Available in bookstores everywhere August 2008 from Kensington Aphrodisia, or pre-order it online at Amazon.com.

JUST LIKE CANDY

Compared to Candy, her across-the-cubicle coworker, Courtney Baxter is shy. She wouldn’t mind being just like Candy, and she’s invested in a new wardrobe that practically screams seduce me. Suddenly Courtney has more men ready to hop into her bed than she ever imagined, including Blaine Daly. The man is sexy as sin with a body to match—and he’ll go to any extreme to please her...

Excerpt...

Standing a foot inside the kitchen doorway, Courtney wore the sheer thigh high stockings with the sexy black pin striping she’d had on at the office. The green, off-the-shoulder top and black skirt were gone. Chain-link silver earrings dangled from her ears to nearly brush her bare shoulders, and a hot pink, spaghetti strap sheath dress clung to the swell of her breasts, the material coasting down her trim sides and shapely hips to end an inch before her stockings began. His fingers tingled with the prospect of touching the tanned skin revealed there.

“I’ve been here a while.” The surprise was gone from her voice, the delight now paired with the raw sensuality he felt calling to him this morning.

Blaine traveled his attention back up her body to find her gaze as assessing as his own. He hadn’t had time to change out of the blue jeans and casual off-white shirt he’d worn to work, before guests started arriving at his house. The heat sizzling in Courtney’s eyes and tipping her hot pink lips up at the corners suggested she approved of his appearance all the same.

She lifted the red plastic glass in her hand. “I didn’t realize the kitchen was off limits. My drink got warm while I was visiting, so I was trying to track down some ice.”

He smiled over the irony. Ice had been his excuse for retreating to the sanctity of his kitchen. More specifically, refilling the ice bucket from the snack table in the living room for the exact purpose that had brought her here.

Crossing to the counter, he grabbed the steel ice bucket and went to the refrigerator. “It’s not off limits,” he assured her as he pulled open the freezer-side door. Frosty air rushed out to greet him. With the way his internal temperature shot up at the sight of Courtney in that barely legal dress, the chilly blast was welcome.

“So you weren’t trying to escape by hiding out in here?”

He glanced over at her as he filled the ice bucket. He didn’t know a lot about her, outside of the fact that she was damned good at her job, but that question had sounded incredibly astute. “Know a thing or two about escape?”

Hesitance passed through her eyes for an instant. Then she gave him a smile that was pure feline. “You know as well as I do some people don’t get the concept of no strings.”

Blaine’s body forgot all about the freezer’s calming effect with the sexual intimation. His cock stirred against his zipper. He definitely knew all about strings and he knew right now he wanted to tug down the two thin ones keeping her dress in place.

Shutting the freezer door, he crossed to where she stood. His first thought at seeing her this morning was that she looked just like Candy, minus the hairstyle. Within touching distance, he could see the differences went well beyond their hair. Courtney’s legs were longer and her breasts, while still plentiful, smaller. Her face was smaller, as well. Her mouth wider and her eyes more round. The combination of her facial features managed to make her look both sweet and sinful at once.

And had him damned anxious to take advantage of proximity.

Traveling his gaze suggestively along her body, he gave her the opening to do so instead. “Take what you want.”

Courtney’s throat made a catching sound as she eyed first the ice bucket in the crook of one of his arms and then the growing bulge at the front of his jeans. Her eyes lifted to meet his. With a knowing grin, he silently dared her to reach out and fill up her hands.

She did. With ice.

Disappointment sailed through him as she plunked three small chunks of ice into her glass. With a murmured, “Thanks,” she started to turn toward the door.

No way was he letting her walk away that easily. Not when the air between them radiated with sexual heat and energy. Not when her nipples were pushing hard at the front of her dress, making both his mouth damned hungry and it clear she wore no bra.

“Stay.” Blaine spoke the word with an edge of demand. Just as he’d been accurate about her naughty thoughts, he had a gut feeling she would be the type who liked to be told what to do when it came to sex. Just as she would want to have her own turn at being the dominant one.

His mind roaming with kinky demands, he backed the few feet to the table, and set the ice bucket on top. He patted the table’s black lacquered surface. “Have a seat. You wanted to hear how things went in Iraq.”

Indecision warred in her eyes as she glanced from him to the door and back again. For a moment he entertained the idea her new look was all for show, then he recalled she was on a date. The guy was undoubtedly out in the living room, his presence giving her reason to hesitate.

Before he could offer up further encouragement, Courtney’s back and forth glances came to a halt. Eagerness took over her expression as she sashayed over on spiked silver heels and set her glass on the table. With a provocative wiggle of her hips, she slid onto the table and balanced her heels on the front edge of a chair. “It had to be scorching hot.”

“Sweltering,” Blaine agreed with a nod. As was his blood as he appreciated the way her short hem rode up with her position, nearly exposing her panties. If she wore any. “Dry heat, but that doesn’t make it any less potent.”

Her hand shot out, reaching toward him. The thought she was ready to touch was enough to have his breath jerking in and his dick pearling with pre-cum.

Her fingers spread but failed to make contact as her eyes trained on his right arm. “Did you do some of the building work yourself?”

Muscles contracted in his arm reflexively. “I helped out, yeah.”

“It shows.”

She’d all but purred the words, sounding as strung out with desire as he felt. That being the case, he flexed the biceps in his right arm a second time. Appreciation shimmered in her eyes and her fingers formed into a fist as if she had to contain them.

He let out a rough laugh. “You’re allowed to touch.”

Her tongue came out, dabbing at her lower lip. “I’m good.”

“I bet you are.”

HARD CANDY

Sensual and flamboyant, Candy Masterson has never made a secret of her love for sex and the male physique. But until Ty Louis came into her life, she didn’t think she’d find a man who could satisfy her every need—and he just so happens to live in her apartment complex. How convenient. Sheet-scorching sex and torrid romance, coming right up…

Excerpt...

“Only you could make a floor-length skirt and long-sleeve blouse look sexy.”

Heat rushed through Candy Masterson at the sound of her condo neighbor’s deep voice coming from the hallway behind her. She stiffened with her hand on her doorknob. In his routine sweatshirts, which hugged his broad shoulders, and faded jeans, which molded to his hard thighs and divinely scrumptious ass, Ty Louis was the arch nemesis of her good intentions, A.K.A. her pussy’s favorite plaything.

He was also full of shit.

She looked drab in the maroon and black full body garb, with her hair pulled up in an austere clip and sensible, low-heeled dress shoes in place of the glitzy stilettos she adored. Nothing at all like the fun-loving sex siren she’d been nearly the whole of her adult life, and precisely like the staid but sophisticated woman she’d set out to become.

The staid but sophisticated celibate woman.

Not about to turn around and torment her deprived hormones by taking in the sensual offer bound to be sizzling in his hazel eyes, she opened her door and went inside. “I’m not sleeping with you, Ty.”

He followed her in, closing the door behind him and making the four-room unit seem incredibly tiny and arid. “Since when does a compliment count as an invitation for sex?”

“Since you moved in next door three years ago.”

“You were the one who claimed to need a cup of sugar and then proceeded to jump me. Not that I was complaining. In fact, just thinking about it now . . .” He trailed off, probably in the hopes she would recall that night and be instantly turned on.

Candy did and was, but she wasn’t about to tell him so.

“I get that you’re still a little shell-shocked about what happened with your coworker,” he continued, “but that was months ago. Besides, I’m no lunatic.”

“Says you.” She hung her keys on the brass holder on the wall outside of the open kitchen then started to turn back. His hands came around her waist mid-swivel, pulling her against an obvious erection and sending her internal heat soaring.

“On second thought, I am crazy . . . for this rocking hot body you decided to up and deny me from touching.” Warm breath tickled her earlobe with the brush of his unshaven upper lip. “It’s not right, Candy. Not right at all.”

Snorting, she lifted his hands away and crossed to her bedroom.

Ty hadn’t attempted to get into her pants in weeks, and she thought he’d finally accepted their time as lovers had reached its end. Apparently, he hadn’t. A normal woman would be annoyed with him over it, but Candy was pissed at herself. Because, damnit, going months without getting laid was a whole lot harder than imagined and she wanted him bad.

“I have a date tonight, Ty. With a nice guy. Accept that I’m off the fuck-friend market and move on.”

“All right.”

She whirled around two steps into her bedroom—once tropical-themed to go with her laid-back, easy-living attitude, now decorated in the same sedate shades of blue, gray and taupe as the rest of the place. “You’re not going to give up that easily. I know you better than—” The words ended on a whooshing breath as he tackled her onto the bed, with her back to the mattress and her hands trapped between their bodies.

Spreading her legs with the shove of a knee, he rocked a steely thigh against her mound. “Yeah, you do. Just like I know you.” A cocky grin flashed across his face before his mouth came over her open one and he slipped his tongue between her lips.

Push his ass off you! Knee him in the balls, if that’s what it takes!

The voice of Candy’s good intentions screamed the words in her mind. Just not loudly enough to counteract the pussy-wetting anticipation that came with Ty tugging up her long-ass skirt and pushing his fingers beneath the miniscule crotch of her thong.

His fingers moved lower, to twine in the string of black lace lining the crack of her butt. Giving the string a tug, that had the front of the thong riding arousingly between her pussy lips, he lifted his mouth from hers. “I knew you couldn’t handle going good girl all the way.”

“Arrogant prick.” Arrogant accurate prick.

As if he heard her silent confession, his lips slanted in a smugly sexy grin.

His mouth returned to hers then, his tongue pushing back inside, devouring with licks and sucks while his fingers journeyed back to her hairless mound. One finger teased along her damp folds, nudging the thong deeper into her slit. Delicious friction vibrated in her sex with the chafe of the lace, quickening her breathing and welling juices in her core.

Her hands were free to roam now. She used them to take his head in her hands as she took possession of the kiss.

For a few scorching seconds he let her lead, let her nibble and lap and be too damned conscious of his stiff cock rubbing along her bare thigh, bucking with its fervent hope to escape his jeans. Then he jerked her focus back to the inferno building between her own thighs by tugging the thong from her slit.