Pleasing Her SEAL(20)

"Okay," she said, her eyes drifting closed, her body swaying closer. "But..."

"Tell me what your objections are and I'll fix them."

Her mouth brushed his. "I want a list of my options, okay?"

"Anything," he growled, and he meant it.

Her eyes popped open and she giggled. "You can't promise me that. What  if I wanted to do something really kinky and you weren't okay with it?"

He couldn't imagine anything she'd want to do that he wouldn't. Maddie  talked big, she lived to shock him and she definitely didn't filter her  words, but he also got the sense that her experience wasn't as broad as  she liked to pretend.

"Feel free to shock me," he added drily.

Another giggle. "You should have a safe word."

He shot her a glance and started packing up the picnic basket. "Is your drink called Tie You Up? Or My Sweet Submissive?"

She blew out a breath. "Now you're teasing."

Only partly, although his personal tastes didn't include ropes and whips.

"I'm all ears," he said instead and tugged her gently to her feet.

"I really want to say the right thing," she admitted, a slight hitch in her voice.

"There's no right or wrong answer, Maddie." And then, because she still  looked uncertain and he'd never seen her hesitate, he said, "Do you  read those magazine quiz thingies?"                       
       
           


       

"Like Cosmo? Sure. But if you do, you may have to surrender your man card."

He shrugged. "I have four sisters. You'd be amazed at how many magazine  quizzes I've taken. They liked to use me as the male benchmark."

She grinned. "You took advantage of that, didn't you?"

"You bet. Otherwise I wouldn't have stood a chance. So here's a quiz  for you," he continued, steering her up the beach and toward the guest  villas. Wrapping an arm around her waist, he gave in to temptation and  stroked his fingers over her hip. "You tell me which answer you'd have  picked. You kiss your girl for the first time. After you break your  lip-lock, you, A, tell her you've been fantasizing about kissing her for  days-and that the reality is even better than the fantasy."

She leaned into him, her breast brushing against his arm. "Next option?"

"B, whisper that she's the hottest kisser ever-and you've got a list of  other places you'd like to kiss her." If she couldn't think of places,  well, he had a list just waiting on the tip of his tongue for her.

"Go on," she said breathlessly.

"Or C, praise her kissing skills and beg her to do it again just so you can be sure."

She sighed. "You make this hard."

"Give me more words." Unfortunately, his mind-and his dick-had  precisely one interpretation of the word hard at the moment, and it was a  very literal interpretation.

Her bungalow emerged out of the darkness. He should have walked slower.

She tugged on his hand. "Which would you have picked?"

"That's easy," he said smoothly. "D, all of the above."

"Wow. You're good." She fished in her bag for her key. Then she smiled  up at him, biting her lower lip ever so slightly, and something in his  chest turned over. "Come in?"

Taking her up on her offer made him feel guilty, but it didn't stop him  from accepting. He kept a hand on the small of her back, steadying her  when she tripped and launched herself at the door. Taking the key from  her, he inserted it and opened the door.

"The bedroom's through that door. I'll be right back," she said and headed for the bathroom.

Six steps took him down the hallway to her bedroom, where a tornado  must have touched down recently, because clothes were tossed everywhere.  Maddie wasn't a tidy person. Apparently, she attacked getting dressed  as gleefully as she did life. She also had awesome choices in panties.  He stepped over the duvet that she'd wadded up and kicked to the floor.  He'd bet she was as uninhibited in bed as she was licking whipped cream  off his mouth.

Still, he didn't want to pressure her into anything. She had to make  the call about tonight because, God, he was a bastard. He'd stolen her  laptop and shadowed her every footstep for days-even if she didn't know  it-and now he wanted to have sex with her? Yeah. Sign him up for the  Asshole of the Month Club.

Maddie stepped into the room and his self-control problem was back just  like that. It wasn't just that Maddie was pretty, or that he really  liked her. Because she was damn gorgeous and he did. She was Maddie.  Liking her was pretty much a given. But she didn't know he had an  ulterior motive for asking her out, or that all this dating stuff wasn't  him. He was just following a script written by a magazine writer, and  the ability to carry out directions didn't make him worthy of having  her.

"I should go," he said brusquely. Off-limits, he reminded himself.

"Stay." That was his Maddie. Blunt. Sexy. An unstoppable force of  nature-although the champagne seemed to have put a dent in her ability  to stand straight. She swayed a little and then pressed her palm against  the wall to steady herself. She was cute when she was tipsy. Barefoot,  she curled her toes into the hardwood, rocking backward as she stared at  him, coming to some sort of decision. She'd painted her toenails bright  red with little white daisies. That kind of decoration was hard to do,  as he knew firsthand because his sisters had roped him into  nail-painting duty more than once.

"Are you sure?"                       
       
           


       

"Two hundred percent." She blinked at him. "I could make it three hundred percent though, if you're feeling insecure."

"Tell me you're not drunk."

She blew him a kiss. "I shouldn't operate heavy machinery at the  moment, but I'm not that tipsy. I'll even make up drink names if it  makes you feel better."

"Yes." Damn it. He sounded hoarse and more than a little desperate.

"Oh, good." She launched herself at him. "I thought you'd never give it up."





9

Ladies, tonight's the night! That's all I'm going to say, other than:  wish me luck! I'm a woman on a mission and Mr. Fantasy Fodder doesn't  stand a chance. I'm ordering rose petals for the bed and a bottle of  champagne (oh, all-inclusive resort! How I love thee!), plus I have what  has to be the world's biggest box of condoms. I am wondering though,  how you all handle the pressure of the Wedding Night. I want tonight to  be absolutely perfect. I want to blow his mind and be the best lover  he's ever had. Am I overthinking this? Underthinking it? I'm worried the  main course will seem boring after all the fun appetizers. Help!

-MADDIE, Kiss and Tulle

"YOU SURE YOU want to play games with me?" Mason's gruff voice in her  ear almost put the brakes on Maddie's pleasure. Almost, but not quite.  Trying to get him into bed had been like racing an iceberg. She'd been  getting nowhere fast, but now he wrapped his arms around her, one hand  pulling her closer to his muscled chest and the other cupping her butt,  and that was a mighty fine answer. He wanted her. He definitely didn't  want to let go. And that made her insides feel molten instead of icy, so  maybe there was hope for that iceberg after all.

"You talk too much."

He stared down at her for a moment, all big, stern man, and then his  mouth quirked up. "You're telling me that I talk too much?"

Picky beast. She slid her hand beneath his shirt. The man had muscles  on his muscles, but the rest of him was smooth with just a sprinkling of  hair. The pair of dog tags was a nice surprise, too. Winding the chain  around her fingers, she tugged him into kissing distance.

Then she slid him a glance. "I'm officially saying, ‘I told you so.'"

He spread his fingers over her butt, his fingertips grazing the crack.  She was pretty sure they both felt the shiver that coursed through her.  "About?"

"You're not just a chef. Or you've been a busy boy in a former life."  She tugged on the metal tags around his neck, sifting the skin-warmed  metal through her fingers. "Dog tags."

"Maybe they're decorative," he suggested, his nonanswer more than enough answer for her. "Or maybe I've served a tour or two."

Imagining him as a soldier wasn't difficult. He had a watchful  stillness about him, an awareness of his surroundings and an easy  confidence in his body that she liked. "That's it? No details?" She ran  her fingers over the dog tags.

"You want my biography?" His fingers stroked a little deeper, fondling her butt and moving closer to wicked territory.

"That's an exit, not an entrance," she pointed out, but darn it, she sounded breathless.

"I thought you wanted to play games," he rasped, bending his head to  whisper the words into her ear. He followed up with another wicked  stroke.