Accidental Protector: A Marriage Mistake Romance Read online

  We find our tempo, work it together, as one. Giving and taking.

  His lips meet mine with an intimate, incredible kiss. One that tells me I’m in way too deep in all the worst ways: right and wrong, heavenly and hellish, scary and irrational, pain and paradise, body and mind and soul.

  Whatever hold he has on me isn't just powerful. It’s unique. A once in a lifetime sort of thing.

  This isn't just sex every time our bodies fuse. Not a one night stand as his forehead touches mine. Not a mistake as he quickens his thrusts, lifting my butt off the bed, crashing into me with such fury and force my first O rips out of me.

  I lock my legs around him and come. He kisses me hard, digging his teeth into my bottom lip, swallowing my defiant screams. He pushes right through it, through me, and just keeps fucking.

  My legs tighten on his rigid body, joining him as the momentum between us grows like the storm this morning. I remember how it took the city, slow and angry, howling its release.

  That's how our bodies find their love and weave their lust.

  Like thunder. Like lightning. Like wind.

  Our pleasure grows. Ever rising.

  So do we, higher and higher, until there’s nowhere left to go.

  I’m there again, on the precipice, about to explode. Noah, too. His body goes rock hard, every muscle building with the animal need to release, to spill himself inside me.

  His thrusts are purposeful, angry, almost desperate, driving us to completion.

  I start panting, shallow breaths in his mouth, his forehead pressed against mine. We lock eyes one more time.

  He doesn't have to say a word. I see them in his sex-crazed eyes.

  Come the fuck with me, Lucky.

  Come right now.

  My pussy grips every inch of him for dear life and I go tumbling over. Orgasm burns through me, hotter than ever. Trying to keep from shouting, I mold my lips with his as another once in a lifetime storm tears through my body, into his.

  His final thrust finishes it. Finishes me. And so does the soft roar in his throat, pushing against my tongue.

  So does the way I feel his cock pulse inside me, even through the condom, his balls pumping and heaving and electrifying every miracle bit of him.

  Just like a storm, the aftermath remains long after the sizzle and clatter. We lay there together, connected, waiting for our breathing to normalize.

  He kisses the tip of my nose. “Hell of an encore, Lucky. Fuck.”

  “I know.”

  As his laughter dies down, I hear something. Like a distant ringtone going off.

  “Listen!” I say, bolting up. “Do you hear –”

  He tilts his head. “It’s just my phone. It’ll stop.”

  “Or Aunt Judy will answer it,” I tell him, biting my tongue in horror. “You left it on the coffee table.”

  “Shit!”

  14

  Trouble Brewing (Noah)

  I leap off Lucky and go charging for the bathroom.

  Whoever it is, I’m going to kill them. End their fucking lives for calling me at this time of the night. For throwing a wrench in what had been the best sex of my life.

  The door opens while I’m washing my hands, and a pair of sweat pants land on the floor as it shuts. I grab them, pull them on so I'm presentable instead of buck naked, and open the door.

  Lucky, wearing those awesome loose-fitting shorts and a t-shirt, stands at the bedroom door. So does Aunt Judy. Holding my phone.

  “It's your friend, Eli,” Aunt Judy says, holding the phone out to me.

  Fuck.

  My anger dissipates. Replaced by worry. He wouldn’t call this late if it wasn’t important.

  I take the phone while she tells Lucky that Eli was in the service with me. How could Aunt Judy ever forget that time I let him crash with us for a few days, before our big road trip east? He rambled on and on about her bomb cooking, in between spouting off his latest theories about Area 51 and UFOs.

  “What’s up?” I bark into the phone as I walk past both of them, into the living room and toward the balcony. Those pictures he sent over not long after our last chat were nothing short of pornographic.

  If this is about Charlie boy – if that little weasel's disrupting my sleep and my sex life – he'd better hope I don't take the notion to fly down there and kick his ass.

  “Sorry for the late call, Bud,” Eli says, “but thought you’d want to know the big news: lover boy just hopped on a plane to the States. No reply to my anonymous message. He's decided to do this the hard way.”

  Shit.

  “What happened?”

  “From what I hear, he and the girlfriend had a falling out. She’s still here. Screwing off with some big Instagram muscle model who's got like a billion followers and enough money to make our fuckboy jealous. Must've figured out what was good for the gander was good for the goose.”

  That slimy little shit. There’s no doubt Charlie boy will come looking for Lucky now. Try to win her back.

  That's what babydicks like him do. They use nice girls to stroke their egos and throw them away. Then when they finally take a beating, they're on their hands and knees, bawling for sympathy. Round two of the world's most selfish bullshit.

  He had his chance, and he won't get another. I’ll make sure of it.

  “Got it, Eli. Thanks for calling.”

  “Anytime,” Eli says. “If I learn anything more, I’ll message you.”

  “I appreciate it,” I tell him before ending the call.

  Damn it.

  I really, really don’t have time for this shit. Not with Lucient breathing down my neck. Not with my only family here, thinking we've got a happy wedding to plan. Not with no clue what it even means that I just fucked Lucky's brains out, and I would have kept doing it, if it wasn't for her pissant ex.

  I turn, see Lucky and Aunt Judy standing near the kitchen. Talking.

  Not good.

  Aunt Judy knows Eli lives in Aruba. She wouldn’t think anything about telling Lucky that, but Lucky would question why Eli would call now.

  She's not stupid. She can put two and two together, knowing Charlie boy is vacationing there, too.

  Or, rather, was vacationing there. Slippery little fink.

  I push open the sliding door and arrive at the kitchen counter. “Toast?” I say, smelling the bread warming.

  “Do you want some?” Aunt Judy asks. “Nothing like warm toast to help me sleep.”

  “No, thanks,” I answer, but I do remember eating toast with her in the middle of the night many times, and yeah, sleeping like a kitten after.

  I think it was more the late night conversations we’d have while eating that helped both of us sleep. Always talked about the little, happy things.

  There were times in Iraq, especially on patrol, when I couldn’t sleep, and would think of those nights eating toast with her.

  “Is everything okay?” Lucky asks. “Noah?”

  “Yeah,” I say, probably too fast.

  “You two go on back to bed,” Aunt Judy says, now buttering her toast. “I’m going to eat my toast and read a bit. I fell asleep before reading more than a few lines. Still had my glasses on when the phone rang.”

  I take Lucky’s arm, hoping beyond hope Aunt Judy hasn't said anything about Eli.

  She tells Aunt Judy goodnight and walks alongside me into the bedroom. I barely have the door shut behind us when she spins around.

  “Why did your army buddy call this late? What's going on?”

  I shrug. “We help each other out every now and then.”

  A hint of disbelief flashes in her eyes. “Whatever he had to say couldn’t wait until morning?”

  I walk toward the bed. “He’s in a different time zone, Lucky. Easy to get mixed up.”

  “If you say so.” She crosses her arms, wielding a suspicious look. I should've known. “Is he helping you find your cousin? Was this about Jess?”

  “No.” That’s the truth. And part of the reason this th
ing is so fucked up.

  If I’d been able to call in others, some help, this would already be over. But it's my problem, and my family's. I'm not putting more lives in danger. Eli and Perez deserve their own lives.

  Stifling a sigh, I bend down and pick up my laptop.

  She walks to the other side of the bed and sits down. “I’ve wondered how much I should ask you. About how best to even ask in the first place. I’ve never been involved in anything like this, but bottom line is, I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on.”

  Her back is to me. As much as I want to tell her that I don’t need her help, or want it, I want to comfort her.

  Show her she's helping me just by being here.

  But deep down, I know it's not completely true. It's not that easy.

  She’s clouding my vision. Tripping me up at a crucial time when I can’t afford to have anything get in the way of finishing the job. Before anyone else gets hurt.

  “So,” she says, turning slightly. “I’ve decided I’m going to leave that part up to you. Whenever you’re ready, you’ll tell me more, and then we’ll get it figured out. Together.”

  I bite my tongue to keep from saying anything. There's nothing to say.

  Lucky will not fucking put herself on the line. Not for me. Not for Jess. Not for any of this.

  It's my fault she's been shoehorned into Lucient's sights to begin with.

  She lays down on her side, still not facing me, and then pulls the covers up and over her shoulder. “Goodnight, Noah.”

  A thousand pounds of hideous guilt hits me, sinks to my very depths.

  Anger, too. At Cesare. How demon Fuckface has completely scrambled my life.

  Except, it's not just that, is it? I told her a story because I didn't want her to know I'd inserted myself into scrambling up hers. Vowing to chase off that overgrown toddler she's dumped, and trying to set her family right.

  I know what I have to do, and in a way, she’s making it easier.

  I pick up my laptop and walk to the door. Leaving the room, I click off the light, taking one last glance behind me to make sure she's sound asleep.

  Aunt Judy watches as I walk across the room.

  “You sure you don’t want some toast?” she asks.

  “I’m sure. Just need some fresh air.” Once again, I open the door to the balcony. Keeping my mind on the task at hand is hard.

  I keep thinking of Lucky, alone in bed. My bed.

  How different this could be if everything else went right.

  That’s life, though. The best laid plans of mice and men.

  I find an email address for Charlie's old man, Donald Pratt, from his company website. It takes a few more minutes to type up a message from an untraceable account, then for good measure, I send one off to his mother as well. I only attach one picture to her email. His father gets several. Barely censored.

  I stay on the balcony until long after Aunt Judy shuts off the lamp beside the couch and flops down, still holding her book.

  Eventually, I make my way back into the bedroom and crawl into bed. Lucky shifts softly, sound asleep, and I bury the desire to wrap my arms around her, hold her close, whisper how I'm making this right for both of us.

  Lucient is on my mind as I close my eyes. I tell myself not to think about him or Jess.

  That I just need some shut-eye. But the memories flow anyway, remembering the first time I heard about Cesare Lucient, roughly a month before Jess even linked up with him.

  A man, Roy Adams, had wanted to hire me. He needed a PI with my skills to find the drug dealer who sold the poison that killed his nephew.

  Throw a dart in any street in any major California city, and chances are you’ll hit a drug dealer. I don’t mind getting one more lowlife prison time, so I'd agreed to meet with Adams.

  He’d said I came highly recommended, and then went into his story, how he didn't want what happened to his nephew to happen again. It was believable. Similar tragedies happen everyday.

  He’s what I doubted. Adams himself.

  Right from the start.

  Within the first few minutes of the conversation, he’d told me how that job – catching this lone drug dealer, some underling of a lieutenant based in Reno, a man named Lucient – could evolve into other gigs. Bigger ones with higher payouts.

  I’d made sure there were no outward signs I'd seen the red flags waving as I listened to him describe the drug scene. He’d known too much to just be a concerned uncle, a guy who said he had a few years on the force before he'd left it behind early in life.

  Ultimately, I’d told him he’d contacted the wrong man, and left.

  Within the hour, I’d gotten a phone call from someone saying I should reconsider helping Roy.

  I ignored it, but less than a week later, I received another one. Telling me I needed to reconsider. That there’s a powerful man who wants to hire me, and it would be in my best interest to take the offer. That it won’t be made again. And the consequences of turning it down could be 'unpleasant.'

  I didn’t give a shit if it'd ever be offered again or not. Threats, on the other hand...

  By then, I’d researched Roy Adams, which wasn't his real name, and there was no dead nephew.

  He works for Cesare Lucient himself. And Lucient wanted me to find a little crony who'd gone rogue, skimming some inventory off the top.

  The small amount I’d come across on Lucient showed a pyramid of crimes, but he had legions of minions under him. So many that nothing ever goes high enough to pin anything on him.

  A few weeks later, Jess mentioned Cesare. Said she'd met him scoping out the foreclosure market, how he wanted rentals for income and a high class home somewhere in the Lake Tahoe area.

  She hadn’t used his real name, at first, but an alias I’d instantly recognized from my search on him. I’d told her to stay away. Stay very fucking far away.

  She’d asked why. I hadn’t given her a reason, other than because I said so. He's dangerous.

  Mistake number one.

  I didn’t realize it then, but I do now.

  Releasing a heavy sigh, I roll over. Lucky is still sleeping.

  I wonder if I do need to tell her what happened to Jess. All the details. I sure as hell don’t want history repeating itself.

  But the number one rule of getting any job done is secrecy. Less people knowing, less to screw up. Some of the secrets I have, I’ll take to my grave.

  This isn’t one of them.

  Fuck, I have to tell her, don't I?

  If it means keeping her safe, keeping her alive, I have to tell her.

  The whole truth, like she wanted from the very beginning. Then I’ll send her home with Aunt Judy.

  Only, that can't work.

  So far, Lucient has stayed clear my aunt. I need to keep it that way, and I also need to get this asshole off Lucky's tail. Somehow. Someway.

  Disgusted clear to my bones, I roll over, close my eyes, and force myself to sleep.

  There has to be an answer, but it's not coming tonight.

  It’s dark. I’m in the desert. Lucient is there. Minions surround him.

  He has a gun. Every last one of his bastards are armed.

  “I deeply regret it had to come to this. You wouldn't give me what I wanted, Bernard, so now I won’t give you what you want,” he says, his ice-cold professionalism dripping from his lips.

  “Fuck you,” I tell him. I reach behind me, try to pull the weight I feel near my hip, but my hands are tied.

  I can't reach my knife.

  And if I ever had a firearm, it's gone, leaving me with a knife in the middle of a gunfight.

  Cesare isn't patient, or fair. He pulls his switchblade, the gold handle glinting in the moonlight.

  Somehow, it's already bloody. He holds it near my face, stooping low, whispering like Lucifer in my ear. “Look, damn you. There.”

  His cold hands touch my cheeks. He twists my face to a slumped, shadowy shape I hadn't seen at first. It's lim
p on the ground, barely a few feet away.

  I look because I can't do anything else. And when my eyes focus, I scream.

  My soul dies at the sight of Lucky covered in blood. Her eyes hollow.

  “Noah! Noah!”

  I tear my eyes open. I’m gasping. Heart pounding like a jackhammer.

  “Noah?” She's shaking me.

  It’s Lucky. She’s alive.

  I grab her, and hold on tight as the nightmare's afterburn slowly fades.

  Of all the nightmares I’ve ever had, this was the worst. The hardest. Still has me trembling.

  “You were dreaming,” she says.

  I know. This happens almost every night. Ever since Jess became a ghost.

  I pull her back down, so we're both flat on the bed again, and hold her against me. “It's over. Darlin', don't worry.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “No,” I answer. More coldly than I mean to.

  We lay in the darkness, quiet for a long time before she finally asks, “What happened to Jess? How did she disappear?”

  “I don’t know.” I close my eyes, growing furious at myself for not knowing, for not protecting Jess the way I should have.

  I know who. I almost know why. But the exact details of how Lucient got her, when and where he swung the trap shut, are the same damnable mysteries as always.

  Lucky kisses my shoulder as she snuggles tighter against me.

  “It all started months ago. Better part of a year,” I say, knowing the time has come. “A guy who works for Lucient wanted me to find a drug dealer. I refused. Saw through him, trying to bait me into a bad job. A short time later, I discovered Lucient had hooked Jess into finding him a house on Lake Tahoe. She sold real estate, but she never did high-end houses, or anywhere so far from Redding.”

  I'm silent, collecting my thoughts.

  Lucky rubs my shoulders. Waiting. Comforting.

  “She was excited, you can imagine. I told her to stay away from him. She didn’t listen, and soon she was spending more and more time across the state line. So I got my PI license in Nevada and started digging into Lucient’s past. I stayed under his radar, kept moving, bouncing from apartments here and some back in California.”