He’ll unlock her wildest fantasies...
Private investigator Curtis Jagger has always had a thing for Alix Harris. She was the darling of their high school—gorgeous, popular, class president...and, he suspects, just as naughty as she is nice. Now Jag has the opportunity to show her what she’s missing. To show her that sometimes being bad can be sexy as hell...
Alix has always done what she’s supposed to, and it’s gotten her exactly nowhere. Determined to please herself—in every way possible—she accepts Jag’s mysterious invitation to his ranch. In front of Jag’s camera lens, Alix finds freedom far beyond her expectations. A freedom where she takes the reins and rides out every wicked desire.
But in one week, Alix will have to return to her real world where politics reign. A world that can’t include Jagger, or she’ll lose everything.
Table of Contents
Dedicaiton
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Discover the Playing for Keeps series…
Hold Me Down Hard
Slow Ride
Wild Ride
If you love sexy romance, one-click these steamy Brazen releases…
Chasing Temptation
Over the Top
Compromising Her Position
Burn for Me
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Cathryn Fox All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Brazen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC. For more information on our titles, visit www.brazenbooks.com.
Edited by Candace Havens
Cover design by Heather Howland
Cover art from iStock
ISBN 978-1-63375-397-6
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition November 2015
To Danita, PA extraordinaire. I’d be lost without you.
Chapter One
Alix Harris walked the length of the barn, yelping when a blade of straw cut into the soft flesh between her sandaled toes. Rivulets of perspiration trickled down her cleavage in the stifling heat, plastering the bodice of her dress to her skin. God, she was so not in the mood for this today. She plucked at the expensive fabric, the slight stirring of air doing little to cool her overheated flesh or lighten her mood.
Hot, sweaty, and hardly dressed for a working dude ranch, she haphazardly tucked a long strand of hair back into her once-perfectly-coiffed ponytail. She shook her head, her thoughts rewinding back to a week ago, to when she’d received a hand-delivered invitation promising her a week of R&R at a ranch in cowboy country. She’d had no intention of going until—well—she’d rather not think about the events that drove her to the airport and then to the other side of the country. The second she came face-to-face with the boy from her youth—the one who’d been a bit of a geek back in the day, but still managed to invade her private thoughts at night—she knew what this reunion was really all about.
Sex.
Honestly, what else could it be? She’d caught the hunger in his glance when she’d exited the plane, noticed the way his eyes darkened as they traveled the length of her body, gazing at her like she was a tall glass of water and he’d been in the prairie sun too long. She also noticed his sidekicks, Coop and Mac, who were standing on the tarmac waiting for Julia and Jess—girls she knew from years ago and who had received the same invitation as her—to disembark. What kind of guys tracked down women from their past to offer them a free vacation without wanting something in return? None. She was used to a world of tit for tat and could only assume Jag wanted the former.
She barely knew Curtis Jagger back in high school, and she was a little shocked to discover that he’d brought her here to live out some juvenile fantasy with her. In their teens, they’d traveled in different circles, and even though the president of the audiovisual club had grown into a gorgeous man with a banging body, it didn’t mean she was going to hang around and become his plaything for the next week. She was so done with men, and rocking the headboard a time or two—or ten—with Jag was the last thing she needed right now. No matter how sexy he looked in that damn Stetson, or how long it had been since she’d been touched.
Don’t even get me started on that.
What she needed to do was turn around, get on the next plane back home to Nova Scotia, and figure out what the hell she was going to do with her life.
Why would I want to do that? To run another political campaign for her fiancé? She snorted. What a way to put her hard-earned politics and international relations degree to use.
If only life came with a redo button. Even if it did, she doubted she could change hers, anyway. With a father who was mayor and a socialite mother who backed him unconditionally, she’d been groomed for the public life since the get-go.
Dammit, she was so tired of being a doormat, tired of doing what everyone else wanted her to do. She scuffed her Jimmy Choos on the barn floor as she paced. Maybe she should just say the hell with them all and stay here for a week and enjoy a few fantasies with the hot cowboy. What is that they say? An eye for an eye? Wouldn’t that put her fiancé in his place?
Ex-fiancé.
With her back to Jag, she continued to pace, and a laugh caught in her throat, even though there was nothing funny about any of this.
“Hey,” a deep, masculine voice said from behind. “You okay?”
Alix spun around, and when she found Jag watching her with rich, smoldering brown eyes, there was nothing she could do to stop her mind from traveling down an erotic path. One where limits were pushed, boundaries were crossed, and satisfaction was guaranteed. Her gaze traveled over his broad shoulders and wide chest, going lower to take in the jeans that hugged him to perfection. Her body stirred in a way it hadn’t in so very long. Maybe having a wild week with him was exactly what she needed to do.
Except that is so not like me.
Or maybe it is, and I’ve just stifled that side of myself for far too long.
“Alix,” Jag said again, taking a measured step toward her. “Relax. I promise you, everything is going to be okay.”
With his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his grin was sexy and laid-back, but his easygoing nature did nothing to relax her. She sucked in a quick breath and ignored the need taking up residency between her legs as her voice lodged somewhere in her throat.