Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Other Books
Note from the Publisher
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Midnight Confessions sneak peek
For Better, For Worse sneak peek
About the Author
By
Tammi Labrecque
c 2015 Tammi Labrecque
CaroBella Publishing June 2015
Cover, title design, and interior design by Larks & Katydids
This ebook is licensed for your personal use and may not be re-sold or given away to others. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase a copy for that person. If you did not purchase this book, or it was not purchased for your use, then you have an unauthorized copy. Please go to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting my hard work and copyright.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, by any means electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system currently in use or yet to be devised.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, institutions, TV shows, or infernal creatures is entirely coincidental.
Books by Tammi Labrecque
(Links are to the Amazon US store. For international versions, search the appropriate Amazon store.)
Romance:
For Better, For Worse
Midnight Confessions
Paranormal Chick Lit:
One Hell of a Guy
(The Cambion Trilogy Book 1)
A Deal With the Devil
(The Cambion Trilogy Book 2)
Fantasy:
SongHealer
Birthright (A SongHealer Novella)
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Note from the Publisher
During the promotional period for One Hell of a Guy’s release, we are also including, for a limited time, sneak peeks of Midnight Confessions and For Better, For Worse, Tammi Labrecque’s two best-selling romances. You will find them after the conclusion of this book (at about the 90% mark in your Kindle edition). We hope you enjoy them, and want to read more!
One Hell of a Guy will be free or $0.99 for the entire week after release, and Midnight Confessions (normally $4.99) will be only $2.99. So be sure to grab all of these quirky romances!
For Myra Scott,
who came up with most of the best ideas for this story.
Any half-baked ideas are probably mine.
And for Jenny, who keeps writing my funniest lines.
Neither one of you is getting any royalties, though.
Chapter 1
IT WAS THE voice that got her attention. Rich and deep, unbelievably compelling. It was unmistakably female but no less intoxicating, even to straight-as-an-arrow Lily. She’d never had occasion to use the word “throaty” in conversation — and, God willing, she never would — but if anyone had asked her to describe the voice, she would have been forced to use it then.
She had to have a look at the kind of woman who sounded like that, which was why she was currently peeking around a display of insanely expensive hand cream, trying not to make a sound and — more importantly — not to knock any of the pricey jars onto the hard Mexican ceramic tiled floor.
30 Luxe was the sort of high-end boutique store where the Rich and Beautiful people shopped. Lily, barely getting by and decidedly average-looking, wouldn’t even have been there if she’d been buying something for herself; she didn’t make the kind of money required to be a 30 Luxe patron. But she wanted to get a bridal shower gift for her coworker Brit that would impress everyone at the office without driving her to bankruptcy, and Miri insisted this was the perfect place, and there was a large clearance section.
Large clearance section had turned out to be a bit of an exaggeration. If hyperbole were an Olympic event, Miri would gold-medal every year. Lily, on the other hand, couldn’t even tell someone their ugly baby was cute without breaking out in a cold sweat. But, exaggeration or not, there were at least a few things in her price range. Lily was trying to decide between a sweet-but-slutty peignoir set and a pair of exquisite hand-blown champagne flutes when she first heard the woman speak: “I’ll just take them all. I hate making decisions, don’t you?”
So there they were, Lily craning her neck to see around the hand cream and Miri pressed up close behind her, watching the woman take off a cranberry-colored stiletto and hand it to the attentive saleswoman.
“Wow,” Miri breathed. “Get a load, huh?”
Wow, indeed. The woman was absolutely stunning: slender but well-endowed and clad in a skin-tight leather miniskirt and paper-thin white silk blouse that clung to and showcased every robust curve. Her hair was the kind of white-blonde that didn’t come in a bottle and she wore it loose and waist-length, allowing it to wave and curve against her face, shoulders, and arms. Even seated it was obvious she was easily six feet tall. Her eyes were almost on the same level with the petite Asian saleswoman, who was her absolute opposite, short and reed-slender with a silky black bob.
The blonde was older than Lily — she could have been anywhere from forty to a very well-maintained fifty or so — and carried herself with the kind of poise and confidence Lily didn’t even bother to covet, it was so far beyond her.
“Some girls have all the luck,” Miri whispered, and Lily nodded slightly.
“They sure do,” she whispered back, eyeing the woman as she pulled on a pair of knee-high leather boots — they were in great shape but not new, so probably what she had worn into the store — and stood, towering over the Asian girl. Shoes and empty shoeboxes littered the floor at her feet. Lily did a quick count: six pairs.
“Can you just have them sent to my house?” the woman asked, gesturing at the pile. Lily wished she could have them sent to her house instead, particularly those hot cranberry stilettos. Some days life just seemed so unfair. She wasn’t poor, exactly, and neither was Miri. They lived in one of the most expensive places in the world, though, and neither of them had ever walked out of a store — not even a discount store, let alone a place like this — with a half-dozen new pairs of shoes.
And Lily knew she sure as hell didn’t look like that in a miniskirt.
“Where do I sign up?” Miri whispered. Lily turned to look at her over her shoulder and found her grinning, but she had an odd gleam in her eye as well. Literally a gleam; a weird, faint light swirled into her eyes and then out again, almost too fast for Lily to see. But that was ridiculous. Trick of the incredibly posh boutique lighting, no doubt.
“To be her, or to be with her?” Lily asked, snickering. “You look like you might go jump her bones any second.”
Miri shook her head a little as if to clear it, then squinted at the woman. “I don’t swing that way.”
“Apparently the salesgirl does,” Lily said, pointing with her chin at the scene in front of them. The blonde had a hand on the salesgirl’s shoulder, making a motion that wasn’t quite a massage but wasn’t a casual touch either. The salesgirl was staring up at her adoringly, nodding at whatever the woman was now saying, though her voice had dropped so Lily could no lon
ger make out her words.
The blonde gave the salesgirl’s shoulder a final squeeze and sailed out the door. The salesgirl stood quietly for a moment, then shook her head much like Miri had a few moments before. After a moment, she crouched down to begin slowly boxing up the shoes — so slowly, in fact, Lily wondered if there was something wrong with her.
Lily tilted her head and elbowed Miri. “Does she look high to you?”
Miri considered, shrugged. “A little floaty, maybe. Weird question.”
“Well, it’s the oddest thing, but … I don’t think that woman paid.”
Miri shrugged again. “I doubt she drugged the help. Probably has an account or something. Once you get to a certain point, you have so much money you don’t even have to carry any money.”
“Yeah, but she didn’t give her a credit card or anything.” Thinking about credit cards gave Lily a little pang of guilt. She was pretty sure her own credit cards would have wept openly if she’d tried to use them to purchase anything. In fact, she was so close to maxed out on the worst of them that she wasn’t sure the automatic payment that would soon be coming out of her also-weepy bank account would be enough to keep her from going over the limit. She needed to learn some self-control. Or win the lottery.
She made a mental note to stop and pick up a lottery ticket on the way home.
“If you get rich enough, you don’t even bring your card,” Miri said.
“Where do I sign up for that?” Lily asked, and giggled. “What do you suppose it takes to get to that point? Because I’d very much like to be rich as well as hot.”
“Deal with the devil?” Miri suggested.
“Hard work and sacrifice certainly don’t seem to be doing it.” Lily frowned and put the peignoir set back on the rack. She really didn’t know Brit well enough to be buying her lingerie, and the champagne flutes were unbelievably beautiful — not to mention a little cheaper. “I bust my ass at work and I haven’t had a slice of pizza in weeks, but I’m still just regular old under-employed, overweight me.”
“Overweight?” Miri scoffed. “By what, five pounds?”
“More like twenty,” Lily said. “And now I want pizza. Great.”
“What do you say we pay for this crap — you know, with our regular old plebeian debit cards — and get out of here?” Miri suggested. “Finnegan’s has pizza rolls for Tuesday happy hour. I’ll smack your hands away if you have more than three.”
That was Miri in a nutshell. She’d never have suggested forgoing pizza rolls — or any good thing — but she was so sensible about it. Moderation in all things was her motto, and Lily knew she meant it, too. For Miri, it was all about willpower.
Of course, Lily thought, if I had the willpower to stop at three pizza rolls, I wouldn’t need to worry about stopping at three pizza rolls.
Still… pizza rolls.
“It’s a deal,” she said.
***
After Finnegan’s — where Lily had a fourth pizza roll, and Miri did indeed smack her hand for it — Miri suggested Club Domino. They had a single drink there, but it was full of older guys on the prowl. Like, really old. The third hand Lily had to remove from her ass belonged to a leathery old guy with enough mileage on him to be her grandfather.
They hit the sidewalk ready for something new, something fun — and found it in the form of a flyer tacked to a telephone pole, spotlit by a nearby streetlamp. It was a garish red, with glossy black lettering slashed across the front spelling out one word:
ABADDON.
The fine print informed them it was a brand-new club and it was only four blocks north.
“Hey,” Lily said. “I’m doing a photoshoot there tomorrow.”
Her job with NYC Monthly wasn’t glamorous — the magazine positioned itself as hip and happening but it was too new to have any real cachet yet — but she did get some cool assignments. For the last six months, she had been shooting a series on hot new clubs. If memory served, Abaddon had been open for about six weeks — and this would be an excellent chance to scope it out before the formal shoot.
“That’s a weird thing to name a club,” Miri said. “Isn’t that the hot chick from Supernatural?”
“I think it’s from the Bible,” Lily said, but her memory of what it might mean was pretty hazy — she’d had three drinks so far, and Sunday School had been an awfully long time ago.
“Everything in Supernatural is from the Bible, Lily. That’s like, its whole schtick.”
Lily snorted. “I just mean, it means something else. I think it might literally mean Hell. I don’t know; my Mom was crazy for church and stuff but I haven’t been in more than a decade.”
“Wanna check it out?” Miri asked. “Maybe the guys there won’t have more hair in their noses than on their heads.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Lily said. “Or whoever can send us some eye candy.”
And, giggling, they headed north to find Hell.
Chapter 2
SEBASTIAN LEANED BACK against the bar, keeping to himself as he watched the throng of people writhing and pulsing on the dance floor. He barely noticed the lights and the music anymore, but the waves of energy coming off the dancers just got better and better.
Dancing, if one thought about it, was an awful lot like having sex — at least if you were doing it right. The palpable energy coming from the direction of the dance floor wasn’t as potent as what he might get from having a partner — dance or otherwise — but it fed a baseline need in him. It made it easy to resist the occasional overture from any woman who happened to get past the not-interested vibe he was very intentionally putting out.
And the vibe was sincere. Since the day Vivienne — his long-lost and, regrettably, recently-found mother — had swept into his life like a thundering hurricane, everything was different. She’d explained to him who and what he was, and after that he’d had as little to do with the opposite sex as he could manage … which was a lot harder than he’d expected. He was virtually irresistible to them, but it had nothing to do with him, with the Sebastian he’d been for almost all of his life.
Since then, he had taken a woman on occasion, when nothing else would slake the need, but he took no joy from it. The thrill was gone, as the saying went.
He missed it — that thrill — very much.
Sighing, he turned around and signaled the bartender for another drink.
***
Abaddon was an assault on the senses. The music was incredibly loud, with a driving backbeat that practically rattled Lily’s teeth. Lights flashed constantly in a rainbow of colors, sending the gyrating bodies into stark relief one moment, eclipsing them the next. And then there were the smells: sweat, perfume, alcohol … and an odd sulfur smell that made her feel jumpy and nervous. She hoped the wiring wasn’t about to go; with her luck she’d be trampled under the stampede if the place caught fire.
A mezzanine lined three walls of the club, and it was packed with dancers and drinkers. She worried briefly about how sturdy it was — there had to be 200 people up there — then followed Miri through the crush of gyrating bodies, headed for the bar.
The bar was an enormous square in the middle of the huge, warehouse-like room, and at each of the four corners was a raised platform. A pair of women danced on each platform, clad in bikini tops, cutoff shorts, and furry go-go boots; they danced with each other in lascivious abandon, writhing together in a way that created a spectacle that would make most people blush. At one time, in fact, it would have made Lily blush, but not anymore — she had lived in New York for two years now, and was accustomed to people making displays of themselves in one way or another, and more often than not that way was sexual. It wasn’t her style — she was far more reserved than her peers when it came to sex. Not a prude and definitely not a virgin, but still … she was picky, and she was careful, and she was not interested in jumping into bed with just anyone.
She and Miri reached the bar and immediately a bartender was there, leaning towards
them.
“What can I get ya?” he asked, shouting to be heard over the music. Miri ordered a Dos Equis, Lily a mojito.
For a few minutes the women nursed their drinks, backs to the bar, surveying the crowd. It was so odd, but Lily would have sworn there wasn’t a single person in the entire place who wasn’t incredibly attractive.
“Do you think they turn ugly people away at the door?” Miri asked, leaning over and shouting an echo of Lily’s own thought into her ear.
Lily grinned. “They let us in, didn’t they?”
“Speak for yourself,” Miri shouted, and did a little shimmy. “This girl’s looking really good these days.”
That was true. Up till about six months before, Miri had been a good fifty pounds heavier than Lily, but she’d done the whole low-carb thing and dropped a lot of weight. At this point she weighed about the same as Lily and, since she was a couple of inches taller, she looked amazing — curvy and slender and just really fantastic.
“You certainly are,” Lily said, leaning over and slapping her lightly on the rear. “Maybe you ought to see if any of the dudes here want to break off a piece of that.”
Miri laughed and shook her head. “Nah, I’m just looking. Things are going great with Matthew.”
Lily nodded, but said nothing. She didn’t care for Miri’s boyfriend. He didn’t seem to be interested in anything but video games and smoking pot, and Lily had been sort of hoping they might not work out, but it seemed things were getting more serious instead. As a friend — as a best friend — it was her job to be happy when her friend was happy, and for now Matthew made Miri happy. Lily planned to keep an eye on him, though.
One Hell of a Guy: The Cambion Trilogy, Book 1 Page 1
