Adore Me by Darcy Lundeen Read Free Book Online Page A

from the feel of her hand sliding a heart, with deliberate slowness, against his hip. Then she went back to his throat and bent over him, smiling with satisfaction at the way his pulse throbbed erratically under her mouth when she put her tongue there to devour one of the hearts.
    “Hey, what are you doing now?”
    Meredith giggled. “Eating my words,” she said and tongued up a heart that was on his shoulder. “Grape-flavored. Mmm, good.”
    Vlad squirmed as she moved lower, tongue-gathering hearts from one nipple, then the other, then his waist.
    “God, you’re making me crazy. You know that?”
    “Poor baby,” she mumbled as her tongue sucked up a heart nestling just below his navel.
    He groaned and grasped her arm. “Okay, that’s it. My turn now. Come here.”
    He pulled her against him, crushing the remaining hearts between their bodies as he rolled them both over, legs entangled, hips snuggled tightly together, until he was on top. Then he bent to suck at her nipple, and she bucked against him in reaction.
    “Ready for another?” he whispered as he switched breasts.
    Meredith sighed. Was she ready? God, yes. With this man, she was always ready.
    “Oh, yes,” she murmured, opening her legs in invitation.
    For a moment, he rolled away to get a condom, then he was back, and she reached between them for his penis. It filled her hand, already swollen and eager to release itself inside of her.
    He stroked slowly at first, then faster, higher, more urgently, smiling into her face as she met his thrusts, her body writhing, then tensing, then shuddering with a final joyful spasm. A few seconds later, his spasming release joined hers, and with a satisfied groan he lowered himself carefully beside her, tenderly pulling her into his arms.
    Cuddling against him, Meredith closed her eyes, her mind emptied of everything, except sheer sensation. And it was good. So good. Luxuriating in the temporary freedom of being able to forget about work and bills…about getting customers, pleasing customers, keeping customers…even about finding enough “Adore Me” candy hearts to satisfy a customer she desperately needed.
    There’d be time for those things tomorrow.
    ****
    “Oh, jeez.”
    Meredith looked up from her computer as Dana entered her office. She didn’t like the sound of that “Oh jeez,” even though it probably just meant Dana had discovered that she’d accidentally missed a great seventy-five percent-off shoe sale.
    “Oh jeez what ?” she asked.
    Dana held up her cell phone. “The candy-heart saying that client insists on, is it what I think it is?”
    “It’s ‘Adore Me.’ Why?”
    “Oh, jeez,” Dana moaned. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
    “Okay, wanna stop with the Oh-jeezes and tell me what’s going on?”
    “They’ve discontinued it.”
    “What?”
    “I was checking for information on candy hearts and found this article that says sometimes sayings are retired. That’s what they did to ‘Adore Me.’ ”
    Meredith sprang from her chair so she could reach Dana’s phone. “That’s impossible. You don’t discontinue a saying like ‘Adore Me.’ It’s what candy hearts and Valentine’s Day are all about—adoring someone and hoping they adore you too. Let me see that.”
    She snatched the phone away and stared at the screen. A minute later, she felt as if the foundations of the world had been knocked out from under her.
    “Adore Me” had been discontinued, and the only way to get copies of it was to order a full production run of the phrase. A full production run! Approximately one-point-seven-million sugary little hearts!
    She gave the phone back to Dana and sank into her chair. “We’re dead,” she said, burying her face in her hands. “Oh, jeez.”
    ****
    By eight that evening, Meredith sat in her home office, feverishly working on the problem. She had already checked out at least a dozen websites that dealt with old-fashioned candy that was no longer being produced and