Enticement
Once trouble moves in, it can throw a kink in your plans.
Evie’s future finally looks as tidy as the Yorkshire house she shares with Ross, her serious boyfriend. Until she comes home and sneaks into his after-work shower—and discovers she’s just jumped a naked stranger with mysterious, deep-running ties to Ross’s past.
Fresh from a bartending stint in Japan, Kit plans to move into his newly inherited house as soon as it gets a roof. Meanwhile, his old friend Ross has offered him a spare room. How better entertain himself than by pushing Evie’s buttons…and her boundaries?
Risk isn’t Ross’s style—at least, not anymore—but then again, he was never able to say no to Kit. Memories of their wild adventures still spice his sexual fantasies. Fantasies that could cost him Evie’s love, if she knew.
Captured by Kit’s bad-boy charm, Evie finds her vision of domestic bliss rapidly fading in the growing intensity of Kit’s dark sexuality. Kit knows he’s playing fast and loose with Ross and Evie’s relationship, but he’s certain he can win them over and have what he’s always wanted. A three-way romance.
Even if his last attempt ended in a disaster that comes back to haunt them all…
Warning: This title contains explicit, ménage a trois loving, m/m sex and a bad, bad man with a fondness for skimpy shorts and irreverent behavior.
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Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520
Macon GA 31201
Enticement
Copyright © 2010 by Madelynne Ellis
ISBN: 978-1-60928-237-0
Edited by Tera Kleinfelter
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: November 2010
Enticement
Madelynne Ellis
Dedication
To my monsters—life wouldn’t be the same without your unique perspectives and all the riot and rumpus you cause.
Chapter One
“Ross—you home?”
Evie Latham dropped her keys on the kitchen table before poking her head around the living room door. Besides the single pool of warmth created by the standing lamp, there was no sign of Ross. He had to be home, though. There was no way Mr. Energy Conservationist would ever be caught leaving the lights on all day. She’d only just trained him out of unplugging the kettle after every cup of tea.
Upstairs, the exotic scent of his herbal shower gel suffused the corridor. Evie glanced at her watch. It wasn’t like Ross to dive in the shower the moment he got home. He knew she liked the smell of him, all musky and hot, with a hint of the chemicals he used at work blended into the mix, and the powdery smears from the latex gloves still fresh on his fingertips. She loved to press her nose up tight to him, snuggle into the crook of his arm and breathe in his wonderful scent. Clearly, today had been gruelling. Possibly, he’d lost one. It sometimes happened. Animals he just couldn’t save. Ross wasn’t the sort to get all teary-eyed, but she could always tell how his day had gone from the timbre of his voice when he spoke. Too low and dry, and he was obviously choked up. Eight years as a vet and losses still bruised him.
Cheering up tactics would obviously be necessary.
Having shed her shoes at the bedroom door, Evie pressed on towards the bathroom, unbuttoning her white blouse as she went. Some things never failed. Just thinking of how delight would transform Ross’s expression as she stepped into the shower with him fully clothed gave her butterflies.
Little transgressions. That pretty much summed him up. Wet clothes that clung to the skin and turned transparent being his number one thing. A curious one as kinks went, but far preferable to him admitting a love of spanking or borrowing her underwear. Each to his own, of course, but she thought she’d have a much harder time accepting either of those things.
Ross loved water. He loved being caught in the rain. While everyone else was hurrying by, he’d be the one dancing in the puddles or sauntering along sans coat and umbrella without a care in the world.
They’d met in the rain, in a thunderstorm, only a few yards from their current doorstep. She’d been wearing a floaty white dress that had turned transparent at the first touch of water and clung to her skin, accentuating every curve. She had a fair few of those, not all in the right places either. Ross had seen it all before they’d even exchanged names.
In her fantasy replays of that event, Evie liked to imagine their meeting had been an explosive coming together of yin and yang, a passionate melding of minds and bodies. The truth was that she’d gone arse over tit on the wet grass and slipped a disc. Ross had kindly called an ambulance and held her hand on the way to hospital while she screamed in pain.
The wet scent hit her like a blast of steam as she ploughed through the bathroom door. The normally shiny surfaces were reduced to fuzzy blurs by the wall of fog. Instinctively, she reached for the fan cord, and as the gentle whir began, the overhead light flickered on too. Even then, she could only just discern his outline through the steamed up glass bricks that screened the shower. Strong shoulders, dark hair, his cute tight-as-a-button arse. Her Ross. They’d been sharing a place with friends for so long it was good to think that, now they had their own place, he was entirely hers.
Evie dropped her jewellery and mobile on the edge of the sink. The final button of her shirt undone to display her admirable cleavage, nicely framed by her new polka dot bra, she stepped under the shower spray behind him, and wrapped her arms around his waist. “How’s this for a welcome home?”
There was something wrong.
Even before her hands closed upon his flesh, she knew it. His scent… Even masked by the citrus and wood of the shower gel, his underlying scent was different, as was the way their bodies folded together.
As if scalded, Evie jerked back, unleashing a blizzard of ungodly oaths. She scrambled out of the shower and pulled her wet clothes tight around her. “Who the fuck are you?”
He turned slowly. “Erm… Evie?”
She stared at him, all ripped smooth muscle and not a speck of hair on him anywhere besides his head, and failed to find any hint of familiarity. His two perfect penny-like nipples were all perked up and excited. “Start talking, mister. You’ve thirty seconds before I call the police.” Assuming the local station didn’t just laugh when she complained of having a gorgeous man in her shower.
Her fingers nervously twitched as she stretched her hand towards the washbasin and the phone, still blindly backing up.
“Evie,” he said again.
Water droplets clung to his eyelashes, while his dark eyes—so dark she couldn’t really tell what colour they were—smiled down at her. How did he know her name?
Cheeky bastard didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed.
Her phone exploded with sound. Evie made a grab for it, only for it to shoot from her hand like a bar of soap. It hit the wet tiles and skidded to a halt between the stranger’s feet. With a squeal of alarm and frustration, she hopped back a little farther towards the bathroom door.
The stranger stepped from the shower and wrapped the skimpiest towel the bathroom had to offer around his hips. He bent and retrieved her phone. He glanced at the face before lifting it to his ear. “You’re too late, mate,” he said into it. His voice rich and smooth like honey. “We’ve already met.” He held out the phone to her. “It’s Ross. He’d like a word.”
Ross… Ross?
Evie snatched the cell from him and clamped it to her ear. “What in the blazes is going on?”
“Yeah…er… Hi, Evie.” Ross’s semi-apologetic tone washed a sense of calm into her ear. “Sorry to spring this on you, but, you remember my friend, Kit? I’m sure I’ve mentioned him before. Well, he’s back in the country and I said it would be okay for him to crash with us until he sorts his place out. That’s all right, isn’t it?”
All right! Like hell it was. How could he even contemplate destroying their privacy after only two weeks? They’d been waiting months to get this place. They were barely settled. There were still boxes in the spare room they hadn’t unpacked. Speechless, she just glared at the naked intruder.
“Evie? You all right?” Ross asked, an apprehensive edge creeping into his voice.
“I thought we moved so we could have some us time,” she said.
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “I know… It won’t be for long, okay. I promise. Just a month or so.”
“A month!”
“Evie, I did try to reach you at work. Your phone’s been off. Look, it is okay, isn’t it? He’s not a scruffy lout or anything, and we go way back.”
“I can see that.” Not that they went way back, obviously, but that he wasn’t scruffy. He’d started drying his hair with another skimpy hand towel as she talked, so that the muscles in his torso rippled with the movement. A lock of thick black hair flopped forward over his brow.
“We’ll talk when I get in,” said Ross.
Yes, they would. Not that there actually seemed all that much to negotiate. Kit was already here. She risked another glance at him. Yep, quite definitely here. Still mostly naked and making himself at home. He sniffed at a bottle of Ross’s aftershave, but discarded it unused.
“Love you,” Ross managed to squeeze in before she hung up.
Yeah, love you too she thought, still bitter but no longer quite so cross.
“That’s some welcome technique you have.” Kit glanced at the shower cubicle and smiled, so that the corners of his eyes crinkled and his lips parted to reveal slightly crooked teeth. “I’m sorry I shocked you. It is lovely to meet you at last.” He offered her a hand.
“Kit?” she said, accepting it.
He nodded.
In the comfort of the master bedroom, Evie shrugged off her wet clothes and collapsed on the rumpled duvet in her dressing gown. Frigging crazy, they’d only been here a fortnight. Two weeks of harmonious bliss away from the inconvenience of housemates and ever-calling friends. No one was quite as keen to drive out to the village of an evening, as they’d been to just nip in when she and Ross were living above the town’s finest take-away. The last thing they needed was a houseguest, gorgeous or otherwise. And he had been that. This move was supposed to be about them gaining some private time, not taking in waifs and strays.
Kit! She huffed out a sigh. She wasn’t even sure she recalled Ross ever mentioning him. She’d met most of his mates. This one had to be from eons back.
There was a rap on the door. Evie sat up, a pillow clamped to her chest. “Yeah,” she called.
Kit poked his head around the jamb. “Tea, coffee, foot massage,” he offered. He was still showing far too much skin. Judging by the way he leaned around the door, he probably only had on a pair of shorts.
“Get real.”
He shrugged. “Just trying to apologize, and drinks is what I do best.”
Her gaze flicked down over the perfectly buffed skin of his chest as he leaned a little farther around the door. Ross was sexy, but compact and rugged, more Sean Bean than GQ model. This guy was rangy and moulded, with lighter skin and a tattoo on his hip that just poked above the line of his shorts. His knees looked as if they’d seen a few scrapes. The skin upon them was silvered and ruddy.
Kit continued to stare at her expectantly from beneath his cloud of coal-dark hair.
He had to have some Asian or Romany ancestry. Had to. No one had hair that dark naturally without it, and of course there were his eyes to consider—equally dark, two pools of glowing temptation focused entirely upon her.
The first stirring prickle of arousal chased across her skin. Evie clutched the pillow a little more tightly. “Just put some clothes on, all right.”
He seemed a little startled by her concern over his near-nakedness. “Okay.” He dug his teeth into his bottom lip.
Really, there was only so much temptation one could accept in a houseguest and still permit him to stay. She sank back against the duvet once he closed the door. Kit was one hell of a package of smut. Not the sort of man boyfriends generally invited over to stay. Give it a few days and she’d probably have all her girlfriends driving over to check him out.
A little while later, back downstairs, Evie flicked on the TV and settled in front of the road traffic update. Another lorry had blown over on the A1 resulting in a twenty-mile stretch of it being closed. Ross called again to say he was stuck in the resulting tailbacks.
Kit cast a shadow over the sofa.
Evie glanced up at him. He’d finally dressed, although, actually that didn’t stop her insides doing a little hop. She sat a little straighter and lifted her feet off the sofa. My God, was he dressed. She dusted the Kettle Chip crumbs from her dressing gown and refrained from putting another into her mouth. Leather trousers hugged his thighs and fell in tailored perfection to rest on leather boots, while a green silk shirt flowed over the contours of his chest, the top three buttons left undone. “Are you going out?”
Kit gave an eloquent shrug. “Figured I’d do some catching up. There are plenty of folks still around that I used to know.”
Evie nodded. She kept looking him up and down as if she couldn’t quite decide if he were real. “You do know there’s only the pub in the village, right? No clubs or restaurants or anything. It’s all a bit downbeat and homely really.”
He shrugged again, a move that pulled the silk taut across his broad shoulders. “Sure. I know that.”
“Oh!”
He cocked an eyebrow as if the remark required further qualifying.
“I just thought something more casual would, you know, fit in better with the jeans and jumpers crowd.”
Kit looked down at what he was wearing with his eyes narrowed.
My god, she realized. This was Kit’s version of casual. Heaven help her and the rest of the village’s female population if he ever dressed like he meant business.
“I’ve never been much into jeans.” He strolled over to the mirror that hung over the traditional fireplace, where he tweaked a few stray strands of dark hair into submission. “I’m sure they’ll forgive my little eccentricity. They never worried about my aunt, and she wore three-piece suits made from her neighbour’s old chintz curtains. They’ll just think I’m following in her footsteps.” He glanced down at himself again. “It’s hardly that outrageous.”
It wasn’t. It just wasn’t typical Yorkshire village haute couture either.
“So, where’s this place of yours?” she asked, wondering how quickly she could slip away and pull on something less dowdy. Not that she particularly needed to impress him, but she didn’t want him thinking her a total slob.
“Down the road.” He came over and perched on the sofa in the space her feet had recently occupied.
“What, in the village?” There wasn’t anywhere up for sale. She and Ross had had to wait five months for this place to become available just to rent. Kirkley wasn’t really even a village, more of a hamlet. Just a few old cottages huddled around a green with a pub, a duck pond and a sort of post office. No church, no school, no streetlights.
“Rose Cottage. Do you know it? It was my great aunt’s place. It’s been going through probate and whatnot, but it’s all sorted now.”
“It’s a fucking wreck!” she blurted before she thought better. There wasn’t even a roof on it. Evie clamped her hand across her mouth. Okay, there was half a roof, and maybe three intact panes of glass in the entire building.