Dangerous Lover: Take Me, Lover, Book 4 Read online

  But Samantha’s earlier words were somehow filtering through her frenzied thoughts, making her want to scream. Make him sweat. Then Macy’s, telling her how insane she was. Her mother’s haughty, disapproving face.

  Michelle’s expression softening with yearning and traveling a million miles away at the memories of him.

  All at once, she was barraged with all the voices of reason in her life, every one in direct opposition to what her body was begging her to do right now.

  “I can’t,” she whispered, pulling away from his lips to cram her face into his neck. Praying he would understand, but that he wouldn’t stop. Selfishly trying to claim what she couldn’t have.

  “I feel how wet you are,” he murmured sinfully in her ear. “How much you need this. To hell with everyone else. Let me give you what you need.” His tongue flickered against the soft shell, and she moaned as his talented fingers continued to work their magic. But he was slowing his pace, touching her too shallowly, holding her teetering on the edge of a devastating orgasm. Trying to make her give in. And she couldn’t. “No one has to know,” he cajoled.

  “Please don’t do this to me,” she cried, fearing the dam stopping up her emotions was about to burst. She couldn’t let it, couldn’t do this. And Brian froze, pulling his hands away from her as if she’d seared him.

  To survive, she’ll have to keep up with him all day. And all night…

  Adventure Lover

  © 2010 Charlene Teglia

  Take Me, Lover, Book 3

  Jill Martin loves adventure—as long as it comes between the covers of a book. Preferably one sporting a bare-chested hero. But to reinvent her faltering travel agency, she needs to start with reinventing herself. Her assignment: a three-day backpacking trip through the Olympic High Divide.

  Soon she’s forced to cope with bears, blisters, and a basic instinct to get horizontal with her vertical guide. He’s as hard as the ground they sleep on and his heart’s as icy as the glaciers that surround them. Not a problem, since she’s only interested in his body.

  Ryan Lowe knows how to read terrain, and Jill’s is easy. Soft lips, soft eyes, soft curves, soft muscles. She won’t last a day. Plus, if she knew what his imagination was doing with her body right now, she’d turn tail and run. Yet the city girl surprises him with her sheer grit—and sassy tongue.

  When they run into geocachers using the remote location as a drug drop-off, there’s only one way to escape—plunge headlong into the untracked wilderness. As she puts her life in Ryan’s hands, Jill wonders if she’s in danger of losing something more precious. Her heart.

  Warning: All the romance and twice the heat! Contains graphic non-vanilla sex, the great outdoors, bears, bad guys, and binding commitment. May cause hot flashes if read in unventilated room.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Adventure Lover:

  By the time Jill crawled into the tent, she was having serious doubts about her ability to do anything but fall into a coma.

  “I think you really did kill me on that damn trail,” she groaned before she collapsed on her belly, still dressed except for her boots. She could hear Ryan moving around, stowing their backpacks, zipping the tent closed. He’d smothered the campfire and cleaned up earlier, and now there was nothing but the light of a billion stars and a fat yellow moon to relieve the darkness.

  “Dead people are quieter.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  His hands settled on her hips and gripped. “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “My muscles hurt,” she said, feeling pitiful. “All of them. Including ones I didn’t think I had. Backpacking is hard. Why do people want to do this?”

  “To get where you can’t go unless you’re on foot.” His fingers dug in, released, then shifted to her butt. Jill started to protest, but then he did something with his thumbs, finding a spot in the center and applying pressure. At first it raised the low-level complaints her ass had been sending her brain for the last three hours, and then the pain eased and the relief staggered her.

  “That’s fantastic,” she mumbled. “More.”

  Ryan was already working the muscle farther down, kneading, pressing, making it hurt more and then taking the hurt away. “Tell me if it’s too much. Massage can be really intense.”

  “It’s intense,” she agreed, inhaling sharply as the pressure built. “But if you keep this up, I might be able to walk in the morning.”

  “I’m hoping you’ll feel better tonight.”

  “I feel better already.” Her mouth shaped a smile as she relaxed into his touch. She had no idea so many pressure points were in her butt or the backs of her thighs, but Ryan systematically searched them out, working magic. By the time he reached her calves, her body hummed with a sense of well being she wouldn’t have believed possible after the punishment she’d given it.

  She’d never done anything so physically demanding before. She’d also never experienced such sheer scenic variety in a single afternoon. She’d seen waterfalls, rainforest, and alpine vistas, all in a few hours.

  She’d sipped dried soup as if it was the nectar of the gods and devoured the lake fish Ryan had caught and baked in the coals of their fire, amazed at the flavor and texture. She’d never eaten fish that tasted like that at any restaurant.

  When she asked Ryan why everything tasted so good, he’d looked at her as if she was slow and said, “The water. The air.” Then he’d added, “And when was the last time you were really hungry?”

  Under his firm touch, she could feel a different hunger growing. When was the last time she’d been touched like this? Really touched. She couldn’t remember ever being with a man who’d explored her body so thoroughly before. She hungered for more, for the touch of his hands against her bare skin, his naked body pressed to hers, inside hers.

  Ryan flexed her leg and raised her foot, massaging the heel with so much pressure she bit her lip at the sudden pain, and then exhaled relief as pain fled and pleasure took its place. His fingers dug into the ball of her foot next, then her toes, releasing every tight muscle and leaving her limp, relaxed, and intensely aware of her entire body.

  When he peeled her wool socks off and rubbed the soles of her bare feet, his touch shifted from therapeutic to caressing. His hands moved up under her pant leg, tracing patterns around her ankles and lower calves, awakening nerve centers.

  Jill rolled onto her back and waited as his hands slid up the outsides of her legs before finding her waistband and unfastening her jeans. She raised her pelvis while Ryan peeled the denim down below her hips, all the way down her legs, and off. His hands returned, stroking up the insides this time in a single, unhurried movement from her ankles to the juncture of her thighs.

  A sharp breath escaped her at that first touch. Ryan drew his hands back and forth, rubbing lightly between her legs, the fabric of her panties the only barrier between them. He didn’t move them aside or cup her pubic mound. Instead, he kept going upward. His fingertips trailed across her hipbones, teased her belly, grazed her ribcage with a touch light enough to almost tickle, but instead it made her arch up, aching for his hands on her breasts.

  He cupped the undersides and rasped his thumbs over her nipples. They responded to the attention, tightening under her shirt and bra.

  “I have too many clothes on,” Jill said, putting her hands over his. “Help.”

  “I’ll have to stop touching you to do that.”

  She bit her lip. “That’s a problem. Tell you what, let’s race. I do mine, you do yours, we meet back here naked.”

  “What do I win?”

  She laughed, knowing he’d probably beat her even though she had a head start. “Anything you want.”

  Jill got down to skin faster than she’d ever undressed in her life, despite sore muscles and the awkwardness of doing it half-lying down in a small, enclosed space. Ryan was still faster. After she tossed her bra into a corner of the tent, his hands closed on her waist and pulled her close.

  She sucked in a breath
at that first contact of skin to skin, her soft body conforming to the hard contours of his. His hands gripped her butt, bringing her even closer. She could feel his engorged shaft against her belly. His obvious arousal filled her with a mix of greed and wonder. All for me.

  “I win,” he informed her as his lips grazed her temple and his fingers dug into her ass.

  “Then I guess you get to claim your prize.”

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