Fuzzy Logic

Two

Lucas hadn't meant to lick Ashley.

He wasn't usually impulsive, but he was curious if the lotion would taste different on her skin than it did on his. He imagined it was designed to react to an individual's body heat. Not to mention that everyone secreted different amounts of perspiration.

The opportunity to taste Ashley's flesh was too tempting to pass up.

So he had licked.

And damned if it didn't taste a hell of a lot better. In fact, it was delicious. Like rich, creamy, chocolate mousse, cool on a warm spoon.

"Mmm, that's good. Have you tried it?" Running his tongue over her moist wrist one more time to get the stray bits, Lucas chanced a glance up at Ashley.

Her green eyes were huge. Her breathing was a bit faster than normal. She shook her head, and Lucas had to acknowledge to himself that he was hopelessly, pathetically in love with her.

It was the only explanation for why he let her rent this apartment at half its market value, and why he could never seem to get involved with a woman beyond casual dating. It explained why he wanted to ram a fist into the face of every big stupid ugly jock Ashley had dated-and there had been quite a few.

He was in love with her, and just once he wanted her to see him as more than Jason's friend.

He wanted her to see him as a man.

Which was why he lifted her arm to her mouth. "Try it."

Ashley shook her head even harder. "No, I just ate dinner."

He nearly grinned, but kept it back. "It's not meant to fill you up, Ash, it's to turn you on."

She took a step back, yanking her arm from his grip, looking flustered. "Well, I know that. I'm the Pleasure Party consultant here, after all."

He was certain she'd make an excellent one. Ashley had good people skills, something he could not claim, and her enthusiasm could probably sell a hell of a lot of dildos. Yet she always seemed to underestimate herself, making comments about never being able to expect more than the entry-level job she had at a computer design firm.

It bothered him, which seemed to be further evidence that he was irrationally in love with her.

"What kind of training did you receive? For ease of selling, I would think you'd want to personally experience as many products as possible." His eye fell on the tickle-whip contraption he'd set down on the table. Had she used that?

On the one hand, the thought had him painfully hard. On the other hand, the idea that some guy-some low-IQ Encino Man, half a step below a chimp, bonehead used-car salesman-had taken a fake whip to Ashley's bare skin made him so angry the room sharpened into red-hot focus while his veins throbbed.

She wiped her wet arm on her pink-and-white striped skirt. It was soft and clingy and one side was shorter than the other. Her shirt was sleeveless, white, with a big fake pink flower pinned on it. It was kind of overblown and odd, but knowing Ashley, it was trendy and expensive. Her shoes were spiky little high-heeled sandals that looked painful at best, lethal at worst.

“Lucas, I don't have time for this. I'm not even finished setting up and people are going to be here in thirty minutes.” She ripped open one "Pinky" and took it out of the package. Shaking it at him, she said, "Either help me unpack or go home."

He could honestly say that being reprimanded with a neon dildo was something of a strange experience. He felt like he had when he was thirteen and his dad had caught him with a pilfered Playboy. Ashamed and slightly dirty.

And fighting the urge to bust his gut laughing at the ridiculousness of it.

Lucas bent over and grabbed a box and hefted it onto the table. Ashley moved away from him, finding a spot for "Pinky" on another table, before she started fussing with some folders and brochures.

He arranged massage oils, lotions, and shaving cream onto the table in neat, tidy little rows. Looking at all the flavors and textures of lotions and powders, and reading all their buzz words like erogenous, erotic, maximum pleasure, and stimulate, he was getting a little uncomfortable.

"Is it hot in here? Is your air-conditioning unit working right?"

"Yes." Ashley had a rubber ducky in her hand.

"You sell rubber duckies? Isn't that kind of tame?"

She ripped the duck's head off. "It has a vibrating egg hidden inside." She pulled a small soft egg out and twisted it. It started humming. "It's a tub toy."

"Oh." He went back to his box, thinking. He didn't see the logic. "So, is it in a duck so no one knows it's there?"

"Yes."

"But… why would an adult have a toy duck? Wouldn't people think that was weird? And if you have kids in the house, wouldn't they want to play with it, and what if they accidentally unscrewed the head? Wouldn't that egg be a choking hazard?"

The look she shot him suggested she didn't know the answer. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"

She was trying to get rid of him, but he wasn't ready to leave just yet. It wasn't often he got a chance to see Ashley without her brother or without one of her best friends.

"No." He pulled out glow-in-the-dark condoms from the box.

"So, what's the point in these?" He spoke half to himself, genuinely puzzled. "I mean, they don't glow until they're out of the package, so it can't be meant to lead you to the nightstand. And the man is the one who needs air traffic control guiding him in, not the woman. In fact, I would think seeing a glowing pink penis would scare the shit out of most women, wouldn't it?"

"I'm assuming that's a rhetorical question." Ashley disappeared into the kitchen.

"Well, have you used these?"

"No." Her voice carried loudly and vehemently.

Products all arranged to his satisfaction, he tucked the empty box under the table and started browsing. "Why would anyone want edible underwear?" He shook the box and sniffed it. "I mean, it's not like you'd wear them all day. You would only put them on in the heat of the moment, and wouldn't that sort of kill the spontaneity of the whole thing? Like here, go put these on so I can eat them off… and how can these possibly be one size fits all? That doesn't make any sense."

Ashley came clicking back into the room and slapped a cheese and crackers tray down on the coffee table. "Lucas Manning, some things don't make sense, all right? They just don't. People do them because they're fun. F-U-N. Fun. Got it? Because it's silly and sexy and exciting to do something crazy and maybe even stupid when you're attracted to someone. Can you understand that?"

Oh, hell yeah, he could understand that. Because he was attracted to her and about to do something crazy and even stupid.

"So if I pulled up your shirt and smeared this peach powder across your nipples, it would be fun?"

Ashley closed her eyes for a split second. Oh, Lord, help her. He was so smart, yet so damn dumb when it came to common sense. He had no idea that you couldn't just run around discussing touching a woman's nipples and not expect them to harden. Like hers just had.

Which was ridiculous. Lucas was talking about her nipples in a purely scientific manner. He was trying to understand the logic behind romance enhancing products, and she was pretty sure there just wasn't any. And in the meantime, he had somehow managed to arouse her.

It must be all the aphrodisiacs in the room. The power of suggestion. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with Lucas, whose smiles were so infrequent as to attract notice, and whose hair looked like he'd forgotten to comb it for a week solid. But in all fairness, Lucas was a very good-looking guy. Who suddenly when she wasn't looking had sprouted to over six feet tall and broadened out a bit.

"In theory, yes, that would be fun, given the right circumstances." She put a hand on her stomach, as if she could press the alarming heat out of her womb.

"What would those circumstances be?"

She barely heard the question, frozen in place watching him unscrew the lid on the jar and pull out the little feather duster applicator. "Well, it would be if two people were settling in for a night of making love. I don't think you'd want to rush through this kind of foreplay."

His brown eyes pierced hers in concentration as he closed the two feet between them. "So, you wouldn't want to just smear it on the nipples then? You'd want to start maybe with the shoulder."

The brush touched her skin and she shivered. He moved it gently back and forth over her shoulder while she tried to find the willpower to step away. But before she could even think to react, his tongue was on her, sliding in little swirls around and around before his mouth dropped down completely over her in a wet embrace and he sucked.

She almost fell off her stilettos she was so shocked. "Lucas!"

"No, the shoulder isn't right?" The feather dabbed her neck, close to her collarbone. "Maybe here, then?"

And dang it if he didn't start licking and sucking there too, until she was curling her toes and fisting her hands and tilting her head back. He didn't touch her anywhere else, and her body started to strum and hum and ache for attention.

Which was just so wrong. This was Lucas. He had seen her with braces and acne and bad hair. This was Lucas, who she loved absolutely, in a pure sisterly sort of way. She'd do anything for Lucas.

Apparently even let him experiment with her body for the sake of sexual science.

A shaky sigh fell out of her mouth before she could stop it.

Maybe this was ecstasy envy. She hadn't had sex in eight months, since her last boyfriend had moved to Chicago for a better job opportunity. He hadn't suggested they keep in touch and she hadn't been all that broken up. Chad wasn't the brightest bulb in the pack and his jokes had become wearing after a while.

Not that she wanted to date someone smart, like a genius, who would make her feel inadequate, like she had her whole life, growing up with a super-intelligent brother. But she didn't want to date someone dumb either. She'd settle for a happy medium.

Since Kindra was engaged and her friend Violet was seriously dating someone, she knew they were both getting it on a regular basis. Maybe this bizarre arousal was just her body's way of reminding her that she was heading into her peak sexual years and this wasn't the time to neglect it.

Lucas dusted powder on her chin and sucked. She grabbed his arms for balance and tried not to be turned on. His whiskers rubbed against her cheek and his hair tickled her nose and his tongue started shifting upward and, damn, she was turned on.

Especially when his finger tapped her bottom lip, depositing powder on it. The peachy fragrance drifted up to her nostrils, and without thinking her tongue darted out and licked a tiny bit. It melted in her mouth in a juicy sweet river.

"No, I'm supposed to taste it," Lucas murmured against the corner of her mouth.

Then he was rolling his tongue across her moist lip, clear from one side to the other, making little sounds of approval at the taste. Ashley's fingers curled tighter in his shirtsleeves and her breath jerked out of her in little ragged bursts.

She wasn't sure what was happening, wasn't sure why she was letting Lucas lap at her like a dog with a bowl of water, but oh my, it felt so good, and no matter how loud her brain screamed, her feet weren't walking her away.

Suddenly he shifted, and he was kissing her. Just plain and simple kissing her, his lips locked over hers and his tongue doing reconnaissance in her mouth. The sweet peachy powder still clung to both of their tongues and the embrace was hot, wet, exciting, full of heat and passion.

When Lucas finally pulled back, she heard a great lusty sigh emerge from her own mouth. Lucas's eyes were dark, half closed, his lips shiny. But he simply said, "The peach is definitely better than the chocolate."

Ashley relinquished her death hold on his shirt and tried to take a step back. She hit the table with her backside, wobbling on her stilettos and upsetting the display of disco vibrators. Whirling around, she placed the yellow, blue, and red vibrators with flashing chaser lights back to the original position. Her cheeks were flushed and hot.

"So I should push the peach then?" she managed, hoping her voice didn't warble.

Here Lucas had just been curious, like he always was, and she had gone all weak in the knees and wet in her panties.

"Definitely."

Then she could hear packaging tearing and she was forced to turn around in exasperation. "What are you opening now? This stuff was expensive."

"But you need some things opened for demos, right? More customers will buy if they can taste, touch, and try the product. These lotions are perfect for that." He held up a little jar he'd pulled out of the box. "This stuff is supposed to heat your skin and tingle."

If he tried to pull up her shirt and touch her nipple with that crap, she was going to scream. He was starting to unnerve her. Maybe he was so elevated intellectually that he could isolate his brain from his penis, but she wasn't on quite such a higher plane. He was making her horny.

Since he had no intention of having sex with her and she had no intention of having sex with her little brother's best friend, at the end of the night he was going to leave her hot and aroused, with no one but rubber ducky for company.

And no matter how naughty and inventive the Pleasure Party ducky was, nothing beat a real man covering you.

"And your samplers can be for personal use as well then."

Lucas reached out for her and she yelled, "Don't!"

But he was only turning her wrist over and rubbing the cream into the soft skin at the bottom of her palm. "Don't what?"

"Uh… don't get it on my skirt, please." She was aware that sounded lame, but her brain had stopped working. Never in her entire life had she suspected her wrist could be sexy.

But the way Lucas was stroking it with the pad of his thumb, in little floating circles, was oddly, incredibly sensual.

"Is it getting hot? Tingling?"

"Yes. Very hot. Everything is hot and tingling," she whispered.

All over every part of her she was hot and tingling and starting to think something was wrong with her, and damn, damn, was he going to kiss her again?

His body moved closer to hers.

The doorbell rang, Ashley jumped back two feet. "Oh, shit, someone's here!"

But she was secretly relieved, even if her show wasn't completely set up yet.

Another split second and she might have been doing some serious cradle robbing.