charli

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Awards

  • Romance Junkies 5 Blue Ribbon Award
  • Fallen Angel Reviews Recommended Read
  • Love Romances Reviewer’s Choice Golden Rose Award
  • 2007 Fantasm Winner

Drake Trahern left the dangerous world of military secrets and betrayal to express his creative genius in software. The game, Wyvern’s Quest, is an enormous commercial success, but it acts as a screen for his true purpose. His secret has been safely hidden in his desert lair, unsuspected, until his security is cracked by a lone intruder.

Shy Melinda Palmer has been drawn into a world of dangerous games. Computer games. Spy games. And the most dangerous game of all, sexual surrender to a dominating male who will fulfill her every desire, if she dares to submit. Leaving her sensible shoes and prim clothes at the door, she enters into Drake’s game, a game of sexual enlightenment that will forever change her.

But the “danger” in the game comes from a most unexpected direction as Drake tries to guard his secrets and expose all of Melinda’s.


Now available in ebook at Ellora’s Cave

Ms. Teglia makes this story and the characters come alive and defy expectations. The Romance Studio, 4.5 Hearts

Ms. Teglia has written a first-rate book. This is another keeper for my shelf and one I will be telling my friends is a must buy!” Romance Junkies, 5 Blue Ribbons

If you like fun and games, you’ll enjoy Dangerous Games. Just Erotic Romance Reviews, 4 Stars

Dangerous Games is a story that pulled me in from the start. I highly recommend this wonderful story; it’s absolutely entertaining in more ways than one. Enchanted In Romance, 5 Unicorns

What I enjoy most about this author’s writing is her great skill at characterization and dialogue. Drake and Melinda behave like real people; their characters have that extra something that makes them fascinating. The many male/female love scenes are explicit and very sexy, and are woven into the story seamlessly. This book is a keeper and I recommend it highly. Fallen Angel Reviews, 5 Angels

By reading any further, you are stating that you are at least 18 years of age. If you are under the age of 18, it is necessary to exit this page.

Copyright CHARLENE TEGLIA, 2005.
All Rights Reserved, Ellora’s Cave, Inc.

“Okay,” Melinda said. “Rules. First, this has
nothing to do with paying Ryan’s penalty or revenge. I’ll be your lover for
a weekend, but I won’t be your whipping post and I’m not sleeping with you
out of obligation.”

“Glad to hear it. Obligated is not what I want you to
feel when you spread your legs for me. So it’s agreed. This is our game,
and it’s only between us. Only what we want. Tell me what else you want.”

She breathed deeply, inhaling his insanity-producing
pheromones in the process, which didn’t help her concentration. “Second, if
you truly find me unlikable as a person, the game’s off. I can’t be touched
intimately by somebody who dislikes me.”

“Do you have to like a man to want him?” Drake asked.

“I wouldn’t think much of myself if I didn’t.”

“Do you dislike me?”

“I don’t know you,” Melinda hedged. “I can’t say you’re
a nice man. But nice and good aren’t the same. Ryan says your game is the
best because it’s the hardest but it’s fair. You were willing to give him a
break when you didn’t have to. So that says something about you, I guess.
And you gave me your jacket to wear, so if we’d been in an accident I
wouldn’t have been unprotected. You put my safety above yours. So no, I
don’t dislike you, but you make me uncomfortable.”

“I get under your skin,” Drake pointed out. “I make you
mad. I turn you on. Uncomfortable, maybe, but not everything in life is
about staying in your comfort zone.”

“That’s fair. Okay, your turn.”

“First, I want you to be honest. If you lie about what
feels good, you’ll cheat us both. Until the game is over, you have to tell
the truth about anything I ask you.”

Melinda nodded.

“Second, I want you to trust me completely with your
body. I want you to do anything I tell you to do. No arguments. No
questions.”

He wanted her to give him that kind of control? “You’re
not into whips or anything, are you?”

“No pain,” he promised. “I won’t hurt you. But I don’t
think you know very much about your own body. You don’t, do you? You look
like sex is brand new to you and you’re curious as hell. That turns me on.
I want to be the man to teach you all about what your body can do.”

It would be so much easier if he didn’t give her a
choice, if he just unzipped his jeans and took her, right there against the
door. She wasn’t a virgin, but she might as well have been because he was
right, damn him. No man had ever made her…wonder. Drake Trahern made her
wonder about forbidden things and what it would be like to try them.

But instead of taking away her choice or touching her
until she was incapable of making one, he was forcing her to take
responsibility for her response, for her own pleasure, for her decisions.
Forcing her to acknowledge feelings she didn’t want and couldn’t control.
Forcing her to confront him and herself both.

Forcing her out of her comfort zone. A comfort zone she
now admitted silently she’d climbed into four years earlier at her parents’
death. It might be time to be pushed out of it.

She had an opportunity here for more than smoothing
things over for her brother, more than the perfect no-strings fling. She
had an opportunity to discover something about herself, to see if life had
more to offer her now than the safety she’d been embracing.

He looked all wrong for her. The situation was all
wrong. But her hormones agreed that in one important way he was exactly
right and his knowing hands said so, too.

Her shyness hadn’t put him off. Maybe the wrong man was
exactly what she needed. Maybe she could become the right kind of woman
under his influence, the kind who could be brave and confident, the person
she was in her fantasies but didn’t know how to be in reality. She could
find out.

All she had to do was say yes to his terms.

Tell him the truth about anything he wanted to know.

Do anything he told her to do.

His hands in her hair were massaging her scalp, sending
tingles of awareness down her spine and making her feel oddly soothed and
reassured at the same time. Her hair was full of tangles from the wind…it
would be easy to pull painfully against the roots without meaning to. But
his hands were careful, gentle.

He would be that way with all of her, Melinda realized.
When he’d tugged her nipple, it had been hard enough to excite but gentle
enough to be pleasurable instead of painful. His hand inside her panties
had been careful of her delicate skin. He’d been careful with her body even
while he was trying to make a point, to force her to acknowledge him and
her sexual response to him. He hadn’t used his hands or his superior
strength to hurt her.

Still. Agree to do anything, anything at all that he
wanted her to do? Give him advance permission to do anything at all he
wanted to do to her?

“Why do you want me to do anything you ask?”

Drake used her hair to tug her even closer, so close
their breath mingled and no air moved between their bodies. “Because for
some reason you bring out the beast in me. I want to conquer you. I want to
own you. I want to dominate you sexually while you submit to me. I want to
know that you’re mine to do anything I please with until Sunday night.”

He wanted to dominate her. The idea made her mind tilt.

It wouldn’t matter that she wasn’t brave and didn’t know
how to be. It wouldn’t matter that shyness paralyzed her and made her
tongue-tied. She would only have to act on his orders while he did
everything she longed to experience.

He was so close, their mouths were nearly touching.
Melinda wanted to feel the brush of his lips against hers so badly she
could almost cry. Her mouth was dry. “Is there any more?” she managed to
get out, her voice thick with desire.

“No. You?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t help moving that extra
bit closer so her upper lip slid against his. One light touch and she
wanted to follow with her tongue. She shuddered against him.

Maybe he wasn’t the only one who wanted to conquer.
Maybe she wanted to own him, too. And this exotic, dangerous male beast
could be hers for a whole weekend. A little temporary insanity that she
could indulge to the limit and nobody else would ever have to know about.
No repercussions. No regrets.

It would only take three little words.

She didn’t recognize her own voice when she spoke.

“It’s a deal.”

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