This excerpt needs a little setting up. Our hero, Benedict, is working undercover to bring down Viktor, drug lord and criminal kingpin who’s also into the sex trades. Viktor becomes obsessed with an erotica writer, Alexis St. James, to the point where he sends Benedict in a temporal ship to bring her to him, by any means necessary.
Turns out there was a slight glitch in the temporal programming and Benedict is about to find out Alexis St. James is not exactly what Viktor is expecting. She’s not what Benedict was expecting either, having unknowingly had an encounter with her in a bar during a 60th birthday party the night before this scene.
Lexi was enjoying a late morning drink on her deck. She loved the summer months and hated to waste any day as beautiful as this one. Of course after last night the drink was a pitcher of iced tea – home made, thank you very much; none of that packaged stuff for her. She even had a couple of extra glasses in case someone stopped by, which happened more often than not.
She smiled, thinking back to her birthday party. It was a party to remember all right. Her smiled widened as she recalled the stranger, and his kiss. Talk about memorable! For a while there he’d made her forget just how old she was. If she’d been twenty years younger she’d have been all over him like white on rice. Hell, even if she’d been ten years younger.
As if her thoughts had conjured him, she heard a voice from in front of the house. That couldn’t really be him . . . could it? She took a quick sip of her drink as her mouth went dry. Ignoring her heart rate, which sped up in anticipation, she put her feet up on the deck railing in an effort to look casual.
She called out in reply to his hail and realized two things at once – she wasn’t wearing any underwear, and she wanted him more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life.
Benedict wasn’t sure if that muffled noise was a voice, but encouraged, he repeated, “Hello?”
“Around the back,” came the faint reply.
Sighing with relief, Benedict started around the house. The back opened to a spectacular view of the lake. There was a wide deck running the width of the back of the house, and a figure was sitting with their feet up on the rails.
“Miss Saint James?” he asked. “I—”
The woman looked up and his voice failed him. “You!” It was the woman from the bar last night. Desire slammed into him like a fist. “You’re Alexis St. James?”
“That I am,” she said readily. “And you are?”
“Alexis St. James the writer?”
“No, that would be me.” He was kind of cute, the way he stood there gaping at her. She decided to cut him a little slack. “My friends call me Lexi.”
“You wrote the Dungeon Mistress, and Come On Command?”
Lexi sighed. How very disappointing. He seemed so nice last night and now it turned out he was one of those misguided, pervert fans who’d just had his fantasy of her collapse around him. Damn, this is what she got for having such lustful thoughts about such a young man. He must have really been into those stupid books to be looking so ill.
“Why don’t you have a seat,” she invited. “You don’t look so good.”
Numbly, Benedict took the seat she waved him to. This was not good. This was not good at all. Viktor would be expecting a nubile young woman, not this mature, composed lady. Now what was he supposed to do?
“Would you care for some iced tea?” He just sat there, staring at her, looking very pale in the natural light. She poured him a glass and held it out to him. He took it without a word and just sat there, holding it.
“I’m sorry if you’re disappointed . . . ” she began.
That shook him out of his stupor. “What? No! No, I’m not disappointed, just surprised, that’s all.”
“The truth is, I wrote those books a long time ago, when I was young, and stupid, and needed the money badly. It’s just the last few years there’s been a jump in the erotica market and my publisher decided to re-release my early work.”
She had no idea why she was explaining herself to him, nor why she had invited him to sit down. Normally she made short shrift of fans like him and sent them on their way with an autographed copy of one of her books. She must still be hung over from last night.
To be perfectly honest, she was against the idea of re-releasing her erotic books, but money was money and her agent had pushed for it. She put her foot down when it came to changing the name on the cover though. Alexis was the writer of erotica; Lexi St. James wrote more respectable romance. She wouldn’t even let them update the picture on the back cover. The poor boy sitting beside her must be terribly disappointed.
“So these books were actually written years ago and just re-published recently? That explains a lot,” he muttered to himself.
“And in case you’re wondering,” she said with a hint of asperity, “I am, or was, nothing like the women in those books, even in my younger days.”
“What? I mean, you’re not?”
“My sex life was never close to as interesting as my heroines. A lot of the stuff in those books is all made up. Some of it may not even be possible.”
“This is not good at all,” he muttered under his breath.
“Sorry to disappoint you son.”
“I’m not disappointed,” he told her honestly. “The truth is, I’m rather relieved. I’m just worried about how my employer is going to take it. The picture on the back of your books . . .”
“That was me, all right. About thirty-five years ago.”
Damn. Viktor was not going to like this at all. But what choice did he have with that damnable cerebral chip in his head.
“I’ve come a long way to meet you,” Benedict said, gathering his scattered wits.
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes ma’am. My employer—”
“I don’t care how far you’ve come,” she said, eyes narrowed. “If you ‘ma’am’ me again I’ll be dumping this pitcher of iced tea over your head.”
“Sorry, Miss St. James. My employer—”
She sighed. “You’d better call me Lexi.”
“Lexi,” he repeated. She hadn’t lost any of her attraction in the harsh light of day. Suddenly, he didn’t mind the trip ahead nearly as much as he had. He smiled suddenly. “It suits you.”
“Thank you. And you are?”
He flushed slightly. “I’m sorry, my name is Benedict. I’m here on behalf of my employer who wishes to meet you and—”
“No.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Sweetie, you can beg anything you want, but the answer is still no.” Her booted feet came down off the rail with a thump and she picked up the tray that the pitcher of iced tea and the glasses had been sitting on.
Damn, she was every bit as attracted to him today as she had been last night. That kiss had stayed with her through the rest of the party. She’d gone to bed thinking about him, mostly about him naked, in bed with her. For her own peace of mind she needed to get rid of him as quickly as possible, before she did something incredibly stupid.
Annoyed, he followed as she carried the tray back into her house. “How can you say no? I haven’t even asked you anything yet.”
“You don’t need to. I don’t do interviews and I don’t go off with strange men I don’t know, no matter how gorgeous they are, and I especially don’t go off with strange men to meet even stranger fans.”
“But I—” he stopped mid-sentence and grinned suddenly. “You think I’m gorgeous?”
Lexi rolled her eyes. Clearly this one needed a poke in the ego. “It was a slip of the tongue.” Damn but she’d love to give him a slip of her tongue – all over his body. Getting a hold of herself, she set the tray down on the kitchen counter and turned around. He was right there behind her, invading her space. Lexi swallowed hard.
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