Any Way You Want Me

Any Way You Want Me - Jamie Sobrato


1

THE NEW GUY in the office was a serious distraction.
How was a girl supposed to concentrate when there was a six-foot-tall specimen of male perfection strutting around, on his way to the copy machine, the fax machine, the coffee maker—always on his way somewhere, and always passing by Yasmine Talbot’s desk.
As he walked by just now, his ocean-and-evergreen scent wafting over her, Yasmine’s fingers halted on the keyboard, and when he was well past her desk, she turned to watch. Two days ago, she’d nearly fallen out of her chair watching.
He knew the effect he was having on her, and he probably reveled in his power. From the moment they’d first laid eyes on each other last week when he’d emerged from the new-employee training session and stood across the room from her, blinking under the fluorescent lights, they’d begun a silent office flirtation that had gotten progressively bolder by the day. Now it bordered on the ridiculous that they’d yet to even say hello to each other, even in an office as big as Virtual Active’s. Were they just going to exchange hot-and-heavy glances forever?
Yasmine was both amused and embarrassed by the animal-mating-dance quality their relationship had assumed. She imagined them starring in their own Discovery Channel documentary—Mating Habits of the Common Office Drone. He fluffed his feathers, strutted to and fro, made searing eye contact. Essentially he was staking his claim. But Yasmine didn’t want to be claimed. Nor did she want to star in any mating-ritual documentaries in the midst of her workplace. And yet she couldn’t deny how mesmerized she was by him. It was as if she’d been biologically programmed to want him.
This guy, with his windswept hair and his perfect ass, was the stuff heroes on the covers of romance novels were made of. Put him in a billowing white shirt unbuttoned to reveal his chest, with a beautiful damsel draped on one arm, and he’d look right at home. But put him in the middle of the mundane offices of Virtual Active, Inc. and he was likely to spawn his own interactive sex game, Virtual Alpha Male. And don’t think that, as the only female programmer at the sex software company, she hadn’t seriously considered it.
In fact, she realized, as she glanced at the file full of notes on her latest software project, Sexcapade, a night with a guy like him probably was just what she needed to kick-start her creativity. So far, she’d been uninspired, and the project was going badly.
But her attraction to the new guy was slightly bizarre. She didn’t do beefed-up, all-American-surfer-boy types. She was completely immune to the charms of calendar hunks with too-perfect hair. Yet here she was, her girl parts getting all tingly every time this guy who was prettier than she was strolled by. It had to be the lack of available attractive men in her life.
Her type of guy was darker, more brooding, prone to motorcycles and leather. True, she had a bad-boy fixation—particularly if they were the unattainable, strictly fantasy type. But the way she figured, bad boys and bad girls went hand in hand. Yasmine might have turned pretending to be good into an art form, but in her heart lurked a rebel.
The new guy disappeared into the break room, and Yasmine tried to turn her attention back to her work. But her mind kept wandering.
One other problem with him—he looked as though he belonged in L.A. more than San Francisco. He had a tan, for crying out loud.
Where would anyone, especially a programmer who spent his days attached to a computer, even get a tan in this city in the middle of December? The answer was he wouldn’t, not unless he was going to a tanning bed—did those even exist anymore?—which this guy must have been doing. A fact that should have repulsed Yasmine.
Instead, she found herself wondering if he had tan lines. One of her more disturbingly detailed fantasies even had her freeing him of his khakis, inch by inch, to discover not a single line. It was ridiculous. He was probably the kind of guy who had a Playboy bunny tattoo right next to his schlong.
The break room door opened, and the object of her whacked fantasies came out carrying a bottle of Evian water. She watched him walk to the printer, his snug pants advertising the well-sculpted muscles beneath them, and shook her head. It was official—Yasmine was losing her freaking mind.
She glared at her computer screen and promised herself she would do no more ogling today. She would focus on her work. Focus, focus, focus.
If only he looked like any other code-slinging brainiac who spent too much time indoors and could use a trip to the nearest fashion consultant, there would be no problem. But he didn’t. And he worked in her office, no less. Yasmine didn’t do the office help. So she took her tingly feelings as a sign that she’d spent a few months too many sans boyfriend.
She just needed to get laid, and she’d stop drooling over her strutting, preening office mate.
“Excuse me,” she heard an unfamiliar male voice say.
Yasmine looked up to see the object of her constant ogling looming beside her desk. He smiled faintly, his gaze locked on her. She opened her mouth to say hi, but nothing came out.
“Is this yours?”
She stared at the document she’d printed an hour ago and nodded. “I, um, I…forgot to go pick it up.”
He placed it on top of her in-box pile and smiled. He had perfect white teeth. “We should stop this, don’t you think?”
“Stop what?”
“Staring at each other but never talking.”
Staring? Had she been staring?
“We’re talking now,” she said stupidly.
“I’m Kyle Kramer,” he said.
She liked his voice…and his eyes, which were a smoky shade of hazel. They were mesmerizing—almost unreal looking.
“Hi, Kyle Kramer,” she croaked.
And now that he’d formally introduced himself, would it be forward to take him home and have her way with him?
Definitely she should at least tell him her name first. She pointed to the nameplate on her cubicle wall. “That’s me. Yasmine.”
If her conversational skills got any more brilliant, she’d have to shoot herself.
He smiled and nodded. He had sort of a Rhett Butler attitude going on, as if he knew he was gorgeous enough to make most women feel that they could never fill Scarlet’s shoes.
“Right,” he said. “Yaz-meen. I’ve been pronouncing it wrong in my head.”
So he’d been thinking about her? Had he maybe even been as distracted by overwrought office lust as she had? Very intriguing.
There was an awkward pause.
He studied the Christmas decorations all around her cubical, and it struck her as odd for the first time that she’d bothered to decorate her work space but not her home. Funky little ornaments she’d found at a shop in Noe Valley—a beaded green frog, a purple feather angel, a little carved wooden genie emerging from a bottle, a sparkly pink bird, among other things—hung from twinkling red lights around the top edge of the cubicle walls.
“Nice frog,” he said, his tone almost languorous, as if he had no intention of leaving anytime soon.
“Is there, um, something I can help you with?”
She sounded like an uptight bitch, but she was unnerved by his unexpected presence, his seeming awareness of his effect on her.
“Would you maybe like to go for drinks after work?”
Drinks, dancing, hot, sweaty sex. She was game. But Yasmine knew better than to follow such wild impulses. In fact, she never followed them. She knew the right thing to do, the safe thing, would be to end this silly mating ritual right here, right now.
“I’m sorry—I have plans with a friend after work.” Which was true.
He rested his forearms on top of her cubical wall and shrugged. “Okay, how about another night?”
“I’ve been working late most nights,” she said, making herself sound like the workaholic she was.
He gave her a look that said he wasn’t buying her excuses. “Going to the holiday party on Friday?”
Urgh, the annual office party. Only four days away. Virtual Active threw it at the same inconvenient time every year—the day before Christmas Eve—to kick off the holidays.
“I don’t usually date office mates,” she blurted. Idiot, idiot, idiot.
What was she so afraid of? Why did she have to play it too far on the safe side all the time?
He wasn’t anyone she worked closely with…. And the upcoming holidays did have her feeling lonely…. And she had been feeling the urge to do something a tiny bit wild—maybe even something that could remind her what hot guys and hot passion were all about. And Kyle did make her squirm like no guy had in God knows how long.
“We’d just be going to the party together. It’s hardly even a date.”
Yasmine recalled last year’s party, when Larry Mono-Brow Harris had gotten drunk and spent the entire night coming on to her. She shuddered. Maybe having a date wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
“Well, I guess it’s okay. Since you’re new, I wouldn’t want you to feel like an outcast for all the merriment.” Yasmine smiled, and a weight she hadn’t even noticed was lifted from her shoulders.
“We’ll just call you my ambassador for the evening. I’ll pick you up at six o’clock Friday night, then?”
And if he turned out to be a nutcase, she’d have to move to a new apartment. “As your ambassador, I should give you a ride to the party.”
“Fair enough.”
He stepped into her cubical, invading her professional space and making her dizzy with his too-large presence. As if he understood his effect on her, he glanced at her and smiled, then took a pen from her desk and began writing something on her memo pad. This close, the sheer weight of him became his most obvious and overwhelming attribute.
Yasmine had always found some irresistible lure in the size and weight of men. Their solidity. Their strength. It was the quality she was trying to convey in the male character for the Sexcapade project, but so far her on-screen guy still looked kind of flat and boring.
It was a quality that was never more apparent than when a guy was naked against her, moving inside her, all that force and heft and power barely restrained—and hard to duplicate on a computer screen.
And if she kept up this line of thinking, she’d definitely end up doing something she would later regret. Like invite Kyle to be her own personal muse for the night.
When he finished writing, he handed her the paper with directions to his house on it as Yasmine discreetly tried to wipe away the film of perspiration that had formed on her upper lip.
“I might need to be a little later than six,” she said, doing a mental calculation of how long it would take her to navigate rush-hour traffic, go home and transform herself from office-boring to going-out fabulous, then drive to his house. “Maybe more like seven.”
He shrugged. “Sounds good.”
A sense of déjà vu struck Yasmine. Something about him seemed to resonate with her. Maybe in another time, another place, they’d passed on the street. Or maybe in another lifetime….
Perhaps that was the explanation for her insane attraction to him. In a past life, they’d been a couple of enamored yaks in the mountains of Nepal, doing what yaks did best. She winced at the image.
“I’ll see you later, then,” she said, smiling. As if she’d be able to do much else.
This was the moment when he should have vacated her cubical, but instead he lingered a little too long. Her senses went on alert, and the tingly feeling in her nether regions returned with a vengeance. Then he smiled, nodded and he was gone.
She was pathetic. Her life had gotten so dull, even obvious guys like Kyle Kramer could get her hot.
She had to do something about this attraction so she could get back to work. Maybe he’d turn out to be an airhead, or a toad, or a guy who ate with his mouth open. And if not, if he was as perfect as he looked…
She knew the deal. In that case, what she needed was a little excitement, and a whole lot of sexual satisfaction. Then maybe she could shake all this misguided lust.
Or something like that.
She turned back to her computer, but out of the corner of her eye, she could see someone approaching. She glanced over and spotted Drew Everton stopping in her cubicle entrance, which was suddenly the place to see and be seen, apparently.
Drew, clad in a Santa hat, had been at Virtual Active for at least as long as Yasmine had, but unlike her, he’d taken some initiative. He’d moved from programmer to team leader to project manager, and while everyone liked to point out that Yasmine had the talent to do the same, she just didn’t feel the drive. He was a hard worker and a nice guy.
“What’s up?”
“Did I overhear you making a date with that Kyle guy for the holiday party?”
“What? Do you have my desk bugged or something?” Yasmine was conscious now that any number of her co-workers had probably witnessed her conversation with Kyle.
“No, I was in the next aisle. I couldn’t help but hear.”
“You and who else?”
“It’s not a crime to date a co-worker, you know.”
“I just don’t want everyone looking at me and whispering,” Yasmine said. She’d endured that as a teenager and vowed she’d never be the subject of any controversy big or small, again. It wasn’t the easiest vow to live with.
“Yeah, well, I can understand that. I’ll keep my lips sealed about the subject, if that helps.”
“Thanks, but I guess there’s no point. People will see me with Kyle at the party, regardless. But really, I’m only going so he won’t be the lone new guy.”
Drew flashed a doubtful look at her. “Speaking of dates, I’ve got one of my own for the party, and I was hoping maybe you could chat her up a little, give me your opinion on her.”
“Of course I will. Where’d you meet her?” Yasmine said, then tried hard to suppress a yawn. She’d been awakened last night by a heavy-breathing phone call that she’d quickly hung up on, but the bastard had called back again and again until she’d finally had to disconnect the phone.
He sighed. “Online dating service—and you know how all the previous matches have worked out.”
“Maybe this one will be better,” Yasmine said without sounding very convincing.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You know, I’ve got a friend I think would be perfect for you. She broke up with her last boyfriend recently, and I think she’s past the rebound phase now….”
“Is she hot?”
“She’s very hot. But, more important, she’s a good person.”
He shrugged. “Okay, so hook me up.”
“I’ll work on it, but in the meantime, I’ll definitely scope out the dating service girl for you Friday night.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you there,” he said, then wandered off.
Yasmine turned her attention back to the nightmare of a software patch she’d been working on all afternoon, but her brain had given up. This was nothing that couldn’t wait until tomorrow, or the next day, or the next week.
At the thought of the long, empty Christmas holiday coming up, her chest developed a dull ache. Her traitorous parents would be taking off for their annual trip to Paris, right in the middle of the holidays, leaving her orphaned at the one and only time of year she’d prefer not to be. They’d been going to Paris for Christmas ever since she was a little girl, but lately, tagging along had lost its appeal, and just once she’d like them to be more interested in spending the holiday with her than with their favorite city in Europe.
All her friends would be spending time with their families, and she’d be sitting home alone, watching Christmas specials on TV and feeling sorry for herself. Some friends had invited her to their holiday gatherings, but she’d politely refused, not wanting to crash their family traditions.
So here she was, a few days before the Christmas weekend, with her only holiday plans being the annual office party, and her only sure companionship a guy she’d just met—a guy she was entertaining using for sexual inspiration.
How sad was that? Yasmine hated how alone she’d felt lately. Alone and strangely vulnerable. She suspected the feelings had started with the odd phone calls she’d occasionally been getting late at night. Sometimes silence, sometimes heavy breathing, sometimes even moans that sounded disturbingly like a guy coming on the other end of the line.
She’d reported the calls to the phone company, but they’d said there was nothing they could do unless she wanted to change her number. She’d opted for waiting to see if the calls stopped. So far, no luck.
They did make her more worried about the sense she sometimes got that she was being watched. But really, that feeling had been with her ever since her teen years, after she’d learned she was the object of an FBI investigation. Probably she was just being paranoid for no good reason.
Whatever the source of Yasmine’s discontent, she was pretty damn sure Kyle could be a fun distraction.


SOON, IF HE WAS LUCKY, he’d find out the truth about Yasmine Talbot.
Alex DiCarlo, otherwise known as Kyle Kramer for the extent of his employment at Virtual Active, watched Yasmine from across the room. She stood up from her desk and walked down the aisle between two rows of cubicles, then disappeared out of the office. She was even prettier up close than she was from afar, and so much more a woman now than she’d been the first time he’d laid eyes on her over ten years ago.
Her long black hair hung nearly to her waist, glossy and straight. Her huge, baby-doll brown eyes belied the fact that she was a wild child, a woman who’d once spent a year in a youth correctional facility, while her skin, pale café au lait thanks to her Indian mother and her English father, was unbelievably flawless.
And she had a way of wearing tight clothes that could plant dirty thoughts in the head of a priest. Today, her black pants and stretchy red sweater had nearly made Alex forget the real reason he was watching her—not purely for her aesthetic appeal.
But there had always been that conflict inside him where Yasmine was concerned. The desire to see justice served versus the sexual desire she stirred in him. Years ago she’d been utterly forbidden, an underage teen and the subject of his investigation. He never would have acted on his attraction, never would have even admitted it existed—not even to himself. Now, though, she was a grown woman, and the temptation was much greater.
She didn’t know he’d been watching her every move for the past two weeks—couldn’t know—or that he knew all the details of her criminal past.
Most important, she couldn’t find out his real identity. So far Yasmine hadn’t shown any sign of recognizing him. Unless she’d illegally accessed employment files that showed his FBI photo, she hadn’t laid eyes on him in nine years. Not since he’d testified against her in the trial that had sent her away to juvenile prison.
He’d gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to get close to Yasmine now—using old contacts to obtain a fake ID, fake job references, and he’d brushed up his slightly creaky programming skills.
He’d also changed his appearance to ensure she wouldn’t recognize him. Six months of growing his hair had left him looking less like the FBI agent he no longer was and more like the obsessed surfer he was fast becoming. The tan he’d acquired from countless days on his surfboard added to the look, and the many hours he’d spent at the gym working out his career frustrations on the weight machines had taken his body from thin but fit to admirably bulky.
A pair of colored contact lenses had completed his transformation from clean-cut FBI agent Alex DiCarlo to California surfer Kyle Kramer.
Now all he had to do was get close enough to Yasmine to answer once and for all the question of whether or not she was still a hacker. But if he got close enough to find that out, would he then be too close to resist asking for more from her? She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and the most intriguing.
But he couldn’t let that temptation deter him. He had to know the truth.
Then he’d be able to get the hell away from this tedious programming job and get on with what was left of his normal life. He may not have his career in the FBI to go back to, but he did have a fledgling information security business that he would never be able to get off the ground until he put this obsession with Yasmine’s case behind him.
In the past two weeks he’d cultivated his programmer persona while settling into the new office, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, and so far he’d been a success. With the technical skills he’d acquired while working to stop cybercriminals at the FBI’s San Francisco field office, he blended right into the offices of Virtual Active, Inc.
But he wasn’t sure how much more of this charade he could take. He hated lying to people, hated pretending to be someone he wasn’t. He didn’t want to be in this place deceiving an office full of basically decent people, even if it was for a good cause. He needed to get an in with Yasmine sooner rather than later.
Alex had to know the real reason he’d lost his FBI career, had to know if Yasmine had been involved, had to know if he’d caused his own downfall or if someone else had helped him out of his job.
His former partner, Ty Connelly, had been insistent that Yasmine was a major suspect in their investigation, and it only occurred to Alex recently to wonder about Ty’s motives. Why had he been so adamant in the face of so little evidence?
Alex made a mental note to give Ty a call and meet him for drinks, where he could maybe pry some details about the investigation out of him. But he doubted it would uncover anything new. Ty was a good agent, a man Alex could trust.
Probably more so than he could trust his own judgment where Yasmine was concerned. That was his most compelling reason for pursuing the investigation on his own—he had to prove to himself that he could get to the truth. If he didn’t, he would live with the doubts about his own competence for the rest of his life. He’d have to live with his own failure, and that was not acceptable.
Forcing his thoughts back to the task at hand, he skimmed the new e-mail messages in his in-box and was about to call it quits for the day when he heard someone clearing his throat behind him. He turned to see Drew Everton, still wearing the goofy Santa hat he’d been wearing all day, pulling his rolling desk chair across the aisle to park in Alex’s cubicle.
“Hey man, congrats.”
“About what?”
“Bagging a date with Yasmine. It’s about time somebody besides Larry Harris got the nerve to ask her out.”
Alex shrugged. “Thanks,” he said, playing along.
And also hoping he could use this opportunity to acquire a bit of information. He’d gotten kind of buddy-buddy with Drew during the short time he’d been at Virtual Active, but he’d yet to broach the subject of Yasmine because there’d never been an unobtrusive time to do so.
“So what can you tell me about her?” he asked, trying to sound casual.
“What’s to tell? She’s hot, she’s intelligent, she’s a programming genius.”
“Is she that girl I remember seeing on the news way back when? The convicted hacker?”
Drew nodded. “One and the same.”
“You think she’s still into that stuff?”
“No way. I talked to her once about her trial and everything. She said she was finished with hacking, that she was afraid she was being watched all the time and couldn’t imagine breaking the law again.”
“You believe her?”
“Why wouldn’t I? She’d be crazy to risk going back to jail,” Drew said.
“Some hackers just can’t give it up.”
“I’d be surprised if she was that type. I think she was just a kid who got in way over her head, and she learned her lesson.”
Maybe Drew was right. There was a part of Alex that wanted to believe that of her, wanted to stop the investigation now. But the bigger part of him wouldn’t. If he could gain Yasmine’s trust, he’d be able to work the truth out of her…or her computer hard drive.
Sure, he might have been able to gain the same information by breaking into her apartment, but he’d never have gotten access to Yasmine herself that way.
“Well,” Alex said, fairly sure Drew didn’t know anything. “I think I’m heading out of here. See you tomorrow, man.”
“Sure, see you.” Drew started humming jingle bells as he wheeled his chair back to his own cubicle.
Alex straightened the papers on his desk, powered down his computer, then stood and pushed in his chair. This damn cubicle was a reminder of everything he’d lost, and how he had nothing left to lose.
If he had nothing left to lose, then screw it. He’d do whatever it took to find out the truth about Yasmine.