Tangled Pursuit by Lindsay McKenna Read Free Book Online Page A

word. Save that for all the other women you routinely chase around here.”
    His brows rose. “Ahhh, my legendary reputation has preceded me. Well, I’d like to share my philosophy with you—”
    “Don’t bother! Matt told me all about your ‘living for today’ attitude.”
    “It’s a good philosophy, don’t you think?” He allowed a hint of a smile to leak from his mouth, wanting to kiss the hell out of those petulant, full lips of hers. Had anyone ever told this woman how sexy, how earthy and sensual she was beneath that godawful uniform she wore? Just because she was a Marine didn’t mean she wasn’t sexual.
    “No! I don’t do sex for sex’s sake, so get me off your radar, Chief Lockwood.”
    “Now,” he crooned in his best drawl, “the woman I want to take to bed and make love to is my whole world. She’s the only thing on my radar, darlin’. I want to hear her talk, listen to the tenor of her voice, feel how soft her skin is, how responsive she is when I start to please her. My woman is all I live for in that moment. Nothing else exists for me except her heart, her soul, and what I can do to please her.”
    “Ugh,” Tal muttered, wishing she could gut-punch him so he’d move and leave her alone.
    Wyatt thought he saw arousal in her eyes when he dropped to that low, soft drawl, kind of like a croon, and he knew the effect it had on women. He wondered if she was damp between her thighs yet. How he’d like to run his hand between her legs and find out. “I don’t see anything wrong with wanting to please my women, do you?” he said, and remained where he was. Wyatt knew if he reached out to touch her right now, she’d probably deck him.
    He’d wanted to test Tal to see just how deep her supposed revulsion toward him really was. There was a slim possibility that she really didn’t want him, but he thought the chances were between low and none. “You know,” he continued, “there’s more than just sex between a man and a woman. There’s the sharing of genuine feelings. And the best part is when they like each other as well as have a great time in bed together.”
    He saw her drag in a ragged breath. His hands itched to follow the curve of those breasts, to feel their heat and touch her nipples, which by his calculations were already hard right now.
    “Step back,” she ordered, her eyes narrowing. Tal couldn’t go there. She just couldn’t, even though her damned body was being a traitor, falling for Lockwood’s seduction. The man clearly knew how to get a woman’s full and undivided attention. And worse, she liked that he was fully, intensely focused on no one but her. Absorbing him, that glint in his eyes, his shadowy features, wildly aware of the male heat rolling off him, she wanted to try to disregard her fearful heart. It had been shattered with the death of Brian, and it had nearly broken her as a result. She never wanted to endure that kind of pain again.
    “You know,” he said, suddenly changing the subject, “when I was a boy, I spent a lot of time breaking wild mustangs at my father’s ranch near Van Horn, Texas. I loved the land there, the animals, nature. My dad always told me I was good at working with wild animals. On a regular basis, he’d rescue ten or fifteen mustangs from a chicken feed factory up in Amarillo and have them trucked down to our ranch. Then he gave them to me to tame. We’d put them in a huge, round corral, and I’d bring in a hose and fill buckets of water. I knew how thirsty they were, and I wanted to show them that a human could be trusted. I knew all they had experienced from us was pain.”
    He saw Tal’s shoulders lose some of their tension and the fear dissolve in her suspicious eyes. Wyatt knew the importance of a low, soft voice with frightened four-legged animals, or in this case, a wary two-legged human female.
    “What did you do?” she asked, her voice turning husky.
    He heard the anger leave her voice. Now her tone was frayed and