by Desiree Holt
“How did he take it?”
“How do you think? Shocked. Stunned. Speechless. Having a difficult time comprehending that the Speaker of the House was planning a treasonous takeover of the government with his own private army. But he jumped on it right away and got the other necessary agencies involved. Trask was in custody before the plane took off to return him to D.C.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I’m amazed at the sheer audacity of human nature.”
“Me, too,” Maddie agreed. “I’ll bet they’ve got his offices locked up tighter than a drum, too.”
“You got that right,” Nikki agreed. Then her face sobered. “The unfortunate part is we can’t do much about any of the others except Starling, He’s the only one who actually admitted anything on tape besides Trask. But Dan, the Director said to assure you they’d be working on it.”
“Yeah, well, I know how sticky that can get. At least we know those guys will have eyes on them so they can’t slip so easily under the radar. Maybe.”
“Maddie, your father called. I had your cell so I answered. He’d like to hear from you.”
“How did he sound?”
Nikki shrugged. “Distant. Angry. Put out. Who knows.”
Maddie shook her head. “He can wait.”
“Well.” Nikki rose gracefully from the chair. “I think we’ll clear out of here and let the two of you have a little piece and quiet. Just a couple more things, though.”
“What things?” Maddie quirked an eyebrow.
“First of all, you’re out of a job now.”
“True,” Maddie agreed. “The Majority Leader is succeeding Trask and he has his own chief of staff to run things.”
Nikki crossed her arms and her dark eyes twinkled. “There you go! So I’d like to ask you to come to work at Nemesis. Maybe even as a partner.”
Maddie’s jaw dropped. “You are kidding me.”
“Not at all. If you’re interested we can work out the details next week.” She looked at Dan. “Same offer goes for you.” She grinned. “Except for the partnership, of course. Ladies only in that department.” The smile disappeared. “I don’t know what your options are now, so just think it over and let me know if you’re interested.” She headed for the door, motioning to her team to follow her. “Call me when you’re up to talking. Both of you.”
Maddie stared after her, a feather of interest tickling her. First she wanted to know what was happening with her and Dan. Then she’d try to find out what was up with her father, who’d flat out told her Dan was dirty and not to look for him. Something was off the mark there and she meant to dig for answers. After that she’d talk to Nikki. But life had certainly become very interesting all of a sudden.
Chapter Eleven
But a coup d’etat was no small event to the FBI or Langley, the State Department and Defense.
Maddie closed her front door more than three weeks later as the last of her Bureau escorts left her for the final time at her home in Georgetown. She sank against the wood and sighed. What she knew, how she’d learned about Speaker of the House Paul Trask’s attempt to destroy the central government was a labyrinth of lies that he had built over the three decades he’d been in office. He’d hidden his efforts, his conspirators and his resources so skillfully that only one agent—Dan—had detected one odd bit of information about undocumented shipments across the Mexican border into Texas. One incident. One clue. One intelligent man.
She shut her eyes. Dan. How are you, sweetie? Where are you? Where did the boys from Langley take you to debrief? Back to the Rio Grande?
She missed him. And she had heard nothing from him since he’d been discharged from the hospital and one agent each from the Bureau, Langley and the National Security Administration had escorted him, as they said, “to locations unknown for the immediate and unforeseeable future”.
Dammit, she missed him more than she had any man, any one, ever.
Waiting for him to come back to Washington had been hell. She was used to his presence. His laughter and his kisses. His loving. His concern. And his protection? Even when he had been wounded and in pain, he had extracted her from Trask’s clutches and rushed to Carstairs’ ranch. She could not even imagine how much willpower it had taken Dan to do that. But he had.
And in the doing, as she relived the days she had spent with him, she realized she loved him for that. For his devotion. To find a man like Dan was rare. For her, phenomenal. She who had always known she had a tough time trusting men. But now, she just pined to have him back with her.
Enough mooning over him!
She toed off her shoes, unbuttoned her blouse and headed up the stairs to her bedroom. She had to clear her mind, get out of these clothes and submerge neck deep into a huge mound of frothy bubbles.
Dropping her slacks on the carpet of her bedroom, she unhooked her bra and wiggled out of her panties. The sound of music froze her in her tracks.
The volume rose. Flooded the room.
Heart pounding, she ran to the hall. Bracing herself on the doorjamb, she blinked and wondered where the hell she’d put her gun.
The volume increased again and she realized what she heard was a love song of Stevie Wonder’s. For Once in My Life drifted through her house from her own bathroom.
She took the two steps to her bathroom and noted the door was ajar. With two fingers, she pushed it open.
A wonderful baritone singing the lyrics flowed out to her.
She stepped inside.
There, in her big circular white tub with giant bubbles churned up by the Jacuzzi sat a beautifully tanned, toned and fit Daniel Foreman.
His grin was generous and his words, inviting, as he shot a hand up to grab her wrist. “Hey, there, baby. Finally home from the wars, huh? I thought you would need a good way to relax.” His green eyes danced with mischief. “Care to join lonely old me?”
How he had gotten in was irrelevant. When he got in would be nice to know. But that he was here made her quake with delight.
So she wasn’t certain if she shrieked or groaned, but she did lean over, cup his jaw and kiss him. Hard, fast and more than once.
He tasted of need and joy.
“Lucky me. Naked already.” He put an arm around her waist and dragged her forward. “Get in here now and show me how you really feel.”
She climbed right in, no second invitation necessary. Bracing herself on her knees, she pressed herself against his torso, wound her arms around his shoulders and kissed him again. But she jumped away! “Your arm!”
“Good enough to hold you, sweetheart. Come back and kiss me again, Maddie,” he whispered. “I’ve been so lonely for you.”
His words stripped her of all awareness. Suddenly, she was clutching him, her lips to his throat and tears were dribbling down her cheeks.
“Hey, hey, baby. None of that!” He drew her away from him. He held her face, brushed her cheeks with two thumbs and smiled at her. “I’m fine. Better. See?” He lifted his left arm and circled it in the air. She could see the scar, still healing, and she drifted down into his embrace again, his body as warm as the water and deliciously firm.
“I missed you so,” she told him as he began to stroke her back with one of her bath sponges. She sighed in release of her tension. “I wondered where you were. How you were. Wondered when you’d come back.” She kissed his chest.
He ran his splayed fingers up into her hair. “But you knew I would.”
She smiled against his throat.
He pulled her up again so that he could see her face. His was full of fear. “You did, didn’t you?”
She gave him a joyful grin. “I did. I knew because you’ve always come back for me no matter the odds. I have trusted you from the beginning. I will ’til the end of time.”
“Madison Sommers,” he whispered as he brushed his lips over hers, “you are so right. I am always coming home to you. Know why?”
She shook her head, speechless.
“Because I love you.”
She caught her breath and kissed him back with all the ardor and all the pent up craziness of the last five weeks. “I love you, too, Dan. I never thought I would ever say that to a man. Never thought I’d find anyone I could trust. Or love.”
He crushed her close, one arm wrapped around her back, one hand skimming her breast, her belly and caressing her pussy. “Oh, honey. You are the sweetest thing I’ve ever known. The wisest. The wettest—” He shifted her so that his fingers sank up inside her cunt.
“And you,” she managed as she found his hot girth and stroked him, “are the best lover an Ice Goddess ever had!”
He sputtered in laughter. “Who knew I could melt you down?” Then he pushed her aside and rose, the water rippling down the planes and hollows of his body, sluicing all his tempting muscles with glistening refractions of light. He put out his hand. “Let me make you do it again.”
She stepped out after him, letting him dry her off and pulling her to him to walk her backward into her bedroom.
He sat her on the edge, reached over and threw pillows this way and that, then came back to her to peel the towel off her body. “Know what I love about you?” he said, his voice vague and dreamy.
Lost in him, she drifted in a haze as he massaged her hair and kissed her forehead. “I want to hear.”
He spread her legs wide and nestled his hot, damp torso between them. “I love your brains.”
She guffawed. “Thanks!”
He pulled her hair at her nape so that she looked up at him. “No joke. You are one smart cookie.” He blessed her eyelids and her nose with his mouth. “I told the boys that, over and over.”
“The boys?” It was about all she could manage with the way his thumbs had found her nipples and rubbed them from side to side.
“Mm. My boys. Frank and Len. And Jared, too.” He ran his lips over the ridge of her jaw.
“The three musketeers?” she pursued his line of thinking as he bit her earlobe and made her shiver.
“From the alphabet soup agencies.” He put one hand to her ass and sank his fingers between her cleft to tap her darkest orifice.
That was a new adventure for her. One she’d have only with him. “Dan, I—”
“Shh, baby. I’m talking here.” He leaned down and took one nipple into his mouth and sucked her hard so that she arched up. “I love your gorgeous breasts. These,” he crooned as he slipped to the other and played with the areola with the tip of his tongue. “I love how pink they are. And as soft as silk.” He nipped her. “But hard for me.”
She fought for breath.
He pushed her to her back, her legs dangling over the edge of the mattress as he widened her thighs. “I love your big toes!”
She yelped as he pinched both of them. She cuffed him. “My toes?“
“Sure!” He fell forward over her to rub his chest on hers as he squeezed her knees. And his hard, hot beautiful cock teased at the entrance to her pussy. “Feel what a turn- on your toes are for me!”
“You are nuts, Foreman!” She was gasping with laughter. “You are making me crazy with lust!”
“Precisely!” He dropped a kiss to her navel. “And am I ever grateful.” He put both hands to the juncture of her thighs, his thumbs to her labia. “Want me to prove how grateful?”
“I do! Ohh, how I do!” She was giggling, groaning and counting the milliseconds until he possessed her. On a whimper, she pleaded, “Now, honey, now. Dan, I’ve waited so long for you.”
“I waited to find you too, baby. You are so smart, so tough, so honest.”
She ran a hand over his hair. “Dan, darling.”
He made some wild sound then as he sank to spread her wide and put his mouth to her needy little cunt. His kiss on her clit was brief. His tongue on her labia was hot. His devotion to every little inch of her was long and succulent and sweetly maddening. “You know,” he murmured against her sensitive flesh, “the reason we have such good sex is because you and I knew who each other was long before we ever hooked up in that stairwell.”
“Yes, Dan, I took one look at you and I knew I was a goner, honey.”
“Through all this mess, you had faith in me when no one else did. Say you won’t ever leave me.”
“Never! I love you. How could I go? Oh, Dan, please.” She pushed back, trying to get up more fully on the bed. “I need you inside me.”
Grinning, he grabbed her nape and kissed her like he was a starving man. “Hold that thought, baby.”
He pulled away. She heard a condom package tear. She felt his body heat as he came back to her, like he always did. And she smiled at him as he rose above her, hooked his hands under her knees, pulled her open and filled her with all of him.
Caught in the pleasure of it, she paused. He gritted his teeth. “I love your pussy, too,” he told her with a growl. “The way you clamp your muscles around me, like that. And the way you let me in, oh, hell, baby, all the way. All the way home. Like that. And the way you just don’t ever stop.”
She dug her nails into his thighs. “I won’t! I won’t ever stop loving you.”
He slid in and pulled out ever so slowly. “I want you.” He slid in again, all the way to her heart.
She bucked. “You have me.”
He gathered her close to him again, his cock buried deep inside her, his big hand under her nape. “Always.”
“Always.”
“You’ll marry me then?”
Her mouth opened. Her mind blanked. Her heart swelled. She grinned and arched. “If I say I’ll marry you, will you please make love to me before I dissolve here?”
“How about Friday?” He gave her another taste of his ultimate intentions.
Undulating beneath him, she beat the mattress with her fists. “Three days from now?” Who would come? Who cared? All she needed was Dan.
“In Maryland.” He drove into her twice more to show her his talents with a long smooth drive to ecstasy.
“You’re in a hurry?” she barked. Any second in frustration, she would gnaw the bedposts.
“We go to work with Nikki soon.” He rolled his hips against hers. “And I need a nice long honeymoon, baby. To do this,” he whispered as he pinched her clit and sent shock waves through her. “And this,” he hauled her thighs up onto his and pumped into her once with deliberate force. “Say yes.”
She threw back her head and groaned. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“Nice.” He caught her hips in his two big hands. “Now be a good girl and hang on to me!”
About the Author
Desiree Holt: I always wonder what readers really want to know when I write one of these things. Getting to this point in my career has been an interesting journey. I’ve managed rock and roll bands and organized concerts. Been the only female on the sports staff of a university newspaper. Immersed myself in Nashville peddling a country singer. Lived in five different states. Married two very interesting but totally different men.
I think I must have lived in Texas in another life, because the minute I set foot on Texas soil I knew I was home. Living in Texas Hill Country gives me inspiration for more stories than I’ll probably ever be able to tell, what with all the sexy cowboys who surround me and the gorgeous scenery that provides a great setting.
Each day is a new adventure for me, as my characters come to life on the pages of my current work in progress. I’m absolutely compulsive about it when I’m writing and thank all the gods and goddesses that I have such a terrific husband who encourages my writing and puts up with my obsession. As a multi-published author, I love to hear from my readers. Their input keeps my mind fresh and always hunting for new ideas.
Cerise DeLand: An award-winning author of more than two dozen romances and mysteries, Cerise DeLand creates heroes readers crave. Cerise has met many men in her worldwide travels and created the best of the best from all the wonderful places she’s lived and visited. Today, she lives—and writes—in wild west Texas, where a never-ending stream of cowboys, vaqueros, para-military types and di
plomats stroll into town and fuel her imagination for red hot affairs.
Desiree and Cerise welcomes comments from readers. You can find their websites and email addresses on their author bio pages at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Desiree Holt
Cougar Challenge: Hot to Trot
Cupid’s Shaft
Dancing With Danger
Diamond Lady
Double Entry
Driven by Hunger
Eagle’s Run
Ellora’s Cavemen: Flavors of Ecstasy I anthology
Mistletoe Magic: Elven Magic with Regina Carlysle & Cindy Spencer Pape
Mistletoe Magic: Touch of Magic
Emerald Green
Escape the Night
Hot Moon Rising
Hot, Wicked and Wild
I Dare You
Journey to the Pearl
Just Say Yes
Kidnapping the Groom with Allie Standifer
Letting Go
Line of Sight
Lust Unleashed
Night Heat
Once Burned
Once Upon a Wedding
Riding Out the Storm
Rodeo Heat
Scalded with Allie Standifer
Scorched with Allie Standifer
Seductive Illusion with Allie Standifer
Switched
Teaching Molly
Trouble in Cowboy Boots
Where Danger Hides
Also by Cerise DeLand
Carried Away
Her Three-Way Merger
Laid Bare
Mia Dolce
Whenever We Meet
Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer ebooks or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.
