Tempted By Trouble

  Tempted By Trouble

  Christa Wick

  C.M. Wick

  Contents

  Book Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Thank You For Reading & Reviewing!!!

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  Also by Christa Wick

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 by Christa Wick

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, this book and any portion thereof may not be reproduced, scanned, reverse-engineered, decompiled, transferred, or distributed in any print or electronic form without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Participation in any aspect of piracy of copyrighted materials, inclusive of the downloading and obtainment of this book through non-retail or other unauthorized means, is in actionable violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, media, brands, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and registered trademark owners of all branded names referenced without TM, SM, or (R) symbols due to formatting constraints, and is not claiming ownership of or collaboration with said trademark brands. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is purely coincidental.

  Published by Evergreen Books Publishing

  Copy edits and line edits by GBI Author Services

  Proofreading by Rosa Sharon

  Cover design by Violet Duke

  Previously published as Black Gold 1 & 2 (c) 2012 & (c) 2014 by Christa Wick

  Book Description

  Billionaire. Swamp gator. Former special ops. And current pain in her a—.

  Law student Gina Banks knows that getting in bed—literally—with billionaire Austin Long is just plain trouble. Sure, she’s taken a few risks to try to stop the expansion of Skipjack Bay. And yes, okay, the first time she met with Austin to plead her case, she’d technically been trespassing.

  But this? His bed, his rules, his massive, let’s just say confidence. Not to mention his uncanny ability to make her come...completely undone. It’s all beyond crazy. Still, the chance to help the families in her hometown is something she can’t turn down. So, she agrees to his terms.

  Total surrender. Hers. To him. A simple business deal where they both get what they want.

  The absolute last thing Gina expects is for Austin to want her to surrender her heart to him, too.

  Previously published as Black Gold 1 & 2, (c) 2012 & (c) 2014 revised throughout with newly added content and an extended ending.

  Note: This is an extra steamy Far Too Tempting standalone with character cameos from the hot & sweet standalone, Tempted Beyond Reason, formerly titled Waking Up Her Curves, which has similarly been republished with revisions and new content.

  1

  Clothed in a clingy emerald green dress that stopped two inches above her knees, Gina Banks stepped away from the line of trees backing the Boudrot estate. Glancing to her right, she noted she was a football field away from the big house and conveniently close to what looked like one of two guest cottages.

  Gina memorized the distance from the nearest cottage to where she stood, then returned to the tree and retrieved a plastic bag from the local grocer. The bag contained a dollar store flashlight, an empty champagne flute and a pair of suede pumps that perfectly matched her short, sleeveless dress. She took off the hiking boots she'd bought for five bucks at a thrift store then slid the pumps on.

  After checking one last time to make sure her car key remained wedged down the front of her bra, she grabbed the champagne flute then hid the bag and boots behind the tree. With little natural light and no mirror, she ran a hand over the upswept braids, smoothing here and there until it no longer felt like she had just walked half a mile through branches and brambles with snakes slithering through the underbrush.

  With a smile, she headed toward the back of the big house. Tea lights sparkled along the veranda like fireflies attracted by the sounds of a string quartet drifting across the dew laden lawn. Schubert played if she wasn't mistaken. Her stomach knotted when the fortissimo broke violently to a pianissimo chorale and she recognized the composition as Death and the Maiden.

  Her grip on the delicate stem of the champagne flute tightened. "That song's not for you, girl."

  If anything, the song played for Austin Long, the man she was risking snake bites, navigational errors and arrest to speak to. She had exhausted all conventional means. Half a dozen subordinates at the Long Shore Oil Development headquarters had hung up on her multiple times each; registered letters had been refused at the front desk; and security had forcefully escorted her from the building more than once.

  She had been ready to chain herself to the front steps—a questionable strategy for a third-year law student—before she luckily caught a scrap of office cross-talk on her last phone call to the company's executive suite.

  Nine p.m. this Sunday at the Boudrot estate…yes sir, Mr. Long will be in attendance.

  Reaching the back of the house, Gina frowned. The building was beautiful. Massive, with two-story pillars and a porch that wrapped all the way around the house, it exemplified antebellum architecture. She had loved the look of such homes as a child until she learned the ugly history surrounding them.

  Forcing the frown back into a smile, she stepped onto the rear porch. She walked toward the center of the building, her free hand trailing along the wall in bored elegance, slowing only occasionally to test the handle on the double glass doors until she found one unlocked.

  The smile turned genuine as she slipped inside. The host had security checkpoints at the front of the house and the long oak-lined drive. Filthy rich, Rory Boudrot had plenty of paid help to keep people like her out.

  Smart and determined, she didn't need an invitation.

  Following the music led her to an oversized, candlelit parlor. There were a few men in formal dress milling around. The women on the arms of those men startled Gina. They looked—delicately put—like high-class call girls.

  Chill, Gina. It's a party filled with trophy wives, not hookers. Don't look shocked or you'll get kicked out before you even find Long!

  She moved around the room, smiling and looking for the familiar features she had studied a hundred times over in the local papers and on the internet. Seeing that he wasn't among the men there, she put her champagne glass down and grabbed one that was full. She pushed hers to the back so no one would notice it didn't match the others then walked through the open double doors to the next room, where more couples lingered. At the third room she stepped into, couples sat on couches and…

  What the heck?

  Gina turned away from the too ardent and far too public embrace of the nearest couple. Opening the closest door to her, she stepped through and found herself in a long hall. Closing the door behind her, she rested against it, closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  Okay, maybe crashing the party was a bad idea. Maybe Long wasn't even there.

  Only he was.

&nbs
p; Gina learned that the moment she opened her eyes. Austin Long, in the flesh, and staring intently at her. As he approached Gina, she couldn't help but notice the predatory sway of his hips, his center of balance pushed low, his whole body ready to spring into action.

  A West Point graduate, eight years special operations after that before resigning his commission to run the family oil business four years ago, Long wasn't the kind of man she'd mess with if she didn't need to. Unfortunately, an entire community—the one she'd grown up in—needed her to fight for them.

  Reaching Gina, Long stopped a foot away and dropped his gaze to her hips. The dress gathered at the sides, the intentional wrinkles of fabric moving up and inward to accentuate her breasts. She'd felt self-conscious putting it on that evening. She hadn't realized she would be twice as dressed as any other woman at the party.

  Gaze sweeping upward, Long stared past Gina's shoulder and smiled.

  "You have a problem, beautiful."

  She turned, her attention landing first on a couple that had just stumbled into the hall, the woman topless and joyously squealing as a grandfatherly man chased her with a paddle and a lecherous gleam in his old eyes. Shocking as the sight was, Gina knew in a heartbeat her problem was the man standing just beyond them, one hand to his ear and the other reaching along his belt line to where a pair of handcuffs dangled.

  Despite the kinky nature of the party, the cuffs were not of the fur-lined variety. These were professional grade steel, the kind cops use. He had the look of a cop, too. That meant he was part of the expensive security team Boudrot had hired for the night.

  The man waited for the couple to disappear behind another door and then he advanced. Gina mentally ran through her story, the one she hoped would keep her from getting arrested.

  Glaring at Gina, the man stopped. "Miss—"

  "She's with me." Long's hand curled around Gina's bare shoulder. "Problem?"

  The guard's expression went blank, his eyes flicking to Long and then back to Gina. "No, sir. My apologies if she's an invited guest."

  "She is." Dropping his hand to her waist, Long steered Gina toward the entry room and a spiraling staircase. With their hips touching and his hand resting possessively on the curve of her waist, he led her upstairs.

  "I don't usually rescue gate crashers," he said as they reached the second floor. "Consider yourself lucky…for the moment."

  She cast her gaze up to find him staring at her exposed throat and bare shoulder. He must have realized she was looking at him because he peeled his eyes off and up, his smile mischievous.

  Mischievous and sexy.

  A tingle low-down in her stomach slowed her steps, but Long kept propelling them along toward a door at the end of the second floor hall.

  Her reaction surprised her. But then he looked different than all the times she'd seen him in the paper or online. His public face was polished steel, his blue eyes as dead as an uprooted cypress. The Austin Long of paper and pixel was one-hundred eighty degrees removed from this man. He stood taller, bigger, had eyes that flashed like lightning over a Louisiana bayou.

  And he smelled even better than her momma's kitchen.

  Realizing she hadn't stopped looking at him, Gina took a rough swallow and redirected her gaze ahead of her. "What makes you think I was crashing?"

  Opening the door, he pulled her closer to him and stepped inside the room. "Baby, you look nothing like the women here."

  Right as rain, Gina thought. All the women she had seen on the estate were whiter than sour cream, almost exclusively blonde with a handful of shockingly red fakes for variety. Half the bodies could have passed for pre-pubescent boys.

  Feeling anger heat her cheeks, she looked up at him. "Thank God for that."

  "Indeed," Long agreed.

  Shutting the door, he stepped further into the room.

  Not just any kind of room, she realized. He had led her into a bedroom. She took a shaky breath in, remembering just what kind of party she had crashed. Seeing him slide his dinner jacket off and reach for his top button, Gina turned toward the door and tested the handle.

  "Locked, baby." He moved down to the next button…and the next. "Gonna take security to get it open again. And you don't want to talk to security."

  Staying near the door, her hand on the knob, she watched him untuck the shirt, his hands moving to his belt buckle.

  "Why did you lock me in?" Pretty certain of the answer, she still asked the question, hoping she could keep him talking long enough to figure a way out of the situation that didn't end with her in jail. No matter what he did, he could claim he thought she was one of the hired hookers. In jail for trespassing or prostitution, she'd have a hard time convincing the bar examiners it was all a big mistake and she was the victim.

  Long folded the belt in half, pushed the ends toward one another then yanked them apart with a sharp smack of leather that made her jerk.

  "For a private conversation, Miss Banks."

  2

  Shit, busted! How the hell did he know?

  "That is why you're here, right? The Skipjack Bay expansion. Can I call you Gina?"

  Her fingers slid from the handle, her whole body going numb as she nodded at him. The room had a big leather chair next to the window and he slid into it, his long legs stretched in front of him.

  "If you recognized me…" She stopped, at a loss for words. She had expected an irregular talk with him, possibly heated, but this was off the scale of irregular.

  "Didn't. You recognized me. And I have just enough details about the company's current pest to put two and two together."

  For a second, she was sure he was lying, felt deep in her bones that he already had some kind of dossier on her. Long was said to be meticulous, highly strategic. It might have been fawning praise for a rich, white boy, but the articles she read had unanimously praised him for singlehandedly increasing the company's fortunes more than ten-fold since his father's death.

  Her certainty fled when he tilted his head and took his sweet time studying her. Gina felt her cheeks flush, the speculation in his eyes enough to make the devil blush.

  "Gotta say," he purred, "if they'd told me you were smoking, we could have talked weeks ago."

  The heat warming her skin started to burn. Anger crackled along her spine, forced her in an angry march halfway across the room before she stopped dead in her tracks. The man was dangerous as hell, she reminded herself. Not just rich and built like a tank, but with the upper hand.

  She needed to reason with him, not argue.

  "Mr. Long, the Plaquemines Parish will be seeking an injunction—"

  "You know the parish president is Boudrot's brother-in-law, right?"

  "A community group will—"

  He shook his head, the smile on his face tolerant and good natured. "Good luck getting a lawyer to take that up."

  Near her boiling point, Gina took a few more steps closer to Long. "I'm fully capable of proceeding pro se if—"

  Long stopped her for the third time. "Latin, love, really?"

  She took a step back. Love? Long seriously overestimated his southern charm if he thought he could sweet talk her into dropping the injunction—or her panties.

  "Excuse me?" she demanded.

  "Sorry, baby. You surprised me." His hand brushed open air, erasing his words. "The only Latin used at these parties is fellatio, and usually they just ask if I want them to blow me."

  It took a whole sixth of a minute before Gina remembered to breathe. The man had no sense of propriety!

  Long undid the cuffs of his shirt, smiling at her the whole time. "So, how do we proceed?"

  "Proceed?" Was he really undressing in front of her? It seemed so. His shirt was wide open, exposing a muscled abdomen and thick chest plates, his nipples like small, chocolate dipped nuts—the kind she liked to snack on when she was home alone with nothing more in her bed than a law book and her laptop.

  The tingle low in her belly she'd felt on the stairs returned and sh
e had to remind herself to keep breathing.

  Austin Long was not attractive, she told her mutinous body. Not intellectually nor socially, nor—

  "Baby, either you're a gate crasher and I need to call security or you're," He paused, his smile cranked all the way up on one side. "…staff. Which is it?"

  Oh, he wanted a laugh at her expense. That was it. He thought he could intimidate her into leaving, embarrassing or frightening her before having her kicked out to ensure her calls and letters to his company stopped cold and never restarted.

  She folded her arms across her chest, determined to deny Long his moment of smug satisfaction. "If you think I'm going to have sex with you—"

  With his gaze locked on her face, he slid one arm out of its sleeve. "Are you married?"

  She shook her head. The man certainly wasn't shy. Body like that, he didn't need to be. A subconscious flex of his arm had his bicep winking at her and the warm tingle in her belly dipping dangerously lower.

  "Boyfriend, then?"

  Another head shake before she could stop herself. She should have lied, seen if he would let her off with the simple excuse of already belonging to some man. She shook her head again, annoyed at the idea of any man having rights over her or using it as an excuse.

  "I got you the first time, baby.” He turned both hands palm up, looking genuinely puzzled. "So then what's the problem?"