Текст книги "Dirty Twisted Love"
Автор книги: Lili Valente
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Dirty Twisted Love
Lili Valente
Lili Valente
Contents
Dirty Twisted Love
Copyright
About the Book
Dedication
1. Harley
2. Harley
3. Harley
4. Clay
5. Harley
6. Clay
7. Harley
8. Harley
9. Clay
10. Clay
11. Marlowe
Sneak Peek
Acknowledgments
Tell Lili your favorite part!
About the Author
Also By Lili Valente
Dirty Twisted Love
Dirty Twisted Love Book One
By Lili Valente
All Rights Reserved
Copyright Dirty Twisted Love © 2015 Lili Valente
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This erotic romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This e-book is licensed for your personal use only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy hot, sexy, emotional novels featuring Dominant alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Cover design by Bootstrap Designs. Editorial services provided by Leone Editorial.
ISBN: 978-1-940848-58-7
Created with Vellum
About the Book
Warning: This is a dark enemies-to-lovers romance that contains violence, a damaged alpha male, and dirty twisted hate banging. Read at your own risk.
The first time CIA Agent Clay Hart fell for Harley Mason, she nearly killed him. But she won’t get another chance at his heart or his life. He’s going to take the son she’s hidden from him for years, send her to jail where she belongs, and never look back.
Harley isn’t the sick twisted person she used to be, but sins have a long half-life and rage an even longer reach. Now the only man she’s ever loved is back from the dead and determined to take away her reason for living. But she won’t give up her son without one hell of a dirty, twisted, sexy fight.
She won’t give up.
He won’t give in.
And neither of them is prepared for the sparks that fly between them or the shared enemy determined to destroy them both.
* *Dirty Twisted Love is the first installment in the Dirty Twisted Love romance series. It is a spin-off of the Bought by the Billionaire series, but can be read as a standalone romance. This is a SERIAL story, with a CLIFFHANGER ending. If you don’t like being teased, steer clear.* *
Dedicated to M.F. my cohort for life.
Chapter One
Harley
Just a few more weeks.
Just a few more weeks, one last job, and she and Jasper would finally be safe.
Harley studied her reflection in the small mirror above the outdoor sink, trying to see if she was buying her own encouraging load of bullshit. But her blue eyes were cool and calm. Her eyes kept their secrets, refusing to say if they believed in happily ever after.
Happily ever after. Riiiight.
I’m sure that’s right around the corner, along with Santa Claus and Prince Charming riding a unicorn.
She turned to face the beach with a sigh the sea breeze swept away. Happily ever after was definitely a long shot. At this point, she would settle for being able to stop looking over her shoulder and take for granted that she would live to see her thirtieth birthday. Ian Hawke—her father’s enemy and the man who had nearly killed Harley and her twin sister, Hannah, last December—was dead, but her own enemies were still very much among the living.
Marlowe Reynolds considered her a friend, or at least a trusted associate, but if he realized she wanted out, she would see the terrifying side of the soft-spoken Brit. He was the most successful drug lord in Europe, and a man didn’t run a multi-billion dollar cartel for over a decade without knowing how to keep his friends close, his enemies dead, and people who knew too much tucked firmly beneath his wing. Marlowe didn’t let people walk away; he made the malcontent disappear. In order to make her escape, Harley was going to have to be very smart, very careful, and very lucky.
Smart and careful she could control, but luck didn’t take directions.
Therefore, precautions had to be taken.
Harley’s gaze drifted to the sheltered section of the private beach, where Jasper was busy digging a hole so deep only the top of his tousled blond hair showed above the sand. Before she and Dominic had started running sprints along the shoreline, she’d asked Jasper what he was digging for, but he’d refused to say, only giving her a mysterious grin and a vague “you’ll see.”
With his dark blond hair, murky blue eyes several shades darker than her own, and golden skin, Jasper looked like his father, but he kept his secrets close to his chest like his mother.
Sometimes Harley worried that he was too much like her, and that his insatiable curiosity would lead him into the same labyrinth she’d wandered most of her life, a place where the walls of perception were always shifting and each ugly new revelation only forced you deeper into the maze. But most of the time she believed in nurture triumphing over nature. She wasn’t raising Jasper the way she had been raised. He was being taught that kindness was a strength, not a signal to attack at will, and as he grew she would continue to help him channel his curiosity into more productive pursuits than the ones she’d been steered toward.
Engineering, maybe. Jasper loved building things, even though he claimed he was going to be a “destruction worker” when he grew up.
“Is that smile for me?” Dominic asked, his dark eyes flashing as he walked up the trail from the beach.
Harley tilted her head to one side, letting her grin stretch wider. “It could be. If you say the torture is over for the day.”
“Not yet, beautiful.” Dominic’s hand lingered on her waist. He nodded toward the makeshift weight room he’d set up on the covered patio. “Come on, let’s do legs and abs and then we’ll call it a day.”
Her sister Hannah’s former bodyguard had spent the past three months whipping Harley into the best physical shape of her life, insisting she needed to keep her body as sharp as her mind. In addition to serving as her personal trainer, he was also concealing her whereabouts from her sister’s psychotic new husband, Jackson, a man Harley suspected wanted to kill her. Not that Jackson didn’t have every reason to want her dead after what she’d done to him, but she had a son to raise. She had to stay alive and Dom was helping make that happen.
In exchange, Harley spent several hours a day sweating in the brutal Thai sun and her nights pretending she didn’t realize that her lover would rather be sleeping with her sister.
“Let me get Jasper into the bath,” she said, catching Dom’s hand and giving it a light squeeze. “I’ll meet you there.”
“All right.” He stretched his arms overhead, his white tee shirt riding up high enough to reveal the taut planes of his stomach. “I already put his boogie board away. All he needs to do is grab his sand toys.”
“Thanks,” she murmured, letting her eyes skim up and down Dom’s frame. He was a beautiful man—long and lean, with muscles on top of muscles, caramel skin, amber-flecked eyes, and a classically handsome face. It had certainly been no hardship to spend a few months on a beach with him, but it wouldn’t hurt to say goodbye. She had enjoyed their time together, but she wasn’t looking for long-term attachments.
She only had space in her heart for Jasper. Her son was her first—and only—priority. There wasn’t room in her crazy life for anything else.
“But don’t be too long,” Dom continued, backing away. “We should leave by four. Traffic’s been bad getting in and out of town since the mudslide.”
Harley nodded and started across the sand to help Jasper gather up his toys. He loved bath time and would play until his skin was pruned all over if she let him. Today she would set his timer for an hour. That should give her plenty of time to finish her workout, grab a quick shower, and finish packing Jasper’s bag for the trip. Maybe his last trip.
Please let it be the last.
She didn’t know how much longer she could keep sending her son away not knowing when or if she would ever see him again.
“Tub time,” she said, forcing a smile as she squatted down at the edge of Jasper’s sand pit. “Have you found the buried treasure yet?”
“I’m not finding it, I’m leaving it.” Jasper scrambled out and began tossing his extensive collection of sand toys, favorite red shovel, and alligator beach towel down inside the hole. “I’ve already drawn a map to leave in my room. That way the next kid who lives here can go on a hunt for my treasure and then we’ll be friends.”
Harley’s throat tightened. “So I guess you saw your suitcase in the laundry room.”
“You can’t take sand toys on the airplane,” Jasper said, not meeting her eyes as he shoved a mound of sand toward the edge of the pit, sending it sliding down on top of his treasures. “A little help here, lady?”
“I’m not a lady, I’m your mother,” she said, finishing her part of their inside joke even though her heart wasn’t in it. But neither was Jasper’s, and he wasn’t moping. He was burying treasures for a friend he would never meet.
She helped him fill in the hole, not bothering to tell him that the tide would probably wash away his treasures long before any other child came to find them. She’d chosen this island off the coast of Thailand because it was remote, sparsely populated, and far outside the stomping grounds of the typical tourist. The rental house they’d leased had stood empty for a year before they had come to stay and would probably stay empty for months after she had packed up their things.
After the sand was smooth again, she and Jasper stomped over the top a few times, tamping it down until a darker, damper spot than the surrounding sand was the only sign that the beach had been disturbed.
With one last stomp, Jasper took her hand. “Are you coming this time, Mama?”
“No,” Harley said, leading the way back toward the bungalow. “Dominic is going to be your travel buddy. I have to take care of a few things and close up the house. Then I’ll come meet you. It shouldn’t be more than two weeks, three at the most.”
Jasper frowned. “What about Miss Louisa? Am I still supposed to call her if something goes wrong?”
“Yes. Call Miss Louisa first and if she’s not available call Mr. Tim and he’ll know what to do.” Harley hated that her six-year-old was so intimately acquainted with potential danger, but their plans and backup plans had kept Jasper safe when she was taken captive last December. If some of his innocence had to die in order to keep him alive, it was a price she was willing to pay. “But you know Dom is smart and careful. You shouldn’t have any problems and you’ll be having so much fun exploring a new city you won’t even have a chance to miss me.”
Jasper dropped her hand to turn on the waterspout near the door and leaned down to rinse his arms and legs. “I would rather stay at the beach with you. I like the beach better than the city. Even Paris.”
“Me, too,” she said, ruffling his sandy hair. “Maybe someday soon we’ll have a forever house on the beach.”
Or you will, when I’m dead and you go to live with Hannah on her island.
Harley pushed the thought away and helped Jasper get the sand out from between his toes. She wasn’t going to die and leave Jasper to be raised by someone else. Hannah would love him like her own, Harley was sure of it, but Hannah’s husband, Jackson, was another matter.
Harley had done terrible, unforgivable things to Jackson back when she was a young woman with more lust for vengeance than sense. Framing a man for rape had been one of her uglier moments, but whether Jackson’s hatred for her was justified or not, she didn’t want her son raised by a man who might make Jasper pay for her sins.
Jasper had never known anything but a mother who loved him more than life and that’s how things were going to stay. He was never going to know what it felt like to be shut out of a parental figure’s heart.
“Can I bring my bath toys on the plane?” Jasper asked as they let themselves into the house and headed for the bathroom.
“We can buy more bath toys at our new place.” Harley started the water running, making sure it was a little on the hot side since Jasper would be playing for a while, and turned to help him undress. “But I have a special surprise for you. I’ll give it to you at the airport.”
Jasper’s head popped free of his blue rash guard, his eyes dancing. “Is it for my collection?”
Harley shrugged mysteriously. “You’ll have to wait and see.” She leaned in, cupping his chubby cheeks and pressing a kiss to his sun-warmed forehead. “Remember to turn the water off before it gets too full, okay? And scrub your hair good. You don’t want to carry sand with you onto the plane.”
“I don’t care.” Jasper shoved his trunks down, sending the sand in his swimsuit spilling out all over the tile. “I like sand.”
“Obviously,” Harley said dryly, watching him climb into the tub, her heart breaking a little bit.
He was so beautiful, so sweet, and so much like his father there was no way she would ever be able to forget the man she’d lost too soon, before she’d realized that punishing the people who’d wronged her would never fill the empty place in her soul.
But that was all right. She didn’t want to forget Clay and she never wanted to take her son—or the way he’d changed her—for granted. Jasper had saved her life, pure and simple. He was her everything and she would do whatever it took to keep him safe.
Even if it meant one last dance with the devil in the pale moonlight.
Marlowe was a bad man, but Harley was no angel, and sometimes one thing must die for another to be born from the ashes.
With one last look at Jasper—doing her best to memorize the blissed-out expression on his face as he dumped his bath toys out of their bucket into the water—she closed the bathroom door and went to set the first stage of her plan into motion.
Chapter Two
Harley
“No way, we’re not skipping legs and abs.” Dominic shook his head, pointing to the mat he’d spread out on the patio. “Give me a plank hold. Let’s see if you can break yesterday’s record.”
Harley crossed her arms and stood her ground. “No. Exercise interferes with my focus and we need to talk. There’s not much time left.”
Dom’s full lips curved at the edges. “We could have talked for hours last night after Jasper went to bed. You’re shameless, H. Any excuse to get out of a workout.”
“There’s a reason I was happily scrawny and lacking in muscle tone before you came into my life.” She let him draw her into his arms and linked her wrists behind his neck, running her fingers through his silky black hair. “I need the contact information for your friends in Bangkok. I think I’ve figured out a way to get free from Marlowe, but I’m going to need help.”
Dom’s grin faded. “The people I know in Bangkok aren’t nice people, Harley.”
“I don’t need nice people. I need people who won’t have a problem breaking into the house while I’m asleep, roughing me up, and leaving enough of a mess behind that anyone who bothers to look will assume I didn’t make it out alive.”
“A mess?” His brows drew together. “What kind of mess?”
“Blood, probably some tissue too,” she said frankly. There was no time for either one of them to be squeamish. That’s why she’d waited to bring this up. She didn’t want him to be able to put her off. She wanted him under the gun with no choice but to give her the names she needed. “And it has to be mine. Marlowe will have it tested. He doesn’t leave boxes unchecked.”
Dom tried to pull away, but she held tight to his neck. “It’ll be okay. I’ve lost a lot of blood before and been just fine.”
“Yeah, I was there,” he snapped, wrapping his fingers around her wrists, breaking her grip, and holding her hands captive between them. “You weren’t fine. You almost died. If your dad hadn’t had a doctor on call, you might have.”
“The only way Marlowe is going to let me go is if he thinks I’m dead,” she insisted. “You know I’m right.”
“I do. That’s why you need me here to help you.” He gentled his touch. “Let’s cancel the flight today. We can call your friend Louisa, put Jasper on a plane to Paris as an unaccompanied minor, and—”
“No.” She pulled her hands free with a shake of her head. “Jasper can’t go back to Paris. Ian’s men found me there. That means Marlowe’s could follow the trail, too. They would figure out who my friends are and they would eventually find Jasper. I can’t risk that. Marlowe can never know about Jasper.”
“You think he doesn’t know already?” Dom said, pacing toward the rack of free weights at the edge of the patio. “He’s fucking paranoid as hell, Harley. I’m sure he knows everything about you, right down to what color you shit in the morning.”
Her nose wrinkled, but she refused to dignify that comment with a response.
“You need me here with you,” Dom continued, prowling back toward her. “If someone is going to help you fake your death it should be me. At least you know I won’t sell you as a sex slave while you’re unconscious.”
“I’m too old for the slave trade,” she said, a part of her wishing Dom was still on her father’s payroll so she could get away with giving him orders and expecting them to be obeyed. “They like innocent little girls, not twenty-nine-year-old mothers.”
His lips parted, but she cut him off before he could speak.
“And I’m not going to change my mind about this. I need you with Jasper. If you really want to do what’s best for me, then take care of him.” She closed the distance between them, taking his hand in both of hers. “Please, Dom. You’re the only one I trust to be prepared for whatever happens. Louisa is wonderful, but she doesn’t know how to handle a gun or how to find Hannah if things don’t go as planned.”
His eyes narrowed “You can’t be serious.”
“I don’t have anyone else,” she said. “I won’t let Jasper be raised by my parents, and Aunt Sybil isn’t in good enough health to raise a child. Hannah is the only one I trust to love him the way he deserves to be loved.”
“She’s married to a psychopath,” Dom said. “That’s the only reason I agreed to keep your location a secret in the first place, Harley. To keep you and Jasper safe from him. Jackson loves Hannah now, but I saw the way he treated her in the beginning. He’s a monster. I would never trust him with a child.”
“So I guess I’ll just have to do my best not to die,” she said with a soft laugh.
His scowl deepened. “That isn’t funny. None of this is funny. You should never have gotten involved with a man like Marlowe.”
“I know that now, Dom,” she said, checking her impatience. “But when I met him I was a single mom who couldn’t risk coming out of hiding, wondering how I was going to make ends meet when Daddy’s money ran out.”
“Stewart would have given you more.”
“I didn’t want more,” she snapped. “All I want from Stewart is for him to be out of my and Jasper’s lives. Permanently. This is the only way to do that. I finish the job, collect my last paycheck, and disappear in a way that ensures Marlowe doesn’t come looking for me.”
Dom sighed. It was a put-upon sound, but she could tell she was winning. She just needed to drive her argument home.
“And then Jasper and I can find a house in a little village in a corner of the world where Marlowe and my father and all the other bad guys will leave us alone and we’ll be out of your hair for good.” She leaned into him with a smile. “And then all you’ll need to worry about is how you’re going to spend the twenty grand I’m going to pay you for services rendered.”
“I don’t want your money.” His arm went around her waist, holding her close. “And maybe I don’t want you out of my hair, either.”
Harley looked up at him, chest tightening at the soft look in his eyes. “You don’t mean that. I’m not the one you want, Dom. We both know that.”
“Don’t tell me what I want.” He bent low, silencing her with a kiss. His tongue slipped between her lips and his hand plunged into her hair, drawing her closer. He kissed her with a hunger she hadn’t felt from him before, but she knew this was as much about being forced to say goodbye as anything he might feel for her.
It was easy to mistake the thing that was hard to get for the thing you really wanted. She’d been swept away by her share of unattainable men when she was younger, before she’d met the man who had taught her that love was sweetest when you didn’t have to fight for it. Loving Clay had come easily. Being with him was the most natural thing in the world, like breathing, like she’d been born to laugh at his jokes, fit perfectly in his arms, and get lost making love in a way she never had before.
She hadn’t made love to anyone else—before or since. The part of her that had been capable of that kind of closeness had died in the car crash with Clay.
Even as her body came to life, responding to Dom’s kiss and the feel of his hand up her shirt, under her bra, rolling her nipple between his fingers, her heart remained calm and quiet. She let Dom pick her up and carry her into the bedroom, locking the door behind them before laying her on the bed, because he needed this and she needed him. She needed his help and she needed to feel something good before he and Jasper left and took all the light in her world with them.
She was a strong woman and she pretended to be even stronger, but there were times when she needed softness in her life.
She needed Dom’s mouth hot on her bare skin and his tongue flicking across her nipple before he suckled her hard enough to bow her back off the bed. She needed his rough palms smoothing over her hips to grip her behind the knees and spread her wide, needed his thick fingers fucking her slow and deep while their tongues fought a battle they were both going to win. She needed his cock at her entrance, pushing inside, filling her, building the sweet tension swelling low in her body.
But she didn’t love him.
When he stared deep into her eyes as he began to move, silently asking her to let him in, she closed her eyes and buried her face in his neck. Her hands trailed down to claw into the thick muscles of his ass. She urged him to thrust faster, harder, to take them both where they needed to go, but she didn’t give him any reason to believe that this was more than a moment of shared pleasure.
This wasn’t the beginning or the end or anything worth writing home about. It was a moment to catch their breath and brace themselves for the downpour before running back out into the rain.
“Damn, Harley,” Dom whispered against her forehead. “You feel so good. Look at me, baby. Look at me. Let me see you.”
Harley relaxed back onto the pillow with a moan and gave the man what he was asking for. She held his gaze as she lifted into his thrusts, letting him see her face twist as she neared the edge, letting him watch as her orgasm claimed her, rippling through her body with enough force to make her lips part in a soundless scream.
But most importantly, she let him see the emptiness at her core, the calm, untouchable pool where the water never rippled and no man would ever see his reflection. It was a lifeless place, ruled by the ghost of a dead man and no other man would ever stake his claim on it.
There were other worlds inside of her, where friends were treasured, where Hannah was loved with a ferocity only twins could understand, and where Jasper had ruled as the prince of her heart since the moment he looked up at her and blinked his eyes for the first time. But there was no place for what Dom wanted.
It was as impossible as asking the sun to rise in the west or the stars to shine through the daylight.
“Fine,” Dom said, hurt flashing in his eyes as his jaw clenched tight. “I get it, but you’re going to come for me again. If this is the last time I fuck you, I want to be sure you remember it.”
Without another word, he pulled out and flipped her over on her belly. A moment later, he drove into her from behind. Harley groaned as she gave in to him, letting him take her hard and rough if that’s what he needed. She would come for him again—he was an amazing lover, that had never been the problem—and he would be able to get off without looking into her cold, dead eyes.
Now that she had dyed her hair back to its natural brown and grown it as long as her sister’s, maybe he would be able to pretend he was fucking Hannah. The good sister, the one he really wanted, the one everyone loved.
And why shouldn’t they—Hannah had been born whole and sweet of spirit without any inclination to self-destruct and take the world out with her. Hannah was easy to love. Harley was complicated and hard to handle and sharp to the touch, even when she was trying her best not to hurt anyone.
“I should have known. You never said my name while we were in bed,” Dom said, his breath harsh as he reached beneath her, fingers finding her clit. “Never, not one single time.”
“Dom, please,” she said, but he cut her off before she could finish.
“Don’t say it now, it’s too late. I just want you to come,” he said, riding her harder as his finger circled the top of her sex, making her gasp as she neared the edge a second time. “Come and then I’ll come and I’ll leave and take care of Jasper, just like you want me to.”
She wanted to thank him, but she knew he wouldn’t appreciate it, so she didn’t say a word. She just let her head fall back and her hips tilt as she came a second time, her channel contracting so tight it would have forced Dom from her body if he hadn’t tightened his grip on her hips, keeping them fused together as his cock jerked inside of her.
She came in long, fierce waves, but the pleasure was bittersweet.
Because Dom was right. This was the last time. They had stopped at different places on the road and now the bridge had washed away, leaving them no way forward or back, at least not together.
“It wasn’t her,” he murmured, his lips kissing her sweat-slicked shoulder as he spoke. “I know you think it was, but the only person on my mind, when we were like this, was you. I could have loved you if you’d let me. I already love Jasper. So maybe think about him the next time you’re ready to get rid of someone who cares about you. You may not want more than this, but there’s no reason to shut love out of Jasper’s life.”
He pulled away, leaving her on her belly on the bed as he disappeared into the master bathroom to dispose of the condom. Harley heard the shower start and rolled over, staring up at the fan whirring softly above her.
Her throat went tight and the backs of her eyes began to sting, but before the tears could fall, a brisk wind from deep inside of her swirled to the surface, freezing the surge of emotion. Soon her inner world was cold and still once more.
It was the way things were. She couldn’t change it, even if she tried.
Dom was wrong. It wasn’t that she didn’t want more than this. She wasn’t capable of more than this. He was asking her to spread her arms and fly, stubbornly refusing to see that her wings had been ripped off a long time ago, the day she’d lost the only man she would ever love.
