The Challenge

Dean’s gaze shifted. Ah, she was spot-on. Wow.

“Dunno what you mean.”

“You only keep quiet about the dudes you like, which are few and far between lately.” Actually, there hadn’t been any. Katie kept the tone light, not wanting to bring up old flames just for the sake of needling her friend–there was plenty to tease Dean about without bringing Ethan into it.

“Sure, I like him. I like lots of stuff.”

Katie laughed. “I know you do.”

With this laid out between them, Dean seemed satisfied. “So long as he’s not that douche from Connex. That guy was bad news.”

Katie laughed at the way Dean bristled on her behalf. “Umm…no. I wouldn’t even fuck him with your dick. C’mon, move that pretty ass. Time to shine.”

“We have a few minutes.”

Katie sighed again. An old argument. She liked to be prompt, even early. Dean preferred to make a grand entrance. She eyed his practiced pout. “I told you, that doesn’t work on me.”

“It works on everyone.”

This was very close to true. “Only because everyone else doesn’t know you like I do. All promise, no delivery.”

Dean leered, once more leaning so close Katie could get a full whiff of his delicious cologne. “Shut your mouth! The fuck you mean, no delivery? I deliver.”

Katie leaned, too, so her breath would tickle his earlobe. “No, babe. That ass and that smile promise a lot but Dean Manion only delivers to addresses on Penis Avenue. Vagina Street’s out of your delivery zone, remember?”

He turned his face half an inch so his lips brushed her neck. “Just because I don’t doesn’t mean I couldn’t.”

At this boast, so typical, Katie burst into laughter loud enough to make her happy she had her own office with a closed door. She pushed at his chest. “Please. You’ve never fucked a woman. Have you ever even kissed a woman?”

“I’ve kissed you,” he reminded her, letting her push him away but not making it easy.

“A New Year’s Eve kiss under mistletoe. Besides,” Katie said as she gave his tie a fond yank, “there was no tongue. Doesn’t count.”

“Doesn’t mean I couldn’t,” Dean repeated stubbornly.

Katie cast another glance at the clock. Fifteen minutes to make it from her office, down the hall, up three floors in the notoriously slow elevator, down another two corridors to get to the meeting room. “Look, your reputation as a sex bomb is safe with me. I swear I will never reveal to all the women crushing on you that you’d rather get a paper cut on your tongue than eat pussy.”

She laughed again at his outraged expression. “Don’t act like it’s not true. I’ve seen you with the girls in reception, the ones who always give you doughnuts. You can whore yourself for a bear claw all you want, but when it comes right down to it, you won’t put out.”

Dean was the part of their team who came up with the brilliant ideas; Katie figured out how to put them into action. Dean orchestrated the flash and bang while Katie made sure all the pieces fit into place. Yet it was Dean who fought the hardest to win the accounts, even when Katie’s careful financial summaries determined the risk wasn’t worth the effort. Dean who worked long hours ripping apart campaigns and sewing them back together until nobody could possibly offer something better. The same competitive edge that made him killer at racquetball drove him in his work, too, just as Katie’s intrinsically neat and tidy personality did in hers.

She’d just tapped Dean’s warrior nature. She saw it in his eyes and stance, so briefly fierce she’d have stepped back from it if the desk hadn’t already been under her butt. Any other man in the office–hell, anywhere–who gripped her hips and pulled her close up on his crotch that way, who ran his mouth along the curve of her neck to find her ear and breathe heat into it—any other man would’ve earned a knee to the nuts and possibly the heel of her hand into his Adam’s apple.

Instead, Katie tensed under Dean’s practiced touch, head tipping to give him greater access. There was no denying he was scrumptious. Probably more so because they were such good friends, and she knew his quirks. Most definitely because he was gay and triggered the “never gonna get it” hormone. Now she closed her eyes while he ran his lips lightly over her skin.

“This is so out of the boundaries of appropriate workplace behavior it’s not even funny,” she murmured.

He moved away, not quite enough. “Since when have I ever been appropriate?”

“This is true,” Katie said, amused to hear the sex-syrup tone of her own voice. God, it had been too long since a man had put his hands on her. “However, it doesn’t mean you could make me come.”

Disgruntled, Dean stepped back. “You think it would be so easy to get me off?”

“I do, actually. Now c’mon, shake that oh-so-fine ass, please. We really have to move.”

Dean crossed his arms, still looming over her. “What makes you think that?”

“Because I’m looking at the clock.”

“No.” Dean shook his head. “That I’d be so easy to get off, but you wouldn’t. What makes you so sure?”

He was, Katie saw with genuine surprise, seriously wounded. She tugged his tie gently. “Because you have a penis, sweetie, and penises are notoriously easy to please. And I like sucking cock. I’m sure if you closed your eyes, you’d never know my mouth was attached to a set of breasts and a cunt. On the other hand, the fact you’ve never made love to a woman and aren’t turned on by women, would probably mean that providing me with the same favors wouldn’t be as successful.”

She paused, deciding to go for the truth simply because Dean was a friend and a good one, at that. “And because I have a hard time getting off with straight men who are into me. I think managing an orgasm with a guy I knew was cringing the whole time would really be impossible.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake. No.”

Dean gave her the full force of his flirting grin, the one she’d seen slay the girl who brought around the bagels, random guys on the street and everyone in between. “You’re afraid to take me up on it?”

“Are you suggesting I. fuck you?” Katie didn’t even look at the clock this time. The idea was intriguing. Tempting, even. It wasn’t like she’d never wondered what it was like to get in Dean’s pants. And to be the first woman to ever have him?

Fucking delicious.

“I’m saying we should fuck each other. We’ll see who gets who off first.” Dean ran a hand through his hair, pushing it away from his eyes. “And fastest.”

“Sex is always such a game to you.”

“And that’s wrong…because…?”

“Because we’re late, for one thing,” she said sternly. “For real, this time. Let’s go. If you want this account–”

“Say yes, Katie.”

She looked him up and down, taking in every detail. She knew every inch of Dean already, having spent so many hours with him, and suspected he was probably as familiar with her. She looked at him with new eyes, now. She’d gone to bed with men she was less attracted to than she was to Dean, so really, where was the issue? Sex was with him was unlikely to lead to one of those three-in-the-morning talks about what it all meant, and if it did, both of them would be fools. At the very worst, she’d be proven right, and even with that, how could getting a full serving of the delicious, deep-dish pie of gorgeous that was Dean be wrong?

“You’re on,” Katie said.

“You did what?” Jacob, standing at the sink and rinsing a pot of steaming hot pasta, turned so fast a few strands of limpid spaghetti slopped over the sides.

Dean leaned against the counter, bottle of beer he hadn’t yet tasted in one hand. “You heard me.”

“Oh, I heard you.” Jacob turned back to the sink and ran cool water over the pasta before dumping it allinto the bowl. “I just can’t believe it. You’re going to have sex with a woman?”

Now Dean drank. “Yeah.”

He watched Jacob’s shrug, wondering whether that meant the other man was dismissing the possibility or expressing jealousy. Or maybe Jacob didn’t give a shit, Dean thought, tasting the richness of the beer. Would he have cared if Jacob had told him the same thing? What would Dean have said?