Bad Boy Hero: A Romantic Suspense Read online

  Bad Boy Hero:

  A Romantic Suspense

  Adair Rymer

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  Copyright © 2015 Adair Rymer

  All rights reserved.

  Bad Boy Hero: A Romantic Suspense is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. They are not to be construed in any way. Resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Cormar Covers

  Special thanks

  -to David and Julie who allowed me to haunt their spare mobile apartment while I wrote this book.

  -to my wonderful editor Danni Werner

  -to my other wonderful editor Julie Ahern

  -to my proofreader Sara Smolarek

  Steamy romance, serving your needs...

  More books from Adair Rymer:

  Too Rough for Love

  Too Wild to Ride

  Too Fast for Hope

  Riding for Her

  Outlaw Road

  Undercover Badass

  Getting Mine: Stepbrother Romance

  Obsession: Bad Boy's Secret Baby

  Full Shred: Billionaire's Secret Baby

  Connect with Adair!

  Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/Adairrymer

  Goodreads- https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8990152.Adair_Rymer

  Amazon- http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00P5PQ4GE

  Twitter- https://twitter.com/AdairRymer

  Email- [email protected]

  This book comes with a free copy of both parts 1 & 2 of the whole SHRED story!

  *Author's note Bad Boy Hero is a rerelease of the novella Shadow Over New York

  Preview of Bad Boy Hero: A Romantic Suspense

  Her hand drifted up to my mask. It was her only protection from me and she wanted to remove it. Through my mask's lenses I could see her eyes burn for me.

  “That's cheating,” I said, with a taunting smile.

  “Spoilsport.” Her frown hinted at the way she used to pout when she didn't get her way. She really had changed a lot from the spoiled, sometimes selfish teenager. Seven years changes everyone I guess.

  The heat rolling out from between her thighs was a raging inferno to my enhanced senses. It was a fire I hoped would burn me alive. My cargo pants snagged and ripped her leggings, then tented with the massive size of my cock. Its rigid shape grazed against her and stoked her flames that much more.

  Natasha's frown shifted into a coy smirk as she reached for my belt instead. “How 'bout this, Hero? Or is that against your rules too?”

  “Some rules are made to be broken.” I said, gliding my hand around the waistband of her miniskirt. Do it. An impulse compelled me to tear down the side of the garment like it was paper. I was strong enough to punch through stone, cotton was less than nothing.

  “Oh, shit!” Nat laughed. It was a bubbly, surprised sound, sweeter than anything I'd ever heard. Her breathing steadied as she regained her composure. “I just bought that!”

  “Purple?” I marveled at her newly revealed panties, then let my enhanced gaze devour the rest of her. The soft curve of her waist, her hip bones, the way the bumps of her ribs slightly broke the smoothness of her skin; all of it was every fantasy I'd ever had rolled into one. “You have to admit, I was pretty I was close.”

  “I still don't believe you can see through clothes.” She slid my pants down, enraptured by the thick outline of my cotton-covered cock. She couldn't take her eyes off of it. She dragged a finger down the front seam of my briefs, until she hit the stem of my cock. “Because if you could, there's no way I'd have missed this...”

  She knew I liked what I saw. She was right, too. If I could see her naked all the time my cock would be at rigid attention whenever she was near me.

  Even through the cotton I could feel the lines in her fingerprints as she continued down the entire length of my shaft. My cock twitched beneath her hand, it raised nearly invisible hairs on the sides of her neck.

  “Wow,” she said, so softly that she couldn't even hear it. I did though. Loud and clear.

  “If you think that's big,” I pushed down on the bed and slid a hand under her head, bringing me a tongue's length from her ear. My words were coffee syrup, thick and dark. “Just wait till you feel me fill you up.”

  “That a threat?” she cooed, trying to maintain the appearance of being in control of herself.

  “What if it is?” I knew the truth. She wanted to feel every long, hard inch of me.

  Prologue

  Natasha (age 12)

  There were three knocks at the door, then two, then one. It was Logan Drake, the new boy from down the hall. He was the only person who ever knocked like that. I scrambled for my headphones, but I couldn't get them on in time. Shoot!

  “Natasha!” Mom called out to me in my room. She was on the couch watching some soap opera and nursing my new baby brother, Kurt. That was all she ever did since she got home from the hospital a few days ago.

  “I'm in the middle of a drawing.” I protested, then went back to work on my picture of Sailor Mars. I had done the outline and was working on the shading, it was my favorite part.

  “The drawing isn't going anywhere. Answer the door.”

  “I don't want to, Mom.” I slapped my pencil down. “Logan's weird. I don't like him.”

  Logan Drake was weird. The Drakes moved here a few months ago from... somewhere down south. I didn't know, but he had a weird accent and he smiled too much. I hated when people smiled too much.

  The stupid three, two, one knocks came again. Was that Morse code or something? Or was that, like, a thing they did wherever he came from?

  Ugh, so weird!

  Kurt, started crying because of all the noise and Mom gently bounced him in her arms to get him to quiet down.

  “Natasha.” Mom's voice got harder, then she gave me one of her death stares. I wasn’t getting out of it. “The door.”

  Everything always revolved around the baby, no one ever cared what I wanted. It was bad enough I had to go to school with Logan, now I had to see him at home too? How was that fair?

  “Fine!” I sighed, stomping my feet down the hall of our apartment.

  My hand paused over the doorknob until I could quickly glance at the small mirror we had by the door. I tried to rub off the pencil smudge on my hand from my drawing, then I smoothed my curly flyaways back into my pony tail.

  I wasn't trying to look good for him, it was just good manners. That's all.

  When I jerked open the door that led to the shared hallways between apartments Logan was there with a card and flowers. He had to stop his hand from another series of stupid knocks or else he would've hit me in the face.

  “Oh, hey!” He said. Logan wore a button-up shirt and slacks. It was Sunday, so his family had probably just gotten back from church. He had short, dark brown hair, dark brown eyes and thick eyelashes for a boy.

  I stared at him. Mom told me to answer the door, not to talk to him. Kurt cried in the background and my mother's cell phone rang.

  “My parents told me told me to give your parents these.” He gave me everything, then extended his hand to shake mine. “Congratulations on the new brother.”

  “Thanks.” I said, looking at his hand. Shaking hands was something adults did. Logan was so weird.

  Don't be rude, Nat. My mom was always telling me to mind my manners.

  I pulled my lips tight across my face and extended my hand. Usually I wouldn't have cared about the manners thing, but this time was different. I didn't know why. I also didn't know why my heart pulsed a little
faster when Logan took my hand. It was the first time I held a boy's hand, even if it was just to shake.

  It felt weird, but I didn't hate it.

  Then, with an awkward jolt, he brought the back of my palm to his lips and kissed it. My eyes flashed and my cheeks flared with heat and started to turn as red as my hair.

  “Gross! You creep!” I ripped my hand away. It tingled. I could still feel the heat from his lips “What's wrong with you?”

  “No. Everything's fine. Natasha is just talking to the Drake's boy.” Mom replied to whoever she was on the phone with, then looked over at us. She laughed, then made everything worse. “Yeah, that's him. I think Natasha has a crush on him. You know how they are at that age.”

  Mortified, I turned back to Logan. A smile was spreading across his lips, which he just used to kiss me! I slammed the door on him. The rest of my face matched the redness of my cheeks.

  I never wanted to see Logan's stupid face ever again.

  Natasha (age 15)

  “Are you awake, Nat?” The walkie-talkie that Logan gave me squawked.

  Logan's parents were very old fashioned, they didn't want him having a cell phone until he got his driver's license. He saved up his allowance and bought us walkie talkies so we could talk to each other when we shouldn't be. He'd also bought a pack of Sailor Moon stickers and decorated mine. I totally loved it.

  I plugged my headphones into the jack so the noise wouldn't wake my parents or Kurt. We had thin walls and it was way past all of our bedtimes. “I am now.”

  “You are such a liar.” Logan called my bluff. “Mrs. Gordon's exam is tomorrow.”

  For some reason I always had trouble sleeping the night before big tests at school. My brain was a jerk. It didn't care that I needed to be asleep, so I punished it by reading terrible Harry Potter fan fiction on my cellphone.

  “You caught me.” I whispered back, pulling the blanket over my head to hide my voice even more. I checked my phone. It was two in the morning. My father always got up super early to commute to work, and he would bust a blood vessel if I or Kurt woke him now. “But why are you awake? We're in the same class, you have to take the test too.”

  “I'm not gonna pass it anyways so I figured I'd keep you company.”

  Between Logan's faint southern accent and being a natural athlete, it was easy for a lot of people to write him off as just another dumb jock. But that was just the way he wanted it. Logan was great at reading people and getting them to believe what he wanted them to. All the girls in our grade loved him.

  “You should let me tutor you.” Over the course of the last few years, we'd become best friends so his charms didn't work on me. That's what I kept telling myself. “I know you're smarter than you want people to think.”

  “With your insomnia, you'd probably just fall asleep on me halfway through the lesson. Like you did on the bus.” There was a smile in his voice that made my chest burn. “Just don't drool on me this time.”

  I held the talk button to give him one of a hundred excuses, but no words came out so I let my finger off the button.

  We'd gone on a field trip to the zoo this past winter. On the way back, our bus was stuck in traffic for four hours because of a bad accident. It was dark and I hadn't slept well the night before so I passed out on Logan's shoulder. It was some of the best sleep I'd ever gotten.

  When I woke up he was holding my hand. I didn't want him to let go so I pretended to be asleep until we got back to the school. That was the first time I started thinking about Logan as more than a friend. I hadn't been able to stop thinking about him like that since.

  “I didn't drool on you, jerk-face!” I said, after too long of a pause.

  Logan laughed, then asked, “Has anyone asked you to the dance yet?”

  My heart started beating like it had in the hallway when he kissed my hand.

  “Maybe,” I said, trying to act casual. My friend, Gwen, told me that a few boys were going to ask me, but none had yet. That was fine, I didn't want to go with any of them. There was only one boy I wanted to go with...

  “Who?” Logan sounded weirdly defensive. Did he really care that someone might've already asked me?

  “Clark and Bruce. Why do you care? Last I heard you were going with a high schooler.” Gwen told me that too. Going to a dance with a girl in an older grade would make Logan a legend to all his friends. I didn't like it, but I understood it. Understanding didn't make it hurt any less though.

  “This is our first real school dance. You shouldn't go with either of those guys, they're assholes. They're just going to ruin it for you.”

  “So you want me to show up alone and sit on the bleachers the whole night like a loser?”

  “No, you dork.” Logan paused and my heart did back flips in my chest. “Why don't we go together? You know, just as friends”

  Holy crap! Logan just asked me out! I didn't care that we'd be going as just friends. We were just friends when we held hands on the bus. I thrashed around on my bed, excitedly. I never, in a million years, thought this would happen!

  “Nat, you still there?”

  I stopped flailing like a giddy lunatic and found the walkie-talkie. I took a deep breath and clicked the button to talk. It was hard to keep the happiness from my voice. “Yeah.”

  “Well?” Logan asked.

  I swallowed and pretended to be cool, “Sure.”

  Natasha (age 17)

  “Are you nuts, Logan?!” I whisper yelled at the crazy man whose waist and legs were dangling out of my bedroom window. He was thoroughly unconcerned about hanging so far off the ground. How did he even get over here? Was there even a ledge that went around the building? Did Logan turn into Spider-Man and I never noticed?

  I hoped no one saw him. He was lucky it was dark out. Having the cops come by for someone breaking into my room probably wouldn't score any points with my parents. They were already pretty pissed at Logan already.

  “Depends who you ask. But yeah, probably.” Logan flashed his flawless smile. The wind lightly rustled the short tuft of hair he kept up top, the sides of his head was buzzed into a fade. He wore a sleeveless shirt which was fitting for the muggy, early June heat. It also showed off his taught muscles. They'd been sculpted by three seasons of being the best quarterback in the city.

  Several colleges were already offering him a full ride if he played on their football team when he graduated high school. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time till Logan went into the NFL.

  I closed my bedroom door behind me and raced to the window.

  “You're four stories up! Does anything scare you?”

  “Only what you'd do to me if I left without saying goodbye.”

  Much to the jealousy of every other girl at school, Logan and I had officially been dating for almost a year. We'd been inseparable since the first school dance, when he asked me out over those silly walkie-talkies we used to use.

  “Wait, you're going too? I thought it was just your dad that was headed to...” I actually didn't know where. I didn't think Logan did either. He told me last week that his father had to leave town for a few weeks for some conference.

  “Yeah, they just sprang it on me when I got home today. I guess we're all going. Mom said they were going to make the trip into a family vacation.” Logan didn't look thrilled. “Yay... three long, fun weeks in Kansas. You'd better keep your phone charged because I'm not suffering through this alone.”

  “Oh,” I deflated a bit. That was a long time. There was a new superhero movie coming out this weekend that we were going to see together. I didn't much care for the film, but it was an excuse to be in a dark theater with my boyfriend. “Are you leaving after exams on Friday?”

  “No,” Logan's carefree attitude seemed to fade. It was the same look on his face every time he had bad news. “We're actually headed out tonight unfortunately.”

  “Tonight?” I felt like I'd been given a static shock. I wouldn't even get the rest of the week with him? “What about yo
ur final grades?”

  “I guess I'm just going to have to make them up.” Logan shrugged. I bet he didn't mind missing the schoolwork. But behind his thick, gorgeous lashes, his mahogany eyes were heavy. Something else was on his mind. “The whole thing feels kinda off though. Mom was more anxious than usual and Dad looked...I don't know, worried? They definitely aren’t telling me the whole deal.”

  Logan's phone buzzed in his pocket.

  “Just stay with me!” I hugged him. It was unfair that he had to go at all. Our parents never thought about what we wanted. “You can live in my closet. I'll bring you bread every day. I promise.”

  “I'm not a pigeon, Nat.” He chuckled, removing one arm from the ledge and wrapping it around me. That made me scared he might fall so I hugged him even tighter. “Besides, I don't think your parents are too happy with me for keeping you out past curfew the last three Saturdays.”

  Through our hug, I could feel Logan's phone start buzzing again. I hated the idea of us being apart for so long. Three weeks was an eternity...

  “My phone is blowing up, I'd better get back.” Logan sighed, then pulled away to arm's length. “Sorry, I couldn't give you more of a head's up. I'm going to miss you like crazy, Nat.”

  “I'm going to miss you too.” My face scrunched up as the weight of everything sank in. I put on the bravest face I could and tried to end on a lighter note. “I demand a selfie of your silly face every day. And text me when you get there.”

  Logan gave me a one hand salute and was about to lean back out the window when I stopped him.

  “And be careful getting back to your room! You're going to give me a heart attack.”

  He smiled in that light, airy way only he could pull off, then he kissed me.

  It was wonderful. It was always wonderful. We'd kissed tons of times, but it always felt like it was the first. I could live in his lips and be happy for the rest of my life.