Contents

  About Wicked and Forever

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  Wicked as Secrets

  Wicked as Sin

  Wicked & Devoted World

  About Shayla Black

  Other Books by Shayla Black

  WICKED AND FOREVER

  Written by Shayla Black

  This book is an original publication by Shayla Black.

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  Copyright 2022 Shelley Bradley LLC

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  Cover Design by: Rachel Connolly

  Photographer: Wander Pedro Aguiar, WANDER AGUIAR :: PHOTOGRAPHY

  Edited by: Amy Knupp of Blue Otter

  Proofread by: Fedora Chen

  Excerpt from Wicked as Sin © 2020 by Shelley Bradley LLC

  ISBN: 978-1-936596-93-5

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by an electronic or mechanical means—except for brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews—without express written permission.

  eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared, or given away, as it is illegal and an infringement on the copyright of this work.

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  All rights reserved.

  ABOUT WICKED AND FOREVER

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  He’ll make her his again…even if he has to seduce her

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  When the woman he loves is taken, Forest “Trees” Scott abandons a mission to save her from the enemy. Fearing the worst, he moves heaven and earth to find her—until he realizes Laila Torres left him of her own free will for the man who used her for six years. He’s stunned and wrecked. She played him—and he fell for it. One thing he’s not doing? Giving up. He’ll find her and he’ll make her pay…in his bed.

  * * *

  Laila is devastated by her tormentor’s return, but when he threatens the bodyguard she’s so foolishly fallen for, she risks everything—including her life—to protect Trees. As a mere pawn in a deadly game played by factions of a cartel, she and Trees have no future unless she can somehow destroy them. But she doesn’t count on Trees hunting her down, stripping her soul bare, and insisting in the sexiest way possible that she belongs to him and always will.

  * * *

  But danger awaits around every corner, and secrets abound. As Trees and Laila fight for their future, their enemies close in. Will they let go of their hurts and trust in their love before it’s too late?

  Author’s Note

  Dear Reader,

  If you have not read Wicked as Seduction, please STOP.

  Wicked and Forever is the second half of a duet in the Wicked & Devoted series about tech expert Forest “Trees” Scott and gutsy Laila Torres. In order to fully understand and enjoy this book, you should first read part one of this duet, Wicked as Seduction.

  I sincerely hope you enjoy the saga of these two characters I’ve come to love so deeply, which is why they required two full-length books to tell their whole story.

  Happy reading!

  Shayla

  February 4

  Lafayette, Louisiana

  For Laila Torres, the day started out troubling. It ended in hell.

  As dawn rose, her bodyguard and lover, Forest “Trees” Scott, prepared to join the rest of EM Security on a mission with one objective: to rescue his bosses’ sister, who was being held captive by dangerous kingpin Geraldo Montilla. As he headed for the door, Trees lifted her against his tall, hard-muscled body and held her close. Reflexively, she wrapped her arms around his neck, her heart beating fast.

  Last night, they had fought. Trees’s bosses had proposed she act as bait to lure the narcotics king out of hiding and into a trap. She’d said yes. After all, her sister and her nephew—the only family she had—would never be safe until Montilla was gone. When Trees had refused to let her go, she’d tried to escape. He’d quickly caught her and dragged her back to his house. Then they had skipped sleep and spent the rest of the night electronically hunting their enemy. With the information he’d gleaned, Trees had devised a plan for him and his fellow operatives to nab the kingpin, one that didn’t require her to be involved in Montilla’s takedown at all.

  Now, as he left to put himself in danger so she would be safe, she felt the desperation in his touch. It matched her own as she clung to him. “What are you doing?”

  “Telling you I love you, Laila.”

  She froze. That shouldn’t be possible. Yet…how many things had he done to help her, soothe her, and save her? Trees had always been fair and patient, kind yet gruff, but intensely protective. Would he have tried so hard if she didn’t mean something to him?

  Laila wasn’t sure and didn’t know what to say…but her first reaction was resounding joy. Her heart filled with it and threatened to overflow.

  But could she give the words back to him? Had she searched her soul enough to be certain of her feelings?

  “I know it’s one-sided. I don’t expect you to say anything. I just—” He shook his head, let out a curse, then seized her lips in a hard press as if he was determined to imprint himself on her. And he stole her breath.

  Just as suddenly, he wrenched away, set her on her feet, and slammed out the door, leaving her gaping and already regretting the things she’d left unsaid.

  With a final glance back at her through the living room window, he punched a few buttons on his phone. She heard the house alarms engage—his way of keeping her safe during the twelve hours he would be gone.

  After he drove off, Laila roamed his place listlessly. She picked at breakfast. She turned on a telenovela…then turned the silly thing off. She paced, praying Trees would finish this mission unscathed. She showered, hoping the soothing water would help her decide what to say when he returned.

  What was love? Did she really know? She felt something for him—a lot, actually. But love?

  If that isn’t what you feel, why do you have such angst?

  It was a fair question. Was she capable of the kind of love Trees had given her? Or had she endured too much to love him the way he deserved? After all, if she allowed another person to be tattooed onto her heart, that gave her tormentor, Victor Ramos, another weapon to use against her, the way he had her family.

  After wriggling into her pink tank and short shorts—and wishing for the hundredth time that she’d packed something warmer when she’d fled Florida—she towel-dried her curls, her thoughts turning.

  Until an electronic peal shattered the silence.

  The perimeter alarm.

  She froze. Her heart started chugging. Was someone on the property? In the house?

  Days ago, she’d told Trees safety was an illusion. Unfortunately, she’d been right.

  Laila tossed her damp towel into the sink, then rushed down the hall to Trees’s home office to scan his bank of security cameras. Her heart stuttered when she saw a sleek black truck with unreadable plates lunging up the road. That wasn’t Trees. It wasn’t his friend Zy. It wasn’t one of their three bosses, either. She didn’t know for sure who was barreling onto Trees’s property uninvited, but he wasn’t coming to borrow a cup of sugar or say hello.

  Had she been discovered again? By the Tierra Caliente cartel or by Victor Ramos himself?

  Either possibility sent panic burning through her. From her bedroom, she heard the ringing of her phone. Trees. He would already know that someone had broken past his security. Did she dare run back to grab the device?

  She peeked out the living room window, to the front of the house. The black truck was rolling to a stop in front. She didn’t have time to retrieve her phone.

  She had to hide—now.

  The ringing stopped, only to start again. Trees was panicked. She could practically feel him worrying as he pressed buttons, looked at his cameras, remotely tried to assess the situation and figure out how to save her when he was probably hundreds of miles away. She hated to worry him, but she had to shove regret aside for survival.

  As she dashed through the kitchen, she caught sight of the intruder—a man in a ski mask stomping toward the door, gun in hand. Terror iced her veins. As she feared, this wasn’t a simple burglar looking for jewelry or cool electronics he could fence. He was armed and furious.

  Laila managed to crouch down before he caught sight of her, but the sudden blast of a gunshot, followed by the shattering of glass, had her shrieking involuntarily and clinging to whatever shadows she could find in the morning light.

  As the man stepped through the wide-open window, Laila raced to Trees’s bedroom, praying she hadn’t been spotted, and eased the door shut behind her. She only had one possible hope of staying unharmed now.

  Shaking from head to toe, she fought to catch her breath as she crept into Trees’s closet and shoved aside his clothes. The keypad to his panic room and dungeon gleamed in the semi-dark. The code. She’d seen him punch it in. And she’d committed it to memory, just in case.

  Since the safe house she’d shared with her sister and her nephew in St. Louis had been breached months ago, she’d plotte
d escape routes everywhere she went. The grocery store. The mall. The movies. And especially anywhere she slept.

  But she’d felt so safe with Trees. Oh, he’d terrified her since he could make her body crave things that unsettled her and make her heart ache in ways that unraveled her. But he’d given her a sense of security—one she hadn’t had for nearly a decade. She’d rationalized that no one would think to look for her in the middle of Nowhere, Louisiana, out on property that had every security precaution imaginable. So she had gotten complacent. She hadn’t planned an escape route. Laila hadn’t thought she would need one.

  What a horrible time to realize she’d been wrong.

  She stared at the keypad, dragging in ragged breaths that sounded way too loud in her ears, as her thoughts raced. She knew the damn code. Why couldn’t she remember it?

  Taking a minute—and a risk—Laila closed her eyes, forced her respiration to slow, and pictured Trees in front of his panel, punching in the numbers to his underground lair.

  The digits swam though her head as another gunshot, this one inside the house, disturbed the air. She bit her lip to hold in a scream. Then she heard footsteps tromping through the place. She had to reach the panic room before the intruder found her.

  Finally, she recalled the numbers and lifted her fingers to the buttons, but the whine of electronic devices signaled that the prowler had cut the power.

  Oh, god. How would she access the panic room when the panel she needed to open the door was dead?

  The worry had barely crossed her mind when electronic devices all over the house began to clink and chime on again. The panel in front of her lit up once more, and she almost cried with relief. Of course Trees would have a generator. In his hidden room, the man kept years’ worth of freeze-dried and canned food. It stood to reason he was prepared for any eventuality, including power loss.

  As the intruder’s footsteps approached the bedroom, she quickly punched in the code with trembling fingers. A low, humming buzz warned her that her first fumbled attempt was wrong. Panic ratcheted up. She almost started hyperventilating. She forced herself to be calm and tried again.

  Her finger pressed the last number as she heard the squeak of Trees’s bedroom door open. Footsteps paused inside. The opening to the panic room appeared with a whisper. Relief swept over Laila as she squeezed through the crack, moved Trees’s clothes to cover the panel again, and eased the door shut—just as the closet door jerked open.

  Her hammering heart chugged as fast as her runaway thoughts. What if the intruder had heard her? Or saw Trees’s clothes swinging on their hangers or…any of the other hundred things she could think that would tell him he wasn’t alone in the house?

  Seconds ticked by. With her hand pressed against her rattling chest, she stood frozen, not even daring to creep down the stairs. Since she couldn’t risk turning on a light, she closed her eyes and tried to breathe through the suffocating darkness.

  Finally, she heard a door slam and his stomping footsteps retreat to the kitchen, where he banged cabinets and broke glass. With every sound, Laila felt this man’s rage, and she felt horrible for Trees. He wasn’t here to defend his house. He’d likely moved away from the city to avoid crime and people, for privacy and peace.

  That was all being defiled and defaced now, because of her.

  The sounds crossed the house, getting fainter as he moved farther away, but no less violent. Then she heard more gunfire—multiple blasts. Whoever was above her clearly had an agenda. Destroying Trees’s house wasn’t enough for him. He wanted blood.

  She couldn’t let him have it.

  Laila turned on the light in the bunker and crept to the bottom of the stairs. She looked past Trees’s dungeon equipment—implements she didn’t understand that had filled her with both trepidation and fear the first time she’d seen them. Today, she looked around for a way to call for help. But she’d had to abandon her phone across the house, and Trees had taken his iPad, so if there was any way to communicate with the outside world, she didn’t know it.

  Deep breaths. She could handle this. All she had to do for now was hide. Once whoever was out there had finished what he’d come for and left, she would emerge, call Trees, then stay to help him right his house. It was the very least she owed him.

  She wished she could do more.

  “Where are you, you motherfucking cabrón?”

  Laila stopped—breathing, thinking, living. Abject terror gripped her throat. That voice… She couldn’t mistake it for anyone else’s.

  Victor Ramos.

  And he hadn’t come for her. He’d come for Trees, to get revenge—the eye-for-an-eye kind.

  “Are you hiding like a pussy? That won’t stop me from avenging my brother. Come out and die like a man.” Victor paused in the silence, then let loose a cutting laugh. “I’m not surprised you’re hiding like a coward. You couldn’t even face my brother to kill him. You shot him from the back. And you pulled the trigger for Laila. I heard you. Where have you stashed that puta?”

  Her jaw dropped. Laila wasn’t surprised that Victor had called her a whore, but how had he heard Trees say that he’d killed Hector for her? If he had been there, he would have saved his brother.

  Only Hector’s house having surveillance made sense.

  As soon as that realization hit her, another truth swept in behind it. Victor didn’t know she was here.

  “Too afraid to face me, cabrón? Then I will burn down your house, and you better start looking over your shoulder, because I’m going to find you and put a bullet in your back, too.”

  Laila’s heart stopped. One thing she knew about Victor? His follow-through skills weren’t a problem. He meant what he said.

  She had to stop him—now. Somehow. Find a way to protect Trees and his house while keeping Valeria and Jorge’s location secret. If it kept her safe, too, even better. But that wasn’t important. She had survived Victor once. She could do it again for the people she loved.

  Laila froze. That was the second time she’d wondered if she was in love with Trees. Logic said it was too soon. She admired him. She respected him. She’d come to trust him. She melted against him when he gave her pleasure no other man had. She simply couldn’t repay all his kindness by letting Victor destroy everything he’d worked for. But that wasn’t love.

  Or was it?

  She didn’t have time to figure that out now. The seconds were ticking down, and she had to stop the maniac pacing Trees’s home, bent on torching it. Trees had put her first so many times. She needed to do the same for him. Laila knew just how. She simply had to find the right words—and the guts.

  On shaking legs, she crossed the room and plucked a semiautomatic off the wall, then jerked down its mate, just in case. She rummaged through some nearby drawers and found the magazines and a box of nine-millimeter ammunition. Of course Trees was prepared.

  Thank God.

  Then she loaded the guns—grateful she’d paid attention during the years she’d been a captive of her brother-in-law’s cartel—took a deep breath, and let herself out of Trees’s panic room, ensuring the lights were off and the door closed behind her. Once she’d shrouded the keypad with his clothes again, she did her best to steady her shaking hands and went in search of Victor.

  She didn’t have to go far. As soon as she rounded the corner out of Trees’s bedroom, she spotted Victor striding through the front door, gas can in hand. He held a lighter in the other.

  Her heart leapt to her throat, but she forced herself to stay steady. She was going to stop Victor…or die trying. She owed Trees at least that much.