Another deep pang stilled her as she realized that, even if she had more time, she couldn’t afford to allow him to harbor her any longer.
She couldn’t come back to him. She couldn’t put him in that kind of risk.
Blinking back the moisture threatening to blur her vision, Plix pushed herself to make her preparations, calling on the callous efficiency that had gotten her through so many sticky situations in the past. Plugging in the auxiliary data jack, she downloaded everything—all the data Edison had managed to recover—watching as it disappeared from his system, erasing it line by line. Then, without remorse, she ran her most aggressive algorithm to scrub all traces of her presence from his mainframe. All of it.
Well, almost all.
She left exactly one file. Masked and encrypted and hidden deep within the parts of his system that only she would think to look in, she knew it would take even Edison a while to find and decode it. But still, she left one piece of herself for him to find.
In case she didn’t come back.
When she didn’t come back.
Plix was just finishing when she heard the sound she’d been waiting for this entire time, footsteps coming down the hall with that familiar echo and that long, loping gait. She swallowed hard and clenched her eyes shut, steeling herself for the goodbyes that had been growing more and more difficult for years now. This one would be the most difficult of all.
With a silent prayer, Plix wiped the display and slipped the cable from her neck, turning quickly and forcing as neutral of an expression as she could muster. As she did, the door behind her swung open, knuckles rapping gently against plastic in a small warning.
The sight of Edison’s face, broadly expectant, smiling and open, was nearly enough to crack her resolve and shatter all her plans.
It only took a moment for everything to shift, though.
“Hey, sleepyhead, I—” The words had barely left Edison’s mouth before his expression was falling, his features betraying how quickly he understood exactly what was happening.
Plix could only hope he didn’t grasp the full extent of it. If he did, he would never let her go.
“What—?” The hurt in his eyes was paralyzing, the sudden defensiveness in his posture striking so stark a contrast to the lazy smile he’d entered with.
She always hurt him.
Every single time.
There wasn’t any point to pretending. “I’m sorry,” she started.
“No.” Edison shook his head fiercely, his arms crossing as he straightened up to his full height. “You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry at all. If you were, you wouldn’t—”
“I have to.” Plix couldn’t meet his eyes anymore. She couldn’t even hold her unaltered hand in front of her, it was shaking so badly.
“You don’t. You don’t have to,” he said, pleading. “Whatever it is you think you need to do, it can wait.”
As she fought back the tears that wanted to overflow, she tried to shake her head, tried to move, tried to leave. But she couldn’t. And then there were hands on her shoulders, one rising up to touch her cheek, seeking roughly to tip her head back. When she held firm, her eyes trained intently on the floor, he gave up and simply wrapped his arms around her, pressing her face against his chest.
He smelled so good.
“Please, Plix. Please. Just a few more days.”
She’d already stayed too long. “No,” she said. The sound was muffled by his shirt, every breath and every word pulling more of his scent toward her lungs.
He pushed her back, and in her surprise, she let her eyes meet his. “Then let me go with you. Let me watch out for you. If you have to do this, we can do it together.”
She closed her eyes and her fists. “No.”
“Please—”
“No.” Sucking in a deep breath, she summoned all her strength to open her eyes and meet his gaze. “You know I have to…that I can’t…”
When he lifted his hands to cup the sides of her face, she wasn’t prepared for how powerfully that unexpected tenderness would affect her. Usually, he screamed. Sometimes he broke things.
He never touched her. Not quite like this.
Maybe he knew after all.
“Plix, I can’t…I can’t keep doing this.”
She felt her expression fall, the truth of what she was saying making the words echo with the pain she wanted so desperately to hide. “You won’t have to.”
For a long moment, their eyes held, and she was left with no doubt as to whether he grasped her meaning.
“Please.” Plix didn’t know how their faces had gotten so close, his breath warm on her face as he whispered, “For me.”
Her eyes fell closed again, the lashes brushing his cheek, and as she parted her lips to speak, she could feel the warmth of his skin.
For the first time in all these years, she felt his mouth.
His kiss.
It was chaste. Simple. Just pressure and lips, and it was everything she had ever wanted but never dared to ask for.
It was everything she couldn’t have.
Plix gave herself just a few seconds to memorize the feeling of his lips, full and soft against hers as she let her mouth open, a brief caress, damp and perfect. And then she pulled away, her palm coming up to stroke the rough plane of his cheek as she said quietly, smiling brokenly, “Of course it’s for you.”
With an ache building inside her chest, she uncurled his hands from around her face, kissing the knuckles of each just once before placing them against his heart. His glassy eyes remained on hers the entire time, his lips still parted.
Edison didn’t say anything, though. Not when she stepped back or when she placed her hand on the door. Not even when she rasped out a choked, “Goodbye.”
It wasn’t until she was almost gone, the thick plastic of the door already swinging closed, that he finally spoke. His words were muffled. Quiet.
Still, it hurt her more than she could have imagined to think that the last words he’d ever say to her would be, “For now.”
A good bad boy is hard to find…
Getting Hotter
© 2012 Elle Kennedy
An Out of Uniform Story
Seth Masterson has been lusting over Miranda Breslin since the moment he saw her on a Vegas stage. Now that he’s been asked to watch out for her as she opens a dance studio in San Diego, he’s all over it, figuring it’s his chance to get her in his bed. Except the stubborn single mom seems determined to deny their crazy-sizzling sexual chemistry. In typical SEAL fashion, Seth makes it his personal mission to prove her wrong.
Miranda got over her attraction to bad boys about the time one of them knocked her up at the age of eighteen. Seth’s mocking gray eyes and military-buff bod, though, are pure and utter temptation. And when a flooded apartment forces her and her twins to move in with him, she can no longer resist the urge to set off some serious fireworks between the sheets.
But give him her heart? No, thank you. Any involvement with Seth will be strictly physical—and temporary. So when Seth decides permanent is what he wants, Miranda must steel her defenses before she does something incredibly foolish…like fall in love.
Warning: This book contains a bad boy SEAL who knows what he wants and will go to any lengths to get it. Expect some graphic language, hot sex, seduction, hot sex, dirty talk, hot sex, a little man-on-man action, hot sex. Oh, and hot sex.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Getting Hotter:
He walked over to the simple wooden dresser under his window and grabbed a pair of black track pants from the bottom drawer, along with thick wool socks. “The pants will be baggy, but there’s a drawstring so at least they won’t fall off.” He paused. “You want some boxers too?”
Her cheeks took on a pinkish hue. “No, it’s okay. Just the pants will do.”
His groin tightened as he wondered whether she planned on going commando. From there, the most mouthwatering image flashed in his mind, one involving Miranda’s bare s
ex, his track pants, and a whole lotta friction.
“What’s wrong?”
He met her concerned eyes. “Why do you ask?”
“You got this look on your face, like you were in pain. Are you all right?”
A choked laugh slipped out. “I’m fine.”
“What’s so funny?” Suspicion colored her tone.
“You’re completely oblivious to the effect you have on me, aren’t you?”
She let out a startled breath. “What?”
Releasing a breath of his own, he eliminated the distance between them, lifting one arm over Miranda’s shoulder so he could close the bedroom door. Her eyes widened at his nearness, and her cheeks turned redder.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Giving us some privacy.”
Her slender throat dipped as she swallowed. “We don’t need privacy. I wouldn’t mind some, though, so I can change out of these damp clothes.”
“That can wait a few minutes.” He locked his gaze with hers. “You asked if I was in pain. Well, I am.”
She blinked in surprise. “But you just said—”
Before she could finish, he grabbed her hand and placed it directly over the bulge in his sweatpants.
Miranda gasped, her mouth falling open. “What are you…oh my God. Jesus, Seth!”
And yet for all the lady’s protests, she didn’t make a single move to yank her hand away.
Seth’s pulse kicked up a notch, his cock growing even harder beneath Miranda’s palm. She didn’t stroke him. Didn’t cup or caress or move her fingers in the slightest. She just kept her hand over the erection straining against his sweats, her lips parted, her pupils dilated.
“Feel that?” he murmured.
Her gaze slowly met his. She looked almost mesmerized as she nodded.
“That’s what I’ve been walking around with since the moment you moved to town, baby.”
“Seth…” Reluctance crept into her voice. “Stop. Just…stop.”
And then her palm moved. A fraction of an inch. A torturous glide over the hard ridge of his cock.
He groaned softly. “Do that again.”
Her fingers froze. Her expression conveyed shock, as if she truly hadn’t realized what she was doing.
“This is insane,” she mumbled, and then, to his extreme disappointment, she withdrew her hand.
But the sexual awareness zipping back and forth between them refused to dissipate. It thickened the air and made his skin burn with anticipation. Christ, he wanted this woman so badly he couldn’t think straight anymore. Every time he saw her he turned into a sex-crazed caveman whose sole purpose in life was to claim his female.
His gaze focused on her mouth, that sexy mouth he’d been fantasizing about for so long.
“One taste.” The words slipped out before he could stop them, his voice full of gravel.
“W-what?” she stammered.
“Let me have one taste. One kiss.” He brought his hand to her mouth and swept his thumb over her plump bottom lip. The breath she hissed out warmed his fingers. “Please, Miranda.”
Oh Christ, he was actually begging.
Begging to kiss a woman.
If his entire body wasn’t overcome with pure agony, he might have been disgusted with himself, but at the moment, he couldn’t focus on anything other than Miranda. The intoxicating scent of her, vanilla and roses and something soft and feminine. The way her long, damp hair curled at the ends. The fullness of her breasts beneath her T-shirt.
He stroked her lower lip again, then let out another groan when her tongue came out to taste the pad of his thumb. She looked as surprised as he was by her actions.
But he wasn’t complaining. Hell no. He just capitalized on that tiny sign of surrender by cupping her chin and lowering his head to take possession of her mouth.
The kiss rivaled the storm that raged outside the house—powerful and all-consuming. Her lips were soft, warm, and he could feel them trembling as he rubbed his mouth over hers in a fleeting caress. There it was, his one taste, and it wasn’t enough, not by a long shot. Miranda must have agreed, because she didn’t pull away, didn’t protest when he coaxed her lips open with his tongue and licked his way inside.
She let out the sexiest little moan he’d ever heard when their tongues met. He swallowed the sound and angled his head to deepen the kiss, letting their tongues swirl and explore.
The only contact between them was their fused mouths and his hand resting lightly on her jaw. Her arms didn’t come around his neck. His other hand didn’t explore her sweet curves. Their lower bodies didn’t collide.
And yet it was the most erotic kiss of his entire life.
Disappointment slammed into him when Miranda abruptly tore her mouth away. Her hazel eyes shone with arousal and uncertainty, and she was breathing hard, her chest heaving.
“There,” she said. “You got your taste.”
He knew she was trying to sound casual, but her wobbly voice betrayed her.
“And you got yours,” he answered, lifting his eyebrows in challenge. “So let’s hear it.”
To her credit, she met his gaze head-on. “Hear what?”
“Your speech about how you didn’t feel anything, the kiss was no big deal, it doesn’t change your mind about going to bed with me, et cetera, et cetera.”
Miranda sighed. “I’m many things, Seth, but I’m not a liar. I did feel something, and trust me that kiss was a big deal. It was a huge deal, actually.”
She might as well have pulled out a two-by-four and smashed him in the gut, that was how shocked he was by her frank admission. Pure triumph soared through him—only to fizzle out like a wet candle when Miranda kept going.
“But you’re right. It doesn’t change my mind about going to bed with you.” Before he could respond, she spun around and grabbed hold of the doorknob.
“Miranda.”
She went still. “What?” she asked without turning.
“What the hell is it going to take for you to give in to this?” The echo of defeat in his voice surprised him as much as the next question he posed. “What do I have to do to win you over?”
Take What You Want
Jeanette Grey
She needs an escape…and he’s exactly what she had in mind.
College senior Ellen Price spends every spare minute studying to get into medical school. Until spring break yawns before her, as empty as her wallet.
With no money to hit the beach, she fills her empty to-do list with a plan: for just one week, she will become the kind of take-no-prisoners woman she secretly wishes to be, starting with the hot guy at the bar. It's a no-risk situation: at the end of break, he’ll head back to his campus, and she’ll go back to hers. No muss, no fuss.
At first, Josh Markley isn’t sure what to think when the quiet, intense beauty from his pre-med classes approaches him for a night of casual sex. Even more mystifying, she doesn’t seem to return his recognition. But if she wants to play “strangers in a bar”, he’s game.
Their passionate night is a welcome respite from life’s stress, but afterward, Josh realizes he wants more—from himself, from life, from Ellen. Except she still thinks he’s a one-off she’ll never see again. Confessing the truth now—before she figures it out on her own—could shatter the fragile beginnings of just what the doctor ordered. A forever love.
Warning: Contains mistaken identities, a sometimes-glasses-wearing hottie, deep questions about figuring out what you want from life, and a red-hot college romance.
eBooks are not transferable.
They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing
, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
Take What You Want
Copyright © 2013 by Jeanette Grey
ISBN: 978-1-61921-374-6
Edited by Jennifer Miller
Cover by Lou Harper
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: March 2013
www.samhainpublishing.com
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
About the Author
Look for these titles by Jeanette Grey
Also Available from Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Copyright Page
Take What You Want Page 12
