Be sure to post a comment to be in the running for an Amazon.com gift certificate! The winner will be announced on Thursday morning, so you have several chances to win!

BBG will be available for purchase tomorrow! And you know it’s going to be hot. How hot? Well, as hot as a stubborn cop who thinks things between him and his sweetie are good enough just the way they are. Too bad for him that Jolene is changing up the game plan…

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Expect magic when one determined woman dons a legendary pair of red stilettos and bares body and heart to get her man’s attention…

Jolene’s a big, beautiful woman with an even bigger heart. But she’s become her police officer boyfriend’s favorite doormat and that’s so not working for her. It’s time for a little conversation, time to tell Mr. Happy Pants to “pee or get off the pot”.

Gabriel has seen what his profession does to marriages. He’s not willing to risk that kind of heartbreak. Besides, he likes what he has with Jolene. The woman is sex personified. So when Jolie tells him she won’t see him anymore if he’s not willing to commit, he’s shocked and angry.

With a girlfriend’s encouragement and the added confidence a certain pair of red stilettos gives her, Jolene arranges a special show at a strip club to prove to Gabe once and for all that she’s more woman than any man can handle, and if he doesn’t want the job, then she’ll find another lover who does.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Jolie’s apartment door swung open and Gabe’s gaze slid down her body in a slow, hungry crawl. She wore a silky robe in a bronzy orange, which hugged her curves like his hands were itching to do.

However, her hand was still on the knob, and she hadn’t backed up to let him in.

He leaned against the doorframe. “Am I too late?”

“Are you too late?” she said slowly.

Jolie’s tone was always like warm honey when she expected sex—soft and oozing down his spine—but right now, a sarcastic edge tightened her voice. And he didn’t like the militant gleam in her dark chocolate eyes.

What had put her into a bad mood? Could she be mad at him? He hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. “If this is a bad time…”

Her soft jaw tightened, but she took a step back and waved him inside.

He breathed a sigh of relief and stepped across the threshold, his hands going to the buttons at the front of his dark uniform shirt as soon as the door closed behind him.

A soft huff of breath halted him, and he looked up to find a scowl sinking a line between her dark brows. “What?”

She slowly shook her head. For a fleeting moment, her eyes filled but she blinked away the moisture. “Nothing.”

“I’m sorry. Should I step out the door and come back in? Something’s bothering you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So you think you need to step outside while I get over it?”

“Yeah…”

Her scowl deepened.

“What?”

Her shoulders slumped and she shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing at all.” She turned on her heel and headed to the bedroom.

For the second time in five minutes, he sighed his relief. He’d thought, for just a moment there, that she would ask him to leave. That had never happened.

But then, she’d been acting a little funny lately. Quiet and brooding. With another woman he might have thought it was just her time of month, but Jolie wasn’t moody. One of the many things he appreciated about her.

As he followed her down the hallway while she flicked off lights heading to the bedroom, he mulled it over and thought he might have found the answer.

She’d finally decided dating a cop was too harrowing.

After his partner had gotten shot last summer, she’d been a gem, bringing food to the hospital for the men who waited in the halls, calling the wives, babysitting their kids while they took turns waiting with Lexie, Tyler’s girl.

Now that Tyler was back at work and everything had returned to normal, she’d had time to think about what happened. She couldn’t handle it.

Gabe tamped down the searing disappointment. He’d miss her.

He’d always known this day would come. Deep inside, he’d held part of himself back from her because he knew better than anyone that living with a cop was hard. Too stressful for most marriages to survive.

His own mother had stuck it out, soldiering on as friends were lost along the way, until she’d crumpled on the porch when the chief of police and chaplain climbed the steps to deliver the terrible news. From that moment, she’d never pulled herself away from the dark place she’d entered.

Jolie was smart. She’d gotten a taste and decided to protect herself from a grim future.

Still, he was here. Maybe for the last time. He’d make it special, let her know he held no grudges. He’d tell her to move on and not feel guilty that she wasn’t strong enough for the life.

He’d be gentle. And if his chest felt a little tight, well, he’d get over it. This was how it had to end. He stepped into her bedroom.

While the living area always smelled like cookies, her bedroom smelled like roses, like the pink petals sitting in the bowl on her dresser. Feminine. Light. Which contrasted with the smell of the woman—hot, musky spice. He’d never smelled a place like hers, never smelled a woman whose scent felt so right when it wrapped around him.

He flicked off the overhead light and walked to the windows, opening the curtains to let the silvery moonlight filter inside. The darkness would hide his expression, keep her from knowing how hard this would be for him. He had to be strong. He didn’t want her feeling badly about herself when she kicked him to the door.

Facing away, she shrugged out of her silky robe, the fabric sliding down her back and pooling at her feet. She took small, feminine steps toward the bed.

His cock surged as his gaze traced the length of her back, loving the color of skin the same shade as the milky French coffees she preferred, loving the fall of her thick black hair, but especially the firm, lush swell of her ass.

She crawled onto the mattress and turned, her eyes gleaming in the darkness as he toed off his boots and stripped, in a hurry now to join her.

Not until he’d crawled over her body and settled his cock between her legs did his heartbeat slow to a steady, even throb. Game face on, he was ready to go.

Her expression was impossible to read, eyes watchful, full, rusty-brown lips pressed firmly together. He dove down and sucked her bottom lip between his teeth, waiting for the sexy catch of her breath and her lips to open, and then he stroked his tongue inside.

The sweet taste of vanilla and coffee caressed his taste buds, and he groaned into her mouth, deepening the kiss and sucking against her lips to seal their mouths. He nudged her entrance with his cock, found the moist center and drove through the gate, shuddering because it felt so damn good and she was so fucking wet.

She might not want to be a cop’s girlfriend, but she sure as hell wanted him. Feeling more confident, he broke the kiss and pressed both hands into the mattress to raise his torso, dragging down her gaze with his to the place where their bodies joined.

While they both watched, he sank into her again and again, felt the tug of her lips clasping around him, the hot gush of pleasure spilling around his shaft, and he quickened his strokes.

“Play with your breasts,” he whispered. “Let me watch.”

Her eyelids lowered to half-mast and her body rippled beneath him. Her hips glided up and down as she danced gracefully beneath him. Her hands smoothed up her soft belly to cup her breasts and massage them, rolling them together and apart. He knew he’d have to have her again, had to stroke his cock between those lush mounds until he came all over them.

Her breaths came faster, rasping harshly.

He paused to circle his hips and screwed slowly in and out of her heat.

She raised her knees and gripped his hips hard with her thighs. “Don’t want it slow and easy, baby,” she said, her voice deep and throaty. “Give it to me hard.”

Gabe smiled, gave her another teasing drag of his cock, then reared up and knelt between her thighs. He hooked his arms beneath her knees and pulled her butt off the bed then flexed forward, thrusting toward her core.

He’d be the best she ever had if it killed him. And when she squeezed her inner muscles around his shaft, she nearly did him in. He quickened his strokes, smacking her pubis with every inward thrust, grinding past her G-spot, the place she’d taught him to linger over.

Jolie whimpered. Her hands squeezed her tits hard, her belly undulated—out of synch to the rhythm of his strokes—and he felt his own rigid control slip. He hammered faster, sweat sprouting on his forehead and upper lip. When she jerked and cried out, her eyes squeezing shut, he let himself go, following her over the edge, his jaws clenching to halt the shout clawing at this throat.

He slowed his hips, enjoying the wash of hot, silky liquid bathing his dick, drinking in the sight of her head slowly turning side to side as she continued to moan.

God, she was beautiful. How the hell could he ever walk away?

* * * * *

“A girl’s gotta do what girl’s gotta do,” Jolene Ledbetter muttered, and cinched the belt of her silk robe tightly around her waist.

She eyed the long, hard body stretched across her soft cotton sheets and just barely suppressed an appreciative sigh. No, she wasn’t going to slip back into bed with the man—no matter how tempting the package his large hand caressed in his sleep.

Even snoring, he oozed sex appeal. His nude, six-feet-four, hard-muscled body sprawled diagonally, taking up most of her queen-size mattress. The sheets were pooled on the floor at the foot of the bed because they’d both dozed off, sweating after the last round of mind-blowing sex. A dark, bluish shadow hugged the curve of his jaw and she could well imagine how it would feel scraping against her breasts or between her thighs.

“Mmm-mm-mm,” she breathed, not wanting to wake him, not just yet. She still had to work on suppressing the need curling deep inside her belly and stiffening her noodle-limp backbone.

Time for Gabriel Devine to piss or get off the pot. Time for him to man up.

She’d been his doormat for far too long—his go-to girl when he wanted company for a meal or sex. And it was all her fault. She’d fallen into his arms the first night they’d met and she hadn’t said no to a damn thing since.

Her half-Asian, half-African-American mother had been only slightly less of a doormat than her Asian grandmother. Jolie had inherited the doormat gene, doomed from birth.

Gabe said she was the only woman in his life and she believed him. However, being his one and only didn’t seem to mean the same thing to him that it did to her. She’d expected after nearly a year of dating that they would have made some progress toward commitment.

He still rolled out of her bed in the wee hours of the morning, hadn’t brought a toothbrush or any clothes, and he hadn’t mumbled a single word about where he wanted the relationship to go.

A pang of guilt tightened her chest.

Neither had she. Her best friend Lexie Burns had warned her that if she didn’t set some expectations, some limits, and let him know right upfront he couldn’t expect a free ride for life, that he’d keep up the same old pattern.

And Lexie should know. She was a syndicated advice columnist. Plus, and this qualification was a helluva lot more meaningful to Jolie, Lexie was engaged.

If Jolie had hoped that Gabriel would take a page from the same book after watching how happy his partner Tyler was with Lexie, she’d been doomed to disappointment.

Every time she brought up how content they appeared, Gabe grunted and changed the subject. Jolie was beginning to believe that Gabe was either dense or purposefully trying to throw her off the scent of marriage.

Well, even if she was a pushover, she wasn’t a quitter. And her mama hadn’t raised a fool, even though her mother still waited on her dad hand and foot. At least she’d gotten a ring for her efforts.

All Jolie ever got was sex. Mind-blowing sex, yeah, but when the sheets cooled, she always slept alone.

Jolie cooked special dinners for Gabe, carried his laundry back and forth to the cleaners, was ready at the drop of the hat to have sex, wherever and whenever he wanted. She’d gotten tested and gone on the Pill when he’d asked—all because he didn’t want a condom to interfere with his pleasure.

All the man ever had to do was crook his finger and she scampered over to him, panting and eager to please.

He might be the finest thing she’d ever seen draped across her sheets, but enough was enough.

No more. Gabe Devine had just had the last free ride he was gonna get. The next time he wanted anything, an éclair or a blowjob, it was gonna cost him one engagement ring.

Not that she wanted anything extravagant. He was a cop after all.

She stared down at her naked hand and curled her fingers into claws.

Time to wake him up and tell him what for.

Jolie took a deep breath and approached the bed, hovering over him for a moment and sucking in the scent of him—male musk, sex, a slight whiff of the spicy cologne she’d given him for his birthday. Dayum, the man made her mouth water. Just the smell of him made her knees weak and her sex all soft and wet.

She reached out an index finger and poked his shoulder, afraid to touch him with her entire hand, well, because she knew where that would lead. “Gabe, time to wake up.”

He grunted and his hand closed tighter around his sex. His eyes cracked open and shards of icy-blue glinted at her. “’S early.” He scowled and glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand. Then he turned back, a dark eyebrow rising. “Need somethin’, baby?”

God, that sexy purr of his melted her like butter. She firmed her lips and poked him with a stiff finger again. “I need for you to get your sorry ass out of my bed.”

His eyes widened and one corner of his mouth quirked up. His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. Before she could suck in a deep breath, he’d pulled her down on top of him. “Mad ’cause I fell asleep?”

“Nope.”

“Mad ’cause I didn’t make you come?”

She pursed her lips. “You know damn well you did.”

“So, what’s got you all hot and bothered?”

Jolie clamped her lips together. This close, plastered to his chest, his thickening cock nudging against her open thighs, she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t be strong. She melted all over him, her breasts flattening against his chest, her belly rubbing against his.

The bastard had the nerve to smile. Prickling started at the back of her eyes.

He rolled her, his arms encircling her, and thrust a knee between her legs. “Baby, don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” she muttered. Although she already knew. Her eyes were quickly filling, and he hated tears, even happy ones, and these weren’t happy. She blinked away her frustration.

God, she was doing it again. Pleasing him.

She jutted out her chin and stiffened her body. “Get off me, Devine.”

“I’m not ready to. You woke me up.”

“Doesn’t mean I wanted this.”

“Sure you did.” To prove his point, he reached down, parted her robe and slid his silky, hot cock between her folds.

Her pussy clasped him, the wet sound louder than their deepening breaths.

Gabe stroked deep and sighed. “This is good. What we have.”

It’s not enough, she wanted to say, but she didn’t want him stopping, not yet. Already her body tightened; her belly curved to take him deeper. She sighed, resigned that she couldn’t kick him out until after she’d come.