Table of Contents
DEAR READERS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE NAKED TRILOGY
THE SAVAGE TRILOGY
ALSO BY LISA RENEE JONES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the supplier and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at lisareneejones.com/contact
All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination. www.lisareneejones.com.
DIRTY RICH SECRETS
PART TWO
LISA RENEE JONES
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DEAR READERS
Thank you so much for picking up DIRTY RICH SECRET: PART TWO! Please be sure you’ve read Part One prior to diving into this book, because they do need to be read in order. Ashley and Aaron’s story continues right where we left off with the mystery man coming out of the shower. Who do you think it is? Turn the page to see!
xoxo,
Lisa
CHAPTER ONE
Ashley…
I stare at the naked man in the shower, rippling muscles licked by droplets of water, and for a moment, I can’t breathe. He’s perfect. He’s deadly. He’s Noah, not Aaron, and this man will never be Aaron to me, no matter how many times I use that name.
He’s alive.
We’re alive.
We’re together.
I launch myself toward him, and the minute I’m at the edge of the tub, he grabs me, lifts me, and pulls me into it. “I thought you were dead,” I whisper. “I thought—”
His mouth slants over mine, and oh God, he tastes like him, like Noah, like the man I love in every possible way: earthy, raw, and yes, lethal. I realize now that he was always lethal, that I always knew this, that it turned me on, that it called to me. “Noah,” I whisper against his lips.
He doesn’t even try to correct me. “Yeah, baby,” he whispers, “I’m right here.” He turns me and presses me against the wall. “Which I thought you knew two days ago. Obviously, your concussion was worse than I knew.”
“Two days?”
“Two days,” he says, the thick line of his cock pressed to my hip. “And if you don’t remember that, I haven’t fucked you as perfectly as I should have.” And just that fast, he’s kissing me again, has me refusing to ask another question. He’s going to fuck me perfectly. Yes. Please.
I reach down and wrap my hand around his shaft and say just that. “Yes. Please. Make me remember.”
A low growl escapes his throat, and he goes from devouring me with another kiss to dragging my shirt off of me and dropping it in the puddle of water at our feet. It’s barely gone, and he’s turning me to face the wall as his hands cover my breasts.
“Noah,” I plead.
“That’s right, baby,” he says, his fingers playing with my nipples and pinching them to the point of erotic pain. “Noah, and you’re the only one who knows that.” He teases my nipples again, pinching and repeating the deliciously painful action over and over until I can’t take it any longer.
“Why are you not inside me?” I demand.
“You’re going to remember this time,” he promises. “You don’t get to forget me ever.” He unsnaps my jeans and pulls them off. “Understand?”
“Why would I need to? Why would I want to?”
“Remember you said that,” he says, turning me around and backing me up against the shower wall with him caging me in, my sex clenching with the idea that he will soon be inside me.
Yes.
Please.
I could say those words, think those words, a hundred times with this man with no regret. I have no regrets with him. I’m tired of pretending otherwise. He was almost gone again. He was almost dead this time, and now he’s standing in front of me again. I wrap my arms around him and hug him, pressing my breasts to his chest and offering him my mouth, my trust, my heart.
He cups my head, claims my mouth, and in that kiss, there is possession, heat, need. We need. He needs. God, I need. Take me. Fuck me. Own me. Love me. Those are the things I try to tell him with every lick of my tongue and then he’s inside me; I don’t even know how it happens, but he’s inside me, stretching me, filling me, in all those ways that I need to be filled.
“Damn it, woman, you undo me,” he whispers, and my back hits the wall again, his hands on my breasts, fingers plucking at my nipples, his kiss devouring me. Then, I’m no longer on the ground. I’m no longer against the wall. He’s lifted me while my legs have found his waist. And just that fast, he’s pumping into me, thrusting, and I’m not sure if he’s pulling me down on top of him, or if I’m pushing against him. I’m not even sure how I lean back, but I don’t fear falling. I know he has me. I think I’ve always known that he has me. As if promising that to be true, his arm wraps around my waist, his big, beautiful, powerful body holding all of my weight.
His eyes meet mine, lowering to rake hotly over my naked, bouncing breasts, and I am all about this moment. About showing him trust. About taking what he offers and that is him, that is pleasure and with that decision is freedom to just be here, live this, take him as he is. I push into him, groan with how hard and thick he is. For me. He is hard and thick for me, and I want him to want me. We are wild, and I watch his face, the hard lines, his perfect lips that I know can be deliciously punishing, and for reasons I can’t explain, just the idea of that mouth is what undoes me.
I shatter into orgasm, and it’s not just any orgasm.
It ripples through me with such sudden force that my body stiffens and clenches, my sex clamping down on his shaft. He groans low and deep, and his reaction, his pleasure, is everything to me. He is everything to me, and I can feel the warm, hot heat of his release, I can see the pleasure ripple over his features, and that is almost enough to make me orgasm all over again. He is masculinity personified, a perfect man to me, and it’s that thought that seems to wrap us up and drug me in the final moments of his release.
He molds me close and holds me, his face pressed to my face, and for longs moments, a full minute, I think, he doesn’t put me down. He doesn’t move. He just stands there, seeming to inhale me, to drink us in, and I do the same. I don’t want to return to the rest of the world. I don’t want to fight for our lives and fight for a world where we can be together. I just want this moment to last forever.
Slowly, he slides me to my feet and strokes my cheek. “Don’t forget me ever again.”
“Don’t give me the chance,” I order. “I
thought—I thought you were dead.”
He cuts his stare, his gaze lifting skyward, his jaw clenching, and when he looks at me, his expression is all hard lines and torment. “I know,” is all he says, and then he’s releasing me, stepping out of the shower.
He grabs a towel and hands it to me and then wraps another one around his waist. There’s something going on that I don’t know, which is really a stupid thought. There’s a lot going on that I don’t know, but right now, what I care about is whatever it is that just made Noah pull away from me.
I wrap the towel around myself, and by the time I’m out of the shower, Noah has both hands pressed to the sink, his chin on his chest. Whatever is wrong is big. Whatever it is, he doesn’t want to tell me. Dread fills me. His silence stretches out, and all those thoughts I had about trust and us and no longer denying how much I love him seem to mock me.
“Noah,” I whisper. “Talk to me. I need you to talk to me.”
He pushes off the counter and turns to face me. “I’m not Noah. You need to figure that out and do it now.” And with that contradiction to what he just said in the shower, he walks out of the bathroom. Angry. He’s angry with me, and now I’m angry. I pursue him; I’m done with secrets and lies. It all ends here and now.
CHAPTER TWO
Ashley…
I don’t know what just happened to set him off, but I can guess that being attacked back there by that cabin has something to do with it. He’s on edge and pushing me away, just as he had momentarily done during that snowstorm. I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit. Needing some semblance of control I search for clothes, scavenging a couple of shopping bags. I find options, lots of options because this man knows me. I know him, too, I tell myself. I pull on jeans, a tee, and Converse, brushing my hair and that’s all the patience I have. He is making me crazy.
I charge after Noah, or Aaron, or whatever the heck I’m supposed to call him at present, I round the corner and bring the room into view. And Lord help me, he gives me his back as he drops his towel, his perfect backside now gaining my full attention. My God, this is an unfair play, which sums up everything with this man.
He starts pulling on his pants, sans any damn underwear.
“You’re killing me,” I hiss. “Everything about you is killing me.”
He whirls around to face me, his hair around his handsome face somehow accenting the anger in his eyes. “I’m keeping you alive.”
“I wouldn’t need to be kept alive if you wouldn’t have—”
“Come into your life?”
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I say quickly. “I didn’t mean that. I’m emotional, and it just came out.”
“Because it’s what’s in your head.” He snatches a shirt up. “I’m crystal clear on that point, but I did and that means you need to stop fucking calling me Noah.” He pulls the shirt over his head. “That name can get us both killed.”
I swallow hard with the harshness of his tone. “Then you shouldn’t have told me—”
“I get it,” he says. “I shouldn’t have done a lot of things, Ashley, but I did. Burying me in your hate in this room doesn’t help me make sure we don’t both end up buried somewhere else.”
“Do you want me to hate you?”
“We’ve had this discussion. No, I don’t fucking want you to hate me, Ashley.”
“Then stop acting like a dick. I get it. You’re worried. You blame yourself for all of this, but I don’t. I knew what you were. I felt it. I liked it. And don’t ask me to explain that right now. Right now, I just need to know where I am and how I got here.”
He studies me several long beats, his expression unreadable, but the air is thick, the charge between us crackling. “One of the assholes who attacked us hit you on the head. I killed them all and brought you here, to New York City.”
He killed them all. I swear he speaks those words like he’s baiting me, pushing me, trying to get a reaction. I don’t give it to him. I focus on our location. “Back to where this all started, back to where I was forced into protection. I assume that’s to find out how and who started it all. What now?”
He doesn’t pop out an answer. He scrubs his jaw and turns away, pressing his hands to the wall. Seconds tick by and then stretch to a full minute.
“Aaron?” I prod softly.
He pushes off the wall and faces me. “What now? I get you out of this.”
He doesn’t know what comes next. I feel that in him and he’s lost the only person he trusted.
“I have people we can trust,” I offer.
“They’ll end up dead. Is that the price you want them to pay for being trustworthy?”
“I’m not talking about friends. I’m talking about people with skills. Before I was taken into protective custody, a man from Walker Security guarded me. His entire team is made up of Special Forces and FBI and every agency in existence, even CIA.”
“And you just made the case for why we can’t trust them. They’re connected to the CIA.”
“I trust Smith.”
His eyes narrow on me, a fizzle of something in their depths that is dark and dangerous. But then I’ve always known he was dark and dangerous. “Do you now? Because I remember you being someone who doesn’t trust easily, and I haven’t been gone long enough for you to trust him that much. Not without some intimate time spent with him.”
“I didn’t fuck him if that’s what you’re suggesting,” I snap, angry with him now. So very angry. “But I had the right. You left.”
“I had no choice.”
“There is always a choice. He protected me from you. That’s the irony here. I was being told that you were a monster, and he was protecting me from the man I loved.”
His eyes narrow, and he closes the space between us, his hand coming down on my arm, heat shooting through me as he drags me to him. “Loved?”
My hand flattens on his chest, and his heart thunders under my palm. He’s furious now. “You know I love you,” I say, “if I didn’t, I would have ended up with Smith. He’s a good guy. I’d just found out that you weren’t who you said you were. I asked myself over and over why I didn’t just fall into Smith’s arms.”
He stares down at me, his eyes hooded. “And what was your answer?”
“I’d gotten the flowers, which turned out weren’t even from you. They’d promised there was more to the story. That kept me holding on. You wouldn’t let go of me. I wouldn’t let go of you.”
A challenge resonates between us, both of us angry, and the reasons, well, mine at least, are many. He lied. He betrayed me. He stole my life, even without protective custody. He became my everything. He became my heart and soul. I hate him. I love him. His lips thin, and he turns away, his shoulders bunched.
I open my mouth to call him Noah but clamp down on the name before it escapes my lips. “I can’t help it,” I whisper, hugging myself. “You’re Noah to me, and you did that to me. You told me—”
He turns to face me. “I know every sin I committed against you, Ashley. And right now, I want to strip you naked again, take you to bed, and fuck and love you until you remember I’m still the man you fell in love with, but that doesn’t get us to the endgame.”
“Which is what?” I ask, just needing to hear it again, just needing to know that it hasn’t changed.
“A new beginning.” His hands settle on his hips. “A new life together where I make all of this up to you for the rest of our lives.”
“Unless you talk yourself out of it?” I challenge. “Unless you decide you’re bad for me.”
“Is it my decision to make?”
“It’s our decision, and if we really are a we, that’s how it’s supposed to be. I know that the only person you trusted is gone. I know he turned on you, but I’m not him.” I take a step toward him. “And neither is Smith. Smith is a good man.”
“Who wanted to fuck you.”
“I didn’t—”
“I get it. You wanted him, but loved me too much to fu
ck him.”
“Stop it.” I wave a hand at him. “Stop pissing me off.” I point at him now. “You should have told me the truth a long time before you did. You should have trusted me. I wouldn’t have let you down.”
“And yet all too quickly, you were thinking about fucking another man.”
“Stop acting jealous. I was scared and alone.”
He lowers his head, chin on his chest again, a deep breath gushing from his lips. “Fuck,” he murmurs and then he’s back in front of me, stroking my cheek, and when he looks into my eyes, this man, this killer, is tormented, vulnerable. Afraid? Of losing me? Of losing everything? Yes. I do believe he is. “The idea of you with another man guts me,” he says. “And I can’t stop that feeling. I can’t stop loving you. I can’t fucking walk away from you, even though, as you said, I did this to you.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“You did, and you’re right. I didn’t step back from you. I didn’t protect you because that’s how I could have protected you. I have no control where you’re concerned, and there is little in my life I can’t control, Ashley.”
This confession, that I’m what shatters his control, steals my heart all over again. “I don’t want you to be okay with me and another man. I just want you to understand how I felt.”
“I do understand, and I’m fucking sorry a hundred times over. I’m going to protect you. I’m going to take care of this. I know I keep saying that, but it’s more than words, and I need you to believe I can make this right.”
“I do, but I also know that Smith can help. I trust him. Trust me, please. Trust me like you didn’t trust me when you held back, when you didn’t tell me who you really were. And, I met the Walker brothers who run the operation he works for; they’re good men.”
“Who think I’m a traitor.”
“Smith can convince them otherwise.”
“Why would Smith believe otherwise?”
“I’ll convince him. We’ll convince him.”
Dirty Rich Secrets: Part Two Page 1