Party of Three: A H.O.T. Cops Novel Read online

  Praise for the Novels of Lacey Alexander

  What She Needs

  Winner of the HOLT Medallion Award

  “Lacey Alexander has created a book which literally ‘wows’ the reader. Buckle up and hold on tight. Impossibly hot!”

  —Fallen Angel Reviews (5 Angels)

  “One very hot, sexy, and erotic book. Full of sexual fantasies that will have you flipping the pages to see what will happen next!”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Prepare to be swept away on an erotic journey of sexual awakening … very sensual, erotic, and will open your mind to infinite possibilities!”

  —The Romance Studio (5 Hearts)

  “An ultraheated erotic romance. The heat is on.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “This book sizzles …. Ms. Alexander explores the spectrum of the human sexual experience without embarrassment or ridicule.”

  —Erotic Romance Writers

  “Each sex scene is more varied—and hotter—than the last in this delightful read. Fans of heroes with tragic pasts will swoon over Brent.”

  —Romantic Times (4 Stars)

  The Bikini Diaries

  Write Touch Award Winner and Colorado Award of Excellence Finalist

  “Hot, sizzling, and sexy! Lacey Alexander definitely will scorch your senses.”

  —Romance Junkies (5 Blue Ribbons)

  “Ms. Alexander sweeps away her readers in a sinfully erotic yet surprisingly nongratuitous manner.”

  —Sacramento Book Review

  “With intriguing characters, [a] fast-paced story line, and tight writing, plus a host of naughty sexual adventures, Ms. Alexander delivers a powerful story.”

  —Love Romances & More (4½ Hearts)

  “Truly a phenomenal book. Lacey Alexander is a remarkably gifted author who writes exactly what I want to read, pushing boundaries with titillating sexuality, but never going beyond what’s tasteful …. Do yourself a huge favor and buy everything Lacey Alexander has ever written. You won’t regret it.”

  —TwoLips Reviews (5 Lips)

  “[The] most erotic book I have read. Lacey Alexander has written a no-holds-barred romp of sexual delights … a profound book.”

  —Joyfully Reviewed

  “I loved this book. Each sexual act was well written and done extremely well.”

  —Night Owl Romance (5 out of 5, Lifetime Keeper)

  “I was completely swept up in Wendy’s journey …. Lacey Alexander is certainly the queen of what I fondly call ‘romantic kink’!”

  —Wild on Books (5 Bookmarks)

  Seven Nights of Sin

  Write Touch Award Winner

  “Lacey Alexander’s books bring out the good little bad girl in all of us. Unforgettable in an ‘oh, yeah, do that again, please’ sort of way.”

  —Michelle Buonfiglio, myLifetime.com

  “Thoroughly tantalizing, with magnetic characters, a sizzling plot, and raw sensuality, this book will have you fanning yourself long after the last page!”

  —Romantic Times

  And for Lacey Alexander

  “Ms. Alexander is an exceptionally talented author who, time after time, takes us on extremely erotic journeys that leave us breathless with every turn of the page …. This author pens the most arousing sexual scenes that you could never imagine.”

  —Fallen Angel Reviews

  “Lacey Alexander has given readers … hot, erotic romance with no holds barred.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “Ms. Alexander is probably one of the most talented, straightforward, imaginative writers in erotic romance today.”

  —The Road to Romance

  “Lacey Alexander just ‘wowed’ me! Incredibly hot!”

  —Romance Reader at Heart (Top Pick)

  “Lacey Alexander is a very talented writer.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “Lacey Alexander is an intoxicating erotic writer using sensual and sexual prowess to embrace your inner passions and desires. Sexual discovery at its best.”

  —Noveltown

  “Lacey Alexander’s characters … are so compelling and lifelike.”

  —Coffee Time Romance

  “Sooo romantic and sexy!”

  —Cupid’s Library Reviews

  “Lacey Alexander takes blissful hedonism to a whole new level in this blazingly brazen, passionately erotic love story!”

  —Ecataromance

  Also by Lacey Alexander

  H.O.T. Cops Novels

  Bad Girl by Night

  Voyeur

  Seven Nights of Sin

  The Bikini Diaries

  What She Needs

  Party of Three

  A H.O.T. COPS NOVEL

  Lacey Alexander

  A SIGNET ECLIPSE BOOK

  SIGNET ECLIPSE

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,

  Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

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  Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

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  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632,

  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

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  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First Printing, April 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Lacey Alexander, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  SIGNET ECLIPSE and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Alexander, Lacey.

  Party of three: a H.O.T. cops novel/Lacey Alexander.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-58004-2

  I. Title.

  PS3601.L3539P37 2012

  813’.6—dc23 2011046535

  Set in Centaur MT

  Designed by Alissa Amell

  Printed in the United States of America

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  Party of Three

  “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4


  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  About the Author

  Give in to Me

  Chapter 1

  “Happy birthday, honey. Ready for your present?”

  Mira lifted her cheek from where it lay resting on Ethan’s shoulder in the hammock they shared. “My birthday’s not until tomorrow,” she reminded him with a playful smile.

  “Yeah, but … don’t you want your present now?” His blue eyes sparkled as he tilted his head to one side in the netting, and something in his look made the juncture of her thighs spasm, just slightly. Then again, it had been doing that a lot lately. In anticipation of this weekend.

  “I thought my present was this,” she said, motioning around them. He’d brought her to a secluded cabin in the woods on the north shore of Michigan’s upper peninsula for her thirty-second birthday. To make up for some things. To start treating their relationship differently. And, of course, for some hot sex, which her body currently hungered for.

  “It is,” he confirmed. “But … there’s more.”

  Hmm. “More? Really?”

  He nodded, yet added nothing.

  So she leaned closer, lacing her voice with flirtation to ask, “Well, don’t you want to save it until my actual birthday?”

  “Can’t,” he told her simply.

  And she narrowed her gaze on him. Her boyfriend wasn’t usually a man of so few words, so this conversation was beginning to feel downright cryptic. “Um, why not?”

  That’s when he began to look more hesitant, his expression transforming into a mixture of hope … and uneasiness. It was the look a man wore when he’d worked hard to find you the perfect gift but was still waiting to see your reaction when it was opened. Only Mira didn’t see any sort of gift bag or box anywhere. “I can’t save it,” he told her, “because it’s sort of … starting tonight.”

  Her birthday present was starting? Okay, he must be talking about the sex portion of the gift. Yet … why would he need to announce it if he was just talking about sex? Because yeah, she was good and ready for that, but … they’d had plenty of sex already during their four years together. “The sex, you mean,” she said to clarify anyway, though she knew she sounded confused.

  “Kind of,” he said, and now he … hmm, to her surprise he suddenly looked just as uncertain as she felt. Not nervous exactly—Ethan was never nervous—but he’d slowed down on this present-giving thing and she sensed him wading through it a little more gingerly at this point, and definitely holding something back. What was going on here?

  She lowered her chin, met his gaze. “Kind of?”

  “Okay, wait,” he said, holding his hands out before him. “I should have thought through how to tell you about this, because now that it’s time, I don’t quite know how to say it. So … give me a minute to think about the best way.”

  Mira just looked at him. How complicated could this present be? He needed a “best way”? He sounded more like someone about to break bad news than a man giving a birthday gift to his girlfriend. “You’re starting to make me worry,” she admitted, still peering down into his handsome face.

  “The thing about your gift,” he began, “is that I want you to love it, really love it. But … I’m not sure how you’ll take it.”

  She blinked, thoroughly perplexed now, then finally laid her head back on his shoulder, drinking in his musky, masculine scent as she silently provided him that minute he’d requested. A bird twittered in a tree somewhere to her right and the late afternoon sun warmed her face as she looked out over Lake Superior in the distance. Blue skies and unseasonably warm June temps in northern Michigan made the scene complete. And up until a minute ago, she’d felt relaxed, happy, like he really was making up for the troubles they’d endured over the past year or so. But right now she didn’t know what to feel—and the uncertainty turned her thoughts unwittingly back to what had led them here, to this moment.

  Ethan had been a workaholic since they’d started dating, and while she admired a strong work ethic—and particularly admired the pro bono legal work he’d embraced—over time she’d started feeling like she came in a distant second behind his career. And when, last summer, he’d canceled their Labor Day weekend boating plans with friends at the very last minute, she’d realized her life with him was starting to be … well, not all she’d hoped.

  He was hot. Sexy. And great in bed. He was a good guy, a sincerely good man. In fact, Ethan West was the man she wanted to marry, and she’d known that almost from their first kiss. But then things had changed. He’d left the Charlevoix Police Force to study for the bar exam around the same time she’d moved in to his condo. And as soon as he’d passed the bar, he’d opened a small office not far from her shop, and business had been booming ever since for the quaint lakeside town’s newest young lawyer. Life had bustled along, and they’d been fine. Until his work had started taking priority over her.

  And things hadn’t improved since Labor Day—and in reality they’d gotten worse. More late nights, more lost weekends. He could spend an entire dinner with her in a nice restaurant looking at his BlackBerry without ever even realizing he was leaving her virtually alone. And evenings at home that used to be spent together were now generally spent apart, him behind the closed door of their home office.

  The truth was, right up until two weeks ago, she’d been seriously considering moving out. He didn’t know that, though—she’d never told him. Because when she did complain about being neglected, he never seemed to hear—except for the times when he threw it back at her, pointing out how hard he was working, that he didn’t need her nagging him on top of that, and how nice it would be to get some support. So he hadn’t exactly been understanding or apologetic; he’d come closer to making her feel like an insecure shrew and she’d soon learned to just keep the peace by not speaking up at all.

  And one day … well, she’d even started packing a suitcase. Envisioning the goodbye note she would write. Thinking about the serious logistics of moving the rest of her things.

  But then she’d stopped. Because she’d reminded herself one more time that she loved him, and that when he was there for her, things were amazing and the chemistry between them—both physical and emotional—was intense. She connected with Ethan in a way she never had with anyone else. Yet lately she’d been asking herself: Can I give my life to a man who doesn’t put our relationship first? Is that what I want forever? And what if we move forward with getting married, having kids? Will he be that dad who never quite makes it to the recital or little league game? Will he be an absentee parent?

  And then—like some kind of miracle—the day after she’d almost left him, he’d taken her to lunch at her favorite waterside bistro and told her he’d rented a cabin upstate for her birthday weekend. He’d said he knew he’d been neglecting her and was going to change. Flashing a seductive grin, he’d told her he wanted to spend her birthday making it up to her by “doing hot, nasty things to you in the sun. Then doing more hot, nasty things to you in the moonlight. With maybe a little sleep in between before we start over again.”

  She’d bitten her lip, given him a smile across the table, and reached out to take his hand, utterly surprised and happier than she’d felt in a very long time. This was the old Ethan, the Ethan who’d swept her off her feet.

  And now here they were, alone in the woods, and she’d begun to think that maybe he really could repair what he’d broken between them. He hadn’t so much as mentioned a case or a client since they’d left Charlevoix this morning. He’d even left his BlackBerry at home. And he was once again the man who went out of his way to show his affection in ways both great and small—he’d even brought along a few
bottles of her favorite wine, one of which they’d opened to drink with dinner a little while ago. Ethan had grilled burgers—saving the steaks he’d brought for her birthday dinner tomorrow night—and they’d eaten at the picnic table on the dock down below the cabin and the hillside where they now lay. “I know wine doesn’t really go with hamburgers,” he’d said with a slightly sheepish grin, “but …”

  And she’d just replied with a happy laugh. “Who cares? I like wine and I like burgers. And I especially like how thoughtful you’re being, Mr. West,” she’d added teasingly.

  Normally, she wouldn’t have thought of renting a remote cabin as the way she wanted to spend her birthday, but the sentiment had touched her and now that they were here, she realized it was the perfect setting for a weekend of nonstop fucking. Since that was what she suddenly realized she wanted to do. Fuck him from now until Sunday, when it was time to leave. Their sex life had definitely begun to suffer over the past year, along with every other part of the relationship, and she was more than ready to get that back on track, too. And she supposed the wine had her feeling amorous. Even though they were outdoors, no other house was within sight, and the treed landscape added to the sense of isolation, so this felt as private as their bedroom at home—only a little more exciting.

  Though she wasn’t the sort of girl who usually thought of sex as fucking. A little dirty talk in the bedroom was fun, but it almost surprised her when that particular way of describing it entered her mind. I must really need this. I must really need to let go this weekend and just let my body have him the way I want him, with no inhibitions, nothing held back. Because even when they did have sex … maybe she had held part of herself back lately, due to resentment, not feeling totally connected to him anymore. Well, this weekend, no holding back. This weekend he gets all of me. Maybe even more than he’s ever had before. She bit her lip, feeling naughty, aggressive.