Excerpt of In Bed with the Competition by J.K. Coi

Ben Harrison had seen his fair share of women in bikinis,
but this one seemed different. For one, she wasn’t model
thin with toothpicks for limbs, but had killer curves and
legs that went for miles. His mouth went dry as he took
it all in. A wide straw hat. The thin ribbon ties of her
top coming together in the middle of her back. The ends
trailing down a few inches, drawing the eye to the curve
of her waist and then lower, to bright red bottoms.

He felt guilty for staring and averted his gaze, but
Nolan’s low whistle of appreciation reflected Ben’s
sentiments exactly.

He turned to his friend with a raised brow. “What are you
looking at?”

Nolan leaned up on one elbow and tilted his sunglasses
down the bridge of his nose. “The same thing as you, I’m
thinking.”

“Well, you can just lie back down and forget about it. We
might be here a couple of days early, but there’s still a
lot to do to get ready for the convention.” Ben enjoyed
the occasional break, which is why he and his business
partner Steve Nolan had come to Antigua two days before
this convention was scheduled to begin. But no matter
where he went, he never left the work entirely behind,
because he still hadn’t achieved his goals.

“Not for me,” Nolan protested with a grin. “And not for
you, either. We got this nailed, Harrison. Everyone will
be lining up to hand over their money. And you have to
admit, if you look at any more reports, you’re going to
go blind. Trust me, nobody likes a squinting playboy
without a tan, no matter how innovative he is.”

Ben frowned. A year ago he’d been a nobody, fighting
tooth and nail to make his mark along with all the rest,
but after appearing at a few gala events with heiress and
model-turned-CEO Meredith Stone, someone had decided to
run a story on him, and suddenly he was considered a
playboy. “It’s bad enough I get that shit from the media.
I don’t need to hear it from you, too.”

“What? You don’t appreciate the attention?” Nolan
smirked.

It was disconcerting and inconvenient, but Nolan was of
the opinion that a little media attention of any kind was
a good thing. It had the potential to translate into the
kind of corporate interest they desperately needed, and
that made it worth putting up with for a while. Both of
them had sunk everything they had into their cutting-edge
software development company, but it just wasn’t enough.
They needed more capital, and they needed it now.

That’s what had brought them to Antigua. The Artificial
Intelligence world was a small one, all the industry
players would be at this convention, and they would all
be looking for the next big Internet money-maker—that’s
where Optimus Inc. came in.

Nolan grinned. “If you ask me, the fact that the media
hounds have locked onto someone else’s scent for a while
is fucking fantastic.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re ecstatic,” Ben answered with a
shake of his head.

The reporters might suddenly consider Ben Harrison’s life
fodder for their pages, but they practically wet
themselves over any chance to photograph brilliant
mathematician and bad boy Steve Nolan, whose family had
been the stuff of society legend until it all fell apart
in a public scandal a few years ago…and who was now
having too damn much fun at Ben’s expense.

Ben’s attention shifted back to the woman on the pool
deck. She faced away from them, having arranged herself
on an available deck chair in front of the sparkling
pool. She was applying lotion to her legs and thighs. Her
motions were slow and smooth, the sun bouncing off her
perfect, slick skin. It didn’t take much for him to start
imagining those legs wrapped around him…

Maybe he had been staring at reports too long. After all,
he’d left New York early to scratch his itch for
adventure…and a reckless island fling could be exactly
the thing he needed.

Nolan moved to get out of his chair. “Well, since you’re
not going over there, I think I’ll introduce myself—”

“No way.” Ben shoved him back. He stood and grabbed his
shirt, flinging it over his shoulder. “You’ve got your
wish. I’ll clock out for the rest of the day, but that
means you have to check in with Clarissa in New York.”

Nolan groaned good-naturedly. “Where are you going?”

“Don’t worry about me.” He glanced over his shoulder.
“With any luck, I’ll soon be sufficiently distracted for
the rest of the night.”

Ben walked away, but having escaped Nolan, he quickly
changed his mind, deciding he was going back to his room
after all. He didn’t want to intrude on the woman’s
privacy. There was going to be a preponderance of a
certain type of person at the resort this week: execs and
programmers specializing in programming initiatives, and
the marketing bottom feeders who were just looking to
capitalize on someone else’s innovation. The facilities
had been completely booked by the convention, so while he
couldn’t picture many software engineers who looked like
her, it stood to reason she was another early arrival
taking advantage of an opportunity for some time to relax
before the hordes descended, and he didn’t want to
encroach on that.

As he passed her chair, though, he couldn’t help but
slow. A large beach bag rested on the ground beside her,
a colorful towel spilling out of it. He wondered if she
planned to take a dip in the pool later. That was
something he didn’t think he’d want to miss out on.

Right now, she lounged back in the reclined deck chair.
Her drop dead gorgeous body was presented to the sun like
an offering, and the front of her was equally as stunning
as the rest. The round globes of her breasts teased him
from behind smallish triangles of bright red Lycra. Her
skin was smooth and creamy, gleaming with the layer of
sunscreen she’d just applied, but pale, as if she took
vacation about as often as he did. Then again, after a
few days in that tiny bikini, she’d be golden in no time.

She’d taken out a book, presumably from the depths of the
large bag, but it lay closed in her lap. He raised his
brows. That was some dense, technical subject matter. His
first instinct had been correct; she was obviously here
for the convention. That put a different spin on his
interest, and he stopped walking altogether, trying to
decide if he recognized her. He thought he might, but
oversize dark glasses covered her eyes.

She wore a thick gold band on her thumb that looked
better suited to a man, but no rings on any of her other
fingers, including the third finger of her left hand. Not
that such an absence meant as much these days as it used
to. The band gave him pause, though. He used to know
someone who wore a thumb ring like that.

Looking closer, he tried to see past the floppy straw
hat. It covered her face and hair, with a red ribbon that
matched her bikini. Thick curls escaped from beneath it
and fell to her shoulders. He used to know someone with
tight curls like that, too.

“Um, excuse me. You’re in my sun.”

He was startled by her relaxed, husky voice, as if she’d
just been through a long night of steamy sex, and he was
the man who’d awakened her with kisses to do it all over
again. That voice was familiar, too.

Very familiar.

He cleared his throat and inclined his head with his most
approachable smile. “My apologies. You caught me
daydreaming.”

“Oh, is that what you were doing? Not staring at my…uh…
hat?” Her lips were coated with some kind of clear gloss
that made them look wet and full. A cocked eyebrow rose
above the rim of her sunglasses. The way she did that,
the tilt of her head as she looked up at him…

He laughed, but his gut tightened. “Ah, maybe you’re
right, and that’s what got me daydreaming. You have a
very lovely…hat after all.”

The hair was different. Her body was different…or maybe
he’d just never seen so much of it before. If only he
could look into her eyes to know for sure.

He readjusted the shirt he’d thrown over his shoulder and
stepped closer. “Would you and your hat care to meet me
in the bar tonight for a drink?”

That eyebrow went up again at his boldness, and her hand
clenched on the book in her lap like a shield.
“I don’t mean to intrude on your holiday,” he added
quickly. “But if you’re here alone and you’d like some
company…”

She pressed her lips together, and he felt the weight of
her assessing gaze travelling down the length of him,
even though he couldn’t see past the barrier of her dark
sunglasses.

After a long moment, she reached up and slid the glasses
down the bridge of her nose, revealing deep green eyes.
Green like the tropical water surrounding the island.

Her gaze was the same as a physical touch to his skin.
Hot and unexpectedly jarring. Those eyes.

Yes. He knew those eyes.

He knew her.

In the time it took for him to verify his suspicion about
her identity, her smile turned brittle, and her
expression hardened. “It’s only been a little over a
year, Harrison. Don’t tell me I was that forgettable.”