Louisa Neil Read online

  Bête Noire

  Diana Wilson was satisfied with her life in New Orleans until the unexplained nightmares began to plague her. Each one brought her to the mythical beast she came to trust and love. Dream sex with the huge monster is beyond anything she might have summoned by herself. Telltale marks on her body leave her confused, as if the acts they committed in her dreams were real.

  Meeting Dane Bowie and Sloan Shayla, new owners of the newspaper, comes with an unexplained sense of well-being. Dane is free-spirited and Sloan the professional. When the men explain they moved to New Orleans to be near her specifically, she’s confused. Their story of the mythical Minotaur and their mutual connection to the beast are hard for her to accept.

  Diana realizes both men are the perfect counterparts for her. Now all she has to do is accept that she can satisfy them both on a permanent basis.

  Note: This book contains double vaginal penetration.

  Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre

  Length: 70,745 words

  BÊTE NOIRE

  Louisa Neil

  MENAGE AND MORE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage and More

  BÊTE NOIRE

  Copyright © 2012 by Louisa Neil

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-61926-768-8

  First E-book Publication: June 2012

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 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

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Bête Noire by Louisa Neil from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Louisa Neil’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Neil’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  For my husband, my erotic muse.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  bete noire (bet nwar’; E bat’nwar)

  A person or thing feared, disliked, and avoided.

  —From Webster’s New World Dictionary

  BÊTE NOIRE

  LOUISA NEIL

  Copyright © 2012

  Chapter One

  Diana Wilson swung wildly with her arms, kicking her feet to get loose. Nothing worked. She was still encumbered by an unknown force. All she knew was she had to get away. She opened her mouth to yell, but no voice came out. She tried harder to scream, yet no sound penetrated her own brain. Her breathing was out of pattern, and she was all but gasping for air.

  Then his vision appeared above her, and she stilled.

  His black gaze penetrated her mind, reverberating a wave of fear she’d never experienced. She could hear his cruel laugh as it filled her space. His appearance made her wonder if her screams had been heard. He was dressed in a black suit and a black man-tailored shirt. He wore no tie, and the top two buttons of the shirt were open, spread wide. She could see the soft black hairs that encircled his throat and knew they would follow down his chest and end in a halo of curling hairs around his cock.

  She didn’t know how she knew this, only that she did. In those moments, she saw her reflection in his eyes. Her blonde hair was mussed, pulled from its normal sleek braid running down her back. The lighting was dim, but she could see her green eyes staring into his. Diana swore she’d seen a flash of fire in his. She blinked, and he was gone.

  She blinked again and woke with her body in a full sweat. She was tangled in her sheets and blankets, kicking wildly until she was free. Sitting up, she scanned the room and found it was empty except for her and the furnishings.

  Pulling the blanket up to her throat to cover her nude body, she knew with absolute knowledge that she’d gotten into bed wearing a long T-shirt. It was a soft blue and came almost to her knees. With a shaking hand, she reached to the lamp on the bedside table and switched it on. Blinking several times against the brightness, she finally felt her body relaxing. Glancing around, the room seemed the same, except for her T-shirt. It was on top of the bureau, carefully folded as if it had just come from the laundry. Yet she knew she’d put it over her body before dropping into the bed.

  She stood on shaking legs and grabbed the shirt, struggling to pull it over her head without dropping the blanket. Once she managed to get her arms and head through the holes, she smoothed it down to cover herself. Then she reached to the chair at the foot of the bed and grabbed at the plaid flannel robe she always dropped there. She pulled it on and belted it tightly.

  “What the hell was that,” she said, talking to herself. With all the courage she could muster, she moved the few steps to view herself before the bureau mirror.

  What she saw distressed her.

  While her hair was disheveled, she looked the same as she had all her life. She noted only the dark circles under her eyes seemed darker, almost a blue-black. For a second she let herself laugh at the image. Then it struck her she hadn’t worn any makeup today. Those weren’t mascara smudges.

  “What the hell?” she whispered as she gently let her index finger run along the almost translucent skin under her eyes. They were bloodshot, the whites more red than white. She knew she’d been tired lately, but this was beyond tired. She looked sick, but she didn’t feel sick, only fearful for the unknown.

  “This is crazy,” she told herself, talking aloud to hear her own voice as she forced her fingers to undo her braid. With a shaking hand, she brushed out the knots into soft waves. She kept glancing in the mirror, checking all corners of the room to make sure she was truly alone. When she felt somewhat normal, she looked to the mangled b
ed, the blanket and sheets disheveled.

  “I’m not going back there,” she said aloud and with much angst, lifting her hand to the doorknob. It opened easily, and after skirting along the wall, she flipped on the overhead light. Everything in the small, shotgun-style house seemed the same.

  With the kettle on the burner, she pulled down her favorite mug from the cabinet and dropped a decaffeinated Earl Grey tea bag into it. She loved this mug. It was a double-walled glass that kept her tea hot much longer than any other she’d ever used. It had no handle, rather, was easier to hold with its top half hour-glass shaped. She startled when the kettle started to whistle, and she laughed at her anxiety. After shutting off the flame, she poured the steaming water into the mug and wrapped both her hands around it to warm them.

  Sleep was not an option any longer. Even if she did fall asleep, she was afraid she’d reenter the dream with the menacing man in black hovering over her. It was just past three, and she decided even the Home Shopping Network would be better than sleep. She grabbed the remote and turned on the television in the living area, muting the sound as low as she could so she wouldn’t wake her neighbors through the shared wall. Tugging a soft cotton throw from the back of the sofa, she hunched down and covered herself, letting the tea warm her hands. Diana flipped from channel to channel, nothing suiting her frightened mood. Finally, she tossed the remote aside and stared blankly at the screen, not seeing the jewels someone was trying to sell her. Instead, she kept reliving her dream—no nightmare.

  It wasn’t a man she’d come in contact with, and she didn’t remember seeing him on anything she’d watched on the television. She’d been reading a romance earlier that night, and there were no dark, menacing men in that story. So where did she conjure up the vision of this frightening stranger?

  She’d been living on the outskirts of the French Quarter of New Orleans in this same row home since she had relocated two years earlier. Never had she experienced anything like the nightmare she’d had tonight. Even as a child, she had not been prone to nightmares. Of course, she’d had the occasional dream that made no sense, but she never woke with such angst and fear.

  Diana thought back over her workday and couldn’t remember coming into contact with anything that resembled the man she’d conjured tonight. Maybe she was just working too hard.

  Diana decided tomorrow she would force herself to take her bag lunch outside and get some fresh air instead of forging ahead with her work. She was guaranteed another five years of work, transferring the original issues of the newspapers onto computer files. Occasionally someone would come down to her basement office, looking for information in back issues, but the information they sought was usually much more recent.

  She’d been working on the first years of issues, ones dating back to the late eighteen hundreds. She didn’t have time to actually read the papers as she scanned them into the machine that would preserve their contents digitally for generations to come. Mostly, she looked at the headlines to get a feel for what was going on that particular day in history.

  It was a very slow job, the newspapers all but crumbling from age. Some days she managed to get three whole papers converted. Other days they were so damaged, it would take a day to copy just one issue. She never touched the pages without wearing disposable, white cotton gloves. Beyond keeping her fingers free of newsprint, it kept the papers as pristine as possible. They would go back into the archives, but she understood with each passing day they would disintegrate further. Her job made her feel useful, as if she were preserving a bit of history that would otherwise be lost.

  She put her mug on the coffee table and snuggled down on the sofa. When she felt herself drifting off to sleep, she would force herself to wake, walking the length of the house hallway and back before going back to the sofa and television. She flipped the channel over and over, this time winding up on old situation comedies. It didn’t matter what they were, only that the laugh track in the background made her feel better. Diana closed her eyes at the commercial and woke with a start as the early light streamed through the sheer curtains she’d hung on the front windows.

  She stood and stretched, feeling foolish about her nightmare. This morning she could hardly remember the face that frightened her so. Still, she had to force herself to go through her morning routine, showering and braiding her hair, dressing in comfortable chinos and a three-button knit shirt with the newspaper name embroidered over her left breast. She wore broken-in walking boots and took extra time to use the makeup she rarely put on anymore. After all, working in the basement archives of the newspaper, she was rarely seen. Her boss didn’t care what she looked like, only that she continued to produce legible computer copies of the newspaper he’d inherited and had come to love and covet. He ruled the paper with an iron fist and just recently accepted that the print version was dying in existence to the ease of the Internet.

  She had been hired on when the paper had started its online version two years ago, although they continued to print a Sunday paper, including all the travel, entertainment, and headline stories. It had been a sad day when they didn’t print their normal Monday newspaper. Tuesday had been worse. Those first weeks, she hadn’t ventured past her moldy office, knowing how the employees were split. The younger reporters had seen this as progress. The older reporters had trouble with working their computers. She could sympathize with both camps.

  In the last two years, she’d seen the older employees accept their computers and put aside their typewriters. It was do or die, as the saying went. Either you moved ahead with the times and equipment or you found yourself without a job, as a few could attest. Diana was always thankful she hadn’t been put in that position. She’d been hired because of her computer knowledge and background. While she could sympathize with the bosses, she understood if they didn’t keep pace, they would be left behind. So on Wednesdays, when the paper sent its Sunday supplement issue to the printers, she made a point of eating her lunch inside her office, avoiding the angst that was palpable in the air of the offices above her. Discourse in any way weighed heavily on her, and she’d been thankful the changes were accepted quickly by those who chose to accept progress. Even if it annoyed some of them, they kept their complaints to themselves.

  She’d taken the job because of the relocation it required. Her winters in the snowy mountains of Maine were left behind without a second thought. One walk through the French Quarter and she’d found herself. While she, too, complained about the heat in the dead of summer, she thrived in the heat as opposed to the cold and snow of the state where she’d been born and raised. She’d chosen her neighborhood because it was close enough to the downtown but far enough to be away from the hordes of vacationers. She was also able to walk to her office, which meant she didn’t have the added expense of a car. Even though she was now the proud owner of a small driveway, it remained empty, much to the chagrin of her neighbors who were always wanting to rent it from her. In truth, she refused because she wanted the privacy. Diana thrived on living alone and being left to herself unless she was in the mood to socialize. That was why her job suited her so well.

  Today she’d packed her lunch but knew she’d take it outside and find a seat somewhere that people thrived in the sunshine instead of eating at her desk. She couldn’t stop glancing over her shoulder as she walked to work, the niggling fear of her dream still clinging to her mind. Arriving a few minutes ahead as usual, she smiled and nodded to the other employees as she made her way through the offices to the old wooden staircase that led down to her office. It was slightly rickety, but she never felt it would give way under her. Instead, she sighed with relief. The space looked just as she’d left it yesterday. She tucked her lunch in the cooler-sized refrigerator her boss, Walter, had brought her after realizing she brought her lunch. She also kept bottles of water in there, the only beverage she drank during the day.

  Diana acknowledged that she’d seen much less of Walter lately, and he seemed stressed when she did see him.
Most days he poked his head down to yell a hello, and she’d pause to ask how his day was going. It was their running joke, her asking about his day when he was checking on hers. She’d seen him gain weight in the last months, all of it landing around his middle. His once-thinning hair was now all but nonexistent, leaving him looking older than his fifty-something years. Walking through the office twice a day, his office door was closed, and his old-fashioned metal venetian blinds drawn tight.

  This was strange to her, as he’d always kept them open, surveying the workroom and his reporters, even if he had a meeting going on. In fact, she couldn’t ever remember seeing them shut. The rest of the employees always seemed intent on their computer screens, not meeting her gaze as they often did. Something beyond going electronic was happening. Diana didn’t have a clue as to what it was and kept hoping Walter would take her into his confidence when he was ready.

  She went around the room turning on her machines and flipping on the overhead lights. Pulling on a fresh pair of the cotton gloves, she reached for the next paper on the stack.

  All morning while she went through her routine of scanning, her sixth sense was nagging at her subconscious. She remembered a conversation with her parents from her preteen years. They had been sitting at the kitchen table, supper dishes empty before them. She’d had a strange feeling in her stomach all day yet she couldn’t define the ache. She’d missed her school bus home on purpose that day. At the time she wasn’t sure why, but she made the long trek home alone. Just a few blocks before her stop, she saw the bus sitting at an awkward angle to the curb, one of the rear tires in shreds along the street. There were long, wavy black marks on the street for what had to be one hundred feet before it came to rest where it was.

  She entered the crowd of students, residents and parents all clamoring to find their children and make sure they were safe. Her mother had been in the crowd, and Diana would never forget the look of relief on her features when she’d found her.

  “I was so afraid you’d been hurt,” her mother had said, dropping to her knees and hugging her tight. While there were no major injuries, Diana was thankful she hadn’t taken the bus home.