Free Sex, Lies and Mistletoe by Tawny Weber Page B

hit-and-run.”
    “Maybe. But maybe not. I’m just saying if he hits again, you should take him up on a little ride. I’ll bet he’s the kind of guy who’ll make you see stars.”
    Stars. Pandora wasn’t a virginal prude. She liked sex. Especially if it was good sex. She read the how-to articles in women’s magazines and erotic books, she knew her body and wasn’t shy about giving directions when necessary.
    But, typically, the guys she’d been with weren’t big on directions.
    Which was probably why she’d never seen stars. With Sean, she’d seen a flicker or two but never full-oh-my-God stars.
    “So?” Kathy prodded.
    “So what?”
    “So, are you going to shoot for the stars? Or are you going to take the route of avoidance?”
    Avoidance. All the way.
    After all, the last time she’d given in to a sexy fling, she’d paid. Big-time. And Sean hadn’t been anywhere near as hot, gorgeous or tempting as Caleb. Getting involved with him was crazy.
    The last thing she needed was to get herself all upside down over a guy. Even a just-sex-and-nothing-more kind of guy. A more confident woman might be able to handle a sweet fling with someone like that, but her? She wasn’t that kind of woman.
    For once, though, she wanted to be. She wanted to have a purely sexual fling based on nothing more than physical satisfaction and excitement. She wanted to be exciting and dynamic. Fun and maybe a little wild. No expectations of anything long-term or emotional.
    And maybe, just maybe, to relax knowing that because she didn’t expect anything, her inability to read him couldn’t be termed a failure.
    “He’s not going to ask me out,” she said again.
    “So why don’t you ask him out?”
    Why didn’t she jump up on the table and strip naked while singing Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold”? “I can’t do that,” she excused.
    Kathy just gave her The Look.
    Pandora pressed a hand to her stomach, feeling as if she was about to jump off a very high cliff.
    It was scary.
    But it was also exciting as hell.
    “I’m not promising anything. But—and it’s a teensy-tiny but—but…if I do, and if he says yes, then our next kiss will involve tongues,” she vowed.
     
    CALEB LEANED HIS LEATHER-CLAD shoulder against the black iron lamppost and stared across the street at the warm welcome of Moonspun Dreams.
    He’d promised Hunter he’d give it two weeks. So in between watching the store, he’d spent the past four days nosing around. He’d hit what passed for the party scene in Black Oak. Bounced through a few bars, made himself known to the major partiers and netted a couple easy introductions to the town’s lower-level drug dealers. The first step was to get the lay of the land, to gauge how challenging the bust would be and to establish his identity.
    The ecstasy was definitely available and at discounts usually only seen in Black Friday sales ads. Marketing 101, make the product cheap and plentiful until you’d hooked enough suckers, then bleed them dry. As he would on any DEA job, he’d scored a little from each dealer, sending it all to Hunter for analysis. But experience and instinct told him it was all coming from the same source. A source nobody could—or would—pinpoint.
    So far this visit was a bust. He hadn’t found out much for Hunter. He hadn’t cleared his father. Of course, he’d done his damnedest to avoid seeing his father at all after that first surprise visit, but that was neither here nor there.
    And all he could think about was that one small kiss from the intriguingly reticent Pandora.
    Unlike his usual M.O. in breaking a drug ring, this time he had no cover. Around here, everyone and their granny knew who he was. Many had pinched his cheeks at the same time they’d bemoaned his probable criminal career. That all worked in his favor, his lousy rep ensuring that nobody questioned his activities.
    Still, that was then. He’d have liked to come home and be appreciated for who he really was now.