Bedding The Wrong Brother (Dalton Brothers Novels) (2 page)

And not just any kind of sex, Melina thought.  Mind blowing, can’t live without it, I’ll-never-look-at-another-woman-for-fear-you-won’t-give-it-to-me-again, sex.  The kind of sex she apparently didn’t know how to provide, but was going to master this time even if it meant renting every porno in her neighborhood video store. 

“You like sex, too,” Grace pointed out.  “Do you factor into this equation at all?”

“Of course, I do.  I have no doubt that Jamie can give me what I want.”

Lucy harrumphed and narrowed her eyes at her.  “Well, I’m glad your wants are still in the picture.  At least Brian didn’t totally squash your sexual confidence when he hooked up with his little co-ed.”

Melina just smiled again, not willing to admit the truth.  Brian hadn’t just squashed her sexual confidence, he’d annihilated it.

“True passion isn’t about technique, Melina,” Lucy insisted.  “You can’t manufacture it by reading about it.”

Melina nodded.  “I get that.  But I’ve never been overly passionate, anyway.  After Brian, I was sure I was through with men for good.  But then Jamie approached me.  He’s smart and kind and funny.  I think I could be happy with him.”  She heard the hesitation in her voice but charged on.  “I just need a little extra insurance that I can make him happy, too.”

Snorting, Lucy shook her head.  “If you’re talking in bed, there’s no such thing as insurance.  You’ll just have to take the plunge, so to speak.”

“Not necessarily,” Grace drawled.  “As my mama always said, practice makes perfect, right?”

Lucy’s brows furrowed, while Melina gave an internal groan.  She recognized the challenge behind that drawl.  For a woman who was so contained, Grace could throw down a challenge like nobody’s business.  Worse yet, she’d be the first to take one up, which made Lucy and Melina hard pressed to turn one down themselves.

Melina turned to Grace, whose impish smile was unmistakable.   “And just who are you suggesting I practice with?” she asked.  

In sync, all of their gazes moved to the same shelf of pictures.  Melina’s stomach clenched even as she zoomed in on the most recent addition.  Max and Rhys both looked impossibly handsome in black tuxedos.  She’d taken it at the IBM Magic Convention in Vegas last year, right after they’d beat out Chris Angel and Lance Burton for Best Stage Magician Of The Year.  Of course, in the picture they each had an arm around their date—Max, a tall, leggy redhead, and Rhys, a stacked brunette whose boobs were almost spilling out of her plunging neckline. 

Melina dropped her gaze to her ice cream container.  Unless Ben and Jerry had begun manufacturing implants, she’d bet that brunette had never heard of them.  Suddenly feeling as if every bite of ice cream had gone straight to her hips and thighs, she set the carton aside.

“Rhys?” she asked incredulously.  “I said I need insurance I can satisfy Jamie, and you want me to drive head-on into a brick wall.  Rhys is in a whole different league than Jamie.”

“Exactly,” Grace replied.  “You want him, yet you’ve let fear hold you back.  You’re turning twenty-eight in a week, Melina.  Why not overcome two fears at the same time?  Prove to yourself you can satisfy a man like Rhys, and you’ll necessarily prove you can satisfy someone like Jamie, as well.”

“You’re wicked,” Lucy breathed, sounding utterly impressed.

Grace bowed in acknowledgment. 

Melina shook her head and held up her hands.  “Just hold on.  You’re assuming I can satisfy Rhys.  How likely is that?  I couldn’t even keep Brian satisfied in bed, and he’d only been with two other women.  With all the women Rhys has had…”  Melina swallowed hard, the very thought of all those women causing an ache of mammoth proportions in her chest. 

“All the more reason to ask him.  Think what a fabulous teacher he’d be,” Grace urged.

But Melina was already shaking her head again.  Defiantly, she picked up her ice cream container and took a fortifying bite.  “No way,” she mumbled around the spoon.  “Rhys doesn’t even like me anymore.  We haven’t talked for months.”

Obviously, he was too preoccupied with the showgirl-type women he was often photographed with to have time for an old friend.  Of course, he’d proved to her long ago that nailing the hottest chick was more important than friendship.  Her mistake had been in thinking it was a one-time thing. “Forget it.  I’m not asking Rhys for anything.”

Her tone brooked no argument, or so she thought.  After a few seconds, Lucy shot her a sideways glance.  “Okay, so if not Rhys, what about Max?”

Melina choked, coughed, and wheezed, “Max?”

“Of course,” Grace said, nodding and smiling in delight.  “He has even more experience than Rhys.  And she’s completely comfortable with him.”

“Not
that
comfortable,” Melina interjected, only to be ignored.

“She trusts him,” Lucy agreed.  “He’s a hottie.  They’ve already kissed once—”

“That was almost twelve years ago and he felt sorry for me—”

“—and he’s flying in for her birthday.  He’s perfect.”

“Perfect,” Grace echoed.  “Talk about sexual empowerment.” 

Melina’s gaze bounced back and forth between her friends as her mind frantically tried to come up with a reason why sleeping with Max was a bad idea. 

She couldn’t come up with one. 

Still, it would be humiliating for Melina to cave so soon.  Narrowing her eyes, she asked, “And exactly what sexual empowerment issue would you two be addressing during my crash course in satisfying a man?”  She looked over at Grace, who’d started to braid a strip of her long pale hair.  “Grace?”

Grace stopped braiding, bit her lip, then shrugged, her mouth twisting into a sardonic smile.  “No point in denying my greatest fear, now is there?  My birthday’s two weeks after yours, so I’ll try to find the man I fear doesn’t exist—the man who can get me off.  I’m sure it will just lead to another weekend of frustration, but as long as I can keep my vibrator handy, I’m willing to suffer for the cause.”

Although she felt herself softening, Melina didn’t reach out to her friend.  This challenge had been Grace’s idea.  Maybe she needed it more than Melina did.  She hadn’t dated in almost a year, convinced that if she couldn’t even attain pleasure with a man, there was no point in putting up with one.  Lucy, on the other hand, put so much stock on pleasure that she often put up with a man’s failings longer than she should.  Melina turned to her friend, keeping her face impassive despite the scowl on Lucy’s face.  Lucy’s birthday wasn’t for a few months, but it was a big one, the big 3-0. 

“Lucy thinks she should get a pass on this one,” Lucy said.  “I’m fearless when it comes to sex, you know that.  I’ve tried everything there is to try.  There’s no reason—”

“You fear intimacy,” Grace said gently.  “You only date jerks, guys who are never going to commit to you—” 

“Just because I happen to love brooding, creative men with an edge does not mean I fear intimacy,” Lucy protested.

“It’s one weekend, Lucy.  One weekend with a nice guy you normally wouldn’t give a second look,” Melina clarified.

“A nice guy?”  Lucy looked outraged.  “Oh, sure.  For your birthday weekend, you get to ask a hot friend to show you everything he knows in bed.  Grace gets to have someone pleasure her for two days straight or die trying.  What do I get?  A nice guy who probably doesn’t know a cock-ring from a cockatoo.”  She held up a hand to forestall Melina’s response.  “But fine.  If you two can do it, then so can I.”

Lucy paused and smiled sweetly, which—from her—was the equivalent of a big, flashing “danger” sign.  “I call the stakes.  Anyone who puts their plan in motion and sticks with it the entire birthday weekend, regardless of the results, gets a full day of pampering at Silk Spa. Anyone who chickens out has to get up in front of my Women’s Studies 101 class and explain why.  In excruciating detail.  And answer questions afterwards.” 

Lucy stuck out her hand, palm down.  After a brief hesitation, Grace placed her hand gently on top of it.  Melina’s hands curled into fists.  Her gaze landed on the magazine that Lucy had been reading, the one with the sex survey she’d read through earlier.  She’d committed one paragraph to memory: “Of those people who are very satisfied with their sex lives, ninety percent are also very satisfied with their marriage or committed relationship overall.  The less sexually satisfied people reported being, the less satisfied they were with their marriage or partnership.” 

It sounded so simple, she thought.  Keep a man satisfied and he’d be less likely to stray, right?  Continually blow a man’s mind in bed, and he’d be yours for life.  In that way, men weren’t unlike the bugs Melina studied—give them what they wanted and they’d give back to you. 

With Max as her teacher, she’d learn to keep a man sexually satisfied.  And she was an excellent student.  She’d just never given that particular skill her total focus.  Once she did, how hard could it be?

She shakily laid her hand on Grace’s. 

She’d never have Rhys.  Maybe being with Max was the next best thing.  One thing was for sure, though.  Given the parameters that Lucy had set, none of them was backing out of this challenge. 

***

“So, when do you leave for Sacramento?” Rhys called to Max.  He tried to sound nonchalant, focusing his attention on lifting the supple, feminine leg and placing the delicate ankle in the leather restraint.  He refused to look at Max, instead tugging the leather to make sure the restraint held firm.  Then he did the same thing with the woman’s other leg, ending with a playful growl that caused her to giggle. 

Satisfied that she was now fully restrained, he continued to play his part, absently dragging his fingertips up the inside of her gently curved calf and then her soft, pale thigh, continuing the journey over a lush hip, nipped waist, generous breast and upraised arm until he grasped the single restraint that bound her two fragile wrists together.  Max still hadn’t answered.

Standing directly in front of the bound woman, his feet braced apart, his chest just brushing her magnificent breasts, he turned to look at his brother.  “Max?”   

His brother wasn’t paying any attention to him.  Instead, he was staring at the floor, his brows flexed.  Rhys sighed, released the leather restraint that was suspended from the contraption on a chain, and smiled at Laura.  “Give me a second?”

Laura chewed her gum and winked.  “I’m not going anywhere.”

Rhys marveled at the huskiness of her voice.  Although she was dressed in a modest leotard and tights rather than the skimpy sequined outfit she wore during a performance, everything from her voice to her polished toes was a walking wet dream.  It wasn’t necessarily an act, either.  Even when she was lecturing her teenage son about doing his homework, she still managed to sound like a sex phone operator.  Striding toward Max, who leaned against the stage left wall, Rhys rolled his shoulders and tried to suppress his impatience.

It figured that the moment their dream was within reach, Max would get into one of his brooding moods.  Normally, Rhys could tolerate and compensate for Max’s moods, just like Max did for him, but with the recent back-to-back rehearsals combined with the time he was spending working the kinks out of the Dalton Brother’s newest stage trick—the most spectacular one to date—his tolerance was spent.  Next week’s show had to go off without a hitch.  Add to this stress the fact that Melina’s birthday was coming up?  Exhausted didn’t even begin to describe how he was feeling.

“Max?  Max!”

Max blinked and straightened, his far-away gaze focusing on Rhys and then on Laura, who still hung in the customized apparatus behind them.  He raked a hand through his already disheveled hair and jerked his chin at Rhys.  “Did you need me to test out those restraints now?” 

Rhys smiled tightly.  “I’m sure Laura can wait until her hands go numb if you need a few more minutes in la-la land.”

Shaking his head, Max strode to Laura.  “Sorry about that, babe.  I was just thinking.”

Behind him, Rhys snorted.  “I thought we agreed that until we land the contract with Seven Seas, you’d let me do the thinking while you focused on flexing your muscles and shaking your ass at the audience.”

“What would it matter if it was my ass or yours?  The audience rarely knows the difference.” 

Rhys hung his head.  When Max was right, he was right.  The whole mystique around the Dalton Twin’s Magic Show was that the audience knew the magician performing that night was an identical twin; they just didn’t know which one.  Not until the end of the show.  The problem was that he was more and more content to let Max be the performer so that he could do what he liked best—focus on managing the act and inventing new tricks.  He’d had to step up the number of his own performances or risk losing the mystery hook altogether.  Plus, once they unveiled their new trick, Rhys wouldn’t get a reprieve for a good long time.  Floating Metamorphosis would be spectacular only if the audience saw both Dalton twins on stage at the same time.

After tugging on the restraints like a volunteer from the audience would do, Max nodded his head at Lou, one of the backstage assistants.  As Lou began to loosen the restraints, Max absently patted Laura’s hip.  In response, Laura blew Max an air kiss. 

Laura and Lou left the stage, but not before Laura shot a seductive backward glance at Max.  Suddenly, the fact that the two of them had sauntered into practice half-an-hour late, their hair mussed and looking like they’d barely slept, took on new meaning.  Rhys glowered at his brother.  “Jesus, Max, you just couldn’t keep your hands off, could you?  Not even for a few weeks?”           

Max shrugged and held out his palms in a “what of it” gesture.

“What happens when you piss her off and she quits the night of a show?  Are you
trying
to screw up everything we’ve worked for?”

“You’re not giving Laura enough credit.  She’s a big girl.  Last night was fun, but she’s still got a thing for her ex.  She’s driving up to see him this weekend.  And her son, too, of course.”

“That’s not the point,” Rhys snapped.  “I’ve had to double security since we caught Joey Salvador trying to sneak back stage.  Seven Seas is insisting that we come up with a G-rated proposal for their family night performances.  And let’s not forget that after tonight’s show, I’m going to have to get everything packed up and shipped to Reno on my own, while you jet to California for the weekend.  Things are crazy enough around here without me having to worry about your sex life, too.”