“This is amazing, Isabel,” he said seriously. Joe was ashamed of himself. When he’d heard Isabel had run a food blog he’d thought—how cute. This wasn’t “cute”. It was a very serious labor of love that a lot of people found useful. She was an expert in the very thing that kept humans alive. Food.

They had that in common. It just so happened that he was an expert, too, on one of the other things that kept humans alive. Weaponry.

“You need to bring this blog back to life. And you need to write your book. Promise me you’ll at least think about it.”

She looked him full in the eyes, this incredibly talented woman. This incredibly beautiful and talented woman who was his. The smile reached her eyes. “I promise.”

She was coming back to life right in front of his eyes. Putting herself back together again, picking up her life where it had been blown up.

He knew all about that. He’d picked himself up, too. The difference was he’d had a lot of help along the way.

“It’s late. Are you tired?” Startled, Isabel checked her wristwatch.

Joe didn’t bother checking his watch, he had a perfectly functional one in his head. It was 10:35 p.m., give or take a minute. He didn’t give a fuck what time it was, though. All he knew was that it was time.

“Because I’m tired,” he said, rising. He cupped his hand under Isabel’s elbow and she rose, too. “I think it’s time for bed.” Either he took her to bed or his dick was going to explode.

Right now Isabel was absolutely impossible to resist. The Isabel he’d met had been like a wounded bird. He’d wanted to touch her, kiss her, bed her, but also curl himself around her and protect her. But there was another Isabel inside, not wounded, a confident woman, talented and worldly. Incredibly sexy. Like she was the woman sex had been invented for.

Joe softened his hands. He wanted to hold her tight, kiss her hard, but he had big strong hands and he had to watch himself. To make sure he didn’t clutch her too hard, he placed his open palm against her back and kept it open as he moved her toward the bedroom.

She looked up at him in amusement. “So, it’s like that, is it?”

He wanted to smile but it was hard to do when he was shaking with lust, trying to control himself. “Exactly like that.”

In the bedroom, Isabel immediately veered for the bathroom. Yeah. Okay. Chicks wanted to be all fresh before they had sex. Joe didn’t need that. He’d want her if she just came off a marathon. He wouldn’t care.

He sniffed his armpits just to see if they were rank, but they weren’t. Let’s hear it for twenty-first century deodorant. Inside of five seconds he was naked and under the covers. He was boiling hot but he had the blankets up over his crotch because his cock looked almost inflamed, and it felt harder than it had ever felt before.

It almost scared him and it was his cock. So he didn’t want her to see it and run screaming. He wanted her to scream all right, but not that way.

He sat up against the headboard, hands behind his head, waiting. She was doing something in the bathroom. He heard running water, then silence. Oh God, she was naked in there. He shut his eyes because his cock had given a painful pulse. He didn’t think it could become harder than it already was, but it did.

Because Joe knew what she looked like naked. She was designed specifically to drive a man wild. Soft skin, full breasts with pretty pale pink nipples, only the very tips became cherry red when she was aroused. All that honey blonde hair—enough for six women—fluttering around her shoulders. Those long slender legs, a pale little cloud between them, groomed and neat, pink-and-red folds peeking through.

The folds glistened when she was excited.

Oh yeah.

God, please make her come out now or he was going to spill all over her bed and wouldn’t that be fucking embarrassing? The sheets were soft and crisp at the same time. He’d read somewhere that sheets were graded on a thread count, the higher the count the higher the quality. These sheets probably had a billion thread count. And covering the bed was a huge thick comforter patterned with rosebuds, feminine overkill.

It was certainly killing him.

He waited and waited and waited. Though the clock in his head said that about a quarter of an hour had gone by, it felt like days, weeks, months. He had to clench his abdomen a couple of times to keep from ejaculating. He recited the Ranger Creed in his head. He wasn’t a Ranger but they had the coolest creed of all the armed services.

He was running through the driest of the SEAL exams—mechanical comprehension—when the bathroom door opened and all thoughts flew out of his head. Straight out of his head. He was reduced to a sack of oversensitive skin, an aching dick and a hammering heart.

Look at her. She didn’t have on that pretty woolly nightgown that had been secretly sexy. Now she had on a nightgown that was openly sexy. Full-length. Cream-colored, thin straps, showing every outline of her body. The full breasts with the hard nipples, the tiny waist, the gently curving hips...

She wasn’t wearing anything at all underneath.

Joe blew out a breath, hard.

She was swaying as she walked, eyes on his, smiling. She knew the effect she was having on him. Though she couldn’t see his dick, he was sure it was sending out signals.

He held his hand up. “Stop.”

She stopped, pretty feet gripping the floor. She cocked her head. “Joe?” Her voice was low and husky. She could see how worked up he was. Her stopping wasn’t in the program.

“Pull your nightgown up.” His voice was hoarse, strangled.

Her eyebrows shot up, but she obeyed, bunching that soft, creamy material in her fists and raising the hem to her shins.

Fuck. Those feet and ankles were so damn pretty. He was going to suck her toes...his cock surged, grew slick. He couldn’t afford to think of sucking her toes.

“Higher.”

Isabel studied him, trying to figure out what his deal was.

Well, tell her.

“I’m...a little worked up. As you can probably tell.” Joe manfully refrained from looking down at his lap. “So this is about the only foreplay you’re going to get. You’re going to have to do it yourself.”

“DIY foreplay?”

“Yep.” He was glad she seemed to have a sense of humor about this because it was actually not in the seduction playbook—to tell the lady that she wasn’t going to get any foreplay, she was going to have to do it herself. But he didn’t have a choice here. “When I get my hands on you it won’t be slow and it won’t be gentle.”

Her eyes opened wider.

“So pull that nightgown up.”

Isabel didn’t feel his urgency, otherwise she would have pulled that fucking nightgown over her head in a flash and run to the bed. But she didn’t. She was having fun. The hem of the gown inched up a little higher. Not much.

“More.” Joe was reduced to words of one syllable.

Isabel smiled. Raised the hem another inch.

“More.” Joe rubbed a hand over his chest. He was sweating slightly.

Another inch.

“More.”

Isabel swayed slightly, tilting her head, studying him. She gave that Mona Lisa smile only beautiful women manage, because she had his number. He was dead meat here, fragged, bagged and tagged. She lifted her hem higher, to the tops of her long smooth thighs.

Ah Jesus...

“What are you feeling?” He hoped against hope she felt a fraction of what he did. Like jumping out of his skin. Like being radioactive.

“Hot,” she whispered. “In every sense.”

“Show me.” Joe’s voice was urgent.

“What?”

“Show me you’re hot. Show me you’re ready. Show me now.”

Goddamn, why was he pushing this?

Because he was hanging on to control with two shaking hands and it was slipping from his grasp by the second.

With one hand, Isabel bunched the nightgown in her fist, lifting the folds of material up and to the side, baring her body from the waist down, pubic hair neatly shaped around her sex. The hair on her mound was a light ash brown, the same color as her eyebrows, a shade darker than the hair on her head. Her skin was so pale it looked silvery in the light from the bathroom.