Forbidden Love With the Marine

Forbidden Love with the Marine
Copyright 2013 Dez Burke
Prologue
Ivan Lance knew he would never forget that one night in May.
The raid had been planned down to the tiniest detail; a mission that could leave nothing to
chance. More than twenty men strong, the team’s helicopters dropped them into the dusty compound
dotted with buildings.
It had taken months – no, more accurately years, to get to this point. And Ivan felt his heart beat like never before.
When he’d become a member of the Marine’s classified and most elite counterterrorism team,
he’d known a time like this would come. The search and capture operation that would bring an end to one terrorist’s reign of terror that had spanned decades. It was all going down tonight…
Countless bullets later, Ivan was standing in a room with nine of his other team members. Their
guns were pointing at the extremist leader who looked almost unrecognizable from all the photos and video camera shots Ivan had ever seen of him. But there was no mistaking that he was their target.
And it was only a matter of time before the world would be free from the terrorist’s history of killing and calculated use of violence. When the end came, it happened quickly…
Chapter One
Three months later…
Ivan felt out of place in the crowded party. But since everyone had gone out of their way to
make this a special night for him he couldn’t complain.
Not when there’d already been so many good surprises…One of them being a certain brown-
eyed beauty he’d believed he’d grown immune to a long time ago.
Looked like he was wrong.
Olivia Kirkland had a body made for sin. Ivan had known that she was going to be trouble ever
since she’d started to bloom before his very eyes years ago.
Seven years younger than Ivan, Olivia had shown great potential from age eighteen that she was
bombshell material. It was around then that Ivan had started to be away from home for months at a
time as a Marine - and it seemed like every time he came back, she just got lovelier and sexier.
Her father, Martin Kirkland, had been like an adopted uncle to him after his parents died in a
car crash when he was sixteen. Martin and Ivan’s father had been best friends in the army, and Martin had been quick to act as mentor and friend to the younger Ivan.
Torn with grief from the loss of his parents, he had been on the brink of dropping out of high
school, doing drugs, or getting involved with any number of the rough gangs in their neighborhood.
But Martin had proven to be just the father figure he had needed when his own relatives had failed to rein in Ivan’s teenage excesses. Although he lived with a maternal aunt, it was his father’s best friend who’d kept him on the straight and narrow.
Ivan had always been welcome at the Kirkland home, and in fact, he’d considered the
Kirklands more of his family than any of his own blood relatives. He remembered the warm, robust
dinners and holiday visits he’d enjoyed right here in this same house, and the many talks he’d shared with Martin.
They’d spent lots of time hanging out on a bass boat fishing and Martin had taught him a lot of
core values, not to mention dragging him to church every Sunday. By the time he was twenty two, Ivan had earned his college degree. Months later, he’d decided to join the Marines and he could remember Martin being in full support of his decision.
Now age twenty-nine, Ivan had a very successful career as a Marine behind him. He already
had two bronze stars and a Purple Heart under his belt. Ivan knew he was lucky to still be alive after all the action he’d seen in Afghanistan.
His job was one of the most dangerous, and life expectancy wasn’t exactly a given. But he’d
survived well enough so far and had no intention of dying any time soon. Not when there was so much of life waiting to be sampled.
And there was one thing his raging hormones told him was just ripe for sampling – and right
now she was coming his way.
How old was Olivia now? Twenty-two, twenty-three? She certainly filled out that dress nicely
for her age, mused Ivan. It was an electric blue number that went well with her skin-tone. Her breasts looked full, firm and rounded, jealously cupped by the corseted bodice of the dress.
She had hips to make you lick your lips, and a waist so small he knew he’d easily span it with
his two hands. Her legs, visible thanks to the knee-length hem of the dress, were long and lithe,
ending in matching heels that if Ivan didn’t know better, had “kiss-me” written all over them. Ivan looked, and swallowed, and wondered what it would be like to wrap his arms around her and catch
those lush lips in a deep searching kiss.
And then he blinked hard, stopping short as he realized he was nursing carnal thoughts for his
adopted uncle’s only daughter. Something he’d promised long ago that he’d never do.
But damn, she was hot as hell!
There was a smile on her face as she reached him, and he sucked in a breath as her loveliness
smacked him in the chest. Beautiful dark brown eyes framed with dusky lashes and jet black, wavy
hair which tumbled to her bare shoulders. Her lips were… hell. A red-blooded man couldn’t look at those lips and not think of sex. Full bottomed and tinted naturally with pink, they looked perpetually swollen and sensual.
“I saved the first dance for my handsome Marine,” Olivia said teasingly, totally unaware of the
very unchaste thoughts those curvy lips of hers were causing within his head.
Her voice was the most surprising of all; smoky and filled with delightful warmth, it vibrated
straight through his heart and made Ivan grit his teeth at the force of arousal that shot through him.
Damn his cursed self-enforced celibacy!
Ivan had decided to stay away from the girls for a while – no thanks to his recent screw-up of
his relationship