Sexcapades (6 page)

Petra stopped, a frown marring her face. “I’m not sure.”

“Did you want me to get you someplace? Call you a cab?”

“Actually, my place isn’t that far from here.” The way she said it, she sounded surprised. “Did you want...?”

Darcy realized what she was about to offer, even if she’d stopped herself. He had two choices—let the statement go and see her on her way, or jump on the chance to get to know the woman behind PC in a private environment.

“I would love to.”

Petra jerked in his hold, but didn’t pull away. “I’m sure it’s a terrible idea.”

“Maybe. But it’s also a chance for me to spend some time with the real PC. I don’t know about you, but I’m curious as hell.”

It wasn’t entirely fair, holding her so close to him while she tried to make a decision like this. But Darcy was honest enough with himself to know he didn’t always play fair when it came to women who’d captured his attention.

“I’m not sure I should have you over.”

“You can call your friend again. Let her know that I’m there, if it will make you feel better.”

Petra did step away then. “I was thinking about the competition. It wouldn’t look good if they found out we were together after the accusations tonight. I mean, most of my advertisers are pretty awesome, but I have a few who wouldn’t want to be associated with any type of scandal.”

Darcy cupped the back of his neck, squeezing the muscles that had tightened. “Look, there’s no way we broke any rules here and we wouldn’t have even if we were dating. My brother entered me in this competition and I’ll be honest, it doesn’t mean much to me. If the committee caves to the other contestants and asks one of us to withdraw, I’ll do it.”

“What?” Petra’s eyes were wide and her lush lips parted. Shit, he really wanted to kiss her. “I can’t ask you to do that. How is that fair to you?”

“It’s fine. More than fine. If it means I get to be with you, it’s totally worth it.”

“Darcy—”

“I know you think I’m a bit of an asshole. Both because of what I’ve said online and how I treated you last night, but—”

“I don’t.” She bit down on her lip for a moment before chuckling. “I don’t think you’re an asshole at all. And you have nothing to apologize about for last night. I haven’t felt that special in a long time.”

The sincerity of her words made his cock hard, and something strange happened to his insides. He closed the distance between them once more, but didn’t touch her. “So, if I said I’d love to come back to your place for coffee and a chat, you’d be okay with that?”

Petra cocked her head to the side, a slow smile spreading across her face. “If by coffee you mean sex, then yes, I’d totally be okay with that.”

Grinning, he held out his arm. “Then lead the way, madam.”

Chapter Seven

Hot damn...I had no idea how many uses there were for a vibrator. Ladies, keep in mind, a man might enjoy the feelings as much as you do. Also, handcuffs and wax, such an amazing combination.

—PC,
Sexcapades
—
sex advice for women

Guh.

—D. Williams,
Mantastic
—
advice for REAL men

It was pretty much official at this point, Petra had lost her mind. Was she really going to sleep with Darcy again, this time knowing full well who he was?

A quick glance at his handsome face was all she needed for her mind to shout a resounding
hell yes!
Every fantasy she’d ever had about D. Williams was coming true. Not only was he great in bed, Darcy was a gentleman who was concerned about her safety. Sure, she didn’t actually know him, but they’d been practically having foreplay online for a year now. She’d seen what she considered to be the worst of him...and somehow it didn’t quite gel with the man walking beside her.

She fumbled with her keys as she tried to get them into the door to her building. Wow, they were really going to do this. Go back to her tiny condo and have crazy monkey sex. Darcy would now know where she lived, could post that information online if he got vindictive over an argument they were having. Her hands began to shake even before she lifted them to the lock.

“Hey.” He tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Would you rather not do this? I can leave right now.”

This was insane. Darcy might be a mess of contradictions, but not once had she ever gotten the creepy vibe from him. Not online and not in person. Sure, he pissed her off sometimes with his outdated thinking about how to seduce women, but on more than one occasion she’d seen him come down hard on anyone who implied women didn’t deserve respect, and banned them from his site.

“Pet?”

“No, I’m just afraid my place is a bit of a dump. I don’t know what you’re used to, but as you can tell, I’m not exactly living in the lap of luxury.”

Darcy laughed. “I promise I won’t hold it against you.”

Letting out a sharp huff, Petra shoved the key in the lock and pushed the door open. “Okay, but I warned you.”

By the time they reached her condo door, she really was freaking out about the condition of her place. Shit, had she put all the vibrators away? Lube?

Did it really matter?

“Your building isn’t bad.” Darcy had turned to face her, his back pressed against the wall by her door. “It’s secure and clean. You should see the dump my brother lives in.”

“Well, it’s not much to look at, but the neighborhood is fantastic.”

“And excellent coffee is nearby,” he said knowingly.

She smiled as the lock clicked free and she opened the door. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

It was strange watching Darcy walk past the threshold and into her living room. He was actually here, in her home, D. Williams.

Oh my frigging God.

“Hey, you really do have vibrators everywhere.”

Petra bolted into the apartment, slamming the door behind her. “Ah yes, sorry about that. I just got another new product package from a company looking for me to do a review. A follow-up to my last post.” Nice, vibrators out in the open. Smooth, girl.

Darcy didn’t seem to mind, picking up the biggest of the bunch. It was fire engine red and scared the shit out of her on principle. “Have you actually tried any of these out?”

Snatching it from his grasp, she shoved them all into the box. Of course they didn’t all go back in neatly, leaving several ends sticking out the top. “I don’t think I want to answer that question.”

“Oh come on. I’ve always wondered how many of your posts were based on actual experience, and how many were you simply writing what you thought women wanted to hear.”

“I’ll have you know I have lots of experience. Just because I’m not out there like a lot of people doesn’t mean I’m ignorant to the ways of awesome sex.”
Liar
,
liar
,
look at your nose grow.

Darcy nodded, but his sincerity was undermined by his smirk. “So, you have lots of experience with things such as—” he picked up another box, one she hadn’t had a chance to look at herself, “—sex candles. Do you use the handcuffs on your partner, or do you prefer to go all Dominatrix on their asses and tell them not to move?”

Petra’s mouth went dry. “Sex candles?”

“That’s what you have here.” He held the box up and gave it a shake. “Sounds like you have a good supply of them too.”

Some days she hated her overactive imagination. Right then it was far too easy to picture Darcy stretched out naked on her floor, her straddling his waist with the candle in hand. The hot wax would make misshapen splotches on his skin as she dripped it. His cock would twitch every time she pulled a hardened blob free...

“Petra?”

“I need to get a glass of water.” Without another glance, she bolted from the room.

Thankfully, Darcy took the hint and didn’t follow her. Flipping the tap on, she leaned over the side of the sink and patted several handfuls over her cheeks and neck. What the hell had she gotten herself into?

She wasn’t PC. If she’d felt uncomfortable at the welcome party, then this was the next level of hell up from that. Sure, Darcy was only teasing her, but she
wanted
to experience these things. Her sex life had been boring. Sean had been a control freak who thought the only opinion that mattered was his. The things he’d said to her when they broke up still bothered her, but she’d tried telling herself that sex didn’t need to be a specific way to be
right
. People could have fun in bed without being freaks.

It had taken her a long time to get over that. Alice had helped, providing her with a wide collection of porn and sex magazines targeted at women. Since then Petra realized it was okay to want something exciting. Sean had been a jerk, and not in the majority when it came to his views on sex. It was one of the reasons why she started
Sexcapades
in the first place.

Women needed to take control of what they wanted in the bedroom if they were going to be happy. If a woman’s partner was man enough to keep up, then all the better. If he wanted to turn tail and run, or called you weird or a freak for wanting to do things a bit different, then he wasn’t the right person for you in the first place.

She wasn’t a freak.

Darcy hadn’t made her feel that way either.

Grabbing a glass from the sink, she filled it up enough to take several deep swallows. If she didn’t get her ass back to the living room and stop hiding, he might take the opportunity to run away. He had to know she was a bit of a basket case at this point. No sense in hiding from him.

Plus, the illusion of PC should now be adequately shattered.

Quickly running her hands through her mass of curls, she fixed her clothing and dried her face. She could do this. It’s not like she hadn’t had sex with him before. Things would be fine.

“Can I get you anything? Coffee? Beer?”

“A beer would be great.”
Oh thank God
,
he’s still here.

Grabbing two bottles of the microbrew she’d picked up a few days earlier, Petra strode back to face her fate.

She managed to get two steps into the room before she stopped again. Darcy was sitting on her couch, his suit jacket off, tie undone and shirt sleeves rolled up. On the coffee table in front of him were the entire contents of the sex candle box. He was reading a pamphlet as he toyed with a skinny black candle.

Oh.
My.
God.

Swallowing hard, she managed to plaster a smile on her face. “I hope you like lager.”

Darcy made some noncommittal noise as he accepted the bottle. “Do you have a lighter?”

Don’t panic.
Don’t freak.
Sure as hell don’t pant and beg.
“Nope. I might have some matches though.”

“That would work. Apparently people don’t actually need to be into pain to be really turned on by this stuff. The skin will redden a bit, but there shouldn’t be any burns. It’s a special wax.”

She could easily picture what the red marks would look like against her skin after he’d peeled them off. She’d be so sensitive afterwards, wanting him to caress the spots while he fucked her.

“Petra?”

“Sorry.” Dammit, she was blushing again. “I was daydreaming.”

“I bet you were.” He grinned. “I said, were you planning on doing a blog post on this stuff?”

The blog. Right. “Probably. I normally try and do one when companies send me products. It’s really the least I can do.”

“How were you planning on writing this one up? Would you use it on yourself, or someone else?”

A loaded question if she’d ever heard one. Taking a seat beside him, Petra put her beer down and picked up one of the other candles. “I would probably do a bunch of research. Find out what other people said about it, look into the company, customer stories, that sort of thing.”

“You wouldn’t light one of these yourself?” He shifted closer. “Wouldn’t you want to know what it felt like before you told other women to do it or not?”

“I—”

“You could let the wax fall onto your thigh. See how much of a sting there was.”

Petra glanced down at her bare legs, her skirt now riding up past her knees. “I...”

Darcy ran his finger along the couch, brushing the side of her leg. “You could try it.”

“I don’t think it’s the same if you do it to yourself.”

“Want to test that theory?”

There was certainly something about his grin that did things to her insides. That sparkle in his light blue eyes, silently daring her to come along for the ride, made her skin tingle and her stomach flip.

“Sure.” She fought the urge to do anything stupid. “What do you have in mind?”

“Where are those matches?”

Holy shit.
“In my bathroom. Down the hall, third door on the left.”

Before she could even think of protesting, Darcy was down the hall like a shot.

Folding her hands neatly in her lap, Petra ignored the way her heart raced, the slight tremor in her hands, the fact that her pussy was not only damp, but ready to explode, and tried to focus on the idea of knowingly having sex with her online rival. This wasn’t the same as her wild one-night stand with handsome Darcy, coffee shop mystery man. No, she was going to let D. Williams, jackass of
Mantastic
, pour hot wax all over her body before screwing her senseless.

“Found it!”

Petra closed her eyes and let out a long, slow breath.

Did knowing Darcy’s identity change her opinion of D. Williams? Yes. And no. She was well aware of which aspects of PC were a fraud and which were a part of her. If it turned out that Darcy was more D. Williams than not, then any relationship they tried to get started wouldn’t last long.

Because while she was beginning to adore Darcy, the jury was still out on D. Williams.

“I found some massage oil too. I hope you don’t mind that I grabbed it. It’s not like I went snooping or anything, they were actually side by side—” Darcy stopped in front of her as Petra opened her eyes. “That is a rather serious expression.”

“Are you D. Williams? Really?” Unable to hold his gaze, Petra let hers drift to the opened box containing the sex candles. “Because there are parts of him I really don’t like. Like your arrogance. And your need to be right all the time.”

“Ah.” Darcy squatted down in front of the coffee table so she had no choice but to look at him. “And it bothers you that you might sleep with a man you can’t stand.”

“My favorite term for you is ignorant Neanderthal.”

Darcy chuckled. “I know. I’ve earned that tag on more than one occasion.” Setting the matches and oil on the table, he placed his palms flat on the surface. Man, he had beautiful hands. “What would you like to know?”

His question threw her. Instead of the myriad of questions she normally wanted answers to, there was only one thing that came to mind. “You don’t live in your parents’ basement, right?”

Darcy leaned forward and pressed his forehead to the coffee table. His shoulders shook from his near-silent laughter. “I moved away from home over ten years ago. I only visit on weekends or if my dad needs a hand with something.”

That was good. “I was scared that...never mind.” Alice won that bet. “Are you married?”

“No.” Darcy rested his chin on his hands, giving Petra an excellent view of his blue eyes. “I’ve been in a few serious relationships, but nothing that went beyond that.”

“Because you didn’t want them to be?”

“Because I work long hours in a high-stress job and sometimes put my patients ahead of myself. The women I tended to end up with didn’t appreciate coming second.”

Oh. Well, that was different than being an ignorant Neanderthal who couldn’t commit.

“Did you have any other questions? Like whether or not I really believe all the stuff that I put on my site? Yes, I do believe all women, regardless of shape or size, are sexy. That comes from their attitude, their confidence and intelligence. I’ve met some women who are gorgeous by all physical standards, but are ugly on the inside. I run as fast as I can from them, no matter how attractive they are.”

At some point during Darcy’s little speech, Petra found herself leaning closer to him. She wanted to see every micro-expression on his face, every muscle twitch. There was nothing but sincerity in his eyes, his open expression revealing the man beneath the suave exterior. Darcy Williams might very well be a bit of an ignorant Neanderthal, but he was also a gentleman.

With her decision made, Petra picked up the matches and candle, holding them above the table between them. “How exactly do these work again?”

* * *

Darcy lay stretched out on the floor on top of a soft blanket and let his eyes adjust to the dim candle light. Petra had insisted on setting the mood if they were going to do this. She’d set to work cleaning and organizing while he’d made a mad dash to the drug store for a box of condoms.