by Maria Luis
DEFIED
Blood Duet, Book 2
Maria Luis
Alkmini Books, LLC
I am both a sinner and a saint, but I bleed vengeance.
For years, I’ve lived in the grey… until her.
Avery Washington didn’t belong in the shadows, but I dragged her into the darkness anyway.
One kiss, and I would stop at nothing to possess her.
One caress, and my need to destroy wavered.
Our attraction was poison and pleasure.
They say the devil recognizes his own, but I never saw Avery coming.
She's determined to light the matchsticks, and I can't resist going down in flames...
Defied (Blood Duet, Book 2)
Maria Luis
Copyright © 2018 by Alkmini Books, LLC
Thank you for reading and reviewing this book. It is illegal to distribute or resale this copy in any form.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Photographer: James Critchley
Cover Model: Charlie Garforth
Cover Designer: Najla Qamber, Najla Qamber Designs
Editing: Kathy Bosman, Indie Editing Chick
Proofreading: Tandy Proofreads
Created with Vellum
For my girls in Book Boyfriends Anonymous - thank you for encouraging me to write Lincoln & Avery’s story when I shared a snippet of the prologue months and months ago. Without your interest, without your encouragement for me to take a leap of faith, the Blood Duet would still be gathering dust on my laptop. Thank you for always having my back, and I love you guys, tons.
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Good job, honey.
Contents
1. Avery
2. Avery
3. Avery
4. Lincoln
5. Avery
6. Avery
7. Avery
8. Lincoln
9. Avery
10. Lincoln
11. Avery
12. Lincoln
13. Avery
14. Avery
15. Avery
16. Lincoln
17. Avery
18. Avery
19. Lincoln
20. Avery
21. Avery
22. Lincoln
23. Avery
24. Lincoln
25. Lincoln
26. Avery
27. Lincoln
28. Lincoln
29. Avery
30. Lincoln
31. Avery
32. Lincoln
33. Avery
34. Lincoln
35. Avery
36. Lincoln
Epilogue
“Lagniappe” - Because New Orleans Always Gives More Than You Asked For
Join the Fun!
Dear Fabulous Reader
Preview of Say You’ll Be Mine: A NOLA Heart Novel
Preview of Power Play: Blades Hockey
Acknowledgments
Also by Maria Luis
About the Author
1
Avery
The chill of the metal gun to my temple was like ice skittering down my spine.
Every inch of me was frozen—fear working its way through my limbs, immobilizing me until all I could do was struggle to breathe.
In.
Out.
In.
Out—
The muzzle of the pistol slid from its place against my temple to that sensitive spot behind my earlobe. Chills erupted over my skin, and there was nothing I wanted more in that moment than to cup my hands over my mouth and quiet the humiliating whimpers escaping me on every exhale.
Be brave.
Be bold.
The stranger’s words finally registered, pushing through the blood pounding furiously in my head, and suddenly the ice turned to heat, and I worried I might vomit all over the front seat of the SUV.
My gaze latched onto Lincoln, the man who’d just brought me to orgasm not even an hour ago. Multiple orgasms, my brain offered up, not just one.
“Ahhh, I see,” the man in the back of the SUV drawled pleasantly, like we’d all sat down for tea instead of a feast of guns and terror, “you didn’t know.”
How could I have known? My stepfather had never spoken of having kids when he’d been married to Momma. There’d only been me. His stepdaughter. His only child. Apparently he’d lied about that too.
The urge to throw up returned, tugging on my gag reflex, but not because of who Lincoln Asher was—we had no ties to one another. Nothing to bind us. His father had my mother murdered in cold blood, and the way I saw it, that one fact destroyed any familial bonds society could have ever deemed existed between us.
No, I wanted to vomit because that was yet another lie Jay had fed us.
Another lie, another way to keep us in the dark and create an illusion of gentlemanly behavior that held no truth to it.
And Momma and I had believed every word, sucking them up like they were a paragon of all that was right in the world. He’d never lie to us, he’d always whispered—but he had.
Every. Single. Day.
“Take the gun off her,” Asher clipped out, his voice pitched so low I could barely hear him over my thundering heart. “If you’re going to kill someone, it’s going to be me. Not her. Do you understand?”
The gun on the underside of his jaw shoved up, pushing hard enough to cant his head into an awkward angle.
“The one with the gun at your head is the one who gets to call the shots here, Sergeant. And that ain’t you.”
In the light of the vehicle, Asher’s scars flexed as his cheeks hollowed with a dark laugh. “Ain’t, huh? You suddenly forget every bit of schooling you learned back in the day, Joshua? Or is it that when you’re slumming, you feel the need to speak like us regular folk and forget all about your fancy Pershing presidency?”
My eyes went wide. The Pershing presidency?
The man holding me at gunpoint was Joshua Hampton?
It was so absurd that I almost laughed out loud. Maybe I would have, if it weren’t for the pistol getting so closely acquainted with the back of my skull. As it was, my voice tremored when I spoke, like the very devil himself was the one seated behind me. “What do you want from us?”
“So, she speaks.” The backseat cushion squeaked as he shifted his weight. “There are many things that I want, Laurel, but first . . .” He cocked the hammer on the revolver at Asher’s jaw, the sound swallowed by the hum of cars honking their horns as they passed us. “We need to take a little trip. In case you’re concerned, Sergeant, you’ve got enough gas. I checked when I had Templeton break in for me and hide me under all your uniforms back here. I’d suggest bringing them to a laundromat soon.”
“Motherfucker.”
In the driver’s seat, Asher jolted, twisting at the waist and hands lifting into motion, and then—
Click.
This time, it was the hammer to the revolver at the back of my head, and I wasn’t the only one who stiffened in fear. Asher’s limbs locked in mid-air, his jaw working as he went still, his familiar blue eyes fixed on me.
Dread. Terror. Grief.
I read it all in his gaze just before he blinked and his customary mask slipped back into place.
Would he tell Hampton to pull the trigger? When it came down to it now—him or me—had he changed his mind? He looked at me like he cared. But there was no denying the fact that we barely knew each other, and at the risk of saving his own neck . . . would he sacrifice mine?
I wouldn’t cry out. I wouldn’t cry. But there was no stopping my lids from falling shut as the realization set in that I was at Hampton’s mercy for reasons that were completely unbeknownst to me. I would die, probably, not knowing. Without having peace. Without vindicating my mother. Without living.
“Put your hands on the wheel, Asher.” Hampton lifted the revolver from the base of my head to my temple. “Unless you want this SUV looking like a crime scene, you’re going to do exactly as I say. You understand?”
With reluctant slowness, Asher’s hands went to the steering wheel, gripping at ten and two.
The pressure holding the gun to my head didn’t slacken.
“Good,” came the Pershing president’s soft murmur. “And if you think, for even a second, that I won’t put this bullet through her head, all you have to do is take a glance in the rearview mirror or at the cars on either side of us and check out the drivers. She’ll die before you even have a chance to make a move.” There was a small pause, and then, “Now drive straight until I tell you otherwise.”
2
Avery
We drove for close to an hour.
Joshua Hampton’s revolver never wavered.
Between fits of panic that I was one trigger away from having my brains blown out remained the nagging fear that I was missing something crucial here. Besides Asher’s relationship to my stepfather, besides the fact that I’d never even heard Asher’s name before two weeks ago, was one lingering thought: “Big” Hampton knew my name.
My real name.
Which meant that he somehow knew my stepfather was full of shit, pretending after all these years that Laurel Peyton had committed suicide.
It was both a relief to know that I was “alive,” so to speak, and also terrifying.
If Hampton knew, who else did?
Who else could use my identity against me?
With the revolver kissing the base of my skull, I watched the street lights speed past my window as Asher drove down Airline Highway, somewhere just east of Baton Rouge. The fact that Hampton had no worries about us knowing our final destination meant that he either planned to kill us before the night was over or the location was a setup for tonight only, never to be used again.
I desperately hoped for the latter.
“Up here,” Hampton murmured, “take a right up at the next traffic light.”
He spoke like we were being directed to a restaurant or somewhere equally unassuming, but when Asher made the turn and the street went from gravel to dirt, there was no mistaking the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere.
My fingers dug into my thighs.
For all his pompous air, Hampton wasn’t an idiot. Within minutes of us driving out of New Orleans, he’d forced us to hand over both guns. There was no telling him to screw off when we were sitting ducks—every which way I looked there were black, unmarked SUVs, and I wasn’t enough of an idiot to think that they were simply accessories to a man who liked to make a grand entrance.
No, each one was packed to the brim with men who carried firearms. If I squinted hard enough, I could make out their outlines through the tinted windows.
Our own SUV bumped along the uneven road, the seatbelt locking me in place.
I’d rather go through the windshield than be stuck in here.
The thought came just as quickly as it went.
It wasn’t true, not really. I hadn’t managed to escape my stepfather’s notice for over a decade just to roll over and give up now. Momma would never forgive me for giving in. I wouldn’t forgive myself.
“Are you going to kill us?” I demanded, my voice scratchy from pent-up nerves. “Is that your plan?”
Pershing’s president chuckled. “Want to answer this one, Sergeant?”
With my heart in my throat, I stared at Asher. Even after an hour of sitting on the new information, I couldn’t believe . . . I couldn’t even fathom that we . . . that Jay—
I dropped my gaze to my thighs, breathing through the jitters, only to hear his deep timbre to my left: “We’re not dead yet, which, if memory serves correctly, means we’re likely to keep our heads on our necks for the time being.”
“You remember so well,” Hampton murmured with an air of snobbery. “I figured our last run-in made enough of an impression on you, and I suppose I was right.”
“Our last run-in had nothing to do with me. If your side-piece wanted some better cock—some younger cock—than what she was currently getting, that’s not on me, you piece of—”
Pft! Pft!
Glass shattered before me as my ears rang from the shot of a pistol, my hair swinging forward as the SUV slammed to an unexpected stop.
Lincoln.
I tried to turn to him, but the seatbelt jerked me back—and the revolver at my head never eased. Asher’s arm shot right, across my chest, keeping me in place as though he worried I’d go flying from my seat and through the splintered window.
My lungs inflated with much-needed air, and it was only in the far recesses of my mind that I realized I was clawing at his bulky arm, trying to draw him closer.
He was okay. He was okay. He wasn’t dead.
“Put the gun down,” Asher bellowed, his voice harsh in the dimly lit car, “if you fucking shoot one more time, I will—”
Behind me, Hampton’s breathing came loud and heavy. “Finish that sentence, Sergeant, and I’ll put the next round through you. Better yet, I’ll aim for Laurel here. How does that sound? You mess with me and she ends up as collateral.”
It sounded like Joshua Hampton had spent too many years watching blockbuster thrillers at the theaters, but I wasn’t about to risk my neck by giving voice to the sarcastic retort.
One second passed, and then another, and then Asher stiffly pulled away from me and set his hand on the steering wheel again. A single glance at his profile was all I needed to know that he was a man balancing on a very thin tightrope.
Like me, he was no good at obeying.
In pure silence, Asher hit the gas again and we rolled on, farther into the darkness, farther into unknown territory. I watched the digital clock on the dashboard like my life depended on knowing the precise moment everything went straight down the gutter, and by the time Hampton instructed Asher to park the car, another thirty minutes had trickled past.
“Don’t move,” Pershing’s president grunted as he popped the back door open and slid out from the SUV.
A half-second later, the passenger’s side door swung open and an unfamiliar man stood there. “Put your hands out,” he ordered. I wasn’t given the opportunity to do a damn thing—he clasped my hands in his, drawing them out, and then efficiently circled them with a set of metal handcuffs. The lock clicked into place, and then he was hauling me out of the SUV.
Was Asher being subjected to the same treatment? Was he getting manhandled just like me?
My bare feet tripped over the dusty soil as I stumbled forward, my weight off balance from the man’s hand directing me forward. Although “directed” was too gentlemanly sounding. No, the man at my back shoved relentlessly.
Temper snapping, I twisted back to glare at him. “Ease the hell up before I eat dirt, asshole.”
Dark brows lifted, and to my satisfaction, the pressure at my back slackened.
It didn’t make me feel any better.
Off somewhere to my left, I heard Asher protesting, volatile curses falling from his mouth, and then . . . nothing at all. Oh, God. I craned my neck to stare at where he’d stood before, searching for him, needing to catch sight of his powerful frame, only for the jerk behind me to push me roughly all over again.
“Keep walking,” he growled.
Within the binds of the cuffs, my hands curled into fists. Rage claimed my every step, the soles of my feet beyond the point of protest as I stomped over gravel, dirt, pebbles. My dress rode high on my thighs, every step inching the hem up to expose more skin. I was far beyond embarrassment, though, and I didn’t touch it. Didn’t try to yank i
t back into place, even though I was still panty-less.
I wanted someone to make a comment.
I wanted someone to leer.
And when I finally got my hands on a damn firearm, I’d wipe that stupid look right off their faces with a single bullet to their most precious jewels.
Boom.
Head up, chin lifted, I stormed forward. Crying did nothing for me. Worrying only wasted my time. If Asher was wrong, and we were going to be killed tonight, I’d go out in a blaze of glory. The particulars hadn’t formed into a solid plan yet, but I refused to roll over and call it quits.
Be brave.
Be bold.
I always had been, and I wasn’t about to change now.
The scent of swamp infiltrated my senses, pungent and smelling of rotten eggs. Cypress trees dotted the horizon, swarming my periphery, concealing the moonless night sky above, and up ahead was a small wooden shack that looked like it belonged to Huckleberry Finn and not the twenty-first century. Seated on tall pilings, the house hovered some ten feet above the water with wooden steps leading from the ground level to the front door.
“Up we go,” Jerk muttered, giving me another push when we reached the base of the steps. “Don’t even think about getting frisky.”