by Cassia Leo
“He’s mine. He’s mine, you bitch.” The shooter looked at me and pointed the gun. Her eyes, moving from me to Raquel, went wide with rage when she realized her mistake. Through a clenched jaw, she growled, “You! That was meant for you. I hate you.”
The server had returned with strawberries just then and bashed her in the head from behind with the silver bowl in his hands. Red berries went bopping around on the carpet.
Danny rushed the psycho, tackling her to the floor just outside the door, and wrestled the gun out of her hand. She yelled and fought him. She was really strong and limber.
“I am not yours.”
With her down and pinned, I dashed to the bathroom, snatched a towel, and brought it to Raquel. I compressed her wound, and she was bawling her eyes out and moaning in pain. I stroked her hair and tried not to sob as I called 9-1-1. “Shh. Hold that down. It’ll be okay, Raquel. You’ll be okay. Hang on.” I quickly dressed as I spoke with the operator. “I called the cops and an ambulance. They’re on their way. Hang on.” Crouching to help her compress her wound again, I saw that bitch in the hall whip a knife out of her pocket. “Danny!” I shrilled because he had no clue, as he was too busy holding her down with his weight.
Since she’d been struggling against him, he tried to flip her over, but she was able to free her leg and knee him in the groin.
He sat up astride her, yowling in agony.
“A knife. She’s got a knife!” I yelled.
“No one can have you! You are mine.” Seething, she drew her hand back to spear him in the lower back. I rushed over to stop her, but the server quickly snatched the gun from Danny, who was still in evident agony, and shot the bitch in the forehead.
I bellowed ad staggered back and coughed, almost puking as blood, flesh and brain matter flew everywhere. “Oh my god.”
With blood seeping on the carpet, Danny had to work off a heave as well, his hand curled over his mouth. He was still staggering in pain.
The server, looking down in shock and horror, hyperventilated and broke down sobs. He crumpled to the floor, his hand shaking, the gun falling from his limp fingers.
“Danny! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine.”
I clutched his arm, and he stumbled up to his feet. He lumbered over to the bathroom and got some water for Raquel because she said she was thirsty. He bent down with me to let her sip from the cup, and I compressed her wound with the towel. She thanked us both.
“Who was that bitch?” Raquel cried. “Oh my god. What a freak!”
I shrugged. “We don’t know. Some stalker that’s been obsessed with Danny for months. Stay with me, okay. Are you doing all right?”
“Uh, think so. It hurts, and I feel weak. But … I think I’m okay.” She was much stronger than I would’ve been with a freaking bullet wound in the gut.
I just washed up in the sink, but Danny took another shower to get that psycho’s blood off his skin as the server called the manager.
When Danny came out, his skin looked red and raw from how hard he must’ve scrubbed his body. He was shaken and an emotional mess. “I love you, Alexa, and I’m never letting you go.”
“Love you too.”
We embraced each other and exchanged soft kisses.
“I’m glad it’s finally over,” he said. “I’m glad that psycho is dead and that she can’t hurt you. I’d die if I lost you, Lex. I love you so damn much.”
I just held onto him, shivering at what a close call that was. I’m shorter than Raquel, so if that had been me, the shot could’ve been fatal. Life was too short to waste on shit and games.
Cops and paramedics came, as well as a medical examiner, and Raquel was looking pale and weak, but she was still awake and talking coherently about the incident when they wheeled her out. I was so worried shock would set in, but she was hanging in there.
Danny, the hotel server, and I were tied up for hours, answering questions with authorities as they investigated the scene.
The room service hero was not arrested for the fatal shot, which I feared he might be.
Right there on the spot, police ID’d Danny’s stalker as Gracelyn Hutchinson, the daughter of an IT tech billionaire.
Nina put two and two together, but not even caring about my turmoil for one second, she fired me on the spot, as soon as she spotted me in the lobby.
So, lucky me, after all that, I had no job at Momentum.
But the one thing I did have, still, and hopefully for life, which gave me great comfort and a well-spring of hope for the future, was Danny Zane. And that was all thanks to a quick-acting hotel server and my weird, messy lust that had somehow, someway turned into love.
***
If you liked the beginning of Danny and Alexa’s steamy romance, look for their follow-up novel, Kinky Steps, as they take their sexy times to an edgier level and face new challenges in bringing their relationship into the light. If you enjoy BDSM romance, check out, Sorority Pledge Saga and Sorority Saint, and also, Nothing But Trouble, the first novelette in a series of stand-alone romances, each one featuring a different kink.
NOTHING BUT TROUBLE
(The Kink Therapist Novelettes)
Kobo
About Daizie Draper
*** USA Today Bestselling Author ***
Daizie Draper is a happily married sex fiend, who loves to write naughty stories that mix the sweetness of chocolate with the bite of leather. She likes sensuality, kink, fruit, impressionistic art, spanking and beauty. She hates big bugs, freedom crushers, injustice, artificial orange and onions. Along with 27 other people in the world, she has never read Fifty Shades of Grey.
For new release info, sign up for Daizie’s Delicious Dirt.
To get freebies, ARCs and swag goodies as a part of her team, sign up for Daizie’s Dolls.
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Table of Contents
Red Hot Bikers, Rock Stars, and Bad Boys
Forever Ours by Cassia Leo
Resisting by Chelle Bliss
Randomly Ever After by Julia Kent
Stella & Dane by Deanna Roy
Every Breath You Take by Blair Babylon
Cold Fusion by Olivia Rigal
The Storm and the Darkness by Sarah M. Cradit
Rock Candy by Daizie Draper
Wuther by V. J. Chambers
Three Nights With A Rock Star by Amber Lin and Shari Slade
Revik by JC Andrijeski
Disclaimers and Copyright Notices
WUTHER
by V. J. Chambers
WUTHER
by V. J. Chambers
WUTHER © V. J. Chambers 2013
The original bad boy love interest, Wuthering Height’s Heathcliff, retold in a 1990s new adult novel of torrid passion, heartbreak, and romance…
A gypsy orphan, Heath Galloway adores Cathy Earnshaw, his childhood sweetheart. He would do anything to protect her from her drunken, abusive father—even push the man down a flight of stairs to stop him hitting her.
But with her father dead, Cathy’s older brother Matt runs the Earnshaw farm and both of their lives. And Matt despises Heath. Forced to drop out of school and work the fields, Heath is separated from Cathy and the two begin to drift apart.
When Cathy meets the rich, blond, and suave Eli Linton, she finds herself torn between Eli’s charm and Heath’s brute potency.
Fiercely proud and stubborn, Heath doesn’t take well to being brushed aside. He’ll get what he wants, or he’ll get revenge. No matter how long it takes.
1984: unquiet slumbers
The wind whistled through the cornfields, fluttering the stalks like a restless ghost. Outside the tenant house, Floyd Earnshaw—Daddy to Cathy—raged as he banged on the front door.
“Get in the closet, babies,” said Mama Galloway to Heath and Cathy. She was already urging the children inside the linen closet and shutting the door after them.
Mama Galloway wasn’t really Cathy’s mother. Sh
e was a hired hand who lived on the tenant house of the farm. She did some cooking, some housekeeping, some cleaning, and she helped with the planting and harvesting. Heath was her son.
Daddy had been drinking whiskey that night. He drank a little bit of it every night, but some nights more than others, and some nights, it made him mean.
Some nights he only came down to kiss on Mama Galloway, in her little tenant house, right in the shadow of the big farm house. But some nights he yelled and growled, and then Cathy was afraid of him.
Those nights, when Mama Galloway heard his heavy fist on the door, his slurred voice outside, she would hide Cathy and Heath in the closet.
It was like that on this night. Mama Galloway shut the door after them. “Hush now, little ones,” she said. “Daddy won’t be happy to find you here.”
Cathy bit down on her fingernails, peering through the slits in the door to the closet. She was seven years old, and she wasn’t supposed to bite her fingernails anymore. But when she was nervous, she couldn’t help herself.
Heath was bigger than her. He was eight years old, and he was her favorite person on earth. They played together every day. Heath was never like her big brother Matt, who always pulled her hair and called her a sissy baby.
Heath touched her arm in the darkness of the closet. “It’s okay, Cathy. He won’t find us. He never does.”
She nodded. The closet was full of folded sheets and towels, and it smelled like laundry detergent.
She and Heath were quiet. They could hear Mama Galloway outside, opening the door.
“Floyd, what are you doing down here?” she said.
“I’m looking for my girl.” Daddy’s voice. It was heavy and slurred, the way it always was when he’d had a lot of whiskey. “My Catherine. Is she down here, Wanda? You know I don’t like it when you let her sleep over with that boy of yours. It ain’t right, boys and girls in the same bed.”
“Oh, they’re only children, you know that. They’re innocent little babes,” said Mama. “Why don’t you sit down here? I’ll get you some coffee. You could use it, hon.”
“Don’t want coffee. I want my daughter. Where is she?”
Daddy’s voice was getting louder as he got close to the closet.
“Floyd, calm down,” said Mama.
“You down here, Catherine? You naughty girl, running off like that on your old daddy. When I find you, I’m going to beat your backside black and blue.”
“Floyd—”
“No,” roared Daddy. “She’s not yours, you know, Wanda. That little girl is mine and her dead, sweet mother’s. And you ain’t nothing but hired help, when it comes down to it.”
“Sit down and stop it,” said Mama. “You been drinking, and you’re going to regret saying all this in the morning. Whenever you do this, you always apologize to me.”
“You force me to apologize, woman!”
“Ow, Floyd, don’t grip me so tight.”
A crashing noise.
Cathy squeezed her eyes shut. Heath wrapped his arm around her protectively. It was going to be a night where Daddy broke things, then. He got like that sometimes when he drank too much. Last time, he broke a vase that Mama Galloway had gotten from her grandmother. It had been beautiful, all purple and glazed and wonderful. Cathy missed it. But Daddy had called Mama Galloway’s grandmother a “gypsy whore” and smashed the vase against the wall.
Mama had cried. Cathy and Heath had huddled in the closet and listened, and they were both afraid. But the next morning, Daddy and Mama were all made up, kissing while Mama scrambled eggs in the kitchen.
“You do,” said Floyd. “You get inside my head, and I can’t stop trying to make you happy. You’re a witch. A gypsy witch, and you cursed me.”
“That’s right,” said Mama, but her voice was strained. “Cursed you with love, you big lug. Now let me go.”
Mama told them sometimes. She told them how she used to travel with her gypsy family, doing fortunes and making jewelry and working odd jobs. But she gave it all up after the night she met Daddy. She came to work on the farm, moved into the tenant house, and she never went back to her family.
“Shut up, you stupid bitch,” growled Daddy.
Another crashing noise.
Mama screamed. “Floyd, stop!”
“You stupid, stupid bitch,” said Daddy, and it sounded like he was concentrating real hard on something.
Mama was making gurgling noises.
Cathy pressed her eyes up against the flats of the closet and looked outside. Daddy had his hands wrapped around Mama’s neck really tight. Mama’s face was turning red.
“Heath,” whispered Cathy.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Daddy was muttering, a slurred litany.
Heath saw what was happening. He opened up the door to the closet. “Stop it, Daddy.”
Daddy looked up to see Heath. He flung Mama away.
Mama fell into the end table, and the impact of her head against the wood made a loud cracking noise. It looked like it hurt. But Mama didn’t even cry out. She didn’t do anything at all.
“What are you doing in there?” said Daddy.
Heath ran over to Mama. “Mama? Mama?”
Cathy started to cry.
And then Daddy saw her. “Catherine? You are down here. Hiding in the closet with that boy.” He stepped towards her, but he was shaky on his feet.
Heath was shaking Mama. “Mama? Mama, wake up!”
“What did you do to Mama Galloway, Daddy?” said Cathy. “What did you do to her?”
Daddy advanced on Cathy. He pulled back his hand and slapped her hard across her cheek.
Cathy screamed.
Heath got up. “Don’t!”
Daddy looked at him.
“You killed her,” said Heath, his dark eyes flashing. “You killed my mama. You killed my mama!”
Daddy backed away from Heath. “I…” He looked afraid.
***
2013
“I can’t believe you’d do this,” said Eli Linton, Thera’s father.
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” said Thera. Her real name was Catherine, but she went by Thera. She was named after her mother, who had died of complications giving birth to her. Her father told her that he’d named her that because he wanted to honor Thera’s mom. But then he couldn’t bear to say her name out loud, so he’d started calling her Thera instead.
Thera thought it was weird. She was glad enough not be called by her mother’s name. It was kind of creepy, when she thought about it, having a dead woman’s name. And Thera didn’t know anything about her mother. Her father would never talk about her, since it was too painful for him.
They were in the kitchen. Sunlight was streaming through the window, and her father was holding onto her laptop, glaring at her as if she’d just committed some sin too horrible to name.
She was pouring coffee into two mugs—one for her dad and one for her.
“The big deal, Thera, is that I told you to stay away from these people.”
She opened the refrigerator door and got out some almond milk. “It’s not people, Dad, it’s only my cousin Linton. And anyway, what gives you the right to go through my facebook messages like that?”
“The computer was sitting open on your bed.” Eli folded his arms over his chest. He peered around her body. “Are you putting that almond milk crap in there?”
Thera turned to hide what she was doing from her father. He was watching his cholesterol, and the doctor had advised that he needed to avoid animal fats whenever possible. Her dad didn’t want anything to do with it, but Thera made sure to watch out for him when she could. Almond milk was just as good as cow milk in coffee. It was even vanilla flavored. “Why were you in my room?”
“It’s my house. I can go where I please,” he said. “And I should be able to have cream in my coffee if I want it. Real cream.”
“Daddy,” she sighed. “I’m worried about you. You have to start eating healthier. You promised
you would make some changes.”
Eli’s nostrils flared. “Changes, sure. But I didn’t agree to tofu and almond milk and that quinoa stuff you keep trying to feed me.”
Thera squirted some agave nectar—a natural sweetener—into her father’s mug. She gave the coffee a stir and handed it to him. “It’s good for you.”
Eli made a face. He took a sip.
“Doesn’t it taste good?”
He set the mug down on the counter. “It’s not bad, I guess. But I don’t see how you have time to worry over what I’m eating and time to study for your classes. Your priority needs to be your studies, and you know that.”
Thera was only a few weeks away from her last week of freshman year of college. Living at home with her dad wasn’t the most exciting way to spend her undergrad, but she didn’t have the heart to leave him all alone. She was all that was left of her father’s family. He’d lost his sister and parents in addition to Thera’s mother. He’d be lonely without her, and she knew that.
She gave him a hug. “I couldn’t leave you alone, Daddy. But you could try to remember that I’m a grownup, and that you can’t snoop on my computer whenever you want.”
Eli sighed. “Maybe I did invade your privacy, but I can’t keep silent about this. Heath Galloway hates you, Thera. He wishes you were never born. Anything to do with him is bad news.”
“I told you, it’s not about that Heath guy,” said Thera. “It’s only about Linton. He’s your nephew. And he wants to meet me. I don’t see what the big deal is.”
Eli shook his head. “No, it’s not Linton. I read these messages, and Linton did not write them. Heath wrote them. He’s trying to lure you back, and god knows what horrible things he wants to do to you.”