Oooh, not a question she wanted to answer right now. She needed a diversion. Quick. So she strode across the room to where she had slung her purse over the back of a chair, rummaged through it until she found what she was looking for, then shamelessly withdrew a limp, bent, God-only-knows-how-long-it’s-been-in-there cigarette, plus her lighter, and strode back over to Turner.
“Hey,” he objected. “You can’t smoke today.”
“Why not?”
“Because we have a bet, that’s why.”
“I didn’t make any bet,” she pointed out as she tucked the cigarette between her lips. “You did. I can smoke if I want to.”
He gaped at her. “But that’s not fair!”
She smiled. “Yeah, I know.”
“But…but…but…”
She withdrew the cigarette from her mouth and extended it toward him. “Would you rather have it yourself?” she asked sweetly.
For some reason, it suddenly seemed imperative that she get him to smoke. Not just because she needed him to lose the bet in order to accompany her to the hypnotherapist, but because the sooner he lit up, the sooner she could win the bet and vacate the premises. Then, in the privacy and safety of her own home, she could wonder just why the hell she suddenly felt so weird around Turner. So she moved the cigarette closer, rolling it between her fingers in an effort to free the sweet aroma of unsmoked tobacco, a fragrance she knew he wouldn’t be able to resist.
“C’mon,” she taunted him. “You know you want to. Can’t you smell it?” she cooed in the sexiest siren voice she could muster. She took another step closer, until her body was almost flush with his, then pushed the cigarette even closer to his face. “Smell how good it smells,” she entreated him seductively.
But Turner glanced away, silently declining her offer. She frowned at the rebuff, feeling strangely rejected. So she lifted her free hand to his face, cupping his jaw in her palm until she could turn his head toward the cigarette again.
“Look at it, Turner,” she said softly.
“I don’t want to look at it,” he replied, turning his head away again.
So Becca cupped his jaw more firmly and urged his face to where she’d held it before. “Look at it,” she instructed him more forcefully, her voice sounding throatier now, though she couldn’t recall making a conscious effort to have it do that. “Look how smooth and round it is.”
He did as she told him to, glancing down at the cigarette, then hastily back up at her face. “Yeah. So?”
“Don’t you want to touch it?” she whispered, arching one brow.
He shook his head slowly, but his gaze flittered back down to the cigarette she held out to him. “No,” he told her roughly. “I don’t want to touch it.”
“Of course you want to touch it,” she said sweetly. She threaded her fingers intimately into his hair. “You want to touch it sooooo bad.”
“No, I don’t,” he declared.
“Yes, you do,” she insisted. “You want to caress it, and stroke it and hold it in your hand. You want to run your fingers over it, up and down and around and around. Then you want to put it between your thumb and forefinger and roll it back and forth. It feels so good to do that, doesn’t it? I love how that feels.”
Becca lifted the cigarette to her mouth, and Turner’s gaze followed. Instead of tucking it between her lips, however, she raked the cigarette slowly across her mouth. “But as good as it feels to touch it, there’s nothing like putting it in your mouth, is there?”
“Becca…” he said, the warning in his voice unequivocal.
“You want to feel it against your lips,” she murmured. “Taste it on your tongue. You want it in your mouth, don’t you, Turner?”
“No. I don’t.” But his words were quiet, uncertain.
“Yes. You do,” she said. “You want your mouth on it, sucking hard. Don’t fight it, Turner. Take what you want. Take it now.”
For a moment, she thought he would succumb, because he actually lifted his hand toward her—or, rather, toward the cigarette. His fingers hovered there for a moment, lingering…lingering…. Then he drew his hand away again and crossed his arms over his broad chest.
“No,” he told her, his voice still a little shaky. “I’m just saying no. I will not submit to peer pressure.” And then, as if he wanted to physically illustrate that, he took a solid step backward, away from the cigarette, away from Becca.
Dammit. They had been so close. Though, somehow, what they had actually been close to doing wasn’t the thing she had wanted them to be doing. Or worse, maybe they had been close to doing that.
She made herself roll her eyes, as if she were as unconcerned as he. “Fine,” she conceded petulantly. Then, smiling playfully again, she placed the cigarette between her own lips and said, “Then you won’t mind if I smoke.”
He opened his mouth to object again, then closed it. “Feel free,” he said. “This is by no means a smoke-free environment.”
“Thanks,” she replied, her tone just as clipped as his. “Don’t mind if I do.”
But the reason Becca lit the cigarette wasn’t so much to tempt Turner by smoking in his presence as it was an effort to calm her own nerves. Because their little exchange just now had left her feeling edgy and irritable and very close to blowing her top. Or something.
It made no sense. There was no reason for her to feel edgy or irritable around Turner. Just because he wasn’t folding as quickly as she’d thought he would, and just because he obviously had more willpower than she did, and just because it looked as if she might lose this bet instead of him, that was no reason for her to get edgy and irritable.
Funny thing was, she suspected her bet with Turner had nothing to do with her current state of unrest.
Deciding not to think about any of that, she palmed her lighter and thumbed the flame to life, moving it to the tip of her cigarette. Inhaling deeply, she savored the warmth of the smoke filling her mouth and lungs, and relished the false heat that wound through her body. Nothing felt as good as smoking, she thought. She couldn’t imagine a greater physical pleasure than that soothing, pleasant sensation curling through her body.
Until she glanced up to find Turner gazing at her—or, rather, the cigarette—with unmistakable desire and unmitigated hunger. And then she began to imagine, too well, a physical pleasure that might rival, or even surpass, the one she was enjoying now.
“You’re playing dirty, Becca,” he said as he watched her enjoy herself. And without awaiting a reply—not that his comment really needed one—he spun on his heel and went back into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
It was all Becca could do not to follow him. And not because she feared he might light up in secret, either. But because she felt hungry and wanton herself. So she inhaled deeply on the cigarette again, waiting for the familiar sensation to calm her down.
But for the first time she could ever remember, smoking did nothing to soothe her nerves.
IT WAS AFTER ELEVEN that night when Turner finally gave up all pretense of being unaffected by the day’s events, and surrendered to the urge to smoke. Because even at that late hour, he knew sleep was a long way off, and he’d spent most of the day feeling half-crazy as it was. The craziness had resulted less from going smoke-free, however, than it had from watching Becca move about his life as if she belonged there.
It wasn’t that they did anything unusual together, but that was just the point. They spent the day doing the most mundane things two people—two friends—could do. They ate lunch together at a nearby fast-food restaurant, and they had dinner at