Last Kiss
Page 1
Praise for Laurelin Paige’s First Touch
‘Laurelin Paige writes an addictive mix of emotion and sexy that draws the reader in and doesn’t let go until long after the last page is read’ K. Bromberg, New York Times bestselling author of the Driven series
‘Edgy sex and pulsating mystery make this fast-paced and sensual story impossible to put down’ Jay Crownover, New York Times bestselling author of the Marked Men series
‘Each chapter leads you deeper into mystery, twisting what you knew, making you love who you’re meant to hate. A fascinating read!’ Pepper Winters, New York Times bestselling author of the Pure Corruption series
‘First Touch is a heart-chilling page-turner from a master storyteller – and the hottest thing I’ve read this year, hands down’ M. Pierce, bestselling author of the Night Owl trilogy
‘Gritty, edgy, dark, and compelling. First Touch pulls no punches and just might leave you reeling’ Megan Hart, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Tear You Apart
‘This spellbinding story will have you glued to the pages from the first page to the last. Paige’s best work yet. Thrilling, captivating, sexy, and shocking. I am in love with this story’ Claire Contreras, New York Times bestselling author of Kaleidoscope Hearts
‘First Touch is shocking, stunning, and intense with a heat level that can only be measured on the Kelvin scale’ CD Reiss, USA Today bestselling author of Shuttergirl
‘First Touch is a deliciously dark and sinfully sexy story that had me up way past bedtime. Laurelin Paige knows exactly what a woman craves, and I’m craving more Reeve’ Geneva Lee, New York Times bestselling author
‘First Touch will make your blood pressure skyrocket with its wicked and deliciously depraved plot. It will leave you on pins and needles, breathless and begging for more. Laurelin Paige has delivered her finest work yet’ Jen McCoy, The Literary Gossip
‘A beautifully executed maze of suspense, seduction, and ridiculously hot sex’ Alessandra Torres, New York Times bestselling author
‘A dazzling mystery to unravel… wicked and yet sensual. Decadent in her ability to weave a captivating story from beginning to end, Laurelin Paige has another hit on her hands’ Kendall Ryan, New York Times bestselling author
Laurelin Paige is the New York Times bestselling author of the Fixed Trilogy. She loves a good romance and gets giddy anytime there’s kissing, much to the embarrassment of her three daughters. When she isn’t reading or writing sexy stories, she’s probably singing or dreaming of Michael Fassbender. She’s also a proud member of Mensa International, although she doesn’t do anything with the organization except use it as material for her bio.
You can stay in touch with Laurelin on Facebook/LaurelinPaige and on Twitter: @laurelinpaige. You can also visit her website, www.laurelinpaige.com, to sign up for her newsletter.
Also by Laurelin Paige
FIRST TOUCH
FIXED ON YOU
FOUND IN YOU
FOREVER WITH YOU
HUDSON
FREE ME
FIND ME
TAKE TWO
STAR STRUCK
PORN STAR
FALLING UNDER YOU
Writing as Laurelin Mcgee
with Kayti McGee
MISS MATCH
LOVE STRUCK
COPYRIGHT
Published by Sphere
978-0-7515-6412-9
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Laurelin Paige 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
SPHERE
Little, Brown Book Group
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DZ
www.littlebrown.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
Last Kiss
Table of Contents
Praise for Laurelin Paige’s First Touch
About the Author
Also by Laurelin Paige
COPYRIGHT
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
To friends
who kill spiders
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To my family – this one was tough. We made it. I think.
To my editor, Eileen Rothschild – As always, you remain my hero. Please don’t ever leave me!
To the team at St Martin’s Press – you’ve changed while I’ve been working with you, but each and every incarnation is fabulous. Thanks for all you do to make us all look good.
To my agent, Rebecca Friedman – you’re my soul sister. I love you.
To Bethany, Kayti, and Melanie – through spiders, trapped farts, and bears (oh my!), you’re definitely the only reason I lived past October 2015. Thank you for being fellow sNAkes.
To Jenn – yep. Writers are crazy. You’re just as crazy to want to work with us. And, man, am I grateful.
To all of you authors and bloggers who read and blurbed and pimped this series – I’m so honored and humbled to have such incredibly talented, creative people say nice words about my books. You all truly amaze me. Thank you!
To my girls – Fab Four, Domination, Wrahm, Snatches, FYW, Order. You guys get me. Thank God someone does.
To my readers – I never knew what a sadist I was until I read all your e-mails and private messages cursing me about that wicked cliffhanger. Gee, that was fun. Thank you so much for reading and loving Emily and Reeve’s story. You truly make it worth the work.
To my God – always first and last and everything in between.
PROLOGUE
Amber took her sweet time saying good-bye to Rob that Sunday afternoon after my seventeenth birthday. She’d kissed and cooed over him at the door of his convertible while I stood at the curb, knee bouncing, worried we’d miss our bus if we didn’t run for it soon. Worried that my mother would find out that we spent my birthday shacked up with Amber’s rich “uncle.” Mom’s wrath would have been tolerable, but the fear that she might keep me from spending time with Amber made me fiercely anxious. That weekend was the first time I’d explored my sexuality. The first time I’d felt sensual. The first time I’d experienced real desire. Now my life had possibilities; I didn’t want to go back to before.
“Amber.” I’d meant to nudge her gently, but I couldn’t mask my anxiety. Her name was both a prayer and a curse.
She’d twisted her head sharply in my direction, the arch of her eyebrow letting me know she hadn’t appreciated being rushed. She’d worn that expression only a few seconds before her features had relaxed and her lips slid into a playful grin.
“Emily,” she’d called to me, sugar dripping
from her voice. “Don’t you think Rob deserves a decent kiss for all he’s done for us?”
“Of course he does.” I’d matched her sweetness, though I’d been pretty sure that most of what had been “done” had been done for Rob, not that I’d objected. It had been fun and he’d bought us pretty things and given us pretty drugs and that had been well worth the blow jobs and the aching thigh muscles. “Just, the bus…”
She either hadn’t heard me or hadn’t been as concerned about the time because she beckoned me closer with a nod. “Come say good-bye to him, Em. Come kiss him.”
At her request my pulse had begun to race, my cheeks flushed, and heat barreled between my thighs, and not simply because I’d wanted one last kiss. My concern about the bus had faded into the distance, so I’d taken the three steps over to them, then tilted my chin up and met his mouth with mine, letting my tongue dot against the tip of his before sliding it along the curve of his upper lip.
“Jesus, Em. The bus is about to leave. We have to run.” Amber’s inflection had been teasing, proving she’d been aware of my distress all along. Grabbing my hand, she’d tugged me away from our “uncle.” She’d waved to him once more before we broke into a run, making our ride just as the doors had been about to close.
We’d taken a seat in the back, and, once we’d caught our breath, lost it again in a fit of giggles. “He’s great, isn’t he?” she’d asked after we’d settled down, but before I could respond, she’d bounded on. “I knew you’d like him. You didn’t mind when I got bossy back there, did you? When I told you to kiss Rob good-bye?”
“Not at all. I liked kissing him.” It had felt like a lie, or at least, not the whole truth. I had liked everything we’d done that weekend together, the three of us. Every new experience. But half the reason I’d enjoyed that last kiss so much hadn’t been because of what it was – the feel of lips on lips, the twining of the wet, thick muscles of tongues – but because Amber had told me to do it… ordered me out of equal parts playfulness and love.
It wasn’t the first time I had recognized my desire to submit. When we’d met several months before, Amber had uncovered my longing to yield. To please. To surrender.
But this time her command had also awoken my sexual tastes. She had summoned a creature to life inside me – a deeply seated beast with an appetite for carnality and a desperate need to be stroked as she knelt at the foot of the one who would feed her.
It was then I caught the first glimpse of the person I would become, and the role Amber would play in my life as the first master I wanted to please.
CHAPTER 1
My feet moved automatically, pulled by a force that couldn’t be simplified with a label of compassion or curiosity or obligation. I crouched in front of Reeve and took Amber’s limp wrist into my hands. My body was present, going through the motions of a concerned friend, but my head was in a fog. The smell of sex still lingered in my nose, the orgasms Reeve had given me still rang through me, low and wide, like the faintest waves sounding off a tuning fork.
Then there had been Reeve’s declaration. He’d hinted both that he loved me and that he knew who I was, knew that I’d been Amber’s friend. That had sent me into shock long before I’d been confronted with her ghost in the flesh.
She was supposed to be dead.
I was confused. I was relieved. I was more than a little scared.
Around me there was a buzz of voices, discussing Amber, but nothing they said made sense. All I heard was a steady drone and her whimpers softer than when I’d first seen her and barely audible. She didn’t seem to be conscious, whatever pain she carried was so great that it slipped out in her sleep.
Reeve tried to get her eyes to open, slapping gently at her face with the same hand that had caressed me earlier in the evening, had been inside my mouth and cunt. The concern etched on his face and the tight emotion in his tone as he coaxed her were mirrors of the way he’d spoken to me in our most intimate moments.
“Emily. It’s you,” Amber whispered.
My focus snapped to her. I was aware now – of her, of her injured state, of the frenzy occurring on her behalf. Aware that Reeve now knew conclusively that his Amber was also my Amber.
“Yes, it’s me.” I stroked the length of her arm, forcing my gaze not to zoom in on her black eyes, her bruised nose, the sallow color of her skin. She’d been beaten badly. Her body was stick thin, her wrist fragile under my hands. I wrapped my fingers around it and registered a pulse, stronger than I’d expected from the near skeletal figure before me. This couldn’t be the confident, vibrant woman that I’d known, and yet she couldn’t be anyone else. My shoulders threatened to sag with guilt and grief, and my throat felt coarse like I’d swallowed sand.
But she needed strength, and I was a good actress. So I held my head high and made my voice a balm. “I’m here.”
Her lip was too fat and bloodied to smile, but the corners of her mouth turned up slightly. “It is you.” Her words were labored, her breath short. “Joe said you’d sent him. To save me. I —”
I glanced back at Joe as she broke into a coughing fit that tried to curl her torso in, but she couldn’t manage to lift her head, the exertion too much for her.
“Save your energy. We’re going to get you to a bed, Angel.” Reeve nodded at his men.
Angel. Was that what he called her or simply an endearment he was using now? Either way it felt private. Like I’d walked into the middle of another couple’s love scene.
“I need a few things from my office,” Jeb said to one of the security guards. “An IV kit, my bag. There are painkillers in the safe.”
He continued to issue orders, and I stood to get out of the way as Reeve gathered Amber in his arms. I turned to Brent, the ranch manager. “Shouldn’t we call a doctor?” I was sure Jeb was good at what he did, but he was a veterinarian.
Brent shook his head. “Jeb’s got all the training we need and we don’t want to raise any unwanted attention.”
I started to protest, but Amber called out, drawing my attention back to her.
Reeve was standing now, Amber in his arms, headed for the stairs, but he paused and spun so that she could see me easily.
“I’ll be right there, Amber,” I promised. “I’m just going to talk to Joe for one minute while they’re making you comfortable.”
She nodded, her lids closing as though they were too heavy to keep open.
I turned to the man who held her. Who moments ago was my man – now I wasn’t so sure. His expression was hard and unreadable. But when his gaze caught mine, the room tilted. His eyes held a dark brew of emotion, so murky and filled that I couldn’t determine what he was feeling, only that he was feeling. And that he wanted to share it with me. Even though it was obvious now just how much I hadn’t shared with him.
My chest tightened, and I looked away, breaking the intense connection. It was all too much. I pivoted toward Joe, aware of Reeve behind me as he held his position a second longer before taking Amber upstairs.
I forced my full attention on Joe. I’d seen him as I’d come into the room, before I’d noticed the battered girl in Reeve’s arms, but I hadn’t gotten a chance to study him. Now I scanned him for similar injuries, for any sign that her rescue had caused him harm. When I saw nothing, I asked, “Are you okay?”
“Besides being exhausted, yeah. I’m fine.”
I let out a shaky breath of relief. “I told you she was alive.”
Joe chuckled. “You did.”
In the beginning, I did, I’d insisted on it until he’d shown me the autopsy report of a Jane Doe that had matched Amber’s description, a woman who bore the same V tattoo that Amber had on her shoulder. I’d found the same report in an e-mail to Reeve when I’d been snooping on his computer, which had further ended any hope that she was still alive.
“How did this —?” I wasn’t sure how to ask the question. “How is she not dead?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I think we we
re deliberately thrown off.” His expression told me exactly who he’d thought had done the throwing – Reeve Sallis. Joe had never trusted him, and with good reason. Reeve’s reputation was shady at best. Five years before, his girlfriend, Missy, had mysteriously died while with him on his island in the Pacific. He’d been cleared from any blame in the crime, but my friend Chris Blakely, who had been close to Missy, had painted her relationship with Reeve as volatile. Chris was convinced that Reeve had killed her and had even gone so far as to hint as much on a recent talk show.
I wasn’t sure which side of the fence I sat on. Reeve had assured me he’d had nothing to do with her death, and while I didn’t know if I believed him, I’d decided the answer didn’t matter. Now that Amber had returned, I had less reason to doubt him.
Joe, it seemed, was still skeptical. After months of investigating, he’d only found more incriminating evidence. Evidence that tied Reeve to the Greek mafia and a sex slave ring that Joe had been certain Amber had wandered into.
I thought of her bruises and shuddered. Joe was probably right.
“What happened?” I asked him, not wanting to know but needing to all the same. “Where did you find her?”