The Naughty Nine: Where Danger and Passion Collide

by Nina Bruhns

  The reason she had so many secrets from him. Like her little side business.Besides, it wasn’t like she really did anything with these men. She wasn’t a hooker or an escort, for heaven’s sakes. She was simply an actress playing a role. In fact, she should get an Academy award for her performance.

  No one knew her name. Or where she lived. Or what she really wanted to do with her life.

  Or how to find her.

  But if the general discovered the truth about how she paid her rent and tuition, he’d kill her.

  Even the prospect of her impending career, provided she succeeded in landing a job after she finished the internship in the fall, wouldn’t stop him because he wouldn’t give her time to explain.

  The general was not a listener.

  Her phone finally stopped ringing, and she let it roll over to voice mail while she uncorked a bottle of her favorite Argentinian Cab. Knowing she needed alcohol as a buffer to talk to him, and chocolate for sustenance, she dug out a handful of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and popped one into her mouth while she poured herself a generous glass of wine. Inhaling another Reese’s cup, she swirled the rich wine around to let it breathe, then took a sip and clicked to retrieve the message.

  “Willow, this is your father. Where are you, dammit? If you’re home, pick up the phone. This is an emergency!”

  Her heartbeat stuttered. It wasn’t unusual for the general to overreact if she didn’t answer, or to feign an emergency just to force her to return his call, but something about his tone set her teeth on edge.

  The last time she’d heard that note of desperation in his voice had been the day her mother died.

  She took another hefty sip of the wine, but her hand was trembling so she set the glass on the desk then punched his number. A second later, her father’s loud voice boomed over the line.

  “Thank God, you finally called me back. Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling you for hours.”

  Willow shot a guilty look toward her BCP, business cell phone, then inhaled a deep breath. “Sorry, I had the phone on silent. I was at the library studying,” she lied, then touched her nose to see if it had actually grown longer. “What’s wrong, Dad? What is this emergency?”

  His shaky breath rattled, alarming her even more.

  “I’ve received a threat,” he said flatly.

  Fear clawed at her chest. “What kind of threat?”

  “That is not your concern,” he said tersely. “I’ll be fine. In fact, we’re not even sure the threat is legitimate, but we’re investigating, and I’ve been placed under protective custody.”

  Thank God for that.

  “But until the situation is resolved,” he continued, “I’ve assigned a protective detail to you.”

  “What?” Willow vaulted off the couch, banged her knee on the corner of the coffee table and yelped.

  “What’s wrong?” her father asked, panicked. “Is someone there now? Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine, I just hit my shin on the coffee table.” Limping and massaging her kneecap, Willow bit back tears and tried to walk off the pain. If she didn’t, he’d probably send the paramedics. “Now about that detail. Dad, you know I don’t want—”

  “The subject is not up for debate,” her father said in that infuriating military tone she despised.

  “Yes, it is,” Willow argued. “I won’t let you smother me with one of your macho guards—”

  He cut her off. “Don’t argue with me. He’s a Special Forces operative and one of the best.”

  Oh, good heavens. One of those secretive, killer types. “I don’t care, Dad. If you’re worried, I’ll stay with a friend.”

  “And what? Endanger another civilian’s life?”

  So like her father to pour on the guilt!

  “Now, it’s settled. I just wanted to give you a heads-up that he’s on his way.” He paused. “In fact, he should be there any minute.”

  “Any minute?” Willow gulped. “But Dad—”

  “His name is Sergeant Max Murdock. And I wouldn’t have sent him if I didn’t trust him.”

  That meant he was old enough to be her father and was a total control freak. He might as well lock her in prison.

  “I know you have a chip on your shoulder when it comes to military men, but be nice to him, Willow. Now I have to go. I’ll be in touch.”

  Without giving her time to plead her case, he hung up. Willow wanted to scream! Of course, she had a chip on her shoulder when it came to military men. And with good reason.

  They thought they knew everything. They were bossy, overbearing, cocky, domineering…the list went on for miles.

  Furious, she paced back and forth, then punched in her best friend’s number. Lacy answered on the third ring, and Willow spewed out her troubles.

  “He can’t do this to me. He knows I hate his bossy soldiers babysitting me.”

  “He must be really worried to have sent a bodyguard,” Lacy said. “Besides, men in uniform are sexy. Something about their power, all that brute strength, it gives me goose bumps.”

  Yes, all that brute strength and testosterone gave her goose bumps, too. But it was the alpha male part of it that could get a girl in serious trouble. “But I like my privacy,” Willow insisted.

  A twinge of anxiety seeped inside her as she glanced at her BCP again. How could she conduct her business if a stranger was peering over her shoulder, watching her every move?

  The doorbell dinged, and her heart hammered. “Good grief. I think he’s here.”

  The bell dinged again, and Willow glanced at it. He sounded just as impatient as her father.

  “Stay on the line, Lacy. I might need you to come and rescue me.”

  “Or save you from killing him,” Lacy teased. “Orange is just not your color, Willow.”

  She was so right. Orange totally clashed with her hair color.

  Willow clamped the phone in one hand while she opened the door. Sure enough, a tall, dark-haired man in a uniform stood on the other side.

  The dim light in the hall cast subtle lines across the soldier’s face and highlighted his stripes, indicating he was a noncommissioned officer.

  Yet night shadows surrounded him, reminding her that this man was about to invade her space. Her sanctity.

  And cramp her style.

  Except he wasn’t exactly what she’d pictured. Not exactly old. No...well, maybe a little older than her. Thirties, but not fatherly old.

  Her pulse began to race as his intense dark brown eyes locked with hers.

  For a moment they simply stood and stared, sizing each other up. Tension stretched between them as the hum of arousal burst to life, and heat sizzled through her blood. Something wanton and primal flickered in his expression, and perspiration trickled down her breasts. His sexy eyes followed the droplet, and an image of him licking it off flashed in her head.

  She shifted, startled by her reaction. She hated military men.

  Unfortunately for her, this solider was the poster boy for sex appeal.

  Broad-shouldered and muscular, at least six-two, two-hundred pounds with a body honed to perfection, a wide jaw, cleft chin, and eyes that were so brown a girl could drown in them.

  But he held his big strong body rigid, military style, just as he did his stern expression. In fact his mouth was pressed so firmly together that it would take a crowbar to pry his lips apart.

  Still, her body tingled as she noticed his wide hands, large and masculine. Hands that had probably held a gun and killed.

  Hands that could bring a woman mindless pleasure.

  The earlier erotic conversation rolled through her head. Unbidden came images of the sergeant trailing those long blunt fingers down her spine. Of his lips tugging her nipple into his mouth. Of his knee parting her legs and his thick length stroking the sensitive, yearning spot between her thighs.

  But a muscle ticked in his jaw. He obviously didn’t intend to go there. “Miss Woods?”

  She nodded, but her lips felt so
dry she couldn’t speak.

  Determined to pull herself together, she dragged her gaze from his face to the floor and his feet. He had big feet...Big feet meant big all over...

  Lordy, lordy...

  Don’t think about his size. Not the size of his feet or the size of his dick.

  Think about those polished shoes. He’s a soldier.

  As if to cement that reminder, she noticed the military-issued duffel bag on the floor beside him. The bag indicated he’d come to stay.

  Her world swayed.

  “Willow,” Lacy screeched. “Is that him?”

  He removed a set of papers from his pocket and shoved them and his military ID toward her. “Sergeant Max Murdock. I have my orders from General Woods.”

  She gave his credentials a perfunctory glance. But the words blurred, and all she could think about was that he was the hottest hunk she’d seen in a decade. And what his gruff, deep voice would sound like murmuring erotic sweet nothings in her ear.

  Lacy cleared her throat. “Willow,” Lacy cried. “Answer me. Are you all right?”

  No, no, she wasn’t. She never thought men in uniform were sexy. Especially ones associated with her overbearing father.

  And this one had been handpicked by him.

  “Answer me or I’m coming over,” Lacy shouted.

  “I’m okay,” Willow whispered.

  “Let me guess. He looks like your dad? All big, macho and mean?”

  Willow wet her damp lips with her tongue. Well, yes. He was big and macho. But as far as mean...

  He did look tough. And his jaw was still clenched so tightly she thought she heard his teeth grinding. He wasn’t smiling either.

  In fact he looked pissed off at something.

  Maybe he was always pissed off.

  “I’ll call you back, Lacy.”

  “Good. I can’t wait to hear how you get rid of him!”

  Willow swallowed hard. Yes. She was going to do whatever it took to get rid of him.

  Wasn’t she?

  He stepped into her apartment, and the space suddenly became way too small. For a second she couldn’t breathe. The walls were closing in around her, the idea of him watching her every move making her feel claustrophobic.

  And excited at the same time.

  His masculine scent swirled around her, and her head swam with images of naughty things that she’d like to do with him. Naughty things that she’d talked about with her phone sex clients, but had never tried.

  Naughty things that she could not do, or he would run back to the general and expose her secrets and lies.

  One Night to Kill: Chapter Two

  Max maintained his military stance, body straight as steel, eyes glued forward, unemotional, focused on his mission.

  Except his damn dick was not cooperating.

  And when the general’s daughter’s fingers brushed his as she handed him back his papers, something hot and needy shot through his loins.

  Holy mother of God.

  The mission—Willow Woods—did not fit the description of the woman he’d been assigned to protect. She was not the prim, proper, private school, shapeless, bony, freckled geek in the photograph. No. The braces were gone. The braided pigtails were gone. The glasses were gone. The uniform was gone. The weird red hair was gone.

  In fact, now it was a stunning, auburn mass of waves that triggered wanton thoughts of running his hands through it.

  And the bones—well they were covered in a nice, sensuous body full of curves and angles.

  And those generous breasts, sensational breasts—and he was an ass man himself—poured over the top of a sweat-stained sports bra and made his mouth water. They must be at least C cups, he decided, having learned from female recruits that the sports bra was designed to minimize size to detract perverted, spineless oglers while the women tried to perform normal activities that men, ergo pigs, took for granted. Like jogging and getting a workout in.

  Damn sports bras.

  Damn men for being pigs.

  Damn his own dick for liking women who worked out and weren’t afraid to sweat. Sweat was natural and sexy and made a woman’s skin taste like a real woman.

  When he’d spotted that droplet trickling down into Willow’s cleavage, he’d ached to lick it off.

  Reigning in his thoughts, he mentally forced himself to concentrate on his orders. Protect Willow Woods.

  Her father, the general, his commanding officer, would kill him if he didn’t.

  But in spite of the fact that he kept his eyes zeroed in on her face, he had been trained to note details with a single glance. Her eyes were a mesmerizing blue, raw and sensual, her lips a rosy color like ripe berries, plump and tempting him to touch them with his own.

  And once he’d sized up her breasts and given them a ten-plus, his gaze traveled to her hips and thighs, which peeked from beneath a pair of skin-tight running shorts that hugged every inch of her flesh and told him three things about Willow.

  One—she had left childhood behind and grown up. And done a damn fine job of it.

  Two—she was ripped and had impossibly long, athletic legs that would feel great wrapped around him.

  And three—her father should hire a bodyguard to protect her.

  From men like him.

  Men who saw a sex symbol and wanted in her pants.

  Or rather, wanted her out of them.

  A string of expletives rolled through his head, but thankfully he had the good sense and training to keep his tongue on a leash.

  “Well?” Willow folded her arms, inadvertently pushing her breasts up even higher and making his battle to stifle a hard-on damn near impossible. Her nipples were straining against the Lycra, begging for a man’s mouth.

  His mouth.

  Dammit. He wanted to close his lips around a turgid peak and suck her until she moaned his name.

  Desperate to control his reaction, he resorted to tactics he’d learned in the military and forced himself to project mental images of something to distract himself.

  Something nonsexual.

  Like boot camp. Hiking with a hundred pounds on his back. Crawling through the jungle and the desert tracking the enemy. Fending off bullets.

  None of those worked. They only made him think of how long it had been since he’d had a woman. And how much his body needed some serious skin-on-skin time.

  He struggled for another image to distract him.

  Her father.

  Think about the general. He’s watching your every move. He has your career in his hands. He’ll fucking destroy you if you lay one finger on his precious daughter.

  “There’s been a mistake,” Willow said.

  She lifted her chin defiantly. That haughty movement and tone coupled with the image of her father at his court marshal trial, then another image of the general holding an MP-5 to his head, and his cock went limp.

  “I don’t need a bodyguard,” Willow continued. “I just got off the phone with my father, and you can”—she waved her hands in a dismissive gesture—“go on back to whatever you were doing for him before.”

  Despite his best efforts, his eyes narrowed. Her tone made it sound as if he’d been kissing the general’s ass—literally and figuratively.

  Which, of course, he had to do jobwise. He was his commander.

  And he was giving up his first furlough in nine months to babysit her! The ungrateful witch.

  Seriously pissed off now, he hardened his expression. “My orders came from General Woods, ma’am,” he said, purposely slandering the last word. “If he has cancelled them, I’ll need to hear it from him.”

  Fury reddened her creamy cheeks, and she actually hissed. “This is ridiculous. I do not need a babysitter, and you’re not coming in.”

  Hell, that suited him fine. Between her snooty attitude and her tantalizing body torturing him, sleeping in a loaded minefield would be safer.

  But he did owe her father his life. And he respected the man more than any one person in the
world, so he would keep her safe.

  And keep his hands off.

  “Then I’ll station myself outside your door.”

  A look of frustration, no panic, darkened her sea-blue eyes. “But you can’t sleep on the floor in the hallway.”

  “Believe me, Miss Woods, I’ve slept in far worse places.”

  For a brief second, emotions flickered across her face, emotions that bordered on sympathy and regret and indecision. As if she might change her mind.

  Then she clamped her teeth over that plump bottom lip, a lip that he imagined nibbling on, and she slammed the door in his face.

  Max stepped back to keep the door from smashing his nose then glanced down at the hardwood floor with a grimace. Some R & R. No getting drunk. No getting laid.

  No woman’s soft hands bringing him to ecstasy.

  Not even a nice warm bed to crawl into.

  Then her panicked look flashed in his mind again, and he wondered why she didn’t want him in her house. What was she hiding?

  * * *

  Willow fought sheer panic as she shut the door and left Sergeant Max Murdock in her hallway. What if he started asking questions or met Ms. Dora or the other tenants?

  No, the other girls wouldn’t talk. And neither would Ms. Dora. Besides, the sweet, little old woman was not the picture of the madam of a phone sex business.

  Speaking of which, her BCP buzzed followed by the doorbell dinging. Frustrated, she let the phone click to voice mail again. She couldn’t very well conduct a session with him pounding on the door.

  Had he decided he didn’t intend to sleep on the floor?

  A sliver of guilt wormed its way inside her for being rude. Good southern manners had been drilled into her in private school and by the general as if she’d been in boot camp, but she could not have that big macho, sex magnet in her apartment.

  Not so close that she could smell him.

  Because he smelled too darn tempting.

  Still, he was going to sleep in the hall and even that was too close. She would know he was out there!

  I’ve slept in far worse places.

  Of course, he had. He was a soldier. Special Forces. A hero.