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Category: Erotica/Erotic Romance/Romance
Description: Let the games begin? Party Games, Book 1 Talent agent Frankie Winchester is a hellion. Her motto is all a girl needs is a fun time, a fast car and an awesome masseur on speed dial. There's only one person who could beat her at anything. Alec. Bane of her high-school existence, a kid whose parents were as working class and loving as hers were rich and distant. When celebrity landscape architect Alec Harris spots Frankie at an exclusive Sydney house party, everything comes rushing back. The memory of being the "cheap-money" kid, trying and failing to prove himself--and impress his dream girl, Frankie Winchester. Unexpectedly partnered in a wildly sexy game, the delicious friction ignites a scorching sexual tension. But there's more than a playing card trapped between them. Frankie refuses to admit that kiss shook her to the core. Alec wants nothing less than her full surrender. Game on! Warning: C'mon, the book's called Suck and Blow. What more warning do you need?
eBook Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd., 2011 2011
eBookwise Release Date: December 2011

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [166 KB]
Words: 35923
Reading time: 102-143 min.

Jesus, you've got to be kidding me?

Her heart leapt into her throat, choking her, robbing her ability to breathe. She stared at him, her lips tingling, her stomach knotting.

He still stood taller than anyone else in the room, just as he'd always done, except now the wide width of his shoulders fitted perfectly with the broad expanse of his back and muscled width of his chest most definitely absent the last time she'd seen him. His arms were just as sun-kissed brown, but now their lengths were sculpted by smooth muscles the likes found more commonly on an elite athlete or model, his biceps straining the sleeves of his crisp white T-shirt. His stomach was just as flat, his backside just as tight in his faded Levis, Levis snug enough to reveal a bulge she'd never suspected of--

Frankie tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but to no avail, her stare fixed on the man striding his way across the busy living room. His honey-blond hair was still a scruffy mess, but now it looked too damn sexy for words, his cheeks and jaw were covered in a fine golden growth, the bristles doing nothing to hide the twin dimples in his cheeks when he smiled at those around him.

"Alley Cat." The nickname formed on her tongue, a soundless whisper that made her nipples pinch tight.

She licked her lips, her mouth dry. What the hell was Alley Cat doing here? At a party in Avalon? And not just anywhere in Avalon, but the most luxurious house in the most exclusive street? Who could he possibly know with the social connections to be invited to a party at Avalon?

A prickling heat filled her cheeks at the last question and she pulled a face. It was churlish. That kind of societal, socio-economic snobbery was beneath her. Her parents may have lived by it, may have bathed in its pretentiousness every day, but she didn't.

"Seriously, what the hell does a kid from Penrith think he's doing at a school like Knox Grammar?"

The snide comment Frankie had hissed into Miki's ear over a decade ago at an interschool mock-trial competition, whipped through her mind and she swallowed. Okay, so she had lived by it at one stage of her life, but that was a long time ago. Before she'd grown up and realized how shallow it was. Before she found the notion of class discrimination distasteful.

Before she started feeling...things...for Alley Cat that unnerved her to no end.

She tracked his path through the partygoers, her throat tight, her cheeks warm. Aleczander Harris. The bane of her entire high school existence. The kid who had beaten her at everything. Debating. Public-speaking. State mathematic championships. Hell, he'd even beat her at freaking regional mixed-doubles tennis tournaments. If her school was pitted against his, he beat her. Every time.

Alec bloody Harris.

Here. In the flesh.

As if he felt her stare, Alec swung his head in her direction, his brilliant blue eyes--still the colour of a cloudless summer day--finding her with ease.

Her heart just didn't thump harder in her throat, it damn near tried to slam its way out of her body through her mouth.

"You spoke really well today, Francesca."

"And still you beat me."

His blue eyes widened at her sharp response, his broad shoulders pulling a little straighter, his Adam's apple jerking up and down his throat. She drove her nails into her palms. Damn it, that wasn't what she wanted to say. She wished she could take the words back, but she couldn't. She was Frankie Winchester. She didn't let anyone get to her. No matter how much her stomach knotted when she sees him, no matter how many times she wondered what it'd be like to kiss...

"I gotta go," she burst out, shoving the jarring memory away as she shoved her still-untouched shot glass into Miki's hand. Half the contents splashed onto her own gazillion-dollar boots but she didn't care. She'd deal with that later. After she'd escaped the suffocating living room.

"Huh?" Miki blinked at her, expression more than a little panicked. "What do you mean go? Where? Frankie, you're the one who dragged me to this party. You can't leave me here alone."

She tore her stare from the man watching her from the other side of the living room. "I...I just saw...I think I saw..."

"Who?"

Frankie shook her head. She knew what Miki would do if she uttered the name Alec Harris. Roll her eyes and say, "Oh God, not this again."

"What the hell is wrong with you, Frankie?"

She gave Miki a wobbly smile. "I just need some air. I'll be back. Promise."

Miki's eyebrows shot up, but Frankie couldn't stay. Not when she was being attacked by a past she didn't want to remember. Or own. She barged her way back through the crowd, heading in the opposite direction Alec was heading. As quickly away from him as the packed room would let her.

Which in her shell-shocked opinion wasn't bloody quick enough.

Alec watched the stunning brunette with the wild curls, skin-tight black leather pants and just as tight red T-shirt barrel her way through the laughing partygoers. Holy shit, is that The Gun?

He straightened his spine a little, turned back and stretched his neck in an attempt to track the brunette's trajectory out of the living room.

Was that really The Gun? A frown pulled at his eyebrows as he peered over the heads of those around him. The woman slipped through the crowd, dodging people with the skill of a professional rugby union player, her glossy dark curls bobbing against the back of her neck and shoulders in an excited little dance. He frowned again. Maybe it wasn't The Gun? He hadn't seen Francesca Winchester for close to ten years, so he could be mistaken. Francesca Winchester had straight dark hair, long enough to brush the curves of her arse cheeks and was a touch more...cuddly than the pocket-rocket darting her way through the rowdy partygoers. Yeah, he had to be mistaken.

No, you're not.

A wholly unexpected tension filled his balls at the possibility, squirming up into the pit of his stomach and sending ribbons of heat down into his dick. He ground his teeth, his grip on his glass--a crystal highball half-full of some exotic alcoholic concoction--growing firmer.

He wasn't going to let his memory of The Gun affect him. He wasn't. Ten years had passed since he'd seen her last, and he'd moved on. Gotten over her. Grown up.

Sure, there was that time he'd read about her opening her own public relations and management business in the paper--Kerpow Talent Management--and had the horniest friggin' wet dreams about her for nights after. Then there was the time one of his clients had talked about his agent and Alec had discovered it was Frankie. It had stirred emotions in him that he'd tried his bloody hardest to bury, but apart from those two times, he'd put the woman from his mind.

Yeah, right. And pigs have grown wings and are preparing for imminent flight. Not a day goes by when you don't think of Francesca Win--

He killed the thought. It served no purpose tonight. Tonight he was here to have fun, and thinking about The Gun was not fun.

Bullshit.

He ignored that thought. Facing the way he had entered, Alec returned through the crowd. Mac was somewhere in the house, but his big brother could wait for a while. What he wanted to do was find the brunette and hit up a conversation with her. He'd been in the US for too long on his last trip--six months to the day doing the promo-gig for Going Bush Landscape and Design's latest range--and he desperately needed to hear some Aussie accents. Something about the way the woman moved told him she'd have a sexy voice. What better way to reacquaint himself with the local vernacular than to hear it fall from the lips of someone who made him thing of Frank--

"Fuck." He let out a ragged sigh. The persistent thought of Frankie knocked him off kilter. Damn it. He had to get his act together. He wasn't planning to pick up a woman tonight, but he sure as hell wasn't going to be able to maintain a conversation with a woman if he kept thinking about the one person on the planet who reduced him to a hormonally preoccupied imbecile.

He maneuvered his way through the packed living room, searching the throngs of people as he went. The low but insistent beat of the music emanating from the house's stupidly expensive sound system vibrated through his body into his still-tight groin. He quickened his pace, the sudden flash of untamed curls entering the house's media room catching his eye. Passing off his mysterious drink to a bikini-clad woman tottering past him, he ducked to the left, taking the long route through the kitchen to the massive room he knew Mac and his housemates had set up as a private home theatre. From the sound of the cheers and guffaws coming from the supposedly sound-proof room, whatever was going on in there, it wasn't watching a deep and profound drama, that was for certain.

All but jogging down the four steps descending into the media room, Alec crossed the western threshold. His gaze fell on the brunette in the skin-tight black leather and Han Solo T-shirt just as she was inching her way between two men roughly the size of a small office block each, looking over her shoulder as if searching for someone herself.

Him? If it was Frankie, would she want to talk to him? Or would her flight-or-fight instincts kick in? To be honest, the last time they'd seen each other, she'd been less than impressed with him. If he stepped in front of her now, would she try and, well, fight him?

He frowned at another possibility. Would she try and flee from him? Is that what the mad dash through the party had just been?

Another laughing cheer rang out. The crowd around Alec jostled forward and instinctively, he jerked his stare from the disappearing woman to what was causing all the raucous joviality.

A line of laughing people snaked its way through the room, an alternating pattern of male/female dissecting the floor almost in half. On either side of the line, a small crowd watched, their calls of encouragements egging on the activity of two of the people somewhere near the front. Two people who, at first glance, seemed to be locked at the lips in a rather awkward kiss.

"Suck, suck, suck!" a chant rose beside Alec.

"Blow, blow, blow!" another chant came from the other side.

Alec narrowed his eyes and studied the kissing couple--a short man who looked suspiciously like Australia's latest cricket captain and a willowy woman he could have sworn was Kylie Minogue.

Except the kiss looked wrong. They weren't kissing. There was something between their puckered mouths. Something thin and blue and...

"Ahh." He nodded, finally recognizing the playing card mashed between the man and woman's mouths. "Suck and Blow."

Another cheer rippled through the room, followed by a hitching giggle from the possible pop-sensation as her cheeks concaved a little and she pulled away from the possible cricket captain.

A tense hush fell over the room, peppered by the occasional "is she going to do it?" as the blonde slowly--gingerly--turned a complete one-eighty on her heel and leant towards the new man now standing before her, his face lowered to hers, his lips puckered, his eyes grinning.

The room grew quieter, everyone holding their breaths as they watched the two drew their faces closer together. Closer...closer...closer...

Bam. Their mouths pressed together, separated only by the thin rectangle of gloss-covered cardboard.

"Yeah!" The cheers and laughs erupted again just as the guy sucked on the card and pulled it from her lips. The willowy blonde stepped backward in a fit of giggles, her bright blue eyes crinkling at the edges.

Alec chuckled, shaking his head. He'd never played Suck and Blow as a teenager. When his parents had won the lottery and sent him and Mac to study at Knox Grammar, the most exclusive private boys' school in Sydney, he'd never been invited to these kinds of parties because he was, to put it bluntly, cheap money.

Another whoop of delight filled the room, snatching Alec from his wry reverie. He returned his attention to the line, his stomach knotting immediately. Two things became perfectly clear. One, the woman he'd followed to this part of the house was joining the game, and two, there was no question or denying who she was. This close, he could see the tiny smattering of light brown freckles across her fine, upturned nose. This close he could see the stormy-blue clarity of her eyes through the thick tumble of ringlets hanging over her forehead. This close he could see the straightness of her dark-brown eyebrows under that unruly fringe. This close he could see, see, the supreme confidence radiating from her in crashing waves. Couldn't miss it. And it had the same effect on him it always had. His groin tightened and his balls throbbed.

He let out a low groan, the sound swallowed by the new round of cheers filling the room.

Frankie Winchester.

The Gun.

His long-denied sexual fantasy was all of about three sucking-and-blowing moves away from having her face plastered up close and personal with a guy dressed in designer jeans while another waited his turn behind her.

Fuck.

Join in.

He stood still. Long enough to watch the playing card be passed from a tall guy with a tattoo of a black dragon twisting up his arm to a laughing woman who Alec was sure read the news on the leading morning variety television program. For a quick moment, the card seemed glued to Mr. Tatt's lips then, just as his head drew closer to Miss Morning News, it fluttered downward, passing his chin in a twirling flash of red hearts and blue herringbone.

The newsreader's smiling lips pressed to Mr. Tatt's, her eyes widening as he obviously gave her more than she'd anticipated.

The watching crowd burst out laughing, as did Miss Morning News and her tattooed partner. "Scull! Scull!" came the chant as a beer glass was handed to Mr. Tatt. He threw back his head and swallowed the amber beverage in three gulps, then held the empty glass above his head to the cheers of the room before stooping to retrieve the dropped playing card from the floor.

A husky chuckle played over Alec's ears, making his breath quicken, and he slid his stare to where Frankie stood waiting in line for her turn. God, he remembered that laugh. It had driven him mad as a teenager. It was low and throaty. Confident and knowing. It said that she'd done things he couldn't begin to imagine. It said that she could do things to him that he couldn't even hope to imagine.

For a split second, he was back at high school, sitting in the audience of an inter-school debating contest, listening to Frankie laugh at something one of her teammates had whispered in her ear. He'd squirmed in his seat, his trousers suddenly uncomfortably snug in the groin. And her eyes had slid to him, looking at him for the merest beat of his heart before sliding off him. His breath had caught in his throat, his trousers growing tighter in the crotch.

"Don't be a fucking loser, Harris," the kid beside him--a fellow student from Knox Grammar--muttered, jabbing Alec in the ribs with his elbow. "Frankie Winchester's not in your league. Shit, the chick dates movie stars. You're nothing but cheap money."

He'd ground his teeth, his gaze fixed on Frankie where she sat a world away from him. She'd laughed again at whatever her teammate had written on a palm card, and then given Alec a quick glance from the corner of her eye. Just one. But he'd sworn to God her cheeks had filled with a faint pink tinge and her smile had reached her eyes for the first time since walking into the room.

He hadn't had the courage to approach her after the debate, slinking out of the room with his hands shoved in his pockets, hoping to hide the embarrassing effect she had on him, but he'd never forgotten that smile in her eyes. Nor her laugh.

He looked at her now, noting with a sharp sense of irony how she seemed completely unaware of his existence in this room. Did she even remember him? Or was he just the geek from her past who kept defeating her?

Find out. Now.

Without letting himself contemplate his next move or question his motive behind it, he pushed his way from the crowd and stepped up to the line, coming to stop directly before the guy on Frankie's right. "Heya, big guy," he said with a grin. "Mind if I cut in?"

Chapter Two

Frankie stared up at Alec, her heart thumping into her throat. So much for running away from him. She'd thought she'd lost him in the house. She thought she'd given him the slip.

She'd thought he hadn't come after her in the first place. Why would he? In all the years they'd known each other, they'd never shared anything more than a stilted word after whatever event or competition he'd thoroughly trounced her at. Why on earth would he follow her?

It didn't matter though. Rational thought had deserted her the second she'd laid eyes on him. Deserted her, and here she now was, hiding out in a game of Suck and Blow with Alec bloody Harris standing before her, showing her once again, how monumentally stupid she was. Damn him.

It's been ten years, Francesca. It's time you grew up, don't you think? Besides, he may not even remember you.

She gazed up at him and her breath stuck in her throat. Did he remember her?

Brilliant blue eyes moved to her, direct and way more confident than they'd been as a teenager. "Hello, Francesca."

Her sex constricted, an involuntary response to his stunning good looks and the sinfully sensual way he murmured her name. Had to be involuntary. Why else would she be feeling all squirming and...and...

"Fuck off," the guy beside her growled.

Alec gave him a wounded look. "C'mon, mate. This is my old girlfriend from school. I haven't seen her for ten years."

Frankie's mouth fell open. Okay, that's not what she expected him to say. What the hell?

With a lopsided smile, Alec raised one sublimely muscled arm, pressed one straight finger gently underneath her chin and, his grin growing wider, slowly closed her mouth.

And she let him.

She let him. What the hell was she doing? She let him?

The guy standing beside her, a bit-role actor if she was correct--and she always was about this kind of thing--slid his own striking blue eyes in her direction.

"C'mon, mate," Alec said and, God help her, Frankie's pussy constricted some more at the languid confidence in his voice. "Help a bloke out."

Before Frankie could say anything, or do anything--like, hmmm, slap Alec's hand from under her chin perhaps--the guy on her right let out a disgruntled snort and stepped out of the line, holding out his arm for Alec to take his place. He gave Frankie a steady look. "I'll be at the Twister station if you're interested." He flicked Alec a glower. "After Mr. Ex is done no doubt reminding you why he's Mr. Ex."

"Oh, he was a witty one," Alec commented, watching the man shove his way through the crowd. He swung his attention back to Frankie, giving her a wide smirk. "But a little too tame for your standards if I remember rightly?"

Frankie opened her mouth again, a searing heat flaming through her. Just as Alec nodded toward something behind her back. "Head's up, Francesca," he murmured with a grin, closing his fingers around her shoulders just as gently as he'd pressed his finger to her chin. "It's our turn."

He turned her around, in time for her to see the man next to her in the line lean forward, the ten of hearts stuck to his lips.

She blinked, her ears roaring. Alec's fingers held her shoulders with steady pressure, the warmth of his tall, lean body licking at her back.

A prickle of something far too unnerving washed over her, something too aware of his maleness, his nearness, and then the man with the playing card on his mouth was pressing his lips to hers as Alec's hands smoothed down her arms to come to rest on her hips.

She sucked in her breath, the sudden gasp fixing the playing card to her lips. His fingers scalded her through the supple leather of her pants, his grip loose and relaxed and far from suggestive. So why was her heart thumping so hard? Why was her pussy fluttering like a psychotic horde of ADHD butterflies?

The man currently nose-to-nose with her pushed his face a little closer, an over-powering smell of Jean Paul Gaultier's Pour Homme slipping into her nostrils and she staggered back, Alec's hips brushing her backside as she did so.

Oh God.

Her heart leapt away from her, the soft pressure of his fingers at her waist making her head swim. Or was it the fact she was holding her breath? Holding her breath with the goddamn ten of hearts stuck to her lips?

Do something, woman!

She didn't have to. Alec did it for her. With a gentle push and pull on her hips, he turned her around to face him, his blue, blue eyes holding hers, his dimples flashing as the sides of his mouth curled. "So, who's going to win this one, Frankie?"

The question was asked on a low chuckle, each word making her sex constrict.

She stared at him. Watched him lower his head to hers. Watched him draw closer. Closer. Her lungs burned. Her head swam. The room fell silent.

And her breath ran out just like that, the card slipping from her lips at the loss of suction a mere second before Alec's mouth pressed to hers.

Explosive heat shot through Frankie, like she'd suddenly and inexplicably grabbed a live wire on an electrical fence. Except it wasn't electricity charging through her, singeing her nerve-endings and making her nipples pinch hard but arousal. Instant and undeniable. A wicked ribbon of warm tension unfurled through her belly and into the junction of her thighs, and before she could stop it, a low groan vibrated deep in her throat.

His lips were warm, soft. They melded to hers with perfection, slightly parted, his intake of breath drawing her exhalation into his mouth.

He'd expected to feel the playing card pressed to his lips now, of that she had little doubt, but instead of pulling away as she thought he would, his lips lingered on hers. Slanting over them as his fingers on her hips curled a little more firmly against her body, tugging her closer to his body with an insistence that made her head swim just as much as her earlier oxygen deprivation.

She stiffened, for the first time in her wild, uncontrolled life she was utterly and completely bamboozled as to what she should do next. Her feet stumbled over each other, her lurching forward momentum halted by Alec's hard form.

And he was hard. Very hard. All of him. Hard and big and impressive.

His stomach pressed against hers like a sculpted plane of marble. His chest was hard and smooth under her palms.

Her palms? Frankie's already rapid heartbeat kicked up a notch, thumping against her breastbone like a bloody sledgehammer. When had she put her hands to his chest?

Who cares? The brazen thought whispered through her head at the very moment Alec's lips parted against hers and his tongue dipped into her mouth.

Oh.

He tasted of sinful paradise. Pineapple and coconut and rum. It was intoxicating. She wanted more.

Snaking her hands up over his shoulders, she tangled her fingers in his messy crop of blond hair, opening her mouth wider to his kiss and stroking her tongue against his. She rose onto tip-toe, the elevation aligning her hips to his, the hard heat of his cock nudging at her groin.

Oh. The single word was nothing but a soft sigh in her mind--a mind furiously trying to remind her just who in the bloody hell she was kissing. Alec Harris. Alley Cat, Francesca, you're kissing Alley Cat.

And he was kissing her back. And doing a superb job of it.