by Christa Wick
Tempted Beyond Reason
Christa Wick
C.M. Wick
Contents
Book Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
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Also by Christa Wick
About the Author
Copyright © 2019 by Christa Wick
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, this book and any portion thereof may not be reproduced, scanned, reverse-engineered, decompiled, transferred, or distributed in any print or electronic form without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Participation in any aspect of piracy of copyrighted materials, inclusive of the downloading and obtainment of this book through non-retail or other unauthorized means, is in actionable violation of the author’s rights.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, media, brands, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and registered trademark owners of all branded names referenced without TM, SM, or (R) symbols due to formatting constraints, and is not claiming ownership of or collaboration with said trademark brands. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is purely coincidental.
Published by Evergreen Books Publishing
Copy edits and line edits by GBI Author Services
Proofreading by Rosa Sharon
Cover design by Violet Duke
Previously published as Waking Up Her Curves (c) 2015 by Christa Wick
Book Description
She’s gentle, innocent, and sweet—everything I’m not.
There’s a reason I was hired to protect her by one of the few former military buddies I consider a friend. Because I’m the man people call to get the job done, even if the job is guarding the lushest, sexiest body I’ve ever laid eyes on.
I’ve somehow been able to keep my hands off her these past months as her bodyguard, but that’s before I learn why she’s avoiding the biggest decision of her life. The surgery could either restore her sight or take away what little she can see forever; and I’m the reason she’s been holding off.
She says she wants one night with me—her first time, no less—while she still has a fraction of her vision left. Hell, I don’t know what the right thing to do here is. But what I do know is that protecting her isn’t just a job for me anymore.
And one night? That’s damn sure not going to cut it.
The Far Too Tempting Collection
Tempted Beyond Reason (Wake & Lacey)
Tempted Beyond Relief (Wylie & Rhea)
Tempted Beyond Recourse (Logan & Lily)
Previously published as Waking Up Her Curves (c) 2015, revised throughout with newly added content and an extended ending.
Note: This is a steamy & sweet standalone with character cameos from the even steamier standalone, Tempted By Trouble, formerly titled Black & Gold, which has similarly been republished with revisions and new content.
1
I left the car idling, prepared to shift into reverse at a second's notice, as I used my iPhone to swipe through all the feeds from the extra security cameras I’d had set up around the perimeter of the estate.
The guesthouse was situated at the back and the acreage was completely fenced in, patrolled by three mature bull mastiffs weighing over a hundred pounds each and two adolescents that were almost as large. Perimeter cameras monitored by the gatehouse guards gave a full view of the fences and the exterior of every building on the property.
Given all the safeguards in place, the probability of an attacker or kidnapper lurking inside any of the buildings on the estate was as close to zero as possible, absent an insider coerced or paid into betraying my employer.
Still, I couldn’t stop being paranoid.
Billionaire Austin Long had hired me as a bodyguard months ago, a relatively straightforward job, given my training. But the job had proven to be anything but simple, given that the soft, lush body I was being paid to guard belonged to his far too sweet—and legally blind—younger cousin Lacey Addams Long.
Even with the small percentage of sight available to her in each eye, Lacey couldn't run from danger. For her, a van with a driver ready to yank her inside presented the same shadowy profile as a large boulder or garden shed, and any man who could be standing right in front of her with a rifle wasn't distinguishable from an ornamental tree. And forget her being able to spot anything on the ground that would trip her up.
Or worse.
I swiped through each of the view screens one last time then quickly made my way back to the garage. Watching my rearview and side mirrors the entire time, I waited for the garage door to shut behind me before turning off my vehicle and letting my guard down a fraction.
Even in this veritable fortress though, my fingers itched with the need to take one more trip through the camera views.
But a quiet sigh from the young woman in the passenger seat stopped me before I could.
"Is all this really necessary?" she asked, facing me fully. "It seems like the precautions grow more excessive with each new day."
It was true, over the last two weeks, the time it took me to ensure the premises were safe enough to let Lacey out of the car and secured in the house had grown considerably.
The probability of an attack against her was a constant variable that kept me on high alert at all times. While Lacey was financially dependent on her billionaire cousin, she was also one of his heirs. That made her a prime target for kidnappers and crazies.
And the crazies were coming out in force lately.
"Austin thinks it’s necessary," I answered, avoiding giving her my own opinions and explanations on the subject of her safety, especially since my personal opinion was quickly becoming less professional each day.
Simply put, the near constant, isolated care of Lacey Addams Long was turning me into a lust-struck idiot.
How else could I think of myself when I grew hard in a heartbeat the second I was alone with the sweet, utterly innocent young beauty next to me?
Shifting restlessly in her seat, Lacey fixed her worried blue gaze in my general direction, between the top of my head and my shoulders, around where my eyes would likely be by her estimation. "Is something wrong? I mean Austin has never been this careful with my visits before."
"There's just been a lot of news coverage lately..." I evaded, looking for any rationale that would justify my overly-cautious routine without scaring her. "Some of the trashier papers and gossip websites have been going crazy about a billionaire, white oilman from a deeply southern family stepping out with a poor, black, tree-hugging hottie with a law degree. That raises the security profile of Austin and everyone around him because it catches the attention of the paparazzi, crazies and professional criminals."
She didn't need to know about the death threats from the far ends of both sides of the political spectrum.
A wry smile pulled the corners of her mouth downward. "So, I'm some kind of collateral damage risk?"
"Not when I'm protecting you," I answered, my voice dropping low to squeeze at my balls as my eyes locked on those voluptuous lips of hers.
Feeling the too-familiar hardening of my cock, which always happened when I didn’t keep my thoughts in check around her, I flung my door open without another word and quickly stepped out of the vehicle.
I circled the car and opened her door, my hand touching lightly at her shoulder to signal that I was ready to assist her, per our established protocol. Watching over Lacey had more routines than my usual protection details because of her lack of sight. And this particular one, which entailed having her skin touch mine the entire time as I guided her, was one of the ones that put the most strain on my sense of duty, not to mention the fit of my jeans.
Her fingers wrapped around mine and then she put one foot outside the car. She turned in her seat, the other foot touching the garage floor as her free hand sought the door's interior grip. I braced myself, but she only leveraged my hand a little as she rose into a standing position.
As close as we were, with her shorter height placing the top of her head even with my lips, it took only a shallow breath to fill my lungs with the apple crisp scent of her shampoo.
My mouth started to water and my fingers twitched again, this time with the need to tilt her head back and bring her lips close to mine.
You're here to guard the girl, Wake, not fuck her!
I exhaled quickly to clear my lungs of any lingering temptations just as she brushed lightly against me.
The contact made my gut kick, but it was over almost as soon as it began as she inched her way toward the rear passenger door then stopped.
Dutifully, I retrieved her bag and cane from the front floorboard and handed them to her. With one hand on the handle of the car door, I closed it slowly, my other hand hovering next to her full hip to ensure there was enough clearance between hard metal and tender flesh.
The unexpected, casual intimacy of these touches and almost touches had worn me down over the four months I had been assigned to protect Lacey. The last month had been pure torture. I had discovered that the live-in aide her mother, Amanda Long, employed for Lacey had been spying on the girl and Austin and reporting to Amanda the entire time.
Needless to say, after the interrogation of the aide was finished, she was fired. And Lacey didn't want, or really need, a replacement. The cleaning crew from the main house came by once a week for the more intensive and detailed work, the rest she did for herself with a pinch of my help in preparing meals—when she would allow it.
In the last month, we had turned into a regular Ward and June Cleaver, straight from their fifties television sitcom, only without the kids or Ward's smoking pipe and with a hell of a lot more curves on Lacey's sweet body than ole Ward ever could have handled.
"Uhm...is everything okay?"
Her question instantly yanked me out of my thoughts. Hell, lately I just couldn't keep a security mindset around her once we were alone. I kept thinking about what I shouldn't be thinking about. Her, in bed, naked, wet, my fingers between her legs as I made certain she was ready to take my cock.
"Sorry," I answered and began moving her toward the door that separated the garage from the house. “Today was just a long day.”
“My fault. If we hadn’t had to go all the way out to New Orleans today—” Her throat strangled the last of her reply.
“Lace, your eye appointments could be on the other side of the world and I’d take you to every last appointment.” Lucky for her though, she didn’t have to travel that far. Austin had found a world-class specialist nearby who could do the surgery to possibly restore her sight. But Lacey had been delaying the decision of whether to do the surgery for a while now. The choice would have been easy, except there was a chance she would lose what little sight she had left.
“We’ll keep going until you’re comfortable making your choice,” I told her as I held her hand while she took the short step up from the garage floor to the side entry hall. “A thousand times if that’s what it takes.”
Once we were in the guesthouse, she didn't need my help or her cane so I stepped back to let her do her thing. Every time we returned home, the process was the same. She had memorized every last inch of the place and went through each exacting step like a careful choreography.
Moving to the narrow table that hugged the wall, she put her bag on the left side of the surface, all the way to its edge. She placed her cane next to it and then shrugged out of her light jacket and hung it on the leftmost peg above the table.
Everything in the house was arranged just so—no changes allowed. With all the time I had spent in the military, the requisite precision of her living environment comforted me.
Following from behind, I watched her measure her distance from the wall with an outstretched arm and then she started down the hall. As she proceeded through her routine like clockwork, I found myself relaxing a little more. Seeing her comfortable and barricaded away from danger was the only way I could stop being on alert.
She had on a soft, flowy skirt, same as most days. This one was a pale blue transparent layer over a slightly darker, closer fitting bottom layer. The scalloped edges of the outer-skirt bounced with each step, her broad hips whipping the fabric left and right in a mesmerizing pattern I just couldn’t get enough of.
Damn, that ass. That luscious, luscious ass.
Hell, her entire body gave me ideas that would no doubt get me fired and ruin my friendship with Austin. But the job and friendship were only secondary controls on my behavior. I couldn't stand the idea of hurting Lacey. She had a tender heart and an innocent outlook despite being raised by a woman who had all the warmth and charm of a swamp full of gators.
She deserved so much more than I could give her.
Suddenly, a surprised squeak a second after Lacey rounded the corner had me sprinting in her direction, my hand moving beneath my jacket to my pistol.
I had the holster unsnapped with my fingers around the grip when I all but slammed into her and pinned her to the wall behind me.
I scanned the room, looking for the person or object that had startled her, but found that we were totally alone.
"What happened?” I asked, checking her from head to toe before scanning the room again.
She edged a foot forward and nudged the ceramic pot of a large fern that was supposed to be against the other wall.
With a shaky exhalation, I secured my pistol in its holster. "Damn cleaning crew," I growled as I circled her body and shoved the pot into place. "They must have pulled it out to plug in the vacuum and didn't put it back. I'll talk to them, make sure it doesn't happen again."
Returning to her, I wrapped a hand around the opposite side of Lacey's waist and the other around the elbow that she had tucked against me. My eyes searching the floor ahead of us for any other objects out of place, I led her to the couch in the living room.
"I need to make sure they didn't screw anything else up," I said as I sat her down. "Stay."
"Woof, woof."
Her reply came out good-natured, but I still felt bad when the small, sweetly delivered reprimand registered. "Lace, that's not how..."
"It's okay." A forgiving smile curled her lips and she reached toward me. "You're just trying to keep me safe. And I’m getting used to your terse commands."
Three fingertips, polished and sporting a French manicure, pressed lightly against the middle of my thigh. My breathing ceased and a fresh surge of blood raced to fill my cock.
Since she couldn't really make eye contact, touch was how she communicated with those close to her. I'd had four months of her fingers whispering against some part of my body, my muscles flexing with the impulse to shift her hand a few inches in one direction or another.
Li
ke up to my cock or higher still so I could kiss the dainty fingers or turn her hand palm up and press my lips against its center.
Having her touch me now while she talked about my giving her commands…
I knew my limits and she had me with my back flat against the wall and no place to run as it was.
Taking a step to the side, I broke contact and went off to do what I told her I would—whatever the hell that was—promising I wouldn't take long.
Eventually it came to me when blood started returning up north to my brain and I started moving through the three-bedroom guesthouse room by room, checking the precise placement of objects while I did my standard check of all the locks on any doors or windows leading to the outside. I walked with my phone in my hand, texting the security team with a request for a playback review for the time we were out.
That way, not only would I be able to identify which member of the cleaning crew needed a reprimand, but I would have a task at hand to keep me occupied—and away from Lacey.
2
My plan for a distracted evening was solid.
That is, until I reached her bedroom and saw the nightgown and tomorrow's change of clothes in their tidy folded squares on the bench at the foot of the bed.
Seeing two garments, I ran through three emotions in rapid succession. An unflattering, pervy curiosity came first. As I fingered the thin cotton shift that would be molding itself to her body tonight, I tried—and failed—not to imagine lifting the hem while she wore it, my hands drifting up her thighs to tug the panties down to her ankles, the fabric tangling to keep her legs hobbled and her body in place.
