Free At Your Service: Tammer by Lila Munro Page A

held his hands out toward her. “Come on. Come to bed. He told me I could spend the night. All night.”
    “He what?” he clipped, running her arms under her breasts and glaring at him. “Why would he do that?”
    “Because I didn’t lie for you. I told him you weren’t feeling quite up to par and he told me to stay with you.”
    “Do you realize what a bad idea this is?” Nina asked, scowling.
    “Yeah, I do and I’d be lying to you, myself, and my maker if I tried to deny what you’ve decided we can’t say out loud. But I know what I want. I want you. In my arms. All night. Even if I can’t kiss you or make love to you completely, I can hold you. Your Liege just broke rule number three for me so I can do just that.”
    “You must be fucking shitting me. Is there no regard for the truth or is that one of the golden rules you choose to ignore?”
    “I just said I didn’t lie. And I didn’t ask to stay with you. That was his suggestion and if the cards falling the right way makes me a bad man, well, sweetheart, guilty.”
    “You know this will never be enough,” Nina said, climbing into bed then curling up on her side while Tammer shut the lights off then climbed in behind her and pulled her against his chest. “The longer we pretend it is, the worse it’ll be when…”
    “Let me worry about what happens when. And just so we’re clear, that’s not a question, it’s an order.”

 
     
    Chapter Ten
     
    Could anything possibly feel more right and at the same time be so damn wrong? Tammer hardly believed he loved Nina, hardly thought it was feasible to grow to love anyone so quickly. But if love was something that just happened then he couldn’t fully deny the plausibility of what his heart pointed out every single time she invaded his thoughts, every time he laid eyes on her. He also couldn’t deny that what was happening was as foreign to him as Chinese so he couldn’t be certain where the line became shady and more than liking someone turned into an emotion he’d never held for anyone in his life. Why the hell now? More importantly, why did his heart have to think it was perfectly acceptable to initiate the scariest feeling he’d ever felt for his friend’s wife, who was off limits in that department?
    There were rules.
    Rules. That was a joke. When had Tammer ever been one to walk a completely straight line anyway? Never. In his former and current line of work, there was a gray area in which people played around with the rules, bent them, found loopholes, read into them whatever it took to be able to use the rules to one’s advantage. They used people, places, things, and assets to get what they needed and stay alive when it came down to it.
    But Tammer wasn’t in the field. He was in his friend’s house in his friend’s bed with his friend’s wife and the harder he tried to convince himself he could walk a straight line where she was concerned, the harder it became to believe it.
    While Tammer could argue with himself all day long that Joel had put him here and Joel knew the risks, the fact remained this was a business arrangement. One he could have turned down upon request. Or was it? The truth was, Tammer erased a line of his own from the beginning by refusing payment from Joel. They were friends. How did he even begin to label this thing at all? And who did he really have to blame for what was all too evidently transpiring between he and Nina, the very vulnerable woman who’d fallen asleep in his arms not minutes after finally succumbing to the fact Tammer wasn’t going anywhere.
    He couldn’t blame Joel for her state because the man hadn’t neglected Nina on purpose. The Corps was an evil mistress who’d been forcing men to make a less than savory choice for over two hundred years. Tammer didn’t know a single marine he’d come in contact with and had a significant other who’d not struggled at one time or other with putting their career above a spouse or lover. It wasn’t