The Bad Boy Next Door (12 page)

He had the nerve to laugh.

I wanted to kick him.

“I was going to draw Dewey out. Use Kitchner as a trap.”

“With Kitchner’s phone?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have Kitchner’s phone. I lost it as I was getting away from the fuckers who grabbed me off the street.”

I frowned. “But the phone you showed Dewey…”

“A burner. One I’ve had for a while.”

A sick tension curled in the pit of my stomach. “You were bluffing?”

“One of the best ways to win any fight is to bluff, Ronnie. I remembered enough of their texts to gain me the advantage and I used it.”

I swallowed. The tension in my stomach was now creeping through me. “What do you mean, I led him here? How did I do that? I didn’t even know he existed until today, so how did I lead him here? And did
you
know he was here?”

“I didn’t know until he went AWOL. I turned around and was driving back to you when Winchester called me. Our mutual contact had come through for me. I knew exactly who was dirty and who wasn’t. Which meant I only had Dewey to deal with, given Kitchner wasn’t going to cause me—or anyone else—trouble again.”

“What about…about the Trinity? And
how
did Dewey follow me. How did he—”

“Trinity thinks I’m dead.”

That sick tension turned to a suffocating blanket of cold shock. “What?”

“And Dewey put a tracker on your car. I found it underneath the rear wheel arch when I got back.” A devilish glint filled his eyes. “Thank God another case kept him from tracking your location before now. Otherwise we may have been interrupted at the most inopportune time.”

Holding up my hands at him, I frowned. “Wait, wait, wait. Go back a second. The Trinity thinks you’re dead? How?”

He pulled a face and scrubbed at the back of his neck. “Loco, the head of the Trinity, owes me.”

“
Owes
you?” My brain couldn’t process the declaration. How could the leader of one of the state’s most notorious gangs owe Lucas? What could he have possibly done to make that be the case? “Did you throw a fight for him?”

Indignation and disgust etched Lucas’s face for a moment. If I hadn’t been so stunned by how surreal my life had become in the last few hours, I would have laughed.

“I did not throw a fight,” he said. “Are you kidding? Throw a fight?”

“Then what did you do?” I don’t know why, but I felt like his answer for the question was more important than any other he’d given so far.

“I saved his little sister from being raped by his stepfather.”

A soft breath slipped past my lips. My stomach rolled.

“And delivered her to their mother, who now lives in Melbourne.”

“In Florida?”

He gave me a lopsided smile. It infuriated me and made me ridiculously horny at once. “In Australia.”

My mouth fell open. I shook my head, hugging myself again. My head was spinning. “I truly have no idea who you are, Lucas Pratt.”

An unreadable tension fell over his face. He straightened from the sofa until he stood directly before me, our thighs brushing, his gaze holding mine. “I am the guy who’s loved you for longer than you will ever know. The guy who will fight the world to make sure nothing ever hurts you. The guy who will give up everything he’s ever known to see you happy.”

My heart swelled in my chest. I swallowed, my throat tight. “Does that include fighting? Will you give up the whole MMA fighting circuit?”

“Hell yeah,” he said. “I’ll even settle down here for the rest of forever, if you’ll settle down with me. Will you? Live with me? Here? For the rest of our lives together?”

“Hell yeah…” I whispered with a smile. And then I gave up any hope of other words, tangled my fingers in his hair and kissed him.

He
was
all those things. But more importantly, he was mine.

The boy next door. My savior. My fighter.

My lover.

Mine.

The world, my world, had just got a whole freaking lot better.

Bring it on.

Stimulated, Book 1

Lexxie Couper

Morpeth, Australia

“
Y
ou know they’re going to call the big guys in for this, don’t you?”

Sliding her fingers over the smooth, solid length gripped firmly in her left hand, Phoebe Masters flicked a sideward glance at the tall streak of stunning blondeness beside her and bit back a sigh. “I don’t want the big guys.”

The blonde—a.k.a. Sami Charlton, a.k.a. BFE (Best Friend Extraordinaire), a.k.a. Australia’s most successful female motocross rider—let out a chuckle. “I don’t think you’ll have a choice, Pheebster. Your studio’s been gutted. With a fire this bad you know they’re going to call in the investigation team. If Dad was alive he’d tell you the same thing.”

Phoebe’s stomach lurched and she ground her teeth. Damn it, when she’d upped and moved from Newcastle to the utterly parochial, completely charming historical village of Morpeth six months ago, she’d planned to never see the
investigation team
again.

“And I don’t believe for a second that you don’t want to see them.”

Sami’s calm statement made Phoebe’s pulse pound just a little harder in her neck. She bit back another sigh. Here she was, standing in the smoking, charred remains of what was once her studio, the place she spent every day blowing molten glass into artworks of stunning beauty, with the acrid, wholly jarring stench of scorched wood and wet timber stinging her sinuses with every breath. Reminding her with no uncertainty that everything she held dear and valuable was destroyed—and she was thinking about Damon Hunt and William Bradley.

“I don’t want to see them,” she grumbled, glaring at the object she gripped in her hand, the only thing salvageable in the heartbreaking mess. A long, thick shard of glass that, thanks to the fire, now looked like a massive, slightly demented glass dildo.

“See who?”

The gruff male voice behind Phoebe made her jump, the glass length almost slipping from her fingers as she did so. She pulled a face, wrapping her fingers tighter around the accidental dildo like it was her one and only life preserver. “No one.”

“The investigation team from Newcastle,” Sami said to the elderly man now standing on Phoebe’s left. “This has to be arson. There’s no other explanation for such an accelerated burn of materials designed to withstand high temperatures, don’t you think?”

The old bloke’s wiry salt-and-pepper eyebrows rose up his creased forehead and he tugged at his somewhat scruffy firefighter’s uniform with calloused hands. “And what would you be knowin’ about arson and accelerated burn, missy?”

Phoebe let out the sigh she’d been holding back for the last five minutes or so. “Captain Kilgour,” she placed her fingers lightly on the prickly old firefighter’s arm, “this is my best friend, Sami. Sami’s dad was the commander of the Newcastle District Fire Investigation Unit.” She turned and gave Sami a pointed look. “Sami, this is Keith Kilgour, the captain of Morpeth’s fire brigade.”

Kilgour squinted at Sami. “Was?”

Sami nodded. “Was.”

Phoebe knew her best friend wasn’t going to expand on her answer. The death of her father in a house fire still hurt Sami deeply.

Kilgour’s eyes narrowed even further before he returned his attention to Phoebe. “Well, much as I hate the idea of those upstart buggers from the city coming here and tellin’ me my business, the young missy is right. There’s somethin’ about the feel of the place I don’t like.” He sucked in his checks and smacked his lips. “It tastes wrong.”

Sami nodded. “Too bloody right.”

Phoebe frowned, ignoring the fluttering little knot in her belly at the “upstart buggers from the city” coming anywhere near her. “So what you’re telling me,” she grumbled, crossing her arms over her breasts, “is I can’t start cleaning up until the investigation team—”

“William and Damon,” Sami interjected.

Phoebe gave her a scowl. Damn, she was one for providing details today. “Until the Newcastle team come up and—”

“Work their magic,” Sami finished for her, a grin playing with the corners of her lip-glossed mouth.

Phoebe scowled harder. Were it not for Captain Kilgour standing beside them, Sami would be finding herself the recipient of a bloody good punch to the arm. Work their magic? Under no circumstances were Will Bradley and Damon Hunt working any kind of
magic
on her again. Ever.

“That’s right, Ms. Masters,” Captain Kilgour agreed, giving Phoebe what she suspected was supposed to be a reassuring smile. “The Newcastle boys will need to take a look at this before you can touch it.”

Phoebe let out a shaky sigh. Damn it.

“I could take a look around, Dad.”

A younger version of Keith Kilgour, dressed in a pristine firefighter’s uniform that almost—
almost
—hid a paunch and narrow shoulders, sidled his way over the charred mess, giving Phoebe a wide smile as he plucked the glass shaft from her hands. Blue eyes tried hard to hold hers, the effort lost when Captain Kilgour barked out a laugh.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Harvey. You barely passed the last fire science and behavior training course.”

Harvey Kilgour’s fleshy cheeks glowed red and Phoebe suppressed a need to shuffle her feet. Since moving to Morpeth, she’d more than once had to decline Harvey’s eager invitations to coffee, lunch, dinner, breakfast, a trip to the local drive-in. Six months of being “courted” by Harvey. And that was the word he used whenever he asked her out,
courted
, as if their relationship was anything more than determined suitor and non-interested recipient. Several rejections later and he still hadn’t taken the hint. Still, seeing him get shot down by his father
was
a touch uncomfortable.

It wasn’t that Harvey was grotesque or repulsive; he wasn’t. In fact, he seemed quite personable in a slightly desperate, puppy-dog kind of way. He was polite, charming, had an old-fashioned sense of propriety and an almost boyish innocence about him. He’d turned up with handpicked flowers a few times, had offered to fix anything in her home or studio if needed. When she’d come down with that very nasty dose of the flu, he’d arrived at her door with a steaming boiler of vegetable soup so bloody delicious it was all she could do not to run her fingers around the inside of the pot when it was all gone. Soup he’d
made
. How could she say no to a guy like that?

How indeed? But she had. Often.

For reasons she couldn’t put her finger on, something in her belly told her to stay away from Harvey—or at least keep him at arms’ length. Something that made her feel…unsettled.

What? More unsettled than the way Damon Hunt and William Bradley make you feel? Is that even possible?

Yeah, but
that
unsettled had nothing to do with an inexplicable discomfort and
everything
to do with two tall, dark, sarcastic and alpha-to-the-extreme men awakening sexual longings she couldn’t deny no matter how hard she tried.

A shiver rippled up her spine and before she could shut it out, a flash of memory blinded her…

William’s towering form, buck naked and completely aroused, his dark blond hair a tousled mess, his eyes glinting with hunger as Damon impaled her on his equally impressive cock. Damon’s full lips traveling over her throat, his strong hands squeezing her backside, her moans of rapture a familiar soundtrack to a weekend spent—

“Better go write the report—”

“Can I walk you to the—”

“Time I hit the road—”

Phoebe blinked, the cacophony of voices jerking her from the wholly unsettling memory. Her heart pounding too hard for her liking, she looked at Sami, for the moment needing to focus on one thing, one speaker—and her best friend was the least…vexing. “You’re going?”

Sami pulled a face. “Yeah, I know. I suck. But I have a photo shoot with
Inside Motor-Sport
magazine this afternoon and a meeting with my agent in less than three hours.”

Phoebe shot her watch a quick glance. With the way her best friend rode the classic Ducati she loved like a…well, a
lover
, Sami would make it back to Sydney with time to spare, as long as she wasn’t arrested for speeding.

“Okay,” Phoebe grumbled, turning completely to the Amazonian blonde to give her a hug. “Next time come up for longer than just a night.”

Sami squeezed her back. “Hey, if some prick hadn’t burned your studio down I’d be mooching off you for brekkie and you’d be wishing I’d hurry the hell up and go home.”

Phoebe chuckled. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Sami flashed the kind of grin that made her the darling of the motocross world—cheeky, sexy and very, very devilish. “Of course I am. Say g’day to Damon and Will for me.”

Phoebe’s belly flip-flopped. “Bugger off with you, Charlton.”

With another squeeze, this one a tad gentler, Sami turned on her heel and strode from the blackened mess of Phoebe’s studio, hips swaying. “Better still,” she tossed over her shoulder, swinging her helmet beside her leg like a schoolgirl swings her school bag, “give them both a kiss.”

“A kiss?” Captain Kilgour’s voice sounded mortified.

Phoebe bit back a sigh and, turning from the sight of her friend’s departing leather-clad form, gave the firefighter a placating smile. “She’s kidding.”

Harvey laughed, slapping his dad on the back. “Of course she is, Dad. Why would Phoebe want to kiss the arson investigators?”

Warmth crept up Phoebe’s neck and over her cheeks and, unable to stop herself, she pressed her thighs together, the sudden flush of tension tickling her labia, making her want to groan. Why
would
she want to kiss the arson investigators? She wouldn’t. Especially when those two men were Damon Hunt and William Bradley.

Yeah, right.

* * * *

“Head’s up, Tiny, we’ve got a job.”

William Bradley spun on his desk stool to glare at the tall man crossing the room toward him. “How many times do I have to tell you not to call me Tiny?”

Damon laughed, dropping into the low, beat-up couch sitting in the middle of their cramped office. “Well, seeing as it’s been eight years now since I first met you, I’m guessin’…” he affected a pensive expression, crossing his ankles on the cluttered coffee table and lacing his fingers behind his head, “a lot. Besides, you’re a short-arse. What else am I going to call you?”