Redline Lover

Redline Lover

Read an Excerpt

On sale today! Get your copy from Samhain or your favorite online ebook source.

Redline Lover

copyright 2009

Charlene Teglia

Samhain Publishing all rights reserved

Take Me, Lover, Book 1

When it comes to cars, former race driver Adam Richards knows how to maximize performance. Love? It doesn’t come with a maintenance manual, and it’s just as well. The secrets he’s hiding behind his partnership in a racing garage don’t lend themselves to lasting relationships. Now that Maggie Parker is back in town, though, he’s got a few ideas to make her purr like a finely tuned engine.

Life taught Maggie that men don’t stay. Leaving Adam before he got bored was supposed to protect her from heartbreak…only it didn’t work. If helping her sister was the only reason for coming home, she might have got away unscathed. But the story she’s been assigned to write is going to bring her within scorching distance of her old flame.
Adam is as irresistible as ever—and just as stubborn. He won’t give her a story, but his offer of a no-strings fling is one she can’t refuse.

Passion pushes them to the limit, sparking Maggie’s belief that loving Adam is worth the risk.
Until she digs deeper and discovers some things just don’t add up…

Warning: Cornea-blistering sex scenes that use ALL the words, a hero to eat your heart out over and True Romance. Plus fast cars.

Excerpt:His eyes swung to Maggie. She was wearing jeans and a striped Oxford style shirt that buttoned almost to the collar. She’d left it open at the throat with the shirt untucked. He wondered if she knew she looked like an invitation to undo the rest of those buttons and see what was underneath.
“Maggie.”He’d meant to say something more than her name but what, exactly, escaped him.

“Adam.” She tried to smile, and it looked as stiff and uncomfortable as her movements had been last night. Pete became very busy with his task, almost comical in his attempt to be inconspicuous.

“Come on.” Adam jerked his head in the direction of the stairs and led the way, trusting her to follow. If Maggie had changed her mind, she wouldn’t have shown up. Maybe subconsciously he’d expected her to back out, so he’d kept working past the time he should have stopped. But she was here. And after he’d told her what to expect if she came.

Every part of him felt tight and on edge as he thought about having Maggie, rough and hard and right now. His hands curled into fists to keep himself from reaching for her.
He stopped at the top of the stairs and stepped to the side, letting Maggie be first to go into his apartment above the garage. Then he followed her in.

“Make yourself comfortable. I’ll just be a minute.”
Then he went to strip off his coverall and make himself presentable.
When he went to rejoin her, Adam found Maggie standing in the bedroom, her arms wrapped around her stomach as she stared at the bed.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” Part of him wanted to take the words back, to push her down on that bed and trap her between the mattress and his body, but if she had any reservations he’d rather find out now. Before he got his hands on her.

“Yes, I do.” Maggie turned to face him and reached for the first button on her shirt. She undid it and moved on to the next.
He watched in silence as she undressed herself for him. He fought the urge to take over the task. Her way guaranteed that she’d be able to button the shirt back up when she left. His way, she’d have to borrow one from him and that would erase any doubt anybody might have about what they’d been doing during his lunch hour.

Maggie finished with the shirt and moved on to her jeans, then her bra, her hands quick and efficient despite their visible trembling.

“You can leave that if you want,” Adam said. His voice came out harsher than he intended, and Maggie’s head came up, her eyes wide. She froze with her hands behind her back where her bra hooked.

“Adam?”
She sounded uncertain, and he wanted to kick himself for making her even more nervous. “I’d rather see you naked, but if you want to keep that on, you can.”
Yeah, that would put her right at ease. Christ.

But Maggie finished freeing the hooks and let the bra slide off her arms and away, giving him an unimpeded view of her bare breasts. While he feasted his eyes on her, she slid her panties down her hips and stepped out of them.
For a minute, he didn’t dare move. The sight of Maggie naked in his bedroom made him ravenous and wild and he didn’t trust himself to get any closer to her.
He realized his silence and immobility were making her more nervous when she wrapped her arms around herself again and cupped her hands to shield vital parts from his view.

“No. Put your hands down.” His voice was still too rough, but that couldn’t be helped.
Maggie complied, then turned and climbed into the bed. She pulled the covers up and sat there, looking at him. Her eyes looked huge in her pale face. Then her lips compressed and her jaw tightened.

“Stop looming,” she said, jerking her chin at him. “You said come at lunch time. You said you wouldn’t be gentle and I shouldn’t come if I couldn’t handle that. Fine. I’m here. I’m naked. Why are you still dressed? If you don’t want me anymore, Adam Richards, I’m going to throw something at your head for standing there and watching me take it all off just so I’d be more vulnerable when you rejected me. If this is your idea of payback for that stupid note—”

His mouth cut her words off. His kiss cut her breath off. His hands found the covers and yanked them down so he could pull her close without the barrier of too much fabric between them. His clothes were still in the way, though. Adam broke off the kiss and let her go long enough to get naked.