Kitabı oku: «Misbehaving»
Wanted: Adventurous, open-minded man willing to try…anything…
As a popular sex blogger, Beatriz gets paid to have orgasms. So being on deadline the week of her sister's wedding isn't as rough as it sounds. There's just one hitch: Bea's assignment is to write a review of a sex position manual, but she doesn't have a plus-one to play with.
The good news: Ben, the one who got away back in college, is also attending stag—and he's as temptingly gorgeous as ever.
The bad news: Ben turned down Bea's offer of graduation-night sex five years ago.
The best news: He's not planning on making the same mistake twice….
Contemporary, sexy stories for sassy women
Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Mills & Boon
Dedicated To…
Kenneth Branagh, who showed me how sexy Shakespeare could be.
Dear Reader,
Every writer remembers when she first discovered how much fun Shakespeare was. A field trip to see A Comedy of Errors in high school changed my life. Shakespeare wasn’t just fun and funny—he was dirty, too! My kind of guy! As soon as I had the premise for Misbehaving (a sex toy blogger has to find a man ASAP so she can review a sex position manual) I realized I had a classic comedy-of-errors plot just like my favorite Shakespeare play, Much Ado About Nothing.
I hope you enjoy my modern erotic retelling of Much About Nothing, starring Ben and Beatriz—two feisty lovers who are “too wise to woe peaceably” but wise enough to get each other in bed as often as humanly possible.
Happy reading!
Tiffany Reisz
P.S. Original Sinners fans—keep your eyes peeled for an inside joke only you Sinners will get.
P.P.S. My deepest apologies to The Bard.
Misbehaving
Tiffany Reisz
Contemporary, sexy stories for sassy women
Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Mills & Boon
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
About the Author
Also by Tiffany Reisz
Extract
With apologies to the Bard…
Chapter One
Something vibrated in Beatriz’s bed. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence, except that when vibrating happened in her bed, Beatriz was usually in the bed. She heard the buzzing from her bathroom and sighed.
“Don’t be John,” she said as she raced from the bathroom to the bed and started digging through her sheets. “I don’t have time for you today….”
She found her phone and glared at the screen.
“Me estás jodiendo?” she swore when she saw the name “John the Bastard” pop up on her screen. With a sigh she took the call, knowing he’d keep calling until she answered.
“John, I turned in everything three days ago.”
“I know, I know,” he said, sounding uncharacteristically apologetic. “But I need you.”
“I don’t like hearing those words from any man I’m not sleeping with.”
“Are you hitting on me, Bea?”
Beatriz sighed heavily into the phone and hoped it created ear-splitting feedback on the other end of the line.
“My cab is on its way right now,” Beatriz said. “I’m spending a week in Essex for my sister’s wedding. I don’t have time for this.”
“Not my problem,” he said, sounding like the old John the Bastard she knew. “Angie just called. Her column’s going to be late.”
“New boyfriend?”
“Medical crisis, Bea. Have some sympathy.”
“What’s her problem?”
“Carpal tunnel syndrome from too much masturbating.”
“Occupational hazard. I have no sympathy.”
“Bea, behave.”
“You’re stuttering, John.”
“Look, I’ll leave you alone. But I need a thousand words from you this week to fill Angie’s slot.”
“As much as I’d love to fill Angie’s slot, I’m a little busy this week doing wedding stuff with my family. Remember when I emailed you six months ago and said ‘Leave me alone the last week in August because my only sister is getting married’?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I did. Family wedding time is not really the best time to be trying out new sex toys, okay?”
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t an emergency. And you don’t have to try out new toys. You can do a book review.”
Beatriz sighed.
“A book review? I don’t get orgasms doing book reviews.”
“You have to write me something, Bea.”
“Fine. As long as Angie promises to return the favor sometime.”
“Does this mean you’ll have at least a thousand words for me in my inbox by Sunday night?”
“Sometimes I think I’m kinky because I fantasize about slapping you. And then I realize I really just want to slap you.”
“Beatriz,” John said in a stern voice. “Pause and take one little moment to remember that I pay you four hundred dollars a month to review sex toys. In other words, I pay you to have orgasms. Are you thinking about that?”
Beatriz paused, took a moment and remembered.
“Okay, you have a point there. I’ll get you a book review. I have a stack of unopened envelopes from publishers on my desk anyway.”
“Good. Now give me your hotel address so I can send you this new box of stuff I want you to review by next Sunday.”
“This slapping fantasy has returned.”
Beatriz gave him the hotel information. Hotel Essex, Essex, New York, care of Claudia Spears—her sister, she reminded him, who was about to get married. As she finished giving him the address her waiting cab honked outside the front door of her brownstone.
“Gotta go. Cab’s here.”
“Have fun,” John said.
“Have fun writing a book review?”
“You’ll find a way to make it fun, Bea. You always do….”
Without another word Bea hung up on him and tossed the phone into her purse. She shouldered her bag, grabbed her suitcase and raced past the desk in her tiny home office. She had a stack of unopened bubble mailers on her chair that had been accumulating for weeks. The return address label on the top envelope read “Brown Paper Publishing.” She knew Brown Paper. A boutique press, they specialized in coffee table books on risqué subject matter. Great. Perfect. Wonderful. Lots of pictures and very little text. Easy review for a busy Bea.
Beatriz shoved the envelope into her purse and headed out to her cab. She threw her stuff in the backseat and directed the driver to take her to the airport. Once they were on their way she pulled the envelope out of her purse. Maybe she could flip through the book on the plane ride upstate. She’d get the reading and the reviewing over with as soon as possible so she could relax and enjoy all the pre-wedding partying with her sister, Claudia, and Henry, her fiancé. This wouldn’t be a problem. Not a problem at all.
With one tear she ripped the envelope open and pulled out the book.
THE MANUAL it read in big gold type on a black cover. She flipped it over to the back and read the cover blurb.
A Sex Position Manual for Generation Y. If you read it, you will come…
Sex position manual? Beatriz nearly groaned aloud. There was only one way to review a sex position manual and that was by having sex with someone. And here she was on her way to a wedding with no date, no boyfriend, and no time to go back to her apartment and get another book. Which meant only one thing.
Once she got to Essex, she would have to find someone to sleep with.
“Fuck,” she breathed.
“Fuck what?” the cabdriver repeated, a smile on her face.
“No,” Beatriz said. “Fuck who.”
That was the question.
Chapter Two
Ben arrived at the Essex Hotel just in time to keep Henry from drinking himself into a stupor at the bar. The groom-to-be had two empty beer bottles and one full shot glass in front of him. Henry reached for the shot and Ben covered it with his hand.
“Hey, whoa,” Henry said. “No shot-blocking.”
“I’m here to save you from yourself.” Ben slapped him on the back as he removed the shot glass from Henry’s vicinity. “Friends don’t let friends drink and wed.”
Henry groaned and leaned back in his bar stool before seemingly discovering there was no back to a bar stool. Ben grabbed his shoulder to steady him.
“Thank you.” Henry lifted his empty beer bottle in a salute. “Sit. Talk. Keep me from drinking. Drinking more, I mean.”
“Why are you drinking anyway?” Ben took the stool next to him. A pretty bartender, chocolate skin and ebony eyes, gave him a broad smile and an “I’ll be right there” wink as she poured a glass of wine for another customer. “Aren’t you happy? Big day coming up? Marriage? Kids? The dream all men dream of?”
Henry glared at Ben and Ben only laughed.
“I hate you,” Henry said. “And I hate you for the following three reasons. Number one—you’ve been here two minutes and the bartender is already flirting with you.”
“I can’t help that I’m prettier than you.”
“Number two.” Henry held up two fingers and feigned shoving them in Ben’s eyes. “I love Claudia. I can’t wait to marry her. But if she ever makes me have a wedding again, I’m going to divorce her. Well, just her family. She can stay.”
“Future mother-in-law driving you batshit?” Ben asked.
“Yes. Very batshit. But the wedding planner’s worse. Wants me to ask my own brother to step down as best man. Something about height symmetry.”
“Next time you get married…don’t.”
Henry tapped his forehead. “Genius, you are.”
“Thank you. I think I get smarter with every breakup.”
“You must be Einstein by now. Are you going to date and dump the bartender this week? She’s giving you the eyes.” Henry looked at the bartender and back at Ben.
“She does have nice eyes,” Ben agreed and then put all thoughts of beautiful bartenders out of his mind. “But no. After Katie, I swore off women for a year. I just need a break.”
“No women for a year? You?” Henry scoffed. “I give it two days.”
“It’s already been two months. And what’s the third reason?” Ben asked.
“The what?”
“The third reason you hate me, you half-drunk asshole.”
“Oh. Because you took my drink away, you not-drunk asshole.”
“Mine,” Ben said and downed the shot. He didn’t drink much, not anymore. Unavoidable adulthood had forced him to do terrible, awful things like drink less, eat better and work out more often. He’d never felt younger, healthier or more energetic since he started acting his age. How depressing. “If it makes you feel any better, man, I hate you, too.”
Henry nodded.
“Yeah, I don’t blame you for that.”
“You do know why Katie dumped me, right?” Ben asked and Henry gave him a guilty look.
“Does it start with a B?”
“She caught me reading Beatriz’s blog.”
“Reading it or, you know, reading it?”
“What do you think? When I told her who she was…” Ben winced at the memory of his final fight with Katie. The relationship would never have worked anyway. Katie wanted marriage and kids and as soon as possible. He needed more time to focus on his career and figure out what he wanted from life before going down that path of no return. And then she’d caught him masturbating to a blog column written by the one woman he’d never gotten over….
“Don’t kill me or anything, dude,” Henry said. “But speaking of people whose names start with B…”
“What?” Ben asked the question slowly, emphasizing every single letter in the word.
“You’re going to need to get back in drinking shape by tomorrow.”
Ben narrowed his eyes at Henry.
“Why?” He drew the “why” out as long as possible to maximize the threatening tone in his voice.
“Because…well, Bea’s coming.”
“What? I thought she was in Spain.”
“She was. But she moved back to the States two months ago. Just in time to come to the wedding.”
“You have got to be shitting me.” Ben’s stomach dropped. Then it jumped back up again at the thought of seeing Beatriz again for the first time since college. Would she look the same? Leggy, brown-haired, dark-eyed and beautiful? Talk the same? Sexy Spanish accent and nine kinds of attitude? Smell the same? Vanilla and strawberry shampoo?
“Ben, she’s Claudia’s foster sister. She’s in the wedding. You both are in the wedding. So, you know, take that.”
Ben took it. He took it hard. Beatriz…He’d loved that girl in college. He could own that now. Back then he’d pretended Beatriz was just another girl he wanted to sleep with, and when he didn’t, he told himself it was no big loss. But here he was, five years later, still thinking about her.
“Is she here yet?” Ben asked.
Henry raised an eyebrow at him and Ben’s stomach dropped once more. It went down and stayed down this time. Ben watched as Henry spun around in his bar stool and pointed across the lobby. Ben followed Henry’s gaze to where it stopped on a woman, tall with long straight black hair and deep copper skin. She had on jeans, a camisole that did nothing to disguise the fullness of her breasts, and a wide grin on her face as she chatted with the man at the registration desk. She was, in fact, the most beautiful woman in the entire world. Ben recognized her immediately.
“She’s here now,” Henry said.
Ben stared at Beatriz across the lobby. She didn’t see him, thank God, so he knew he could stare all he wanted.
“Orange,” Ben said, noting the color of Beatriz’s shirt. “She’s wearing an orange shirt and orange high heels.”
“So?”
“She’s the only woman I’ve ever known who wears orange. She looks like a tropical flower, doesn’t she? God, she looks good in orange.”
“Man, I thought I was the drunk one.”
Ben looked down at the empty shot glass and back up at the bartender. She waited for his order. Five minutes ago she’d been a gorgeous girl he’d had fun flirting with. Now she was only the bartender. Good thing. What he needed right now was a bartender and nothing else. He pointed at the shot glass. She refilled it and started to walk off.
“Wait,” he said to her. She turned around with that same seductive smile. A smile that disappeared after his next three words. “Leave the bottle.”
Chapter Three
Beatriz checked into the hotel at nine that evening, THE MANUAL still burning a hole in her bag. While the man at the desk processed her credit card and paperwork, Beatriz scanned the lobby looking for any suitable candidates to help her with her review. Maybe she’d get lucky and an “Attractive Men Looking For No Strings Attached Sexual Intercourse” conference would be happening at the Hotel Essex this week. She saw a few teenage boys loitering by the fountain. Too young. Three older couples talked in the vestibule. Too couple-y. A pretty girl about her age strode through the lobby pulling a wheeled suitcase behind her. Too female. Most days she wouldn’t have any problem with a few nights in bed with another woman, but the sex position manual was for heterosexual couples. Plus women tended to get clingy. She had no time for clingy.
She heard a shriek from the general elevator area and Beatriz took a steadying breath. Speaking of clingy women…
“Oh, my God!” Claudia rushed toward her and wrapped her up in a bear hug. Beatriz hugged back, knowing that a Claudia-hug, much like quicksand, trapped a person more the harder he or she struggled. Best to simply relax and take it. This, incidentally, was her philosophy of anal sex, as well. “When did you get in?”
“Just now. Checking in. You look amazing.” Beatriz pulled back enough to give Claudia a once-over. She hadn’t seen her foster sister in over a year. She’d expected her to look haggard from wedding planning, but she wore the look of love. “Engaged looks good on you. Where’s Henry?”
“Hiding in the bar,” Claudia said while the bellhop put Beatriz’s bags on the luggage rack. “The wedding planner’s driving him nuts. I’m about ready to hit her myself. Got any connections?”
“I do,” said the bellhop.
Beatriz made a mental note to give the bellhop a good tip.
“How bad is it?” she asked Claudia.
“Long story. It involves her trying to get Henry to rearrange his groomsmen so they line up by height. She thinks the tallest one should be best man. Henry’s brother was not amused.”
“Short men deserve love, too. Is Mike still single?”
Claudia shook her head. “Nope. He’s here with his girlfriend. Why?”
“I need to get laid. It’s work-related.”
Claudia nodded. She knew all about Beatriz’s work.
“I have connections there, too,” said the bellhop. Keaton, his nametag indicated.
“I love this guy,” Beatriz said as they neared the elevators.
“So what’s the job?” Claudia asked as the three of them got on the first elevator.
“I have a book to review by Monday. Sex position manual creatively entitled THE MANUAL. They call it ‘The Joy of Sex for Generation Y!’ complete with exclamation point.”
“What’s Generation Y?”
“Us.”
“Got it. We’ll find someone to do you. Someone generation Y.”
“I like older men. Gen X works, too.”
“A couple of the groomsmen are single,” Claudia said. “Jake’s here.”
“No way. He always wears too much body spray. I’d need to wear a hazmat suit. Hazmat suits are not sexy.”
“Speak for yourself,” Keaton the bellhop muttered.
“Jed?” Claudia suggested.
“We hooked up in college. He’s terrible in bed.”
“Really?” Claudia sounded stunned. “He seems so confident. Cocky even.”
“It’s a cover. Guilt. Momma complex. You have sex and then fifteen minutes later he’s giving you the ‘I don’t think we should do this anymore’ routine. I told him his cock wasn’t worth cutting through the red tape for.”
“You go, girl.” Keaton nodded his approval as the elevator door opened.
The three of them disembarked and headed for room 424.
“Well…there is one other option,” Claudia said as they reached Beatriz’s hotel room.
“Not worry about it since you’re getting married in five days?” Beatriz asked.
“Not that. Getting you laid is much more fun than me getting married.” Claudia helped Keaton with the bags.
“Then what?” Beatriz asked.
Claudia smiled at her. It wasn’t a good smile. It was a “don’t kill me” smile. Immediately Beatriz thought of a plethora of ways to kill Claudia.
“Ben’s here, isn’t he?”
Claudia winced. “Sort of. He’s one of the groomsmen.”
“You told me he wasn’t coming,” Beatriz almost shouted.
“He wasn’t coming because of a work thing. Then he got a promotion. So now he is coming. I mean, he came.”
“So Ben’s here?” Beatriz glared at Claudia.
“Ben’s here.”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
“Who’s Ben?” Keaton asked, leaning against the luggage rack and smiling.
“My ex-nothing,” Beatriz said.
“She was in love with him in college, but nothing ever came of it. She’s still a little bitter.”
“I’m not bitter. I’m just still mildly disappointed in him. You know, as a human being. Because he never fucked me, and he should have.”
“Yes, he should´ve,” Keaton said.
“Thank you. I owe you money, right?” Beatriz asked.
“I wouldn’t want to impose.” Keaton waggled his eyebrows.
Beatriz handed him a five-dollar bill. He gave Lincoln a quick kiss and headed for the door with the luggage rack.
“You should leave the rack,” Claudia said. “She’s having crazy sex this week with someone she doesn’t know yet. She may need that.”
“If she needs it back, call the front desk,” Keaton said as he pulled the luggage rack out of the room. “Put the wheel brake on first. Voice of experience.”
Alone now in the room with Claudia, Beatriz started to unpack.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me Ben’s here,” Beatriz said, angrily removing her underwear from her suitcase.
“I didn’t want you bailing on the wedding.”
“I wouldn’t bail on the wedding. But if I knew he was going to be here, I would have mentally prepared myself to see him again.”
“Mentally prepared as in?”
“I would have brought a date with me. I have a male escort who owes me. Although I think one of the Real Housewives has him booked this weekend.”
“Your life is weird, Bea.”
“What? Because I’m a sex education blogger?”
“For starters. Are you mad at me?”
“No, I’m not mad. He’s one of Henry’s best friends so of course he’s here. He should be here.” Beatriz hung her dresses up in the closet and started sorting through her shoes. “I just don’t want things to be weird.”
“It shouldn’t be. You haven’t seen him since college.”
“True, but we didn’t part on the best of terms. The day he graduated I went to his room in a bathrobe, took it off and stood naked in front of him. I told him to fuck me like he’d never fucked anyone before. I knew I’d probably never see him again so why not? No strings attached. No pressure. Only beautiful sex. My graduation present to him.”
“I never knew you and Ben had sex.”
Beatriz’s heart stuttered at the memory of standing naked in front of Ben in his dorm room. He’d already packed everything up. Nothing remained but the bed, the sheets, him and her. The way he’d looked at her when she dropped the robe, she knew she had him. Not only did he want her, he adored her. He drank up the sight of her like a man who’d walked across a desert and found his oasis. Or she’d thought.
“We didn’t. He said he was sorry, but he wasn’t interested. He asked me to go.” Beatriz would never forget the burning sting of humiliation. Her whole body had blushed at his rejection of her.
“What the hell? What straight man in his right mind says no to that offer?”
“Ben did. So I said something horrible to him, put on the robe and walked out. I cried all night. The next morning, I decided he was dead to me.”
“Beatriz…why didn’t you tell me this?”
“You were graduating, too. You had more important things on your mind. Plus, it was so humiliating. Definitely not my finest moment.”
Claudia sat on the bed and looked up at Beatriz, who tried looking at anything but her sister and the pity in her eyes.
“And here we are—it’s just like college again. You’re with Henry, and I’m stewing over Ben.” Beatriz sat on the other bed across from Claudia. “It’s just, I loved him, you know? I didn’t let myself love anyone else but him. And maybe that’s for the best. But I spent an entire year trying to be with him, and he said he didn’t want me. That’s fine. No one is supposed to want me. But then why did he kiss me like he did that night we met? Why did he tell me he wanted me on a Thursday, but by Friday it was poof—gone?” She blew into her fingertips.
“I don’t know. I thought he was crazy about you, too.”
“He took me for a tour of campus. You remember that? My first week at Brooks? I told him I was born in El Salvador and only made it to the U.S. when I was ten. You know what he said?”
Claudia shook her head. The sadness in Beatriz’s voice clutched at her throat.
“He said, ‘Más vale tarde que nunca.’”
“What does that mean?”
“Better late than never.” Beatriz smiled. She’d been so impressed that Ben, this blue-eyed all-American boy, spoke Spanish and spoke it so well. He hadn’t asked her any questions about her past, about why she’d come to America, where her parents were. People did that, even total strangers, not realizing that if a ten-year-old girl had to leave her family and her country behind, then it was probably not the sort of story you’d tell to someone you just met. No. Ben said, “Better late than never,” as if he was the reason she’d ended up in this country. And at that moment she’d believed he was.
“I know you loved him. I remember.” Claudia sat on the bed next to her. “Your freshman year was tough. It broke my heart watching him break your heart.”
“It was like I had two hearts and both of them were in love with him. I never knew you could feel that much. And he just had the one heart and it wasn’t interested in me.”
“I thought for sure he’d come around about you. I’d never seen two people more perfect together than you two. Not even me and Henry.”
“In college Henry wore his underwear on the outside of his pants.”
“Now you know why it took him five years to convince me to marry him.” Claudia winked at Beatriz who leaned against her sister and kissed her on the cheek.
“I’m very happy you’re getting married to Henry,” Beatriz said.
“I am, too. Now we just have to find you someone to be happy with.”
“I am happy, I promise. Spain was amazing, but it’s great to be back in the States again. Great to be here with you.” She smiled at her sister, a bright, genuine smile that she hoped convinced Claudia not to worry about her. She was so happy for Claudia and Henry. They belonged together. And Claudia needed to focus on her own wedding and not her foster sister’s five-year-old heartbreak.
“You’ll be okay?” Claudia asked, squeezing Beatriz’s shoulder.
“Totally okay. Promise. Or I will be as soon as I find someone to have sex with this week,” Beatriz said.
“God, it really is like being back in college.”
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