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Bad Boys of Bardstown # 2

I swear I didn’t do it on purpose.

All I wanted was a harmless kiss from the handsome stranger at my eighteenth birthday party. But when he said — with a cruel twist of his cigarette smoking lips — that he doesn’t kiss ‘annoying little girls,’ I stupidly decided to flirt with a random guy to make him jealous.

I never wanted that random guy to fall in love with me. Or worse, accidentally start a relationship with him. But now I have a new boyfriend while I can’t stop thinking about the guy who doesn’t care that I exist.

So it’s time to move on and focus on my new relationship.

Only the moment I make that decision, he decides to notice me.

He decides to stare at me a little too hard and in a way that makes me blush. Oh and one day when my boyfriend isn’t looking, he decides to corner me in a lonely hallway and put his rough and heated hands on me that feels equal parts forbidden and familiar.

But I’m not stupid.

I’m not going to ruin my new relationship for someone that people call Stellan ‘The Cold’ Thorne. Especially not when the random guy I’m dating isn’t random at all.

No, my new boyfriend happens to be the brother of the guy I’m inappropriately obsessed with.

And I’m not the kind of girl who comes between two brothers.

Twin brothers…

Or am I?

NOTE: This book is a complete STANDALONE set in the world of St. Mary’s and Bardstown.

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EXCERPT:

I lick my dried lips. “W-what are you doing?”

“Braiding your hair,” he says, his eyes on his task, his cigarette still clenched between his teeth.

Before I can confirm that he said what he said, he begins to do just that. Very carefully and tenderly, he parts my hair in three thick ropes and starts looping one through the other. First under, then over.

Until a lattice forms.

Goose bumps break out on my skin as I watch his dusky fingers working expertly as he makes his way down my long, thick hair, braiding it in loose pleats.

“Where did you learn to do that?” I ask even though I think I know the answer.

“For my sister.”

“So you’d braid her hair?”

“None of the others could. Ledger was too young to learn; Shep was too impatient; Con had other responsibilities. So I volunteered.”

My heart squeezes for the boy he was.

I wonder what he was like back then. Probably just as serious and controlled as he is as a man. And it makes me so sad for him. For the childhood he probably never had. For all the smiles he never smiled and all the laughs he never laughed.

For all the carefree memories he probably didn’t get to make.

Fisting my hands at my sides, I ask, “Why are you doing it to me?”

He’s almost at the end of it. “Because I want it out of the way.”

“Out of the way for what?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he finishes his task, takes another drag of his cigarette, and lets the smoke out as he plays with the tail of my newly formed braid. “Sometimes, in a crowded room, I can recognize you from your hair. From the color of it. How it’s got a polished sheen to it. How it’s wavy but not too wavy. How it’s so thick and yet”—he tugs at my braid—“so soft.”

“I…” I swallow, watching his thumb flick the ends of my braid. “It’s because of my mom.

She’s from India and you know, they have really thick hair over there. And mostly jet-black and—”

He tugs my hair again. “She at least did one thing right.”

“You—”

“And sometimes I see the honeyed flush of your skin and know it’s you. Just a flash of it is enough. Maybe your bare shoulder or the nape of your neck,” he says, his eyes still focused on the hair. “One time, I recognized you from just your fingers. You were reaching for a glass at the bar, at a crowded party, and I saw your small hand peeking through the bodies between us and I knew. I knew it was you.”

I swallow again, gulp really, something occurring to me. “Is that why… back then. You asked for photos of all those things? Of me.”

“I asked for all those photos of you for… after.”

“After the one night you wanted?” I ask even though I think I know.

He throws a short nod.

“What did you do with them?”

He looks me in the eyes. “There’s still going to be an after, isn’t it?”

Right.

Because he thinks I’m marrying his twin brother. And even if I wasn’t, he can’t give me what I want. He can’t give me my dream of being loved. So this, whatever we have, is doomed either way. And I have to say I’ve never hated my desire to be loved as much as I do right now.

“It’s my mom again,” I say, not knowing what else to say right now. “My skin, it—”

“It’s you,” he says, looking up, his eyes dark, his cigarette between his teeth. “All of it is you. You make my heart race a certain way. You make it beat in a way I thought was the same but…”

“But what… What does it mean? What—”

Taking another drag, he jerks his chin at me. “Hands behind your back.”

“I-I’m sorry?”

The cigarette goes back in his mouth, and he begins to unloop the belt from around his fist. He comes closer, oh so closer, leaning over me. I watch the burning end of the cigarette almost, almost touching my skin, the side of my face, but he stops and looks me in the eyes. “You wanted this.”

For a second, I think he’s talking about burning me.

That he wants to use his cigarette to brand my skin.

A love bite. A love burn.

Made out of one controlled addiction on another.

Something that will hurt me in the beginning but will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Something bigger than a tattoo. Like a blood oath, only our oath is going to be done with fire.

Me, Agni. Him, the wildfire.

But then I realize what he’s saying. What he’s asking me to do.

And he’s right.

I did want this.

So staring back at the darkness that’s his eyes, I bring my arms back, my chest thrusting forward, the braid that he’s made out of my hair swishing against my tits, my nipples, making my breaths hitch.

I thread my fingers together as he loops the belt around my wrists, the leather grazing my skin. It’s soft but scary. It’s loose but binding. And the whole time he’s working back there, I watch the sharp angle of his jaw.

I watch the muscle of his cheek standing taut because of that cigarette clenched between his lips.

“Why are you tying my hands?” I whisper to his side profile.

“Because they’ll be in the way.”

“I won’t…” I begin and then trail off because my breath gets caught up in the jangle of nerves that’s my body right now. “I won’t try to push you away or anything when I, you know, do that.”