Excerpt Reveal - Confessed by Nicola Rendell
Lucy Burchett is the heiress to a notoriously disastrous family, and she's left home for good. But when she runs a big, black pickup off the road, totaling it, she finds herself stuck in the middle of nowhere with the driver. He's got a body to die for and a hair-trigger temper. Vince Russo looks like a felon, but he's also pretty funny. He’s on the lam from the cops… and a psychopathic, Russian mob boss who wants to put his balls on a barbeque. Literally.
After a night of ill-advised cocktails and bathroom-wrecking sex, Vince just can't get Lucy off his mind. But he's got plans to rob her. And Lucy’s life is about to get a little bit criminal too.
But can a bad boy and a good girl really escape from their troubles together? Can they trust each other at all?
In the steady march of disasters that follow them west, they fight and they laugh. They tease and they’re tender. They’re either oil and water, or chocolate and peanut butter.
Except, they can’t run from the real world forever. And there’s a hell of a surprise in store for both of them…
***
To the reader: Confessed is a standalone featuring Lucy, who readers met as the best friend in Professed. Both are stand alones and do not need to be read together. Be advised, things get super dirty in this book. The sex is explicit, and the language is rude. It’s an erotic love story with fury. Other tasters’ notes: Bobby pins. Peculiar motels. Horses. Motorcycles. Aiding and abetting. Great Smoky Mountains. New Mexico.
1
Vince
I’m in a ditch with the front end of my truck wrapped around a pine tree when I see her in my rearview mirror. Construction lights on the highway light her up from behind, like some rock star. The curve of her calves is perfect, pretty little ankles and strappy sandals. I’m such a goddamned sucker for sandals.
Her dress is made of something thin. The wind kicks up, lifting her skirt and showing me her bare thighs. She tries to catch it with her hand, but she can’t stop the breeze, and she gives me the full Marilyn Monroe.
This is not what I need right now.
I force the door open with my shoulder and slide out. My neck hurts like a motherfucker, and the engine is pouring smoke. This was not the plan. I head up the dirt embankment. I can’t take my eyes off of her. The construction lights do me a favor and magnify the line of her breasts on the ground in shadow. I rub my stubble and then crack my neck.
Marilyn. She had nothing on this one. Christ.
The dress, it’s this peach color. Those shoulders are smooth and soft. That sexy blonde hair comes down in waves just past her nipples.
She’s driving a white 2016 BMW X5. Top-of-the-line engine, pain-in-the-ass security system. You can’t steal that one unless you’ve got the key. Believe me. I know.
I was driving a perfectly good Dodge 3500 Cummins turbo diesel Hemi V8. I hotwired it not an hour ago from the back lot of a Walmart fifty miles away, outside Knoxville. I was doing just fine until she came along.
Not what I need. At fucking all.
I walk up the embankment. Behind me, the pickup starts honking all by itself. The BMW, on the other hand, is just a little banged up on the bumper. Unbelievable. German engineering and further proof of the point that life’s a total bitch. That’s why you’ve got to steal what you want.
Now I’m close to her. About ten feet away.
A little bow accentuates her waist. One of her straps is a little bit twisted. Pouty lips. Oh shit. Are those freckles?
Motherfuck it.
“You stopped too fast!” she says, marching right up to me like I don’t outweigh her by a hundred and seventy pounds and I don’t tower over her by at least a foot. Totally fucking fearless. “Haven’t you ever heard of pulsing your brake lights?” She points at me. “Sir?”
Sexy and angry?
For. Fuck’s. Sake.
The last time I did a stint in prison, I had to take a mandatory anger management class because of an incident in the lunch line when a racist SOB started rolling with the slurs, so I turned around, slammed him with a left hook, and knocked three of his teeth into his canned beans. Fucking righteous, I’ll tell you what, but not exactly what the New Jersey Department of Corrections had in mind.
So in that stupid class, they taught us something called “meditative breathing.” I count back from eight on the exhale.
It’s not fucking working.
She’s turning me on and she’s pissing me off all at once. Kryptonite in sandals.
I point to the truck. “Are you kidding me? That’s my fault?” It starts hissing even louder. I take a step closer and let my voice get low and mean. “My money’s on you texting. You’ve got the look. Probably talking to some girlfriend of yours about the latest shade of nail polish.”
Her mouth drops open. That tongue. That mouth.
Awww fuck.
“And yeah, I’m fine,” I say, gripping my neck. “Thanks for asking.”
She looks me up and down like she’s checking for protruding broken bones. Then she puts her hands on her hips—actually puts her hands on her damned hips—and stomps her foot—actually stomps her damned foot. She says all matter of fact, “I can see you’re fine. But the crash wasn’t my fault. I had no chance of avoiding you. At all.”
Jesus Christ, what’s that smell? Peaches?
Nope. She’s got no power over me. If I don’t look straight at her and stay downwind.
“Want me to draw you a diagram? You rear-ended me.” I smack my fist into my palm. “It’s not fucking complicated.”
“There’s no need to be rude!” she says. She steps back, but I’ve got her cornered against the fender of the Beemer. She crosses her arms. I’m pretty sure I don’t audibly groan when her forearms push on her tits from underneath. Fuck, I don’t know. Maybe I do. She sets her teeth and glares. “Okay? It doesn’t do any good to yell at me, sir.”
Actually, I’ve got a feeling it probably would do her some good to get yelled at. She looks like she’s never been properly reamed in her life, and right now I’m just angry enough to be the first one to do it.
Her eyes widen, and her jaw slips forward, snagging her top lip and pulling it in. Her nostrils flare. Then she sucks air through her teeth and stares at me, like she’s thinking of a whole lot of awful things she’d like to say but is too well bred to say them.
I’d like to hear her say them. I’d like to hear that mouth get real dirty.
“I was going to say we should call a tow truck, mister. Do you have a problem with that? Do you want to stand around and argue about it for a while?” She’s pointing at me again. Her finger is about two inches from my chest.
Pretty little hands, and a row of gold bracelets running up her arm. Around her neck, she’s got a tiny gold necklace sitting just perfectly in that deep hollow of her collarbone. I want my tongue there. Right there.
Damn it. I want to push her. I want to piss her off. I want to go a little too fucking far.
Just to see what happens.
I tip forward in my boots so that her finger meets my chest. She doesn’t recoil at all. She just pushes harder. The light fro
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