Daring the Bad Boy Read online

The strained words spoken by West Daley County’s chief of police at the crematorium echoed in his head from two days before.

  Who the hell did the guy think he was? Trying to dump that crap on him at his old man’s funeral? Dan Landry had been the only father he wanted, the only father that meant anything. He didn’t want to know what had happened between Decker and his mother. Not now. Not ever.

  His fingers clenched into a fist, all the fury and confusion that had burst out when he was a kid – and he’d seen the suspicious looks, heard the whispered comments, endured the taunts of the other kids – came flooding back. His knuckles throbbed with the familiar urge to hit out instead of holding back.

  Don’t believe a word of it, kid, your Mom was a good woman. Whatever they said you’ve got to turn the other cheek, because you’re the only one who’s getting hurt.

  The memory of his father’s weary faith in a woman who had never deserved it had Cal’s fingers releasing. He flexed his hand, and waited for the urge to pass. The way he’d finally learned to do back then, by using his camera lens to separate himself and his life from the endless gossip and name-calling and small-mindedness of the good people of West Daley – who all seemed to think that someone else’s business was theirs to own.

  Shake it off. You don’t have to punch Decker. You just have to forget him.

  He’d torn up Decker’s card, and he wasn’t ever going to contact the guy. So that was the end of it. No harm, no foul.

  Even so, when the barman returned with his Guinness, Cal stared into the dark liquid and knew it was going to take a lot more than one bottle to get hammered enough to go home alone tonight. He took a long drag, and let the rich malty taste start to take some of the bitterness away.

  But as he threw a ten-pound note on to the bar, slim fingers touched his forearm. He turned and tensed, the sight of the heart-shaped face beaming at him making him feel as if he’d just taken a sucker punch to the gut.

  The woman’s apple cheeks glowed in the muted lighting from the bar. The dusky pink of her skin contrasting with the fluorescent cocktail she had in her hand.

  He sucked in a careful breath, getting his bearings back.

  She wasn’t what you’d call conventionally pretty. Her mouth a little too wide, the red-brown curls rioting round her face a mess, her eyes slanted at the edges to give them a sleepy quality. But she was striking – the high cheekbones, the delicate line of her throat, the pulse fluttering in her collarbone and those come-to-bed eyes. His fingers itched again, but this time for the Leica that was packed in the bag at his feet – the desire to take some shots of her instant and unstoppable.

  But then her small white teeth dug into her bottom lip and professional interest was obliterated by the yank of lust.

  Her lush mouth curved up and the crooked half-smile looked so hot, he began to wonder if she was actually real. Was he hammered already? After one sip? He had to be more stressed than he thought.

  “Hello…” She cleared her throat, the single word coming out on a husk of breath and relief spun through his system. She was real all right. And not just a figment of his desperation to get laid. Good to know.

  “Hi.” He noticed the sparkle of interest in her eyes and hoped like hell it was the result of her appreciation, and not inebriation.

  She lifted her fingers from his arm, and he missed the light pressure through his jacket immediately.

  “I have a favor to ask you,” she said, the smoky English accent speaking directly to his cock. And making him totally forget why he wasn’t in the mood for small talk tonight.

  “Yeah?” Whatever the favor was, her cheeks were glowing redder than the cocktail now.

  “My friends, who are over there…” She pointed across the bar and he clocked a couple of women in the booth opposite waving. “Have come up with what they think is the perfect chat-up line and dared me to use it on you. So if you could just pretend I’m doing that for a couple of minutes I’d appreciate it or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  She climbed onto the stool beside him and veered to one side.

  He grabbed her arm to stop her toppling any further. She gave a squeak of distress, her skin soft and warm under his fingers, before her fluorescent drink splattered his T-shirt.

  “Oh shit.” Dumping the glass, she grabbed napkins from the dispenser on the bar. “I knew this would be a disaster.”

  “Was that part of the pick-up plan?” he asked, enjoying the feel of her fingers dabbing frantically at his pec. And then feeling kind of pathetic. Exactly how long had it been since a beautiful woman had touched him?

  She met his gaze, those slanted eyes going round with confusion.

  “To cover me in cocktail?” he elaborated, wondering why any woman who had that striking face, and eyes that arresting shade of blue-green would need a pick-up line.

  “Oh no, not at all, that was an accident…”

  “Then let’s have it.”

  “Have what?” She stopped dabbing, and her teeth sunk back into that pouty bottom lip. She’d chewed off any lipstick, leaving the skin naturally reddened. His crotch twitched at the thought of nipping the plump curve and then licking it better. “The perfect pick-up line?” he coaxed. “What is it?”

  She shook her head, making the red-brown curls bounce on her shoulders. “I’m not telling you. It’s awful.”

  His first genuine smile in over a week began to work its way loose from his chest. “That bad, huh?”

  “Worse,” she said with feeling. “It’s so bad it could get me arrested. For crimes against flirting. They think they’re being helpful because I have an allergy to Valentine’s Day.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  Her wide mouth tipped up at the edges, and his head began to spin. No doubt from his jet lag.

  “If they don’t, they should have,” she said, her enthusiastic agreement making him wonder what her gripe could be? Because she looked like the type who would usually buy into all the hearts-and-flowers bullshit. Her open face and blue-green eyes guileless enough to give Bambi a run for his money.

  “I promise not to have you arrested,” he said, hoping the line was dirty. Something dirty coming out of that lush mouth would be almost as erotic as watching her chew her lip.

  “It’s hopelessly cheesy,” she countered. Then glared at her friends, who were still watching their every move as if they had stakes in this game.

  “Pick-up lines usually are.” Not that he had a lot in his arsenal. He generally preferred straight talking when it came to sex. But he was intrigued now. As well as being seriously turned on.

  She licked her top lip, her tongue touching the dip in the center. He felt the phantom stroke right across the head of his cock.

  Damn, that mouth was killing him.

  “Do you absolutely promise not to have me arrested?” she said.

  “I swear.” He crossed a finger over the sticky patch on his chest. “Now quit stalling and let’s have it.”

  “All right, but remember you asked for it.” She took a deep breath, which made the top button on her shirt strain. The hint of cleavage was coy enough to leave far too much to his sex-starved imagination.

  She blew the breath back out. “I’m supposed to tell you, I’m giving out free hugs for Valentine’s Day and that you look like you need one.” Her blush shot back into the red zone. “You see what I mean? So cheesy it hurts.”

  And nowhere near as filthy as he’d hoped.

  He frowned. “What makes you think I need a free hug?” he asked, annoyed that the dumb line had tapped straight into the empty space inside him. The space that had opened up a week ago, when he’d gotten the two am call from the Sheriff’s Department to say his father had died from a heart condition he’d known nothing about.

  “Because you looked so pissed off…” she answered, sounding apologetic.

  He tried to dial down on the frown. Don’t scare her off, you dick.

  “Which is perfectly understandable given all the plas
tic penises on display here tonight…” She qualified quickly. But then she tilted her head to one side, considering. “And because you look sort of sad too.”

  He stared, not sure what the hell to say. He didn’t spill his guts to women, especially not ones he’d only just met. And he wasn’t about to start talking about his recent bereavement, or the shit storm Decker had tried to unload on him, to anyone. But that didn’t stop her easy understanding from unsettling him. Was it that obvious?

  You need to work harder, Landry.

  But before he could think of what to say, to deflect her concern and cover his crappy mood, she climbed off the stool.

  “All of which is none of my business. I should go.”

  “Hey, wait up.” He snagged her wrist before she could get away, determined to shift the conversation back where it belonged. He could still salvage this seduction, which had the potential to provide exactly the distraction he needed tonight. All he had to do was locate the man he’d been a week ago, before he’d gotten that phone call.

  The man who could travel the globe taking pictures of other people’s pain without letting it get to him. The man who never had to deal with his own drama, because he’d become an expert at ignoring it. The man who had never had a problem talking a beautiful woman into mutually assured orgasms and knew how to deliver satisfaction, guaranteed.

  That guy would have knocked this pick-up out of the park already.

  “I don’t need a free hug,” he said. Just to be clear.

  She nodded, but she didn’t look as if she believed him, those enchanting sea-green eyes still seeing much more than he wanted them to see.

  Time to play hard ball.

  “But a free kiss…” He leaned towards her to whisper in her ear, and felt her shudder of response as he got a lungful of her scent – fresh and sexy and so full of potential his cock strangled in his jeans. “A free kiss I could definitely use.”

  Her teeth grazed her bottom lip again. And the smile he’d been holding hostage for what felt like a month worked itself loose.

  Hell yeah, the man is back.

  Chapter Two

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  Rosie’s heartbeat accelerated, the blood pounding into her face, and a few other important places further south.

  Good Lord, the man was even more devastating when he smiled. His coffee brown eyes losing the shadows she’d spotted as soon as she’d approached him, and highlighting the golden strands in the irises. The tanned skin around his eyes creased. Was he laughing at her? Did she care?

  “A kiss?” she blurted out, just to be sure she’d heard him correctly over the raucous laughter from the hen party behind him and the sound of Rod Stewart growling his way through a golden oldie on the bar’s sound system. Her gaze got riveted to those sensual lips as if she were profoundly deaf. She pretty much was with her pulse building to a crescendo in her ears.

  “Yeah, a kiss.” The smile inched up on one side of his mouth, heating his gaze – and the hot brick that had lodged between her thighs. “If you’ve got one to spare.”

  It was a dare, plain and simple. And one she would never have taken in normal circumstances – despite her Valentine’s Day phobia and whatever Tash had to say about the healing powers of hot hook-up sex.

  She simply wasn’t the spontaneous type. Or the type to kiss random strangers in bars. No matter how hot the stranger, or how irresistible he became when he smiled.

  But then something inside her shifted.

  Maybe it was the many sparkling pink penises bobbing in her peripheral vision. Or the knowledge that Tash and Imo were watching her every move and expecting her to chicken out. Or possibly even the dutch courage afforded by four – make that three and a bit – strawberry daiquiris. Or maybe it was simply the flicker of sadness she’d detected in those delicious chocolate eyes that made her want to be bold and reckless too. Instead of serious and safe and depressingly predictable.

  But whatever it was, she heard herself say, “I’m not sure you can handle one of my kisses.”

  That would be the other her. The her who had always wanted to be daring enough to kiss a hot stranger in a bar but never had.

  He lifted his hand to touch her bottom lip with his thumb. The barely there pressure slid across her flesh and reaction sizzled through her entire body.

  “I’ll risk it, for a taste of that mouth.” His deep voice brushed over her skin like a caress. And he cupped the back of her neck, turning the sizzles into shockwaves.

  Heck, shock-tsunamis.

  He lowered his mouth to hers, holding her in place. “Kiss me,” he said, his eyes locked on hers. “I dare you.”

  The bar noise and Rod’s growling drifted away, drowned out by the thundering beat of her heart.

  She rested her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. Strength rippled beneath the soft leather, spurring her on, as his hands lifted into her hair to cradle her head and angle it, just so.

  But he waited, for her to lift up on tiptoe and close the distance between them to touch her mouth to his.

  He licked across the seam of her lips, demanding entry, and she opened for him instinctively. The thundering beat became a roar as his hands swept down to her hips and his tongue took control of the kiss, directing it into dark delicious danger.

  Her lungs squeezed, and her skin tightened, as their tongues tangled in a hungry dance. She plastered herself against him, rubbing her aching breasts against the rock solid wall of muscle beneath his T-shirt. Large hands settled on her butt to grind her against the ridge in his jeans.

  Chu-ching! Tash was right. He felt huge, and indomitable and tasted of stout and spice and pure unadulterated need.

  He drew back, his lust-blown pupils turning the hot chocolate to dark rum, his breathing as uneven as hers. The roar in her ears became deafening, until she realized the hen party were giving them a round of applause.

  The girl standing behind him with a Bride-to-Be sash and a plastic tiara stuck jauntily on her head shrieked. “Go for it, luv!”

  “You want to get out of here?” The husky request issued against her ear, rumbled up her spine, detonating a series of conflicting emotions en route. Panic and shock, but most of all bone-deep longing.

  This badass stranger wanted her. And she wanted him. She’d never been kissed like that before in her entire life. And had never kissed anyone back like that either. Without holding a single thing back. Especially not in public.

  “My place is in Clerkenwell…” His hands roamed over her butt, the firm pressure sending a smile through her system. “If you want to take this further? Somewhere private?” His lips quirked in a smile that was both wicked and ironic and unbearably sexy.

  Her heart sunk into her abdomen to party with her raging hormones.

  “I can’t believe that cheesy chat-up line actually worked,” she said, struggling to clear a path through the fog of endorphins. She didn’t know this guy from Adam, however incredible his kissing technique. And however promising the enormous bulge in his jeans.

  “It wasn’t the pick-up line. It’s that amazing mouth.” His gaze got fixated on her lips, the longing unmistakable. “Is it classified as a WMD? Because it ought to be.”

  She laughed. His palms moved up her back with a possessiveness that was even hotter than his smile. Or that bulge. The endorphins fogging up everything now but the clear thought that she wanted to kiss him some more. A lot more.

  Fuck sensible.

  What was she waiting for? Why was she trying to argue herself out of a good time? Why overcomplicate this?

  She was a grown woman with needs and desires that hadn’t been met in a year. Even longer than that if you factored in Vince’s tiny dick and aversion to giving head. All she wanted was some hot fun to cure her V-Day curse. And what better person to do it with than a guy who could kiss her senseless… And might well have a V-Day curse of his own?

  This is so not complicated.

  “How about it?” He dragged her closer, butting his hips ag
ainst hers. “You want to grab a cab and finish Valentine’s Day in style? Satisfaction guaranteed?”

  “Actually, I think I do.”

  He touched his forehead to hers, a smug grin splitting his handsome face. “What’s your name?”

  “Rosie,” she supplied, glad when he didn’t ask for a surname. This was strictly a one-night only, dirty, sexy, V-Day curse buster.

  No surnames, no keepers and no sharing of anything other than hot sex. She breathed in the scent of leather and man. And rampaging pheromones. “What’s yours?” she asked.

  “Cal. Great to meet you, Rosie,” he said, and for the first time she noticed the low drawl of his accent. American, she would guess or Canadian. But she didn’t ask. Because, no sharing.

  She dismissed the foolish trickle of regret – that she would never know where the sad look had come from. Or be able to fix it.

  Didn’t matter, she told herself staunchly. Because she’d already fixed it by blasting it with her ultra-hot lip action.

  Score one, to Rosie the Slut.

  “I think you’re about to make my year,” he murmured, the hungry look as much of an aphrodisiac as his kiss. He lifted her fingers, and brushed his lips across her knuckles.

  Her heart slam-dunked her throat. She swallowed it back down.

  Nuh-uh. Not going there.

  The man was too hot not to be an accomplished player. The gallantry was just an act to get into her panties. Which was exactly what she needed tonight.

  His gaze flicked to Imo and Tash – who were gaping at Rosie as if she’d just stripped naked on the bar. “You want to square things with your buddies before we head out?”

  She considered it for a moment. A very short moment. “No, sod it, let’s leave them hanging.” She might as well go the full slut while she was at it.

  His answering chuckle sent conspiratorial glee soaring through her veins.

  “I’ll give them all the filthy details tomorrow,” she finished, because she was fairly sure they’d insist.

  She sent her friends a jaunty thumbs up and then turned her back on Tash’s hoot of triumph and Imo’s horrified ‘we’ve created a monster’ look.