Louisa Neil
Authors: Bete Noire
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
Louisa Neil
MENAGE AND MORE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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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
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
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 bed, 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.
