Fuzzy Logic

  Fuzzy Logic

  Erin Mccarthy

  Bad boys are on the menu is this delightfully decadent trio of stories that includes Erin McCarthy's Fuzzy Logic, in which shopaholic Ashley Andrews discovers a new side to her scientist neighbor when her package containing romance-enhancing products is accidentally delivered to him.

  Erin McCarthy

  Fuzzy Logic

  A book in the Bad Boys Anthologies series, 2005

  One

  Lucas Manning was absolutely certain he hadn't ordered a box of neon pink dildos.

  Yet there they were, packed four across, three deep in plastic bags, a faint rubbery smell rising from them. They were very bright. With sparkles.

  "Holy crap."

  Lucas closed the box back up to find the packing label. He hadn't actually looked to see who it was addressed to. The package had been sitting on the front porch outside his door and he'd brought it in the house with the rest of his mail.

  He sure in the hell wished he'd looked first.

  Or hadn't looked at all.

  The box was addressed to Ashley Andrews, who lived in the upstairs apartment of his house. Ashley, his best friend Jason's older sister, who Lucas had secretly been lusting after for, oh, about the last decade.

  And she had bought a case of dildos.

  Lucas opened the box again and was sorry he had. They were so goddamn pink. And there were so many of them. What did one woman need all these for?

  Since Lucas was a chemist and schooled in logic, he was convinced there must be a logical explanation for this. He just had to figure out what it was. Leaving the box on his kitchen table, he went to the refrigerator for a beer.

  He needed it to think.

  So maybe Ashley had got up an order together with her friends so they could receive a group discount. That was kind of uninhibited, but plausible.

  Maybe they were all for her, so one was always in easy reach. Lucas took a sip of his beer, swished it around his mouth. One for her bedroom, one for the living room, one for her purse… He stuck the cold bottle to his head. He was sweating.

  One for the shower-damn, there was an image. Ashley, her wet blond hair clinging to her breasts, water sluicing down her fair skin, rocking onto a neon pink… He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

  One for the kitchen? No, he just couldn't picture a sex toy alongside the spatulas. So that was only four. Which left eight unaccounted for. He tried to imagine other uses for them, but drew a blank. These were no cat toys.

  Maybe she had ordered them online and had changed her order from one to two. Only when she had added the two, the one hadn't been removed and it had shown up as twelve. He could live with her buying two. Twelve was alarming.

  Of course, Ashley's really good friend, Kindra, was getting married soon. Maybe these were gag gifts for the bachelorette party. That sounded reasonable. And Ashley liked to throw really fun parties.

  Not that he’d ever been invited to any of them.

  Ashley still thought of him as her little brother's geeky friend, Lucas.

  Which, he supposed, was true.

  But that didn't stop him from having a killer crush on her. She was so vibrant, so energetic, so enthusiastic that he got pleasure just from being near her.

  But not twelve dildos' worth of pleasure.

  Lucas set his beer bottle down with a hard slap. He picked up the box, grimacing.

  Heading out onto the porch he took the two steps to Ashley's front door.

  As he rang the bell he wondered if he should tape the box back up and plead ignorance.

  Nah.

  He'd never sleep again if he didn't hear the explanation for the package of pleasure addressed to her.

  Ashley was a little astonished at what she'd do for money.

  But she had gotten herself backed into a corner with her spending habits, and while her girlfriends were buying houses and taking nice vacations, Ashley had a closet full of expensive clothes and an empty checking account. Not to mention those credit card bills, which had crept from "Hmm, that's kind of high" to "Yikes!" level. Third World countries had less debt than she did.

  It was time to get her finances back in the black.

  The doorbell rang as she shifted the tickle-whip on her dining room table. Damn, she hoped no one was early for her debut as a Pleasure Party consultant. She didn't even have the lotions set out yet and the wine was still chilling.

  The purple whip was clashing with the leopard print furry handcuffs. Grabbing it, she went to the door and threw it open, a smile pasted on her face.

  Lucas was standing there holding a cardboard box. Her smile fell off her face and she sagged in relief. It was just Lucas, her little brother's friend, and her neighbor for the last two years. Fortunately, she had known Lucas since he had been in diapers and they had a deep affection for each other, like brothers and sisters.

  Which meant she could rudely blow him off and it wouldn't matter.

  "Oh, hey, Lucas, what's up?"

  He shifted the box. "This was by my door, but it's yours. I opened it already thinking it was for me."

  "That's okay." She grabbed the box from him and stuck it under her arm. "Thanks." She had every intention of slamming the door in his face, but he stepped forward.

  "Ash?"

  "Yeah?" She tossed her head, trying to get the hair out of her eyes without dropping the box or the tickle-whip.

  Lucas had that look on his face, that serious, studying gaze that meant he was thinking hard. Sometimes she thought he looked cute when he was like that, sort of like a puppy dog sniffing out a bone. But it also reminded her that Lucas had more brainpower in one lobe than she had in her entire skull, and he always needed to understand everything. A curiosity that she just didn't have.

  Not that they were kids anymore, and he wasn't following her around asking why, why, why, Ashley, but she had a party to put on and didn't have time for his theories on how they could improve energy efficiency in the house.

  "Why are there twelve dildos in that box?"

  Since she had expected something uber-intelligent to come out of his mouth, she just blinked for a second. Then shoved the whip in his hand so she could open the package. "Oh, they got here!"

  Running her finger over the plastic bags, she said, "Cool! I didn't think they'd be here in time, which would have been a bummer. 'Pinky' is a top seller."

  She was hoping to move at least three of these suckers tonight alone. It was possible, since she had over thirty people attending her open house to browse the Pleasure Party line of products, all designed to enhance your love life.

  Trying to visualize where she could display one of them for her customers to see and touch and turn on, she moved to go back into her apartment, taking the steps to the second floor two at a time. Lucas was following her, she realized distractedly.

  "Umm, Ashley…"

  "What!" She dropped the box on the living room floor and surveyed her work so far. Using both her dining room and her living room, she had three tables lined up with products, from the handcuffs and a blindfold, to the full line of vibrators and toys. One table was empty, waiting for her to display the lotions and other edible products. She had interwoven strands of white Christmas lights among the products and used tulle and ribbons to dress displays up. It looked pretty darn good.

  "You forgot this…" Lucas was waving the tickle-whip back and forth in the air, his caramel brown hair falling in his eyes the way it always did. He was wearing a white shirt and a blue striped tie with his khaki pants, looking like a J. Crew ad with his earnest look. All he needed was a blue blazer and the words Feel or something equally ridiculous slapped across his chest and he could be a teen model.

  Of course, he wasn't really a teenager anymore.
And when had he gotten those muscles in his forearms? Unnerved, Ashley frowned. What did she care if Lucas had started working out?

  "You forgot this… what is this?"

  Lucas knew what pi was and the theory of relativity, but she knew clothes and sex toys. Every woman needed a claim to fame.

  "It's a tickle-whip. The feather end you use to, well, tickle." She grinned as his brown eyes enlarged. "And the other end you use to whip your partner without any risk of actual injury. Fun stuff, huh?" Not that she'd ever actually used one, but he didn't need to know that. It was just amusing to shock Lucas, who she suspected spent too much time at his computer.

  Only he didn't look shocked.

  "Really? Interesting." The whip end cracked into the palm of his hand. "Just enough sting, huh?"

  Ashley jumped involuntarily. My God, was that lust in Lucas's eyes? Of course it wasn't. He was just interested, seeking all the answers, the way he always did. Next he'd be asking her the best way to use it for maximizing pleasure. Not because he wanted to use it, but because he wanted to know how everything worked. Pick it apart. Figure it out. Like the microwave he'd destroyed at age twelve.

  "So, is there a reason your whole apartment is filled with sex toys? Or are you just entering a fun phase in your life?" He had the feather end under his chin now, rolling it back and forth so the purple plumes rose around him. He looked ridiculous.

  And cute.

  Damn it. Why was she thinking that? Flustered, Ashley ran her hand through her hair. "Put that down somewhere and help me unpack these lotions." If he was going to hang around, the least he could do was make himself useful. "And for your information, I'm trying to make some extra money so I'm selling romance enhancing products. I'm having an open house in an hour."

  "Oh."

  She could practically hear the wheels churning in his head at high speed.

  "Have you personally tried all these products?"

  The Pleasure Party company had seventy-three products in the line, two-thirds of them scattered around her apartment right now. Was he freaking serious? How much free time did he think she had?

  "No." She was just going to leave it at that. If she volunteered any information, he'd be asking her which ones she'd tried and why.

  "I wouldn't want to sell something I hadn't tried myself." Lucas had been studying a bottle of edible massage lotion. He opened it, squirted some on the back of his hand and licked it. "Huh. Chocolate." His nose screwed up. "But somehow licking it off my own hand just doesn't do anything for me."

  And before she could even protest, call him an idiot, or collect the twelve bucks retail that bottle cost, he reached out, snatched her arm and slathered chocolate lotion all over her.

  But even stranger than that, was the sudden hot kick of interest from her inner thighs. Which was horrifying. She should be ashamed of herself.

  Lucas was a baby.

  Well, not that young exactly, since he was her brother Jason's age, and she was pretty sure Jason had turned twenty-five last December, but still. She was twenty-eight, damn near twenty-nine, she reminded herself firmly as his head bent over her.

  Besides, she had never really thought of Lucas in a sexual way. He was too serious, too smart; he was above all those base physical urges.

  He licked her arm.

  Or not.

  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 un
screwed 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?"