Joanne Rock - Wild And Wicked

Breathless, Kyra stared up at Jesse with his broad, square shoulders and wondered what he had in mind.

He grazed his hand slightly over her thigh. “You sure you don’t want to run?”

“And lose my chance to experience Jesse Chandler’s legendary prowess firsthand?” She settled more deeply into the pillows. “I don’t think so.”

He trailed his fingers over her hip, then up to her bare waist. The insubstantial little touches heightened her senses, made her crave more of him. When he walked those clever fingers under the edge of her skirt, desire trembled through her with a force she hadn’t fully expected.

She’d wanted Jesse forever—had fantasized about sexy interludes with him since she was barely sixteen—but in all that time, her imagination had never hinted it could be this hot between them. This wild.

She couldn’t stifle the sighs of pleasure his hands wrought. She ached for him in the most elemental way, and none of his skilled, seductive torments would satisfy it.

She needed him.

All of him.

Now.

Dear Reader,

I had so much fun penning last fall’s Wild and Willing, Blaze #54, that I couldn’t resist retracing my steps to Tampa’s annual pirate festival and finding out what else was happening on that day. The uniquely Floridian Gasparilla Festival was just too fun not to revisit!

Lucky for me I stumbled across bad boy Jesse Chandler, Seth Chandler’s younger brother. But instead of playing pirate at Gasparilla, Jesse was too busy picking up women to don an eye patch. Enter his best friend, Kyra Stafford, who’s had just about enough of Jesse’s antics. I hope you enjoy her adventures as a lusty lady pirate determined to show her friend how much steamy potential lurks between them.

Stay tuned in 2003 for my all-new series, Single in South Beach. If you think Gasparilla is fun, just wait until you hit South Beach in Miami. Four unlikely friends are cooking up revenge for the men who left them high and dry. You won’t want to miss their sensual adventures on the way to happily-ever-after. Visit me at www.JoanneRock.com to learn more about my future releases or let me know what you think of my books. I’d love to hear from you!

Happy reading,

Joanne Rock

In loving memory of my friend and long-ago roommate,

Rebecca Schaffer, who had only just begun

to show the world how brightly she could shine.

Her talent and energy inspire me still.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

“KYRA!” JESSE CHANDLER shouted to his business partner as he strode into the barn housing the offices of Crooked Branch Horse Farms. He juggled purchases from the tack shop until he reached a sawhorse table where he could set them down. “I’ve got all the leather you wanted. Saddles and bridles, riding gloves and a dominatrix outfit—oh, wait. That last one wasn’t a business purchase.”

He sorted through the new supplies in the converted old building Kyra used strictly for storage and office space. The horses Kyra bred and trained lived in much more modern quarters behind this barn.

Removing price tags and testing the leather of the new stock, Jesse waited for his best friend and colleague to appear. He’d never made her blush in over ten years of trying, but hope sprang eternal. No matter that Kyra Stafford was the one woman in Citrus County he’d never hit on, he still loved to make her laugh.

“Perfect,” came a feminine purr from over his left shoulder—far closer than he’d anticipated. “I think you need an assertive woman to keep you in line, Jesse Chandler.”

For about two seconds, he reacted to the sultry promise he must have imagined behind the words.

Awareness fired through him, heated his insides despite the breeze drifting in the wide-open barn doors. The Gulf of Mexico rested a mere thousand acres away to border the northwest corner of the state-of-the-art Florida horse farm and training facility. Surely the gentle wind off the water should have helped him keep cool in February.

But then Kyra stepped around him to stand by his side and look over the new tack, her long blond hair grazing his arm. Smart, sensible Kyra Stafford who had never flirted with him for so much as five seconds.

What the hell was the matter with him?

Shaking off an absurd sense of attraction he’d never felt for his best friend before, Jesse attributed the Twilight Zone moment to too many nights alone. He definitely needed to remedy that situation this weekend.

“Funny, I don’t see any dominatrix garb here.” Kyra glanced up at him with her bright blue eyes. Innocent blue eyes, damn it. And smiled. “Be careful what you wish for, Jesse.”

From any other woman, Jesse would have pegged that remark for blatant enticement. But he was obviously going through major sensual deprivation if he was hearing come-ons in Kyra’s speech.

Hell yeah, he’d be more careful.

Clearing his throat, he decided maybe they were just both getting too old for the game of trying to make Kyra blush. “Guess I left the spiked collar at the store.” He started hanging bridles on the wall, determined to make tracks between him and this ill-advised conversation. “That’s okay. I don’t go for the hardcore type anyway.”

“Seems like you’re not going for any type lately,” Kyra observed, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she leaned a blue jean-clad hip into the sawhorse table. At twenty-four, she looked sort of like Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Bonanza—a petite blonde in dusty cowboy boots with enough determination and drive to move mountains, or, more often, stubborn horses. “Is southern Florida’s most notorious bad boy finally mellowing?”

Allowing a saddle created for one of their new ponies to slide back to the plywood with a thunk, Jesse turned to face the woman who knew him best. The woman whose question mirrored his own recent fear.

“You know I couldn’t mellow if I tried.” Not that he would try. He was too content with bachelorhood, even though his last girlfriend was sticking to him like glue despite his best efforts to move on. He needed to show Greta he wasn’t the forever-after—or even a three-date—kind of guy.

“Why? Because there’d be ten women lined up in Victoria’s Secret lingerie and armed with apple pies if they knew you were thinking about settling down?”

She tried on a pair of fawn-colored riding gloves and stared at her hand encased in suede.

Jesse grinned. “As if that would be such a hardship.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him in one of Kyra’s classic don’t-bullshit-me looks.

He shrugged. “I don’t know what’s up. I’ve been putting in a lot of hours making final preparations around the Crooked Branch before I turn my attention to my custom homes business. Maybe I’ve just been working too hard lately.”

He hated leaving Kyra to run the business all by herself, but that had been her stipulation from the moment they’d went in on the operation together. She’d vowed to buy back his substantial share of the farm once she’d made it a success.

And damned if she wasn’t whooping butt on that promise already. As soon as she clinched one more horse sale, she’d own the controlling share of the business.