by Kym Roberts
Sinfully Wicked
Men of Rock #3
Kym Roberts
Praise for Novels by Kym Roberts
If you've never read anything by this great author, this book will have you falling in love with Kym Roberts. Goodreads Red Lace
This book sucked me right in and didn't let me surface until I was finished. Highly recommend this one! Goodreads Red Lace
I’d highly recommend Handled By The Officer to any romance reader who wants to go from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other thanks to some great writing, not to mention a man in uniform! Harlequin Junkie Handled By Officer
Delightful, hilarious, intriguing and well plotted.. I loved it, and am looking forward to more. Amazon Dead On Arrival
This book is an amazing murder mystery and great read. Amazon Dead Man’s Carve
I suspect that once readers venture into Kym Roberts' fascinating and quirky world, they'll want to devour each and every story in the series! Fresh Fiction Book Barn Mysteries
Fans of the series will be, once again, delighted with Charli’s new adventure, and the poor souls who have never read this fabulous series can jump right in and enjoy this fun ride! Fresh Fiction Book Barn Mysteries
Sinfully Wicked
Copyright 2019 © Kym Roberts
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent by the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
Cover Illustrator:
Jaycee Delorenzo, Sweet ’N Spicy Designs
www.sweetnspicydesigns.com
Editor: Gwen Toppe
Top-ePublishingServices.com
Interior Design: Tim Toppe
Top-ePublishingServices.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Other Titles by Kym Roberts
Men of Rock series
Flirting with The Devil #1
Red Lace #2
Sinfully Wicked #3
Handled By Officer
(Women Behind the Badge #1)
Malia Fern Mysteries
Dead On Arrival
Dead Right There (coming soon)
Dead Man’s Carve
(A Tickled to Death Mystery)
The Book Barn Mysteries
Fatal Fiction
A Reference to Murder
Perilous Poetry (Amazon #1 Bestseller)
Lethal Literature (Fresh Fiction Finalist Best Cozy Mystery 2018)
Killer Classics
(Fresh Fiction Finalist Best Cozy Mystery & Best Book & Amazon Bestseller)
For the survivors
Prologue
The pounding on his head broke through the haze of his alcohol-induced sleep.
“What the—”
Thwack.
He grabbed the offending object only to have his momentum used against him. Soft downy feathers pushed against his face. Air became nonexistent. Breathing wasn’t an option. Fighting was. He shoved the pillow and the person wielding it with all his might; rolling on top to take the advantage and return the favor of death.
Until he saw the woman below him. “McClary. What the hell?”
“I think you can call me Megan at this point, Danny.”
Danny. She’d never called him by his first name. He was Artino and she was McClary. Except…he looked down at her bare breasts, so round and perfect with rosy nipples standing at attention. His dick stirred with desire as memories of the night they’d spent returned. His body immediately readied for round two. Or was it three? Four? Fuck, he couldn’t remember and despite what his dick was saying it wanted, his brain was telling him another round would make work…messy.
“Complicated.” She wet her lips.
“Complicated?”
“Not messy, complicated. I don’t do complicated. Go answer your phone.” She lifted her hips and he wasn’t quite sure if it was to get him off…or well, to get him off.
“Huh?” How many beers had he drunk and why was he the only one suffering the effects from the previous night?
“Danny, if you’re going to put that thing to use for both our advantages, please do.” She licked her lips again as she eyed his now completely awake dick. “But if you’re going to sit on top of me like an ape trying to dominate me, you better get off before I kick your ass.”
He couldn’t tell if she was serious or joking. What the hell had he done? Megan didn’t work for him, but she was a subordinate and he’d—
“Fucked my brains out.” She winked. “Now get out.”
“Get out?” He repeated, still sitting on top of her with his dick pointing directly at her soft delicate lips. Megan had an uncanny way of reading his mind and it wasn’t helping that she was doing it now. Didn’t women want to talk after having a night of sex? Didn’t they want assurances that it wasn’t just a one night stand?
“It was a one time and done thing. Okay, not necessarily one time.” She ticked off their acts of pleasure like she was tallying the books she’d read in the past week. “There was against the door, and on the floor—thank God you at least pulled the bedspread off the bed for that one. Can you imagine what my face would’ve been pressed against?” She shuddered. “Oral, one time for each of us in the shower, and then once in the bed before we both passed out. So three and a half, give or take.”
He stared into her green eyes admiring their beauty. It was only then he noticed her red hair spilled across the bed. She really was a beautiful woman—just not his type.
“Get off me, ape. You’re not my type either.” She shoved with all her might and nearly toppled him head over ass off the bed. Megan pulled the sheet with her as she stood and headed for the bathroom. He hated that he didn’t get to see her tight, firm ass one more time.
“How do you do that?”
She looked over his shoulder at him like he was an idiot. He felt like an idiot. Daniel Khaos Artino was the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Denver office of the Secret Service. He didn’t do stupid shit like this.
“Everyone does stupid shit like this if they’re human.” She looked at his dick again and he felt like covering it. “Even with a schlong like yours.” Then she walked into the bathroom without looking back. “Last chance, in or out. I’m taking a shower.”
His phone rang and he could’ve sworn he heard her chuckle before the bathroom door closed and the lock clicked into place.
He followed the sound of his phone and found it laying underneath her thong on the nightstand. Jeezus. He pulled the scrap of clothing from his phone and tossed it on the bed as he answered the call.
“Artino.”
“Where are you today?” Asked a familiar female voice.
“Don’t ask.” He looked around for his pants and found them near door.
“Don’t ask, you’re with a woman, or don’t ask, you’re on a top secret mission.”
He let silence answer for him. He was not going to admit to his happy-go-lucky sister that he’d spent the night screwing an agent. Jeezus. No matter how many times he said it, or thought it, he still couldn’t believe he’d done it.
“Riiight.” She drug out the word before giggling into his ear.
He rolled his eyes, put on his shirt and began buttoning it when he heard the water turn on in the shower. He breathed a sigh of relie
f, and confessed. “You saved my life.”
“Terrorists knocking on your door?” She asked.
He couldn’t help but grin at his sister’s antics. He loved this new side of his sister that was unreservedly happy. “No.”
“Spinning out of control on the ice on I-70 with a semi coming at you?”
“It’s April.”
“Exactly. In Colorado anything’s possible in April.”
“I’m not in Colorado.”
“OMG, honey it worked!”
Khaos found his shoes, one on each side of the room as if he’d kicked them off in a hurry, then slipped them on. “What worked?”
“Ty’s teaching me interrogation techniques.”
Khaos cringed. He had to admit, as much as he’d hated Ty Beckinsale, the man was responsible for his sister’s happiness and despite the evidence against him, Khaos believed Ty was innocent. The man had been accused of having a prostitute in his suite while on an advance security detail for the Service. If that wasn’t bad enough, his fellow agents who’d shared the suite with him had given statements stating Ty was the only one to indulge in the woman’s services. It’d taken a major diplomatic effort to get him home—just so he could be fired from the Service.
Every agent in the room had been released, but it was Ty who’d had his reputation destroyed with the accusation of paying for the prostitute and then subsequently being responsible for her death. Justice had prevailed for Ty since no one had been able to prove he’d bought the drugs for the dead woman. She however, died without anyone to champion her case. Ty continued to stick to his story, and his fellow agents claimed ignorance about the drugs. The appearance of guilt was there; the proof of guilt was not.
“He’s not the best interrogator,” Khaos reminded his sister.
“I found out you’re not home, didn’t I?”
He slipped on his jacket. Thank God he’d left his gun securely locked in the safe in his room before meeting Megan in the bar to talk about old times. “You did at that, sis.”
“You’re humoring me.”
“Maybe.” Khaos ran his fingers through his hair and looked out the peephole to make sure there were no other agents in the hallway. Once he verified the all clear, he exited the door without looking back. Megan was a straight shooter. If she told him to leave, it ended here and now. She wouldn’t let it faze her, even if he did.
“Well, since you’re not home, and I can’t wait for you to get here to tell you the good news, I’m just going to say it.”
“Say what?” He asked as he opened the door to his room five doors down.
“Ty asked me to marry him, and I said yes!” She squealed. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
“That’s—great.” Fucking great. Now his little sister would be chased by the ghost of a dead woman. Time to throw a fucking party.
“Ty wants to talk to you.”
I want to break his fucking face. He didn’t say it to his sister, but he certainly felt it. “Sure, I’m happy for you, sis.”
The gravelly voice which could only belong to one man, sounded muffled as if he was attempting to cover the mouthpiece of his sister’s phone. He did a piss-poor job because Khaos heard every word. “Babe, can I talk to Khaos, for a minute in private?”
“It’s Danny to you, asshole.” Jeezus. Had he really been grateful this man was in his sister’s life? How could he let her throw away her entire future with Beckinsale’s dark cloud hanging over her head?
“She doesn’t need to know you still hate me, dickwad.” Ty spit back at him.
He had to give the man credit. Ty hid Khaos’s hatred well. “What’s so damned important that you have to send her out of the room?”
“I need you to know something.”
“Spill it.”
“The incident in Mexico—”
“I know. You’re innocent. You had the flu and couldn’t have gotten it up if you’d tried.”
“I can always get it up.”
“That’s helping me hate you even more.” Khaos ground out between his teeth.
Silence fell between them as if each man was trying to gain control of his temper.
“There was another prostitute in my room that night.”
His fists balled. “You motherfucker, I’m going to kill you.”
“She was hiding from Kratz. I saw her come into my room and I told her she could stay, I wasn’t going to hurt her. I don’t know when she left, but when all hell broke loose, she was gone.”
“After all of these years, you’re telling me there’s a witness who can clear your name?”
“Yeah.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that bullshit? Why wouldn’t you say something when you were facing a murder charge?”
“She was just a kid. If she wanted to escape that life, I wasn’t going to stop her.”
Khaos rubbed his face. How had life gotten so fucked up in twenty-four hours? “Did you look for her?”
“No. She asked that I let her go. She said the more attention I gave her, the less chance she had of escaping her pimp.”
“You really believed a kid on the streets of Mexico City was better off without any help?” Khaos remembered the shit storm the case had stirred up. The President had been scheduled to go Mexico for a summit on human trafficking, and his own security team had been involved in crimes against women—and children. Jeezus. If the media got a hold of that…
“I gave her the address of a nun I’d met who was helping kids escape sex trafficking.” “What? How did you know the nun?”
“She was supposed to be a speaker at the summit. I did her background check.”
Relief swamped through his body. Khaos lay back on the bed and let his pillow embrace his aching skull. “Then all we have to do is find the nun, and your name will be cleared.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.”
Of course it wasn’t. He laid his arm across his eyes and asked the question he didn’t want to. “Why?”
“The nun was murdered later that year. I think it was in retaliation for helping the girl.”
“Jeezus, Beckinsale. You can’t drag my sister into this bullshit. I get that you’re innocent, but my sister is just as innocent as that girl you helped back then.”
“I agree.”
He lost his temper. “Then why the fuck did you ask her to marry you?”
“Because I love her, and I know you’ll help us get this cleared up.”
“Why exactly would I do that?” Khaos wasn’t sure who was the bigger dumbass, Beckinsale for asking for help, or him for helping the son-of-a-bastard.
“Because you love your sister almost as much as I do, and I have another lead to the girl.”
Khaos sat up, ignoring the pain that felt like a hammer reshaping his skull.
“What’s the lead?”
“The girl said if she didn’t get away, her name was Téa Bello. She asked if I would find her grandmother in Newark, New Jersey and tell her she was dead.”
Sixteen Months Later
Chapter One
A smile pulled at her lips, but she couldn’t let it form. As much joy as she felt, she didn’t expect it to last. She watched as the children dodged tables and chairs trying to escape little Andrea with his spindly arms and legs as his dark curls bounced into his eyes. At eight years old he was a little terror, yet he couldn’t hide his big heart when little Ava fell to her knees. She was far from hurt, if scampering to her feet was any indication, but Andrea knew Ava didn’t want to be ‘it’ in the game of tag. He slowed his pace in the almost vacant cafeteria, as he kept up the menacing banter to keep her focused on escape, not the bruises that were sure to be there tomorrow. Ava loved it.
The other children sensing Ava’s doom swooped in to distract Andrea from his prey and he bit the bait as if he wasn’t aware of their ploy. Andrea was a boy to be reckoned with. He struggled with his reading lessons, but he assessed people�
��s character with ease. Better than she could at the age of twenty-two, which was probably a genetic curse from her parents.
Just the thought of them made her heart ache. Images of her dad leaving the house that last day threatened to bring tears to her eyes. He’d kissed the top of her head like any other day, but the display of affection had been longer. The desperation he’d felt, palpable. Even at seventeen she’d known something was desperately wrong.
That day had replayed in her mind over and over for years. Had he known the fate he’d sentenced his wife and daughter to? Or had it been his own destiny he’d dreaded? Why hadn’t he packed them up and run?
“Téa?” She jumped at the touch of a hand on her arm. Sister Francesca smiled. “I’m sorry you seemed like you were somewhere else.”
Téa rubbed the spot the nun had meant to soothe. “No. Just running chores through my head for tomorrow.”
Sister saw through her lie, but forgave her anyway. There were some battles even Sister Francesca wouldn’t fight. Téa understood why. She was hardly the most damaged woman to grace the steps of the abbey. Sister had run the safe haven for victims of sex trafficking for the past decade and she’d seen too many broken and damaged souls. They came from all over the world; those who needed to escape powerfully dangerous men. Staying in their own country, or the country they’d been transported to, was not an option. The nuns performed the tasks like the Underground Railroad workers who’d rescued slaves in the United States prior to the end of the Civil War. The stations, stockholders, and conductors of this railroad however, didn’t expand from the South to the North. It traveled across oceans and continents. No matter what century, slavery brought out the worst, and the best in people.
Téa tried to see the good people in the world, but it was hard to separate good from devious. Bad from evil. Indifferent from vicious. Every touch felt like a betrayal in the making.
