How to Break a Cowboy (10 page)

What is a WICKED WAY
INTERACTIVE?

Have you ever wished a book ended
differently? Have you ever wanted to shake the heroine in a story and tell her
to smarten up? Well, now’s your chance!

Welcome to WICKED WAY INTERACTIVES,
an exciting new erotic series by Daire St. Denis, where you (
the reader)
actively participate in the book’s ending. Get started now with the first in
the Wicked Way Interactive series…

SEX, SPIES AND PHOTOGRAPHS

Claire Marshall has a hot husband, a
nice home in the burbs and an assortment of hobbies to keep her busy. She’s perfectly
happy, right? Right?!

So why can’t she stop spying on the
new neighbor next door?

When she finds out he’s an artist,
specializing in boudoir photography, she decides to employ his services to help
spice up her love life with husband, John. However, things heat up beyond
Claire’s imagination when the neighbor and his exotic wife turn up at a party.
By the end of the night, the two couples find themselves in Claire and John’s
bedroom, for more—much more—than a photo shoot.

The relationship that develops
between the neighbors is like nothing Claire has ever experienced and forces
her to realize she’s been living a lie, biding her time in the burbs, waiting
for something to happen.

Something has happened. Claire has
undergone an awakening and she is no longer satisfied with the status quo.
She’s faced with an impossible decision and needs help. Your help. Will you
help her?

In this exciting new erotic format,
you
get to make the decision for Claire.
You
get to decide whether Claire
will find her happily ever after. Or…something else altogether. 

Welcome to Claire’s life. Welcome to
WICKED WAY INTERACTIVE books by Daire St. Denis.

AVAILABLE
MARCH, 2013

SEX,
SPIES and PHOTOGRAPHS

(
A Wicked Way Interactive)

Chapter
One

H
AVE YOU EVER
had a moment in life, a turning point, where the decision you were about to
make would change the course of your life forever? When you were at that point,
did you ever wish you had someone who could help you? Someone who’d make the
decision for you?

That’s exactly the point I’m at. My name’s Claire Marshall
and I need your help. It’s late and I’m sitting outside on my deck, an open
bottle of wine beside me, trying to ignore the noises coming from my upstairs
window, watching the faint light flickering from the window of the house next
door. I’m at a crossroads and I don’t know what to do. I’m lost. I’m confused
and I don’t trust my judgment.

Will you help me?

Before you decide, I’m going to have to give you the
background information. I need to go back in time a couple of months, to June
2012.

Wow. That’s it?  Has my life really changed so much in such
a short amount of time?

Yes. It really has.

Ah, hell.

Okay. Here goes. It all started when the new neighbor moved
in next door. His name is Martin Leblanc. He’s a photographer. Hot. Gorgeous.
Suave. Seductive. He’s the kind of man who is so freakin’ hot, he’s been banned
in forty-nine states, which is why he moved here, to Massachusetts, to a suburb
outside of Boston…

***

G
LANCING
THROUGH THE window at the overgrown yard next door, I said, “I invited the new
neighbor for supper Saturday night.”

“Mmm?” John, my husband, flipped the page of the newspaper
without looking up.

“He’s French. Or at least I think he is. He has an accent.
Sounds French.” I poured the milk into my cereal bowl and sat across the table
from him.

“That’s nice.”

I watched John closely, scrutinizing his tanned face and
his soft golden hair that had gotten long enough to curl up at his collar—the
way I liked it.

“He’s pretty hot.”

“Is that right?”

“For a shape-shifter.”

I waited but John didn’t make a sound apart from the
rustling of the newspaper.

“I saw him in the backyard last night, glowing eyes, fangs
and all. He had a cat, poor thing, sucked the living daylights right out of
it.”

“Oh yeah?”

“He dumped the carcass in our trash bin. You should go
check to see if it’s still there.”

“Mmm, okay.”

“John?”

“Yeah?”

I snatched the paper out of his hands. “Have you heard a
word I’ve said?”

He had the audacity to look annoyed for all of three
seconds. Then he grinned, that stupid boyish grin that had always been my
undoing. “I heard you. The neighbor. Saturday. Supper.” He pushed his chair
back and rounded on me, placing a kiss on my temple and whispering, “I suppose
you’re planning on serving up cat?”

I turned and smacked his chest.

He laughed. “I know you think I don’t listen to you, but
you forget I have this remarkable talent of doing more than one thing at one
time.” He pulled me to my feet and kissed me hard while grabbing my ass. “It’s
why you married me.”

The man spoke the truth. He was incredibly talented…and he
played my body as adeptly as he played numerous musical instruments.

“I hear every word you say.” His tongue outlined my lips.
“Every. Word.”

“Bastard,” I said with a smile in my voice.

“Heard it.”

“Cocky bastard.”

“Loud and clear.”

“Need to be taught a lesson in humility.” I kissed him back
and then held his lower lip delicately between my teeth.

“Mmm?” He moaned in mock pain.

I smacked his ass and he smacked mine back as he pulled
away from my mouth and teeth. “Am I going to have to take you back to our
bedroom, young lady? It sounds to me as if you need a reminder about who is in
control of this relationship.”

I pushed the breakfast bowls and newspaper aside and hopped
up onto the table. “Why waste time—teach me the lesson right here, right now.”

“Is that a challenge?” He spread my knees and leaned
forward so that I could feel the delicious bulge behind his fly through the
thin cotton of my pajama bottoms.

With my hands twined around his neck, I whispered, “It’s
not a challenge, it’s an invitation.”

He hoisted my hips as he ground his restrained cock against
my warmth. “You are a very, very naughty girl.” His lips trailed down my throat
and back up nibbling the lobe of my ear. “This lesson is going to have to be…”

On the other side of the table his phone rang, interrupting
him, and I could feel the vibration of it beneath my butt. “Leave it,” I
whispered, holding on tighter than before.

John groaned, untangling himself from my grasp. “You know I
can’t.”

“So answer it and hurry up,” I said, waving at the
offending device. “You’ve got a horny wife here. It’s not healthy to leave her unsatisfied.”

But John was already walking out of the kitchen, his focus
totally and completely on the phone at his ear.

Dammit!

I waited there on the table for ten excruciatingly long
minutes and then gave up, sliding off the table and plopping myself down in my
chair to finish my soggy Alpha-Bits. When he returned five minutes later, I
didn’t bother to look up but kept my gaze on my bowl as if the cereal had
spelled out some mysterious message that only I could decipher.

“Sorry,” he kissed the top of my head. “That was Dan.”

“Of course it was.”

“I’ve got to go.”

“I know.”

He kept his hands on my shoulders and squeezed. “Don’t be
mad.
Wright Solutions
is a big client, I can’t exactly—”

 “I’m not mad,” I lied, grabbing his hands and kissing
them. “You work hard so that you can afford to house and clothe me. I’m a
‘kept’ woman.” I tilted my head up to him with my fake smile intact. “How can I
possibly complain?”

The truth was John didn’t need to work this hard. I’d
gotten lucky with some dot-com investments back when I was in college. The
stocks shot through the roof and I sold right before the bust. Neither of us
needed to work. You wouldn’t know it by the way John gave up his time—our
time—to woo his latest client.

His face softened as he studied me. “That’s right.” He
tweaked my nose. “I’m your sugar daddy and don’t you forget it.” He pulled me
to my feet and kissed me. “After I’m done with this account we’ll go away,” he
whispered against my cheek. “Some secluded island where I can have you wherever
I want,
whenever
I want.”

“Sounds perfect.” I pulled out of his embrace and
stretched. “Of course, we could also rent a villa in Spain and learn Spanish.
Or, I was looking into these really interesting working/living abroad holidays
in Southeast Asia…”

John rolled his eyes. “That sounds romantic.”

Not much of a traveler, John was the only person I knew who
was more excited on the plane ride home from a trip than on the flight to the
destination. I straightened his tie and patted his chest. “We’ll talk about it
later. Now get to work. I’ve got a date with Mr. Happy this morning.” Mr. Happy
was the pet name for my vibrator. Bright purple—my favorite color—Mr. Happy was
a pleaser.

John groaned. “That’s not fair.”

“All’s fair, baby.”

He kissed me softly. It was nice but lacked some of the
playfulness of earlier. I knew his mind was already on the campaign he was
working on. “Don’t forget I’m going to be late tonight. I have a rehearsal with
the boys.”

“Oh right.” John belonged to a band, one of the few
vestiges of his wild, single days. I went up on tiptoes and kissed him. “Wake
me when you get home. Even if I’m already asleep.”

“You got it.”

He left and I debated whether to get straight to work on
the fresh clay I had soaking, attend to my unquenched physical needs or…to give
in to the curiosity of my newest obsession. My potter’s wheel could wait. Mr.
Happy could wait. I had to satiate my new fixation. Standing at the kitchen
window, just out of the line of sight, I carefully pulled the curtain back so I
could watch the house and yard of the place next door.

***

“S
TOP SPYING.”

It was Saturday morning and I thought John was still in
bed. His presence in the kitchen startled me and I spun from the window,
flustered at being caught. “I’m not spying.”

John parted the gauzy kitchen curtain and leaned forward,
squinting into the bright morning light. “Who’s that?”

“Who?”

“The guy in the shorts and t-shirt standing in the drive
next door.”

“Um, that guy?” I pointed. My gig was up.

“Yes,” he turned toward me with a wry smile twisting his
lips. “The one you were spying on.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s our new neighbor. Martin.”

Arching his eyebrow, John asked, “Martin? The one coming
for dinner tonight?”

“Yes. And he says it like this:
Mar-ten
. He’s
French.”

“You’re spying on Mar-ten?” John said with an
over-exaggerated French accent.

“I wasn’t spying. I was
observing
. You know, trying
to get a bead on him. Make sure he’s not a serial killer or something.”

“Un-huh. Sure.” He leaned closer to the window. “So what’s
the verdict?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is he a serial killer? Shape shifter? Vampire? What?”

“I don’t know,” I said seriously. “I haven’t figured it out
yet.” It was true. I hadn’t figured the guy out. It was a little game I liked
to play where I observed people I didn’t know. I tried to imagine who they
were, what they did, what their story was—their skeletons, all that good stuff.

“Hmm.” John leaned towards me and kissed my temple. “I’ll
expect a full report on my desk later, Agent Marshall.” He grabbed an apple
from the table and poured a cup of coffee in a to-go mug.

“Where are you off to?”

“Tee time. Ten o’clock. I’ll be back this afternoon.”

John wasn’t a golfer, but Dan, his client, was. That meant
John was still working…on Saturday. I tried to hide my frown. “Oh, okay. Have a
good game.”

“I will.” He paused beside the fridge and winked. “Should I
pick up some cat from the butcher’s?”

I threw a dish towel at him and he ducked out of the way,
laughing down the hall to the garage door. I listened for the sound of John’s
car backing out and then repositioned myself at the window. The neighbor was in
his backyard mowing the lawn. He’d taken his shirt off and even from the
distance I could see his skin glistening in the June sun. Who was he? By the
way he was built, he could be a professional athlete or an ex-Olympian. It was
hard to gauge his age, even up close.