Suzanne Forster - Tease

Tess had been shy and overweight, and her parents had tried to embarrass her out of both. Her mother had weighed Tess before every meal, bought her clothes that were too small and put her on her first medically supervised diet at five. Five? Mom, what were you thinking? The debating team and the glee club had been Dad’s idea. Under all the pressure, Tess had developed a stutter.

Fortunately, she’d outgrown it and the weight, which had turned out to be a combination of baby fat and adolescent rebellion. But when she’d slimmed down in college—and started getting attention from boys—she’d gone a little crazy. Enter the wild-child phase. She’d been looking for love in all the wrong places, needing to prove to herself again and again that she was desirable to men when what she’d really wanted was the love and acceptance she didn’t get as a kid.

Most of the boys she was with couldn’t handle the sex part, much less provide any sensitivity toward her emotional needs, which even she wasn’t aware of at the time. Tess could barely remember the encounters, probably because she didn’t want to think about all that furtive groping in hallway alcoves and the sweaty fumbling in parked cars. But there was one guy she did remember.

What a wicked kinky dude Jonathan Wiley was. Not a boy, a man—and maybe a demon escaped from her id, if anything Freud had said was true. Wiley had quietly insisted that she had talent and could have a big acting career, if she wanted. Yeah, sure. She’d barely heard that part, given the blazingly erotic stuff he’d whispered in her ear during their after-hours coaching sessions.

Tess remembered his suggestions in far too much detail: If I had you where I want you right now—naked with your bottom in the air—I wouldn’t know whether to swat you or lick you like an ice cream cone.

He’d talked about restraining her with the ropes that hung from the stage rigging, freeing her from her clothing—and her inhibitions—and arousing her until she fainted dead away. He’d been particularly obsessed with her ass, and all the amazing things he could do to it, including love bites and erotic discipline. Spanking, to be exact. He’d whispered about disciplining her in ways that had made her hair stand on end, but only to bring her the most intense pleasure, of course.

Honestly, he’d frightened the hell out of her, and she’d run for her life. She was only eighteen. But much of what he’d said and done had stayed with her, and as she’d matured into her twenties, the fear had faded, and she’d become secretly fascinated with some of his suggestions, especially the darker ones.

That had scared her a little. Still did. Especially given that just thinking about it made her hot and twitchy. Like now.

“Enough, Tess,” she warned. “You’re not a college kid anymore, and Danny Gabriel is not an incarnation of Wiley.” Despite the sensual features and the seductive ways. All Gabriel did was kiss her.

She got up from her desk and went over to the water dispenser, hoping a cold drink would put out the fire. On the way she passed the Messerschmitt mounted on the wall. “Give it your best shot,” she said softly. “I’m pretty fast.”

She drank several tiny paper cups of water and went back to her desk. This wasn’t her first time dealing with sluice gates. She was a healthy thirty-two-year-old woman, who’d been celibate for a very long time, and she’d had to find creative ways to deal with the situation. Quite by accident, she’d discovered a certain yoga position that had brought about some spontaneous relief. It might even have made the Cosmo orgasm quiz.

She needed to start doing yoga again. Quickly.

She was thinking fondly about her version of the full lotus position when the phone rang. It was the landline, which reminded her that her PDA was still missing. She’d looked everywhere, including the lost and found in the coffee lounge. She’d stopped by security this morning and reported it. She’d also picked up a replacement phone, but it contained none of her vital information, of course.

She went back to studying the glossies as she picked up the receiver. “Tess Wakefield,” she said.

“I know who you are. I just don’t know why you’re not here.”

Tess had a moment of confusion. The male voice struck a familiar chord, but she didn’t know how to respond. It had to be Danny. “Where are you?”

“Waiting for you down here in the Sandbox.”

“The Sandbox? Why are you there?”

“Tess, hello! It’s Andy. We’re all waiting for you down here in the sandbox. You called a team meeting this morning, remember?”

Tess fell back in her chair. Suddenly her heart was pounding when before it had been utterly still. She’d just daydreamed her way through fifteen minutes of the session she’d scheduled with her team. And after all the peptalking she’d done, trying to impress upon them how important it was for them to be prepared. Oh, yes, she definitely needed to get busy with those naughty fingers.

“Okay, this is major,” Carlotta told the team. “We choose one man and one woman with tremendous potential, and we call them Faustini spokesmodels. We create images for them that are totally distinctive, maybe something like Darth Vader for the man.”

Tess had been hoping for something other than Darth Vader, but Carlotta clearly loved the idea. Her expression said she was waiting for affirmation, applause, something. Her shapely butt was perched in a belt swing that hung from the ceiling on chains. Andy had taken the other swing, right next to her, and the rest of the team was sitting around the conference table, which was an old-fashioned picnic table.

Of all the agency’s themed conference rooms, the Sandbox was the favorite, probably because it suggested a day at the beach. Only a wall-size wipe board and a flip chart said business as usual. Otherwise, the wedge-shaped room was lined with real bamboo in naturalistic planter boxes, and the floor was exotic pink sand, imported from somewhere in the South Pacific. The rustic table could have been found at any state park, and the ceiling was painted sky blue. Several large skylights washed the room in sunny yellow.

Natural light, bare feet and sifting sands were supposed to inspire greatness, apparently. Mostly, they inspired Tess to nap like a cat in the sunshine, but that was about it. All this outer pressure and inner tension was getting to her.

“Batman and Catwoman?” Andy suggested.

“That’s distinctive?” Carlotta’s tone dismissed him. “With my idea, we save the client money because the spokesmodels do the entire campaign, and we create magnificent brand identification.”

“Only if the models are magnificent,” Tess countered.

“They will be—”

“Listen to this,” Brad cut in. He rose from the picnic table, his bare feet squishing in the sand. “We set the photo shoot in one of those hot new S&M clubs in the city. We’ll find ourselves the fucking Prince of Darkness and outfit him in Faustini.”

“I love it!” Carlotta squealed.

Tess wasn’t thrilled with the concept, nor did she think Faustini would be, but she was curious where her team might take it. “What about the woman?”

“Streetwalker chic? Gothic glam?” Brad offered his suggestions with a shrug. “I disagree that we need to be distinctive. Faustini already is distinctive. We need to get low-down and dirty. Make people notice.”

“What’s wrong with pulling women’s underwear out of a briefcase?” Andy said, apparently referring to his idea from yesterday.

Tess reached for her tote, where she’d put the manila envelope with the glossies. A moment later she had the pictures fanned across the picnic table like a large deck of cards.