DEVIL’S ADVOCATE
Hell’s Belles Book 1
Wendi Darlin
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
DEVIL’S ADVOCATE
Copyright © 2009 by Wendi Darlin
E-book ISBN: 1-60601-452-8
First E-book Publication: April 2009
Cover design by Tamra Westberry
All cover art and logo copyright © 2009 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
DEDICATION
I have to thank my friend, the fabulous author and honorary Hell’s Belle, Lara Santiago.
This book is for all the Hell’s Belles and the devils they love.
DEVIL’S ADVOCATE
Hell’s Belles Book 1
WENDI DARLIN
Copyright © 2009
Prologue
University of Southern Mississippi, 1999
Haylie lifted her hand and peered over Blake’s shoulder at the ring he’d slipped on her finger. The mattress shifted beneath her as he kissed his way down her throat and cupped her breast in his hand. Everything about the way he touched her, the way he loved her, made her feel like the luckiest woman in the world. Her eyes blurred with tears.
“I love you,” she whispered.
She felt his smile against her skin. “That’s a good trait for a future wife to have.”
She laughed and pulled him closer, wrapping her legs around his waist.
“Isn’t there somewhere you needed to be?”
She shook her head. “I want to be right here.”
She had planned to attend a seminar for victim empowerment being held on campus, but not without serious reservations. In her four years pursuing a degree in social services, she had avoided as many victim-focused activities as possible.
Volunteering to work tonight’s event had taken every grain of courage she had. But being loved by Blake empowered her more than anything she could learn in a room full of people with histories as sordid as hers. Her past was better left buried. She didn’t know how talking about it or putting it out in the open for everyone to see could ease any of the pain or humiliation she’d carried for years. Not even Blake knew the truth about her, and she didn’t know if she could ever tell him.
“I wasn’t going to let you leave anyway.” He kissed his way lower. His chest still slick from their lovemaking, slid against her belly.
A pound on the door of his apartment interrupted the path of heat he was carving down her body. From the weight of the knock, it was either an oaf or his frat brother, Meat.
Blake kissed her again before rolling over to pull on his boxers and answer the door.
Meat bounded in like a bull in a china shop. “Where is she?”
Haylie heard his shoulders bump and brush the wall as he stumbled down the hall.
“There’s my girl,” Meat yelled with a grin from the bedroom doorway and romped toward the bed.
Haylie snatched the sheet around herself and rolled away as he came down on three-quarters of the mattress. He reeked of beer and his glassy eyes leered at her playfully. Blake tackled him, but Meat swatted him away and grabbed at her. Fear struck her core. Flashes of her past stopped her heart and cold sweat sprung from her pores.
She tugged at the sheet, but it didn’t budge beneath Meat’s weight. Screaming, she covered herself with a pillow and jumped off the bed as Meat’s big paw reached for her arm.
“Come back, baby,” Meat pleaded. “I don’t bite hard.”
Blake joined Haylie in the corner, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her bare shoulder. “He’s not going to hurt you, honey.”
Her throat closed too tight for words. Her blood ran cold and a tremor worked its way up her arms. The harder she fought to keep the memories at bay, the faster they filled her mind.
Blake didn’t seem to notice. “Get your big ass out of my bed,” he said to Meat.
Meat made himself comfortable, wallowing like a hog in mud. “Not ’til my girl comes over here and gives me a kiss. I won her fair and square.”
“Won me?” Haylie’s voice barely squeaked out. “You won me?”
“Your boyfriend can’t shoot darts worth a shit.” Meat rolled around on the bed like he was settling in for the night.
She freed herself from Blake’s grasp. “You bet me?” Her entire body trembled.
“It was a joke. Baby…” His forehead creased as he studied her. “You don’t think I was serious?”
She lost focus. The edges in the room softened and her vision blurred. Her father’s face leered at her from every corner of her mind. The past had planted itself right in the middle of her finally perfect world. She couldn’t do this again. Her body wasn’t anybody’s to give away. She ripped the engagement ring from her finger so fast it scraped skin from her knuckle. The ring hit the wall, but she ran out of the room before it landed on the floor.
She turned the ignition of her car, the pillow still clutched to her chest, before she gave any thought to having run out of his apartment naked. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going back in there or anywhere near Blake Sheridan ever again.
Chapter 1
Banana Bob’s Beach Bar, 2009
Haylie, Ashlyn, Kara, and Amanda held their shot glasses in the air and toasted in unison.
“Here’s to the Belles
Who dance in Hell
And keep the devils rockin’
Here’s to the lies
The beasts will tell
To get our boots a knockin’!”
The fabulous foursome clinked glasses, licked a line of salt off the curve between their thumbs and index fingers and tossed back the golden Cuervo.
Haylie Monroe sucked her lime wedge and pitched it into a bowl in the center of the table, then held her thick hair off the back of her neck and closed her eyes as the dirty liquor coated her tongue and slid down her throat.
“Why does it always have to be tequila?” she asked, her face still creased in distaste.
“Te kill ya!” her three best friends
chimed.
Haylie shimmied in her chair as the last of the tequila burned her stomach and trickled to the tips of her toes.
“Stop shaking those things, you’re making me look bad.” Ashlyn shot a pointed gaze at Haylie’s breasts.
Unlike her built for the runway friends, Haylie’s petite frame had more curves than a back country road. And as if height equated to tolerance, alcohol had a habit of hitting her as fast and hard as a souped-up muscle car while the others could guzzle more than an 8-cylinder at Talladega.
“As if you’d ever let yourself look bad.” Haylie stood. “I’m going to the ladies room.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Haylie and Ashlyn left the other two sitting at the table and walked through the sand toward the two-story gray plank building that housed the restrooms and a rooftop bar.
Before they’d made it halfway, Haylie came to a stunned stop. Her high-heeled sandals sank in the sand and her heart hammered in her chest. She’d spent a decade avoiding the devil himself, Blake Sheridan, and there he stood directly in front of her as gorgeous as ever.
“Haylie!” A spark flashed in the devil’s ice blue eyes an instant before he threw his arms around her and pulled her body against his. Apparently, not much had changed in the ten years since she’d run away from him. Familiar fire lingered in his touch, and pressed against him, her body yawned with hunger that almost brought a tear to her eye. Haylie dug the heels of her sandals deeper into the sand and pushed against his chest until she had her own space to breathe again.
Long pent-up emotions whipped through her. She couldn’t deny he looked better than ever. His clothes hung exactly where they were supposed to— khaki shorts and a button-down in fabrics that flowed oh so deviously over the muscular frame beneath. Only his hair dared to defy the clean professional lines he combed it in and followed instead the whim of the wind.
She resisted the urge to tame the thick, crisscrossed locks with a rake of her fingers. She resisted a lot of urges. If she had half a brain she would turn and run away from him again, but either the tequila was stronger than usual tonight or her gray matter had taken a vacation. She knew better than anyone what Blake Sheridan could be capable of, and there was no way in hell or on earth she would give him another chance to hurt her.
Palm fronds swayed in the breeze and a chorus of raucous laughter erupted from a group of men standing around a table on the upper deck of the bar. About twenty feet away, Kara and Amanda were propped on one-legged barstools anchored around a table in the sand. They pretended not to pay attention to her, but they weren’t missing a thing.
“Do you want me to leave you two alone?” Ashlyn asked, after giving Blake the once over.
Haylie swallowed hard. “I’ll catch up with you.”
Ashlyn glanced back at the other Belles before continuing to the restroom.
Haylie breathed the subtle scent of Blake’s cologne mixed with the salty breeze off the gulf. The warm air sizzled between them, and the shock of his hand as it grazed her arm ripped through her like lightning. Familiar doubt crept into her mind. How could she have been so wrong about him? How could she still want to forgive him, even now?
“If you’re leaving, let me give you a ride.” His confidence and the whisper of a smile nearly did her in.
She refused to so much as blink or brush away the hair the gulf breeze had whipped into the corner of her eye. “Is that your standard pick-up line, or a special one just for me?”
His cocky smile widened and he grabbed her hand. He would take anything as a yes.
She held her ground, digging her heels deeper in the sand. “If I followed you out of here, what would we be doing a half hour from now?”
“We’d be finding all kinds of ways to forgive one another.” Humor danced in his eyes. “Or we could spend a little time catching up with our clothes on.”
Her heart sped up and heat spread through her. Everything about him still got her humming from head to toe, and even though she knew better, she wanted him to take her back to that place she couldn’t forget. Just for a minute. She stepped close, wrapped her arms around his neck and brushed her lips against his ear. “And if we had our clothes off. Tell me exactly how you’d be changing my mind about you.” She barely breathed the words, but the way his hands tightened on her waist told her she’d come across loud and clear. “Don’t leave out a single detail. I really want to know what you think it would take.”
His heated breath connected with her skin, but he didn’t speak. She closed her eyes and melted into his arms again. She had craved this since the day she left him. No matter what he’d done to her heart, her body longed for how he’d always made her feel.
“What do you want me to say?” A hint of laughter rode his voice, but something more ragged clung to his words.
She let her tongue slip just far enough through her lips to graze his earlobe and snuffed a smile as he responded with a low groan that tripped her nerves and shot straight to her womb. Somewhere deep in her soul, she wanted him to convince her she’d been wrong all these years. Even if she knew he couldn’t.
“Start out with something simple,” she said. “Imagine you got me to wherever you were just ready to go. We closed the door or slipped between the dunes or… whatever…” His chest moved beneath her hand. His heart pumped hard against her palm. “What happens next? Where are you going to touch me? What part of me will you taste first?”
His hands slid down to grip her hips so hard there’d probably be a bruise. He didn’t know his own strength. As rough as he was gentle, the opposing sensations could do a number on her that left her limp as a noodle and begging for more. His lips and tongue came down soft and warm on her neck and sent wet heat scampering between her thighs. Holy hell. Not exactly the move she’d been prepared for.
“God, Haylie, I want you. Let me take you home.” Kisses heated his words and stole her breath.
Her body caved completely, begging for everything he could give her. She clung to him, sinking deeper with every brush of his tongue against her skin, but common sense finally kicked in. It didn’t matter how Blake could make her feel. If she didn’t stop this now, she’d never forgive herself tomorrow.
She owed herself more than that. She wouldn’t give in to him tonight, or ever again.
“How’s your dart game these days?” she asked, pulling away. “Think you’d be good enough to hold onto me this time?” Anger and hurt boiled beneath her words.
“You still can’t give me more credit than that?” His fingers dug into her hip like she might run away from him again before he could convince her to stay.
“I gave you too much credit to begin with.”
“You didn’t give me enough.”
A familiar tune played in her purse and she reached for her phone. Blake kept his hand firmly in place. A twinkle leapt from his narrowed eyes. She had led him into the game, now he was up for whatever challenge she threw at him.
“Hi, Grady,” she said. “What’s wrong?” She stepped out of the devil’s clutch. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Blake reached for her again, hooking his finger in the waistband her miniskirt. The tug of the denim around her hips and the draw of an even stronger force between them couldn’t hold a candle to what had called her home. She snapped the phone closed and stepped away from him again. “I’ve got to run.”
Ashlyn sashayed by on her way back from powdering her nose.
“Grady called,” Haylie said. “I’ll meet up with y’all later if I can.”
She left Blake without so much as a goodbye wave. The easy buzz that had made her reckless enough to play with him had worn off. Her heart now hummed to a different tune. Grady needed her.
* * * *
“You don’t have a chance in hell of getting lucky with the rest of us,” Kara told Blake as he pulled out his wallet to cover a round of drinks. “We don’t double dip. Belles Law.”
“Who’s Grady?” he said.
Ashlyn stirred her cocktail and wrestled with how much her loyalty to Haylie would allow her to divulge. “I’d love to tell you he’s the reason you’re not going to lure her back to your bed. But we Belles don’t run interference either.”
“So he’s not her boyfriend?”
“She’s sort of a mentor for him,” Ashlyn explained. “She runs a program for young adults who came of age in foster care. Helps them transition into lives of independence. School, housing, jobs, whatever else she can do. Grady’s case is personal for her.”
“She’s a mother hen,” Kara said. “The kid’s trouble, but you can’t tell her anything.”
“At least she’s got a heart.” Ashlyn cocked a perfectly sculpted brow at her friend.
“Yeah.” Kara set her plastic cup on the table and tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder. “Between the two of you every stray animal and juvenile delinquent in south Alabama will have shelter with chocolates on their pillows at night.”
“Enough you two. Blake doesn’t deserve to see me hose you down,” Amanda said.
“Don’t stop on my account.” He flashed them a grin, reached into his back pocket and offered a business card to Ashlyn. “Give this to Haylie for me.” He raised his glass and tipped it to hers. “And remember no interference. It’s against the law.”
His Cole Haan’s sank into the sugary white sand as he walked away.
“Kept himself in shape, didn’t he?” Amanda noted. “What do you think really happened between them?”
Ashlyn took inventory of his back side. “You know she won’t talk about it. But you could practically feel the sparks flying between them when he walked up to her. Whatever they had is still alive and well. Think she’ll call him?”
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