Twice as Hard Read online

  Twice as Hard

  By Amber Bardan

  They caught me. Naked, shivering and dripping after a spontaneous swim in the forest. Two rugged men whose hard gazes captivated and scared me all at once.

  They warned me. Told me I was on private property and I needed to obey the law...or I would be punished.

  The idea of them both punishing me, pleasuring me, kept tormenting me. I couldn’t want them. I shouldn’t. But I did.

  I didn’t mean to trespass again. I thought I could retreat without notice. But they’re coming for me.

  To show me the pleasure in pain. To show me just how right forbidden can feel. And to love me twice as hard as I ever fantasized.

  This book is approximately 26,000 words

  One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise! Find out more at CarinaPress.com/RomancePromise

  Carina Press acknowledges the editorial services of Alissa Davis

  Dear Reader,

  Happy March! This month marks Carina Press’s return to publishing anthologies. This is something that I’ve always loved to do—put out a call for submissions for a certain theme and see what rolls in. This month, we’re starting with erotic romances and, specifically, taboos. In the coming months you’ll see anthologies for shifters, capers & heists, and a holiday-themed anthology. Then, in 2018, we have even more coming your way. Anthologies are a great way for readers to test new authors while getting a complete, satisfying romance, and I hope you love what we’ve got in store as much as I do.

  But first, let me tell you about a book that’s incredibly near to my heart. What It Takes: A Kowalski Reunion Novel is Shannon Stacey’s return to the contemporary world of the fabulous Kowalski family. This is a project I begged Shannon to do, because I wasn’t quite ready to let the Kowalskis go. To say I was thrilled she agreed would be a huge understatement. In this book, we get a new romance, along with cameos from all of our previous favorite heroes and heroines, including a secondary plot with Sean and Emma! Loved the Kowalskis since we first started publishing them in 2010? You are going to adore this book. Never read the Kowalskis before? No worries, this book was written to allow you to jump right in. What It Takes is available in print, in audio and in ebook format at your favorite online retailer.

  Josh Lanyon is back with another male/male romantic suspense, Fair Chance. Elliot Mills thought he was done with the most brutal case of his career, having finally put the serial killer in jail, but when the lead agent on the case goes missing, Elliot has to play this killer’s twisted game to save the love of his life. Find out more about Elliot and Tucker in Fair Game and Fair Play, both now available.

  Together, Maya Clery and Dean Sova have entered a decadent world of passion, pleasure and possibility—but while their love has grown stronger, and their play more intense, the intersection of fantasy and past will challenge their dynamic in the face of deeper, wilder desires. The Discipline by Jade A. Waters will get your senses steaming!

  If you love a good paranormal shifter romance, I hope you’ve been following along with Kerry Adrienne’s fantastic series Shifter Wars. In Taming the Lion, the battle between the lions and bears decimates Deep Creek, and one of the heirs to the lions’ throne is saved from death by a beautiful bear medic who’s torn between her allegiance to her den and her attraction and obligation to the wounded lion. Want more? Waking the Bear and Pursuing the Bear can be on your reading device in minutes!

  We’re pleased to welcome debut author Jules Court to the Carina Press team with a sultry new trilogy of contemporary romance novellas. Kicking off her trilogy is Hot in the City. Brian MacGregor busted his ass to make detective by age thirty. He doesn’t have time for a social life, not even for the pretty ER doc who sewed him up post run-in with a knife-wielding perp. He never expected that when he went looking for the witness to a gangland murder, the doc would be the best lead to his missing witness. Now if he can only keep his hands off her. Look for Enticing the Enemy and Tease Me Tonight coming this year!

  Layla had only wanted to give Sid one hot, sweaty night of her well-planned life, but when these werewolves realize that they’re mates, Layla must accept that she’ll be giving Sid a lot more than she planned in Alpha’s Challenge, the next in Lauren Dane’s Cascadia Wolves series!

  Too Taboo: An Erotic Romance Anthology contains three scorching-hot novellas. Purchase them together in the anthology or as individual ebooks:

  Debut author Morgaine Cameron bangs out of the gate with an indescribably hot story in Absolve Me. A handsome, celibate man wants a licensed sex surrogate to help him exorcise the wicked desires he’s struggling to overcome—because as a priest he needs to play out his immoral thoughts or forever be a holy sinner.

  Returning author Amber Bardan indulges us in some wicked ménage fantasies when an innocent trespassing turns into a lesson in obedience as the two property owners show their trespasser just how right punishment can feel. Twice as Hard is not to be missed.

  When the most skilled operative in the secret organization known as the Seduction Squad is captured, her only hope of escape is to use her body to drive her sexy abductor wild...but, having unleashed his darkest fantasies, does Inge really want to get away from Jake? Amanda Stewart’s Seduction Squad: Captured teases us with the dark taboos of forced seduction and capture fantasies.

  That’s all for this month, but whew, I think that’s more than enough. This is such a powerful lineup, I’m jealous of all of you getting to read these books for the first time. They are unputdownable (that’s totally a word only avid readers understand)!

  Coming next month we have another full-length novel from the amazing author duo Alexa Riley; Rhenna Morgan is back with another to-die-for hero; and two male/male authors give us two amazing romances.

  As always, until next month, my fellow book lovers, here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.

  Happy reading!

  Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  Dedication

  To my readers, thank you for making it possible to do what I love.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Didn’t I Warn You by Amber Bardan

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Amber Bardan

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  I run up the track. My thighs scream—but I can’t stop yet. Pain blazes from my blistered heels. The ground levels out. My sneakers slide on dirt.

  Fuck.

  The world disappears, dropping out only yards from where I’m stopped.

  I go to my knees, gasping. The urge to vomit rises hard in my throat, yet the sight ahead pierces me almost as sharply as the burning in my lungs. The view from the peak of Hunter Mountain is everything I’ve been led to believe. I press my palms to the earth. Oh god, the air is good.

  So damned good.

  Fragrant and so clean I’ve only experienced its pale imitation from a bottle. Forest scent. Almost makes this worth it. Almost. I fill my lungs, and my racing heart slows a fraction. I drop onto my heels. Green rolling hills and the kind of quiet I’ve only imagin
ed stretch out before me.

  I shut my eyes. In my thirty-one years I’ve never experienced a moment of quiet like this. Where the loudest thing competing for my attention is the sound of me—my breath.

  My galloping pulse.

  There’s always been a background noise so ever present I never noticed it until this absence. Traffic. Street. People. The whine of electronics a constant hum.

  Pity there’s not a moment of peace to be found.

  Not now. Not like this. Not on my own.

  Why’d he send me here?

  Flapping jerks me out of my thoughts. I look up. Broad, dark wings beat overhead.

  Holy crap. Is that an actual eagle? The huge bird soars over the ledge to hover above the ravine.

  Hunting.

  On Hunter Mountain. I drag my backpack off my shoulders, and open it up, fingers slipping into the inside pocket where the letter waits.

  I roll onto my backside, and then peel back the seal from one side of the envelope to the other, glue stretching like cheese for a moment before snapping. My thumb pauses in the fold of the paper. I unfold the note a fraction at a time.

  Congratulations, Baby, you made it.

  Aren’t you glad you did?

  Enjoy the view for half an hour. Set your timer, you impatient little thing. Then take the path to the left, there’s something I want you to see.

  I scrunch the paper into a ball, and it’s only the abomination of littering in a place like this, that stops me from hurling it in the direction of the eagle.

  That’s it?

  I’ve come all this way, suffered through so much, for a hike?

  Why’d he even bother? I’m not sure if this is him trying to hang on—or refusing to completely let go.

  Neither answer is one I’m prepared to dwell on. So I gather together the remnants of my hopefulness and obey my husband, setting my timer exactly as he’s instructed. Then drink from my water bottle and eat an apple to pass time, because he’s right—I’m a very impatient thing.

  The beep pings from my phone. With the nonexistent reception here, an alarm is about all the phone’s good for.

  I tuck the phone away, slip the backpack on and stand. My legs give a jellied wobble, leaving me with a feeling of walking on bendy stilts. I circle the top of the mountain, then find a track on the left, the one he must’ve meant.

  Do Not Enter, the sign reads.

  Of course it does. I sigh and take the path, adjusting the straps of the bag and wondering what fresh torture he has in store for me.

  One small mercy, walking down is a damn sight easier than running up.

  I descend into the trees and the silence bleeds into a more organic quiet, where birds rustle, things move, and then...water rushes.

  I pick up pace. Tired or not, I jog down the path toward the sound, then burst into a clearing.

  The scent of water hits me.

  I stare at the stream plunging over a hanging ledge. My eyes widen as if I could somehow take it in more. A real waterfall.

  A heady mix of awe and joy floods me.

  Bounced from one L.A. foster home to the next, vacations and sightseeing hadn’t been any part of my upbringing. I’d worked my ass off to get into college, then worked it even harder in my good, safe, secure bank job to pay off student loans—until him.

  Until Dean came along and every plan I ever had went up in flames.

  But this? Waterfall. Had I mentioned on one of our lazy Sunday mornings after he’d fucked me into exhaustion, how I’d always longed to see one?

  My chest squeezes. Maybe this means he forgives me...

  I take off the backpack and toss it onto the ground. Then tear off my top, kick off my shoes and peel off my socks. The late spring air has my nipples puckering, but I unhook my bra and let it fall where I stand.

  He hasn’t instructed this part, but I can just see him imagining it when he wrote the note. He’d picture me unable to resist skinny dipping in the wilderness.

  Had it made him hard when he’d told me to come this way?

  I undo the button at my waist and peel off my jeans. My underwear goes next. Then I walk buck naked toward the water.

  Of course he’d been hard.

  He’d have known I’d do just this. My thighs squeeze. Heat moves through me. I’m naked out in the open without Dean and he can’t do a thing to stop me.

  I climb onto a rock.

  A laugh springs from my lips. The sound echoes back at me, clear and crisp and startling. It’s been too long since I’ve heard that sound.

  I leap into the water.

  Freezing cold slams into me. I resurface with a gasp. Oh, shit. The water’s not just cold it’s so icy it has teeth. Still, I do the thing I’ve always, always wanted to do, and swim to the waterfall. Foam and bubbles, and the current seem to force me back. A tremor of danger moves through me. It could be risky to try to swim through the waterfall.

  I take a breath and dive underwater. Pressure pounds my back then dissipates. I emerge on the other side, and look up. The water curtains me from the outside world.

  Sadly, no cave, but I climb onto the bit of rock ledge and watch for the brief moment before cold and self-preservation force me down.

  That’s the thing about fantasy, you never dream these parts—the threat of hypothermia or how a slimy rock feels on your bare ass.

  I dive back through the waterfall, and swim toward where I’ve left my things. My skin goes numb. A blanket of goose bumps coats my limbs. I collect my carelessly scattered clothes. Dirt and mossy chunks of forest floor cling to my feet and work up my ankles. My teeth chatter. I bend to retrieve my underwear and jeans.

  Sound crunches behind me.

  I spin, clothes clutched in my hands. A man stands in front of me, maybe six feet away. My heart seizes.

  He stares, gaze raking over me as though he’s never seen a woman. From the looks of him maybe he never has. His beard is rough, dark and speckled with silver, but it’s the jaw underneath—clenched tight as he takes me in, that has my own teeth biting together. He’s built like someone who spends his days felling trees or wrestling grizzlies.

  Or both.

  My pulse mimics the sound of the waterfall, growing louder in my ears, until I don’t know which roar is which. That whole big body seems poised.

  Set to pounce.

  “I didn’t know anyone was here.” My voice emerges strangled and rusty.

  He says nothing, but his gaze makes its way from where I clutch my things to my chest, then lands on mine.

  His features set hungrily, tension thrumming tight through his expression in a way that makes me feel like a buffet that’s being presented at the very brink of starvation.

  I can almost feel my heart beat against my forearms through the clothes I hold. Air moves in icy prickles over my naked thighs and between my legs. His attention moves there. To my uncovered cunt, which my bundle of clothes doesn’t hide.

  His chest moves quickly, like he’s an animal under the heat of too much sun.

  His fingers twitch at his sides. Big fingers. He has big fingers and big hands. Hands that would hold roughly. Fingers that would grab brutally.

  And I can’t move. Can’t cover myself. Can’t conceal my most private area.

  He takes a step—just one.

  I jerk backward and stumble. My clothes tumble to the ground.

  He looks at my chest. At my breasts, nipples puckered and strained. There’s a sensation rushing through me that reminds me of the brief period in my teens when I’d get high. A light-headedness that suspends me almost out of body.

  He hisses, and comes for me.

  A jolt of numbness plunges me back into frozen atrophy.

  A blast rings out. Birds spring from trees.
/>   A gunshot.

  Chapter Two

  I gasp, reality returning in a rush. He glances behind him. Adrenaline lurches me back into action. I reach for what clothes I can get, snatch the strap of my backpack, then run.

  My bare feet pound the forest track.

  I glance behind me.

  The waterfall’s long gone. The forest is still. Nothing pursues me through the trees. I move off the track to a bush and duck down, pulling on my top and jeans without the benefit of underwear or footwear.

  My hair hangs in icy strands, soaking my now dirt-streaked T-shirt.

  What the hell came over me?

  I could’ve run sooner. Could’ve said something.

  Could’ve covered myself with my hands. But I just stood there.

  Dean. His name bursts into my mind. What kind of woman am I? I’ve been without the man I love for barely a month and here I am allowing a stranger in the woods to see me naked. What would he think if he’d seen me today, letting some dirty woodsman look at me?

  Letting another man look at what’s his.

  Would it hurt him?

  I shake myself. This speculation will do me no good. Dean wouldn’t have walked out of our home if he’d wanted to fight for us.

  I collect the backpack, hauling it over my shoulder as though it contains a load of bricks.

  It’s as though I feel the weight of the crumpled letter in the bag. He’s sent me letters, instructions... That proves that even though he’s left, he isn’t gone, doesn’t it?

  I don’t know. Don’t know, and since he hasn’t called, I have no fucking clue what any of this means for us.

  I continue down the path I can only assume will lead me toward the main road, where I’ll be able to make my way back to the cabin.

  A boom shudders the air. Close.

  I duck down, heart lodged in my throat. Another gunshot. Is someone hunting?

  The bush next to me rustles.

  A man emerges, face pressed against the barrel of a shotgun.

  I fall back on my elbows. A scream tears from my lungs. The sound radiates, gaining traction in its echo around us.