Good Girl Gone Plaid (30 page)
She turned around and he found himself staring into Chaili’s blue eyes.
Marc had a fondness for her eyes. He didn’t know why, exactly. Maybe it was because they were blue, and such a vivid blue they almost looked purple to his screwy eyesight. He didn’t know why. Didn’t care. He just knew she had amazing eyes.
It was a punch. A hard, brutal punch straight to his gut and he closed one hand into a fist as he continued to stare at her. Okay. She wasn’t here for him. Chaili wasn’t one of his sister’s girls. She had something else going on… Then it occurred to him—Shera had absently mentioned setting up a line of male companions. Was Chaili…?
No.
Just. No. Even thinking about her paying some guy to take her out pissed him off.
What the heck—
Shera appeared from the back office. “Hey, Marc.” She had a smile on her face. An overly bright one. The kind of smile she’d always given him when she’d done something she shouldn’t have and she wanted him to help keep her out of trouble with Mom. Except she was a grown woman.
Oh, crap.
Swinging his gaze back and forth between the two women, he lifted a brow and waited.
“Awesome news.” Shera still had that wide, too-bright smile plastered across her face. “Chaili is going to keep you company tonight.”
Fate has a way of rearranging everything…
Twisted in Tulips
© 2012 Nikki Duncan
Tulle and Tulips, Book 2
After months of just getting by on military disability pay, Jace Nichols is going for his dream job in Miami. Until he stops to rescue a woman under attack. Thanks to his deeply ingrained sense of duty, he misses his one-shot-only interview—for a woman who seems more grateful he saved her way-too-sexy shoes than her life.
No one knows better than Misty Morgan that everyone is fighting some kind of battle. Hers is against her snobby family, who look down on her chosen profession as a wedding floral coordinator. Behind Jace’s surly exterior she senses wounds that run deeper than a missing arm.
When Jace spots Misty fending off yet another fawning male. he’s not sure what makes his control snap. The fact that she insists on wearing her skirts too short, or the fact he can’t resist kissing her.
Best to get it over with and give in to one crazy night that should get her out of his system. Instead he finds himself with more second chances than he can shake his steel hook at—if he can find room in his wounded heart for love.
Warning: This title contains a jaded hero and an independent heroine who find that when push comes to push-back, an argument is the quickest route to steamy sex.
Enjoy the following excerpt for
Twisted in Tulips:
Jace nursed the beer he’d ordered for another hour and thirty-three minutes. Kyle had left quickly after realizing Jace wasn’t interested in conversation, but the talking armpit of Misty’s date continued to miss the clues of her disinterest.
The longer they sat, the more she glanced in the mirror, occasionally meeting Jace’s gaze. The more she fiddled with the drink she wasn’t drinking and studied the grain of the wooden bar. The more she shifted away, millimeter by millimeter.
Every shift flexed and released the fine muscles in her legs. The more Jace watched those long, lean legs the more clearly he saw her naked except for her stilettos with those legs wrapped around his waist. Her back, held erect in refined posture, would curve as she arched in orgasm.
Her taste, peaches and margarita, lingered on his tongue.
The training drilled into him after years of service kept him from shifting in his seat, but the erection pressing against his zipper increased the challenge. The bigger challenge was stopping himself from crossing the bar a second time.
Misty shifted again. Her skirt slipped a little higher on her thigh.
Jace’s dick twitched. He dropped a shaking hand to his crotch, flattened his palm on his cock and pressed.
Across the bar, Misty flattened a hand on her thigh and rubbed her bare skin.
Rather than ease any tension, the pressure of his hand, the imagined pressure of hers, amped up his arousal. His balls drew tight and without touching the woman haunting him, fully clothed and in a public place, he lingered on the precipice of release.
Before shaming himself, he slid his hand to the middle of his thigh and dug his fingers in until his muscles bellowed with pain. His hunger inched back, not much, but enough for control to slip back to the forefront.
Twenty-eight more minutes passed with him fighting for control when Armpit finally paid the tab and escorted Misty to the door. Not caring if he was obvious, Jace threw some bills on the table and followed.
Whatever it was about the woman he’d rescued that called to him—he’d identify it later—he couldn’t let her walk away and risk never seeing her again. She interested him beyond the desire for sex.
She spoke to him the same as she’d speak to anyone, as if she hadn’t been scared by his arm. Or didn’t care.
Rather than taking a car, Armpit and Misty walked along the sidewalk, close but not intimately close. Satisfaction twitched the muscle between Jace’s nose and upper lip on the left side. She wouldn’t be inviting him over for a
nightcap.
After a few blocks, they turned down a side street and stopped shortly at the gate of a small courtyard shared by six town homes. The place was secured with a coded keypad on the gate. Beyond was an immaculately manicured lawn with lights hidden in the foliage that offered a well-lit security among the beauty of the garden.
Fading into the shadows across the street, Jace watched as Misty hugged Armpit goodnight and keyed her code into the gate. He couldn’t see the numbers from his position, but her finger strokes were enough for him to figure it out.
When Armpit had turned the corner at the end of the street and Misty had let herself into the corner home, Jace crossed the street and entered her gate code. Moving like he belonged there, he approached the door that stood between him and the woman of his desires. He rapped twice.
“One minute.” Her muffled call came out husky and a little breathy through the wooden panel. When she opened the door her burgundy suit jacket hung open, a lace-edged camisole in the same color peeked out.
His blood surged with heat.
“What are you doing here? How’d you get through the gate? Did you follow me?”
Driven by instinct, Jace stepped inside, grabbed her hips and backed her to the entryway wall. His mouth descended to hers. His tongue plunged into her warmth.
Misty’s hands gripped his shoulders. Her body arched against his. She mumbled against his lips. “The door’s still open.”
Taking her response as acceptance, he stretched a booted foot behind him and nudged the door closed. No longer caring about her nakedness, at least not for the first time, Jace hitched her skirt to her waist. She released him long enough to take off her thong while he stripped off his boots and jeans and pulled a condom from his wallet.
“You’re prepared.”
“A military man always is.”
“Because you have a woman in every port?”
“Some do. I didn’t.” He eased her jacket off so she stood before him in only her satin and lace camisole and stilettos. From her pale brown eyes to her swollen lips, her fist-sized perky boobs with erect nipples, to the tips of her stilettos the woman was walking sex. And she was his for the night. “Now stop talking.”
“Make me.”
Good Girl Gone Plaid
Shelli Stevens
Falling for the bad boy is even more dangerous the second time around.
The McLaughlins, Book 1
In high school Sarah fell for her best friend’s older brother—one of the sexy, Scottish McLaughlin boys. But a painful betrayal showed her she’d been a fool to give her heart to a bad boy. At least it made it easier to leave him and move halfway around the world when her Navy dad got stationed in Japan.
Eleven years later, the death of her grandmother has forced Sarah back to Whidbey Island for a month. It’s the length of time she must stay in her inherited house before she’s allowed to sell it, take the money and run. But when she sees Ian, bad as ever and still looking like sin on a stick, she can’t keep her mouth from watering.
One look at Sarah stirs up the regret lingering in Ian’s heart—and never-forgotten desire lingering in his body. He should walk away, especially since divorced single mothers aren’t his style. But when she starts showing up at his family’s pub, he can’t resist a little casual seduction for old time’s sake.
One thing quickly becomes clear, though. The heat between them is causing an avalanche of secrets and betrayal and nothing will ever be the same.
Warning: A bad-boy hero who’s good with his hands, a heroine who’s trying to be good. Contains liberal consumption of Scotch whisky, a Highland Games competition, men in kilts wielding large poles, and a potential Sarah McLaughlin of the non-musical kind.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
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Good Girl Gone Plaid
Copyright © 2013 by Shelli Stevens
ISBN: 978-1-61921-492-7
Edited by Tera Kleinfelter
Cover by Lyn Taylor
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: June 2013