Blogging? Sigh. An Excerpt Then…

You know things are going to be rough in the new year when it’s 9 days past your resolutions and you already need a do-over. Sigh.

I have to get myself back on track to blog three times a week. I had a terrific rant of a post the other day and was actually arguing with myself in the shower. Then…I had to get to a million chores, class, work, and the blog fell on deaf ears.

So I’ll do that ranty one on Monday. In the meantime, how about an excerpt from A Major Connection, which releases January 20th? Sexy Marines in love? Hell yeah!

Happy Friday!

from A Major Connection

Thorn banged on her door the following morning at eight a.m. sharp. He knocked for a while, knowing she most likely wouldn’t be awake. Rumors at work had it that Major Hotness wasn’t a morning person. She had a sweet tooth, an intolerance for fools, and no bend in her whatsoever. Her way or the highway, though she could also admit to being wrong on occasion.

Thorn could work with all that. Especially when that came packaged in shorts and a tee-shirt showing off a body that made his mouth water.

Barking then swearing filtered through the cracked-open windows in front. Fool woman should know better than to leave her windows up overnight.

She yanked open the main door, leaving only the screen door to separate them. Seeing him there, she gaped. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’ve got a problem.”

“More than a few,” she muttered. “Lobo, shut up!”

Lobo whined and backed away, then came back shoving against her, his tongue hanging out while he pushed past her to thrust his nose against the screen.

Thorn held his hand close for Lobo to sniff, which excited the dog into a new frenzy of dancing and wagging.

April glared at the dog.

April. He’d been thinking about her like that since she’d admitted to leaving the Corps. And damn if his dreams hadn’t been hot enough to wake him out of sleep with a hard-on the size of Texas. Sure he’d gone without a woman for a few months. The battalion’s op tempo had been crazy the past year. But he’d been celibate for longer stretches of time and not had such vivid fantasies of a woman before.

“Cut it out,” April snarled when Lobo nudged her knees, almost knocking her over.

“Whoa. Easy, Major. I come bearing gifts.” Thorn held up a cardboard tray holding two coffees and a bag of pastries. Even he had a tough time resisting the call of the sweet smells coming from the bag.

She didn’t blink. “What do you want?”

Hardball then. “Hey, I’m trying to be nice about this.”

She mumbled something about the word nice he couldn’t quite make out. “What do you want, Gunny?”

“Restitution.”

She just stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” He could wait her out. All damn day if he had to. To his bemusement, he realized that sparring with her instilled the same sense of fevered anticipation he experienced when going on a mission. But this time he wouldn’t be trying to rescue anyone or pin down a horde of rebels. He meant to outflank and seriously bed the woman scowling at him.

“Restitution? For what?”

“We’ll start with my dead tomato plants. And the beans, the mangled peppers… And hey, how about the planters Lobo ruined, as well as the sprinkler system that cost an arm and a leg to install? It’s got sections chewed up. Shall I go on?”

She groaned and gripped her hair by the temples.

He almost would have preferred her with bedhead and an unpleasant morning face, something to make her appear less goddess-like and more human. But even roused out of bed she looked gorgeous, sexy, and—hell, he’d just admit it—fuckable. Her long honey-blond hair reached the tips of her breasts, hidden behind a short, ugly, terrycloth robe. But that hair looked soft and silky. Her lips were rosy, parted on a swear, so of course he immediately imagined them wrapped around his cock.

Stifling that thought took effort, because she glared at him with eyes that struggled to be blue or green, or maybe both. Teal, he thought, and wondered if she knew her eyes were the exact same color as the crisp, clear waters off Key West, one of his favorite places in the world.

It wasn’t like Thorn to wax poetic. Hell, the last woman he’d been head over heels for had ditched him for a guy she’d been crushing on forever. He’d made peace a long time ago over losing Maria to an idiot Marine who didn’t deserve her. Even the last woman he’d been seeing, a pretty engineer with a big brain, a terrific sense of humor, and a yearning for kids—all traits he shared and admired—hadn’t gotten to him on this level. Something about April Soames put his back up, his cock up, and his temper to simmering.

He gave her a baleful look. “If you’d rather I just sent you the bill or took you to court, I’m game. Hell, we’ll throw Lobo in the pound and call it even.” He turned, as if he meant to walk away.

The screen door slapped him in the ass before she bodily dragged him inside with her.

“Fine. Come in, come in.” She shut the door behind him. “You, stay.” That said, she darted down the hallway.

He glanced at the dog, who looked back at him and cocked his head. “She talking to you or me?”

A MAJOR CONNECTION
Book four in the Good to Go series.