Crystal Green - Born to be Bad

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

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Scott, aka “Duncan”:

Thanks for your help with Club Lotus!

Now go out there and conquer the world.

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

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.

“Gemma, I heard that. When you finally get it into your thick head that you’ve moved to the wrong city, and listen to your family and move back here—”

Oops. Not…understanding…a…word…you…say….” She snapped shut her cell phone, tucked it into the purse she’d slung crosswise over her chest and rested her spine against the courtyard bricks. She wiped at the heat steaming the straight tendrils of her upswept hair into curlicues while the man’s disembodied voice continued to bluster behind the wall. A fountain tinkled in the background.

Water. The splashes reminded her of Orange County, California, where the dog days of summer were tempered by beach winds and afternoons by the swimming pool.

But that’s not where she belonged. She’d visited New Orleans and had never left, especially after the Weekly Gossip job had come along. The tabloid had sounded good because she’d been desperate for income and experience.

Besides, the “Big Easy” had always sounded adventurous, a bit scary. Naughty.

The last place anyone who knew “nice” Gemma Duncan would’ve expected her to end up.

Over the courtyard wall, another male voice had joined the first one. Gemma idly closed her eyes, listening, lulled by the southern afternoon sounds.

“You’re playing with some fire, here, Mr. Lamont. I’ll leave now, before our meeting humiliates you further.”

Gemma’s eyes eased open, lured by the second man’s voice. His tone had the rough undertow of a bayou night, where unknown dangers were hidden by darkness, the buzz of crickets, the lap of black water against crumbling docks.

A warm ache shocked her lower belly, then pulsed lower, urging her to press her thighs together. Man, if a mere voice could get her going, she really needed a date. Maybe it was time to start meeting more people and doing less work.

People such as…

She strained to hear him again, that echo of her fantasies—shadow-edged and wild, with just a hint of foreign danger.

Right, she thought. Only in my craziest dreams.

Most disappointingly, the first man was talking again, his N’awlins accent charged with anger. “You rigged that roulette wheel and bled me last night. Did you invite me to that gaming room with ruination in mind, Theroux?”