MODEL SOLDIER by Cat Johnson

When love presents itself, take your shot.

Red, Hot & Blue, Book 8

When Emily Price is assigned to an ad campaign featuring one of Uncle Sam’s finest soldiers, she’s thrilled. Who better to break up the monotonous parade of smooth, perfect models than a rough, war-hardened alpha male?

Maybe she’ll even get lucky like one of her colleagues and find romance. Unfortunately, when she meets her model, he’s more caveman than Prince Charming. Now her dreams of love—and her career—are dangling precariously from his callused fingertips.

Staff Sergeant David Hawk Hawkins never imagined refusing a command…until he loses a bet and is ordered off the battlefield and into a new role: poster boy for the Army’s recruiting campaign.

From the start, their relationship is more fire-and-ice than fairytale. Yet beneath their sparring simmers an attraction that finally explodes into a night of lovemaking that, after they part, haunts them to opposite sides of the globe.

But love isn’t through with them—and neither is the public. The campaign is a hit and Hawk becomes a star. Soon he and Emily are thrown together again, but this time it’s on Hawk’s turf, where flying bullets could settle their battle before it begins.

Warning: Contains sex hot enough to travel halfway around the world, and a love strong enough to bring them back home again.

 

 

SIZZLING HOT EXCERPT:

When she returned from the bathroom, she found he hadn’t moved a muscle. Some war-hardened, trained fighter he was. She could probably set off a bomb under the bed and he wouldn’t wake up.

“Sure hope the Taliban doesn’t sneak up on you at night or you’re a goner,” she whispered and crawled back under the warm covers with a shiver.

“I heard that.”

She could hear the smile in his voice.

“Well, it’s true. You sleep like a rock.”

“Yes. When I know it’s safe to do so. Otherwise the slightest sound—a boot crunching, a breath taken too deeply—will wake me up. Believe me.”

Hawk readjusted his position to accommodate her reentry to the bed. With her back against his front, he flung his arm over her waist.

“Oh.”

What else could she say about that? She knew nothing about what this man went through on a daily basis and she probably never would. Another reason her decision to jump him, literally, and hop right into bed was probably ill advised. Mistake or not, as long as she’d done it once, she might as well do it again. If he was up for it.

Emily wiggled back against him. “Speaking of sleeping, what was all that talk in the bar about how there’d be no sleeping tonight? Hmm?”

“I have an excuse. You wore me out. I didn’t know Goldilocks would turn into the Big Bad Wolf in bed.” Two big arms gathered her up and pulled her closer to his chest. As he started to kiss up and down her neck and shoulder she felt him grow hard against her naked butt.

“You’re mixing your fairytales.” Emily sighed as the physical sensations sweeping through her from his touch battled with her emotions.

She’d been more forward with Hawk than she’d ever been with any other man in her past, as few of them as there’d been. What he must think of her after that. She hated to even think about it.

“What’s bothering you, doll? I can feel you frowning from here.”

“I’m wondering how stupid sleeping with you was. I don’t usually do this, you know.” It wasn’t exactly easy to think with his naked body pressed against her, making her warm inside and out, but she managed to answer the question.

“Do what? Have incredible sex with irresistible soldiers you’ve only known for two days?”

“Yes. The two-day part, at least. The irresistible part is pushing it, don’t you think?” Sparring with Hawk brought Emily back into her comfort zone.

He chuckled against her back. “You still don’t like the idea that you wanted me from the minute you walked into that office, do you?”

Actually, it was from the minute his eyes had stared back at her from the computer printout back in New York, but she wasn’t telling him that. And because of that instant attraction, she should have run from the Ratskeller the moment she realized Hawk was inside.

She’d fallen half in love with Hawk before ever meeting him, imagining a fairytale happy ever after with her Army prince. Even the reality of two days of fighting with him over every detail of this campaign hadn’t squelched that attraction. So what had she gone and done? She jumped into bed with him, willing to settle for one night over nothing at all.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“You’re doing it again.” His voice was low and deep.

“Doing what?”

“Thinking.”

He was right. She was thinking, because having sex with Hawk brought up a good dozen or so questions. Would she ever hear from him again? If she did have to contact him again for work, how weird would it be? What if he got injured or killed? Worse, what if he was just fine but she still never heard from him again?

“I can’t help it.” Emily sighed.

“Well, I can.” He skimmed his hand from her waist to her hip, and then down to her thigh. There, he paused and made small circles against her skin.

“You can what? Not think? Yeah, I figured that.”

“No, my witty little thinker. I meant I can stop you from thinking.”

His large, rough hand pulled her leg up and over his hip.  Her eyes closed involuntarily as he worked her increasingly sensitive spot. The tension began to build and she breathlessly shuddered out a moan.

“Still thinking?” He nipped at her neck after delivering that question against her ear.

“Shut up, Hawk.” With her body coiling, tensing for release, her rapid breathing should have given him his answer.

Hawk chuckled just as the hip-bucking orgasm broke over her.

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