Any Way You Want Me - By Jamie Sobrato Page 0,1

though he belonged in L.A. more than San Francisco. He had a tan, for crying out loud.

Where would anyone, especially a programmer who spent his days attached to a computer, even get a tan in this city in the middle of December? The answer was he wouldn’t, not unless he was going to a tanning bed—did those even exist anymore?—which this guy must have been doing. A fact that should have repulsed Yasmine.

Instead, she found herself wondering if he had tan lines. One of her more disturbingly detailed fantasies even had her freeing him of his khakis, inch by inch, to discover not a single line. It was ridiculous. He was probably the kind of guy who had a Playboy bunny tattoo right next to his schlong.

The break room door opened, and the object of her whacked fantasies came out carrying a bottle of Evian water. She watched him walk to the printer, his snug pants advertising the well-sculpted muscles beneath them, and shook her head. It was official—Yasmine was losing her freaking mind.

She glared at her computer screen and promised herself she would do no more ogling today. She would focus on her work. Focus, focus, focus.

If only he looked like any other code-slinging brainiac who spent too much time indoors and could use a trip to the nearest fashion consultant, there would be no problem. But he didn’t. And he worked in her office, no less. Yasmine didn’t do the office help. So she took her tingly feelings as a sign that she’d spent a few months too many sans boyfriend.

She just needed to get laid, and she’d stop drooling over her strutting, preening office mate.

“Excuse me,” she heard an unfamiliar male voice say.

Yasmine looked up to see the object of her constant ogling looming beside her desk. He smiled faintly, his gaze locked on her. She opened her mouth to say hi, but nothing came out.

“Is this yours?”

She stared at the document she’d printed an hour ago and nodded. “I, um, I…forgot to go pick it up.”

He placed it on top of her in-box pile and smiled. He had perfect white teeth. “We should stop this, don’t you think?”

“Stop what?”

“Staring at each other but never talking.”

Staring? Had she been staring?

“We’re talking now,” she said stupidly.

“I’m Kyle Kramer,” he said.

She liked his voice…and his eyes, which were a smoky shade of hazel. They were mesmerizing—almost unreal looking.

“Hi, Kyle Kramer,” she croaked.

And now that he’d formally introduced himself, would it be forward to take him home and have her way with him?

Definitely she should at least tell him her name first. She pointed to the nameplate on her cubicle wall. “That’s me. Yasmine.”

If her conversational skills got any more brilliant, she’d have to shoot herself.

He smiled and nodded. He had sort of a Rhett Butler attitude going on, as if he knew he was gorgeous enough to make most women feel that they could never fill Scarlet’s shoes.

“Right,” he said. “Yaz-meen. I’ve been pronouncing it wrong in my head.”

So he’d been thinking about her? Had he maybe even been as distracted by overwrought office lust as she had? Very intriguing.

There was an awkward pause.

He studied the Christmas decorations all around her cubical, and it struck her as odd for the first time that she’d bothered to decorate her work space but not her home. Funky little ornaments she’d found at a shop in Noe Valley—a beaded green frog, a purple feather angel, a little carved wooden genie emerging from a bottle, a sparkly pink bird, among other things—hung from twinkling red lights around the top edge of the cubicle walls.

“Nice frog,” he said, his tone almost languorous, as if he had no intention of leaving anytime soon.

“Is there, um, something I can help you with?”

She sounded like an uptight bitch, but she was unnerved by his unexpected presence, his seeming awareness of his effect on her.

“Would you maybe like to go for drinks after work?”

Drinks, dancing, hot, sweaty sex. She was game. But Yasmine knew better than to follow such wild impulses. In fact, she never followed them. She knew the right thing to do, the safe thing, would be to end this silly mating ritual right here, right now.

“I’m sorry—I have plans with a friend after work.” Which was true.

He rested his forearms on top of her cubical wall and shrugged. “Okay, how about another night?”

“I’ve been working late most nights,” she said, making herself sound like the workaholic she was.

He gave her a look that said he