Midnight Vengeance by Lisa Marie Rice
Published by: Carina Press (HQN)
Publication date: August 18th 2014
Genres: Adult, Romance, Suspense
Published by: Carina Press (HQN)
Publication date: August 18th 2014
Genres: Adult, Romance, Suspense
Morton
“Jacko” Jackman isn’t afraid of anything. He’s a former Navy SEAL sniper,
and he’s been in more firefights than most people have had hot meals.
Lauren Dare scares the crap out of him.
Gorgeous, talented and refined, she’s the type of woman who could never be interested in a roughneck like him. So he’s loved her fiercely in secret, taken her art classes, and kept a watchful but comfortable distance. Until now.
Lauren had finally found a home in Portland, far from her real identity, far from the memories of her mother’s death, and outside the reaches of the drugged-out psycho who’s already tried to kill her twice. One tiny misstep—a single photograph—has shattered it all. She has no choice but to run again, but this time she’ll give herself a proper farewell: one night with Jacko.
Their highly charged emotional encounter changes everything. In Jacko’s arms there cannot be fear, there can only be pleasure. Anyone wishing her harm will have to pass through him, and Jacko is a hard man to kill.
Gorgeous, talented and refined, she’s the type of woman who could never be interested in a roughneck like him. So he’s loved her fiercely in secret, taken her art classes, and kept a watchful but comfortable distance. Until now.
Lauren had finally found a home in Portland, far from her real identity, far from the memories of her mother’s death, and outside the reaches of the drugged-out psycho who’s already tried to kill her twice. One tiny misstep—a single photograph—has shattered it all. She has no choice but to run again, but this time she’ll give herself a proper farewell: one night with Jacko.
Their highly charged emotional encounter changes everything. In Jacko’s arms there cannot be fear, there can only be pleasure. Anyone wishing her harm will have to pass through him, and Jacko is a hard man to kill.
Excerpt from Midnight Vengeance:
Lauren trembled as they walked up to her front
door. Okay. Jacko had basically already said yes, to anything she proposed. So
how hard could this be?
Very hard, it turned out. Because that rush of
conviction in the SUV driving over here had dissipated, leaving her feeling sad
and foolish.
She’d heard the stories about him from Suzanne
and Allegra, though they’d tapered off lately. But still, they’d been plenty
colorful.
How he was a player and he liked them young
and super sexy. Biker chicks, mostly. That wasn’t her. She wasn’t very young
anymore and she was anything but sexy. A B-cup at best, in her more optimistic
moments.
She wasn’t even that good in bed, or so she’d
been told. What did she know? It all seemed so very mysterious, right now,
walking up to her porch, with a light snow falling around them. That whole Sex
Thing seemed alien, something Martians did.
Another woman would know precisely what to do
and would be a firecracker in bed. Firecracker. That was the term one of her
stepfather’s goons had used to describe a wannabe model-du-jour he’d bedded.
What did firecrackers do? Sex was such a basic activity, what room was there
for improvement?
And yet there had to be room for improvement
because Lauren knew, without a shadow of doubt, that no one would ever, ever
call her a firecracker in bed. Not even a sparkler.
Oh God. This was a really really bad idea.
They were at her door and the whole Sex Thing loomed behind it. And really, in
her experience sex wasn’t that great. Maybe it would leave a bad taste in her
mouth, cloud up her happy memories of Portland.
Had Jacko realized that for a brief moment of
lunacy she’d contemplated dragging him to bed? Because though he always looked
impassive and impervious, he was actually pretty observant. How humiliating if
he realized it, shuddered at the thought, politely accepted a shot of her
whiskey and made a fast escape.
And, and even if he did throw her—what was it
called?—a mercy fuck, what would that gain her? She’d never see him again. She
was going to embark upon a long trip tomorrow with no idea of the destination.
She’d need a good night’s sleep, not a night faking orgasms.
Thoughts buzzing in her head like angry
hornets, she scrabbled uselessly in her tiny evening purse for the key. She was
close to a full-blown anxiety attack and her hands were numb. Ah, there the key
was, on her silver paintbrush fob. But her hand was trembling; she couldn’t fit
the damned key into the lock, one of those fancy ones Jacko had bought for her
and had installed himself.
Something big and warm and hard enveloped her
hand, stilling it. His hand, gently removing the key from the crazy lady’s
hands and opening the door himself.
Lauren looked up into that hard,
expressionless face, wishing she had a clue what he was thinking. How to make a
quick getaway, probably. So he could go home, change out of his formal clothes,
hop onto his massive bike that all the men at Alpha Security International
envied and go to a biker bar. Where he’d pick up a biker chick.
Who’d be young and sexy and fantastic in bed.
“Breathe,” Jacko said, that deep voice heard
in organs other than her ears.
She wheezed in a breath. At the same time,
Jacko opened her door, ushered her in, then closed it behind them.
She didn’t have time for any more anxious
thoughts because a second after the door closed, her back was against it,
Jacko’s considerable weight pressing against her, and he was kissing her.
And kissing her.
AUTHOR BIO
Lisa Marie Rice is eternally 30 years old and
will never age. She is tall and willowy and beautiful. Men drop at her
feet like ripe pears. She has won every major book prize in the
world. She is a black belt with advanced degrees in archaeology, nuclear
physics, and Tibetan literature. She is a concert pianist. Did I
mention her Nobel Prize? Of course, Lisa Marie Rice is a virtual woman and
exists only at the keyboard when writing erotic romance. She
disappears when the monitor winks off.
