Table Of ContentDEVIL’S ADVOCATE
Hell’s Belles Book 1
Wendi Darlin
EROTIC ROMANCE
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
DEVIL’S ADVOCATE
Copyright © 2009 by Wendi Darlin
E-book ISBN: 1-60601-452-8
First E-book Publication: April 2009
Cover design by Tamra Westberry
All cover art and logo copyright © 2009 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
I have to thank my friend, the fabulous author and honorary Hell’s
Belle, Lara Santiago.
This book is for all the Hell’s Belles and the devils they love.
DEVIL’S ADVOCATE
Hell’s Belles Book 1
WENDI DARLIN
Copyright © 2009
Prologue
University of Southern Mississippi, 1999
Haylie lifted her hand and peered over Blake’s shoulder at the ring
he’d slipped on her finger. The mattress shifted beneath her as he
kissed his way down her throat and cupped her breast in his hand.
Everything about the way he touched her, the way he loved her, made
her feel like the luckiest woman in the world. Her eyes blurred with
tears.
“I love you,” she whispered.
She felt his smile against her skin. “That’s a good trait for a future
wife to have.”
She laughed and pulled him closer, wrapping her legs around his
waist.
“Isn’t there somewhere you needed to be?”
She shook her head. “I want to be right here.”
She had planned to attend a seminar for victim empowerment
being held on campus, but not without serious reservations. In her
four years pursuing a degree in social services, she had avoided as
many victim-focused activities as possible.
Devil’s Advocate 7
Volunteering to work tonight’s event had taken every grain of
courage she had. But being loved by Blake empowered her more than
anything she could learn in a room full of people with histories as
sordid as hers. Her past was better left buried. She didn’t know how
talking about it or putting it out in the open for everyone to see could
ease any of the pain or humiliation she’d carried for years. Not even
Blake knew the truth about her, and she didn’t know if she could ever
tell him.
“I wasn’t going to let you leave anyway.” He kissed his way
lower. His chest still slick from their lovemaking, slid against her
belly.
A pound on the door of his apartment interrupted the path of heat
he was carving down her body. From the weight of the knock, it was
either an oaf or his frat brother, Meat.
Blake kissed her again before rolling over to pull on his boxers
and answer the door.
Meat bounded in like a bull in a china shop. “Where is she?”
Haylie heard his shoulders bump and brush the wall as he
stumbled down the hall.
“There’s my girl,” Meat yelled with a grin from the bedroom
doorway and romped toward the bed.
Haylie snatched the sheet around herself and rolled away as he
came down on three-quarters of the mattress. He reeked of beer and
his glassy eyes leered at her playfully. Blake tackled him, but Meat
swatted him away and grabbed at her. Fear struck her core. Flashes of
her past stopped her heart and cold sweat sprung from her pores.
She tugged at the sheet, but it didn’t budge beneath Meat’s
weight. Screaming, she covered herself with a pillow and jumped off
the bed as Meat’s big paw reached for her arm.
“Come back, baby,” Meat pleaded. “I don’t bite hard.”
Blake joined Haylie in the corner, wrapped his arms around her
and kissed her bare shoulder. “He’s not going to hurt you, honey.”
8 Wendi Darlin
Her throat closed too tight for words. Her blood ran cold and a
tremor worked its way up her arms. The harder she fought to keep the
memories at bay, the faster they filled her mind.
Blake didn’t seem to notice. “Get your big ass out of my bed,” he
said to Meat.
Meat made himself comfortable, wallowing like a hog in mud.
“Not ’til my girl comes over here and gives me a kiss. I won her fair
and square.”
“Won me?” Haylie’s voice barely squeaked out. “You won me?”
“Your boyfriend can’t shoot darts worth a shit.” Meat rolled
around on the bed like he was settling in for the night.
She freed herself from Blake’s grasp. “You bet me?” Her entire
body trembled.
“It was a joke. Baby…” His forehead creased as he studied her.
“You don’t think I was serious?”
She lost focus. The edges in the room softened and her vision
blurred. Her father’s face leered at her from every corner of her mind.
The past had planted itself right in the middle of her finally perfect
world. She couldn’t do this again. Her body wasn’t anybody’s to give
away. She ripped the engagement ring from her finger so fast it
scraped skin from her knuckle. The ring hit the wall, but she ran out
of the room before it landed on the floor.
She turned the ignition of her car, the pillow still clutched to her
chest, before she gave any thought to having run out of his apartment
naked. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going back in there or anywhere
near Blake Sheridan ever again.
Devil’s Advocate 9
Chapter 1
Banana Bob’s Beach Bar, 2009
Haylie, Ashlyn, Kara, and Amanda held their shot glasses in the
air and toasted in unison.
“Here’s to the Belles
Who dance in Hell
And keep the devils rockin’
Here’s to the lies
The beasts will tell
To get our boots a knockin’!”
The fabulous foursome clinked glasses, licked a line of salt off the
curve between their thumbs and index fingers and tossed back the
golden Cuervo.
Haylie Monroe sucked her lime wedge and pitched it into a bowl
in the center of the table, then held her thick hair off the back of her
neck and closed her eyes as the dirty liquor coated her tongue and slid
down her throat.
“Why does it always have to be tequila?” she asked, her face still
creased in distaste.
“Te kill ya!” her three best friends chimed.
Haylie shimmied in her chair as the last of the tequila burned her
stomach and trickled to the tips of her toes.
“Stop shaking those things, you’re making me look bad.” Ashlyn
shot a pointed gaze at Haylie’s breasts.
Unlike her built for the runway friends, Haylie’s petite frame had
more curves than a back country road. And as if height equated to
10 Wendi Darlin
tolerance, alcohol had a habit of hitting her as fast and hard as a
souped-up muscle car while the others could guzzle more than an 8-
cylinder at Talladega.
“As if you’d ever let yourself look bad.” Haylie stood. “I’m going
to the ladies room.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Haylie and Ashlyn left the other two sitting at the table and
walked through the sand toward the two-story gray plank building
that housed the restrooms and a rooftop bar.
Before they’d made it halfway, Haylie came to a stunned stop.
Her high-heeled sandals sank in the sand and her heart hammered in
her chest. She’d spent a decade avoiding the devil himself, Blake
Sheridan, and there he stood directly in front of her as gorgeous as
ever.
“Haylie!” A spark flashed in the devil’s ice blue eyes an instant
before he threw his arms around her and pulled her body against his.
Apparently, not much had changed in the ten years since she’d run
away from him. Familiar fire lingered in his touch, and pressed
against him, her body yawned with hunger that almost brought a tear
to her eye. Haylie dug the heels of her sandals deeper into the sand
and pushed against his chest until she had her own space to breathe
again.
Long pent-up emotions whipped through her. She couldn’t deny
he looked better than ever. His clothes hung exactly where they were
supposed to— khaki shorts and a button-down in fabrics that flowed
oh so deviously over the muscular frame beneath. Only his hair dared
to defy the clean professional lines he combed it in and followed
instead the whim of the wind.
She resisted the urge to tame the thick, crisscrossed locks with a
rake of her fingers. She resisted a lot of urges. If she had half a brain
she would turn and run away from him again, but either the tequila
was stronger than usual tonight or her gray matter had taken a
vacation. She knew better than anyone what Blake Sheridan could be
