Bad, Bad Girlfriend

  Bad Bad Girlfriend

  Delilah Devlin

  Copyright © 2016 Delilah Devlin

  Kindle Edition

  Jolene Ledbetter is a big, beautiful woman with an even bigger heart. But she’s figured out that she’s become her studly, police officer boyfriend’s favorite doormat. Having put off the conversation she knows has to happen after his partner was shot, she’s ready now to tell him to “pee or get off the pot”—after a bout of really great sex.

  Gabriel Devine has seen what his profession does to marriages. He’s not willing to risk that kind of heartbreak—not for himself or a wife who might have to face the possibility of getting that dreadful visit from the police chief. Besides, he likes what he has with Jolene. She’s pretty, funny, likes to cook the occasional meal, is ready at the drop of a hat for a little hot loving—but she’s sensible and knows he can’t give her anything more than that. So when Jolie tells him she won’t see him any more if he’s not willing to marry her, he’s shocked and angry.

  With a girlfriend’s encouragement, Jolene arranges a special show at a strip club to prove to Gabe once and for all that she’s more woman than any man can handle, and if he’s not careful she’ll walk her pretty new Louboutins right out of his life.

  From the Author

  To those of you who’ve read me before—hello, friends! To new readers, welcome to my world!

  As you’ll discover, I tend to bounce around in different genres, from contemporary to historical to paranormal to sci-fi—all are very sexy, so be warned. I also write in many lengths from short story to full-length novel. If you can’t tell, I love to write. And when a story is fast, it’s short. If my characters need more pages, well, you get the picture.

  I love hearing from readers and have a very active blog and Facebook friend page. I run contests, talk about my favorite TV shows, what I collect, what drives me crazy. I ramble a bit. I’m doing it right now. But if you’d like to learn more about me and what I’m doing or writing about, be sure to check out the “About Delilah Devlin” page after the story.

  And if you enjoy this story, please consider leaving a review on your favorite retail site or simply tell a friend. Readers do influence other readers. We have to trust someone to tell us whether we’ll have fun when we open a new story!

  Sincerely,

  Delilah Devlin

  Visit www.DelilahDevlin.com for more titles and release dates, and subscribe to Delilah’s newsletter at newsletter.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  About the Book

  From the Author

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  About Delilah Devlin

  Delilah’s Cowboys on the Edge series

  Prologue

  ‡

  Gabriel Devine watched as his partner’s girlfriend rushed into the hospital room.

  Lucy had arrived moments ago, stripping off her raincoat, her face pale, her eyes wild and tear-filled.

  The corridor outside the room swelled with more uniforms as off-duty cops arrived. Mike’s injury wasn’t life-threatening, but every cop felt shaken to the core when one of their own fell. And they all showed up.

  He’d been with Mike at the convenience store, watched the robber raise his gun and fire—feeling as if it all happened in slow motion. When everything fast-forwarded, he felt torn, wanting to pursue the assailant and beat the crap out of him. Instead, he’d knelt beside his partner and applied pressure to the wound until the ambulance arrived.

  Standing helpless, he’d watched EMS load Mike on a gurney and shove fluids into his veins while a warm summer rain soaked his hair and shoulders. He hadn’t moved until one of them looked up and said, “You coming?”

  At the hospital, while the emergency room team worked on Mike, Gabe washed his hands, but the knees of his pants and the cuffs of his shirt were still soaked in drying blood. His stomach clenched at the sight.

  A hand touched his arm, bringing him back to the present.

  “Hey, buddy. Is he up to visitors?” Wally Kinzie stood beside him with two more of their friends. They’d been the first at the scene, taking over tightening down the crime scene while he’d ridden the ambulance to the San Francisco trauma center with his partner.

  “Yeah, but his girl’s inside with him.”

  “It’s not like we’re gonna interrupt anything. Damn, that bastard almost had Mike.” Wally pushed through the door.

  Lucy came out a moment later, taking deep breaths as color refilled her cheeks.

  When the elevator chimed and the doors slid open, Gabe looked sideways.

  Jolie stepped out, a vase of yellow flowers in her hands. Her face was ashen, her dark eyes wide and frightened. She gave Gabe a small, tight smile then hurried toward Lucy. The women took two seats the officers lined up along the wall offered.

  “I’ll get you some coffee,” he muttered, and turned on his heels to hurry away.

  At the first bathroom he saw, he slammed open the door and headed to the nearest stall. He emptied his guts into the toilet then walked on shaking legs to the sink. He rinsed out his mouth, clinging to the porcelain while he stared at his own reflection. His face looked haggard and pale, his eyes red-rimmed and glassy.

  He scooped water into his hands and splashed it over his face before straightening, and tried to get a grip.

  Today hadn’t turned out so bad. Mike’s gunshot wound wouldn’t kill him. He’d recover. Still, the women were shaken. He still shook in his boots.

  He closed his eyes and remembered another shooting, one he hadn’t witnessed but that had marked his life forever. The chief of police pulling into their driveway. His mother falling back a step on the porch, her knees crumpling and her hand clutching her chest. The chief and the chaplain filing up the stairs, taking her arms and escorting her inside. There they settled her into a chair while they hovered over her and delivered the news his father had been shot and killed.

  That day was burned into his brain. He’d learned a hard lesson, watching his mother’s grief consume her. A cop lived on the edge. He expected the worst, prepared for it, but the women suffered the longest.

  He thought of Jolie’s pinched face and hardened his resolve. They’d been drifting closer. Now was the time to put the skids on their relationship. He could only offer her so much.

  Never his heart. Never marriage.

  He would keep it light. Enjoy the comfort of her body and give her the best sex she’d ever have. But that was as far as their relationship could go.

  It was for her own good.

  Chapter One

  ‡

  Five months later…

  Jolie’s apartment door swung open and Gabe’s gaze slid down her body in a slow, hungry crawl. She wore a silky robe in a bronzy orange, which hugged her curves like his hands were itching to do.

  However, her hand was still on the knob, and she hadn’t backed up to let him in.

  He leaned against the doorframe. “Am I too late?”

  “Are you too late?” she said slowly.

  Jolie’s tone was always like warm honey when she expected sex—soft and oozing down his spine—but right now, a sarcastic edge tightened her voice. And he didn’t like the militant gleam in her dark chocolate eyes.

  What had put her into a bad mood? Could she be mad at him? He hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. “If this is a bad time…”

  Her soft jaw tightened, but she took a step back and waved him inside.

  He breathed a sigh of relief and stepped across the threshold, his hands goi
ng to the buttons at the front of his dark uniform shirt as soon as the door closed behind him.

  A soft huff of breath halted him, and he looked up to find a scowl sinking a line between her dark brows. “What?”

  She slowly shook her head. For a fleeting moment, her eyes filled, but she blinked away the moisture. “Nothing.”

  “I’m sorry. Should I step out the door and come back in? Something’s bothering you.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “So you think you need to step outside while I get over it?”

  “Yeah…”

  Her scowl deepened.

  “What?”

  Her shoulders slumped, and she shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing at all.” She turned on her heel and headed to the bedroom.

  For the second time in five minutes, he sighed his relief. He’d thought, for just a moment there, that she would ask him to leave. That had never happened.

  But then, she’d been acting a little funny lately. Quiet and brooding. With another woman he might have thought it was just her time of month, but Jolie wasn’t moody. One of the many things he appreciated about her.

  As he followed her down the hallway while she flicked off lights heading to the bedroom, he mulled it over and thought he might have found the answer.

  She’d finally decided dating a cop was too harrowing.

  After his partner had gotten shot last summer, she’d been a gem, bringing food to the hospital for the men who waited in the halls, calling the wives, babysitting their kids while they took turns waiting with Lucy, Mike’s girl.

  Now that Mike was back at work and everything had returned to normal, she’d had time to think about what happened. She couldn’t handle it.

  Gabe tamped down the searing disappointment. He’d miss her.

  He’d always known this day would come. Deep inside, he’d held part of himself back from her, because he knew better than anyone that living with a cop was hard. Too stressful for most marriages to survive.

  His own mother had stuck it out, soldiering on as friends were lost along the way, until she’d crumpled on the porch when the chief of police and chaplain climbed the steps to deliver the terrible news. From that moment, she’d never pulled herself away from the dark place she’d entered.

  Jolie was smart. She’d gotten a taste and decided to protect herself from a grim future.

  Still, he was here. Maybe for the last time. He’d make it special, let her know he held no grudges. He’d tell her to move on and not feel guilty that she wasn’t strong enough for the life.

  He’d be gentle. And if his chest felt a little tight, well, he’d get over it. This was how it had to end. He stepped into her bedroom.

  While the living area always smelled like cookies, her bedroom smelled like roses, like the pink petals sitting in the bowl on her dresser. Feminine. Light. Which contrasted with the smell of the woman—hot, musky spice. He’d never smelled a place like hers, never smelled a woman whose scent felt so right when it wrapped around him.

  He flicked off the overhead light and walked to the windows, opening the curtains to let the silvery moonlight filter inside. The darkness would hide his expression, keep her from knowing how hard this would be for him. He had to be strong. He didn’t want her feeling badly about herself when she kicked him to the door.

  Facing away, she shrugged out of her silky robe, the fabric sliding down her back and pooling at her feet. She took small, feminine steps toward the bed.

  His cock surged as his gaze traced the length of her back, loving the color of skin the same shade as the milky French coffees she preferred, loving the fall of her thick black hair, but especially the firm, lush swell of her ass.

  She crawled onto the mattress and turned, her eyes gleaming in the darkness as he toed off his boots and stripped, in a hurry now to join her.

  Not until he’d crawled over her body and settled his cock between her legs did his heartbeat slow to a steady, even throb. Game face on, he was ready to go.

  Her expression was impossible to read, eyes watchful, full, rusty-brown lips pressed firmly together. He dove down and sucked her bottom lip between his teeth, waiting for the sexy catch of her breath and her lips to open, and then he stroked his tongue inside.

  The sweet taste of vanilla and coffee caressed his taste buds, and he groaned into her mouth, deepening the kiss and sucking against her lips to seal their mouths. He nudged her entrance with his cock, found the moist center and drove through the gate, shuddering because it felt so damn good, and she was so fucking wet.

  She might not want to be a cop’s girlfriend, but she sure as hell wanted him. Feeling more confident, he broke the kiss and pressed both hands into the mattress to raise his torso, dragging down her gaze with his to the place where their bodies joined.

  While they both watched, he sank into her again and again, felt the tug of her lips clasping around him, the hot gush of pleasure spilling around his shaft, and he quickened his strokes.

  “Play with your breasts,” he whispered. “Let me watch.”

  Her eyelids lowered to half-mast, and her body rippled beneath him. Her hips glided up and down as she danced gracefully beneath him. Her hands smoothed up her soft belly to cup her breasts and massage them, rolling them together and apart. He knew he’d have to have her again, had to stroke his cock between those lush mounds until he came all over them.

  Her breaths came faster, rasping harshly.

  He paused to circle his hips and screwed slowly in and out of her heat.

  She raised her knees and gripped his hips hard with her thighs. “Don’t want it slow and easy, baby,” she said, her voice deep and throaty. “Give it to me hard.”

  Gabe smiled, gave her another teasing drag of his cock, then reared up and knelt between her thighs. He hooked his arms beneath her knees and pulled her butt off the bed then flexed forward, thrusting toward her core.

  He’d be the best she ever had even if it killed him. And when she squeezed her inner muscles around his shaft, she nearly did him in. He quickened his strokes, smacking her pubis with every inward thrust, grinding past her G-spot, the place she’d taught him to linger over.

  Jolie whimpered. Her hands squeezed her tits hard, her belly undulated—out of synch to the rhythm of his strokes—and he felt his own rigid control slip. He hammered faster, sweat sprouting on his forehead and upper lip. When she jerked and cried out, her eyes squeezing shut, he let himself go, following her over the edge, his jaws clenching to halt the shout clawing at this throat.

  He slowed his hips, enjoying the wash of hot, silky liquid bathing his dick, drinking in the sight of her head slowly turning side to side as she continued to moan.

  God, she was beautiful. How the hell could he ever walk away?

  *

  “A girl’s gotta do what girl’s gotta do,” Jolene Ledbetter muttered and cinched the belt of her silk robe tightly around her waist.

  She eyed the long, hard body stretched across her soft cotton sheets and just barely suppressed an appreciative sigh. No, she wasn’t going to slip back into bed with the man—no matter how tempting the package his large hand caressed in his sleep.

  Even snoring, he oozed sex appeal. His nude, six-feet-four, hard-muscled body sprawled diagonally, taking up most of her queen-size mattress. The sheets were pooled on the floor at the foot of the bed because they’d both dozed off, sweating after the last round of mind-blowing sex. A dark, bluish shadow hugged the curve of his jaw, and she could well imagine how it would feel scraping against her breasts or between her thighs.

  “Mmm-mm-mm,” she breathed, not wanting to wake him, not just yet. She still had to work on suppressing the need curling deep inside her belly and stiffening her noodle-limp backbone.

  Time for Gabriel Devine to piss or get off the pot. Time for him to man up.

  She’d been his doormat for far too long—his go-to girl when he wanted company for a meal or sex. And it was all her fault. She’d fallen into his arms the first night they’d met, and sh
e hadn’t said no to a damn thing since.

  Her half-Asian, half-African-American mother had been only slightly less of a doormat than her Asian grandmother. Jolie had inherited the doormat gene, doomed from birth.

  Gabe said she was the only woman in his life, and she believed him. However, being his one and only didn’t seem to mean the same thing to him that it did to her. She’d expected after nearly a year of dating that they would have made some progress toward commitment.

  He still rolled out of her bed in the wee hours of the morning, hadn’t brought a toothbrush or any clothes, and he hadn’t mumbled a single word about where he wanted the relationship to go.

  A pang of guilt tightened her chest.

  Neither had she. Her best friend Lucy Bryant had warned her that if she didn’t set some expectations, some limits, and let him know right upfront he couldn’t expect a free ride for life, that he’d keep up the same old pattern.

  And Lucy should know. She was an advice columnist. Plus, and this qualification was a helluva lot more meaningful to Jolie, Lucy was engaged.

  If Jolie had hoped that Gabriel would take a page from the same playbook after watching how happy his partner Mike was with Lucy, she’d been doomed to disappointment.

  Every time she brought up how content they appeared, Gabe grunted and changed the subject. Jolie was beginning to believe that Gabe was either dense or purposefully trying to throw her off the scent of marriage.

  Well, even if she was a pushover, she wasn’t a quitter. And her mama hadn’t raised a fool, even though her mother still waited on her dad hand and foot. At least, she’d gotten a ring for her efforts.

  All Jolie ever got was sex. Olympic medal-worthy sex, yeah, but when the sheets cooled, she always slept alone.

  Jolie cooked special dinners for Gabe, carried his laundry back and forth to the cleaners, was ready at the drop of the hat to have sex, wherever and whenever he wanted. She’d gotten tested and gone on the Pill when he’d asked—all because he didn’t want a condom to interfere with his pleasure.