Bad Boys and Billionaires (The Naughty List Bundles)

by Synthia St. Claire

  “Murders? Bad? What’s that you say?”

  “Come on. Get serious for a minute,” he said.

  Serious wasn’t something I was good at, but I’d fake it until I made it.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just deflecting.”

  The moon had started its climb on the horizon, and with it, the warmth of the motorcycle’s saddle and my arms around Damon’s waist all worked together, weaving a spell over me. I lay my head on his back and felt the road pulse through the both of us.

  “We don’t know who did this – or what did this – so I just know that my wanting you to stay behind doesn’t have anything to do with us. It’s just—”

  With a sharp lean, Damon dipped down, and dodged a lump of shredded tire rubber in the road.

  “Jesus,” I swore under my breath.

  “You all right?” There was the hand on my knee again. This is a boy who knew how to make me want things I shouldn’t want, given the circumstances.

  “Anyway, what were you saying?”

  “Oh,” he said. “Just that it wasn’t me not wanting to be with you. I’m just... after Devin, I’m a little wary of anything happening to you. I know it’s not your favorite thing in the world, but you’re more important to me than...”

  “Everything is fine,” I laughed, squeezing his shoulder. “I’m fine, I promise.”

  Normally I hate people taking care of me. I want to make my own way, be my own woman, but with Damon, it was different.

  It had barely been a month since Devin almost killed him, but in that time, we’d fallen into a really, really good routine. I wrote, Damon worked his part time bus-boy job at the tavern down the street from my house – the idea of my huge, muscle-bound, werewolf boyfriend busing tables never got old, by the way – and then he’d come home and we’d go out and do stuff I never imagined doing with anyone, ever.

  We looked at the stars, we played around... it was just really pure, really good. And then two days prior to us being on the road to California, Damon learned about the murders.

  He came in really late one night, just as I was about to go to bed. “I gotta go, Lily,” he told me. “Have to go back home. Something’s happened.”

  It took me a full day to get anything out of him. He finally told me that the two Skarachee were found tied up in silver chains, and had awful things done to them. When I first told him I wanted to go with him, his response was predictable: “I can’t put you in danger, Lily. I just can’t do that to you.” He had said, in his worried, very serious, and yet somehow sexy Damon voice. “I can’t... no, I won’t.”

  An hour or so after he made his stance very firm and clear, I had managed to convince him otherwise; even though he’s the pack Alpha, he is still susceptible to certain torture methods. I remembered the sweat running down his chest, the way I kissed him, the way he felt... I couldn’t help but smile.

  But that’s not why I insisted on coming along. The second he told me about the murders, I started getting flashes of visions, or premonitions, like waking dreams. I told Damon, but he dismissed what I said as just an overactive imagination.

  I had a feeling though, a hunch, and I’ve learned to take those seriously.

  The visions I had were really strange though, kind of tilted at an angle and hazy. They didn’t seem like my normal imagination, but then again, they didn’t seem like much anything except daydreams.

  Right before we left, Poko had the strangest look on his face when he saw me. “Be safe, Lily, though... I think there is more to you than either of us knew,” he had said.

  It threw me for a loop, but seriously, I’d learned to take a lot in stride. It’s funny how the werewolf thing took a backseat to me learning to trust Damon instead of questioning everything he said and did, and assuming he always had some ulterior motive.

  After dodging another lump of something in the road, Damon pulled off to the shoulder. “I think that’s about enough for today,” he said as he pulled his helmet off and shook out his hair.

  Running his fingers through his black mane, he caught a shred of the impending dusk and almost glowed.

  “Are you sure?” I turned to face him, sliding off my helmet. “Seems like we should hurry.”

  “No sense in rushing tonight just to get ourselves hurt. Let’s get out to the base of one of those spires and set up camp. Shouldn’t take ten minutes to get there.”

  “Camp? You brought a tent?” I said. “How did I miss that?”

  Damon shrugged, smiled, and pulled me against his body. With those muscled forearms around my waist, he kissed me deep and sweet. His short, raspy stubble tickled my chin, and he gave my neck a gentle squeeze as he swirled his tongue between my lips and sucked gently as he pulled away.

  “What,” I said with a deep breath, “what was that?”

  “I’ve been waiting about three hundred miles to do that,” he said with a sly grin. “Come on, get back on. We’re gonna need as much rest as we can get.”

  By the time we got off the bike and Damon threw the tent that he’d somehow snuck underneath my seat without me noticing, there had been two strange crescendos of waxing and waning vibrations that tickled the base of my skull.

  It was a deep-seated rumbling sound that almost hurt as it peaked, and then faded so quickly I almost forgot it happened.

  He kicked off his boots, pulled off his shirt and stretched out on the pallet I had arranged in the tent floor.

  “Do you think there’s anything to what you said about these spires?” I asked as I pulled off my shirt. My skin prickled all up and down my chest as a desert breeze blew in from the open flap. “My head’s been buzzing since we got about halfway here.”

  Damon cocked an eyebrow and motioned for me to join him. Just sitting felt good. Lying down with my head in the crook of his huge arm was even better.

  “About them being sacred?” He lifted my head just enough to tilt me toward him. “What do you think?”

  Only inches apart, I could feel the heat of his breath curling around my neck. When I sucked a breath through my nose, his scent filled me as his heartbeat thumped in my ear. My whole world, in that moment, was Damon King. The vibrations stopped, along with the quiver in my neck and the rumble in my mind.

  In moments like that, who gives a shit about a couple of rocks?

  I stared at him for a moment, memorizing every whisker, every curve and line of his face, and those green eyes with the flecks of grey running from the inside of his irises out. I don’t know why, but it seemed really important that I not look away from him.

  A hand slid down my back, under my shorts, and then to the front where he unbuttoned me.

  “You don’t waste any time, do you?” I said with a smile as I did the same to him.

  “I have a feeling we’re gonna be busy soon,” he said. “I started wanting you halfway across Arizona. By the time we hit the state line, it turned into needing.”

  He rolled my head closer, kissing me deep and hard, urgently pushing my lips apart and tasting me.

  I pushed him backwards, so that he was flat on his back and straddled his trim, but wide waist. Tracing Damon’s muscle along the middle of his chest, then going gently brushing my fingertip across a spiderweb of scars, I drew a deep breath as he guided himself inside me. My body clenched around him, almost like it was the first time we were together.

  He slid in so slowly that by the time we were fully together, I felt like an eternity passed. His heat against me, inside me, the rise and fall of his chest, and our bodies moving as one faster and faster, lulled me into bliss.

  I fell forward, desperately clenching the sheets underneath us as Damon pushed up, and I gave up trying to hold off. He clutched me against his muscled body, the two of us breathing as one. Held tight against my Alpha, I took a long, slow breath that dripped out of my lips as I exhaled. Damon swelled inside me, and pleasure shook me from my center out, sending tendrils snaking from my core to my toes.

  “No matter what happens,” I s
aid as Damon’s body held me close, “it’s you and me, right?”

  Damon smiled. Even though it was dark, and I could hardly see his outline, I felt his smile. “Now and forever.”

  For a few blissed moments, Damon’s thickness expanded, forcing us to stay together, breathing, and staring into one another’s eyes.

  When his bulge subsided sooner than I would’ve liked, I slid off him, still slightly shaking, and curled up against his side.

  “Forever,” I repeated. Just saying the word was sweet on my tongue.

  I closed my eyes as his breathing evened out. With his arm underneath me, and his huge fingers brushing my naked hip, sleep took me.

  My dream that night started with the two of us, laying there. It was like my consciousness lifted out of my body and floated to the corner of the tent. There I floated, watching. Then, growing bored at watching myself snore, it slid through the fabric, into the air, where it caught an updraft.

  Zooming upward toward the stars, I got a vague sense of panic at the speed of my spirit’s ascent.

  Up, up, up I went.

  I felt like a kid with my face plastered against the front glass of a car going through a dark tunnel. The lights whipped by one after another.

  When finally I turned, I saw the whole desert spread out in front of me. Our little tent, tucked underneath a clump of scrub trees, was all alone, in the utter dark night.

  But then I saw dots of light begin to sparkle, like stars on the ground. One after another, they popped into view until the whole world below me was lit. Up there, my spirit took a long, slow lap, never looking away from the lights in the sky, on the ground, wherever they were.

  Are these people? Fires? Towns?

  It reminded me of those “The World after Dark” maps that show the lights on in all the houses from space, but in this view, the cities – Phoenix and Los Angeles... or at least where I thought they were – were dark. It was the out places, the parts of the map that don’t even have city names on them, that were alive with light.

  And then, all the little dots started changing colors. Some red, some green, some blue, and some of the dots switching back and forth.

  Suddenly, my serenity began to shake. Violent vibrations throttled my spirit’s vision, and it was like gravity finally figured out I was up in the air. I sped down, plummeting with horrible speed straight to the earth. One by one, the lights on the ground below blinked out as I sped downward.

  The tent Damon and I were in came back into clear view, no longer one point of light out of a million, but the only one I could see.

  My spirit screamed past his bike, pushed apart the tent flaps, and slammed straight into my body.

  “Lily?” Damon’s voice was the first thing I heard. “Lily? You in there?”

  I opened my eyes, staring at him and trembling, trying to get my bearings. “I... I think I just went somewhere,” I said.

  “Are you okay? You were shaking, moaning, and saying words I couldn’t make out.”

  Taking a deep breath, I held it until my thudding heart slowed a little. I was in his arms I realized. “Yeah,” I said. “It was just a dream. A really weird dream.”

  He let out a slow sigh. “Okay,” he said. “Just... making sure.” Softly, he lay back down, keeping me close.

  I curled up again, but this time threaded my fingers between his.

  “I’ve never been this far from Grandpa for so long. Well, since my parents...”

  “Hey, hey,” Damon whispered, curling his fingers against my skin. “Everything’s fine. We got each other, right?”

  Nestling down against his chest, I let Damon’s warmth fill me all the way through. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m just worried I guess. What if your friend doesn’t like me, or, I don’t know, what if I don’t fit in and just make everything harder. I never should have made you bring me. I’m just going to be in the way.”

  “Look at me,” Damon said. It wasn’t a question. “Sit up and look at me.”

  He pushed himself up in the blankets and threw the one covering him off. Sitting there, his head almost touched the top of the tent. Grabbing my hand, he pulled me onto his lap so that my legs draped over his. I could almost feel him against me. A stir distracted me for a second, but somehow I forced myself to focus on his face.

  “I’m just scared,” I said. “But you’re right, I’ve got you and—”

  “If I thought you were going to be in danger, I’d have fought you a lot harder about coming. And,” he paused. “Can I tell you something?”

  “Of course,” I said, running my hand along the bulge of his forearm.

  “I’m a little scared too.”

  A month ago it took an act of Congress to get him to talk about anything more serious than his feelings about a baseball game, and now he’s admitting he’s scared?

  I rubbed his arm softly, squeezing the muscle. “Of what?”

  He shrugged those big shoulders and let out a sigh. “Lots of things. I haven’t seen my friend Hunter in years, for one thing. I hope he’s not mad at me for being who I am. I never expected to be the big guy on the block. It’s still kind of a shock that I’m supposed to lead a whole pack.”

  “But that’s who you are, Damon. Who you were meant to be. Why be afraid of that?”

  Damon shook his head. “It’s a lot of responsibility. And that’s another thing – I don’t even know what the responsibilities actually are. It’s like I’m supposed to just pick up on everything and figure it out. It’s like... sorry,” he groaned. “I shouldn’t complain so much. We were talking about you having a bad dream, not me being tragic.”

  “Uh oh,” I said. “You’re starting to talk like me. That’s a bad sign. A real bad one.”

  A smile danced across his lips, and I instantly felt relief course through me. I didn’t want to be a burden to him. He needed me to be strong and that’s what I was going to do. He was strong for me when my parents’ death hit me like a ton of bricks. I made up my mind that no matter what it took, I was going to do the same thing for him.

  “But no,” I said softly, kissing his neck. “I don’t want you to feel like that. I want you to know you can tell me whatever you want, whenever you want. If you can be strong for me, I can do the same thing for you, okay?”

  “I... should be the strong one. I’m the Alpha. I’m supposed to—”

  “No arguments,” I said smiling. “Remember that obnoxious quote? Behind every great man there’s a woman who loves him?”

  He laughed harder than I expected. “You’re not behind me at all. You’re the award winning writer. I’m just some meathead.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess you’re right. But you’re sure a hell of a meathead. Those big arms, I couldn’t imagine better eye candy, you know?”

  I sat there, watching his face draw up until I knew he was about to protest and then I punched him in the ribs. “We’re good together, Damon. I shifted back to lying down, and pulled him with me, resting my head in the crook of his arm. We’ve both got our things, but we’re really good together.”

  “Not good,” he said. “Perfect.”

  There was nothing else to say. Nothing would be better than that. Instead I just nodded, and kissed the inside of his arm before curling up and nestling down, safe and secure, beside my Alpha.

  That time when I fell asleep, there was a blink of blackness, and then morning came early.

  ***

  About the author:

  Lynn doesn't love anything more than being wrapped up in a hammock with her corgi on her stomach and a pile of her favorite books to read. And by "pile of books" she means "a kindle."

  She loves all sorts of romance, but especially ones that feature big, strong alphas who will stop at nothing to prove themselves to the women who melt their hearts.

  Sigh up for her mailing list at http://eepurl.com/G1q2X to keep up with new releases and get free reads and exclusive excerpts!

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  I Married a Billionaire

  © 2013 Melanie Marchande

  Chapter One

  When your billionaire boss’s attorney contacts you out of the blue, your first instinct is to assume something is horribly wrong and that you’re about to pay the price. I still remember the way my throat tightened, the sweat on my palms - what was it about? I was sure I’d done nothing wrong, but if Mr. Thorne decided I had, there wasn't much recourse.

  My boss was notoriously difficult to work for. Thankfully, I rarely saw him. At most he was a vaguely menacing presence in the corner of my eye; a whiff of expensive cologne as he passed by my desk. To him I was surely no more than a line on the payroll sheets that he blindly signed every quarter; I wasn’t even confident that he knew my name.

  And I liked it that way. I’d had overinvolved, micromanaging bosses before, and I much preferred a cold distant figure that I didn’t even have to speak to. I worked hard - I didn’t need someone hanging over my shoulder to make sure I was doing everything right.

  As one of the graphic designers, I reported directly to Lisa, the head of Creative. She was pleasant enough, but I’d never gotten any feedback from her other than a nod of acknowledgement when I showed her my mockups and designs. Quite a few of them made it onto marketing and training materials, so I assumed Mr. Thorne liked my work.

  So when a man approached me in the hallway and introduced himself as Mr. Thorne’s attorney, the only thought that popped into my head was that I had somehow unwittingly committed copyright or trademark infringement, costing the company millions of dollars, and I would be fired on the spot. Or perhaps I’d accidentally incorporated something obscene into one of my designs…

  “Mr. Thorne would like to see you about a special project.”

  I snapped out of my panic mode.

  “A…project?”

  I must have sounded skeptical, because he went on: “It’s very important. A logo redesign for the company. He wants to keep it quiet for the meantime, but he asked to speak to you specifically.”