Sinful Temptation Read Free Page A

pressed to his chest, and Tony worked on getting his key into his mail slot, an effort that took three tries. He finally got the little metal door open and felt a wild swoop of relief as he peered inside and saw…
    There it was!
    He snatched out the single white envelope and flipped it over to work on the flap, desperate to know if Talia had forgiven him and—
    Jesus.
    No.
    It wasn’t from Talia. It was his last letter to her. And written across the envelope, in red pen in Talia’s handwriting, were the four most terrible words he could imagine reading.
    Refused. Return to Sender.
    A lead weight settled in his gut, so sickening and dizzying that he had to slump against the wall of mail slots to avoid dropping to the floor in an undignified heap.
    That was it, then.
    He’d never hear from Talia again. She had her gut feelings, but he also had his.
    And right now, his gut was telling him that his number was up. The mission tomorrow, a joint patrol with his brother’s unit, was going to be his last.
    There was no way he was going to make it back alive.

Chapter 1
    Present day
    K nowing it was a nightmare didn’t make it any less terrifying.
    It always started out so sweet—so achingly, indescribably sweet—and that was part of the problem. In the dream, he wasn’t yet a skinny former POW struggling with PTSD and God knew what other mental deficiencies. He was still a soldier.
    “You want me, don’t you?” she murmured.
    It was Talia. It was always Talia.
    She was right there, right within the reach of his searching arms, but her face was shadowed and obscured by those flowing black curls, and, try though he did, he could only catch a flash of her laughing gray eyes. His eyes strained into the gloom, trying to see. If he could only see her, just one freaking time, he’d be the happiest man to ever put his pants on one leg at a time.
    But she slipped away and the darkness edged closer.
    Only her sounds guided him. The clink of her silver bracelets. The laugh, which was throaty and knowing. The seductive purr of her voice in his ear.
    “You want me, don’t you, Tony?”
    The frustration churned inside him. He lunged for her and missed, stumbling blindly now and turning in a clumsy circle, only to realize that her low voice was coming from somewhere else—some direction he could never quite pinpoint. A place he could never reach.
    “Tony? Tell me.”
    “I want you. You know I need you. Where are you?”
    “Here.”
    She made it sound so easy, but it wasn’t easy at all. Because he could see suddenly, and the seeing turned his bones to melting chips of ice. There she was. Far away from him, in the middle of a road in Kandahar, where it was rocky and dusty and the passing convoy of Humvees and the swooping copters overhead didn’t know how precious she was.
    Then the shit storm started.
    Rockets and IEDs exploded, showering the whole world with shrapnel and clumps of earth so hard they could be used to cut diamonds. Men yelled and then, inevitably, screamed. The line of vehicles splintered into those trying to speed up and escape, those swerving and crashing into others, and those disintegrating into nothing between this blink and the next.
    In the middle of the chaos, too far away for Tony to reach, stood Talia. He sprinted and jumped, weaving through the destruction and ignoring men who needed his help because only she mattered.
    “Talia,” he roared. “Talia.”
    She reached out her arms to him. “Here.”
    “Taliaaaa—”
    “Come on, man,” said a male voice. “Wake up.”
    “Taliaaaa!”
    No one would stop him from getting to her. He flailed and kicked, connecting with a nose and what might have been a jaw. There was a loud yelp, and then concrete restraints locked down around him, and they had no give at all.
    Not that he was giving up. He would never give up.
    “No,” he shouted. “Talia. Talia—”
    “Tony,” said that wry male voice, “I swear to God, man, if you broke my nose, I’m