Resisting Nick (Wicked in Wellington) (27 page)

WARNING: Contains one ambitious man with a tender heart and a body to die for. And one unlikely temptress with an ancient copy of The Joy of Sex.

Praise for
Out of Bounds

Sweet
enough to be touching,
sexy
enough to need the fan on when you’re reading, you won’t be disappointed in this lovely tale.
(Amazon)

Kris does it all,
sex and humor and sheer fun
. She has a light, engaging touch that never falters.
(Amazon)

Excerpt
:

Jetta Rivers despised herself for snooping on him over the old fence, but with her face hidden safely in the foliage of Gran’s jasmine vine, her eyes still followed his every move.

He was sex on legs. Sex on very long legs. Maybe thirty—with strong arms, and a smooth tanned back flexing in the bright Kiwi sun as he polished the silver flanks of an impeccable old Porsche.

She imagined running her hands over his taut muscular body as sensuously as his were caressing the car.

Then, quick as a wink, her naughty brain stripped the jeans off his very cute butt.

‘Stop it Jetta!’
she snapped at herself, adding a couple of frustrated curses as hot little ripples of pleasure pulsed between her thighs. Why did she feel like this when she couldn’t do anything about it? Her body might be bursting with lust but her brain always put the brakes on. In twenty-six years, she’d had exactly one night of sex.

And it had been terrible.
 

A week later Jetta swiped at a trickle of tears and drew a deep determined breath. The house she’d just inherited was far from beautiful—Grandma’s loving welcomes had somehow disguised the awful details and softened the scruffiness.
 

But it was hers now, and chipping up the old kitchen floor with Grandpa’s spade was only the first of dozens of jobs she had planned.

Wincing at her new blisters, she gathered up some of the larger pieces of linoleum, carried them along the hallway, and threw her armful of rubbish onto the growing heap beside the path. Then she took a few gulps of fresh summer air before retreating to the dusty kitchen.
 

 
“Hello...?” a man yelled through the open door a few seconds later.
 

As Jetta turned to investigate, she caught sight of herself in the small mirror on the back of the kitchen door. Under Grandpa’s ancient painting hat, her face was dirty, tear-streaked and bare of make-up. She looked about sixteen, and really didn’t need a visitor.

“Hello?” His voice was softer now and very close.

She whirled further around, heart racing, grabbed for the spade handle, and clutched it tightly. There was only him and her. No one else to save her.
 

“What the
hell
are you doing to the house?” he asked.

She stood there trembling as the man she’d nicknamed ‘Mr Porsche’ gazed about with very obvious amusement on his far-too-gorgeous face. She’d never seen him up close before. Never expected his eyes would be so disturbingly blue or that he’d have that little sprinkling of dark hair showing at the open neck of his polo shirt. “It’s my house—I’ll do what I like with it,” she managed.

“It’s
our
house, and I’ll be demolishing it,” he replied. “Anton,” he said, thrusting out a big hand. “Anton Haviland. And you must be Jetta Rivers.”

Already way on edge, Jetta sagged onto one of the 1950’s chrome and leatherette chairs in case his outrageous suggestion was for real. Demolish her house? Never!

She wouldn’t shake his hand.
 

She wouldn’t touch him with a bargepole.

***

Kris also writes stories about sexy sheikhs…

Taken by the Sheikh

Abducted. Seduced. Purring.

Laurel de Courcey is captured by terrorists, chained up in a disgusting bunker, and videoed for a ransom demand which is shown worldwide.

Ooops—wrong hostage! Who’d expect a shy Kiwi nanny to be worth anything?

Laurel’s soon tied up in Sheikh Rafiq’s bed instead, because he rescues her and appoints himself her personal bodyguard. Very personal. But she has good reason to distrust men.

Imprisoned in his old royal hunting lodge deep in the desert ‘for her own protection’, Laurel rebels. Spectacular fireworks, dangerous escape attempts, and an impossible love affair follow.

Warning: contains one red-hot Sheikh with a wicked tongue and unlimited stamina.

Praise for
Taken by the Sheikh

It was engaging from the first page and kept me interested until the last
. It was well written and I was able to “connect” with the characters. I laughed and cried right along with them. Loved the chemistry between the two...very steamy.
(Amazon)

This is a terrific read
! You are caught up in the action from the first page—real thriller movie action which is authentic and engrossing. The characters are very well-drawn: Rafiq, the Sheikh, is no caricature Rudolf Valentino but a real, rounded and distinct person (which makes you fancy him all the more). Laurel, the heroine, whom Rafiq rescues from the terrorists who’ve kidnapped her, is an appealing mix of innocence and fiesty spirit.
(Amazon)

Excerpt
:

Laurel de Courcey stared at the cliff in dismay. After her exhausting trek through the desert she had to climb
that?

The unexpected barrier at the end of the gully rose up steep and crumbling. The tiny stream she’d been following seeped out from under the daunting rock-face. What was on the other side? Rafiq hadn’t warned her about this—simply ordered her to walk, and said she’d find ‘a house’.

Well, there was no house in sight. And did she trust him anyway? He might be all taut muscles and flashing eyes, but she had to remember he was only the lesser of two evils. The other men in his group? Her body convulsed in a sudden shudder just thinking about them.

She tried to banish the hideous memory and gulped the last of her water, refilled the bottle from the life-saving trickle, clenched her teeth, and attempted the hazardous scramble up out of her temporary hiding place. How she wished she had his strength and endurance!

Long minutes later she hauled herself over the top and lay panting. Black spots whirled across her vision. She squeezed her eyes closed, and still the spots flickered and jumped. Finally she raised her head.

Indeed there
was
a house—or some sort of half-concealed building anyway. A high plastered wall hid much of it, but an arched gateway, softened by cascades of pink blossom from a gnarled tree, looked inviting.

She rose wearily and staggered onward. Palm-fronds and other lush greenery came into focus as she limped nearer, and she feared the unexpected oasis might be a mirage after the endless inhospitable miles of sand and rock.

But no—the gate was real. She stood in the dancing shade of the blossoms and tugged the bell-rope. Within seconds a small wrinkled woman appeared, bustling toward her with colorful long skirts fluttering around her legs.

Laurel pulled Rafiq’s note from her jeans pocket and smoothed it out. Would this be the woman she was supposed to give it to? She held it forward.

The impassive dark face lit up. The gate swung open. The little woman whisked the note from her fingers and became extremely animated, urging her in and rattling away with great enthusiasm.

“Laurel,” Laurel said, tapping her chest with a finger.

“Yasmina,” the woman replied, thumping her own.

“Yasmina,” Laurel tried. This brought nods and smiles.

“Rafiq?” she asked. More nods and smiles, but also an unmistakable gesture of ‘not here now’.

Oh darn.

Yasmina re-read the note with close attention, all the while chattering in her own language, and drew Laurel along the path and in through the doorway of a turreted old house with thick stone walls. The blinding light outside made the interior seem dim and restful, and the relative coolness washed over her skin like a blessing.

After progressing through a long hallway, they arrived in a high-ceilinged bedroom. Yasmina threw open a further door, and Laurel stood amazed as the servant started water gushing into a marble bath from an ornate gold spout. She must look desperately hot and dirty if this was how she was welcomed!

The little woman emerged—smiling and gesturing that Laurel was to treat the room as her own. She trotted off, and Laurel sank down on the bed before her legs gave way under her. What on earth would happen next?

The bath looked blissful once she managed to rise to her weary feet again. Yasmina had thrown a handful of fresh rose-petals into it. Laurel assumed she’d been tidying up full-blown blooms as they proceeded up the path together, but plainly the flowers had been intended for this. Fragrant foam grew ever deeper in the water as the bath filled. A selection of French soaps spilled from a basket at one end of the huge tub. It all seemed way over the top for a semi-deserted relic so far from civilization.

She stripped and bathed, shampooing the gritty sand from her long fair hair and letting the delicious warm scented water soothe away her aches. When she returned to the bedroom she found all her clothes had disappeared and a gauzy mauve robe had been laid on the bed. She slipped it on, admired its bands of amazing gold embroidery, stretched out on the bed to consider the strange turn her life had taken, and plummeted into an exhausted asleep.

At once the nightmare hit again. The wind from the desert moaned eerily. Palm-fronds clattered, but otherwise very little moved as the small seaside resort of Kalal drowsed in the afternoon heat.

A solitary vehicle coasted to a halt just behind her.

Laurel half-turned when she heard the door creak open, but she had only a split second to register the fast-moving dark shape of a man before brutal hands dragged a bag down over her face. As fast as that, she’d been trapped.

A scalding cascade of horrendous possibilities flooded her brain. Terrified, she screamed at top volume, dropped her sketching pad, and kicked backwards with every ounce of her considerable determination. The heel of her shoe connected with what she hoped was her captor’s shin.

It caused a guttural male voice to let loose a vicious curse in the local language and she enjoyed a fleeting flash of triumph. But then an iron-hard hand closed over her face, pressing her lips painfully back against her teeth. And a steely arm wrapped around her waist and heaved her forward and face-down.

Her scrabbling fingers told her she’d landed on a slab of foam rubber on a hard floor.

Doors banged, a motor revved, and she jerked backward as the vehicle took off at high speed.

Shudders of panic took over then. Huge fluttery tremors ran up and down her spine.
 

She was blind. Cruel hands had yanked a drawstring tightly around her neck so the bag was closed, and cut off any vestige of light...any hope of seeing where she was being taken.

She struggled and kicked in the swaying vehicle, and suffered the further insult of a warm weight moving to pin her down to the no-doubt filthy mattress.

“Be still!” a man’s deep voice growled close against her ear.

She was so astounded to hear accented but obvious English she momentarily froze before resuming her frenzied bucking and struggling. But she had no hope of escaping from under his strong body.

Hard hands grabbed her wrists, and she heard the snick of handcuffs and felt the smooth hard metal against her skin. Her whirling brain registered she was now one step more helpless.

Fingers trailed from her wrists to her elbows and back to her useless hands. It was almost a caress. Her heart thudded even more rapidly as the implication sank in.

“Be still,” he muttered again. “We do not mean to hurt you as long as you cooperate.”

With her shoulders flattened down under his chest, Laurel’s breasts were squashed against the floor. The man’s hips were exactly above hers. His bony pelvis ground against her bottom as the vehicle swayed and braked. A long hard thigh clamped either side of her own, pinning her down, holding her captive.

And between those impressive thighs the firm masculine bulge felt all too obvious. Desolation engulfed her then.

“Lie still and it will go easier for you,” he growled, lifting his upper torso off her which at least gave her poor breasts some relief.

But the shift in weight drove his hips even more firmly into hers, and there was no escaping the intimate press of his body. She willed her legs to weld together as shattering images exploded across her brain.

What did they want from her? One minute she’d been wandering happily in the sun, thinking of the children she was caring for, and inventing a family of her own. In an instant, future imaginings had been ripped away and replaced with the desperate danger of the present moment, and this cruel man, and not nearly enough air.

Blind and half-deaf, she used the senses she had left to get some sort of fix on her situation. There was him—who was strong and muscular because he now had her firmly confined. There was the driver. And there seemed to be another hoarse voice in the front seat, too. Presumably that was the man who’d grabbed her in the street and pushed her in to be held down by this one?

So three of them at least. Awful odds. She didn’t stand a chance.

Absolute terror engulfed her as she tried to drag big gulps of dead air into her laboring lungs.

“I can’t breathe,” she shrieked in a panic—almost more scared of suffocating than of any other eventual fate.

Hands slid around her neck, probing until they located the drawstring holding the bag fastened. She shuddered to feel callused fingers on her exposed nape...on the tender skin under her jaw. Her heart thudded with a fast panicked beat.

“Not another sound,” the man grated. But at least he’d loosened the drawstring and let in a little light and some much fresher air.