Tempting the Fire by Sydney Croft Read Free Book Online Page A

seeing Marlena’s face … and then jungle … and then just a white light that burned hotly through him as he came, harder than he’d ever come in his life.
    He thought he was dying. Having a heart attack at the very least. But then the tightening in his chest subsided and gradually he floated back to consciousness, and to the woman he’d collapsed onto.
    He lifted his head and they stared at each other, half in shock in their post-orgasmic haze. He eased Marlena’s legs from around his waist and steadied her when her feet hit the floor.
    Her BDUs remained on one leg and he bent quickly and got them back on her. Because they were coming for her—for them—and no one would see his woman naked but him.
    His woman. Shit.
    Before he could say anything, explain—and what the hell kind of explanation could he give anyway?—Shep burst into the room.
    “What are you doing?”
    34

    Chance wheeled away from Marlena and faced Shep, who had a pistol pointed directly at him.
    “Back the fuck away from her now,” Shep ordered.
    Chance heard a low growl … and spun, searching for the source. Until he realized it had come from him.
    What happened next was both completely unexpected and strangely natural, and like most things he’d done in his life, he simply went for it.
    BITING THAT WOMAN ON THE EARLOBE HAD BEEN ONE OF
    THE stupidest things Logan had ever done in his life, because it had made the whole I’ve-been-in-the-jungle-for-a-month-without-a-woman thing start screaming inside his pants.
    God, she was pretty. Pretty and sweaty and pissed as hell, which, yeah, was another one of his turn-ons, right up there with the whole earlobe thing. She’d tasted a little salty, smelled like vanilla, and fuck it all, why, today of all days, was there actually hot water in this godforsaken shower when he most definitely needed cold.
    He was horny as hell, and it was at times like these that he thanked God he wasn’t fully a machine, that he could still feel all the normal male urges. That he wasn’t a complete monster like the one Frankenstein built, full of wires and steel and mechanisms.
    Since the accident and subsequent rehab, his emotions felt flat—he’d been unable to feel truly passionate about anything he did work-wise. Or anything-wise.
    Sex was the only way he could convince himself that he was still capable of feeling, and hell, that was something.
    Now he leaned his forehead against his arm, which was propped up against the wooden wall of the outdoor shower, his body still soapy, the dirt running down the small hole that acted as a drain.
    He was rock hard, uncomfortably so, and Sela was waiting a few feet away, handcuffed to a pole with no choice but to wait for him.
    “What’s taking you so long?” she snapped—and oh, yeah, if he could keep her talking …
    “You miss me, darling?” he called, the hoarseness in his voice apparent to his own ears as he palmed his shaft and closed his eyes and pretended she was touching him. Stroking him. Maybe even getting on her knees to take him in her mouth. She’d be hot and wet and would put that sharp tongue to use in much more pleasant ways. He could already feel it swirling around his glans and flicking over the tip while her lips created a groan-inducing suction.
    “I want to take a shower too,” she said, and Christ, the thought of her in here, with him, almost made him lose it.
    Too soon—he needed to enjoy this. Deserved to, since he’d been pulled out of the office and into the fucking jungle to clean up another mess. And yeah, he 35

    was about sixty seconds from making a fucking mess of his own, considering he hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off Sela’s ass instead of on the tracks leading to the escaped animal.
    She’d been huffing a little as they’d gotten farther into the brush, each sound, each breath sounding like … like fucking sex noises. He needed to get this job over and done with and get this woman out of this country and away from