one. I had a college roommate that called it relieving her private urges. Doing something constructive, that’s my personal favorite. What says you, Mr.

  Campbell?”

  Simon blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Can I watch?”

  Georgina rolled her eyes. “Sure, why not? You can even take notes.”

  Completely i
gnoring both the eye-roll and acid tone Simon followed her as she climbed the stairs.

  “Now, where the hell is the elevator,” he heard her mutter when she walked in the deserted living room.

  “To the right,” Simon replied.

  Georgina shrieked and whirled to face him. “What…”

  “You said I could watch.”

  “I was being sarcastic.”

  “I wasn’t. Lead on.”

  “You know what, Simon? I have just about had it with you.”

  Simon grinned. How many times had he heard that from the

  women in his life? Not the party girls; he didn’t spend enough time with them to get on their nerves. No, she sounded like his sisters-in-law and Valerie, the only female friend he had that wasn’t related to him.

  But how to get her to do what he wanted? Bullying her didn’t work. Seducing her was out of the question. Then inspiration struck.

  “I dare you to let Abby decide,” Simon whispered.

  “Abby?” Georgina asked, taking a step away from him.

  “Yeah, Abby. I think she’d accept in a heartbeat.”

  “Really?” Georgina whispered. It was hard to tell if she was intrigued at the idea or simply stuck dumb and momentarily unable to tell him to go to hell by the gall of his suggestion.

  Simon held his breath, deciding that less was more in this delicate negotiation. It was a gamble, challenging her to let her alter ego call the shots, but he’d read her work and there was something of the sexual adventurer in Abby that just might nudge Georgina into letting him have his way.

  “Okay,” Georgina said, straightening her shoulders as she spoke.

  “I’m in… I mean, Abby’s in. Let’s go.”

  If you somehow manage to screw this up, you had better get that lobotomy because I will make your life a living hell.

  Simon Says: Chapter 3

  If you’re going to do the wrong thing, do it with conviction. If you can’t manage conviction, go for style. — Simon Says Georgina was running on nothing but adrenaline and bravado by the time she threw open the attic door and imperiously waved Simon inside.