Ménage Material [La Belle sans la Bete Ménages] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

La Belle sans la Bête Ménages

Ménage Material

Realizing there’s a third person in her marriage, Devvy Jacques is stunned. Discovering her husband’s lover is a man, she’s horrified. Learning that man is Alexei Ivanov, the internationally renowned scientist behind the cure for cancer, she’s…
Horny?

Being part of a ménage wasn’t in any of her fairy tales as a kid, but the more she’s with hubby, Sebastien, and new lover, Alexei, the more she realizes it’s a dream come true.

Around them, between them, under or above them, Devvy flourishes, becoming the woman she was meant to be before life did a number on her.

With the ménage flourishing, and love growing every day, it takes a twisted blackmailer to derail it all. Raking up past secrets Alex wants to remain hidden, and exposing their unusual household to the world’s eye, the trio face enough challenges to unravel apart. 

Will life work its mischief or will they still have what it takes to be perfect
Ménage Material?

Genre:
Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Older H/h, Romantic Suspense

Length:
99,342 words
 

La Belle sans la Bête Ménages

Serena Akeroyd

MENAGE AMOUR

Siren Publishing, Inc.

www.SirenPublishing.com

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IMPRINT: Ménage Amour

MÉNAGE MATERIAL

Copyright © 2014 by Serena Akeroyd

E-book ISBN:
978-1-63258-545-5

First E-book Publication: November 2014

Cover design by Harris Channing

All art and logo copyright © 2014 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED:
This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

PUBLISHER

Siren Publishing, Inc.

www.SirenPublishing.com

Letter to Readers

Dear Readers,

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Ménage Material
by Serena Akeroyd from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

Regarding E-book Piracy

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This is Serena Akeroyd’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Serena Akeroyd’s right to earn a living from her work.

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www.SirenPublishing.com

www.BookStrand.com

Forgive the award-ceremony list of thanks, but this day has been a long time coming.

To Mum and Nanna. No words, not even a thank-you, is an adequate dedication. So, I’ll say this: I might have looked like I wasn’t listening, but I always was. I might have rolled my eyes, but I took your advice. (And it almost always was the right thing to do. In fact, delete the “almost.”) I might have been a pain in the ass, but I was
your
pain in the ass. :D Cheers, my dears.

Granddad, I didn’t know you. You were taken from me far too soon. That doesn’t lessen the influence you’ve had on me. Mum made sure she passed along your teachings, you know, always having ten bags of sugar in the cupboard. Just in case. I love you, and I wish we’d had more time together.

To the people who have helped me along the way. Katrina, Caryn, Nicole…and to those of you I haven’t mentioned—THANK YOU. I’m humbled by your help.

And finally, to Trever, for smelling, snoring, and insisting on stinking bits of dried tripe—no soap in the world gets rid of that stench from your pinkies. You may be just a dog, but there’s no
just
where you’re concerned.

MÉNAGE MATERIAL

La Belle sans la Bête Ménages

SERENA AKEROYD

Copyright © 2014

Your money.

Your wife.

Or your LOVER.

100,000 euros to keep quiet. To keep your sick secret hidden from the papers.

You have five weeks to figure out which means more to you.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

I’ll be in touch. And I’ll be watching.

-An interested third party.

Devvy Jacques was no idiot.

She held a PhD in cosmetic science, and while it could be said her line of study was more of a pseudo-science than a legitimate field, she was also a botanist, studying plants and their pharmaceutical uses. Still, her choice of careers never entered into arguments of her intelligence. After all, it wasn’t as if she had to be a member of Mensa, which she was, to see that something was wrong in her marriage. She knew, point-blank
knew,
her husband was having an affair.

Okay, point-blank might have been a
slight
exaggeration, but a woman
knew
, didn’t she? She could sense it, and every ounce of female intuition Devvy possessed was screeching a red alert.

“This is what happens when you aim high, Devina Jacques. You should have stayed in your own sphere. Stayed among the pond scum and not aimed for Darwinian perfection.” Her voice was glum as she stood in her home laboratory, combining witch-hazel with tea tree oil to a solution that would eventually become a bar of facial cleansing soap aimed at teenagers with acne-prone skin.

It was all right telling herself it had been a dumb move to marry Sebastien Jacques, but actually coming to terms with it was another thing entirely. Unfortunately for Devvy, she loved the man, had loved him ever since she’d first set eyes on him at a cosmetics convention in the city that would become her marital home, Paris.

Sebastien was the owner of the only international brand of cosmetics free from animal testing, made with one-hundred percent natural products, and marketed around the world. What had started as a small business in a tiny suburb of Lyon had exploded into one of the fastest-growing cosmetic companies France had ever seen.

La Belle sans la Bête
beauty line was a hit among the socialites and the struggling single mothers—it breached all of society’s barriers and was popular with every income bracket. The snazzy name, Beauty without the Beast, said it all. The brand combined nature’s bounty with reasonable price tags while producing products that actually worked, more so than the chemical-laden glop most women slapped on their faces, and all without animal testing.

Sebastien’s success was legendary in the industry.

At forty-five, he was nearly twenty years her senior and even though two decades separated them, he was still a nine out of ten on the gorgeousness scale, whereas Devvy, with no amount of help from the
La Belle sans la Bête
product line, only just brushed a seven.

And that was on a good day.

When, at the Parisian cosmetics convention, Sebastien had headhunted her and offered her a dream role at his company, she’d dived right in. Not because she believed in his brand, even though she did and had admired his work for a long time, but because of him. Sebastien.

Nearly a foot taller than her own five six, onyx black hair with salt and pepper at his temples, olive skin that gleamed with vivacity and augmented the stunning amber-brown of his eyes, Sebastien was a hunk. Or, as the French said, a
bellâtre
. He was masculine beauty personified and to Devvy, who from birth had been a skinny, geeky non-entity, he’d been a total cliché.

Adonis, in the flesh.

Hell, scratch that. He’d been a walking advertisement. He might as well have had a sign on his head—
female orgasm distributor
. No BOB could ever match a guy like Bastien Jacques. Damn his gorgeous hide.

It had taken all of her reserve not to stutter in his presence. Not to flush or stammer or wring her hands with awkwardness whenever he was near. She’d been utterly beguiled by him. From the almost feminine curve of his mouth, to the lines that crinkled at his eyes whenever he beamed a grin her way. She’d fallen hook, line, and sinker for the man.

So, when he’d approached her with a contract that would take her from her sunny Californian hometown to Paris, the city for lovers, she’d been hard-pressed not to leap at him, to snatch the papers from his hands, and sign on the dotted line before he could retract the offer. She’d managed to hold back. Just. Her pride hadn’t even twanged with self-importance at the fact he’d selected her for his company, when his choosiness at staff selection was as world renowned as his product line. She hadn’t cared on a professional level. It had all been very, very personal.