Erin McCarthy - Bad Boys Online

Neither one of them was wearing their jacket, and the entire room had the sweet smell of sex in the air. He didn't even want to think about the condom in his pocket.

In an attempt to stave off the inevitable, he called out, "Uh, we're doing great. Just give us five more minutes, Harold."

Candy's black lace underwear was still lying on the floor.

"Get your panties," he whispered.

She started and bent over just as Harold stopped opening the door. "Oh, you're not finished?"

"Not quite." Jared pulled his suit jacket back on and ran his hand through his hair to smooth it down.

Candy shoved the panties into her waistband.

"Fine, but let me know when you're done."

Harold whistled as he shut the door and walked off back down the hall. The sick feeling in Jared's gut lessened a notch. "Shit, that was close."

Candy pulled her panties back out. "Watch the door while I put these on."

Visions of her with one foot in her underwear and one foot out with Harold throwing the door open popped into his head. "Just leave them off and put them in your jacket pocket."

She looked at him as if he'd announced he was going to start wearing dresses.

"Yuck! I can't walk around the rest of the day wearing stockings and a garter belt, but no panties. It would be uncomfortable and I'd feel like everyone knew." Kicking her heels off, Candy quickly slipped into the panties and shimmied them up her legs.

Jared thought about her sitting in her office with no panties on under her skirt, her soft backside pressing into the chair. Her curls rubbing against her skirt. And nobody would know but him. He went hard again just thinking about it.

Candy stepped back into her heels then put on her jacket. "We need to finish the counseling session, you know, before Harold comes back."

Right. That's why they were there in the first place. Somehow or other that had managed to slip his mind.

"Candy, the screen's blank."

She whirled around. "What? Oh, my gosh, we unplugged it."

Between pounding against the desk and flailing arms, he wasn't surprised. "Why wasn't Harold using his battery? How stupid is that?"

Candy plugged the computer back in and rebooted it. Jared was distracted by her hot little ass bending over and wiggling in the air as she stuck the plug in the socket.

He said, "Maybe this is better. We can get out of the rest of those dumb-ass questions. We'll tell Harold it crashed."

She looked doubtful, but he pulled her into his arms and kissed her with plenty of tongue until she relaxed.

"Mmm," she said.

"You took the words right out of my mouth." He stopped heras she tried to tug loose and head for the door.

"Seven tonight? I'll pick you up." He wasn't letting her out of this office without a commitment to see him again.

"Okay."

"You go out first. I'll run Harold to ground and tell him we've solved our problems and his karma is at peak levels."

She grinned as they paused in front of the door. "I like your karma."

"There's plenty more where that came from." And because he couldn't resist, he squeezed her ass and molded her skirt to her, one finger sliding down between her legs.

Her eyes fluttered shut. "Oh, stop it, Jared."

"Sorry." Not.

Jared opened the door, and when she stepped out, Candy found herself face to face with Harold. "Oh! Harold."

Oh, Lord, she must look guilty as sin.

And Harold was studying them way too closely.

"Everything okay?"

"Wonderful. Great." She cleared her throat and ran her fingers through her hair, guessing it looked like a blond feather duster. "Wow, what a great idea, Harold. That counseling just broke through all kinds of barriers and really brought Jared and me to a… new level of understanding."

She broke off her babbling when she heard Jared cough over a laugh.

Harold still looked puzzled, but he smiled. "So you finished the session?"

Jared spoke. "Actually, we were two questions from finishing when your laptop crashed, Harold." He shrugged. "Just one of those things, so we didn't get our certificate of completion."

Candy tried to maneuver around Harold, being careful not to touch his leather pants.

"What? No certificate?" Harold pouted, which was so not attractive on a fifty-year-old bald man. "Then how do I know you actually did the counseling? For all I know, you've spent the last two hours playing checkers online."

More like naked Twister. Candy couldn't think of a single doggone thing to say and starting inching down the hall, noticing there were quite a few curious heads poking out of offices.

"I can guarantee you that we were not playing checkers," Jared said in a serious voice. "And you'll see the results of your counseling when we hand you Chunk o' Chocolate completed next week. We're going to work on it tonight."

"Tonight? You're working late?" Harold's ears perked up, presumably at the idea of employees working overtime without compensation.

"Yes. We'll work on it all night if we have to."

A gurgling sound left Candy's mouth before she could stop it.

"Are you okay, Candy?" Harold's eyes swung toward her.

She didn't dare look at Jared. She blinked at Harold and grabbed her neck. "No, actually, I have something stuck in my throat. Excuse me, I'm going to go get a drink."

Without waiting for an answer, she got the heck out of there, rushing down the hall on wobbly ankles. First stop was the ladies' room.

Jan from payroll was walking down the hall with a stack of mail in her hand. She fell into step beside Candy.

"How was Harold's kooky Internet counseling?" Jan asked in a whisper.

Since Jan had been one of the few Stratford Marketing women who had been nice to her, Candy couldn't blow her off the way she really wanted to.

She gave Jan a weak smile. "It wasn't as kooky as I thought it would be."

Jan flipped her dark hair over her shoulder and grinned. "But at least you got to do it with a hottie like Jared Kincaid. With my luck, Harold would stick me in counseling with the office geek."

Oh, Lord, Candy was blushing. She could feel the heat stain spreading across her cheeks. "You just treat it like any other work assignment."

Yeah, right . If you were a hooker, maybe.

"What's Jared like? Is he really the cool customer he looks to be?"

Cool wasn't the word she would use.

"He was very… accommodating." Candy choked on the word as she came to a halt outside the ladies' room. "Excuse me, Jan. I have to use the rest room."

Jan stopped next to her. "Well, while you're in there, you might want to fix your blouse. It seems to have gotten crooked during your counseling session."

She winked and started off down the hall.

Candy glanced down in horror. A good deal of her stomach was flashing through the Titanic-sized hole in the middle of her blouse.

And Harold hadn't even seemed to notice.

Maybe his eyes were going the same way as his hair.

Yanking her blouse halves together, she pushed open the door and wondered how long until the last employee would leave the building for the day.

She just might want to hide in the rest room until then.

@ Jared didn't know what the hell he was doing.

Everything had seemed a lot easier when he and Candy had been seminaked and moaning in Harold's office earlier.

Now things were complicated.

Candy had avoided him the rest of the day, and he had been unable to work because of all the confusing feelings tumbling around inside him. Feelings that were about as welcome as the stomach flu.

Feelings that had him standing outside her door sweating in his wool coat like it was July.

As he rang the doorbell to her apartment, he wondered exactly why Candy had agreed to meet him tonight. He also wondered exactly why he had agreed to meet Candy tonight. He didn't know what he wanted any more than he knew what she wanted.