Desired by a Dangerous Man: By a Dangerous Man, #9

By Cleo Peitsche

DESIRED BY A DANGEROUS MAN (#9) is a steamy romantic suspense book. [This is Season 2, Episode 4.]

Corbin Lagos is everything Audrey ever wanted, but the billionaire ex-assassin who stole her heart is hiding something. Something big.

And he’s becoming more secretive by the day.

She doesn’t have time to tend to her relationship, not when the family bounty hunting business is failing and the clock is ticking on the most important investigation of her career.

This time she can’t do it alone. Corbin is the only one who can help, but his methods lead to changes she’s not prepared for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pouch Productions
• Release date: Jul 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781516312825

Cleo Peitsche

If Cleo isn't writing (or reading!) erotica, she's probably sitting on her balcony, watching the wind blow through the trees. She loves snowstorms, piña coladas, horses, and pasta primavera. If she won the lottery, she would hire an assistant to take care of the technical side of e-publishing so that she could write all day.Some random facts about Cleo:1. Thinks life's too short to forgo HEAs and HFNs.2. Sprained an ankle joining the mile-high club. (Never again!)3. Favorite writers include Cormac Mccarthy, Junot Diaz and Rachel Caine.4. Gets weak-kneed for bookish guys who know how to fix things with their hands. *swoons*

Book preview

Chapter 1

Thanks to my lingering jet lag and a stressful, sleepless night, I was up an hour before dawn. I sat in my car, the turn signal clicking and spraying light onto the dark road, and stared at the chewed-up parking lot of Stroop Finders.

In the shadows, the broken asphalt looked like monsters trying to claw their way out of the underworld.

Of course, that was all my imagination. In the real world, monsters tended to wear jeans and T-shirts like everyone else. They stole, lied, and cheated, and when they got caught, their adoring, gullible mothers scraped together bail money.

Often, the monsters ran off anyway.

As a bounty hunter, it was my job to track them down and haul them back in.

Lately, though, I seemed to be making more messes than I was cleaning up. Exhibit number one: the state of the parking lot. The office addition should have been well underway, but because I’d pissed off the sheriff’s department, there had been a mixup with the construction permits.

The county had finally sent out an inspector, but they were taking their sweet time issuing new paperwork. No wonder my dad was avoiding me.

Sighing, I parked on a section of untouched asphalt, unbuckled the seatbelt and practically melted out of the car and into the hot, humid atmosphere. It was like being poured into a grizzly’s mouth. Instantly, I felt sticky and gross, even though I’d showered less than an hour earlier.

The temperature wasn’t the only reason I was sweating. Potentially, a man’s life rested in my hands.

It was that word, potentially, that had kept me up all night.

Massimo was a good guy, but he’d fled a murder scene… all the way to Europe. Word on the street was that he should come back dead, not alive. His exact location hadn’t been pinpointed yet, but it was only a matter of time.

We needed to find him first, and everyone seemed to think that I could save him. Even Corbin, who really should have known better.

No pressure.

My phone buzzed with a text. Only Corbin would have been trying to contact me so early, so I fished it out of my pocket and leaned against my car’s hood, then immediately moved away from the warm metal, my nose wrinkling. A rusty pickup truck jangled by, its tail lights stark and red in the darkness.

Corbin: Where’d you go?

My incisors caught the tender curve of my lip. I’d ripped the skin off—by accident—only about twenty minutes earlier, but I couldn’t stop chewing.

Nervously, I composed a reply, the words I hadn’t wanted to share. Check the photos in the phone you lent me in Paris. You’re looking for license plates.

There wasn’t any doubt that I was going to send the text, but tapping the send button felt like trying to push a tractor trailer up a hill with my index finger. Those photos, the only solution I’d come up with to help Massimo, were the reason I’d fled to work while Corbin was in the shower.

Those photos…

When I was in France, I’d run into Massimo. Our being on the same plane had been a coincidence. Massimo had thought it was a sign.

I hadn’t wanted to get involved, but he’d begged for my help. People back home seemed to think I was already helping him. I hadn’t been, but I hadn’t turned him over to the authorities, either. The fact was that I liked Massimo, and not just because he was gorgeous and had a charming accent. Despite his vain, expensive clothes and the incongruously hippy-type things he said, he was genuine. There was an unexpected innocence about him.

What else to call a man who turned to me for help with a murder investigation? Innocent.

Or insane. I was a bounty hunter, not a detective.

But I’d been curious to know if Massimo was trying to con me, so I’d spied on him in Paris. Never mind that illegal PI work was what had gotten me acquainted with him in the first place. Apparently I was a slow learner. So I’d tracked him to a small private party, full of people who had no idea that he was wanted for murder.

Even the woman who owned the house, Massimo’s friend, didn’t know why he’d suddenly shown up on her doorstep—though she’d surely been enlightened since then. I wondered how that was sitting with her now.

Spying on him had showed me a man whose heart was broken.

Before heading back to my hotel that evening, I’d snapped photos of the expensive cars parked in the driveway. I hadn’t forgotten that I’d taken the pictures, but I hadn’t thought they would come in handy.

I’d certainly never intended to involve those people in an international murder investigation. But the moment I tapped the send button, that was exactly what I’d done.

My teeth caught my lip again as Corbin’s reply chimed: I knew you’d come up with something.

Corbin would track down the names and addresses of the cars’ owners. Massimo had left the area, but the people who owned those cars were about to have their privacy shredded. The thought made my stomach pitch.

Massimo’s life was in danger. Those were the stakes, and I couldn’t not use my only lead, no matter how slender.

I sent another text to Corbin. I doubt they know anything. Please be careful with them.

He wrote back immediately: Baby, I’m always careful.

It didn’t soothe my nerves. Corbin would do what was necessary, no matter how unpleasant.

He could always be counted on for that.

And now it was out of my hands. Uneasy about that, and uneasy about the cowardly way I’d handled the whole situation, I disabled the alarm and entered the quiet office.

The reek of beer still lingered in the background, but I was getting used to it.

The lights slowly flickered on. Well, no one had trashed the place overnight. That was always a good sign. It had only happened once, but once was enough.

Even though the office had been straightened up, the furniture was still subtly out of place. The changes were small: a desk a few inches closer to the walkway, a computer sitting in a slightly different spot, but I’d spent too many hours of my life inside the boxy walls not to notice.

Out of habit, I switched on the air conditioner. To my surprise it coughed noisily to life. I held my hands up to a vent.

Feeble gusts of musty, tepid air swirled over my fingers. Really, it was substandard, but I took it as an omen signifying that my luck had changed.

I grabbed the edge of a desk and shifted it an inch.

It still wasn’t right. All the little differences added up. The office was neat, but chaos lurked. It set my teeth on edge.

Henry Heigh had done this. Of that there was no doubt. Henry Heigh, who wanted to kill me because I’d betrayed him. And now he was out of prison.

A slow shudder crawled through me. It was all too easy to imagine him standing behind one of the closed doors, waiting to lunge out and grab me.

The longer the thought percolated in my mind, the more vivid it became.

I wasn’t afraid of much, but I practically ran out of the office. Because I needed something to eat for breakfast, I told myself.

But the truth was that Henry did scare me. I knew Corbin could keep me physically safe, but it hadn’t been that long ago since Henry had threatened me, saying I belonged in prison.

The truth was, he was right. A man was dead because of me. Zac was a bad man, true, but that didn’t make me any less guilty—or any less deserving of punishment, at least not in the eyes of the law.

Chapter 2

Except for a pudgy man sitting all the way at the end of the counter, the donut shop was empty when I walked through the door.

The air was fragrant with the soft scent of powdered sugar and fried dough. Coffee, too, an inoffensive brew that was likely the color and consistency of rusty water.

I’d planned to splurge on a plain donut, but I decided on a chocolate glaze. It wasn’t going to be nearly as good as the pastries I’d had in Paris, but that was Paris. I was back in my real life now, where nothing was fancy and nothing was easy.

Not that Paris had been easy.

I smiled. Corbin was kind of fancy, beneath the bad boy ruggedness. He was certainly fancy for an ex-assassin. His thick hair, electric blue-green eyes, and tall, strong body made him look like a Hollywood star. More importantly, he understood me, knew when to laugh, when to caress and reassure. And he definitely knew how to touch me…

Heat coursed through my body. Too bad I’d fled earlier; a quick romp between the sheets would have been nice.

I tapped my finger on the silver bell that sat on the counter.

A moment later, a sleepy-eyed woman came from the back, an apologetic smile on her lips. She held a pacifier in her hand, which she shoved into her apron pocket when she caught me staring.

Sorry about the wait, she said. What can I get you?

A dozen chocolate glazed. I reconsidered. A good portion of our employees continued to work from home even though the construction had been stopped. Not a dozen. A half dozen. And a hot tea with lemon, I added.

I sat at a table facing the road, sipped my bitter tea, and watched the occasional lonely car pass by. A baby cried. The grizzled man complained. Eventually the darkness retreated, traffic picked up, and the feeling of Henry skulking in the office faded.

Still, I might have stayed longer if a noisy group of high schoolers hadn’t entered, their voices loud and jarring, their clothes sloppy, their backpacks sliding off their shoulders.

I left a good tip in the jar and forced myself to leave the bakery. I had a ton of work to do. Stroop Finders desperately needed money, and I hadn’t been pulling my weight recently.

A familiar car zoomed past.

For a moment I stared after it, wondering why the hell my twin brother was speeding to work—and so early in the morning. Over the last six months, he’d had a sort of renaissance as a responsible adult, but coming into the office before seven in the morning was so far out of character that I had a difficult time believing it was his car.

Or if it was, that Rob was behind the wheel. Or maybe he wasn’t alone…

The thought propelled me into my own car. The prospect of catching Rob sneaking around with Jennifer, who was one of Corbin’s former associates, was too juicy to pass up.

When I reached the office, I practically sprinted for the building, exploding through the door.

Rob, who had been sitting with his feet propped on the desk, jerked upright, his brown eyes the size of saucers. Jesus, Audrey, he said.

My gaze swept back and forth.

My brother was alone.

Stifling my disappointment, I lobbed the bag of donuts onto his desk. Thought you might want breakfast, I said.

He gave the bag a deeply skeptical look that was surely intended for me. But never one to pass up free food, he said, Thanks, and settled back into his chair. I’m glad you’re here. I got a call thirty minutes ago. The county decided our situation warrants a second inspection.

Uh-oh. I didn’t need to say it aloud. Rob knew.

Did they happen to mention what was wrong with the last inspection?

He shook his head. But I’m damned sure going to ask. They can’t harass us like this.

He was wrong. Obviously they could.

Being jerked around by the county gave me a measure of sympathy for all the bad boys and girls we picked up and hauled to the authorities. The bail skips usually didn’t say much of anything, but when they did talk, it was either to curse us out, or to curse out the unfair, rigged system.

When the system was against you, getting free of it was impossible. It was like a cyclone, a whirlpool.

Rob glanced