Protected by a Dangerous Man Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  BLURB

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Other Stories

  PROTECTED BY A DANGEROUS MAN

  Copyright, Legal Notice and Disclaimer:

  PROTECTED BY A DANGEROUS MAN © 2015 by Cleo Peitsche. All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from the author. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events, locations and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This book is for entertainment purposes only.

  This book contains mature content and is solely for adults.

  Cover Photo ©2015

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for purchasing this ebook. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I look forward to sharing more of my stories with you.

  Why join my mailing list? Because I release new stories at a special price to thank my readers!

  xoxo,

  Cleo

  Other Titles By Cleo

  After Forever/Bisexual Billionaire Trilogy (Threesome Romance)

  Careless

  Hopeless

  Fearless

  After Forever Box Set

  Office Toy Series (BDSM Gang Bang Romance)

  Office Toy

  Client Satisfaction

  Company Vacation

  Flex Time

  Soft Skills

  Executive Package

  Executive Toy Series (BDSM Gang Bang Romance)

  Executive Toy

  Professional Sin

  Dangerously Big

  Trickiest Job

  Dirtiest Lie

  Forbidden Fix

  By a Dangerous Man (BDSM Erotic Romantic Suspense)

  Season One

  Trapped by a Dangerous Man

  Wanted by a Dangerous Man

  Saved by a Dangerous Man

  Tempted by a Dangerous Man

  Seduced by a Dangerous Man

  By a Dangerous Man (Season One Box Set)

  Season Two

  Dared by a Dangerous Man

  Broken by a Dangerous Man

  Pursued by a Dangerous Man

  Desired by a Dangerous Man

  Protected by a Dangerous Man

  The Shark Shifter Paranormal Romance

  Touching Paradise

  Master of the Deep

  Oceans Untamed

  Blood in the Water

  Shark Burn

  Take Me Hard Series (BDSM Romance)

  Ride Me Hard

  Love Me Hard

  Use Me Hard

  Take Me Hard Compilation #1

  Push Me Hard

  Fantasy Playland Series (BDSM)

  Sleeping Lady

  Sleeping chez Sade

  Wide Awake

  Wide Open

  His Kiss

  Fantasy Playland Box Set

  Mistress Moi Series (Femdom)

  My Three Slaves

  Cuckold Chuck

  Faye-Faye and the Sadist

  Bad Boyfriend Series (Femdom Romance)

  Bad Boyfriend

  PURSUED BY A DANGEROUS MAN (#10)

  ~This is the fifth and final book in Season Two~

  He’s the man she’s been waiting for, but can she trust him?

  Bounty hunter Audrey is close to solving her first big private investigation case, no thanks to her lying clients. But their omissions pale in comparison to what mysterious billionaire Corbin Lagos has been guarding under lock and key in his office.

  Audrey doesn’t have time to confront Corbin, not when he’s determined to eliminate Henry Heigh once and for all. Keeping Corbin’s protective instincts in check is a game she can’t win, and the extremes he’ll go to will change their lives forever.

  Chapter 1

  I stood in the dark, musty stairwell, a can of pepper spray in my left hand, my phone in the right. In a hallway four floors above me, my twin brother was trying to sweet talk a teenager into telling him if she’d seen her father recently.

  We’d gotten a tip that our target had been hiding out with his ex-wife for weeks. She’d likely been the one who’d called; an ex on the couch probably didn’t take ten minutes to become irritating. This guy, Joey Adams, was a small-time swindler, a smooth talker, from what I’d gathered. He had girlfriends and kids spread across three states.

  I rolled my shoulders.

  What I needed was a massage. Better yet, a nice, hard… But I couldn’t let myself think about that. Keeping my distance from Corbin was killing me, and I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out.

  Just the thought of his name was enough to summon memories of his scent, his spicy aftershave mixed with powerful male. And his touch, his hand slipping under my shirt…

  Things between us had been going so well, and then Corbin had to ruin it with his goddamn secrets. It was bad enough that he wouldn’t talk about what had happened when he’d been summoned to DC, but I understood his reasons. The other secret, though…

  It was going to drive me insane. The only time I didn’t obsess over it was when I was working.

  Above me, a door eased open, then gently closed. This was a building of loud noises, of blasting radios and slamming doors. Someone didn’t want to be heard.

  I moved the hand holding the pepper spray behind my back.

  Joey Adams came skipping down the steps, light on the balls of his feet like he didn’t have a care in the world. He was a wiry man in his late twenties with fashionably shaggy brown hair. The combination made him look like a drummer for a rock band. He certainly wasn’t my type, but I could see how he’d racked up all those girlfriends. He tensed when he saw me—when he realized there was someone loitering at the bottom of the stairwell.

  But then he took a longer look, grinned, and resumed descending the steps.

  I bristled.

  Everyone knew that women weren’t tough enough to do anything but sit at home, paint their nails, and squeeze out babies. There was no way I could be a threat, right?

  Some days, that patronizing attitude merely irritated me. Other days, like today, it made me want to kick the fugitive in the teeth. The sheriff wouldn’t let us surrender someone with a bloody mouth, so I generally refrained.

  Adams came to a stop a few feet away. “Hey, sugar,” he said, his voice more raspy than sexy. “Haven’t seen you before. You new here?”

  If there was one thing I hated more than being dismissed as harmless, it was being called sugar, baby, darling, or sweetie by any man who wasn’t Corbin. And this creep? He was as far from Corbin as a chihuahua was from a wolf.

  “Oh, I don’t live here,” I
said, aiming for flirtatious but hitting neutral. “I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Maybe I’m the one you’re waiting for,” Adams said.

  Gag me. “You know… I think you could be right. Hold up.” I gave him a seductive smile as I shoved the pepper spray into the waistband of my jeans. “One second—I want to see where my friend is.”

  I texted Rob. I could handle Adams on my own, but the whole point of working in teams was to make things easier. Safer.

  “Listen, sugar, I gotta go,” Adams said. “You wanna give me your number?”

  “No, no, I’m done,” I told him as I slid my phone into my back pocket. “Where are you running off to? A party?”

  He grinned. “I can make that happen. Maybe your friend wants to tag along. She cute?”

  “Maybe.” The smile wouldn’t quite come this time.

  The door on the fourth floor banged open. From the cacophony echoing down the stairwell, I guessed it had hit a metal railing. Very subtle of my brother. That was my fault; I should have told him there wasn’t any hurry.

  Adams looked up, his brow creasing. “Maybe next time.” He headed for the exit, but the heavy metal door wouldn’t budge. I knew because I’d jammed it myself.

  “Hold up, sugar,” I said as he pushed futilely on the metal lever. “We just met. What’s the hurry?”

  He froze, then swung stiffly my way. “You’re a cop.” He sounded simultaneously disgusted that I might be on the other side of the law and hopeful that he’d misunderstood, that there was another reason for my chattiness, for the fact that someone was barreling down from the fourth floor.

  Technically, it was as illegal for a bounty hunter to impersonate an officer as it was for anyone else. When people assumed I was a cop? I considered that a gray area. One I comfortably inhabited.

  Unfortunately, local law enforcement was pissed at me, pissed at Stroop Finders, and I couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

  “Not a cop,” I admitted.

  Adams looked relieved.

  “Fugitive recovery agent,” I said, pulling a zip tie from my other back pocket.

  “Bounty hunter? A little thing like you?” he asked, a hopeful and flirtatious smile playing across his face. “We can make a deal if you do like to party. I’ve got a stash.”

  “Maybe next time. Show me your wrists.”

  Adams’s smile slid away. His face went completely blank, then he feinted to the left, dashed to the right.

  I grabbed the back of his T-shirt as he flashed past me. The momentum whipped me around, but I threw my weight into him, slamming us both against the wall. Adams made a stuttering gasping sound.

  “Should we try this again? Before you answer, you should know that I’ve got pepper spray.” Never mind that only an idiot would use it in an enclosed space. I knew because I’d been that idiot. Once.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll behave. Don’t spray me with that shit.”

  “Slow movements.” I stepped back, giving Adams room to turn. I could tell he was thinking about making another run for it. “Go ahead,” I told him. “I’ve got a gun, too.”

  That was a lie, but Adams held out his hands. “Usually I buy a girl a couple of drinks before I let her tie me up.”

  “Gross,” I said, cinching the zip tie around his wrists. He wiggled his fingers but didn’t complain.

  “Guess you don’t need me.” Rob was lingering on the first floor landing. His red hair was pushed away from his face, and even though he’d been wearing contact lenses for several weeks, it was still jarring to see him without his glasses.

  “That’s a wrap,” he said, yawning as he descended the last of the stairs. Once Rob had a hand on Adams’s shoulder, I crouched in front of the door and grabbed the handle of the screwdriver I’d forced into the push bar.

  It took a few tugs, but I wrenched it free. A rusty metallic scent filled the air. “It’s not that late,” I told Rob. “We have time for one more.”

  He groaned. He wanted to go home, which was reasonable after twelve hours on the streets.

  “Let me go,” Adams said, “and I’ll help you get the next guy. We can go out for a drink after. I could show you a real fun time, sweetness.”

  I reached for the pepper spray. Rob elbowed me, and I let my hand drop, pretending I’d been intending to rub my hip all along.

  “One more,” I said to Rob, ignoring Adams’s leering face. “Maybe that deadbeat dad? An extra capture a day and we might not have to dip into our savings accounts to make payroll this week.” Even that was optimistic; things were tight.

  “Audrey…” Rob ran a hand through his hair. “Yes, we need money, but you—”

  I grabbed Adams’s arm and pushed into the soft, quiet evening.

  A couple of hours later, Katrina met us outside the sheriff’s office.

  As an employee of Stroop Finders, she was persona non grata, too, but because she wasn’t a flesh-and-blood Stroop, she ranked lower on the shit list. She was 5’10” of humorless efficiency, and Adams didn’t call her baby, didn’t say anything at all.

  Rob and I waited in the parking lot while Kat took in Adams—our second bounty hadn’t panned out.

  Rob jammed his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. “Ok,” he said.

  The way he said it, I knew what was coming next. I wanted to plug my ears.

  “What happened, Audrey?”

  “We got a bad tip,” I said with a shrug, but my heart was pounding. I didn’t need Rob asking why I was avoiding going home.

  He let the silence drag on and on, and I stared at the glass doors, willing Kat to emerge.

  Rob pivoted to face me. “Is it because Corbin’s our landlord?” he asked, referring to the fact that Corbin now owned the Stroop Finders building, which was currently undergoing renovations.

  “I voted for it,” I reminded my brother, jerking my gaze away from his brown eyes. I had voted yes… eventually. My approval had been symbolic; we were equal business partners with our father, but Dad owned the building. “It’s not about the office,” I said.

  “Then what? What happened?”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell my brother, but I couldn’t.

  It was too humiliating.

  “Everything is fine,” I said flatly.

  Rob shifted his weight, his shoes scattering small stones. “Corbin doesn’t think everything is fine.”

  I looked at him sharply. “Since when do you know what Corbin thinks?”

  “Well, I took your advice and called him about Jennifer,” Rob said. “We grabbed a drink. He says you’ve been acting strange ever since he bought the building. What gives? Is it about the money? He’s a billionaire, Audrey. He can spare it.”

  There was no point in asking when Rob could have met up with Corbin. Given all the hours I’d been working lately, there’d been plenty of opportunity. “He only bought the building a week ago, and two of those days he was in DC,” I said.

  “I don’t see your point,” Rob said.

  I threw my hands up. “Maybe he’s exaggerating? We’re talking about a very short period of time—”

  “You think I haven’t noticed that you’re avoiding going home? If it’s obvious to me, of course Corbin has figured it out. That guy is crazy for you.”

  I snorted, and Rob gave me an alarmed look. “Things are that bad?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said before he could pry further.

  Kat was just pushing through the glass doors, and that meant I could leave. Even though I didn’t want to go home, if my brother kept probing, I was either going to strangle him… or worse, tell him everything.

  Besides, I had to head back eventually. If I spent the night at my own place, then Corbin would demand that we talk, and I wasn’t ready for that. Better to sneak in late.

  “See you tomorrow.” I headed for my car.

  Rob followed me across the parking lot. I tried to ignore him, even when he draped his upper body over my car door, preventin
g me from closing it. He cleared his throat. “If you’re going to shut me out—”

  “I’m not shutting you out,” I said. Maybe it was the fact that he was on the door, or because he’d used the word “shutting,” but an idea occurred to me.

  “Uh-oh,” Rob said. He moved off the door. “I don’t like the look on your face. You’re planning something I won’t approve of.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “Something is off between me and Corbin. He’s got secrets.”

  “Of course he does,” Rob said warily. “He used to be an assassin. And he’s dealing with that crap with his ex-wife.”

  The ex-wife who had led a secret life as a spy. She was abducted and murdered over five years ago… except it turned out she wasn’t dead after all, and according to Corbin, even the abduction was now in question. For the moment, she was still somewhere in Nigeria, but one of these days, the French were going to get her back. Then my troubles would truly begin.

  I nodded in agreement. “If that’s all he’s hiding, there’s no problem, right?”

  Rob’s eyes narrowed.

  “I have a lock that needs picking,” I said. “I could probably do it myself, but…” I shrugged. “You’re better at it than I am. Faster.” And while I could handle it on my own, I suspected I would need moral support once we got the door open.

  “What lock?” Rob asked, looking unhappy.

  “The new one that Corbin stuck on his office door.”

  My brother’s face went blank. Then, “Damn it, Audrey. Corbin’s not cheating on you.”

  “It hadn’t even crossed my mind.”

  Kat waved at us as she pulled out of the parking lot. I closed my door and headed home, where Corbin was probably locked in his office.

  I told myself that I’d go right to bed, that I wouldn’t try to spy on him, but I knew better.

  Chapter 2

  Trailing my fingers along the wall, I passed the kitchen and one of the guest bedrooms, following the hallway to the spacious living room. A slight citrus scent lingered in the air, proof that the house cleaners had been through. The shades on the windows and skylights were closed, making the large condo feel smaller, tighter.