Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly

Wednesday? Okay, yeah, that was also known as hump day, but Cole had never gotten the impression it was that kind of—
    Anyway, nobody was erotic on a Wednesday. That was the middle of the week. His hostess, however, evidently spent her Wednesdays a lot differently than most people.
    Tonight was incredible, the passage began. He so surprised me tonight. I showed up needy and demanding, certain I knew exactly what I wanted from him. I’d had a rough day, and I wanted it traditional. I wanted it predictable. I wanted it comfortable. Comfort ing. But the way he looked at me when he came to me, I knew he had something else entirely in mind. No, he told me, I wasn’t going to get predictable and comfortable tonight. Tonight, I was getting something different. Something dangerous. Something exotic. Something spicy and hot. Something he’d discovered in one of the clubs in Bangkok that polite people in the western world never talked about.
    Whoa, this guy got around, Cole thought. Wasn’t Thailand supposed to be one of those countries that, when it came to sexual exploration, turned a blind eye to, oh…everything? Not that Cole knew, of course. He’d seen something about it on the Discovery Channel.
    When he told me what he was going to do, the journal continued, I really didn’t want any part of it. It just didn’t seem…normal. Or safe. I wasn’t even sure if it was legal here.
    Holy crap, what was it? Cole wondered. He read on.
    But then he looked at me the way he does when he wants to change my mind—and knows he can. He touched my shoulder in that way of his, then pressed his fingers to his lips in that way that promised untold pleasure. I shiver whenever he does that, because I know what those fingers can do, and how experienced is that mouth. When he does that, I know I have to turn myself over to him completely. To take whatever he gives me and…mmmmmm…relish it.
    Now they were getting somewhere.
    Oh, my God, it was so wonderfully erotic. When I opened my mouth and he filled me…
    Yeah? Cole thought, Go on…
    The heat of it…The texture…The taste…
    What about them…?
    It was almost more than I could bear at first, there was just so much. But he kept coming with it, and coming with it, until I couldn’t open my mouth fast enough to take it in. I wanted more. And more. And more.
    Oh, God…
    It was the insertion of the cumin, I think, that enraptured me most. Though the way he opened me to the turmeric was spectacular…
    Wait a minute, Cole thought, his fast-rising, ah, interest suddenly cooling. Cumin? Turmeric? Those weren’t sex toys or dirty slang words for body parts. Those were spices. He’d seen them in the pantry downstairs. He backtracked to the first paragraph. Something spicy? Something hot? He read over the entire passage again. She wasn’t talking about sex. She was talking about food! She was describing the dinner she had. The he she was writing about wasn’t a lover, it was a chef. Maybe even her waiter.
    Well, hell. He’d gotten all worked up over a Thai dish he couldn’t even enjoy now, because she hadn’t had the decency to name the restaurant where she’d been eating or even what she’d had. Other than a wonderfully erotic time.
    Eating, he thought again. Good God, the woman made eating dinner out sound like forbidden, hedonistic sex. Either she was a woman who had sex a lot, or else she was more desperately in need of getting laid than anyone on the planet.
    Another piece to the puzzle, he thought as he—reluctantly—closed the journal file. And just like the others he’d found, it was a piece that didn’t fit anywhere. Just who was the woman who called this house home?
    His gaze strayed to the left of the computer, where he saw a small carved Buddha sitting among his hostess’s desk accessories. The figure’s hands were lifted high, and he was smiling broadly, clearly enjoying a level of enlightenment that few people knew. Probably, Cole thought, the Buddha never had