Hypnotic Seduction (The Seduction Series) (41 page)

“Maybe.” She grinned. “You only get them for free if you’re very bad.”

“
Bad
?” He locked the door to the executive suite and scooped her up in his arms. “Don’t you want me to show you how good I can be?”

“You’ve already done that—many times.” Wiggling her eyebrows, she tugged off his tie and dropped it on the carpet. “Today, I was hoping you’d be very bad.”

“Really?” He chuckled into her neck and carried her into his office. “And what will that get me besides free cookies?”

As he lowered her onto the sofa, she nipped his ear. “Try it, and with any luck, you’ll get your reward sometime next spring.” She grabbed the two halves of his
shirt front
and ripped them apart to expose his muscled chest and abdomen. Buttons flew everywhere.

“A little impatient, are we?” he asked, fishing his wallet from his back pocket to find a condom.

Evidently, he still hadn’t caught on. “No-no-
no
!” She grabbed the packet from his hand and flung it across the room. “Really bad boys don’t use those.”

“No?” A slow grin spread across his face. “Ahhh....” He nodded. “By spring, you meant nine months from now.”

Smiling, she unzipped his fly and stroked him, awed that such a wonderful man could love her so much.

“You know,”—he gasped, his eyes rolling back —“I haven’t been this bad in sixteen years.”

Her heart swelled to hear it had been so long since he’d been flesh-to-flesh with any other woman. “I’m glad.”

He stripped off her panties and crawled over her, his pupils dilating. “I think I’m going to like this bad-boy stuff.”

“I know I will.” She traced his ear with her tongue and giggled. “I just hope I don’t like it too much. Or I might decide making babies is more fun than baking cookies.”

“I hope so.” He smiled down at her and groaned his pleasure, sliding into her. “But in the interest of your new company’s success, from now on, we’ll have to limit our baby making to after business hours.”

“Not
necessar
—” She shivered at having nothing between them. “Isn’t this what coffee breaks and lunch hours are for?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he whispered into her hair, “I
love
the way you think.”

wife
  n
. 1. The beautiful, wise, and sexy companion of a man who is smart enough to notice such qualities and make her his legal mate. Sometimes negatively referred to as his old
lady
or ball and chain.

As Lyndon B. Johnson said, ‘Only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First, let her think she's having her own way—and second, let her have it.’

One year later
....

“Ready to go home, Mrs. Calder?” Jordan stood in Hannah’s office doorway, looking more devastatingly handsome than ever.

She glanced at her watch and cringed. “It’s that late?”

“I take it you had a hectic day.”

“Yes, but I still got nothing done, running to the bathroom every half hour.” She patted her round belly. “Your son is using my bladder as a trampoline.”

Jordan wandered into the office and bent over her, laying his cheek against her stomach. “Only seven more weeks, Buddy,” he murmured. “Then you can jump on Daddy.”

“Assuming he’s on time.” She arched her back, rubbing it. “Edward made Gram so happy last night when he suggested naming our son, Samuel, after my grandpa.”

“Come on, it’s late.” Jordan hoisted her out of the chair. “They’re holding dinner for us. This will all still be here tomorrow.”

The previous summer, Hannah had transferred her Alaskan cruise ticket to Edward’s name for his and her grandmother’s honeymoon. During the cruise, Edward convinced Ruth to sell her house and move to the family’s estate so they could spend more time with their great-grandchildren—once Jordan and Hannah quit fooling around and gave them some.

Between starting her company and completing the last three courses toward her degree, their sex life had required a lot of creative scheduling. It had taken her husband four months of making love to her twice a day before they
were rewarded
with a plus sign on the pregnancy test stick. Of course, she loved a conscientious man who took his duties seriously. It was only after she became pregnant that she’d read the chance for conception is actually reduced by daily sex—a tidbit of information she had no intention of sharing with Jordan.

He glanced down at her bare feet and frowned. “Where are your shoes?”

“Under the desk. My tootsies are like two sponges. The straps were cutting off my circulation.”

“What do you expect when you insist on eating Chinese dumplings slathered in soy sauce as a midnight snack?” While he knelt down to retrieve her sandals, she shoved the work she hadn’t finished into her messenger bag. He picked up one of her feet and kissed it before helping her squeeze it into her shoe. “Swollen or not, your toes still turn me on.”

“Tell you what—I’ll let you paint my sexy little
piggies
again tonight while I finish the work I didn’t get done today. I never expected this business to take off the way it has.”

Jeff Burton, Jordan’s ex-VP of Marketing, had proven to be a genius at promoting Hannah’s Heavenly Cheater Cookies. With the help of some of Candace’s contacts in the entertainment industry, he’d managed to land spotlights for Hannah on several major talk shows to launch the company.

While
scarfing
down the samples they provided, the studio audiences had also eaten up the story of how Hannah’s hypnosis had helped her go from an unemployed nobody to CEO of her own company. Even she still had trouble believing it.

All that publicity not only made her company an instant success, it also pushed the self-help book Diana had written onto the New York Times bestsellers list.

“The phone is ringing off the hook with reorders. If it keeps up this way, we’ll have to build a bigger facility. Who would’ve dreamed the American public would be willing to fork over so much for some lousy ready-to-bake cookies?”

“Believe
me,
no one would buy them if they were lousy.” He squeezed her other foot into its sandal and buckled the strap. “And you only have yourself to blame for putting that
big helping of love in every bite
.”

Jordan had coined their slogan at the press conference to announce that twenty-five cents from each package of Hannah’s cheater cookies sold
would be donated
to the Bobby Dobson Leukemia Foundation started in his friend’s memory.

“I think I may have bitten off more cookie than I can chew,” she admitted. “I don’t know how I’m going to manage all of this after Sammy’s born.”

“You didn’t think you could handle your job as my assistant, either. As efficient as Nancy is, she doesn’t make my job nearly as easy as you did. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it lately—”

“Yes, I know—you miss me. I never wanted all this responsibility.”

“You’ll do fine. We’ll simply hire more help for you.” He guided her from the office. “Just promise you won’t steal any more of my staff. Okay?”

Recently, a number of Calder Pharmaceutical’s employees had defected to Hannah’s company, including Trudy Hoffman and several other top executives. Hank
Stanzione
had graduated from culinary school and was one of the supervising chefs.

“Scouts honor.” Hannah raised her hand.

“If you decide this is too much or you’d prefer to be home with Sam, we can always sell.” They’d already received generous offers from two large food companies. “Or you can appoint someone else as CEO and just maintain your position as chairman of the board.”

She stalled mid-stride and turned to him. “If anyone needs to delegate, it’s you. Since the board made you chairman, you’ve been doing the job of three people.”

Not to mention all the time he spent giving her advice.

“That would be nice, Hannah, but who do you suggest I make second in command? You’ve lured away half of my top personnel.”

“How about Bryce?”

Jordan shook his head. “The directors would never stand for promoting a hound like him to President.”

“Well, they let you have the job as CEO.”

“Only because my last name is Calder.”

“So you think if Bryce got married and settled down, the board would go for it?”

“Probably. But he’s even more phobic about marriage than—”

“Nothing a little hypnosis can’t cure.”

“Sweetheart, I can’t force the man to go for hypnotherapy. And he knows all about the CD you had made for me.”

“Oh, well.” She sighed. “I guess you have a tough job ahead of you, convincing Bryce he wants help.” She
slid
her arms around her husband’s neck and rubbed herself against his hard body. “But I know you’ll try since you love me so much and know how thrilled I’ll be if you have more time to spend with me and Sam.”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t you feel any shame, exploiting my weakness for you?”

Okay, so she did a little. “Hey, you’re the one who insists our marriage should be a fifty-fifty partnership. I’m simply doing my part, telling you what will make me happy. Can I help it that you believe it’s your job to move heaven and earth to see that I am?”

He laughed and picked up her briefcase. “Let’s go home, wife. As soon as we finish dinner, I’ll spend the entire evening making you downright ecstatic.”

“What are we waiting for?” She towed him toward the exit.

Since the beginning of her second trimester, her hormones had gone crazy. There wasn’t enough time in either of their schedules to make love as often as her pregnant body demanded. Lately, the only thing she wanted more often than sex was Chinese food—specifically egg rolls and dumplings.

She raised her eyebrows in a hopeful arch. “We could have a little quickie in the car before we head home.”

A long groan rumbled out of Jordan’s chest. “Now I know why a man shouldn’t wait until he’s thirty-nine to become a father.”

“If you’re not interest—”

“Now I didn’t say that,” he quickly amended. “I’m just thinking I should paste a warning label on your tummy that says Insatiable When Inflated.”

She stared pointedly at his straining fly. “Only if I get to slap one on you, too.”

Wincing, he held her messenger bag over his crotch. “If there is any slapping of my inflated parts, I will not be happy.”

“Then I guess we’d better forget the labels. If you recall, I’m a recovering people-pleaser with a compulsive need to make you happy, too.”

“I am, sweetheart.” He brushed her lips with his and
whispered,
“Only three things could make my life more perfect.”

“Oh?” She froze in her tracks. “Dare I hope the first one is stopping for egg rolls on the way home?”

“No, but we can. All I want is a healthy baby, a wife who doesn’t give me sass,”—he squeezed her fanny, his blue eyes twinkling at her—“and the chance to deliver that spanking I still owe you.”

“Well, you can probably count on getting two out of three.”

“Let me guess.” His mouth twitched in a wry smirk.
“
No sass
isn’t one of them.”

“Smart man.” Hannah chuckled and continued waddling toward the exit. “And let’s set the record straight.” She smiled, recalling all the amazing demerits he’d given her in the last year. “You owe me way more than one measly spanking.”

Laurie’s greatest reward as an author is to learn one of her books enriched someone’s life.

 
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L.L. Kellogg a/k/a Laurie Kellogg is a two-time winner and seven-time nominee for the
Romance Writers of America
^®
Golden Heart
^®
award, the winner of
Pacific Northwest Writers Association
^®
Zola
award, and a
Romantic Times
^®
American Title I
finalist. She began writing to avoid housework and has since resorted to naming the dust-bunnies multiplying as fast as real rabbits while she plots. Her Laurie Kellogg books are
Steamy, Heartwarming, Romantic Fun
and the red-hot romantic comedies she writes as L.L. Kellogg
are
 
A
Little Naughty and a lot of Fun!
If you would like to know more about Laurie and her books visit
http://www.LaurieKellogg.com
.

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http://www.LaurieKellogg.wordpress.com

Find Other Books by Laurie Kellogg

 
If you’re interested in reading Laurie’s
Steamy, Heartwarming Romantic Fun
love stories written under Laurie Kellogg, you can find them here:

The Memory of You

A Little Bit of Déjà Vu

Prologue