A woman craves. A man wants. Their collision pitches them into the hot zone. Sometimes a woman craves what she shouldn't want… Marisa Clyde wants nothing to do with the soldier acting as a temporary bouncer in her uncle's tavern, even though the stoic, six-feet-of-smoldering hunk rescued her during a tour gone bad in Mexico. While those few short moments sent their sexual tension screaming off the charts, a devastating hurt in her past now blocks her willingness to surrender to him. He'll only be in town a month. If she can just wait it out, he'll soon be out of her life. Sometimes a man wants more than a woman is willing to share… Jake Sullivan watches Marisa like a hawk, well aware his need to protect is messing with his mind and making him care way more than he should. Priding himself on clinical detachment in the game between man and woman, he figures once he's slept with her, she'll be out of his system for good. But that's before he experiences her at a deeper level—and learns she just might be in danger again.