Wet: Whispering Cove, Book 2 (12 page)

He’s sailed the seas for adventure…and found the sexiest one back at home.

Wicked

© 2012 Nikki Duncan

Whispering Cove, Book 3

Danica Kent MD, has settled into her new role as a small-town doctor. She caters to her Whispering Cove patients, especially the rum-drinking, poker-playing, town grandfathers who have their hands in a bit of everything. But when one of those patients brings her face-to-face with her high-school crush, the work she’s done to reinvent herself falters.

Braydon Mitchell sails around the world writing freelance magazine articles. With no desire to settle down, he’s successfully avoided his grandfather’s pleas to come home...until now. Returning out of worry for the old man’s health, Braydon finds old friends in town for their high-school reunion. And something he hadn’t expected. Danica, the awkward teenage geek who’s all grown up—and filled out in
all
the right places.

From their first touch, erotic sparks make Braydon want everything he isn’t built for—small-town stability, a strong woman’s love, family. And Danica wonders if Braydon has dropped anchor for good…or if her lover will be gone with the next tide.

Warning: Sweet, stunning, single doctor seeks strong, sexy sailor for sailing, snuggles and plenty of batten-down-the-hatches and hold-on-tight lovin’. Meddling grandfathers can please butt the hell out.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Wicked:

Checking his watch, Braydon saw he had a few hours before needing to shower for dinner, so he headed to the cabin to grab the polish for the rails. He didn’t like cleaning, but living on a boat and travelling the world writing freelance stories for yachting and sporting magazines made hiring a regular housekeeper tough. Besides, he was particular about his boat.

Starting at the bow, he sat cross-legged and cleaned and polished the rails. Steady, slow and even strokes back and forth removed the salty build-up and restored the shine. With the front part of the railing done, he moved to work on the rigging hooks on the deck. The action of rubbing the surface to a gleam brought images of Danica to mind.

Images of her stretched out beneath him on the newly cleaned surface. His hands stroking and rubbing her, awakening her body and the shine of arousal he’d seen in her eyes earlier. His dick hardened, pressed into the zipper of his cut-offs.

When he’d agreed to attend the reunion, he’d been surprised at how much he wanted to be there. He wanted to see old friends and even those he hadn’t been friendly with. How much did ten years change people? Were the cliques the same? Were the nerds still nerds, snobs still snobs, jocks still jocks?

He had one answer. Sort of. Danica Kent, for all her awkwardness, was changed and still the same. Every run-in with her in high school had been stilted and awkward. She’d fawned over him, followed him, and spied on him from her room. She’d been unable to talk to him without stumbling over her tongue or spilling things on one of them or tripping. And okay, some had seen her attention as creepy, but mostly he’d found it kind of flattering.

She was still awkward, but somehow not. Clearly she still had the talking and tripping issues, but she hadn’t spilled anything. And damn if she hadn’t turned into the proverbial swan, even if it was with help from Victoria at the Whispering Salon.

“Nice boat.”

“Shit!” Braydon lurched up, tossed the rag and can of polish into the air, slipped on the newly polished surface and fell overboard with a giant splash.

Treading the cool water, he eyed Danica as she moved to the rail. No, she hadn’t spilled anything. She’d moved on to dumping him off boats.

“Do you need help?”

“No! Just move to the cockpit before you hurt yourself.” Rather than wait to see if she responded, he swam to the back of the boat where their small watercrafts were tied and climbed aboard.

She opened the gate part of the back edge of the boat. Rather than swing it in toward her, she swung it out, smacked him in the forehead and sent him falling backward a second time with a lancing pain to his head. He fell into the inflatable dingy, which was somewhat padded, but his hand slammed into the motor and his left ankle crashed against the boat with a resounding crack.

“Son of a bitch!”

“Damn it. Sorry.” Danica’s voice didn’t rise to frantic levels, but he could imagine her flapping her hands in hysteria.

Instead, she climbed down the few steps and got into the dingy with him. “Don’t move.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding.” She pulled her T-shirt over her head with no apparent thought to anyone on nearby boats, leaned over him and pressed it against his forehead to staunch the bleeding.

Her white, lace-covered nipples hovered just in front of his mouth. His cock hardened again. His body urged him to listen to desire, to lean forward and pull a nipple into his mouth. To taste more than her tempting mouth.

She moved the T-shirt, now half-soaked with blood, and put it immediately back to the cut. “This is bad.”

“I’m fine.” Ignoring his body’s impulses, he replaced her hand on the T-shirt with one of his own. “I’ve got this, Danica.”

“You’re going to need stitches.”

“I’ve had worse.” He moved to sit up. The boat rolled beneath him from dizziness and nausea rather than waves. Maybe he hadn’t had worse.

“I’m the doctor here. You need to move slowly, and you need stitches.”

“Okay.” If she wanted to play doctor without her top, he wasn’t going to argue. No straight man would. “Help me to the cockpit. There’s a first-aid kit there.”

“My office at the house would be better.”

As tempting as following her home was, there was no reason. “I have everything you could need.”

“If you say so.” She refrained from calling him stubborn, but he heard the suggestion underlying her words.

Neither of them spoke again while she helped him out of the constantly bouncing dingy and up the few stairs. She followed his instructions to find the first-aid kit.

He sat in the captain’s seat with the sun shining down and watched her move around the boat comfortably. With all the supplies gathered, she stood in front of him and cleaned the wound. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t push the door. That latch smacked the frame and it bounced back.”

“So your intention wasn’t to decapitate me?”

“No, Braydon.” She scrunched up her nose, crinkling the thin scar into microscopic puckers, and concentrated on tying off the first stitch. “I took a vow to heal rather than harm people.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I’d hate to see what happened if you set out to harm me.” He smiled through a wince to make sure she knew he was kidding. She was talking without her regular awkwardness and he wanted to keep her doing so.

She chuckled. “I’ve never been accident prone, but judging by the state of your emergency kit, the same can’t be said for you.”

He ignored her remark on the battered case and supplies he’d restocked many times, adding to them with each injury. “So it’s only me who knocks you off your game?”

“I’ll admit you do something to me.”

Damn, but the possibility flopped happily in his gut. A speed boat zipped past, rocking the boat. Danica froze with her needle poised above his eye. He grabbed her hips to steady her. Though she seemed to be well-balanced on her own feet, he didn’t release her. Instead, he wondered if she wore panties to match her bra.

“Something? You won’t be more specific?” He worked his thumbs in small circles over her pelvis. Fully in doctor mode, she didn’t respond.

“No. And stop moving.” She snipped the thread off. “I only have two stitches to go.”

His forehead tingled beneath her touch. The pulse in his neck pounded painfully, and it wasn’t entirely due to the blood loss. Her nipples stiffened behind the thin lace bra with little bumps circling them. His balls tightened. “Am I going to have a charming scar like yours?”

“What?”

“The scar lining your nose. How’d you get it?”

“Fishing hook gone awry.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. The hook didn’t catch in the fish’s mouth right. I pulled it out of the water. It opened its mouth. The hook flipped back and caught me.” She tapped her glasses and smiled. “Now I have a scar and get to live with glasses.”

“It went into your eye?” He studied her face, looking for more scarring than the thin line. There was none. Someone had done great work, yet the lingering imperfection made her more appealing.

“Yeah. Could’ve been a lot worse. I mean, think about it. What’s sanitary about a fishing hook fresh from the fish’s mouth with the bait still on it?”

“Not a damn thing.” He would have laughed at the oh-my-gag-that’s-repulsive look on her face if she didn’t have a needle in his forehead. “When did it happen?”

“Summer before freshman year.” She tied and cut off the last stitch and set the scissors aside. “There. Keep it clean and the stitches will need to come out in four or five days. If you use Vitamin E after that you won’t scar.”

He hooked his index fingers into the waist of her shorts and pulled her closer so she stood between his legs. “Are you that good?”

“I trained with a plastic surgeon and worked in a New York City emergency room.” Her breasts rose and fell with choppy breaths. “If you’re going to be hit in the head and need stitches—”

“You’re the woman to do the hitting.”

“The stitching at the very least.”

“Tell me something, Danica.” He slid his palms over her stomach, tracing the subtle edges of her abs with his fingertips and slowly edged toward her breasts. “What are you doing here?”

“Huh?”

His thumb tweaked her nipple. “Why did you come to my boat?”

“Did you know the human body can function without a brain?”

“Good. You can shut yours off and just respond.” He didn’t care why she’d come to his boat. He’d endured her hands on him for as long as he could. She was there. She was half naked. He was all for getting her completely naked.

Braydon leaned forward and kissed the edge of her bra, swiping his tongue beneath the lace edge. She moaned and canted closer. He popped the button of her shorts and lowered her zipper. His body begged from his goose-pimpling flesh to his tingling scalp to his pulsing cock.
Release. Soon. Very soon.

“Be sure, Danica.”

She kissed his ear lobe, pulling the tender skin between her teeth. “I’m sure.”

She wants a piece of his rock. He needs her, rock steady, in his heart.

A Little Wild

© 2011 Kate St. James

Tess Sheridan won’t let anything stop her from making partner at a prestigious law firm, especially her notoriously soft heart. The result? She’s a handful of clients away from getting her name on that brass plate. And she hasn’t had sex in over a year.

When her best friend dares her to test-drive her erotic fantasies with a gorgeous stranger, she figures, why not? Loosening the reins will give her inner nympho some well-deserved pampering without jeopardizing her career goals.

Zach Halliday has enjoyed his bad-boy reputation to the fullest, but now it’s time to leave the relative safety of the family corporation and prove he can stand on his own in the business world. That doesn’t mean he’ll pass up an opportunity for some incredible phone sex with the beautiful strawberry blonde he met in a bar.

When business overlaps with the bedroom, Zach sees something special in Tess and is determined to convince her he’s the man she needs, anytime, anyplace. She can backpedal, but come hell or high-climbing-wall, he wants the fascinating, complicated sex bomb in his bed. Over and over again…

Warning: This book contains explicit, melt-your-panties sex (phone and otherwise), and inappropriate use of wild cherry ice cream. Insights on rejuvenating your own inner nympho may be inspired upon reading.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
A Little Wild:

“Hi,” a soft, feminine voice barely audible above the pub’s sound system murmured behind Zach. Turning on his barstool, he saw the slender strawberry blonde who, moments earlier, had been sitting at the table near the ornate mirrors.

“Hi yourself.” Up close, she was more than a knockout. She was breathtaking. A few strands of molten-sunshine hair had escaped her conservative hairstyle to feather in waves along her slim neck. Long lashes framed her demure, light blue eyes. But the way she propped one hand on her hip and the husky timbre of her voice was anything but demure.

Interesting.

Minutes ago, when their gazes had met, Zach had sensed shyness in droves. Now, the intriguing allure of her madonna-minx appeal pulled at him. Pleasure filled him that she hadn’t ventured to the bar while he’d chatted with the Halliday employees on their way out. He might have missed her in the commotion.

And that would have been a damn shame.

“Um, excuse me.” She death-gripped her purse, her voice shifting from sensual to something approaching awkward.

“Sorry.” Zach rose to allow her better access to the bar, but her light blush stopped him from stepping aside. The pale freckles he’d imagined—and was gratified to see she possessed—enhanced her delicate features and high cheekbones.