The Thrill of It (No Regrets Book 2) Read online

  The Thrill of It

  Book 2 in the No Regrets series

  Lauren Blakely

  Little Dog Press

  Contents

  Also by Lauren Blakely

  About

  Author’s Note

  The Thrill of It

  1. Harley

  2. Cam

  3. Harley

  4. Trey

  5. Harley

  Chapter 6

  7. Trey

  8. Harley

  9. Trey

  10. Trey

  11. Harley

  12. Harley

  Chapter 13

  14. Harley

  15. Trey

  16. Harley

  17. Harley

  18. Cam

  19. Harley

  20. Trey

  21. Harley

  22. Cam

  23. Harley

  24. Harley

  25. Harley

  26. Trey

  27. Harley

  28. Harley

  29. Harley

  30. Trey

  31. Harley

  32. Harley

  33. Trey

  34. Harley

  35. Trey

  Also by Lauren Blakely

  Contact

  Copyright © 2020 by Lauren Blakely

  Cover Design by Helen Williams.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This contemporary romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This book is licensed for your personal use only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy sexy romance novels with alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Also by Lauren Blakely

  Big Rock Series

  Big Rock

  Mister O

  Well Hung

  Full Package

  Joy Ride

  Hard Wood

  The Gift Series

  The Engagement Gift

  The Virgin Gift

  The Decadent Gift

  The Heartbreakers Series

  Once Upon a Real Good Time

  Once Upon a Sure Thing

  Once Upon a Wild Fling

  Boyfriend Material

  Asking For a Friend

  Sex and Other Shiny Objects

  One Night Stand-In

  Lucky In Love Series

  Best Laid Plans

  The Feel Good Factor

  Nobody Does It Better

  Unzipped

  Always Satisfied Series

  Satisfaction Guaranteed

  Instant Gratification

  Overnight Service

  Never Have I Ever

  Special Delivery

  The Sexy Suit Series

  Lucky Suit

  Birthday Suit

  From Paris With Love

  Wanderlust

  Part-Time Lover

  One Love Series

  The Sexy One

  The Only One

  The Hot One

  The Knocked Up Plan

  Come As You Are

  Sports Romance

  Most Valuable Playboy

  Most Likely to Score

  Standalones

  Stud Finder

  The V Card

  The Real Deal

  Unbreak My Heart

  The Break-Up Album

  21 Stolen Kisses

  Out of Bounds

  The Caught Up in Love Series:

  The Swoony New Reboot of the Contemporary Romance Series

  The Pretending Plot (previously called Pretending He’s Mine)

  The Dating Proposal

  The Second Chance Plan (previously called Caught Up In Us)

  The Private Rehearsal (previously called Playing With Her Heart)

  Stars In Their Eyes Duet

  My Charming Rival

  My Sexy Rival

  The No Regrets Series

  The Start of Us

  The Thrill of It

  Every Second With You

  The Seductive Nights Series

  First Night (Julia and Clay, prequel novella)

  Night After Night (Julia and Clay, book one)

  After This Night (Julia and Clay, book two)

  One More Night (Julia and Clay, book three)

  A Wildly Seductive Night (Julia and Clay novella, book 3.5)

  The Joy Delivered Duet

  Nights With Him (A standalone novel about Michelle and Jack)

  Forbidden Nights (A standalone novel about Nate and Casey)

  The Sinful Nights Series

  Sweet Sinful Nights

  Sinful Desire

  Sinful Longing

  Sinful Love

  The Fighting Fire Series

  Burn For Me (Smith and Jamie)

  Melt for Him (Megan and Becker)

  Consumed By You (Travis and Cara)

  The Jewel Series

  A two-book sexy contemporary romance series

  The Sapphire Affair

  The Sapphire Heist

  About

  From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lauren Blakely comes the next book in the sexy, emotional and deliciously addictive No Regrets trilogy…

  I swear I’m changing. I’m trying so damn hard to step into the wild unknown of my future.

  At least Trey is on the other side waiting for me, and he’s the closest I’ve ever come to something real, something true, something like love instead of addiction.

  But when I learn what the man I love has been hiding from me, I fear our future will be riskier than I ever could have imagined.

  And I don’t know how the hell I’ll ever be ready for it.

  The Thrill of It is the second novel in the No Regrets and should be enjoyed following The Start of Us. Trey and Harley’s story concludes in Every Second With You

  Author’s Note

  I first released the No Regrets trilogy in 2013, and I have since revamped, revised and restructured the trilogy to tighten the storyline, enhance characterization and update elements. The heart of the love story and the main characters remains the same. Enjoy!

  The Thrill of It

  By Lauren Blakely

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  1

  Harley

  As I stare at Cam’s towering skyscraper, memories race back. Day after day I walked into that building, stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the fifty-fourth floor, then put my hand on my belly as that weird twisty feeling from shooting up into the sky kicked in. When I arrived, I told the receptionist I was there to see him. I have no clue if she knew about his side business. Nor did I care. She gestured to his office down the hall, and my stomach flipped and wiggled in a different way as I
walked to him, because he was my power broker—he was the man who set me free from how I’d grown up. He always grinned when he saw me, then shut the door and gave me the details of the job. Like I was a hired assassin. Like he had a top secret classified file about the target and he was giving me the download.

  We were comrades and partners, pulling off heists.

  Wednesday was our big day. I’d head straight for his office when the final bell rang at my school, and we’d review the gigs for the next week. Sometimes I’d have one, sometimes several. It all depended on my schoolwork and my mom’s schedule, whether she was in town or out of town chasing a story. But even if she was around, I knew how to concoct cover-ups. I said I was at study group or extra field hockey practice, or I made up the name of a boy I was seeing, spinning my own tales of a date with Cody or Hunter or Jay or some other random, nonexistent boy, stories of dates and ice cream and kisses in Central Park. But we always broke up too soon for her to meet this fictional mate.

  When I had my regular appointments with Morris, Cam wanted me to prep at his sprawling Upper East Side brownstone, not far from the hotel where I met the political adviser for his doggy trysts. “It’s safer,” Cam said. “Safer for you. I’ll have a car waiting to take you to the hotel.”

  We had a ritual before the Morris meetings. Cam took a bath, and I polished my toenails. Cam liked his sea salt crystals mixed with Sweet Lemon bubble bath in his baby-blue claw-foot tub, filled to the top with scalding hot water that he soaked in for thirty minutes while singing along to big seventies classic rock, like the Eagles’ “Hotel California” or Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”

  I perched on the closed toilet seat painting my toenails—a mouthwatering fire-engine red for Morris. Cam chatted about whatever business meeting he was heading to during my session, all while dispensing little tips here and there. “Press hard with the right heel between his shoulder blades while he sucks your left big toe,” he told me. “Call me if there’s any trouble, but there won’t be.”

  I looked away as he stepped out of the tub, the water sloshing around and cooled to lukewarm, then dried off with an oversized white fluffy bath towel. He’d already have his outfit carefully laid out on the down comforter of his king-size Japanese-style bed, usually a suit with one of his colorful “cowboy shirts,” as he called them, and no tie. Cam never wore ties.

  Then I’d zip up my skirt and slide on my shoes, and he’d give me a peck on the forehead. “Go make me proud, baby doll. Can’t wait for your report.”

  He’d head off to a steak and lobster meal someplace, likely to woo a shady businessman into a shady deal that seemed legit—all smoke and mirrors was my man—while I’d let Morris slide his tongue between my toes for two thousand dollars.

  Sometimes I’d meet Cam at Bliss after a job and tell him how it went. We’d have drinks—soda and martini—and appetizers, and I felt like every second with him was a fantastic secret. A bubble I lived in that no one could ever touch.

  “Who takes care of you? Who looks out for you?”

  “You do,” I said, poking him playfully in the chest.

  “All the time, baby doll. Anytime you need it.”

  He was proud of me. Like a proud papa.

  I don’t think Cam ever knew how hard it was for me to leave him after those dinners. Every time I did, I felt like black sludge had settled under my skin, because then I had to deal with my mom, my house, the noise. He was the antidote—the only one I ever had—to what awaited me inside my own home.

  Cam felt like home. He was my center. I trusted him when there was no one to trust. Because he gave me me.

  But do I need the antidote anymore?

  Now that I’m here, I don’t know if I will feel the same. I used to walk in here, feeling known, feeling understood. But am I still known? How can I be if I don’t know who I am?

  And that right there is the issue.

  I go inside, not knowing who I am, not knowing anymore why I’m here.

  Am I Harley? Am I Layla? Am I the call girl or the girl in recovery? I don’t feel like either one of them.

  I don’t feel like anyone I know.

  Maybe in here I can be someone again.

  As the elevator whisks me up, I talk back to my overactive brain, my too-emotional heart.

  Play the part. That’s what you know how to do. Fake it till you make it. When I reach Cam’s floor, I’m greeted by a crisp, controlled energy in the air the second the elevator doors sweep open. Sharp women in fitted skirts and heels, men in tailored suits, and assistants with headsets melded to their ears pace from cube to cube on either side of the gleaming floor-to-ceiling glass walls flanking the entryway.

  I walk inside.

  “May I help you?”

  I used to be a regular in these parts, but receptionists come and go, and since this one is new, she doesn’t recognize me. She’s young and blonde, with stick-straight hair tucked neatly behind her ears.

  “I’m here to see Mr. Cameron Jackson. I have a delivery for him. He’s expecting me. You can tell him Layla is here.” I don’t use my name. Nor do I use my mom’s name. I know better. My mom doesn’t reveal her sources, and Cam would never go on the record for one of her stories. He is all background, all behind the scenes. Besides, I’ve just used the one word that guarantees my entrée anywhere Cam is.

  Layla.

  My name is probably sashaying its way through the air, down to his office, slinking behind the door, reaching his ears, all five letters whispered in that sexy, seductive tone that will turn him into the man he is with me—mesmerized.

  “Let me just call him,” she says, then picks up the phone and stabs a finger against a button.

  “Hello, Mr. Jackson. You have a delivery from someone named Layla?”

  I don’t have to hear Cam’s side of the conversation to know what he’s saying right now. He is all yeses.

  The receptionist stands up, ready to escort me, but I tell her, “It’s okay. I know the way.”

  Cam’s door is ajar. I knock lightly, and he calls me in. His smile—that familiar broad grin that reveals all our naughty, tawdry, dirty, delicious little secrets—greets me first.

  Then he leans across his desk, taps on the calendar, and pretends he’s deep in thought, his index finger resting on his chin. “Well, that’s funny. My calendar doesn’t say it’s my lucky day. But clearly it’s wrong. Because seeing you two days in a row means I am the luckiest son of a bitch in the entire fucking solar system.”

  Has it been less than twenty-four hours since I’ve seen him? Since last night at Bliss? So much has happened since then, but so little too. Last night with Trey, the talking, the drinking game, the time on the couch, and then this morning and that dismissive denial from his mouth. I feel as if my world has been tugged, pulled, and twisted through the smallest eye of a needle, and parts are bunched up on one side, left behind in a mess.

  But most of all, the lies.

  Trey’s lies.

  The mistakes.

  I’m the mistake.

  “I guess you’re lucky,” I say to Cam.

  Cam walks over to me—no, he struts, because there is nothing subtle about this man. Not the five-o’clock shadow, not those big eyes twinkling, and not his green shirt, so rich, so opulent he could be wearing a button-down made of emeralds. This man is flash personified. He might as well wear a gold chain around his neck, but that’d be trashy, and Cam’s not trashy. He extends a hand. “Hello, partner.”

  With that word, I freeze.

  2

  Cam

  It comes out in a statement, my offer to make her a partner. To do this racket together.

  But the second the words take shape, I feel questions wrapping around them.

  Should I do this? Can I go there?

  The questions come from her. I see them in her eyes. A touch of…is that fear?

  No. It’s trepidation. It’s uncertainty. I can read them perfectly.

  And the questions are i
n her clothes too. How she’s dressed.

  And that won’t do. That won’t do at all. I won’t let her come on board unless she’s ready. Unless she’s all in.

  And that’s not for my sake. It’s for hers. For this girl who needed something and someone. No one else was giving her what she needed. And I gave it to her.

  But no way will I give her more of this city if she’s not ready. I care about her too damn much.

  Time to pivot.

  “Or maybe you’re here on an errand?” I ask casually, parking myself on the edge of my desk, giving her a sly smile as I nod and craft her an out to see if she’ll take it. “Yup. I can see it in your eyes. You were strolling by the hood. Figured you’d drop something off and give your old friend a hello and a cup of coffee.” I pretend to search behind her looking for the coffee. “Where’s my cup of joe? Don’t tell me you forgot I require lots and lots of sugar.”