Count on Me (Petal, Georgia) by Lauren Dane
Jasmine figures a fun vanilla fling will cleanse her sexual palate. Yet her lover proves himself surprisingly adept at satisfying her submissive desires. And soon she’s in serious danger of doing the one thing she swore never to do: fall in love.
Warning: Contains casual sex, intimate sex, slow sex, fast sex, rough sex, roleplay sex and spanking. So basically, lots of sex and spanking.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Irrepressible Jasmine:
Aaron was on the phone when he glanced out the window and saw Jasmine Campbell striding across the street, making a beeline for his office. His gut clenched, his pulse rate leapt and he totally lost the thread of the conversation he’d been having.
Fortunately, the estate agent on the other end of the line loved the sound of his own voice and continued to drone on when Aaron fell silent. He was too focused on the sight of Jasmine walking toward him to participate in their discussion any longer.
She wore a sheer blouse in deep purple teamed with a miniskirt that barely came to mid-thigh—no stockings—and knee-high leather boots. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders, and the morning sun glanced off the dark strands, making them shine well enough for a shampoo commercial. Her striking eyes where hidden behind a pair of large-framed sunglasses. Her strides were bold, purposeful, as though she was a woman who’d just realized what she wanted and was determined to get it.
Christ Almighty, she was a knockout. She’d left him with a killer hard-on last week, and every male instinct he possessed had screamed at him to ask her out afterward, but he’d refrained by force of sheer will. He hadn’t wanted to come off too eager. Desperation was a major turnoff to women, especially women like Jasmine.
“I’m free for meetings right now, Vera.”
It was Trevor Long, one of Aaron’s best estate agents who spoke to the receptionist. Aaron had his own glassed-in office, but he kept the door open. His dad hadn’t done that, had always believed in keeping a separation between himself and his employees. But Aaron had never been overly comfortable playing the hardass, unless it was absolutely necessary. The open-door policy meant his staff felt free coming to him with issues or advice. It also meant Aaron could hear everything that was going on around the office.
Right now, Trevor had his ravenous attention fixed on Jasmine. He slicked back his already jelled-into-submission blond hair and fairly licked his lips in anticipation.
A wholly unearned sense of territoriality gripped Aaron. He covered the phone mouthpiece and called out the open office door. “Vera, when Ms. Campbell comes in, can you show her to my office?”
Vera Wilmington—a woman in her late forties with four kids and a twenty-year marriage under her belt—turned and looked at Aaron over the top of her half-frame glasses. Her gaze slid from him to Trevor and back. Her lips twitched. “Sure thing.”
Trevor’s face fell. “Oh come on.”
“The boss’s prerogative, Trevor.” Aaron grinned. “And she’s an old friend of mine who would, I guarantee, eat you alive.”
“Yeah, but what a way to go,” Trevor mumbled, returning to his desk with a serious case of the sulks.
Aaron worked at finishing up with Bill Leadbeater as he watched Jasmine walk into the reception area, perch her sunglasses atop her head and ask for him by name. Aaron’s heart performed a ridiculous little flip. She’d come to see him specifically. That was interesting.
When Jasmine walked in, Aaron nodded in acknowledgment. She took a seat in the chair across from his desk and crossed her legs, causing her black skirt to ride farther up her thighs. Aaron couldn’t help the way his attention snagged on the exposed length of supple flesh. Damn, she had great legs. Too easy and too damn fun to imagine them wrapped around his waist as he pumped into her. The images accosted him, and the stirring in his loins became more of a frenzy. Jesus. At least pretend to be professional, dickhead.
Seeing the direction of his gaze, Jasmine uncrossed her legs and squeezed them together, sitting up straighter in her chair with her hands in her lap. The pose said “good Catholic schoolgirl”, something which Jasmine had never been. At least not in any way that wasn’t thoroughly filthy.
And now he was picturing her in a short checkered skirt and knee-high socks. Man, he really had reverted to schoolboy thoughts.
“Anyway, a client just walked in, Bill. I gotta go.” Aaron waited while Bill wound up the conversation, using the time to cleanse his mind of dirty imaginings involving the woman sitting across from him. It was bad enough last time that she’d seen how strongly she affected him. If he let her see it again, she’d know he could be reduced to putty in her hands, if she was so inclined.
But then, maybe Trevor had a point. What a way to go.
At last he got rid of Bill and hung up the phone. He turned his full attention to Jasmine. “Well, hello again.”
“How are things, AJ?”
AJ. It was what his pop had called him when he was a kid, what some had called him in school, so it always made Aaron feel about twelve years old. Considering he felt a little like a pubescent boy with his first boner, Aaron figured he probably deserved the assignation right now. “All good with me, Jas. You?”
“Good. Great.” She drummed her fingernails on her knee and bit her lip. “Actually no, I’m not that great.”
Aaron’s smile dropped a little as her words sunk in. “Why—what’s wrong?”
“Business is slow.” Jasmine gestured through the glass, where they could both see Summer’s Retreat. “My sister’s business.”
“We’re heading into the cooler months. Everyone’s business slows down a bit.”
“Not yours,” Jasmine noted. “I hear AJ Sanderson’s is booming.”
“I wouldn’t say booming, not in this property market.” Aaron tried not to be thrilled that she’d apparently been asking about him. “But we do okay.”
“I hear you’ve turned into a savvy businessman. Like your father.”
Aaron was sure she’d meant it as a compliment, so he didn’t deny it even though every cell in his body wanted to protest the comparison. He’d taken over AJ Sanderson’s when his father retired last year, he sat in the same office his father had inhabited for much of his career. The comparisons were inevitable.
Usually he let them roll off his back like water. For some reason it bugged him that Jasmine, of all people, thought he was like Andrew Sanderson, even though she could have no concept of the man’s faults.
“I prefer to think I’m my own man.”
Jasmine’s face fell. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Aaron realized he hadn’t masked his irritation well. He held up a hand. “Sorry. The comparisons get a little old sometimes.”
“I can understand that.”
Aaron remembered how people—people like his mother and her friends—used to say what a shame it was that Rex Campbell’s eldest daughter showed no signs of the same ambition or intelligence that her father or her sister possessed. He felt like a spoiled prick. His dad hadn’t been perfect, but despite what went on behind the scenes people generally admired him. By association, Aaron had been afforded the same level of respect. The comparisons to his father might bug him from time to time, but at least they didn’t have the power to demoralize him.
Aaron wondered if Jasmine had ever been demoralized by what people said. If she had, she’d never shown it. But as Aaron well knew, people put on fronts all the time.
“So the thing is, I came to ask for your help.”
From the way she clenched her hands together in her lap, Aaron could tell that had been a very difficult sentence for Jasmine to utter. He sat forward and put his elbows on his desk. “What can I do for you?”
Count On Me
Lauren Dane
She needed answers, but he gives her a place she can call home.
Petal, Georgia, Book 3
Petal is the last place Caroline Mendoza thought she’d end up. Sixteen years ago she lost both parents there—her mother to murder and her father
Now she’s back in Petal to find the truth. With a new job and a mystery to solve, she’s got plenty on her plate. But when she bumps into Royal Watson, the sparks fly hard and fast.
When the whipsmart, opinionated lawyer blows into town like a beautiful storm, Royal has a reason to make the time to get off his organic farm and pursue her. And soon their intense attraction is tipping into something more.
As Caroline’s dogged investigation digs up ghosts of the past, there’s not much time for basking in love’s glow. The closer she gets to the truth, the more threatened the real killer gets…and the greater the danger that all her digging could lead to her own grave.
Warning: Laid-back ranchers who are really sneak alpha males, tight butts in wranglers, and creative use of belts and buckles. Bad words, hot sex, and lots of pie—sometimes all at once.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
Count on Me
Copyright © 2014 by Lauren Dane
ISBN: 978-1-61921-991-5
Edited by Anne Scott
Cover by Kendra Egert
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: June 2014
www.samhainpublishing.com
Table of Contents
Dedication
Note to Readers
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
About the Author
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Lauren Dane, Count on Me (Petal, Georgia)