Free Between Duty and Desire by Leanne Banks Page B

him, he shook his finger at her playfully. “Don’t stick out your tongue unless you plan to use it.”
    “How should I use it?” she asked, with a sensual curiosity in her eyes that made him regret teasing her.
    “That’s for you to figure out,” he muttered, irritated at how quickly she made his temperature rise.
    He barely saw her coming when she lifted her mouth to his mouth and kissed him quickly. She drew back, looking as surprised at her action as he was.
    He stared at her in disbelief. “Why’d you do that?”
    “Because you dared me to do it,” she said defensively.
    “I did not.”
    “Yes, you did,” she argued, her cheeks heating. “You dared me to kiss you when you said something about using my tongue. If you didn’t like it, you’ll just have to get over it because you asked for it.”
    The combination of her indignation, embarrassment and impulsive kiss set off a chain reaction inside him of gut-clenching want. The sensations inside him were a mixture of arousal and excruciating tenderness.
    Instinctively reaching for her, he pulled her against him. “I didn’t ask for that kind of kiss, Callie,” he told her in a voice that sounded rough to his own ears.
    “What kind of kiss did you ask for?”
    He lowered his mouth and showed her. He rubbed his lips over hers, relishing the shape and texture of her mouth. Gently squeezing the nape of her neck, he coaxed her lips to a more accessible position.
    He had the sensation of danger as he took her mouth. It should have made him more careful, but there was too much that had been pent up inside him for too long. He slid his tongue over her lips, then inside her mouth to taste her. Surprising the hell out of him, she pressed the front of her body flush against him as if she couldn’t get close enough. With each stroke of his tongue, he felt as if he were standing at the edge of a volcano ready to erupt.
    She made a sound of need that affected him like an intimate touch, and went wild in his arms. Matching him caress for caress, she drew his tongue deep into her mouth the same way she would draw his hardness into her body. The knowledge made him sweat.
    She squeezed his forearms with a sexy kind of desperation, then slipped her hands up under his tank top to touch his chest.
    Brock felt his heart hammer in his chest. Swollen with need, he slid one of his hands down to her bottom, guiding her pelvis against the place where he ached. Feeling the tight tips of her breasts against his chest, he was filled with the need to touch her all over at once. He skimmed his hand over the edge of her breast and she turned toward him, clearly begging for more.
    On fire, he wanted nothing more than to strip off her clothes and plunge inside her.
    After one kiss.
    She pulled away to gasp for air. “Oh, wow,” she whispered.
    Oh, wow was an understatement. A minuscule amount of oxygen seeped into his brain. He saw the dark arousal in her eyes, her lips were already swollen from their kiss. He could take her now if he wanted, the devil inside him said. He could have Rob’s woman.

Seven
    Marine Lingo Translation
Soup Sandwich: A mess. Not squared away.

    H e needed a beer. He needed to watch a ball game on a giant screen. He needed to get laid. Two out of three wasn’t bad, he thought, as he chugged his second cold one and sat on a stool at Smiley’s Bar. His Braves were having a tough time.
    Hearing a chorus of feminine laughter, he glanced over his shoulder and saw the cute brunette giving him the eye again. He glanced away, thinking he could probably get something going with her if he was so inclined. He’d been walking around with a hard-on for the last two weeks. He should be inclined but, for some reason, he didn’t have the stomach for anonymous sex anymore. Brock wondered if his change in attitude was due to the explosion. More than his body had been affected by it.
    Sighing, he took another swig and focused on the game.
    “The Braves aren’t doing very