by Anne Marsh
Subject: Navy SEAL Levi Brandon
Mission: Sort out his accidental marriage...without sleeping with his “wife!”
Devil-may-care Navy SEAL Levi Brandon faces a terrifying task: telling Ashley Dixon that their faux wedding during their last mission together was actually real. It’s bad enough that she completely loathes him, but she’s DEA. Levi will be lucky to get away with his life...
Now Ashley and Levi have returned to Fantasy Island to sort things out...and are tempted to play a dangerous game of lust and restraint. A game of dares. All Levi has to do is keep himself from having sex with the hottie DEA agent. But Ashley’s playing to win—and darers always go first.
“I dare you...”
“No sex for one week.”
“Sure,” Levi said agreeably. “But if I take your dare, you take mine.”
Ashley’s hand shot up. “No. I’m done negotiating with you.”
Of course he kept right on talking, as if she hadn’t said anything. “For each night I go without sex, I get to choose a drink for you from Fantasy Island’s cocktail menu.”
She really, really needed to ignore the pulse of heat that suggestion generated in her stomach. And lower. This was Levi. She didn’t even like him, but apparently her body thought angry sex was something she should try at least once in her life. Preferably tonight. He had her, and he knew it. She just couldn’t walk away from a dare.
“You want to get me drunk?”
His teeth flashed as he snagged the drinks menu from the bar and waggled it in front of her. “We both know I’m talking about the other menu, babe. The secret menu, where the drink names are code for sexy stuff.
“I pick the drink. You do the deed...”
Dear Reader,
The idea for this book came to me while trolling Amazon looking for a fun, racy-but-not-so-racy-he-can’t-open-it-in-public gift for my husband. Did you know you could buy dirty Truth or Dare games for couples? Let’s just say I learned a thing or two. Levi Brandon and Ashley Dixon have plenty of learning to do about each other, as well. These two barely got along on their last undercover mission together, so discovering they might be accidentally married has sparks flying. Soon they’re on Fantasy Island to sort out their marital status, but they can’t stop fighting. Or daring each other. And the dares just get sexier and sexier...
Dares are a chance—a permission slip—to live out a secret fantasy. And what better time to do that when you’re on a tropical island with a bad boy SEAL? Ashley is hardly a wild child (hello, she prefers to play by the rules), but rugged, sexy Levi tempts her to lose her inhibitions. And when she loses a bet and has to pay a very sensual forfeit, bringing her fantasies to life suddenly seems like the best of ideas.
Daring Her SEAL is the final story in my SEALs of Fantasy Island trilogy, which started with Teasing Her SEAL and then continued with Pleasing Her SEAL. Each couple has explored a very different set of sexy fantasies—and I hope you enjoy Levi and Ashley’s story!
Happy reading,
Anne
Anne Marsh
Daring Her SEAL
Anne Marsh writes sexy contemporary and paranormal romances because the world can always enjoy one more alpha male. She started writing romance after getting laid off from her job as a technical writer—and quickly decided happily-ever-afters trumped software manuals. She lives in Northern California with her family and six cats.
Books by Anne Marsh
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For Lisa. Never, ever underestimate the power of your smile. I can’t tell you too often that you’re as fabulous as the heroine in any book and I’m rooting for your happily-ever-after.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Excerpt from Come Closer, Cowboy by Debbi Rawlins
1
“CAN YOU BE married without having sex?”
In all fairness, Levi Brandon needed the answer ASAP. His SEAL team leader paused, however, in the act of piling into the C-23 Sherpa transport aircraft as if Levi had farted in front of the President or something equally crass. The pained look on Gray Jackson’s face was the only high point in Levi’s day since he’d rolled out of bed for a dark o’clock training exercise only to discover that the US postal system and karma had caught up with him.
Gray slapped him on the back, harder than was strictly necessary. “Little personal, don’t you think, Brandon?”
“I’m talking about myself, here,” he said, humping his gear on board. The plane was a no-nonsense set of wings and wheels, perfect for the day’s HALO training exercise.
While Gray mulled over his answer, the rest of SEAL Team Sigma loaded up with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Levi wasn’t the only guy who felt jumping out of a plane at thirty thousand feet wasn’t the best way to pass the time. He preferred keeping his feet on the ground or his fins in the water, thank you very much. On the other hand, at least when he jumped, he felt something. Even fear was marginally better than the emotional desert in which he usually existed.
“Last time I checked, you weren’t married, planning on getting married, or even dating the same woman for consecutive nights. The better question is...can you go without having sex?” Gray dropped onto the bench beside Levi, buckling up as the door slammed shut and the plane started its taxi down the runway.
He’d tried dating when he was younger. Hell. The word younger made him feel like Methuselah, but the feeling wasn’t inaccurate. Courtesy of Uncle Sam, he’d seen plenty and done more. The civilian women he’d dated once upon a time didn’t understand what his job entailed. They’d seen the movies or read the books, but they still popped out perky How was your day?s like the words were Percocet. And too many times he’d been under orders not to discuss what had gone down.
Or he’d had days that were all training or sitting in a foxhole, waiting for the action to start. Nothing to talk about there, so he’d stayed mute and his gal of the moment had gotten upset. And then when shit did go down? What woman wanted to hear about the kill shot he made at long range or the building he’d cleared at the end of an M4? Sure as shooting, she hadn’t been planning to help him pack for combat deployment, and he hadn’t been packing socks and briefs, anyhow.
Sex was much simpler. He gave an orgasm; she got an orgasm. Or three. Everyone walked away happy, and the next time he jumped out of a plane there were no pesky emotional entanglements messing with his free fall.
He certainly had no plans for celibacy. On the o
ther hand, fate had just slapped him with the moral equivalent of a chastity belt. Levi pulled the marriage certificate out of a pocket of his flight suit and waved it in the air. He needed a second opinion, and sure enough, Sam leaned over and snagged the paper. As the team medic, Sam Nale had even fewer personal boundaries than the rest of them, probably because he’d patched them all up on more than one occasion. Funny how once you’d had your fingers in a guy’s bullet holes you felt like you knew him.
“Levi brought reading material.” Sam unfolded the paper, read it over and whistled, the sound all but drowned out by the steady drone of the engines as the pilot took them to altitude. “And trouble. You’re married?”
“Not on purpose,” Levi admitted with a scowl.
Mason Black held out a hand for the certificate. “When did this happen?”
“I’m blaming you.” Levi flipped Mason the bird. His teammate was a big bear of a SEAL, a damned good sniper, and the second member of their unit to find true love when they’d been undercover on Fantasy Island three months ago.
Not that Levi understood how two experienced warriors like Mason and Gray could fall in love while taking down a drug kingpin, but that was apparently what had happened. Levi had been looking forward to giving both of them crap about it for years to come—until he’d checked his mail this morning and discovered he had his own romantic woes to contend with.
“Your girl asked Ashley and I to be the stand-in bride and groom for a beach ceremony. She didn’t tell us we were getting married for real.”
Mason grinned. “Heads up. Every photo shoot with that woman is an adventure.”
“Yeah,” he grumbled, “but can you really imagine me married? To Ashley?”
Ashley Dixon had been a DEA tagalong on their last two missions. As far as he could tell she disliked everything about him—she’d been happy to detail her opinions loudly and at length. Naturally he’d given her plenty of shit while they’d been in their field together, and she’d really hated him calling her Mrs. Brandon after they’d played bride and groom for Mason’s girl.
After they’d parted ways on Fantasy Island he hadn’t thought of her once. Okay. He’d thought of her once. Maybe twice. She was gorgeous, they had a little history together and he wasn’t dead yet although he was fairly certain he would be if he pursued her. She wasn’t the kind of woman who shared her toys, and monogamy didn’t work for him. So how the hell had he ended up married to her?
Mason returned the certificate and Levi jammed it back into his pocket. “Does Ashley know about this?”
He doubted it. “She hasn’t said anything.”
Because if she had known, she’d have found a way to tell him everything he’d done wrong that had led to an actual wedding—with an email, a phone call, or an RPG with a scathing note attached to the warhead. He’d butted heads with her every time he turned around on their past missions.
Well, every time except one. There had been that steamy alleyway kiss when they’d been surprised by a member of the motorcycle club they’d been investigating. He’d pinned Ashley against the wall and kissed her hard, because at the moment the only good excuse he could come up with for their presence in the alley was sex.
She’d kissed him back, too, in the interests of not jeopardizing their cover, but she’d made it clear later and in private that the next time his tongue got anywhere near her mouth she’d cut it off. His kiss had pissed her off that much, he thought with a smirk, and now he was gonna rile her up even more with his hey-babe-we’re-married bomb. That was the only silver lining in this whole situation.
“Trickery’s the only way Levi’s getting our Ashley to say yes.” Sam high-fived Mason. “Ten bucks says she’ll skip the annulment and go straight to the kill you part of marriage. She gets to be a widow—you get to be dead. Problem solved.”
Which was no fun at all. Levi would prefer to aggravate her, get underneath her defiant, snarky surface, if only because she was the one woman who’d never, ever contemplated saying yes to him.
Mason grinned. “I bet you can’t get her to voluntarily say ‘I do.’”
Levi wasn’t Superman. No one could get Ashley to agree to anything she didn’t want to do without wielding some powerful ammo. “Say ‘I do’ to what?”
“You.” A big, obnoxious grin creased the face of the other SEAL.
“Are you doubting my powers of persuasion?”
The skeptical look Mason sported said that was an affirmative.
Gray cursed as if maybe, in some weird parallel universe, a Levi existed who actually wanted to be married to Ashley Dixon. “Ashley could out-stubborn a mule. She’d take a hell of a lot of persuading.”
“Just a matter of leverage.”
“Two minutes, ladies.” Gray stood and motioned for the team to head to the back of the plane. Air tore through the cabin as the National Guardsmen chauffeuring them to the day’s jump lowered the back ramp to reveal nothing but blue sky, empty air and a long drop to the landing zone. Levi slapped his hand on Sam’s shoulder, taking up his position behind the other SEAL as he braced against the plane’s upward pull.
He had never been wild about heights, but jumping out of a plane at thirty thousand feet beat the three-hour commute his brother bitched about, even if he was Navy and frogs weren’t meant to fly. The good thing about HALO jumping, however, was that once he’d gotten his ass out the door, the hard part was done. Gravity took over, and as long he’d packed his chute correctly the happy ending was practically guaranteed.
“Ready?” Gray bellowed the words in Levi’s ear, fighting to make himself heard over the slipstream’s roar. “Don’t make Ashley a widow. She’s gonna want the chance to kill you herself.”
“You betcha.” He touched the knuckles of his free hand to Gray’s. Seconds later, their team leader bellowed the order to jump and Sam flew out of the open bay. Gravity and the engine wake did their thing, sucking Levi out of the plane as he whooped, riding Sam’s ass as they hung in the air for a long moment.
Then they plummeted through the air at terminal velocity, facedown, arms and feet up as strips of road and field swung in crazy circles beneath them. Seventy seconds of flying—or falling—and he pulled the rip cord at four thousand feet above ground level, popping his chute. On a mission rather than a training run, he might wait until as low as a thousand feet to minimize the amount of time hostiles had to spot him. Today, though, he’d maximize his chances of getting to the ground intact. If his chute failed, he’d still have time to deploy the back up. The chute shot out of his back, the canopy catching air and jerking him sharply upward. Bingo.
Sure, Ashley would prefer skipping the divorce and aiming straight for widowhood, but he had no intention of making it easy on her. If she wanted to get rid of him, she’d have to work for it.
2
HIS WIFE WAS fucking gorgeous.
Not that Levi deserved any kind of credit for Ashley’s good looks, but if he had to end up accidentally married to a woman whose dislike for him made ISIS and the President of the United States seem like cozy besties, at least he’d scored a hot bride.
The assessment officially made him shallow, but he still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that they were legally married. The woman bent over her desk, working a cable behind the computer monitor while she sweet-talked the hardware, would rip him a new one when he shared the news with her. In the meantime, however, he might as well enjoy the show.
Husky phrases drifted to him. Come on, baby. Work with me. Yeah, he might get something out of this little field trip. Taunting Ashley was a helluva lot of fun.
He leaned against the doorframe. “You got computer woes too?”
The DEA’s office sure wasn’t Sexyville. After he’d breached the security at the front desk, he’d followed directions and ridden a beige elevator, taken two equally beige corrid
ors, and then forded a sea of chest-high gray cubicles occupied by suits of both the male and female variety. Heads turned as he passed, because his off-duty jeans, motorcycle boots and black leather jacket weren’t standard office wear. He hadn’t come here to give a fashion show, though, so he kept moving.
After infiltrating third-world countries, locating Ashley’s office was easy. Plus, the scenery was motivational. The way her skirt hugged the curves of her ass fed his Victoria’s Secret fantasy, and her blouse wasn’t half bad, either. The silky material draped over her boobs and he’d bet the fabric was as soft as the skin it only partially concealed. When she delved further into the tangle of cables, she flashed him the shadow of a black bra strap. Hooyah.
“Dixon?” he prompted, when she didn’t look up from the mess of cables she was untangling.
She glanced his way automatically, a polite smile pasted to her face. Naturally her smile disappeared real quick when she realized who’d knocked on her door.
“You.” Her voice held a wealth of disapproval, but that was nothing new. Frankly, he had a hard time imagining welcome, pleasure or anything remotely happy painted on her puss. She didn’t like him, and he never seemed to get things right as far as she was concerned. Too bad, so sad. Wait until she heard what he had to say.
“In the flesh.” He stepped into her office because he didn’t need to attract any more attention from her floor mates. She had ten feet by ten feet to herself, along with three pieces of battered office furniture, a dusty plastic plant and a series of action figures suspended from the ceiling by what looked like fishing line. Stepping closer and blocking her access to the room’s only exit, he offered her a lazy grin. “I didn’t recognize you wearing clothes.”
She’d rocked a very nice string bikini on their undercover mission to Fantasy Island, and...what? He was supposed to pretend he hadn’t noticed? Hello. Parts of him were biologically incapable of not noticing, no matter how much vitriol she shot his way.
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