A book in the Bad Boys Anthologies series, 2005

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?