"It's time to switch," she said. "Let me see if I can do a better job than you."

He stared at her, but not with the raw want she expected. There was desire, but also mature concern, as if she'd just propositioned her high school track coach.

"This gives you pause," she said.

He shook his head. "I can't let you do that. I promised you from the start that we wouldn't have s.e.x. If you make me come, I may have to break my promise. I'll make you come again. Let me tell you what I'm going to do."

He leaned down and whispered the dirtiest thing she'd ever heard in her life, then continued to detail where he would put his tongue. She watched Erin and the others sitting on the wall, talking together, oblivious, while Quentin turned her nipples hard and sparked a pulse between her legs just by whispering in her ear.

She said, "We'll see."

She came in so late from the office that he was already in bed. Disrobing, she slid into the luxurious sheets beside him. She curled up against him, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to his back, her mound to his b.u.t.tocks, and her arm around his warm chest.

And couldn't sleep. He was comatose and he still made her want him just by existing, naked. Her center burned so brightly that when she finally drifted off and awoke seemingly moments later in the empty bed in the sunlit room, she was sore. She wondered if he'd touched her in the night.

While she listened to his shower hiss, she brushed her hair, then pulled on a pair of see-through white lace panties and Quentin's long-sleeved white shirt from the closet. She still wore the emerald necklace.

The shower shut off. She balled up the sheets in both fists in antic.i.p.ation. Then, remembering Erin's interruption the morning before, she dashed across the room and locked the bedroom door. She skidded back onto the bed just as he came out of the bathroom.

Wearing a towel around his waist.

Before she could inquire about this newfound and, in her opinion, extremely unfortunate modesty, he stopped by the dresser and told her, "No. I knew you'd do this. I already said no to this. I'll make you again."

"It's Quentin two, Sarah zero," she complained.

"Or the other way around."

"Either way, I want to even the score." She went to him and led him by the hand to the bed, settling him beside her against the headboard. "If you were my boyfriend, you'd want this."

He laughed. "If you were like most of the girlfriends I've had, I'd be begging you to, and you'd say no."

"I'm not your girlfriend."

"I wish you were." He touched his callused thumb softly to her lips. He tucked her hair behind one ear, then behind the other, in the sweetest gesture, as if he really cared about her.

She grabbed his hand and wailed, "I can't believe I'm sitting half-naked on this bed, trying to convince a man to let me give him a hand job!"

He opened the shirt she wore and peered inside at her breast as if examining an engine before purchasing a truck. He closed the shirt again. "Me, neither. But I've told you. Do that to me, and I'm not going to be able to stop myself. And we decided that's not a good idea. Because of Erin."

His mention of Erin should have stopped Sarah cold. He was reminding her that though Sarah might be a fun plaything to toy with for a while, it was Erin he loved. But Sarah had crossed over to a place where she wanted to be Quentin's plaything. She couldn't imagine getting through the rest of this day without taking action. What drove her was mostly l.u.s.t, but part revenge for Quentin seeing her vulnerable in the shower the morning before, and that night in the chair. And part selfless joy at giving pleasure to her handsome friend.

She said lightly, "I thought you liked games."

"This isn't a game. It may have started out that way, but . . . "

"That's the problem." She slapped away his hands so she could open the towel around his waist. "We'll make it back into a game. I don't have a lot of experience." This was the truth, but she hoped he'd think she was being coy. "You can help me with my technique. Tell me how I'm doing on a scale of one to ten, with one being painful and ten being about to come."

Before he could protest again, she put both hands around his swollen c.o.c.k.

He gasped, and swore, and swore again. "Sarah."

She used her hands like she wanted to use her center. She slicked her thumb across the fluid at his tip, then gripped him and slid up and down his length. After several minutes of silence but for his breathing, she stopped and looked at his face.

His dark green eyes watched her with a combination of disbelief and horror, which almost made her laugh. But he didn't argue anymore.

She said, "Number, please."

"Ten," he said.

There were several more minutes of silence as she playfully circled the swollen head of his c.o.c.k with her thumb. She said, "Number every few seconds, please, so I can perfect my technique."

"Ten," he said.

She stroked slowly down one side. Then said softly to remind him, "Quentin."

"Ten," he said.

She stroked slowly up the other side.

"Ten," he said.

"It can't be ten all the time," she scolded him. She slid one hand across his chest, over his heart, to enjoy the rapid rhythm. She gripped him harder with the other hand and stroked more quickly.

"Ah." He laughed. "Eleven." Then, "Ouch, three." Then, "Eleven. Sarah, please don't make me."

His heart raced, and she was as aroused as if he were the one pleasuring her. She leaned over him, her lips brushing his lips. "t.i.t for tat," she said, and pumped him hard again.

His hands were in her hair, pulling her, pressing her mouth to his mouth so forcefully that she was frightened, fleetingly. She took back control by stopping.

He broke away from her to say in agony, "Sarah!"

She gave him what he needed, as he had given it to her. She didn't stop again until his come covered her belly and his grip on her hair slowly relaxed.

He watched his beautiful pink-haired girl slide her hands off his still-erect c.o.c.k and kiss her way down in that direction, then slowly back up his stomach toward his face, the emerald necklace sliding cold across his skin and making him flinch. All he could think was, Oh no.

She kissed his neck, his chin, his mouth, and looked into his eyes with her big, dark eyes. "Did I do it right?" she asked, disappointed.

He nodded slowly.

"I guess I've never seen you speechless before. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?"

He shook his head, because that's all he could manage.

She sat back on her heels. Her shirt-that is, his shirt-fell open to expose tempting white lace panties, flat belly, beautiful b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "This is not the response I was expecting," she said, annoyed now. "I expected unmitigated jubilance."

He began, "What does that mean, unmit-"

Clearly disgusted, she disappeared into the bathroom. He heard the water running briefly, and she returned naked. "Is there a gym somewhere in this house?" she asked without looking at him as she rummaged in the dresser drawer he'd cleared out for her.

"Yeah," he said. "There's a bowling alley, too."

She turned around to look at him as she pulled a sports bra over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Really? Where?"

"Not sure."

She stamped her bare foot impatiently. "Well, where's the gym?"

"On the main floor, down the hall, to the right."

She put on her tank top and shorts before she left, but she took her socks and running shoes with her, bundled together with her music player and earbuds, as if she couldn't stand to stay in the room with him any longer.

The door clicked shut behind her. He stared at it, feeling numb, thinking, Oh no, oh no.

Finally he stumbled downstairs. He cooked breakfast for the Timberlanes and called their butler to come get it. He cooked breakfast for Martin and Owen and left it on the counter because they were already in the studio. The band should have plenty of time to finish the alb.u.m by the afternoon, hours ahead of the midnight deadline that would cause them to break the contract with the record company. But Martin was paranoid and Owen was a dumba.s.s, so they were getting an early start. Because of the time of day, Martin must be profoundly high right now. Quentin was glad Owen was down there rather than him.

Except that he had to do his best to pretend that everything was okay when Erin came in and sat at the bar for breakfast. And when Sarah eventually appeared from her run, wet tank top hugging her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and sat beside Erin.

Munching bacon, Erin laughed uneasily. "Sarah, what did you do to Q this morning? He acts like a zombie."

"I know," Sarah said. "I've never seen a man act so grumpy after a hand job."

His grip slipped. Before he could catch it, an entire carton of eggs dashed onto the floor.

"I wouldn't press it, Sarah," Erin said evenly. "He's about to crack."

As he wiped up the puddle of yolk, Quentin stared at Sarah, because it was better than staring at Erin. But Sarah, ignoring him now, inhaled pancakes like it was her last meal. He had to keep cooking for her. Some exertion had made her ravenous. Running five miles on the treadmill. Or jerking him off. Or making him fall in love with her.

Finally she dabbed at her pink mouth with her napkin and slid off the stool. "Thanks for breakfast, Quentin. I want to make sure you know I appreciate what you do for me." She galloped up the stairs to his room.

Erin was giving him a long, long, long look.

He cleaned up the kitchen automatically, then sat on the sectional. Erin lay on the opposite side with her eyes closed, practicing fingerings on her fiddle. It was a matter of time before she asked him a pointed question, and he wasn't sure he could bluff her into believing that nothing serious had happened between him and Sarah. She knew him a little too well.

If only his Leia hadn't clopped onto the patio ten days ago with the intimidating presence of a seven-foot-tall Wookiee. If only he hadn't brought her down here to spy on them with all his public relations engineering.

What she'd said to him the day she convinced him to drive was dead-on. He played his friends like chess pieces, and he knew it. The solution, she'd said, was to develop relationships outside the band. Well, she was his solution. But he'd put his own solution out of reach by writing Rule Three.

Suppressing the insistent Oh no, oh no in his head, he tried to work out a logical plan of action. The others would know when he left the tour to make a booty call in New York. He had to tell them. And leave the band.

He couldn't ask Sarah to quit her job, because her job was part of what made her alive. He suspected that his job did the same for him. He knew the band made him happy, kept him buoyant, got him through the day.

It did the same for Martin, and he couldn't abandon Martin. In his current state, without the band, Martin would do himself in.

Quentin wouldn't. If he didn't have the band, he could beg the medical school to let him in two years after he'd been admitted. In fact, since Thailand, the need to return to his medical career had been gnawing at him.

But he knew that without the band to distract him, he let the sick kids he treated at work and his own health problems and the specter of death get him down. He brooded, and as Owen and Martin had pointed out to him countless times in college, before they started the band, he was difficult to be around. Like now. If he got stuck like this, Sarah wouldn't want him anyway, and he would have given up the band for nothing.

So even if he found a solution to Martin's problem, there was no solution to his own.

He was thirty years old. If he lived to be a hundred-which he rather doubted, after Thailand-he would pine every day for the beautiful pink-haired girl. He was a character in a sad country song. Oh no.

With an exasperated sigh at himself, he looked up for the first time and noticed that the TV was tuned to the World Poker Tournament. He told Erin, "Sarah's here. Turn it to NASCAR."

"I'm watching this." Erin sat up with her fiddle in her lap. "h.e.l.l's Belle is racking up. She claims this is her first time playing poker, and she just wandered into the tournament. But she's putting all the men to shame. Except that she has a Southern accent, this chick could be Sarah's mother, right down to raising one eyebrow."

Quentin said, "That is Sarah's mother."

12.

I honestly can't say. It's been so long since I had a s.e.xual encounter of ANY KIND WHATSOEVER. Theoretically, no, Daniel wouldn't be silent afterward, because he's sweet-talking me, angling for a victory lap. He's all, "Don't think I'm done with you, dirty girl." Ah, to hear those sweet words again. But I digress. Maybe Quentin wanted to horse around with you, then go back to Erin. He warned you not to push him over the edge. You pushed him anyway. He's acting funny because now he wants you instead of Erin, and he doesn't know what to do.

Wendy Mann Senior Consultant Stargazer Public Relations Sarah was on step ninety-nine of her hundred-step beauty routine when Quentin called to her. If it had been anyone else, she would have applied her red lipstick before responding. But Quentin had never yelled her name before.

Alarmed, she descended the stairs in a controlled fall. Quentin and Erin lounged on the sofas, eyes glued to the TV.

"Where's my alb.u.m?" Sarah exclaimed. "The courier will be here at noon."

Quentin gestured to the television. Sarah walked around the sectional so she could see the World Poker Tournament. Her mother sat at the poker table, looking very pretty in her gray suit, wearing earrings Sarah had given her, gazing at her cards. The announcer explained that Tennessee Frank was currently the chip leader, with the amateur Ethel Seville, a.k.a. h.e.l.l's Belle, now a close second. h.e.l.l's Belle shook her head at this hand and threw away her cards. Rising, she excused herself to the men, who all half stood politely as she left the table.

Sarah pulled out her cell phone. Punching her mother's number, she rolled over the back of the sofa and plopped down beside Quentin, who didn't take his eyes from the TV.

Her mother had been making her way through the crowd behind the poker table, but now she stopped and felt in her bag for her phone. "Sweetie, what a delightful surprise!"

"How's Branson, Missouri?" Sarah asked.

Her mother looked around the casino. "An absolute circus."

"Mom," Sarah said, "I'm watching you on TV."

"Oh." Sarah's mother touched her hair, then gave a small wave to the wrong camera. "Sweetie, I was headed to Branson. I was standing in the Birmingham airport with my ticket. But Branson is such small potatoes. I had been there and done that, as you say. I'm a Diamond Life Master, I need forty-four hundred more points to make Grand Life Master, and I may never make it in my lifetime if I keep drawing partners like that-What was that unfortunate woman's name?"

"Beulah."

"Yes, Beulah," her mother repeated, the name dripping with derision. "So, as I was standing in the airport a few mornings ago, I decided I'd trade in my ticket and try my hand at Vegas."

"You seem to be doing okay," Sarah said. "Did you know they call you h.e.l.l's Belle?"