Real Men Do It Better
Featuring For Maggie's Sake (Tempting SEALS Book 3)
In this sizzing collection from some of romance’s hottest authors, you’ll read four sexy short stories about women who discover that real men do it better…
In Lora Leigh’s FOR MAGGIE’S SAKE, Maggie Chavez from Leigh’s sexy Navy SEALs series is in protective custody with a member of her former lover’s SEALs team. Joe, her ex-lover, thinks Maggie is hiding information from him about a powerful drug lord and the deaths of some SEALs. He intends to seduce her and get the information before she can sell it back to the drug cartel. But when a member of the notorious crime family captures Maggie and holds her hostage at gunpoint, Joe realizes how wrong he is, and only he can save her life.
Maggie ignored the coffee sitting before her, the smell of it suddenly as unappetizing as the lies passing his lips. Standing slowly to her feet she stared back at him impassively, fighting to hide the pain exploding inside her.
“You’ve changed, Joe,” she whispered. “I never pegged you for a liar. An asshole and a prick maybe, but not an out and out liar. Congratulations, you did the impossible. You made my opinion of you sink lower than it was two and a half years ago.”
Turning on her heel she moved to stalk from the kitchen, to put distance between herself and his games, his lies. She hated lies. She hated herself. Because she wanted to believe him, she wanted to trust in the arousal and the warmth that had heated his eyes, just as she wanted to believe that he could trust in her, just once. She was a fool.
“No you don’t.” She came to an abrupt stop as he jumped from his chair, his hand reaching out to catch her upper arm as she moved to pass him.
The shock of his flesh touching hers, the heat and strength in it nearly drove the breath from her body.
“Let me go.” She jerked against his hold, feeling the anger growing inside her, the hurt burning through her heart.
“I won’t let you go, Maggie.” He suddenly snarled, jerking her around as his free hand buried in her hair, his fingers locking into the strands as he jerked her head back and stared into her eyes fiercely. “I won’t let you go and I won’t let you die. Lie to me all you need to. Fuck it. I’ll get Fuentes in the end if I have to kill him to do it. But I won’t let you go.”
“You don’t have a choice.” She pushed against his chest, desperate to escape him, to break free of the hard temptation of his body. “I don’t belong to you, Joe, not anymore…”
“By God, you always belonged to me. Always.”
Before she could stop him his head lowered, his lips covered hers, and time came to a stop. There was only Joe’s kiss. His lips moving against hers, his tongue licking, piercing her lips, moving between them in a fierce, dominant kiss.
Her fingers curled against his chest, then spread out, nerve endings soaking in the feel of him, remembering, relishing the rasp of the short, crisp hairs on her palms, the fiery warmth beneath his flesh.
Against her lower stomach she felt his erection pressing intently through the material of his sweatpants. His arms enfolded her, his kiss intoxicated her.
“Joe,” she whimpered as his lips slid to her cheek, to her jaw. “Don’t do this.”
Don’t make her feel again. Don’t make her ache for all the things she knew she couldn’t have. Don’t make her love him more than she already did.
“I dreamed of you…” The arousal and the anger pulsed in his voice as he nipped at her ear. “For more than two years, I remembered what it was like to feel you beneath me, to hear the soft little catch in your voice when you came beneath me, the feel of your body tightening around me. I remembered, Maggie, and it drove me insane.”
She whimpered at the pain that enveloped her, the raking fingers of need, regret and sorrow that filled her.
“This won’t fix the past.” She tightened her fingers on his biceps, feeling the power and the tension that vibrated in his body. “It won’t solve anything, Joe.”
He wanted to punish her. She could feel it pulsing in the air around them, feel it in the rake of his teeth along her neck, the nipping little kisses and the press of his erection against her.
Even as her head screamed out a warning against his touch and the probability of heartbreak down the road, she felt herself relaxing, leaning into him, the response he had always commanded from her leaping through her system.
“I know one thing it will definitely solve.” One hand slid down her back, gripped the swell of a buttock and lifted her to him.
Maggie moaned at the feel of his cock notching between her thighs, his lips at her neck, his tongue licking erotically at her skin. Blood pulsed hot and fast through her veins, heating her flesh, sensitizing her nerve endings as lust began to spike the air around them.
Hunger surged through her. More than two years of aching, needing, of suffering the restless, shadowed dissatisfaction that edged at her mind, culminated here. In Joe’s arms. His touch, his kiss. It was the drug she had never recovered from, the one very likely to destroy her.