Tempted (Thornton Brothers Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Taken - Chapter 1

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  About the Author

  Sneak Peek

  THORNTON BROTHERS

  BOOK TWO

  TEMPTED

  by Sabre Rose

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY THE AUTHOR

  Published by Sabre Rose

  © 2017 Sabre Rose

  Kindle Edition

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Any resemblance to actual events, any person living or deceased is entirely coincidental. Any references to real places or events are used fictitiously. All characters and storylines are products of the author’s imagination. It has been edited to UK English standards.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, re-sold, or transmitted electronically or otherwise, without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright.

  For more information about the author visit:

  www.sabreroseauthor.com

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  About the Author

  Sneak Peek

  Taken - Chapter 1

  1

  GABE

  Facing Lauren’s family was terrifying. They looked at me with hatred, as though it were my fault, not theirs, that Lauren’s face was stained with tears. I clasped her hand and drew her close to me, trying to protect her from the daggers shooting from the eyes of her mother. Her ex-fiancé, Derek, thankfully, had left when we came out of her room. Morgan started towards us, arms held open, ready to embrace her sister, but Lauren stepped closer to me, her fingers digging into my flesh viciously like she was afraid of what would happen if she let go. Lauren’s mother was seated at the kitchen table, pancakes burning on the stove. Her eyes flicked up when we entered the room, but she didn’t move to comfort her daughter.

  I wanted to wrap Lauren in my arms and take her away.

  Thankfully, Lauren’s niece, Madison, was nowhere to be seen. Her father, Alistair, must have removed her from the house. Part of me felt sorry for the girl having to spend Christmas this way.

  “Lauren.” Mr Greer stepped towards his daughter and Lauren’s grip on my hand loosened just a little. “Why didn’t you tell us?” He walked over and tipped Lauren’s chin so she looked him in the eye.

  Lauren drew in a ragged breath. “I—I didn’t know how. I knew that you wanted children for me and I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

  Tears welled in Mr Greer’s eyes and he reached out to take Lauren’s hand from mine, his eyes searching for permission. I let go and Lauren stepped into her father’s arms, a fresh wave of tears running down her cheeks.

  “Listen to me,” her father said, holding her close and stroking the hair which fell in waves down her back. “You could never ever disappoint me. Ever,” he said with certainty, although his voice was choked with tears. “Your mother and I love you no matter what. You must always remember that. And if this man,” he paused and looked over to me. “If this is the man who makes you happy then I will welcome him with open arms. I will do whatever it takes to see you happy, Lauren. That’s all I want. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  A choked sob escaped from Lauren and she wrapped her arms around her father, squeezing tightly. Morgan walked over and joined them, all three with tears glistening in their eyes. Lauren’s mother got up from the table and walked out of the room. Mr Greer stepped away from his girls and smiled as widely as his tears would allow. “Never mind your mother,” he said. “She’s always been slow to adjust to change. Let me talk to her.” He released Lauren and Morgan and followed his wife out of the room.

  Morgan immediately walked over and embraced me. “Thank you,” she said solemnly.

  I laughed a little, unsure what she was referring to, unsure of anything to do with the situation.

  “Thank you for loving my sister.” She stepped back and wiped the tears from her eyes.

  “It’s not hard,” I said, my eyes drifting over to Lauren whose actions mimicked her sisters.

  Even with tears in her eyes and mascara staining the skin of her cheekbones, she was breathtakingly beautiful. It astounded me that she couldn’t see it. I’m not sure what she saw when she looked into the mirror, but I knew it wasn’t what I saw. Sometimes I wished I could let her look at herself through my eyes. Then, she wouldn’t see someone who was broken. She wouldn’t see the age gap between us. She wouldn’t see the scar on her stomach or the stretch marks that finely brushed her breasts. She would see perfection. She would see someone who had lived. Someone who had grown from life. Someone who had been through hell but was still standing strong.

  She would see someone beautiful.

  For the rest of the day, her mother moved like a ghost around us, never looking at her daughter and throwing daggers at me. She never addressed the fact that Lauren, her youngest daughter, was in pain.

  I hated her for it.

  We opened presents under the tree and Madison squealed with delight at some and pouted over others. The gift I had bought Lauren was a gold bracelet, nothing fancy, nothing flashy, just plain and simple, and the smile she gave me was worth every penny. Lauren’s hand was stuck in mine, holding onto me for strength throughout the day.

  After lunch, I saw her smile. And that evening as her mother sat at the piano and the notes of Silent Night broke the quiet of the room, Lauren got up from her seat and stood behind her mother, her voice rising from a place of pain. I had never heard such a sweetly broken thing.

  When it came time for bed, her mother walked over and handed me a sleeping bag. “There’s a stretcher in the basement,” was all she said and pointed to a door. She was about to walk out of the room when she turned back to me. “There will be no sinning under my roof.” She said it so solemnly, I didn’t know whether to laugh or salute.

  It was three in the morning when I heard the stairs creak and Lauren’s bare feet padded across the concrete floor. I unzipped my sleeping bag and Lauren crawled in with me, her body half beside mine, half on top. It was a tight fit and I immediately went hard as I felt the soft flesh of her breasts crush against my chest through the thin fabric of her t-shirt. I willed myself not to concentrate on the feeling. Not to think of the way her full breasts felt against my skin. Not to imagine taking her nipple, hard from the coolness of the air, into my mouth. Not to imagine the warmth of her, the softness of her. I thought she would just need comfort, but when her hand slid down my bare chest and wrapped around my hard cock, I knew she had other plans.

  “Someone’s pleased to see me.” She smirked seductively in the dim light.

  I fou
nd it hard to concentrate as her hand rhythmically stroked up and down. I wiggled as much as I could in the tight fit. “We don’t have to do this. You’ve had a big day and—”

  Lauren silenced me by crushing her mouth against mine. “Shut up,” she said between kisses. “I want you.”

  A moan involuntarily escaped at her words. “What about your mother?”

  “What about her?” she mumbled as her mouth moved to trail kisses down my neck. She nipped the flesh on my shoulder and my cock swelled in her hand.

  “What if…” I panted as her mouth moved onto my chest and her grip around my cock increased. “What if she comes down?”

  “She won’t,” Lauren said against my skin.

  “What if she hears?”

  Lauren pushed against me, her mouth at my ear, her hand leaving my hardness and being replaced by the dampness of her underwear. “She won’t.”

  She sucked on my earlobe and I drew in air sharply, holding it in before letting it out slowly as I regained control of myself. I found her mouth in the darkness and kissed her urgently and desperately, allowing myself to act on the sensations rippling through every inch of me.

  I wanted to be inside her.

  I needed to be inside her.

  Lauren responded eagerly, opening herself fully and sliding herself further so my cock rubbed her clit, the slight friction of her damp underwear driving me insane. She kept rubbing herself against me while sucking my flesh as I was trapped beneath her, caught in the restriction of the sleeping bag.

  “Lauren,” I panted.

  She twisted around and slowly undid the zipper of the sleeping bag, removing the constriction around us, and slipping down my body hungrily, tugging at my boxers until my cock sprung free. I sucked in another sharp breath as she took me in her mouth.

  I almost came there and then, the pressure, the wetness from her mouth just about undoing me. Staring down at her hand snaking up over my stomach, I counted the freckles that dotted her arm in an effort to resist the welling need to come. Ever since she had left for her parents, I had been dreaming of having her again. Our last tryst at the café had only served to awaken me and no amount of masturbation could eliminate the need for her.

  There were thirty-seven faint freckles on her arm.

  There were precisely fifty-seven visible nails in the ceiling.

  Soon I could concentrate on the rhythmic motion of her soft lips as they wrapped around me. I reached down and wrapped my hands through her hair, lightly tugging as it entwined around my fingers. My eyes rolled back as she took more of me. I applied the slightest pressure, pushing her head down, forcing more of me into her mouth. She gagged and I fell out, only for her to take me again, hungrily sucking, pushing down so the tip of my cock hit the back of her throat.

  “Lauren,” I hissed as the familiar urge built within me. No amount of counting was going to stop me this time. “Careful.” I moaned as she ignored my pleading and took more. I released her hair and gripped onto the rails of the stretcher. Just before I was about to explode in her sweet mouth, she lifted her head and clambered up my body, tugging off her underwear and tossing it aside. Without hesitation she mounted me, removing her t-shirt and exposing her large breasts. Her head rolled back as she rocked on my cock. She was completely wet and even though I didn’t think it possible, I hardened even more.

  I loved her most like this. Unabashed and completely given over to me. Her hair hung over her shoulders and danced over her breast as she rode me. Her hips rocked back and forth, grinding my cock further inside her. Reaching out, she grabbed my hands, bringing them to her breasts, and I moaned again as I toyed with the soft flesh. Her breasts were heavy and heaving and, with a sudden urgency, I rolled her over—not an easy task on a stretcher—and drove myself back inside. Her breasts rippled with the movement. She reached behind and took hold of the frail edge of the stretcher as I pushed into her slowly but forcefully, fixated on her glorious breasts as they shuddered with each thrust.

  It was only then that it occurred to me that we weren’t using protection. It was the first time I had been inside her without the slightly numbing coverage of a condom.

  “Lauren,” I said. “I haven’t got any protection.” I was clean, she was clean, but now, knowing that protection wasn’t needed for birth control, my excitement quickened at the thought of releasing completely inside her.

  She began to moan and I felt her tighten around me. “It’s okay,” she said. Biting her lip, she stifled a groan as every inch of her quivered. And then, as though she could no longer contain it, she let out a loud cry and I placed my hand over her lips, muffling the sound as she shuddered and came. Her eyes fluttered open and she took one of my fingers in her mouth, sucking up and down until the sensation of her mouth, her wetness and tightness of her around my cock, the swaying of her breasts and the look of adoration on her face was too much and I thrust hard, the stretcher lurching across the ground.

  Then I came, filling her with everything I had as I released inside her. And it felt like heaven.

  2

  LAUREN

  I thought if I crept back upstairs before the sun rose, I would avoid meeting anyone in the hallway. I was wrong. Morgan sat on the floor, a fresh cup of coffee in her hand, another sitting on the ground beside her.

  She lifted the spare cup and held it out to me. “You okay?”

  I walked over and sat beside her, taking the steaming cup and inhaling the bitter-sweet scent. “Yeah,” I said, taking a sip.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  The familiar tightness in the back of my throat returned and I shook my head.

  Morgan reached over and squeezed my shoulder. “So…” she said, letting the word hang between us.

  “So…” I mimicked.

  Morgan’s eyebrow twitched and one side of her mouth curved. “Gabe, huh?”

  I smiled and took another mouthful of coffee.

  “You’re not going to say anything?” Morgan’s eyebrow still twitched oddly.

  I shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want details,” she said. “I want the dirty, scandalous details. I’m so jealous of you right now. That boy is insanely gorgeous. The things I have imagined doing to him.” She shook her head, a slow smile creeping over her face as she lifted her cup.

  “That’s my man you’re talking about.”

  She sighed. “I know. But I didn’t know that before, you know, when I was doing the imagining. We married women need our imaginations sometimes to get us through another boring ordeal when our husbands do the same thing over and over.”

  “I’m sure Alistair would love hearing that.”

  “Alistair can go take a flying leap.”

  I lifted my eyebrows and looked down at the cup in my hands.

  “Do you know he wanted to have sex last night? Last night,” she repeated as though the idea were scandalous. “We’re at my parents’ house. Who wants to have sex when their parents are only a few rooms away?”

  I lowered my head further and took a noisy slurp of coffee.

  “Oh my goodness. That’s why you snuck up from the basement, isn’t it? You were down there screwing his brains out.” Morgan groaned and rested her head against the wall. “Why do you get to have all the fun?”

  “I believe you literally just finished saying that Alistair wanted the same last night.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  “Because Alistair is Alistair and Gabe is Gabe.” She snapped her head back and looked at me. “Details now.”

  Since Morgan and I were six years apart, we had never really been ones to discuss our partners. Sure, Morgan had talked about Alistair over the years, and I had talked about Derek, but our conversations had never ventured into the bedroom.

  “Don’t be a holdout,” she complained when I remained silent. “I need to live through you. I need excitement in my life, and right now, you’re it. Well, your boy-toy is it.”
/>   “Don’t call him that.”

  She snorted. “That’s what he is, isn’t he? You’re not serious about him.”

  “I introduced him to the family, didn’t I?”

  Morgan fell silent and we sat side by side, sipping on our coffees. Out the window, the sun rose above the neighbour’s house causing a patch of light to move across the carpet.

  “So you met at work?” she asked finally.

  I nodded.

  “Who made the first move?”

  I let a smile creep over my face. “Oh, he made all the moves,” I said, teasingly.

  “And?” she prompted.

  “Okay, fine,” I said, admitting defeat and resigning myself to the fact that she was not going to give up. “We met at work. Gabe pursued me until he won. I was hesitant at first because of the age gap, but I’ve realised I just need to get over that.”

  “You were together when we all came down for your birthday? That was why he was there, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded and watched the patch of light spread a little further across the carpet. “This is the first time we’ve been together in public, so to speak. I guess I was a little worried about what people would think.”

  “Who cares what people think,” Morgan said. “You’ve got a smoking hot man in your bed and he seems to adore you. What woman wouldn’t want that? Is he as good as I imagine he would be?”

  “I’m really not comfortable with you imagining how my boyfriend is in bed.”

  “Well tell me so I don’t have to imagine then,” she exclaimed. “Is his—” She cleared her throat and wiggled her brows suggestively. “Is it big? I bet it’s big. I bet it’s glorious.” She shuddered and I moved away a fraction. “Oh, come on. You’ve got to give me something, anything? I’m a bored woman here. I need this.”

  “Need what?” Madison’s door opened and my niece stood in the doorway dressed in short pyjamas which barely covered the cheeks of her butt. I remembered the day she was born. The screams of my sister giving birth haunted me for months. My mother insisted I be in the birthing room with them. I think that may have been part of the reason I was scared when I first fell pregnant.