Buch lesen: «Tease»
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF
Suzanne Forster
“[a] hard-edged, sexy romp.”
— Publishers Weekly on Blush
“A gripping novel…depicting the darker side of the rich
and powerful that includes intrigue, sex, lies and possibly
murder. The reader will not want to put the book down…”
—New Mystery Reader on The Lonely Girls Club
“Intelligent, psychologically complex and engaging…”
—Publishers Weekly on Come Midnight
“Forster’s name has become synonymous with taut,
suspenseful and wildly sexy novels that are
hot enough to melt asbestos.”
— Romantic Times BOOKclub
“The attraction was palpable, and [the] love scenes were
hot…a romantic suspense novel I can recommend highly.”
—All About Romance on Every Breath She Takes
“Interesting and appealing characters, great pacing and
interaction, an original plot line…strongly recommended.”
—The Mystery Reader on The Lonely Girls Club
Tease
Suzanne Forster
MILLS & BOON
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Prologue
“Whatever you do, Tess Wakefield, do not come.”
Had she actually said that out loud? Tess tried to open her eyes, but her lids were uncontrollable. They quivered like feather fringe. God, she must be glowing like a beacon. Sensations were lighting her up from the inside, crackling like the filaments of a neon tube.
Had he heard her? What would he do? Take it as a challenge and increase the pressure? Or lighten it and drive her utterly mad? It wouldn’t take much. He could so easily sweep her up and fling her over the edge.
With one finger.
With one more breath on her aching nipple.
One more feather stroke.
Why didn’t he just get it over with? Why did he leave her alone for so long? He came when she least expected him and touched her in intimate places. One finger gliding through her wetness, and then he was gone. The way a child steals icing from a cake.
Two fingers rolling her nipple.
Tight and tender.
Teeth on her rump.
How long had he been doing that? Hours? Days? She didn’t know anymore.
But he didn’t know how strong she was, how ardently she had fought to take back control of her life. She could not be broken, even if it was joy that poured from the cracks.
Someone was laughing, shaking with laughter. Him? No, it was her. Tears soaked her face and salted her tongue.
Was he even there? Or was she imagining a lover worthy of the Marquis de Sade? A demon with the patience for whatever time it took.
Was any of this really happening? The water dripping on her body, splashing between her legs and becoming more intense with each drop. It was a torrent now. She was becoming the water, flowing, dripping, melting like a glacier in spring. How did she stop this flood?
She forced her eyes open and saw them staring back at her. Eyes. Everywhere. Hypnotic and black as cherries. Her own eyes, heavy with sexual desire. Begging. Release me. Don’t let me writhe and thrash like this, helpless. Electrical current grounds me. Lust cracks me like a whip. I am what you have made me, a whore for pleasure. But I will fight you to prove that I’m not. And I will win.
“Put your hands against the wall. Spread your legs.”
Was that his voice? Was he speaking to her? Was that his hand on her naked flank?
Oh, God, no. Another touch. Another feather stroke, and she would be gone. Shattered.
She was ready to climb out of her own body, shed it like a snake, anything to escape him. She grabbed hold of the metal bars, quivering, waiting for pleasure that was unbearable. It took her all the way to heaven and back. All the way to hell. She could not let go. She would shatter into pieces.
One touch and he would break her in half.
Whatever you do, Tess Wakefield, do not—
Chapter One
Twenty-five days earlier…
No point packing the vibrator. Tess Wakefield had zero interest in sex. She’d been doing without it for the better part of a year, and that year had been better, thank you. No more bikini waxing unless she felt like it, no more inspecting her backside for unsightly blemishes or plucking the odd hair from the knuckle of her big toe, which hurt like hell.
No more penises or anything that was attached to them. Men were high maintenance. Well, most of them anyway. They needed all that ego-stroking and fawning, and they didn’t even care if you lied about how wonderful they were. They’d rather you fake orgasms than admit to not having them. Think about it.
And they were wimps, too, when it came to the important things in life. Squeamish about a little honest emotion. Terrified of giving up their freedom. They weren’t looking for partners in life. They wanted groupies. Wannabe pop stars, all of them, in search of an adoring audience. And all that pretending to love football when you were freezing to death and had to pee but didn’t want to risk hepatitis in the event bathroom.
Well, this groupie had turned in her backstage pass.
She tossed the vibrator into one of the boxes that would go into temporary storage and turned back to the array of clothing on her bed that still had to be sorted and packed. Thank goodness her new employer, Pratt-Summers, was handling most of the move to New York for her, which included the generous offer to use one of their corporate apartments until she could find a place of her own. She’d been offered the prestigious creative director position, and she had to look professional. That meant black, and lots of it. On the other hand, this was an advertising agency and they tended to be casual. It was also February, which meant jeans and sweaters, except for client visitation days when everybody wore suits like big boys and girls.
Tess knew a little something about ad agency protocol. She’d been with Renaissance Marketing in L.A. for the past eight years, doing everything from answering the phones to running the creative department to pitching and winning multimillion-dollar campaigns. Now, finally, it felt as if all the hard work and long hours had paid off. She’d given it her all, and maybe too much, considering how everything else in her life was withering from neglect.
She picked up her off-the-shoulder jersey sheath, briefly tempted by the thought of the New York club scene, then relegated it to the storage box. The dress was too red, too tight. It shouted take me off—and a couple other things that ended with off.
Her conversion to celibacy had come immediately after the breakup with Dillon, her let’s-wait-until-the-perfect-moment-to-announce-our-engagement fiancé. That perfect moment was never, of course. Too late Tess had discovered that Dillon was involved with another woman, his mother. She steamed the wrinkles from his boxer shorts and enzymatically cleaned his contact lenses for him, while Tess could barely handle the instructions on a box of laundry detergent. The fact that Dillon had made his mother break off the engagement with Tess confirmed her suspicions about him. He was high maintenance and a commitment-phobe.
That had seemed obvious to Tess, but her always brutally frank friend, Meredith, had disagreed. “You’re the CP,” she’d told Tess, who’d protested, “How could I be the commitment-phobe? I’m the one getting dumped.” And then it had hit her. Maybe she was choosing CPs so that she didn’t have to commit.
She knelt to pull the plug on her clock radio and saw the time. “Ten? It can’t be.” She’d been up since 6:00 a.m. How did it get that late?
Pratt-Summers had arranged for a car to take her to the airport, and a moving van to pick up the last of her boxes. The van was due in thirty minutes, and not only did she have to finish packing, she had to get the apartment presentable. She was subletting her one-bedroom place furnished, and the tenant had agreed to a month-by-month arrangement, just in case Tess found herself packing for a flight back.
Not that Tess expected anything to go wrong. She was eminently qualified for the job, according to Erica Summers, the CEO at Pratt-Summers, who’d interviewed her personally just three weeks ago. But how often did a creative directorship of a large Madison Avenue ad agency come along?
“To most thirty-two-year-old ad execs? Never,” she said, aware of the flutter in her voice. God, she was nervous.
This job was huge. New York City was huge.
Maybe she wanted to miss the flight. She couldn’t even seem to make up her mind what clothes to take with her, and there was no time to call her brutally frank friend to discuss it. Meredith, voice of clarity in a jumbled world, steadfast shoulder, mother confessor and occasional scolding conscience. Were there any Merediths in New York?
Tess’s spirits sank with her shoulders. She looked around the place, marveling at the chaos. It could have been declared a disaster area. Fortunately, she saw the problem immediately.
She wasn’t dealing with Bank of America’s automated voice-mail system. She only had three options to worry about. Get rid of the crotchless day-of-the-week panties that Dillon gave her, obviously without his mother’s knowledge. Toss out anything else that brought the word hot to mind. Then pack the rest and go.
One week later…
“The best way to open the mind is to open the body. If one is closed, the other cannot be open. Breathe through the soles of your feet. Listen with your fingertips.”
Tess spoke in low, modulated tones to the five men and women lying on their backs on gym mats, arranged in a circle and forming rudimentary U shapes with their bodies. Their arms and legs were straight up in the air, reaching toward the ceiling, some steadier than others.
“Can you feel the energy flowing and your mind expanding?” Tess asked. “Focus on the base of your spine. Is it tingling?”
“Something’s tingling.” Carlotta Clark giggled.
“Would you tell Carlotta to stop looking at my balls?” Andy Phipps, who lay on a mat opposite her, tugged at his baggy gym trunks in an exaggerated attempt to cover himself.
“If you had balls,” Carlotta scolded in her sexy, hiccupy voice, “you’d be begging me to look at them.”
Andy lifted up on his elbows and appealed to the group with eyes as big and velvety brown as instant pudding. “You’re my witnesses, people. She’s harassing me again. I’m being harassed. That has to be obvious to everyone here.”
Andy suddenly collapsed, his elbow knocked out from under him by Jan Butler, a plump graying copywriter on the next mat. “She may want you, Andikins, but is she woman enough? Can she take you to Jannie Land?”
Andy seemed to be considering the idea. The others began to cheer him on. “Breathe through your balls,” someone suggested.
Tess rested her hand on her hip and watched their antics with amused forbearance. It wasn’t the relaxation break she’d had in mind. She’d had plenty of experience with ad agency brainstorming sessions. They needed to be loose and free-flowing, but this bunch was flowing all over the place. What they needed now was direction. Tess’s specialty.
She stepped into the center of the circle to restore order. “Back to your mats, wild things. Let’s finish the exercise and get on with our brainstorming.”
Jan gave Andy a wink.
Andy’s skinny legs boinged back into the air. “Don’t blame me if someone else loses control,” he warned Tess. “This position drives the ladies crazy.”
“We’ll bear up,” Tess assured him. Andy’s diminutive frame, rag-mop dark hair and dimples did seem to bring out the vixen in the over-fifty set, but Tess was hot for his fertile brain. And it hadn’t taken her long to figure out that he could be counted upon for comic relief, even when he wasn’t trying to be funny. He was in his mid-twenties, fresh out of grad school and a gifted illustrator. He’d been at Pratt-Summers just a month, which was three weeks longer than Tess had been here, but he was shaping up to be a key member of her creative team. He was bright, verbal and a bottomless pit of ideas. Exactly what Tess needed, considering that she’d been assigned the lucrative—and problematic—Faustini account. The leather-goods franchise was in big trouble. The Faustini name had always been associated with meticulous handcrafting and old-world elegance, but that wasn’t selling in a culture that prized everything young and hot. Faustini’s management wanted to expand beyond briefcases and luggage. They were after a chunk of the luxury leather clothing and accessories market, and that couldn’t be done without a total image overhaul.
“Nine thousand and ten thousand,” Tess said, counting out the final seconds of the position. “Okay, last chance to check out Andy’s balls. Now, lower your legs slowly, and don’t forget to breathe.”
They all copped a look, including Brad Hayes and Lee Sanchez, the other two males in the group. Brad was a thirty-year-old communications major from Harvard, and Lee was the team’s prematurely balding marketing whiz. Andy rose to a sitting position, as red as a stop sign, but seemingly pleased by all the attention to his male anatomy.
Tess had held this morning’s brainstorming session in the company gym so she and her team could take Qigong breaks. She’d expected skepticism toward the martial arts technique, especially from some of the agency veterans, but at least everyone had agreed to give it a try.
“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” Brad Hayes asked. “I tend not to do things I can’t pronounce.”
Carlotta snickered. “Do you even need to ask, Brad? Tess comes from la-la land.”
Tess took the jab in stride. In the week she’d been here, she’d picked up on some animosity from Carlotta, who’d been at Pratt-Summers longer than anyone else on the team. Tess could think of two reasons. Carlotta didn’t believe that Tess had the creative chops to handle the job, which was understandable. Tess had yet to prove herself. Or Carlotta felt the job should have been offered to her, which was a bigger problem, but Tess was optimistic that she could handle it with plenty of diplomacy, and maybe some plum assignments.
“It’s pronounced chee gung,” Tess said, answering Brad. “Qi means life force, and gong means accomplish through steady practice. It works wonders for me. Keeps the blood flowing and the ideas coming.”
Tess dragged her mat into the circle on the other side of Andy Phipps, not wanting to come between him and Jan Butler. It was time to get back to work. She’d been brought in as their boss, so it wasn’t surprising they were a little wary of her, but she hoped to quickly melt any resistance. The team was on a tight deadline with the Faustini campaign. The starting gun had gone off even before Tess arrived, but she did not intend to lose this race.
At least she’d had some experience with bonding and leading. She was more concerned about the other task Erica Summers had given her. Pratt-Summers had built a reputation for brilliant innovation. They’d won nearly every industry award for their avant-garde designs, but they were also becoming known for their arrogance and lack of communication with clients—and it was costing them business. Tess had been brought in to do what spin doctors were supposed to do—create a new image for the agency’s clients, but she’d also been tasked with creating a new image for Pratt-Summers itself.
Now, there was a challenge.
And worse, Erica had asked her to keep quiet about it. She didn’t want to ruffle feathers. Creative types were sensitive about being handled, she’d cautioned, as though Tess weren’t a creative type herself. It was Tess’s ability to successfully straddle the two disciplines—account management and creative—that made her the perfect covert agent for change within the creative division.
“Let’s talk about the Faustini account and don’t be shy.” Tess coaxed the team with her hands, like a traffic cop beckoning cars to advance. Too bad she didn’t have a whistle. “Any new ideas since our last session on Faustini? Somebody toss something out. Anybody. I don’t care how wild it is. How do we make Faustini’s new leather boots a must-have item?”
Andy had arranged himself cross-legged on his mat, continuing to tempt the ladies. “We don’t,” he said. “We start with the briefcases, their signature product. First, make the cases sexy, then introduce the boots.”
“Good luck making a briefcase sexy.” Carlotta shook back her claret-red waves and played with the zipper pull of her Lycra warm-up suit, as if to say now this is sexy.
Tess would have guessed Carlotta to be in her late thirties, but thanks to the wonders of cosmetic surgery, she was, and probably always would be, ageless. It was tempting to think she’d been hired to boost male morale, and maybe their testosterone. But, to date, Carlotta had racked up more awards for her ads than any other Pratt-Summers creative. She was kick-butt in more ways than one.
Andy sprang up and went to get a sleek black leather case he’d left under the basketball backboard. Tess recognized it as a Faustini. She watched with interest as Andy dropped to his knees on his mat, took a pair of sheer red panties from the case and glanced up, a wicked gleam in his eye.
“A man can’t spend every weekend working,” he said, letting a beat pass. “Faustini. Work hard, play hard.”
He’d given Tess an idea. She reached over and touched the lid of the case seductively, swirling her fingertips over the silky leather. “It’s so soft,” she cooed in a kittenish Marilyn Monroe voice, “and you’re so successful.”
Andy arched an eyebrow: “You’re into leather, too?”
“Not leather,” she scolded. “Faustini.”
Tess and Andy grinned, high-fiveing each other. “Not a bad thirty-second shot,” she said.
“Or!” Carlotta squealed. “Picture me as a dominatrix, a bullwhip in my hand. “You’re not carrying a Faustini?” She cracks the whip. “Take that!”
The enthusiasm was contagious. Soon, they were talking over each other, but the suggestions got more and more outrageous. Tess hated to be a killjoy, but she’d already met with Alberto Faustini, the company’s rather stodgy founder, and he didn’t want anything far-out. He’d told Tess to come up with something provocative, but nothing X-rated, and that was despite strong opposition from his new partner, his twenty-two-year-old wild-child daughter, Gina, who favored vampires, sexual bondage and other gothic images. Fortunately, Gina Faustini didn’t sign the checks.
“Guys,” Tess said, “we want to seduce customers not shock them.”
“Why not shock them? Before you can seduce them you have to get their attention.”
Tess wasn’t sure who’d spoken until she noticed her team members looking over her shoulder. She whipped around, saw the source of the disembodied voice, and was glad not to be hooked up to a lie detector. Her sweaty palms would have shorted the machine out.
How long had he been standing there?
She’d never met Danny Gabriel, but even if she hadn’t seen his likeness plastered all over the agency walls in photographs with business giants and celebrity clients, she would have recognized his personal trademarks—the bare feet, the worn blue jeans and the flowing hair he’d gathered into a loose ebony braid.
Here before her was the agency’s image problem in the flesh. Not his clothes, even Gabriel donned a suit on client days. His attitude. He was Tess’s codirector—and the infamous advertising savant she’d been brought in to teach some manners. The Faustini account had been his before it was given to Tess, and rumor had it that he’d been replaced because he sided with Faustini’s daughter.
What was he doing here now? He’d been in Tokyo all week, drumming up international business, which was his new focus, according to Erica. Tess was supposed to have been formally introduced to him tonight at a dinner with Erica and the board members. She was nervous enough about that. If Carlotta was the agency’s diva, then Danny Gabriel was its rock star.
Tess sat there, thunderstruck, aware that she wasn’t racking up leadership points with her silence. Her team knew him, but they seemed to be speechless, too. Either they were intimidated or expecting a confrontation. There was a good chance that Gabriel saw her as an interloper.
She was an interloper. And this could be a test, but of what? Her worthiness to walk the same ground he did?
She rose to her feet, accomplishing it with surprising grace. “My, my,” she said, her tone both friendly and challenging. “I’ve heard so much about you. Danny Gabriel, right? I’m Tess Wakefield.”
She waited for a reaction before offering her hand. He looked almost approachable, except for those eyes. Sharp. Serrated. Like a cutting tool. They reminded her a little of someone else’s eyes, and it was just enough of a resemblance to make her thoughts heat with unwanted memories.
He nodded, his expression warming slightly. “Faustini management doesn’t know what the hell they want,” he said. “The client rarely does, so it’s our job to tell them.”
“Really? Our job?”
They shook hands, and she covered his with both of hers, pressing down firmly. His focus sharpened. Possibly he was just realizing that she might be a worthier adversary than he’d thought.
“But shock value has a way of backfiring, don’t you think?” she asked.
“For people like me, yes. Not for you, though. You can get away with anything.”
“Excuse me?”
He just smiled. “You have a free pass—in advertising and in life. Use it.”
“What free pass?”
“Your sincerity. The good-girl thing. It sells, especially when it’s used to sell something bad. People might not line up to buy bibles from you, but they would buy sex. They would buy leather, even if it came with whips and chains.”
“Really.”
He nodded. “You make the bad stuff okay. If a sweet thing like you is a little bit kinky, then maybe kinky is okay. You give people permission to do what they secretly want to do.”
“Sweet? You’re quite sure of that?” Tess had never been called that before, and it didn’t strike her as a compliment, no matter how he couched it. Her naturally curly blond hair was cut in a bob, on which she spent a fortune for frizz control, and she still had a bit of California tan and a few freckles left. But she was no angel. Her past might shock even him. As for her work, of course, she was passionate and sincere. If you didn’t believe in the client’s product, you had no business trying to sell it. That was her motto. Obviously, it wasn’t his.
“Shock them, Tess,” he continued. “It’s the only way you’re going to get their attention.”
Neurons were firing in her brain, sending out orders to tighten muscles and tendons, her jaw being the target area. She fought the desire to remind him that he was giving advice to his replacement… then arched an eyebrow and said it anyway. Indirectly.
“Shocking the client will accomplish nothing, except to lose us the account, and I don’t need your help with that.” Thwap.
“I meant shock the public, not the client,” he replied, nonplussed.
“That’s not necessary, either. People don’t appreciate being made fools of. You might get their attention once, but you’ll never get it again.”
He rubbed his jaw, seeming amused. “You have much too high an opinion of your fellow man.”
Present company excepted, she wanted to say, but held her fire. She usually kept a pretty good grip on her emotions—Meredith liked to call it a headlock—but anger wouldn’t get her anywhere with him anyway. She needed to stay grounded because this guy was a raging river. He held nothing back, and she didn’t have that luxury. She had to preserve her energy to save the account that he’d put in jeopardy.
“Are you done with the gym?” he asked. “It’s reserved on Friday mornings for murder ball. You and your team are welcome to join us. Carlotta has a mean serve.”
“Murderball?”
He grinned. “Dodgeball where you come from.”
So that’s why he was here. Dodgeball. Not because he couldn’t wait until the evening to meet her. Figured.
“They may want to play,” she said, referring to her team, “but I have some calls to make. Give us a minute to finish up our brainstorming session, and we’ll be out of your way.”
“Take your time.” Suddenly warm and friendly, he worked open the top button of his white dress shirt. “I need to hit the locker room and change first, anyway.”
She mumbled something about seeing him at dinner that night, and then turned back to her team, not surprised to find them riveted. The gym virtually hummed with tension. A corpse would have been sitting up.
“Let’s meet tomorrow morning in the Sandbox,” she told the team, referring to one of the agency’s many themed conference rooms. “I know it’s the weekend, but we have a deadline bearing down on us like a tsunami.”
Andy rose first, picking up his mat. “So, what kind of a campaign is this going to be? Shock and awe?” He grinned, apparently at the possibilities. “I’m sure I could come up with something that would put Faustini management on life support.”
Hmm. Andy may have just handed her the perfect opening. She had no idea whether Gabriel was still behind her, but she hoped so. This was her chance to make an impression on all of them, but most of all, she wanted him to hear it.
“Keep in mind,” she said formally, “that it will be difficult for Faustini to pay their advertising bill if they’re on life support. They are the client, and without them this agency wouldn’t exist. They’ve hired us to do a job. Let’s do it. Let’s give them the campaign heard around the world. But don’t forget that the client has to like it first or no one else will ever see it.”
Tess couldn’t tell whether they were with her or not, but she wasn’t finished. “It’s not us versus Faustini,” she said. “It’s us and them. We’re a team, and they’re part of it.”
Her team gave her a smattering of applause, and she curtsied. Tess waited for Gabriel to say something, and the silence became awkward. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he’d already left. So much for the crusading speech.
As she knelt to pick up her mat, she had the feeling the murderball game had already started, and there were only two players. This was a one-on-one with Danny Gabriel, and she was the rookie, fighting for a piece of the star player’s turf. And maybe for her career.
