Page 3 of Pleasure Control

Trying for casual, she tipped her chin to look him square in the eyes. “And if you do get aroused?”

A playful glint danced in his eyes as his gaze roamed over her. When he reached out to caress her cheek with his thumb, a torrid heat seeped into her skin. Laura moistened her lips and tried to ignore the elevated thud of her pulse.

His bad-boy gaze settled on her mouth. “Sweetheart, if I do get aroused, the possibilities are endless.”

Chapter 2

Jay tucked a bottle of red wine under his arm and climbed the stairs to Laura’s apartment two at a time. He’d thought of nothing else all day except what her curvaceous body would look like dressed in silky lingerie. He felt his semi-erect cock grow another inch just imagining it now. His flesh lubricated in anticipation as each footstep took him closer to her door.

Seeing her half naked for research purposes was pure bullshit and he knew it. Although he had to admit doing it in the name of science certainly put an erotic spin on things.

There was something about Laura Manning that physically pulled at him the way no other woman had. She was a lethal combination of intelligence, innocence, and sensuality.

She got under his skin and warmed his body like a quick shot of brandy. He had it bad for her. So bad, in fact, that for the past couple of months he hadn’t even had the inclination to go on another date. The calluses on his palms were proof of that. Casual sex had lost its appeal when all he could think about was how he wanted to be palming the contours of a woman who was soft and curvy, sweet and sexy.

Even though he felt an overwhelming physical attraction to Laura, it wasn’t like he would ever develop a deeper emotional bond with her. Like his father and the rest of the Cutler men before him, he wasn’t cut out for lifelong commitment. Lord knows his mother had beaten that fact into him. Not one of the Cutler men in his father’s generation had ever had a lasting relationship. After his father bailed on the family, his mother referred to the clan as the “Cold-Hearted Cutlers.”

Jay knew his mother despised him, likely because he was the spitting image of his father. She repeatedly assured him he’d grow up to follow in the Cutler footsteps. The only people who had faith in him and believed he would grow into a fine, respectable man were his childhood best friend Dino Moretti and Dino’s parents, Tony and Isabella. He spent more time at their Italian restaurant than he did at his own house. Being around them gave him a glimpse of how others lived and loved.

Jay had always treated the women he dated with respect, but since he never felt any deep emotions for them, he assumed his mother was right—he was a chip off the old block, just another Cutler who thought with his penis and was incapable of true, emotional love.

As he approached Laura’s door, his thoughts once again returned to the sexy woman awaiting his arrival. God, he craved the feel of her skin next to his. The way she moved with unintentional sensuality and the way her raspberry scent stirred his hormones nearly drove him over the edge. He was dying to find out if she tasted as sweet as she smelled.

Working long into the nights with her had proven to be an exercise in frustration. Around the laboratory she was known as the Ice Princess, a woman who only wanted to research sex inside the lab, not out. She’d never once given him any indication that she was interested in a relationship with him, physical or otherwise. He respected that and had kept his hands to himself. Until now. Until the opportunity to take this relationship to the next level of intimacy had presented itself.

Christ, if she was dressed in white lace when he walked through that door, he knew he’d have to call on every ounce of strength he had not to bend her over and take her sensuous body right there.

He tugged his T-shirt out from his waistband, letting it cover the bulge tenting his jeans. Fuck, he’d been flying at half mast for months now. If he didn’t soon tame the raging anaconda between his legs, he was going to rupture an artery, not to mention all the test tubes he’d come close to knocking over at the lab. His dick was as hard as a torpedo and capable of taking out anything in its path.

His perma-boner indicated that the potion hadn’t yet begun to work. Of course, it wasn’t that he didn’t want it to work. He did. Their future careers at Iowa Research Center depended on it. Not to mention the fact that they wanted to perfect the top secret suppressant before Ad-Tech, their rivals, got wind of their project. He just wanted it to hold off for a few hours so he could coax Laura into succumbing to her needs, her desires. Desires he suspected she had but continually denied.

Tonight he was on a mission. He planned on taking their research out of the lab and into the bedroom. He planned on turning the Ice Princess into a puddle of molten liquid.

Tingles of excitement warmed Laura’s blood as she paced around her small apartment anxiously awaiting Jay’s arrival. She’d almost worn a hole in her carpet as well as her new thigh-high white stockings.

She drew a breath and smoothed her hair off her face. Her palms were so damp they moistened her curls. Laura wiped her hands over her housecoat, letting the thick terry cotton drink in her moisture.

Good Lord, what had she been thinking, agreeing to something like this? The director would kick them to the curb if he found out they were testing the serum on themselves. Especially since they had yet to achieve positive results with their lab rats, the first stage in the analysis process. Obviously her brain had ceased to function and the damp triangular patch at the juncture of her legs was now calling all the shots.

In all honesty, she was simply a quiet, law-abiding, career-oriented woman, raised in a loving middle-class family who never took risks and had never done anything so reckless.

So naughty.

So delightfully scandalous.

For the hundredth time she glanced at the clock, then walked over to her window. She pulled back the sheer curtain and scanned her surroundings. High overhead, silvery stars dotted the velvety black canvas. The full moon broke through the canopy of oak leaves fringing her walkway and lit up the empty path leading to the main entrance. Resuming her pacing, she walked to the door and looked through the peephole.

She stopped to consider what she’d gotten herself into. In no time at all the man she was secretly infatuated with would be walking through her front door, expecting to see her in her slinkiest lingerie.

And what were the chances she’d ever experience the feel of his lips caressing hers, or his artful fingers trailing over her heated, naked flesh? None, considering the fact that she’d given him a libido suppressant hours earlier.

She resisted the urge to slap her forehead. Way to go, Laura. You’re brilliant. That move had Nobel Prize written all over it.

But what if he did get aroused?

The possibilities are endless.

Those four simple words had echoed in her head all day. She allowed herself a brief luxurious moment to envision what it would be like to have his naked body moving over hers. His mouth kissing a path down her quivering flesh until he reached the moist fissure between her thighs. The soft blade of his tongue opening her dewy folds so he could taste her liquid arousal. His lips closing over her hooded flesh, branding her with their heat, claiming her as his own.

---