Though the next day’s open house wasn’t scheduled to begin until four, noon found Chloe in her office working to clean out her inbox. An in-depth marketing proposal for additions to the Glam-Girl Gear line of medicated skin-care products was going to  take more time to study than she had to spare today. And she couldn’t do anything about the lab reports on the perfume trials until tomorrow at the earliest. The rest of the memos were easily handled via instructions jotted to her assistant.

 Although Glam-Gear was to one day enjoy a fraction of Revlon’s or L’Oreal’s worldwide success, Chloe doubted she’d be around to share the wealth or the fame. Not if she didn’t start using her head instead of using her mouth. Her language was one thing. But what she’d done in Justin’s kitchen? To Justin? The very man who’d agreed to help her? The very man who still had teenage, not to mention women in their forties lusting over?

 This three-even-for-three-wishes business was obviously a big waste of time. One down, five to go, and she’d already proved that she had absolutely no desire to change her bad-girl ways. No doubt Justin had shared the joke with her skeletons, and the lot of them were laughing themselves silly ay her expense. What if he told Lance? Oh’ God she’d never be able to face him again. But deep down she knew Justin wouldn’t fit that typical male role. He didn’t fit at all to the men she was used to.

 There was a knock on her door and she looked up from her screen. “Come in.”

“If it isn’t my beautiful cousin.”

 She was out of her chair and around her desk and in her cousin’s arms before he could take another step into the room. “What are you doing here butt-head?”

“Is that any way to treat your beloved cousin? I was gone for a couple days and I hear one of my bestrides telling that one of my other best friends played volleyball with my cousin? Now who would that be? And what has happened to my REAL cousin? You know the one that wear EVERYTHING coordinated and never gets dirty?”

“I don’t wear EVERYTHING coordinated.” when Lance gave her a funny look. She added. “Alright, whatever. And yes I played volleyball. Who cares? How as Hawaii?”

“It was heaven.” Lance said grinning. “Absolute heaven.”

“You and Maggie never left the room did you?”

“Now that’s not completely accurate. We did go out on the balcony a couple time.” he said with a bright smile.

“You two are pathetic.”

“Jealous?”

“You wish.”

“So tell me what is this I hear about you actually being in the same park with J, and not going at it like you usually do?”

“We don’t usually do anything. Reason being that we are hardly around each other. EVER.”

“Exactly my point. What’s going on?”

“Ohh nothing really…” her thoughts turned to the kitchen scene but she quickly tuned it out. “ He’s just a cool guy to be around with. Besides you kindda left me hanging there for a couple days.”

“Since when is Justin a COOL guy? I thought you said he was arrogant. Conceited. Annoying and the list went on and on.”

“I said that six years ago. When he purposely pushed me into the pool at Jc’s house.”

“It was an accident.”

“Bullshit!! He did it on purpose. Besides that old. That “Justin I forgot to tell you I’m only 14” sign got him back even though he never knew who it was holding it up at the  No Strings Attached concert was me.”

“He wasn’t happy. I can tell you that much.” Lance laughed out loud.

“And I’m glad you kept you mouth shut for all those years. You did keep you mouth shut right?”

“Man, I know when I’m defeated. You got too many things on me to screw anything up with you.”

“Exactly.” Chloe said with an evil grin. “Don’t make me call up my contacts. Imagine the headlines.”

 Lance sat back on the Yellow plush couch in the corner of the room and looked down at the deep purple carpeting. He cast a frowning glance around the room, which was decorated in bright candy colors. “You do business in here? And your stomach doesn’t turn?”

“Stop making fun of my office.” Chloe punched his arms playfully.

“Anyway I just came by to say hello. I can’t stay for the open house, but I’ll see you tomorrow I’m sure.”

“Alright butt-head. I’ll c-ya.”

“Bye, Beauty-queen.”
 
*****************************************************

 Tired of waiting for Chloe in the Glam-Girl Gear lobby and having already mingled for fifteen minutes with the rest of the open house attendees, including reporters who till this day were all up in his business, Justin finally went in search of his nondate date. He found her in her office, her back to her desk, her arms around her middle, one finger pressed to the tip of her cute nose as she stood staring out her first floor window onto Industrial Boulevard.

 He leaned a shoulder against the door, shoved his hands into the pockets of his khakis. The tails of his navy blue sports jacket around his wrists. He couldn’t help but take a deep, steadying breath. He’d never expected her to make him feel anything but the flirtatious affection so natural to their friendship. But he was feeling more now. More than he didn’t want to acknowledge, because it would make him a sap. A whipped pussy. And no man with any self-respect allowed himself to be whipped by a single blow job.

 The thought of her mouth made him weak. But he’d long since learned that he wanted more from sex that obvious fun. He wanted a connection, a woman to touch him in more ways that physical. He just wasn’t sure Chloe was that woman. Not if she saw mean as the enemy.

 She wore a short flowing dress, pink of course, a floral print draped loosely over her lower body, hugging her waist and her bust line, yet teasing more than revealing most of her amazing curves. Her legs were bare. And that played into Justin’s plans to pay her back for yesterday’s kitchen encounter.

“Tell me something, Chloe.”

 She gave a start when he spoke, pulling in a gulp of air and shaking off the surprise before turning calmly from the window and offering him her usual chop-busting smile.

“Anything you want to hear, sweetie?”

 Facing him now, she wrapped her fingers over the waist high headrest of her funky mesh chair. It was a telling movement in that she deliberately kept the chair between them instead of moving to the door to link her arm through his and join the reception in the lobby.

“What help am I going to be to your reputation if you hide out in your office instead of mingling and giving the press the sound bites they’re here for?” he stayed were he was, his pride preferring her to make the choice to come to him.

 She didn’t move except to tilt her head slightly to the right. “Actually I was trying to decide if staying in here wouldn’t be the smartest thing to do. Especially since any best foot I might put forward is still recovering from yesterday’s sandblasting.”

“A tough cookie like you? Done in by a little sand?” Justin gave a snort. “ I don’t believe it.”

“I am not a tough cookie.”

“Princess, you are the toughest cookie I know. You don’t take crap from anyone. You know what you want and you go for it.” he paused and he thought about exactly how she went for it in his kitchen. “ besides you spike a hell of a volleyball.”

“The spike was luck and you know it.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. One thing I do know is that you don’t hate sports as much as you let on to believe.”

“Just because it isn’t something I do regularly doesn’t mean I don’t know how to play.”

“I know you know how to play. I was there remember? So you wanna join the team?”

“Permanently?”
 

“Why not?”

“Don’t all the members have to be affiliated with JT’s? How did you manage to sneak me past the officials yesterday?”

“I told them we were lovers.”

“You told them what!!?”

 Justin moved into the office, closing the door most of the way with one hand, but with a gentle shove so Chloe wouldn’t feel trapped. Like it or not, it was time for that conversation she’d run out on yesterday.

“Actually, I said you and I were seeing each other, which is the truth. Especially now with the way things have changed…..”

 Reaching her desk, he let the thought trail off and waited for her ball-busting denial that their relationship had changed. What he got instead was a thoughtful silence and a lazy consideration from eyes boldly enhanced by eye shadow.

 She roiled her chair beneath her desk, walked around the far end and propped a hip on the corner. Arms crossed, she swung that one dangling foot, her dress hiked halfway up her thigh. Which wasn’t much to keep Justin’s mind on the here and now. He lifted his chin, kept his gaze locked on hers.

“In what sort of ways have things changed?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?” she wanted to play? Fine. He’d play her until she begged him to stop.

“That depends, sweetie. Do you think you have the answer?”

“An answer other than the obvious? I mean, it’s not like every woman who comes into my kitchen gets fed my strawberry shortcake.”

“Now THAT I find hard to believe.”

“Why? You think because I am a man I can’t say NO to a woman?”

“You are not only a man. You are THE Justin Timberlake.”

“Believe it or not Chloe, not all men are ruled by the head of their dick.”

“Face it, sweetie. From New York to L.A. to Texas. Men will be men.”

“You’re serious aren’t  you? You really don’t think a man has any control over his baser instincts.”

“Not as much control a woman has.”

“Over his or over hers?”

“Both.” she said lifting both brows.

“So you think it’s easier for a woman to seduce a man that a man to seduce a woman? Scratch that. What I mean is, do you really think a man can’t break a woman’s self control as easily as a woman can break a man’s?”

“Ohh come on Justin don’t make me laugh. Using control and man in the same sentence like that. I have never met a man I couldn’t bring to his knees.”

“But you are rarely brought to yours?”

“Nope not a single carpet burn.” she said examining her perfect knees.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” he pointed to a freckle, keeping his finger there on her skin.  “if that’s not carpet, then it’s got to be from the tiles on my kitchen floor.”

“I might have been the one on my knees but I was also the one in control.”

“Tell me something else, Chloe. Why the rules about no sexual contact if you didn’t intend to hold up your end of the bargain?” Justin moved his hand farther up her bare leg.

“My end of the bargain was agreeing to grant you three nonsexual, favors. As in, you ask me for them first. You never asked me to sample your…strawberry shortcake. That wasn’t part of our deal.”

 Reaching the loose hem of her dress, he walked his fingers beneath the edge of the material and up the smooth skin of her thigh. His hand lingered, and when she didn’t move a muscle, when she didn’t say a word, when she didn’t let go of the breath he’d heard her pull in, he took a bold step into her space.

 He moved his hand in a slow caress up her thigh to her hip, watching her pupils widen, her lips softly part to draw air into her lungs as he approached the strip of elastic that served as the waistband of her thong.

 Touching her skin was like feeling that slide of whipped cream and chocolate all over again. A sensation of exploring the forbidden, sharing the rush of blood and the rise between his legs with the very woman making him ache.

 His palm skimmed over her belly and she adjusted her perch on the edge of the desk, spreading her legs a bit wider, her weight balanced between the one foot she had on the floor and the hand she’d braced flat on the desk at her side.

 She lifted her chin. Her eyes drifted shut with the arousal that shuddered through her. Anyone peering into the office would see their head close together in quiet conversation. What no one could see were Justin’s fingertips scraping across the thong’s material, his knuckles brushing through the barest strip of hair hidden beneath.

 He pulled the thong lower, his index finger dipping down to find her hidden bud and hovering there before sliding to the side of the tight swell and pressing hard. Her eyes flew open and she looked over his shoulder, her lower lip caught by even white teeth as if to hold back sounds rolling from her belly to her throat.

 He heard them all, and he wasn’t having this looking away business. His member was throbbing, caught between his shorts and his stomach. But even that satisfaction mattered less than looking into Chloe’s eyes while making her come.

 He kept his hand in her panties, but lifted his finger away. She squirmed and arched, seeking the return of his touch. A smile drew up a corner of his mouth. He could hardly imagine the intensity of taking her to bed. And it WOULD happen. But not now, not in this room.

 This, he thought, rubbing his finger down one ripely swollen lip of her sex and up over the other, taking what he needed of her juices spreading between to ease the friction of his way. Again he reached her bud. Again he stopped, teased with a single butterfly kiss of his finger to her flesh. The hand she wasn’t using to support her weight moved to his between her legs.

“Look at me Chloe.”

“I can’t.” she said with a tiny shake of her head.

“Chloe, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll give you exactly what you want.” to make his point, he stepped closer, moved his lips to her ear and slid one long finger through her wet folds to the mouth of her sex, then deep inside.

 She stifled a cry. His erection seized up: the ache became unbearable, the need for release a tension with a life of it’s own. His plan was going awry. The sweet reality was she was responding to his  touch, her juices flowing for him, her hand holding him and wanting the pleasure he could so easily give. He wasn’t sure he wanted to make her wait as much as he wanted to make her come.

 He fingered her again, this time slipping both his middle and his index finger deep into her heat. He used his teeth lightly on her earlobe, bathed the nips with the stroke of his tongue.

“You like that? You want more?”

“I want you to make me come.”

 He felt rather than her desperation. One finger pressed forward into the pillow of her G-spot. Her fist tightened over his hand and she shuddered from the inside out.

“Is that what you want? Or maybe this is more of what you need?” he circled his thumb around the hard knot of nerves jutting from between the folds of her sex and drawn as tight as his own erection. When she whimpered in answer, he found the will to move away and make his demand again.

“Chloe, look at me.”

 What he saw was almost enough to make him believe she was reaching for more than her own completion when he saw her eyes. She pulled in a sharp breath. He felt it jerk her body away, and then he felt her climax. The walls of her sex clenched around the fingers he had buried deep inside. Moisture rushed down his hand to soak the triangle of her thong. He vibrated the edge of his palm into the divide of her swollen sex, his fingers feeling her spasms fade even as he pressed his thumb down against her knot of tight nerves. Her own fingertips gouged the back of his hands as she held him still for her finish.

“ Well, now that you got that out of your system, sweetie, why don’t you wait for me in the lobby? I’ll be out in a minute.”

 Justin couldn’t believe it. He was standing here with his dick on the verge of exploding, with Chloe’s cream all over his hand. He’d just concentrated on giving her the orgasm of her life and had had a hell of a good time doing it. And now she was blowing him off?

“In case you didn’t notice, Princess, I didn’t get anything out of my system. Not that I’m complaining. Having you come in my hand was hotter than being inside most other women. You might want to work on being….”

“Appreciative? Admiring? Full of slavish adulation?”

“I’d settle with plain old-fashioned being honest. For some reason you hate to admit that you lost control just now. And that’s a damn shame, Chloe. Because if it feels so good for us to lose control separately, think what it would feel like to hold nothing back when we’re together.”

 Walking away after that comment was as difficult for him physically as it was emotionally.