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  LOVE, LUST, AND DECEPTION

  Kiersen’s Legacy 2

  Samantha Lucas

  EROTIC ROMANCE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Erotic Romance

  ABOUT THE E-BOOK VERSION: Your non-refundable purchase of this e-book allows you to one LEGAL copy for your own personal use. It is ILLEGAL to send your copy to someone who did not pay for it. Distribution of this e-book, in whole or in part, online, offline, in print or in any way or any other method currently known or yet to be invented, is forbidden without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner of this book.

  LOVE, LUST, DECEPTION: KIERSEN’S LEGACY

  Copyright © 2008 by Samantha Lucas

  E-book ISBN: 1-60601-038-7

  First E-book Publication: April 2008

  Cover design by Jinger Heaston

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2008 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Dedication

  This story is for the readers who wrote me and asked for more of the Kiersen men. I love hearing from you and I thank you so much for your continued support. I hope this story lives up to your expectations, and you will love Darius and Ashley as much as you did Dev and Kira.

  Samantha Lucas

  LOVE, LUST, AND DECEPTION

  Kiersen’s Legacy 2

  Samantha Lucas

  Copyright © 2008

  Chapter 1

  Darius lay on his back staring at the vaulted ceiling beams, considering whether or not to fuck the brunette lying beside him again, or simply slip out of bed quietly and let her sleep.

  In the end, he peeled her body from his and slid quietly from the bed.

  When he’d come in last night and Rita was waiting for him, he thought sex sounded like a fantastic idea—especially after the miserable failed trip he’d been on trying to reconnect with his brother. In the light of day, however, the sex hadn’t been all that satisfying. His heart still felt like someone had shoved an ice pick through it.

  He stepped beneath the hot shower spray, purposefully shutting out painful memories and dreams that weren’t ever going to come true. In their place, he brought to mind the image of a woman. This same woman had been arousing him for years. With his eyes closed, he could see her every curve, imagine her head tipped back in the shower spray, her glorious long blond hair becoming dripping wet. He sucked at the curve of her neck, his arms wrapped around her back, pushing her breasts against the hard planes of his chest.

  The soft tips of her nipples became hard in his mouth as he sucked, licked, and bit her playfully. He loved the sound of her laugh, the throaty catch when she moaned in pleasure. He grew harder and harder by the second, thinking of it. It was all recorded to memory with such graphic detail that he could smell her, feel her, hear her breathing, calling to him.

  The fantasy completely absorbed him as he fell to his knees in front of her shaved pussy. She opened her legs, propping one over his shoulder, allowing him to eat her until she screamed mindlessly.

  As he worked his own cock in a rhythmic motion, he thought about how she would taste, heard her pleas for more, clearly in his mind. He ran his hands over her hips and pulled her more firmly against his mouth.

  He groaned, squeezed hard on his cock, and pushed away the small, annoying voice in his head that always questioned why an imaginary woman made him harder than any real woman he’d ever been with.

  He could almost feel her wet sheath squeezing him as his hand made one last jerk before he came explosively. The orgasm so powerful, he fell to his knees when the tumult passed.

  “Now that’s how you start a day right.”

  An hour later, he stalked into the lobby of the Beverly Hills office complex where he’d had offices for the past five years. Sadly, his imaginary woman’s warmth wasn’t lasting and as he rode the metal box toward the eighth floor offices of his PR firm with about twenty strangers, he felt like an absolute fool.

  A lonely, pathetic fool.

  He knew part of his foul mood could be attributed to his miserable failed trip to try and get his rogue brother to come home, but it was more than that. In fact, this unsatisfied feeling had been growing silently for so long that it seemed about to choke him. He surrounded himself by people day and night, employees, women, friends. Still, most times he felt like the only man…person, on the planet.

  And he had finally become fucking sick and tired of feeling that way.

  Pulling back one of the frosted glass doors, the early hour no longer evident as the office hummed to life. Several of his staff bustled about. Phones were already ringing. He could hear the copier running and the quiet buzz of conversation.

  He walked down the internal hallway past rows of offices, exchanging greetings only when necessary since this morning, he was in a funk and didn’t want to accidentally take his bad mood out on any of his employees.

  “How was the trip?”

  Darius grimaced and continued to his office, adding curtly over his shoulder a simple, “Unsuccessful,” just before stepping through the threshold into his space.

  He pulled off his jacket and hung it in the closet, then poked his finger into the soft, loamy soil of several potted violets and a tree fern. After washing his hands, he looked at his reflection in the mirror.

  He’d worked his ass off to prove himself after the implosion of his family and the only world he knew. He’d become obsessed with being perfect, with not allowing anyone to find a single flaw—nothing that could be criticized, nothing that could compare him to his father.

  And he’d done a damn good job.

  His brothers on the other hand, well, it was hard to look in the mirror and not see Dev and Drake staring back at him. He had the same dark thick hair as they, the same deep blue eyes, the same dimples, the same square jaw.

  The thought caused an involuntary sigh.

  He ran his hand over hair he wore cropped short—unlike his brothers—thinking it was time for a cut.

  “I’m sorry about Devlin.” Karen’s voice drifted in from the office. Darius cringed. His heart squeezed. She meant well, but he did not want to discuss his brother. Leaving the washroom and turning to his desk, he ignored her comment, reaching for the stack of messages left for him in his absence.

  One of the many weird quirks he had was his preference for messages handwritten so he could hold them, rather than just view them on the computer screen. He liked tangible. He liked real. If he had his hands on them, they couldn’t get away from him.

  “Anything important?” he asked without glancing up because he couldn’t take the concerned expression he knew she’d have on her face.

  “The most urgent are the two on the top. The one on the very top, urgent and interesting. You want coffee?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck just below his hairline. “No. Is this a joke?”

  Now he did look up, just in time to catch Karen’s shrug.

  “Not that I’m aware of. Spoke to her myself. She sounded anxious, nervous maybe even, but I’m fairly certain it was the genuine article. I’ve been in this business too long to be fo
oled by much.”

  Darius looked back down at the message and blinked at the lettering, wondering what the hell was going on. He supposed at the very least this would keep his mind off his brothers and his pathetic father for a while.

  He turned a curious gaze back on Karen. While he’d been building his reputation within the industry, her input had been invaluable. In many ways, she was the closest thing he had to—he wouldn’t dare even think the word mother—family, and he relied on her heavily. Not just for her duties as his assistant but for her counsel, as well.

  Bottom line, he trusted her. In a town where everything was pixie dust and illusion, trust was huge.

  “So what’s your best guess?”

  She shrugged again, but Darius knew her wisdom would be forthcoming, so he took a seat behind his desk and waited.

  “She’s been out of circulation two years. Maybe she’s coming back and wants a big splash.”

  He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the thought. He also had good instincts and that just didn’t fit.

  “Ashley Williams has been with Morey from the time she was seven. The man made her a megastar, a brand name. It’s one of the legends of this town. He turned a cute little girl—a dime a dozen in Hollywood—into every normal girl’s idol. She’s one of the richest, most sought after celebrities in town. Why would she be looking for new representation now, twenty years later?”

  Karen moved to the other side of the desk but didn’t take a seat. Instead, she leaned her hip against it.

  “Painful memories?”

  “Of Morey?”

  She pursed her lips, eyes squinted in thought. “The woman’s been through hell these last two years…Maybe she simply wants a fresh start.”

  “And she wants it with me? I’m doing damn well for a new guy in this town, but I am still definitely bottom of the totem pole. Celebrities like Ashley Williams do not come to me.”

  “You have a reputation for hard work, being honest, and above all being fair. Maybe she’s smarter than anyone’s ever given her credit for. Could it be the blond on top is as fake as the mounds in front? Say it’s not so.”

  He lightly scolded her with his look for the sarcastic quip and stood to pace.

  “Ashley Williams is one hot commodity in Hollywood, and has been for nearly twenty years.”

  He knew Karen understood that he always needed to think out loud, so he was no longer self-conscious doing it in her presence.

  “She is sex. Ashley is something every new starlet coming through the gates of Tinsel Town aspires to and she’s every man’s fantasy.”

  Including his own, but he didn’t feel the need to share that thought with Karen. He did, however, feel his damn erection growing back and this wasn’t the time or place for it.

  “Is it hot in here?”

  Karen looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.

  “I think it’s hot in here.” He paced back toward the desk. “She’s taken seriously when a lot of other starlets with her background aren’t. And do you know why?”

  “Well, for starters she can actually act, despite the fact that she gets naked in almost every one of her films.”

  Karen batted her lashes innocently. Darius didn’t like the surge of anger he felt at her words, however he let it slide because he couldn’t actually argue with them.

  “Because of her body of work.”

  “Isn’t that just what I said?”

  He looked Karen in the eye with a warning.

  “She’s also genuine in a town of mask-wearing carnivores.”

  In the past thirty seconds of thinking about Ashley Williams, his cock had stirred to life again, and blood rapidly drained away from where he needed it to be. He was normally not a man led around by his dick, and he had no intention of changing that policy now.

  “Well, I guess I won’t know what she wants until I call her.”

  He moved back behind the desk quickly before his ardor for Mrs. Williams became evident to his assistant.

  “Do you want me to make the appointment?”

  “No, I’ll handle it,” he answered absently, his mind not exactly on business yet.

  “You know that’s not going to be her direct line? You’ll look like a fool calling her people directly. Your people call her people. I’m your people, so I call. That’s how it’s done. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine. Besides you talked to her personally. Now it’s my turn.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned to leave.

  “Karen?” His deep blue gaze met her green one. “Exactly how long has it been since her husband died?”

  “One year, ten months, and twenty-one days.”

  “Oh.”

  He knew she’d have the answer, but it always amazed him how exact she could be. He wondered if he dare ask whether she thought Mrs. Williams would be over her loss by now and looking for some male companionship but thought better of it. Besides, everyone on the planet knew the love story of Ashley and Gabriel Williams. It was a fairytale to end all fairytales, and more of that Hollywood legend stuff.

  Ashley would probably never be ready for male company, and a part of him envied her. He believed in that kind of love but at thirty had never even come close. If he looked at his family history, he had to seriously start wondering if it really existed at all.

  “Don’t worry about it, Karen. Today’s just my day for being the fool. I’ll call.”

  He held back a smirk at her exasperated sigh as she left and closed the door. Still holding the message, he looked over the lettering as if it had changed in the past three minutes.

  “Ashley Williams?”

  Fuck! Ashley Williams.

  Visions of his fantasy in the shower this morning started to play before his eyes again. He reached down and massaged his aching hard-on. Professional this wasn’t, but Ashley Williams was the woman who had spurred on his earliest boyhood fantasies, the star of every wet dream he ever had. Her playboy pictorials had…

  Fuck.

  He was granite hard again. He needed release. Moving back to the washroom, he opened his fly and maneuvered his cock free.

  He had no idea what she wanted, but the second he was done here, he would damn sure find out.

  * * * *

  Ashley smiled and gritted her teeth. Not a single person in that office would have any idea how she mentally tortured and knocked them off one by one. A few she castrated, just for good measure. This was her creative team, but right now she thought her creativity, especially as she plotted a way to get Morey to some cannibal-inhabited island, outshined them all.

  “All we’re saying, Ashley, is that you should wait.”

  She didn’t want to wait. It was her body. How the hell had it come to this? She didn’t even control her own damn body?

  “You haven’t made a picture in over two years and that’s death to a lot of people in this town.”

  She smirked and threw back the words she’d been hearing for eighteen years. “I’m not most people in this town.”

  Never thought that would come in handy.

  She drew a breath and tried to express to them all exactly how serious she was about this.

  “Look, my mother is dead. Gabe is dead. It’s time I start taking control of my own life, my own career. I’m starting with this. I don’t want them. I never wanted them, and I want them out of my body. Now.”

  She shifted her position slightly as every man in the room stared squarely at her chest. She knew the low-cut pink halter dress hid nothing and her fake D-cups must be prominently on display.

  The room, filled with too much testosterone and too much cologne, made her sick. She wondered briefly how she’d become this…this thing, this commodity she had almost no control over. Most of her life seemed to be a blur of going wherever someone told her to go, to do whatever someone told her to do, but enough was enough. Wasn’t it?

  “I understand what you’re saying, Ash, but you need to hear me on this. It’s what you pa
y me for, especially with Gabe and Myra gone. Honey, I think of you as my own daughter. You’ve never been involved in this side of your career. You don’t have the faintest clue what you’re doing.”

  Morey got up and walked around the desk, placing both hands patronizingly on her shoulders. Ashley, ever the consummate actress, smiled rather than flinched.

  “Just let me take care of things as I always have and you just go on living the life my hard work has provided for you.”

  She blinked twice and literally bit her tongue to keep from lambasting him.

  What about all my hard work, Morey?

  What about the sacrifices I’ve made? The life I never had and now probably never will? Doesn’t my contribution count for anything?

  She smiled sweetly. At that moment, her cell phone rang. Thank God.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen, would you?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she stood up and walked out of the room the way she’d been taught. Knowing each and every man in there was staring at her ass.

  Well, at least that’s mine.

  Once she made it to the privacy of the ladies room, she let out a slow breath, her hands actually shaking. She honestly wasn’t sure she was strong enough to make it on her own. Even with her mother dead, she could still hear that woman’s voice in her head telling her how worthless she was. Blinking back tears, her pulse began to race when she checked the display on her phone. She had no idea why she’d latched onto this one idea like the last life preserver on the Titanic, but right now, in her mind, Darius Kiersen was the one man who might save her.

  “Mr. Kiersen.”

  Of course it only occurred to her after she’d answered the phone with giddy apprehension that it was probably his secretary and not the man himself. She felt completely foolish as she waited to be corrected.

  “Yes, Mrs. Williams?”