Jodi Lynn Copeland Read online

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  Hot and Wild

  by Jodi Lynn Copeland

  Reader Discretion Advised: This story contains scenes of explicit sexuality.

  After four long years apart, Karen and Brian’s love is stronger than ever, and their sex life would put the Kama Sutra to shame. But on the eve of their drive-through Vegas wedding, Karen can’t shake the feeling that her fiancé has a secret—the kind that could rock the foundation of an otherwise solid relationship. And her worst fear seems to be confirmed when she sees his hot bod, in the arms of another woman! Is it possible Brian has grown bored of Karen’s subservience in the bedroom—that he’s he looking for a woman who can take control? Or is there something deeper, something darker, at play…?

  Chapter One

  “Sex doesn’t have to die after marriage.”

  Staring through my open car window at the white-and-red heart-emblazoned sign of Vegas’s Little White Wedding Chapel, I faked a laugh. My friend Deitre’s speculation at what was on my mind couldn’t be farther off.

  Brian and I had a sex life to put the Kama Sutra to shame. I had every faith we’d still be doing it with the frequency of bunnies after we said those two little words. We didn’t lack for love, either. Having spent four years apart while he chased his music career across the country, our first red-hot reunion kiss—which segued into our first redder, hotter reunion lovemaking—promised this time we were playing for keeps.

  What bothered me was that no matter how much of myself I revealed and even how much of himself he shared, I felt he held something back. A secret that could rock the foundation of our marriage even before we took that fateful nuptial drive through the chapel’s Tunnel of Love. A secret that had me wondering if I shouldn’t be on the eve of saying “I don’t.”

  I looked across the center console of my hatchback. The flashier lights of the strip were up the street a half mile. I didn’t need that glitz, or the luster of the full moon, to see Deitre’s questioning expression. Thousands of small white lights entwined with the tunnel’s blue cherub-and-starlight-bedecked canopy, lighting up the car’s interior like it was ten in the morning instead of ten at night.

  “I was thinking maybe we should go for the old-fashioned approach,” I lied. “A drive-through ceremony might be a little too hokey for even me.”

  From the passenger’s seat, Deitre shot my all-black ensemble of oversize dress shirt, leggings and combat boots a “get real” look. The getup was a stark contrast to my short, naturally white-blond hair, and in that way, deepened my hazel eyes. “You, Karen ‘far-out’ Sanders, do old-fashioned?” Her expression became sympathetic. “Besides, who would you invite to an old-fashioned ceremony?”

  “Good point,” I returned solemnly.

  My parents had been killed in a car accident when I was three. The grandparents who raised me in their stead had passed on a few years ago. I didn’t have siblings or other close relatives, and Brian was just as alone, since his parents kicked him out for not living up to their expectations. Between us, we’d invited a dozen friends to share our rented limo and witness our nuptials tomorrow. Most of that dozen were Brian’s friends. Most of those friends, with the exception of two of his bandmates, I had yet to meet.

  The sobriety that came with Deitre’s observation vanished as my apprehension once again rose.

  Why had Brian yet to introduce me to the guys he routinely spent four nights a month with, including tonight?

  Or were they not guy friends? Was he having an affair?

  “The Tunnel’s as good a place to do the deed as any.” Deitre said the word deed like marriage was a step away from incarceration.

  I forced a smile while inside my belly lurched. But really, what was I worried about? It had to be guys he spent those four days a month with, or he never would have told me I’d meet them at our wedding. So there was no other woman. There probably wasn’t a secret, either. It was just my desperate want for a family at work, making me find fault and fear where there was only good.

  My smile warmed with sincerity and a hint of teasing. “Someday your prince will come.”

  Deitre rolled her eyes as expected. A relationship-lover she was not. Though, honestly, until Brian returned to my life, I wasn’t all that jazzed about them, either.

  “Screw the prince,” Deitre returned. “It’s man candy and expensive booze time. Before you say something else that makes me want to lose my lunch.”

  I did love me some man candy—now that I was engaged it was purely the kind you appreciated from afar, of course. Even so, I wasn’t raring to take in a bunch of strangers’ tight tushies. Drinking myself silly, or at least my nerves into numbness, did hold appeal. Thoughts of the drinks to come spinning in my head, I pulled out of the chapel parking lot and headed toward the glitzy part of the strip.

  “Are you having doubts about Brian?” Deitre asked as we bypassed the brightly lit, towering spike of the Stratosphere. “You’ve only been back together a few months, so no one could blame you for second-guessing, or postponing the wedding, for that matter.”

  I thought the answer to her question was no, that I’d ascertained a half mile ago that Brian was hanging out with guy friends and that there was no dirty little secret. But if I had come to that conclusion, why did the question have my belly back to its obnoxious churning?

  I feigned a laugh. “Nice attempt to bring me back to the single side.”

  “I’d just hate to see you revert to your ‘men are pigs, good only for sex’ mantra.”

  I laughed again, this time for real. “Bullshit, you would.” While my doubts on Brian were relatively new, Deitre had been questioning whether he had my best interests at heart since learning of our reunion. “Brian and I are perfect. Now that I think about it, so is the Tunnel of Love.”

  Repeating those words in my head, I headed for our favorite club—a local’s place a few blocks off the strip and within walking distance of our respective apartments. Traffic slowed in front of the Liege casino, and my thoughts skipped to the bakery-style café I operated inside the building. For an instant my nerves faded to guilt, because I hated leaving someone else in charge of the café this next week. Then my attention veered to the opposite side of the street so fast and hard it was like it was drawn by some molecular force. The stellar view on the sidewalk instantly turned my guilt to lust.

  Holy yum! Brian’s ass.

  Did I mention I have a thing for tight tushies? Well, I do, and Brian’s backside was nothing short of delicious, scrumptious. Totally freaking edible.

  Damn, the man’s butt and long, lean, muscular legs did thigh-melting things to a pair of faded blue jeans. Out of those jeans, he was even more amazing.

  Our first go-round on the relationship wheel, he’d been an incredible lover. This time around his natural dominance and the glide of his finely tuned musician’s hands along my curves, over my peaks, inside my slick, quaking valleys had gotten me hot to the point of delirium more than a few times.

  Last night he’d been working his not-quite-grunge look. He’d left his short, shaggy blond hair to the pleasure of my fingertips and a couple days’ worth of dark stubble that—along with his dark eyebrows—betrayed his natural hair color, to tease along my sensitive flesh. A shudder sliced through me, as if he had that coarse bit of hair taunting me into submission right now, and I trembled despite the balmy night air snaking through the hatchback’s open windows.

  The memory of the multiple-orgasm encounter and the words of love Brian shouted in the midst of his release soothed the last of my nerves. I was feeling much better—not to mention much wetter—when a tall, leggy brunette in short, clingy electric blue appeared on the sidewalk. She seemed to come out of nowhere to throw Brian fi
rst an adoring smile and then her arms around his neck.

  The barracuda’s lips pressed again his, and every salacious thought in my head evaporated. The contents of my stomach vaulted into my throat. Then they nearly came out as I stomped my foot on the brake so hard it propelled the coins from the center console depression onto the floor.

  Deitre braced her hands against the dashboard. “What the hell?” she gasped as a series of horns blared, the most notable and persistent coming from the taxi behind us. “Are you trying to get us killed?”

  No, but there was a very good chance of my killing Brian before this night was through…

  Chapter Two

  “No way. No freaking way!” I curled my fingers around the hatchback’s steering wheel so tightly my nails dug into my palms.

  I feared Brian had a secret that could destroy our relationship, but I honestly never believed he would cheat on me. What would he hope to gain with another woman that he didn’t have with me? A better sex life was out of the question.

  Or was it?

  I’d always assumed he loved the way I played to his dominance. Maybe my subservience had grown old. Maybe he needed a woman who was just as eager to turn the flogger on his ass. The thing was, I could be that woman. I was hardly a shrinking violet, and I did take control now and again, just never total control. Just never to the point where he was left to my complete and utter mercy.

  “What is the matter, Karen?” Deitre prodded from the passenger’s seat.

  I looked over at her, floored she had to ask. Was she blind? Obviously, I was—blind or just plain stupid—to have missed Brian’s infidelity. “The pig’s cheating on me.”

  Red eyebrows drew together, showing her confusion. Not trusting myself to speak again, when emotion hot and thick was barreling up my throat, I nodded out my window to the spot where Brian had just killed my dreams of finally having a real family. Dreams he’d sworn he shared. Dreams that were way in the hell more important than who controlled the reins in the fuck department.

  The bastard.

  The bastard who was no longer in sight. The hoochie in electric blue was gone, too. I hadn’t turned my head more than three seconds. Not nearly long enough for them to make an escape, yet a second search of the sidewalk and twenty feet of the strip on either side revealed them missing in action.

  Unable to tear my gaze from the sidewalk, I managed in a low voice caught between anguish and wonder, “He was standing there sucking face with some brunette chick. I could never mistake his butt.”

  “That was all you saw? Just his ass?” Doubt rang in Deitre’s voice.

  “That’s all I needed to see.” I’m telling you I have an eye for tight tushies, and Brian’s was grade-A, standout-from-the-pack material.

  The taxi driver behind us laid on his horn again. Then again and again. I stuck my arm out the window and flipped him a middle finger of greeting. I got that he was ticked at me for holding up traffic, but c’mon, my life had taken a downward spiral of massive proportions.

  “Brian’s not there,” Deitre stated the obvious. Then she added the unthinkable. “Either some other guy’s walking around with the same ass, or they disappeared into a pocket of darkness.”

  My focus jerked across the center console. Not only was the observation unthinkable, but totally out of the blue. “What?”

  “A place not visible by human eye. Where the supernaturals hang out.”

  “I know what it is.” Anyone who’d called Vegas home for more than a month or two would.

  I’d lived here my entire twenty-seven years, and rumors had been circulating that the city was a breeding ground for paranormal creatures for as long as I could remember. As someone who’d, more or less, fallen into the Wiccan craft, I believed those rumors to a certain extent. I would never have guessed Deitre did, or that she could think Brian was among that supernatural group.

  “You seriously believe the stories?” I asked. In the year we’d been friends, not once had we discussed the paranormal.

  The taxi driver railed on his horn. Deitre frowned out the back window. “I seriously believe if you don’t get this car in motion, you’re going to have a taxi up your ass.”

  I wanted to hear her thoughts on the paranormal. I wanted to know where Brian had gone far more. Sitting here wasn’t getting me answers of either kind. Relenting to the taxi driver with the badass attitude, I lifted my foot off the brake and took the next side street to the local’s club.

  A casual buzz no longer appealed. Still, it was better than heading back to my apartment, where I’d be alone, pissed and heartbroken.

  * * *

  “This diamond ring doesn’t shine for me anymore.” I sang the lyrics in tone-deaf style as I twisted Brian’s engagement ring off my finger, tears pressing at the backs of my eyes.

  I wanted to throw the ring out my third-floor bedroom window, let some other lovesick sap find it. Better judgment wouldn’t allow it. I’d had a handful of beers in the two hours Deitre and I spent at the local’s club. Not enough to mask the truth. That truth was, Brian’s ring still shone for me in a soul-deep way that extended well beyond its luminous, three-carat clarity.

  Setting the ring on the nightstand, I flicked off the lamp and lay back in bed. I hadn’t worn clothes to bed in years, yet I’d never felt as naked as I did now, with my ring finger bared.

  Shutting my eyes, I urged the blessings of a dreamless sleep to claim me. Instead my mind was flooded with the memory of the night Brian proposed. He did things by the book as rarely as I did. That night he’d risked cliché and went down on bended knee with open love gleaming in his potent green eyes. One second I was saying yes and the next second we were fucking like wild animals. Touching, teasing, tasting each other until we were both too exhausted to do more than gasp for breath.

  My heart twisted painfully. When had he stopped loving me?

  Or was I still making something out of nothing?

  Deitre had tried to convince me that it wasn’t Brian I’d seen tonight. Why she’d suddenly become his champion I have no idea, but I wanted to believe her damned badly. I wanted to know there was no other woman, no life-altering secret. No nothing but our love, shining now and forever.

  Only those weren’t wants. Those were all-consuming needs.

  If there was still a chance of the sun rising on one of the happiest days of my life, I had to have answers from Brian and I had to have them now.

  Tossing the covers back, I intended to climb from bed, back into my clothes and head straight for his apartment. Reality had me flicking on the lamp and reaching for the vibrator inside the nightstand drawer.

  There was a chance that I wasn’t enough for Brian from a sexual standpoint any longer, but he was more than enough for me. All it took was the suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows, the naughty slant of his soft, sexy lips, the brush of his palm across my ass—any or all of those—and my brain was mush, my pussy moist.

  He made me feel wild, wanton, wicked with my burning need for his lover’s touch. Even with fear and anger riding high, there was a good chance of my falling victim to lust.

  Sating that lust now was my best attempt at resisting it later….

  Chapter Three

  Purging all thoughts but those of pleasure, I reclined against my headboard, covers pooled on the bed past my bent legs and a flesh-colored vibrator in hand.

  The vibrator buzzed to life with the flick of my fingernail…and my freaking thoughts went racing to Brian. He’d gifted me the sex toy for those times when his band was on the road and I couldn’t hold off my craving for orgasm. Too, so he could envision in full detail the vibrator pulsing inside my body as he took me higher with rough, dirty words via the phone line.

  That’s my cock in you, babe. Fucking you so fast and hard. I can’t get enough of that sweet pussy wrapping around me. Clenching. Showering me with your honey.

  I didn’t want those remembered words from his last road trip in my head. But better it be remembered words that
sated my lust now, than new words that sated my lust when I arrived at his apartment in search of answers a half hour from now.

  Spreading my thighs, I brought the throbbing tip of the sex toy along my slit. I sighed with the erotic contact. More remembered words followed the wanton sound, played hot and carnal in my mind. Eagerly, I filled my free hand with a breast.

  That’s right. Get that hand on your breast. You’re so soft, baby. Everything but these nipples. Hot, hard, ripe for my tongue. Teeth.

  My fingers pinched the swollen red crest, mimicking the heady nip of his teeth. Moisture gushed in my pussy. Blood warmed in my veins and my breathing heightened. The vibrator slipped partway inside the slick valley of my sex with my next taunting pinch. The pulsating head stroked against my clit, and my hips pumped up on rapturous instinct, slipping a little moan from between my lips.

  Wanting, needing more than that light touch, that little moan, I sank the toy deep inside my sheath. Closing my eyes, I let Brian’s sexy face, his commanding words, take me over.

  Thoughts turned to electric sensations. Arousal colored the air with a sensual musk and hastened the beat of my heart. The vibrator and my hand moved together, pumping, pinching, propelling me to the thigh-tingling, belly-tightening edge of release.

  Warmth balled in my stomach, heated my cheeks. Sliced from the erect, aching points of my nipples to that place where my sex clenched needfully around the damp shaft of the vibrator.

  Come for me, Karen. Come all over my cock.

  Brian’s words whispered through my head. Whispered, yet they were rough, deep, that coarse, sexy tone that had aroused me from day one. That decadent demand that had orgasm gripping hold of me now.

  That’s it. Fuck me. Take me all the way inside.

  Panting, I pumped my hips, twisted my nipple and rode each delicious thrust of the vibrator. My pussy contracted around the rod with a final furious clench, and then let loose with a flood of cream. I shouted with the force of my climax. Cried out in ecstasy as the continued twisting of my nipple bordered near to the edge of pain.