Dana Matthews stared out the car window at the passing English countryside and tried to tamp down her resentment over this assignment. Okay, perhaps it wasn't resentment. It was more frustration than anything else.
Since her research scientist position in the United States had been eliminated, she'd been dancing on a taut wire--taking the same job within a different branch of the company, transferring to a new country, leaving behind her husband. Ex-husband now, she reminded herself. He'd been set to join her until she'd discovered a few months abstinence had been too much for him. He'd screwed their next door neighbour, Miss skeezy pants--Miss I'm-twenty-two-and-you're-not skeezy pants--and tried to claim it was a mid-life crisis.
"You okay, Dana?"
Dana glanced over at the brown-haired man beside her and nodded. Jason Kerzi and the other passenger of the car, Christopher Brown, were part of her problem. Also research scientists, but working different projects, the two were headed to London to meet with the Powers-That-Be and explain the findings on their latest work...something about frog DNA and a cancer gene. She hadn't worked on their experiments so other than witnessing excited whispers from the other side of the lab while they ran computer models, she didn't pretend to know what they'd discovered.
Their work had little bearing on her own experiments. Which made her question her presence on this trip.
There was no doubt in her mind, she'd been sent to chaperone the dynamic duo while they met with the big wigs who were flying over from the Former British Territories AKA the United States. It galled her. Why should she play mother-hen to the boys? Thirty-seven wasn't old, damn it. Certainly not eighty. Surely the twenty-somethings could keep themselves in line for a few days.
This assignment put her last frayed nerve on edge. Not because the meeting would suck up her weekend. Not even because she had to chaperone. She took a deep breath and inhaled the intoxicating scents of her companions' colognes.
Her tension stemmed from the fact that she found both men unsettlingly attractive. Attractive? That was an understatement. She wanted them both with a lust befitting a nubile co-ed. And she'd done her best to hide it for the last eight months. That didn't stop her from alternately fantasising about one or the other of them in her bed each night.
She sighed, hoping neither of them caught her mooning over them this weekend. How embarrassing would that be? Hopefully, they'd get to their hotel and she could closet herself in her room until morning. After several hours closed in this car with them, she could use a break from their magnetism.
Maybe she was going through some sort of mid-life crisis. She stifled a snort. She'd always told her husband she'd trade him in for two half his age. At twenty-seven each, Christopher and Jason almost qualified.
Christopher turned in his seat to look back at her, the late-afternoon sun catching his golden-blond hair. "Are you sure you're not feeling a bit off? We should be there soon and you can nick a bit of sleep before tonight."
She raised her eyebrows. "Tonight?" she repeated slowly, looking between the two of them.
Jason's blue eyes sparkled with mischief. "Yes, we've been talking--"
"Plotting, you mean," she interrupted.
He laughed and her pussy immediately clenched. Her fingers fisted on the seat beside her. Please, God, don't let them be able to smell how aroused I am. Aroused? Pathetic. What would they think if they knew their co-worker, a woman ten years older, wanted to fuck them? They'd probably be horrified...especially when they discovered she harboured thoughts of having both of them at once.
Jason patted her hand, sending a tremor to her core. "You've never visited London except for a brief trip from Heathrow. We want to show you the sights."
"I don't think so," she replied, her voice a bit shaky. "It's been a long day. You two go party--or whatever you've got planned--and I'll hang out in my room."
The men exchanged a glance, then each resumed a face-forward position. She suddenly suspected there had been a plethora of silent communication in their small exchange. Great. Now she was paranoid, too? She took a deep breath and tried to remember she was a respected scientist in her field. This lack of self confidence wasn't necessary. END EXCERPT
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