Under His Hand. Anne Calhoun

on>

       Under His Hand

      by

      Anne Calhoun

       www.millsandboon.co.uk/12shades

      Hello Twelve Shades of Surrender reader,

      Congratulations! You clearly have excellent taste, for you are holding in your hands one of Mills & Boon’s exclusive Twelve Shades of Surrender. Curious graduates of Fifty Shades wanted more, and we at Romance HQ rose to the challenge…

      Daring and seductive, with similar themes to Fifty Shades, all twelve stories promise not only scorching hot reads, but emotionally powerful romances that will stay with you long after the happy ending!

      If you like what you read, why not tweet @MillsandBoonUK using #12shades. We’re really proud of our stories and always love to know what you think.

      Finally, remember there are eleven more Shades to explore! Better still, you can get 10% off your next purchase when you sign up to the Mills & Boon newsletter, go to: www.millsandboon.co.uk/12shades to claim it and see what more this series has to offer…

      Happy reading!

      The Mills & Boon Spice team

      CHAPTER ONE

      Tess Weston soaked a facecloth with cold water, then bent forward, drew her hair over one shoulder and held the cloth to the nape of her neck. Rivulets trickled down her back, merging with the sweat seeping from her pores. Even with the windows open, and a fan oscillating as languidly as a spoon through soup, the temperature on the second floor of her house was hotter than the ambient air outside.

      She swiped the now-tepid cloth down her throat and paused at her collarbone. The washcloth soaked the thin ribbed fabric over her breasts while she considered the sheer curtains hanging lank beside the open window. Such an unremarkable thing, an open window, a simple pleasure people generally took for granted. Drew Norwood, her Navy SEAL boyfriend, had extensive experience managing risks of all shapes, sizes and situations. Given her borderline neighborhood, he’d weighed simple pleasures against physical safety and insisted on windows and doors locked tight at night. However, Drew had disappeared almost a month ago, as usual with no warning. Three times in the six months they’d been dating he’d simply vanished into thin air, reappearing weeks later sunburned, thinner and exhausted.

      The disappearing act didn’t bother her. It came with dating an active duty SEAL, and she was used to people walking out of her life. The reappearing, as abrupt and unannounced as the disappearing, still set her back on her heels.

      Not much else did, but a brutal heat wave, an AC unit that had become a frankly ugly pile of scrap metal three days earlier, and no money for repairs, left her with two choices: sleep in a situation Drew adamantly opposed, or melt into a puddle in her bed. She preferred to dissolve into liquid bliss when he was the one heating her up, and she flat out didn’t have the money to fix the AC.

      What Drew didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

      She scrubbed at her breastbone as if she could wipe away the disloyal thought, then draped the washcloth over the edge of the sink. When she shut off the bathroom light and stepped into the moonlight illuminating a path along the scratched hardwood floor, a shadow disengaged itself from the dark corner behind the bathroom door, clamped a hand around her wrist and spun her face-first into the wall. The callused palm clapped unceremoniously over her mouth muffled her instinctive shriek. With her free hand braced at shoulder height, and a strength born of sheer terror, she pushed back into an iron-hard body. Her captor didn’t move an inch. Instead, he knocked her off balance by wedging one leg between hers, and with minimal effort forced her flat. He had superior size and strength, the advantage of surprise, and she was trapped.

      Eyes wide with panic, she twisted her head and peered over the big hand engulfing the lower half of her face, but her vision only confirmed the input from the quivering nerves in her hypersensitive body. Heavy shoulders and a broad chest clad in black pinned her torso, and a ridged abdomen trapped the arm bent behind her back. Squirming futilely in an effort to regain her balance only ground her bottom against his hips, and her thin cotton bikini panties provided no protection from the insistent erection shoved firmly against her ass.

      Knowing it was futile, she inhaled sharp and hard, drawing breath to scream. The air rushing through her nose carried with it the familiar scent of musky skin and the sharp odor of no-frills soap used at Coronado. In a millisecond she plunged from ice-cold fear to weak-kneed relief, and sagged against the restraining body.

      Drew. Back with no warning. In her bedroom, scaring her half to death.

      But how?

      She’d been working downstairs all night, the front and back doors secured with the handle lock and dead bolt. He had a key, but hadn’t used it; the door would have caught on the chain. The downstairs windows were so warped that opening or closing one was a noisy process that took effort, even from Drew. But upstairs the windows were unlocked and slid, loose and flimsy, in their frames. Discarding the possibility he’d slithered under the front door, he must have clambered in through the damned open window in her bedroom.

      “Tess, you are in so much trouble.”

      Silky menace simmered under the growled words as he shoved off his black stocking cap and tossed it behind him. His thick, sweat-dampened hair, bleached near-silver by hours in the sun and salt water, gleamed even in the midnight-blue of her bedroom. With a wickedly accurate sense of timing he’d caught her at her most vulnerable, dressed for bed in one of his tank undershirts, and string bikini panties. Her feet were bare, her body crushed between his and the wall, and she stood no chance of breaking free from his tight grip.

      “I can explain,” she said, but his palm muffled her words.

      “What?”

      The barked question told her that have the living daylights scared out of her hadn’t atoned for her sin. She tossed her head back, away from his hand, and he lifted his palm just enough to let sound escape. “I said I can explain!”

      His hand mashed down over her mouth again. “I don’t want an explanation,” he growled. “I’ve been gone for twenty-six days. I want you. Now.”

      A bolt of hot lust shot through her when his gorgeous tenor drawl, laced with rough need and tightly controlled ire, tumbled into her ear. She jumped when he nipped the sensitive rim of her lobe, then slapped her other hand up against the wall. Docile, trembling, she stood still for him as he pushed her panties down her thighs, then went to work on the buttons of his cargo pants. Sensations zinged through her as his abraded knuckles brushed against the soft, rounded flesh of her bottom. He made room for himself between her legs, the width of his thighs urging her feet farther apart, her thin panties straining against the muscles quivering in her legs.

      Disconcerting, palpable desire streamed along nerves lit up by the adrenaline rush from his unorthodox appearance. Need coiled tight and hot between her thighs. Without conscious thought she arched her back and tilted her hips toward him.

      His low, dry chuckle didn’t mask the sound of a condom wrapper tearing. After a pause he settled big hands on her hips and lifted her up and forward, to the very tips of her toes. Turning her face to the side to rest her hot cheek on the cracked plaster, she closed her eyes as fear, the unintentional aphrodisiac, heightened the sensations swamping her. His rough black BDU pants chafing her inner thighs. The soft brush of his cotton T-shirt against her shoulder blades and back. Sweat slicking the skin of her bottom and his lower abdomen where he leaned into her. Whirling,