Holy hell. Evan was speechless as he took in the sight of Halley smiling prettily on the home page of her website. Totally naked from head to toe.

Tampered was a hell of an understatement.

Halley was right. She had been hacked.

“Those bastards. What the fuck?”

“I know!” Halley’s hands landed on his shoulders.

If he hadn’t been so distracted, he might have enjoyed that little skin-to-skin contact, but he was too pissed off right now to appreciate it. “What a total kick in the balls. I cannot believe they got through my firewalls. This site was hack proof. Dicks.”

Halley’s nails dug a little too deep. He winced and shifted away from her.

“That’s not the point, Evan. The point is I’m naked!”

Was she ever. Jesus. Halley’s navy blue dress had disappeared and her smile seemed to have gone from professional to suggestive.

He liked it. Now if he could only get her to smile at him like that, instead of the perpetual “best buds” grin she always gave him.

“I don’t think they got your best side, sweet stuff,” he said, when he retrieved his voice from his throat where it had been lodged like a beer nut.

She slapped his shoulder. “That’s not even me!”

“I know.” Did she think he was stupid? He knew every inch of her body, from her bouncy blond hair to her oddly chubby little toes. And everything in between.

He turned to look at Halley. She hadn’t changed much in the ten years they’d been friends. Her hair was a little shorter these days, almost to her ears, and her clothes had toned down in style and color, but she was still the same Halley.

His best bud. That for quite a while now he had been wishing could be more. He had never seen Halley naked, but he had made a study out of her in clothes, and knew every curve of her delicious body.

There were plenty of occasions on which Halley really hadn’t been wearing that many clothes in front of him, like trips to the beach and the pool, and those awe-inspiring times when she had opened the door to him in her pj’s, no bra under those tight little stretchy tops.

With that kind of data stored in his memory banks, it was no wonder he was suddenly dreaming about her in triple x.

Today Halley was a little pale, but that could be because she was looking at her head slapped on a naked body being fingered by a creepy ass animation.

He wondered how pale she would be if he told her he wanted to be more than friends. Way more than friends.

Not that he had any intention of telling her. That was a surefire way to screw up the best friendship he’d ever had. Sometimes he couldn’t control himself and he let loose with comments that were way too revealing, like the recurring dream he’d been having. Or he flirted, unable to resist. But Halley always assumed he was joking. Or she wanted to believe he was joking.

But he wanted Halley. He wanted to strip her naked, taste every inch of her, and fuck her so hard she forgot her own name. But he wouldn’t do that because he valued her friendship. That was worth more than satisfying his dick or his curiosity or whatever you wanted to call it.

“Of course I know that’s not you. Your body doesn’t look anything like that.” Halley’s body was perfect. Breasts that would fit into his hands, a narrow waist, firm, sleek thighs and an ass that could stop traffic. “We’ve already established you do not have a chest that big.”

And the hard-on he was now sporting in his boxer shorts was pure coincidence. A morning erection, twenty minutes late.

“You do not know what my body looks like,” Halley said with censure, like he’d admitted to looking under the bathroom stall.

“Yes, I do. I’ve seen you in a bathing suit, and this body is not your body.” This one, with the overgrown breasts and scrawny legs, did nothing for him. Halley’s body made him want to drop to the ground and beg.

He turned and tried really hard not to look at her breasts. He failed miserably, and stared at her nipples jutting out in her tank top, her chest heaving up and down in indignation. If she had any idea the torture he endured in the name of friendship.

Innocently unaware of his lecherous thoughts, Halley said, “It doesn’t matter whose body it is. Can you get rid of it?”

“Sure, I can fix it. No problem.”

He dragged his gaze away from her firm breasts. With supreme effort he turned back to the screen and eyeballed the image there again. It was then that he studied the figure between her legs. Or whosever legs they were. “Is that his finger or an arrow getting you off?”

She smacked his arm. “That’s not me. I’m not getting off. And I think it’s a finger, but why does it matter? It’s just violating. I’m being sexually assaulted pictorially.”

He should have realized it immediately but he had been distracted by studying the naked woman. “Halley, this is the trademark of the Three Commandos, well-known hackers and online legends.”

“How can you tell?”

“They always put a cartoon figure in their work. Cherubs, demons, devils, usually revolving around the themes of heaven and hell. And see? There’s a C on each wing, and one on his bow.” Evan found himself excited in spite of the circumstances. He had a chance to dig into the Three Commandos’ handiwork, and see if he was up to the job of restoring Halley’s site to its pre-hacked state. After he shut her site down. That was easy enough.

Since he was in middle school, he had been fascinated by computers and their capabilities. He had gotten into development and programming in college, but as a geeky teen, pre-millions of dollars, he had been obsessed with the skill of hackers. He had studied them with the curiosity some people reserved for serial killers. He had wondered what motivated them, and how the hell they got away with it.

He enjoyed stuff like this. The challenge of the computer, figuring out its inner workings and how man had manipulated those.

The Three C’s had thrown down a challenge to him. To figure out how they had managed to so obviously and effectively corrupt the site he had built for Halley. It just might require enough brain capacity to keep his mind off Halley for an hour or two.

“So why did they pick on me?” Halley wailed, obviously not concerned about the mysterious guts of a computer.

“Did you serve them bad fish, maybe?”

“I don’t serve bad anything.”

He didn’t doubt it. Halley personally oversaw everything about her business. Despite her horror, he grinned at the screen in total appreciation for the art of The Three Commandos. They had style, you had to give them that.

“Sweet stuff, whatever you did, it earned a cherub going down on you.” A position Evan would prefer he be in.

Halley flushed. Her cheeks were vivid pink and her mouth dropped. “I didn’t do anything, and that’s not me,” she stubbornly insisted.

“I know it’s not you. We’ve been over this. I’ll fix it, so don’t get your panties twisted.” There he was. Doing it again. Mentioning underwear when that was the last thing in the world he should be discussing with Halley.

Inevitably, the image of her in nothing but panties rose in his mind. His cock throbbed and he shifted in his chair, hoping Halley didn’t happen to glance down into his lap. The Leaning Tower of Penis might be a little hard to explain.

Halley whacked him on the back. Not a light teasing pat. Or a seductive brush. But a whomp. Right between the shoulder blades. “Let’s see how you would feel if you were naked on the Internet.”

He tossed her a grin, almost grateful she’d lobbed him hard enough to knock a few teeth loose. Maybe if she whacked him on the head next, he’d recover his sanity. “But you just said that’s not you.”

“Technicality!” She dug her hands into her hair and twisted her fingers around until her hair was in a makeshift bun. Her shirt rose way up past her belly button, flashing him with smooth pale skin.

Damn it, he wanted her. He wanted to take her hard, every way that he could. He wanted to hear her moan and call out his name and orgasm because of his tongue, his touch, his cock.

But he loved her. He had loved her almost as long as he had known her. It was a love that had grown out of friendship, and was deep and solid and forever. In the last couple of years that love had extended to the physical, as in he’d love to get his hands on her body.

The only reason he hadn’t pursued Halley was he sucked at relationships. He was a workaholic, amassing a fortune, working insane hours, and demanding a similar intensity from his women. Halley knew him, understood him, but she would buck against his restraints, so to speak. She would not be submissive, or if she was in bed, she wouldn’t be otherwise and she would not put up with his shit.

Evan stared at her and contemplated reaching forward and licking her stomach, dipping his tongue into her belly button. He was restless and fixated on sex today, which was probably the result of not dating for the last six months. For years, he had avoided his feelings for Halley by marathon dating, but lately, he just couldn’t even fake his way through it anymore.

He had first taken to hookups but eventually that had gotten just inconvenient and more work than it was worth. Hence the hard on that wouldn’t quit this morning.

Halley waved her hand back and forth in front of his face. “Hello? Did you fall back asleep? Can you fix my site today, or do you know someone we can call who can do it if you can’t?”

That distracted him from studying the smooth skin of her abdomen as his ego suffered the insult. How could she even doubt he could fix it? He could fix it with one hand tied behind his back. He could fix it submerged in water. He could fix it even if Halley was sucking his cock.

Well, maybe not that one. Painful hot throbbing filled his boxer briefs. He wouldn’t be doing anything else but enjoying, if Halley ever took it upon herself to suck him.

Not that she would ever even dream of doing that with him, the man she thought of like a brother. But that didn’t stop him from fantasizing a little. Right now.

“Well?”

Huh? He had forgotten what she’d asked him.

“Oh, yeah, of course I can fix it. It might take me a couple of hours to bypass all the firewalls the hackers could have erected but that won’t be a big deal. In the meantime I’ll just take it down so no one can see it.”

“Can you put it back exactly the way it was?”

“Not a problem.” The only problem was that she needed to move away from him or he would never be able to concentrate.

Halley needed to get away from Evan. The feel of him, the sound of his voice, the sleepy morning smell that surrounded him, was driving her crazy.

Not batty like her aunt Ginny. But wild kind of crazy. Really achy kind of crazy.

She hadn’t been with a guy since that fiasco she had called a relationship with Lewis, the human plunger.

Given the heat in her jeans, it seemed a safe bet that two years was too long to go without a little woohoo.

She backed up slowly, one, two. There, that was better. She couldn’t smell him anymore. “I want to call Nora and let her know what’s going on.”

“Okay.” His voice was already distracted as he peered at the computer screen. He started moving the mouse, clicking on things in rapid succession.

Halley was relieved to leave her problem in capable hands and retreat to his kitchen, which still had last night’s dinner dishes in it. Dinner looked to have been Cheetos and a frozen burrito.

She shuddered. His eating habits were abysmal, and in the last few years she had taken to cooking for him a couple of times a week. But since she had been avoiding him he had obviously resorted to barrel scraping.

She could cook something for him a thousand times better than a frozen burrito in ten minutes. A nice fluffy omelet would be ideal, she thought as she dug her phone out of her back pocket and called Nora.

Nora immediately picked up.

“Hey, how are things going there?” She held her breath waiting for the answer.

“Well.” Nora hesitated.

Halley’s stomach did a hokey-pokey imitation, shaking and churning. “Tell me.”

“Okay. We’ve had six calls requesting nude catering jobs. Three callers wanted to know if you could serve penis-shaped hor d’oeuvres, one thought he could order a prostitute complete with her own Cupid sex toy, and you remember Mr. Benjamin, that sweet old man whose eightieth birthday we catered last month? He wants a refund since we didn’t serve nude at his party.” Nora took a deep breath. “And I caught one of our servers tweeting a screen shot of it. Fortunately I just happened to see it in my feed.”

“Oh, geez.” Halley sagged against the counter. She was ruined. Completely and utterly ruined. She might as well pack up and go back to the trailer park she had grown up in.

As a total failure.

“First of all, who the hell knew our site was so active? I mean, we don’t get that many calls on an ordinary day.”

“I suspect it may have gone viral on a minor scale.” Nora sounded bewildered. “Who would have thought so many people in suburban Pittsburgh want naked catering?”

That was a question for philosophers and Dr. Phil.

Determined not to freak out anymore than she already had, Halley took a deep breath. “Evan says he can fix it, so just try and stay calm. You’re doing great.” Which was more than she could say for herself since she had the urge to collapse on the kitchen floor in a screaming fit.

“You might want to reprimand the employees or warn them they’ll lose their jobs if they share the screen shot.”

Halley quickly cut her off. “Geez, okay, though I need you to monitor that activity. I don’t think I can deal with it.” She really had no interest in which of her male employees had found it humorous to share her naked body.

Which was not her naked body at all. That was the worst part of the whole thing. They had given her one of those figures that looked like it was three or four different bodies welded together. Huge breasts, hourglass waist, curvy behind, and chicken legs.

Naked Catering Barbie. Complete with tray.

Besides, she had a hard time visualizing calling her entire staff into her office and telling them to stop sharing screen shots of her being, ahem, pleasured by a baby-faced animation. It sort of shot her advantage as their intimidating boss.

“One last thing,” Nora said, her tentative voice betraying the casual words.

“What?” Halley paced back and forth in Evan’s kitchen, skirting his overflowing trash can. Whatever Nora had to say, it couldn’t get any worse.

She was ready.

“The church charity group called.”

Oh, no. This was going to be worse.

“And?”

“They’re canceling us for their five-hundred-seat event.”

What would Evan do if she suddenly starting screaming “bloody hell” at the top of her lungs?

That charity dinner was five hundred people at a premium price per plate, which meant she was out a hell of a lot of money.

“They didn’t even want to talk to me?” Maybe if she threw in free wine…

Nora said, “I tried to talk them out of canceling, I told them it was a hack job, but they didn’t care. I think it’s the fact that the hashtags the pic is being shared with are pretty dirty.”

She squeezed her eyes closed. “That’s okay.”

Her life was over, but it wasn’t Nora’s fault. Nora was clearly upset and Halley didn’t want her to feel she was to blame. The Three Commandos were the ones to blame, and they were smarmy elusive hackers, tearing their way through decent hard-working people’s lives. What happened to old-fashioned identity theft? It would be easier to deal with someone using her credit card number than this bullshit.

“I’ll call you later.” She ended the call and ran a mental list of all the events they had coming up during the busy August and September wedding season. If even a fourth of them canceled, she was going to suffer from excess inventory, an unnecessarily large staff and decreased income.

Which meant she was going to have to lay off staff and cut other expenses. She also wasn’t sure if she would be able to pay Evan back for his investment. Currently, she paid him monthly for the extensive loan he had given her to start the business.

On a shaky sigh, she let the tears break free and roll down her cheek.

“Holy crap, you’re not going to believe this.” Evan came strolling into the kitchen, a grin dancing across his face. He had put on basketball shorts, thank goodness.

Halley turned to hide her tears, but the smile collapsing into concern showed he had already seen them.

He stopped dead. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Stupid man. What did he think was wrong? That she’d missed the end-of-summer Target sale on outdoor living items?

“I have lotion in my eye.”

“Lotion? In your eye?” He was coming closer to her, frowning like he was doing some serious thinking.

“Yes. Lotion.” She bent over the sink and pretended to be rubbing around in her eye, and tried to swipe away any remaining signs of her uncharacteristic breakdown. She was normally tough and Evan expected her to be able to hold her shit together.

His hands landed on her upper arms as he came up behind her.

Touching was bad. It was very, very bad. Touching meant that he was close to her and that with one little shift back, she could be flush against him, her curves melding into his hardness, his breath rushing past her ear. She could press her backside along his pants and feel him swell with arousal.

Wait a minute. He wouldn’t get hard. He would he shocked and horrified at her unfriend-like behavior, and she would lose the best friend she’d ever had.

“Let me see.”

He was right there. On top of her, cutting off her air and sending her into full-fledged panic. If he would just call flick her arm or mock her, she’d be fine, but this sweet soft concern was more than she could handle.

“I’ve got it.” Her voice wobbled a little.

Those strong hands forced her to turn around. She blinked like a myopic deer caught in the headlights. Turning her head a little, she tried to lean back away from him, not wanting to smell him or feel him, so she wouldn’t embarrass herself by going in for a kiss.

“You’re crying,” he murmured, his thumb reaching up and wiping the last wet streaks from her cheeks.

“No, it’s watering because I have an eyelash in it.”

“I thought you said it was lotion.”

Was he writing this stuff down? Geez. She glared at him. “Evan, I’m fine.”

Then he kissed her nose. A sweet gentle dusting.

A funny little sigh came out of her mouth.

“I’m sorry about your site, you don’t deserve that.”

His lips brushed across hers, a soft caress that made her feel warm and gooey.

“What are you doing?” she whispered as his arms came around her back and drew her up against his hard, very uncovered, chest.

“Comforting you.”

It was working. She was so comforted her bones seemed to have dissolved like Alka-Seltzer in water. His thumbs rubbed her waist, his hip pressed against hers, and his mouth came towards hers again.

Evan had kissed her before in the past, and she was sure this wasn’t any different. Light brushes for hello and goodbye, a full mouth kiss when she’d graduated from college. Hugs when her grandmother had died. It was no big deal at all… no different.

Except this time his tongue was in her mouth.

Sweet heaven, that felt good.

It had started out the same as any other friendly kiss, but now it was sweeter, deeper. Wet. A kiss that required open mouths, gripping hands and rapid breathing.

Slow and steady, he dipped and tasted her, and Halley clung to his chest, too stunned to do anything but lie across him like a limp noodle. This was the last thing in the universe she had expected Evan to do, and even though it felt so damn good, she hesitated.

Evan’s hands were in her hair, and he tilted his head to gain better access to her. Halley wondered briefly if this was how he comforted all his friends. Then she reminded herself she was his only female friend, and she didn’t really care why he was kissing her, just that he was.

Her mom always said don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. She had never known what in the hell that really meant, but she thought in this case it gave her permission to make out with Evan.

So she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back for all she was worth.

Their mouths slid and pressed together, tongues intertwining in wet passion as they moved from soft to deep to reckless. It was the fullest, most meaningful kiss she’d ever had in her twenty-eight years and when Evan’s hands cupped her behind, she moaned into his mouth. Oooh, that was nice.

And it made her press against his cock, which was hard and ready to go. No need to wait for the sixty-second inflate time. Evan must have already pulled the rip cord.

Which gave her no small amount of satisfaction. She had turned him on. Take that, bitches.

Light little kisses fell on her mouth, hard enough to feel him and taste him, light enough to make her want more, deeper and fuller. A whimper dragged out of her. He kissed her jaw, and licked a seductive trail down her neck as she tossed her head back.

Worry over her catering business was long gone. Only to be replaced by a new tension, tight, burning sexual tension rising from the center of her body.

“I have an idea,” he murmured.

She was getting one too. One that involved no clothes and her and Evan doing the dirty here on the kitchen floor.

She shivered as he breathed into her ear, anticipating a suggestive overture from Evan. A confession of deep desire and longing, a demand that she get naked. A sensual coaxing that she was the best friend he’d ever had and could be so much more…

Evan said, “Let’s do a little hacking of our own.”