LITMIR.BIZ

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to them physically, it was absolute combustion. Yet he’d never felt anything like this before. She left him… Jesus. He wiped one hand across his forehead. Dazed was one word for it. Another was juiced.

      Finding ways to make sure his dick got the kind of attention it deserved had never taken much effort. Women were everywhere. Beautiful women who sought him out, women whose eyes were glowing with seduction the minute they knew who he was: Forbes billionaire, Jake Sutton.

      Maggie’s voice lingered in his ears. It was low-pitched and a little husky. He wanted to hear her say his name when he made her come, but thinking about that made him ache to the point of near agony. If you play with fire long enough, his uncle used to tell him, eventually, you’re gonna get burned.

      The problem was, maybe he wanted to get burned.

      No, this was crazy. The minute you started thinking one woman was going to do it for you, you were already in dangerous territory. Jake stood, grimacing. He stared at the path she’d taken. At the end of it were lights and people and laughter.

      Funny how he was here alone in the dark. Again. But wasn’t that simply how life worked? In the end, you were always alone.

      Shake it off, he told himself. He’d get over it. So what if she didn’t sleep with him? He’d survived worse disappointments.

      Jake started down the path toward the party. Maybe he’d been chumming the wrong waters. Maybe it wasn’t models and actresses who could light him up like that. Instead of sleek, glamorous women, he should have been looking for something a little more homespun.

      He saw Richard Glasgow hurrying toward him. Three hours into this thing and Richard still had his signature red power tie snugged up next to his Adam’s apple. Richard may have tended toward the anal-retentive, but he was a top-notch locations manager.

      “I may have found a site for the nerd—the tech incubator,” Richard said. He carried a plate of cheese cubes speared with toothpicks and seemed to be polishing them off with his usual appetite for anything tasty.

      “You can call it a nerdery, Richard.” Being a nerd was something to be proud of. Jake should know. In the tech community, he almost had nerd status because he could code.

      “Well, I think it might be worth looking at. Just outside of town, close to a major hub like San Antonio, but not too close.” He popped another piece of cheese into his mouth and chewed rapidly. “Oh, sorry, do you want one?”

      Jake shook his head. He saw Maggie talking to people sitting at a table. She glanced up at him, eyes flickering, and then she returned to her conversation. But he knew she wasn’t listening.

      They were connected now, he and Maggie. They were connected by the knowledge of what happened when they stepped in the ring together.

      A knock out.

      Something glowed warmly inside him. He recognized it at once: determination to have her. To never take no for an answer. No was merely a roadblock that had to be pushed aside to get where you wanted. Who you wanted. Which was her.

      “I’m pretty sure we can get it at a rock-bottom price, too,” Richard was saying. “It’s a huge lot. Good road access. You can go crazy building your nerd habitat and I can act all smug about finding the place. Way I figure, it’s a win-win.”

      But Jake couldn’t take his eyes off Maggie, the way she moved, the way she held herself. She was pretending to ignore him now. There was something irresistible about a woman acting all ladylike when just minutes ago she’d been panting with the same dark, raw need that ate at him right now.

      “I’ve also decided to start wearing women’s panties,” Richard said.

      Jake snapped around. “What?”

      “Knew that would get your attention.”

      “You’re a sick bastard, Richard.”

      “Well, I was getting all lonely, talking to myself. She’s worth staring at though, I’ll give you that.”

      Jake stole a cheese cube off Richard’s plate and chewed absently. “It’s like trying to crack open a bank vault. I want to, but I just haven’t figured out the right code, I guess.”

      Richard snagged a beer from a passing waiter. “Well, it’s a nice bank vault. Ah, I remember my single days. They were one long swing and a miss.”

      “You’re married,” Jake said. “You got no worries.” Felicia, Richard’s wife, was expecting their fifth child. Jake had been over to their house. It looked like a goat had exploded. No wonder Richard worked all the time.

      “Married for life,” Richard replied. “I’m happy with it. If I ever left Felicia, she’d kill me anyway.”

      Jake flicked his gaze in Maggie’s direction. Some asshole wearing a sports jacket and jeans was flirting with her. It bothered him more than he liked to admit.

      If he hated jealousy in women, he sure as hell hated it in himself. So when Maggie smiled up at the guy, Jake got a pain in his jaw from clenching his teeth.

      No, this had to stop.

      “Wait. Your site for the nerd incubator,” Jake said. “How soon can I see it?”

      * * * *

      Maggie collapsed on her bed while Gus frantically licked her face. She was never moving from this spot again. Thank God she’d scheduled Coralee to open the bakery in the morning.

      “Enough,” she told Gus, covering her face with her hands. She peeked at him and he barked, his silly curly-cue tail going a million miles an hour. Gus was all the man she needed. “Isn’t that right, buddy?” she murmured, trying to stay away from his tongue.

      She wanted to get out of her Maid-of-Honor dress and into something less annoying. She also needed to take Gus for a walk before bed. But every muscle in her body ached and throbbed. And she couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d done tonight. With him.

      With Jake.

      No one had ever taken her over like that, hijacking every system. Something blisteringly hot moved over her when she remembered the way he’d kissed her, slow and consuming and…personal. That was it. Jake made it seem as though there was no one in the whole world he wanted except her.

      And that made him terribly dangerous.

      A man like Jake, a man who rode planes to weddings, who wore a tux with the debonair sophistication of 007, would eat her alive. Little country girl Magdalene Roby with her country girl bakery and her country girl dreams about faraway places like Rome, Paris, Monte Carlo.

      How many times had Jake been to Paris? He’d probably had lunch there last week.

      Jake had kissed her the way he no doubt did everything, with ease and skill and an intensity that made her feel as though she’d been pounding whiskey shots at a bar. She had his scent on her even now and kept gulping it before it disappeared. Now she felt a little lightheaded. Maybe she still wasn’t sure what hit her. And a tiny treacherous wormhole of regret at not giving her body what it wanted had slowly opened.

      She got to her feet and yanked the rest of the bobby pins out of her hair. Gus, who knew everything because he was a Wonder Dog with psychic powers, guessed there might be a walk in his future. He made a mad dash around the bed and then barked at her, head between his outstretched paws, hindquarters up, tail swishing.

      “We’re going, we’re going. Give me half a minute.” Maggie peeled off her gown, hung it up and then slipped into sweatpants and a bulky sweater. She avoided looking at her body in the mirrored doors of her armoire. She felt as though it had betrayed her by wanting things she could never give it—not without paying an impossible price.

      Gus practically vibrated with excitement when she lifted him off the bed and attached his leash. He bounded down the stairs and then happily lifted his leg on his favorite tuft of grass at the bottom. Gus was nothing if not predictable.

      But

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