Wicked Angel

WICKED ANGEL JAINE DIAMOND Wicked Angel Jaine Diamond Copyright © 2023 Jaine Diamond All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, uploaded or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in book reviews. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons is coincidental. Published by DreamWarp Publishing Ltd. www.jainediamond.com Cover Design: DreamWarp Publishing Ltd. Cover Photo: Michelle Lancaster @lanefotograf Cover Model: Chad Hurst Join Jaine’s Diamond Club Newsletter to get free bonus content, new release info, giveaways and insider updates. Wicked Angel Contents Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Books by Jaine Diamond Note to Readers / Acknowledgments Playlist About the Author For my man. Thank you for teaching me that my tears are never wrong. villain noun An immoral or antagonistic person; an antihero. Prologue Angeline We all make mistakes. We all fuck up royally from time to time. We all harbor painful regrets, sorrows, and even secret shames. Things we wish we never did. And other things we only wish we never did because we know they’re wrong, even if they felt right. Things we’re so deeply confused about that the torment wedges deep inside, twisting like a knife between our ribs with every breath, until we fear that our boyfriend is about to find out. Or, wait. Maybe that last part is just me? Point is, we all make mistakes. Some we hope to be forgiven for. Some we don’t deserve to be forgiven for because… if we could do it all again… We’d still fuck up. The night I fucked up, all I wanted was a quiet place to make a phone call in the middle of a loud house party. So I stepped outside and walked across the grass, away from the house into the dark, alone, for just a moment. But all it really takes is a moment for the world to crash into oncoming space junk. “Hey, Angel.” I jumped a little at his voice floating out of the dark, a tidal wave of goosebumps running down my body. My heart lurched. My nipples pricked. My fingernails dug into my palm as I took a slow, deep breath and turned to find him sitting in the shadows. “Hello,” I said softly. I sounded like a young girl. A girl so much younger than I was. A girl who was deeply uncertain, suddenly, of the place where her feet met the earth. I was only twenty steps or so from my boyfriend. And from my older sister. Ten steps from a house full of friends. Any one of them would’ve saved me in that moment, if they could. But the door was closed. No one could see me. Or him. No one could see us. Instead, it was all left up to me, and I fucked up. Crimson and gold flared in the night as he clicked his lighter and firelight danced across his gorgeous face. His name was Johnny. He was the older brother of one of my best friends. He was a mistake, long before anything ever happened between us. Nothing had ever happened between us. But I’d crushed on him so hard and for so long, just the sight of his face, flickering in and out of the dark as that lighter sparked the joint in his hand, turned my stomach to a mass of snakes. Because I knew. I knew something very, very bad was about to happen. And I was going to let it. “Angeline Delacroix.” He said my name slowly, like he was tasting it. Like he was really hearing it for the first time since we’d met, years ago. Every syllable so soft and sensuous on his lips in the dark. Then he got to his feet, standing up to his full height, looming over me. I got a better look at his face in the moonlight. His eyes were wet with some emotion I couldn’t identify. He looked high or drunk, or both. He looked tormented. It took my breath away. His hands slid up around my bare neck, so suddenly I didn’t even pull away. By the time his fingers had slid under my ponytail to cradle my skull, I’d gone almost limp. I dangled there in his hands as his watery eyes tripped into mine. He was gone. Somewhere far away and somewhere deep inside me, all at once, as he looked into my eyes. My heart fluttered like a trapped butterfly. My hands went to his waist, grabbing onto him, and his eyes flared. I didn’t pull him to me or push him away. I just held on. I didn’t even know what was happening except that in the utter chaos of this miraculous, fragile event called life, his orbit and mine had suddenly collided and locked together. And I couldn’t move. “Wh-why did you call me Angel?” My voice shook. My fingers dug deeper into his waist. I could feel his heat through his T-shirt. Despite my name, no one had ever called me Angel. His watery, dark-aquamarine eyes dropped to my lips. “First time I ever saw you…” he said, his voice rough and dark as sin, “you were wearing a shirt with a kitten on it. With wings. A fucking sequined kitten. You remember that?” “No.” Yes. But… he remembered what I was wearing the