Maggie fought to make out Joe’s expression, to see through the dim light provided by the flashlight Jose had aimed more at the floor rather than Joe. It left Joe’s expression in shadow to her, though she was certain Jose had the required light to watch it closely.
She shook her head slowly as Joe watched her. It wasn’t worth it. The Fuentes gang would continue to kill, to rape, and to maim if they were allowed to go free. But could she bear the pain Jose could deal her? She was horribly afraid she couldn’t.
“Decide now, Merino.” The blade pressed into the upper portion of her breasts, pricking the flesh. “There is no time left.”
In more ways than one.
As Maggie’s gasp tore from her throat, light flared in the garage, brilliant and intense as sirens began to blast through the interior. Maggie felt someone’s rough hands jerking her away to the side as the feel of the blade biting into her flesh had her crying out in shock.
“Stay down.”
She heard Joe’s fierce order at her ear as she was dragged to the other side of his precious car, the sound of bullets pinging around it sending a flash of dread through her chest.
“Sons of bitches,” Joe yelled. “Be careful of my fucking car!”
The garage doors flew open as Maggie’s eyes adjusted to the light, the sight of black-clad figures pouring into the interior sending jubilation rushing through her.
Within seconds it was over. Maggie rolled to her back, staring up at Joe as he leaned over her, his lips curving into a smile as she watched him in surprise.
“Looks like Craig knew me better than I thought he did,” he grunted with a short laugh. “I’d have pulled that one over easy on Grant, Maggie. He would have never known I was gone until I didn’t return.”
“Craig did this?” Joe helped her to her feet, his arm curving around her waist as they watched the SWAT team gather up Jose, Roberto, and their henchmen, under the close supervision of Craig Allen, the district attorney, Mark Johnson, and the federal prosecutor, Andrew Jordan.
Craig turned to them slowly, his eyes watching them for long assessing moments before he lifted his hand, touched his fingers to his forehead, and nodded slowly.
“My car is ruined,” Joe sighed.
Maggie jerked her gaze to the car. It was scarred with bullet holes from one end to the other.
“You can fix it.” She was still breathing harshly, hardly daring to believe that it was all over. The information they needed was found, the Fuentes group was back in custody, and she was free.
“How about ‘we’ fix it?” He turned to her, staring down at her with sudden sobriety, his brown eyes almost black with emotion. “We could redecorate the house while we’re at it.”
“We?” she whispered.
“We.” He nodded slowly, his fingers lifting to the bloody scratch on her chest before his gaze came back to hers. “I won’t let you go again, Maggie. Ever. So for your sake, I hope you love me as much I love you, because if not, we’re in for a hell of a battle.”
“We’re in for a hell of a battle anyway.” She couldn’t stop smiling. Couldn’t stop crying as she threw her arms around his neck, felt his surround her, and knew, in that moment, that her dreams had come true.
She was in Joe’s arms, and he was talking forever. And forever was a good thing.
epilogue
three weeks later
joe found the little plastic stick with the line running through the result window when he dragged himself out of the bed and stumbled into the bathroom.
Sleep wasn’t something he had gotten a lot of the night before. Maggie, on the other hand—he had gotten a lot of her. He had taken her until he was certain sex would be the furthest thing from his mind for days. Only to reach for her again, impossibly hard, desperate to feel her coming around him.
He stared down at the home pregnancy test, hardly daring to believe what it meant. That in the weeks since he had her back in his bed, a child had developed. The child he had dreamed of having with her every fucking night she had been married to Grant.
He had lived in fear of the other man announcing pending fatherhood. Certain that the moment he heard the news, life would crumble around him. Two years he had spent in hell, aching, tormented by memories of Maggie and a hunger that never slept. A hunger that still didn’t sleep.
How had one tiny woman buried herself so deeply within his heart without his knowledge of it? Yet Maggie had. He loved her in ways he had never loved his first wife. In ways that still defied his own understanding. He would die for her. Without thought. Without regret. He would die for Maggie. And now for their child.
He reached out and picked up the stick, feeling his chest clench as emotion threatened to overwhelm him. And amazingly, he felt the erection between his thighs, his cock thickening, straining as arousal began to tear through him.
Maggie was pregnant.
Joe blinked back the moisture that filled his eyes as the knowledge overwhelmed him, weakened his knees, and made him feel like whimpering in excitement and fear. Damn, he felt like a fucking teenager with his first woman now. His flesh prickled with the sudden awareness of the bond, and his chest felt too tight as his heart seemed to swell with the overabundance of emotion flooding through him.
He backed slowly from the bathroom, his eyes on that small line of color in the result box of the test stick.
“There’s still time to escape.”
He swung around, meeting the brilliance of Maggie’s uncertain gaze. It moved from his face to his cock, her expression flickering with surprise before her eyes returned to his.
“Escape?” He winced at the sound of his own voice, hoarse, ragged. “Maggie…” He shook his head.
Son of a bitch, there were words he should be saying right now. Something poetic or romantic, something that would alleviate the uncertainty in her gaze. But his throat was locked with emotion, his chest heaving from it as he fought to breathe.
But he could still move, and he did so without conscious effort. He dropped the result stick, strode to her, and within seconds he had her in his arms. She wore nothing but his shirt, and he could feel the heat of her body searing him through it. Emotion threatened to overwhelm him as he stared into her eyes, saw the hope, the fears, and the love. Maggie had always stared at him with such love. Then slowly, desperate to feel her, to feel the life within her, Joe went to his knees as his arms wrapped around her hips, pulling her to him. He jerked her shirt up over her abdomen, his face pressing against the soft flesh as he felt the moisture that refused to evaporate from his eyes.
Fuck, he was a grown man. Grown men didn’t cry.
“Joe?” Her voice was low, a sweet little cry filled with hope and love, joy and innocence.
He pressed his lips to her stomach, his hands moving around to grip her hips and hold her close as he imagined he felt the life growing beneath his lips, inside her precious body.
“I love you.” He couldn’t say the words enough as he felt a tremor rushing through him, through her. “I love you, Maggie.”
Then he was pulling her to him, dragging her down to face him, staring into those beautiful green eyes and the tears that washed over her cheeks.
“I love you, Joe.” Her hands touched his cheeks as he smoothed back the fiery strands of hair that had fallen across her cheeks. “I guess this means you’re happy about the baby?”
Her tremulous smile had his lips quirking as he fought the shudders racing through his body.
“I want you again,” he whispered, dragging the material of her shirt to her neck as he fought to remove the hated clothing she had donned.
She didn’t need to wear clothes. He wanted to see her body, wanted to watch it change, to become heavy with their child. He wanted to see the pearly sheen of her skin and feel every inch of the warm satin flesh against him.
“We’re going to kill each other like this.” Her laughter was thick with arousal, with the same hungers that drove him as he laid her back on the carpet and c
ame slowly over her.
Her thighs parted for him, knees bending as he settled between them, his cock lodging at the entrance to the fiery, sweetly aroused flesh awaiting him. Soft nether lips enfolded the head of his cock as he pressed against the entrance of her pussy, they caressed his sensitive flesh, the damp friction causing his teeth to grit at the subtle, torturous pleasure as he began to take her.
* * *
Maggie stared up at Joe, seeing the track of the tears he had shed on his lean cheeks, the intensity of emotion that darkened his eyes. Dark blond hair fell over his forehead, softening the savage cast of his features, and his lips appeared softer, hungry, as he stared at her.
He filled her slowly, tenderly, as though aware of the sensitivity her inner flesh held after the hunger that had raged through them the night before.
As he pressed inside her, filling her, stretching her, his fingers brushed over her cheeks, her lips, feathering over her skin as though memorizing her by touch, even as his eyes traced each feature.
“I died when I lost you.” The sound of his voice shocked her. It was guttural, thick with remembered pain.
“Joe.” She tried to shake her head, to halt the flow of pain she could see in his eyes.
“No. Hear me out. Now.” He pressed deeper inside her and suddenly the joining of their bodies was more than just pleasure, or bonding. It was as though the embrace had become elemental, a fusion of body and soul. “I don’t want to ever be that stupid again, Maggie. I don’t want to ever forget the agony I felt every day that you lived under his roof, that I thought he lived in your heart. Because I don’t want to ever be that stupid again, Maggie. Ever.”
“As though I would let you, ever again,” she whispered, a smile trembling over her lips as tears fell from her eyes. “I love you, too, Joe. And walking away isn’t something I’ll do again. I’m here. For always.”
He moved then, as though he couldn’t help himself, his hips shifting, moving against her as his erection began to thrust slow and deep inside her.
Her back arched with pleasure as a whimpering cry escaped her chest. God, she loved this, feeling him inside her, touching her, loving her in a way she knew she would never know with another man. Only Joe.
“Ah, Maggie,” he groaned as his hands lowered from her face, his fingers sinking into her hair as he bent to her.
Gentle lips nipped at hers as he gazed into her eyes. She could see her reflection in the dark gaze, as well as the emotion that poured from him.
“Sweetheart, you fill my soul,” he groaned as he began to thrust harder, his cock spearing into her, stroking tender nerve endings, sensitive flesh, and creating a blaze of lust as the friction increased.
Her legs lifted, wrapping around his hips as she fought to deepen the kiss, to hold him tighter to her as she felt a part of her soul lifting, lightening, melding with his as he took her with a gentleness she wouldn’t have believed possible.
It seemed never-ending. He kissed her with devouring hunger, though his thrusts were tender, stretching her vagina with easy strokes as his fingers caressed her scalp. She could feel him from her lips to her ankles, his harder, stronger body moving, flexing against hers as the building pleasure began to tighten through her body.
“Joe. Oh God, it feels so good…” Her head thrashed against the carpet as his lips moved to her neck, his tongue licking over her flesh as he moved lower.
“Hmm. Damned good, baby. But only with you. Sweet heaven, Maggie, only with you.”
Maggie fought to breathe as his lips moved to her breast, his tongue painting her tight nipple with liquid fire a second before the heat of his mouth enveloped it. The firm suckling of his mouth heralded a harsh groan from his lips before he began thrusting inside her harder, faster, fucking into her with a depth and intensity that sent her spiraling into an orgasm that swept through her soul.
Maggie was barely aware of her own cries as release raced through her, but she clearly heard Joe’s. Harsh, a guttural male cry, almost animalistic, that preceded the harsh shudders that tore through his body and the feel of his release pulsing inside her.
Exhausted. Ravished. Maggie lay bonelessly on the floor as Joe collapsed to her side, breathing harshly.
“Well, that’s the first time we did it on the bedroom floor.” It was all she could do to form coherent words, but that thought struck her as funny.
“It was ’bout time then,” he panted beside her.
His hand moved lazily to her stomach, his fingers splaying across her flesh as he turned to her then.
“I love you, Joe.” There was no containing that love, or the happiness blooming inside her.
“I worship you, Maggie,” he whispered. “For your sake, I hope you can live with it.”
“Always, Joe.” She smiled back at him tearfully. “Always.”
atlanta heat
prologue
some women a man knew to stay the hell away from. It was a self-preservation thing. Survival instinct. The lone wolf that reveled in its independence and sexual freedom knew when it was staring in the eyes of a sensual trap. A woman capable of making the male animal stand up, take notice, and tremble in his military boots.
Mason “Macey” March was a man who liked to live on the edge, though. He was all about the challenge, the risk, the excitement, whether it was a mission or a woman, or a terrorist out to destroy the world. He was a man who stared out at life with a defiant snarl and dared it to take first blood.
He was a man staring at his own destruction, and he had enough sense to recognize it, and to be equally terrified and drawn to it. Like a spectator to a train wreck. It was going to be bloody. It was going to be a mess. But he couldn’t look away because she had him by his soul and he knew it. One kiss. That was all it was going to take. One touch and he was going to be a goner. He was aching to touch.
Hazel green eyes twinkled mischievously over lightly freckled cheeks. Lush lips curved enchantingly, and made a man wonder about the things that mouth could do even as it threatened the fit of his dress whites.
Softly curved, temptingly delicate, and trouble with a capital T. Messing with this woman was the ultimate insanity, but no one had ever accused him of being sane.
“You know, Lieutenant March,” she drawled in a seductive Southern accent. “You could always slip out the back door. I bet the admiral won’t even realize you’re gone.”
He stared down at her, eating up the vision of her below the neck even as he kept his gaze steady on hers. Wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to let the admiral catch him leering at his goddaughter’s ample breasts. The way the sapphire blue silk clung to them, held over the luscious mounds with the tiniest of straps. Her long chestnut hair fell down her back in thick soft waves, making his hands itch to touch it.
“Sweetheart, the admiral would fry important portions of my anatomy if I dared.” He attempted to smile, but he was damned close to swallowing his tongue as he caught sight of those sweetly curved mounds lifting in a sigh. If he wasn’t mistaken, there was a sheen of moisture popping on his brow as he fought to control the hard-on threatening beneath his slacks. This wasn’t the best place to prove to the admiral that he really was nothing more than a dog panting after a pair of pretty tits, as the bastard had recently accused him of being.
He didn’t pant after tits. He revered them. Worshiped them. He was nearly drooling over them. Maybe that did make him a dog.
He watched Miss Emerson Delaney smile. A playful curve of her lips that was a warning in and of itself. And beneath that silk was the faintest hint of nipples hardening.
“You know, I could help you sneak away,” she whispered playfully. “Admiral Holloran is, after all, my godfather. I’ll make your excuses. You aren’t looking well, you know.” She was laughing at him. Playfully. In amusement. But she was getting a kick out of the fact that he didn’t dare piss the admiral off at this point. He’d already been busted down in rank for one misdemeanor; he didn’t need to get brought down again becau
se Emerson was in the mood to play.
“Don’t do me any favors, imp,” he growled.
She pouted back at him playfully. “But Macey, doing you a favor would just make my day complete. Didn’t you know that?”
He snorted. Likely story. If he didn’t get the hell away from her the admiral would barbecue his ass.
“Do me a favor then and find someone else to harass, kid,” he told her. “I’m in enough trouble.”
He caught the narrowing of her eyes as he made his escape, quickly. Before he lost control and let his gaze drop to those incredible breasts.
Okay, so he was a tit man. He couldn’t help it, and she had the most incredible set he’d ever seen.
He drew in a quick, fortifying breath as he made his way through the ballroom, the foyer, and then quickly entered the silent, empty study that the admiral made available to his men during these jackass parties his sister insisted on throwing in his name. Holloran should get married or something, to a nice shy little wife who didn’t like parties, instead of letting his sister run his social life.
He stalked across the room to the bar, pulled a glass from the shelf, and splashed in a healthy dose of whisky as he heard the door snick open behind him. And he knew. Hell, he knew who was back there.
He tossed back the whisky. “Go back outside and play, little girl.” He grimaced as he caught sight of her in the mirror over the bar. “You’re biting off more than you can chew this time.”
He’d known her for years. Known her and avoided her and lived in dread and in anticipation of the chance to touch her.
“I had a message for you.” Her voice wasn’t teasing this time, it was a chilly snap. A proper, aristocratic, holier-than-thou, kiss-my-ass whiplash of sound.
It made his dick hard. Made his balls draw tight in hunger and his fingers curl with the need to touch.
“So what’s the message?” He rubbed his hand over his face before glancing at the mirror again.
She was leaning against the door; her eyes were glittering with anger, and those lush lips were tight with irritation.