Chasin' Eight: Rough Riders, Book 12 (44 page)

Wild Ride: Strong, Silent Type

Three’s Company: Wicked Garden

Beginnings: Babe in the Woods

Running With the Devil

Dirty Deeds

Good girls can play rough too…

Cowgirls Don’t Cry

© 2010 Lorelei James

Rough Riders, Book 10

Jessie McKay has accepted her marriage to Luke McKay wasn’t perfect. After two years of widowhood, she’s ready to kick up her bootheels—until Luke’s younger brother shows up to spoil her fun. But if Brandt thinks she’ll ever take orders from another McKay male, he’s got manure for brains.

Brandt McKay has avoided his sweet, sexy sister-in-law ever since the night he confessed his feelings for her weren’t the brotherly type. Unexpectedly faced with proof of Luke’s infidelity, Brandt is forced to ask for Jessie’s help in taking care of Luke’s young son. Jessie agrees on one condition—she wants Brandt’s boots exclusively under her bed for the duration.

The sexual heat that’s always simmered between them ignites. Brandt is determined to make the temporary situation permanent, proving to Jessie he’s a one-woman man. And Jessie is shaken by feelings she’s sworn never to have again for any man…especially not a McKay.

Warning: Contains branding-iron-hot sex, the one McKay on earth who wants to be tamed, and a woman who’s decided tame is for nice girls who finish last.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Cowgirls Don’t Cry:

“Landon is down for the count.”

“Thank God,” Brandt muttered. “You have the magic touch. I swear the kid looked like he’d punch me in the face if I so much as touched him.”

She rolled her eyes. “He’s a little young to start brawling. But he is a McKay, so I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Brandt took another pull off his beer and gestured to the couch. “Sit down and take a load off.”

Jessie paced to the door, peering out the window, cursing her nervous energy. Hah. Who was she trying to kid? She was just plain nervous. This seemed like such an easy idea in the truck on the way home from work. Get naked. But it was two hours later and she still had her clothes on.

“Something on your mind?”

She couldn’t un-stick her tongue from the roof of her mouth.

“Jess? You know you can tell me anything,” Brandt said.

Yeah, just spit it out. You turned him down once. What’s to say he won’t do the same to you…just to even the score?

She closed her eyes, trying to slam the door on the self-sabotaging portion of her brain. “This…the way we’ve got this set up isn’t working for me any longer.”

He exhaled a frustrated burst of air. “Okay. What’s the problem?”

“I’m tired—”

“We both are. That said, I can probably pick Landon up earlier and take him back here until after you get off work so it’s not—”

“This isn’t about Landon. It’s about…us.”

“Us?” he repeated.

“Yes, us. Living in the same space. Sharing everything.”

Another one of his thoughtful pauses. “I’ve tried to keep to myself and not cause you extra stress.”

Jessie whirled to face him. “That’s what’s not working, Brandt. I am stressed and it’s because you’re everywhere. In every part of my life. In every part of my house. We eat together. We do chores together. We take care of Landon together. We watch TV together. You’re the first person I see when I get up in the morning and you’re the last person I see before I go to bed at night. We’re acting like a married couple.”

The muscles in his jaw rippled and he gritted out, “And that bothers you?”

“Yes, dammit, because we’re doing all the hard day-to-day couple stuff without the benefit of the good couple stuff.”

“Such as?”

“We’re not sleeping together. And if we’re gonna act like a married couple then I want you naked in my bed every night.”

Brandt’s mouth dropped open so fast Jessie swore she heard his jawbone crack. Then his eyes tapered to fine points and his entire posture changed. “Since when?”

“You want an exact moment? How about last night when you gave me a backrub? I wanted you to stay with me all night and rub more than just my back. I know you’re probably thinking I’m crazy since I freaked out last year when you told me you wanted more than friendship.”

“What’s changed?”

“Honestly? Me.” Jessie briefly closed her eyes. “I’m not as emotionally raw as I was even four months ago. I’ve also realized I don’t want to spend my life unwilling to take a chance because I’m scared.”

“I scare you?”

“Yes.”

Embarrassment flickered on his face.

“You don’t scare me physically. There’s an intensity to you that is intimidating as hell. There are no half measures in your world, Brandt. It’s all or nothing. Being with a man like you would be unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”

That muscle in his jaw continued to jump in an agitated manner. “How do you know that?”

Now that she was floundering, she realized getting naked in body was a helluva lot easier than stripping herself emotionally bare in front of him.

“Jessie. Answer me.”

“I figured it out last summer when you warned me about Mike, but you didn’t pull that highhanded McKay attitude and drag me out of there. Even though that situation ended in my humiliation, the way you forced me to accept the consequences of my rash decision proved you weren’t the gentleman I thought you were. But you didn’t leave. I know you wanted to finish what Mike couldn’t. But I was too—”

“Shitfaced?” he supplied with a soft snarl.

“No, I was too mortified you’d witnessed yet another man who found me as sexually lacking as my husband had,” she said without flinching.

But Brandt flinched. “Jessie that’s not—”

“True? Yes, it is. Yet, I know you would’ve tossed me a pity fuck if I’d asked.”

That shocked him. But he recovered quickly. “You sure?”

“No. I’m not sure of anything. Except I can’t get you out of my head since you’ve moved in. All that mundane household shit that oughta be boring and I hated doing by myself? I look forward to doing it with you. Even when you’re driving me crazy with lust.”

“Crazy with lust?” His dark eyebrows winged up. “That’s a stretch, ain’t it?”

His skepticism might’ve sent old Jessie scurrying to her room to hide. But new Jessie soldiered on. “Every night after you get out of the shower and the scent of your shaving cream drifts out of the bathroom I fantasize about you rubbing your face and that scent over every inch of my skin.”

Surprise and something else like…desire flashed in his eyes, which spurred her to keep going.

“Sometimes when you’re talking to me? I’m so busy staring at your mouth, imagining your kiss that I don’t hear a single word you say.”

With that, his surprise changed to recognition. So Brandt had noticed her attention to his lips whenever they were within kissing distance.

“But know what really twists me into knots? Seeing the way you look at me now.”

“And how’s that?”

“Like you no longer see me as sweet, innocent Jessie. That if you ever got those big hands of yours on me, the last thing you’d be with me…is sweet. You’d get a thrill pushing past my boundaries, the ones I had before Luke and the ones I’ve erected since Luke. You’d derive great pleasure in showing me facets of sexual intimacy that I’ve been denied—or denied myself.”

“Fancy talk.” Brandt cocked his head, as if he was trying to study her from a new angle. “I’ll admit, you’ve got me pegged better than I ever thought you would. With one exception.”

“Which is?”

“If we set this in motion, I’ll demand more than just physical intimacy from you. It ain’t only gonna be about scratching an itch, Jess, because I can get that any time I want.”

How had Brandt picked up on her plan to prove to herself that she could experience sex without the pesky emotional ties?

Because he knows you better than you’ve ever given him credit for.

“I’ll expect a different kind of intimacy than what we’ve had in the past. A connection between us that has nothin’ to do with Luke.”

She looked away.

“What?”

“It’s a nice thought, but this connection has everything to do with Luke and there’s no way we can ever get around that. Besides, you brought Landon into my life, Brandt, and he’s connected to Luke. We wouldn’t be in this situation if not for him. And maybe Landon’s presence has forced us to deal with this—” she gestured to the space between them, “—so I’m done denying the pull is there.”

“Is this ‘pull’ something you recently realized? A proximity thing? I’m a man, I’m here, I’m good enough to fuck for a few months?”

Jessie twisted her fingers together. “It’s more than that and you know it. After you made that pass at me, I convinced myself you were exactly like Luke—biding your time until your charm earned an invitation into my bed. You’d get your fill of me, work me out of your system and move on. And no, you can’t fault me for that mindset, because of my limited experience with men, and my experience with Luke in particular. Plus, I wasn’t so sure you wouldn’t be using me to settle a score with Luke.”

“You really think that lowly of me?” he bit off.

“You really think I’m a clichéd horny widow desperate to screw the first man who smiles at me?” She didn’t bother to bank the anger in her eyes when she met his glare head on. “If that was true, I wouldn’t have waited two goddamn years, would I? I wouldn’t be asking you to touch me, would I? I could’ve found another man to scratch that itch in the four months since we last saw each other. But I didn’t. Something held me back.”

“Again, nice sentiment, but spell it out for me.”

“I want no-strings sex for these four months we’re together. At the end of those four months, we’ll walk away.”

“Just like that?”

Be strong, be confident.
“Can’t we try it and see?”

“What do we tell people? Because you know my family, they’re gonna ask.”

“We are living together, even if it’s temporarily. People are already gonna assume we’re sleeping together, especially in the gossipy McKay family.”

“So if Skylar comes right out and asks you if you’re with me? Will you tell her that we’re just fuck buddies?”

She couldn’t confess that Skylar encouraged her to get naked with him. “What would you rather I told her? That we’re attracted to each other, but we’re keeping our hands off each other because it’d be like Luke was in bed with us?”

She’d struck a nerve with that. She hadn’t meant to but there was no sense in apologizing now.

“I’m not Luke.”

“Then stop acting like him,” she snapped. “Quit trying to tell
me
what I’m feeling is wrong. I’m being completely honest with you. I’m telling you this because I realized if we start this, I’d own my sexuality for the first time in my life. I want that. With you. Starting tonight.” Jessie took a breath, figuring she’d said enough. Too much probably.

He studied her more intently than she was used to. With an edgy stillness that seemed totally foreign to him.

The longer she stood before him, the more her paranoia built.

Finally, Brandt pushed to his feet. His dark eyes remained on hers as he deftly skirted the coffee table and the pile of Landon’s toys. He stopped in front of her, his big hands clenched at his sides. “Starting tonight, but especially this first time, I call the shots. All of them.
I
own your sexuality. We clear?”

Talk about being the big, bad wolf. Jessie nodded.

“Say the word so there’s no misunderstanding between us.”

She swallowed and said, “Yes.”

Brandt slanted his mouth over hers. But he didn’t kiss her with lust-fueled passion. He drank her in—with his eyes, with the short, choppy breaths he pulled into his lungs.

Although Jessie was pretty sure he wanted to take a possessive kiss, he didn’t, which indicated his monumental control.

His tongue darted out and slid along the plump inside curve of her bottom lip. A leisurely, sensuous glide across the sensitive flesh that caused her mouth to tremble even as her lips parted in invitation. But he didn’t dive in for a greedy, openmouthed kiss. He lightly swept his damp lips over hers. Repeatedly. Male hunger and hot breath, tempered with softness that was unlike anything she’d ever experienced.

He gauged her responses and inched closer, but didn’t allow their bodies to touch. Heat shimmered between them.

Jessie actually felt dizzy from want. What would he do if she fisted her hands in his T-shirt and just took the kiss she craved? His warning,
This first time, I call the shots,
forced her to truly surrender to him.

And that’s when Brandt kissed her.

Stuck between a rock-solid man and a hard place…

Rising, Freestyle

© 2011 Vivian Arend

Xtreme Adventures, Book 2

Melanie Dixon’s body may have recovered from a horrific climbing accident, but her nerve is long gone. So is the natural enthusiasm for life she took for granted. Tired of being scared, beyond ready to conquer her fears, she pulls up stakes and moves to her brother’s new hometown to start over. Her first step is the most terrifying—to tackle the wall at the local climbing center.

Derrick James is mesmerized by Melanie’s dark beauty, and equally impressed with her climbing abilities and determination. Watching her retune rusty skills spurs a desire to partner with her—on
and
off the ropes. Melanie’s a compelling mix of wit, sensuality and vulnerability, and it’s his delicious task to convince her the scars on her body are no match for the heat rising between them.

Then a man from Melanie’s past shows up, pushing their relationship to the edge. Nathan King wants photographs for a “where are they now” series, but his side agenda is more personal in nature. A proposal that brings her out of her sensual shell and onto a precarious sexual ledge. Where trust is crucial…and too easily shattered.

Warning: This book may cause heart-pounding, body-shaking adrenaline attacks—and that’s before they leave the climbing gym. Contains blindfolds, ropes and a healthy dose of voyeurism. Go on—you know you like to watch.