“How long ago did she die?”

“Twenty-eight years.”

He was silent for a moment. “Long time. How’d she die?”

So long she hardly remembered her. “Heart attack. I don’t remember a lot about it. Just my daddy calling her name and the sound of the ambulance and a white sheet.”

“My mother died almost seven years ago.”

“I’m sorry.” Her knee bumped his. “Your memories are fresher than mine.”

He was quiet for several more heartbeats, then added, “I was in Fallujah at the time. My sister was with her when she died.”

Her fingers on his collar stilled. It had been a while, but she remembered the nightly news reports and pictures of the fighting in Fallujah. “You were a soldier?”

“Sailor,” he corrected. “Navy SEAL.”

She guessed she’d been schooled. “How long did you serve?”

“Ten years.”

“I dated a Ranger once.” For about three weeks. “He was a little crazy. I think he had PTSD.”

“Happens to a lot of good guys.” She was nosy enough to want to ask if it had happened to him, but she was tactful enough not to.

Her fingers slid into the short dark hair at the base of his skull. There was just something about a strong, capable man. Something appealing about knowing that if a girl fell and broke her leg, he could throw her over his shoulder and run twenty miles to a hospital. Or hell, make a splint out of a little mud and sticks. “The Ranger guy said that SEALs are even more arrogant than Marine Recon.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he said next to her ear, scattering those warm tingles down her neck and across her chest. “People confuse arrogance and the truth. When President Obama ordered a counterterrorism unit to take down bin Laden, he sent three SEAL teams because we’re the best.” He shrugged his big shoulders. “That’s not arrogance. It’s the truth.” The music stopped and he pulled back far enough to look down into her face.

“We should maybe get a drink.”

A drink would lead to other things and they both knew it. Knew it by the way his green eyes looked into hers and how her body responded. She didn’t know him. She wanted to know him, though. Wanted to know all the bad things that would feel so good. If just for a little while, but she had more sense and a lot to do in the morning. “I’ve got to go.”

Purple and blue chandelier light sliced across his nose and cheeks. “Where?”

“Home.” Where she was safe from good-looking strangers with too much charm and testosterone. “I’m leaving early in the morning and I need to spend a few hours with my daddy before I go.”

She half expected him to angrily point out that he’d barely arrived at the wedding as a favor to her, and now she was leaving. “I’ll walk you out.”


“Thank you again for coming to my cousin’s wedding,” Sadie said as she and Vince moved down the hall toward the bride’s room inside the Sweetheart Palace. “I feel bad that you got dressed up for so short a time.”

“I’m not all that dressed up, and I owed you,” he said, his deep voice filling the narrow passage toward the back of the facility.

Together they entered the bride’s room, and light from the hall spilled through the door and on the rows of salon chairs and empty garment bags. Within the rectangle of hall light, her coat and overnight bag sat in one of the chairs and she moved to it. “You didn’t owe me, Vince.” She picked up her coat and looked at him through the salon mirror. The light cut across her throat and his chest, leaving the rest of the room in variegated shadow.

He took her coat from her hands. “We square now?”

It seemed so important to him that she nodded, realized he probably couldn’t see, and said, “Yes. We’re square.”

He held her coat open behind her, and she threaded one arm and the other into the sleeves. The backs of his fingers brushed her bare arms and shoulders as he helped her with the coat.

Sadie pulled her hair from the collar and looked back across her shoulder at him. Her mouth just below his, she whispered, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” His breath brushed her lips. “Are you sure you want to go home?”

No. She wasn’t sure at all. She felt him bend down the second before his mouth covered hers, warm and completely male. So completely male it was like a straight shot burning its way down her chest to the pit of her stomach. The tingles he’d ignited on the dance floor flared, and she opened her mouth. His tongue swept inside, hot and wet and good. Her toes curled in her shoes and she melted back into the solid wall of him. His arms circled her waist and he held her against him. Held her tight even as he pushed her into the lush descent of pleasure. She didn’t know if she would have resisted. Didn’t really get the chance to think about it before he turned up the heat, giving her deep, wet kisses. She tried to catch his tongue, tried to draw him deep into her mouth as her body turned hot and liquid, wanting more. More than just his tongue deep inside.

Desire curled around her, squeezing her with so much pleasure that she didn’t resist when she felt his hands slide up her waist to cup her breasts. Through the thin taffeta his hot hands turned her nipples hard and she moaned deep in her throat. A shiver worked its way up her spine, and she turned to face him.

This was all happening so fast. Too fast, and her whole world narrowed and focused on his hot mouth and warm hands, touching her breasts and softly caressing the tips of her hard nipples. His mouth continued to devour hers in hot passion and greedy hunger, and she ran her hands all over his body. His shoulders and chest. The side of his neck and through his short hair.

She was in trouble, big trouble, but she didn’t care. His warm hands on her aching skin felt good. His mouth luscious, the big erection pressed into her pelvis, hard and powerful.

He moved one warm palm to the inside of her cool, bare thigh and slipped his fingers beneath the hem of her short dress. His mouth slid to the side of her neck. “You’re beautiful, Sadie.” His mouth opened on the side of her throat and his hand moved between her thighs.

She gasped as he cupped her crotch through the lace and silk of her panties. This wasn’t happening. This shouldn’t be happening. She shouldn’t let this happen. Not here. Not now.

“You’re wet,” he said against her throat.

Liquid heat, fiery and intense, poured through her veins, and her whole world was reduced to Vince’s hot mouth on her throat and his fingers pushing aside the tiny scrap of lace and silk.

She moaned and her head fell back.

“Do you like this?”

“Yes.” She had to stop him. Now, before there was no stopping. He parted her flesh and stroked where she was slick and wet inside and . . . “Oh God.”

“More?”

“Yes.”

“Wrap your legs around my waist.”

“What?” She was mindless. Mindless to anything but his pleasure-giving hand.

“Wrap your legs around my waist and I’ll fuck you against the door.”

“What?” She opened her mouth to tell him they couldn’t do anything against the door. He had to stop. Stop before—“Oh God,” she moaned as a rush of liquid fire grabbed ahold of her and burned her up from the inside out. “Don’t stop, Vince.” It started between her thighs and spread across her flesh. Her head spun and her ears rang as hot wave after hotter wave of intense orgasm slammed into her. “Please don’t stop.” She squeezed her thighs around his pleasure-giving hand. Her body pulsed with pure lust, over and over; it rushed across her skin until the last ounce of the hot pleasure flowed from the tips of her fingers and toes. Only then did she slowly become aware of where she was and what she’d just allowed to happen. “Stop!” She stepped away. “Stop!” She pushed at his hands and chest. What was she doing? What had she done? “What are you doing?”

“Exactly what you wanted me to do.”

She tugged her top up and the hem of her dress down. This was her cousin’s wedding. Anyone could have walked in. “No. I didn’t want that.” Thank God she couldn’t see his face and he couldn’t see hers.

“You just begged me not to stop.”

Had she? “Oh God.”

“You said that a couple of times, too.”

The burning in her cheeks spread to her ringing ears. She closed her coat over her dress and grabbed her overnight case. “Did anyone see us?”

“I don’t know. You didn’t seem too concerned about that a minute ago.”

“Oh God,” she said again, and raced from the room.


Sexual frustration pounded Vince’s head and groin. Was she really leaving? When he wasn’t finished? “Wait a minute!” he called out as the tails of her coat disappeared from sight. He stood in the bride’s room in some wedding place in Texas with a huge hard-on. What the hell had just happened? He’d hardly touched her, was just getting into touching her, and she’d gone off.

“Shit.” He let out a breath and looked down at himself, at the tent in the front of his pants. He’d known she’d be trouble. He just hadn’t figured her for a dick tease. Not after she’d shoved her body against his chest on the dance floor. Not after she’d looked up at him like she was thinking about sex. He’d been around enough women to know when they were thinking about getting naked, and she’d been thinking about it plenty.

He sat in a salon chair, adjusted himself to the right, and then leaned his head back into the darkness. He couldn’t leave. Not quite yet. Not until he wasn’t leading with a hard-on. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had his hand up a girl’s dress and she’d left him throbbing and alone. High school maybe.

Earlier, when he’d pulled her close so he could hear her over the band, she’d just melted into him, reminding him that he hadn’t had sex since he’d left Seattle. By the time they’d entered the room alone, he’d been half hard and he’d acted on it. He wouldn’t have kissed Sadie if he hadn’t looked into the mirror, into that slice of light cutting across her pretty mouth and incredible cleavage that had been riding his chest. So maybe it hadn’t been one of his finest ideas, but she hadn’t exactly objected, and he’d gone from half to fully stiff in less than a second.