Born to be Bad
He's dark and he's dangerous. But reporter Gemma Duncan wants to break the story of businessman Damien Theroux's rumored underground dealings–which means she'll have to deal with the devil himself.Posing as a waitress, Gemma scores a job at one of Theroux's legit restaurants so she can snoop for info. When the bad boy of New Orleans takes an immediate interest in his new employee, Gemma finds herself falling under his seductive spell.Soon Gemma is lost in a shadowy world of naughty sex games, acting out her wildest fantasies with this dangerous man. Part of her knows she has to get her story and get out of there ASAP. But another part wants to see just how far these games will go….
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“What would it take to make you cry out, Gem? Have you ever come so hard you forgot everything else?” Damien asked
His bold words jarred her, excited her. They made her realize that, no, Gemma Duncan had never been rocked like a hurricane in her life.
“Don’t talk to me like you know me,” she said, trying to stay in control of herself. “You don’t. Not at all.”
“I don’t?” He laughed softly. “Certainly I know when a woman wants to be touched. What’s your favorite spot, Gem? A long kiss behind the knee? A finger tracing up your spine?” He brushed his mouth over her ear.
Gemma ached, literally hurting because of the burn, the throb inside her. Only pride was keeping her from touching herself.
Because once she stepped over this line with Damien Theroux, there was no going back….
Dear Reader,
What’s your fantasy?
When Gemma Duncan meets Damien Theroux, this is what he asks her. And—you guessed it—he’s more than willing to carry out her most exotic requests. I was lucky to travel the steamy streets of New Orleans in order to flesh out their fantasies: the vivid historical atmosphere, the joie de vivre, the “I’m-willing-to-gain-ten-pounds-for-this-food.”
Tough job, but someone has to suffer through it.
The hot-blooded adventures of Damien and Gemma were great fun, and I hope to write many more stories in The Big Easy. I also hope you have a good time with this saucy undercover reporter who decides to expose the city’s biggest bad boy!
Dare to dream….
Crystal Green
www.crystal-green.com
To Scott, aka “Duncan”:
Thanks for your help with Club Lotus! Now go out there and conquer the world.
Contents
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
Epilogue
1
IN GEMMA DUNCAN’S FANTASIES, sweat would bead on her skin. It would trickle down her body to dampen the satin sheets while strangers—bad boys who never turned good—trailed their mouths over her belly.
They would dip their tongues into a navel pooled with summer heat, drag their kisses upward, over her writhing torso, her ribs, under the tender swell of her breast, drinking her in. They would never leave their names, but they would leave her tapped out physically, filled only with a surging need for more.
Gemma never talked about these fantasies.
But there were safer ones she would share with her new friends over happy-hour cocktails. Fantasies such as winning a Pulitzer at the tender age of twenty-six. Fantasies where she would uncover the nefarious activities of crime lords while crusading as a journalist at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Fantasies where she could bake a perfect soufflé, do a triple axel like Michelle Kwan and come home to a Garden District fantasy mansion full of fantasy puppies saved from the pound with her fantasy fortune.
As far as vivid imaginations went, she was number one. Heck, her fantasies even included knowing how to position a cell phone so that it always received perfect reception.
Needless to say, reality was a little different for Gemma Duncan.
“Jimmy?” she asked for the third time, walking five steps to the left and cocking her head to the right as she exited a French Quarter souvenir store. Taunting her, the phone fuzzed and stuttered in denial.
She’d had her older brother on the line only a second ago. “Jimmy? Can you hear me?”
The shop’s zydeco music, with its energetic pulse of percussion and accordion, caused Gemma to plug one ear and wander through the muggy July air toward Dumaine Street. The threat of an afternoon rain braided itself with the smell of battered crawfish and spices from a nearby café.
“Hello?” She clutched her shopping bag, eager to talk to Jimmy and be back on her way to the Weekly Gossip offices in the Central Business District. Today she’d been interviewing a psychic who was integral to her latest headline: “Swamp Girl Finds Love with Tarot Reader.”
Truly. That was it. This was why Gemma used a pen name—Duncan James—as opposed to her real one.
As she wandered farther down the street, away from the tourists and toward her second destination, a voodoo shop, her older brother’s voice squawked in and out of range.
Lunch-hour efficiency, she thought, somewhat proud of her scheduling skills. On Dumaine, she would not only achieve possible reception but also buy gris-gris bag souvenirs for an out-of-town friend. Oh, and then there was the antique shop where she could see if that white-satin-gowned jazz-singer painting was still for sale….
“Jimmy,” she said again. “I’m trying to… Aw, forget it. If you can hear me, I’m running errands anyway, so I bought that grotesque shellacked baby gator head for your wife. I’ll send it priority mail tomorrow, okay? By the way, tell her happy birthday, you sicko. If I had a husband with a yen for weird gag gifts like you, there’d be some damage. And I say that with all the love in my heart. Talk to you later.”
In one last, hopeful attempt to achieve reception, Gemma paced near a courtyard. It had a wrought-iron gate, and banana-tree leaves that leaned over the brick wall like a bored woman passing time while watching the street’s infrequent traffic. Beyond the barriers, a man’s raised voice competed with Jimmy’s tinny bark.
