Free Hold Me Down Hard by Cathryn Fox

Chapter One
    Eden Carver dealt the remaining cards from the deck and glanced at her three friends as they gathered around her small kitchen table for their weekly game of poker. She took note of the nearly empty glasses and made a move to get up.
    “Anyone want another…” Her voice fell off when the sound of her neighbor’s Jeep pulling into their shared parking lot drew her attention.
    She dropped back into her chair and didn’t miss the warm shivers of delight raining down her spine as she strained to hear her best friend’s footfalls on the stairs. The echo of his size-twelve boot hitting the first step quickened her breath. As she listened, there was nothing she could do to keep her pulse from racing, nothing she could do to prevent her nipples from pressing insistently against her thin white tank top.
    “Hello, earth to Eden,” Janie said, waving her arms in front of Eden’s face to pull her attention back to the game at hand.
    As a humid summer breeze fluttered the lacy curtains over her sink, Eden blinked her mind back into focus and met Janie’s shrewd glance. While the four girls sitting around the table were all actresses, having met on a movie set after Eden moved to the Big Apple three years ago, Janie was by far the most flamboyant and loudest of the bunch.
    Eden shook her head. “Sorry, where was I?” she asked, with only half her attention on her cards. The other half was still on her neighbor and how she’d do just about anything to get a glimpse of him in his police uniform before he peeled it from his rock-hard body and called it a night.
    God, if he only knew what it did to her, knew how many times she’d lain in bed and conjured naughty scenarios with the big bad cop in his work wear—doing delicious things to her with his cuffs—he’d surely think she was a deviant and run the other way. This, of course, was the main reason she’d never admit her desires to anyone. Not ever again, anyway. The one time she’d told a guy how she felt about men in uniforms, the way her mind’s eye played out a bevy of kinky fantasies—like being shackled to the bed or tied at the ankles—he’d run straight into the arms of a normal girl. Apparently, because she was from Iowa, he, as well as everyone else, expected her to be a shy country girl, not some wild and twisted pervert—which was what he’d called her on the way out of her condo and out of her life.
    But dammit, she was tired of hiding the real Eden, and she wanted a guy she could be herself with, a guy who accepted her for who she was and who wasn’t afraid to explore all her darkest desires.
    Except it wasn’t just any guy with whom she wanted to share her wicked side. Oh no, not at all. The guy she wanted to lay herself bare to was none other than her best friend, Jay Bennett.
    “Oh. My. God,” Maria whispered, her big blue eyes bulging wide as she studied Eden. When Maria’s mouth dropped open, her chin dangling inches from the table, Eden feared her friend was about to catch the fly buzzing around the kitchen.
    Angie picked up her strawberry daiquiri and gave a small salute to Maria. “Oh my God is right.”
    “What?” Eden asked, working to keep a measure of calm as all three glared at her like they could see straight into her soul. Then again, they’d all shared so much over the last few years that maybe they could. Maybe they knew how much she wanted her neighbor, in and out of his uniform.
    Janie snapped her fingers and did some weird head-bobbing thing before saying, “You’ve got it bad, girlfriend.”
    Eden stared at her friends for a moment longer, then let loose a long-suffering sigh, deciding any attempt to hide her feelings from the trio, who probably knew her better than she knew herself, was simply an exercise in futility.
    “I know,” Eden admitted and buried her face in her hands. “I’ve got it bad. But he totally friend-zoned me. He’s not interested in sharing anything more than pizza and movies.”
    The