Her Guilty Secret Read online

  She’s the good girl...

  He’s guilty as sin!

  Hotshot defense attorney and visiting professor Connor Hughes is so hot it’s criminal! And while idealistic law student Olivia Amorelli might not agree with his practices, she just can’t stop fantasizing about ripping Connor’s clothes off. But she’s always been a good girl, and an affair with her teacher is strictly forbidden—until Connor tempts Olivia to let him corrupt her!

  Clare Connelly was raised in small-town Australia among a family of avid readers. She spent much of her childhood up a tree, Harlequin book in hand. Clare is married to her own real-life hero and they live in a bungalow near the sea with their two children. She is frequently found staring into space—a surefire sign that she’s in the world of her characters. She has a penchant for French food and ice-cold champagne, and Harlequins continue to be her favorite-ever books. Writing for Harlequin is a long-held dream. Clare can be contacted via clareconnelly.com or her Facebook page.

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  If you liked Her Guilty Secret, why not try

  Stripped by Nicola Marsh

  Sweet as Sin by J. Margot Critch

  Getting Naughty by Avril Tremayne

  And check out the next installment in

  Clare Connelly’s Guilty as Sin duet,

  His Innocent Seduction,

  coming soon to Harlequin DARE!

  Discover more at Harlequin.com.

  HER GUILTY SECRET

  Clare Connelly

  For Elle Woods and Legally Blonde, without whom I might never have enrolled in a law degree and had my own inappropriate crush on a lecturer.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Excerpt from Stripped by Nicola Marsh

  PROLOGUE

  SHE SITS IN the third row of students, as usual. Her enormous eyes stare at me with the kind of intensity that makes my blood pound and my cock hard. She stares at me with eyes that are mentally stripping my body of clothes, imagining what’s underneath.

  I should know.

  It’s how I want to look at her, but I can’t because she is forbidden to me.

  Olivia.

  Olivia Amorelli.

  Even her name is a turn-on.

  She’s wearing the pale green dress again, the one she wore last week. It comes to her knees and has tiny white swallows detailed in the fabric. There are buttons down the front, and I have spent way too long fantasising about pulling them apart using only my teeth, stripping her, slowly. Unwrapping her like a Christmas gift, a present just for me.

  What the hell is happening to me?

  I don’t think I’ve ever fantasised about a woman like this, and never one like Olivia. She is all that is sweet and innocent. She is my opposite in every way. I have made a career defending the indefensible. I am renowned—notorious?—for my defence of the unscrupulous. Men like Donovan. Thoughts of that particular case needle my sides and I push them away, not wanting to think of that man now. Not wanting to think about the fact he is free because of me. But he is. Free, because of me. I can’t ignore it.

  Where I am darkness, Olivia Amorelli is not. In the few weeks I’ve been her professor, I’ve discovered she thinks differently to me. She is purity and passion, sweet and good. Her smile practically glows with sunbeams.

  What would it be like to have someone like her in my bed? In my life?

  Would that be enough to lay this demon to rest? If someone like Olivia could want me, could forgive me my sins, would I make my peace with what I’ve done?

  All sins are deserving of forgiveness, Connor. Father O’Sullivan said that to me a lot after my parents’ murder. He believed my hatred for the terrorists responsible for their deaths would consume me one day, and perhaps he was right. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The quote from James spins around my head often; I hear it in Father O’Sullivan’s hoarse, throaty whisper, cracked by that gentle smile of his.

  I came to pray for my parents’ murderers, to understand that in forgiveness lay my own refuge from grief and despair. It worked, for a time. I don’t think anyone is praying for me right now. I don’t think I deserve it, either.

  I run my eyes over the room, pretending to scan the other students when it’s really just a ruse to return my focus to her. She’s toying with her blonde hair, flicking the ends of her ponytail between her fingers. Her nails are red today, just like her lips, and I want them on my body more than I can say. Her nails, her lips. All of her.

  It’s been four weeks. Four weeks of watching her and wanting her, knowing that I can’t act on it. The school’s guidelines prohibit it.

  That wouldn’t usually stop me from taking what I want but, the thing is, she’d get suspended. Possibly expelled.

  Just because I want to run my tongue down her body and taste every inch of her. Just because I want to see if her innocence can be drawn to my guilt; to see if she can absolve me with her body’s delights.

  It would be selfish to indulge this. Selfish to make her wait after class just so I can be alone with her. Selfish to lift her dress up and take her against the whiteboard, making her cry out into this very classroom.

  Fuck. I’m hard as granite. I stand, keeping my body behind the desk. ‘Right.’ I look right at her and she sits a little straighter, pressing her knees together beneath the table. My cock jerks. ‘Let’s get started, shall we?’

  CHAPTER ONE

  CONNOR HUGHES MIGHT be one of the most successful defence barristers in the country, famous the world over for his inspired interpretation of the law to ensure justice is done, even when that means defending some of the most undeserving members of society.

  He might be everyone else’s idea of some kind of hero.

  But not mine.

  People like him are everything that’s wrong with the law. Smooth tongue, smart, beguiling, charming. No wonder his win-to-loss ratio is one of the best in the business. How many criminals are wandering the streets because of his egomaniacal need to win? His obsession with being the best at what he does, even when what he does is exonerate those who should never again see the light of day?

  Yeah. He’s everything that’s wrong with the law.

  But that doesn’t change how much I want him. It doesn’t change the fact that when our eyes meet I feel like I’ve been injected with live voltage. It doesn’t change the fact that he looks at me a little longer than he should, that there’s an invisible current electrifying the air between us all the time.

  I stare at him as he writes something on the whiteboard. I don’t see the words, though. I see his fingers. Long, lean, darkly tanned like the rest of his body would be. At least, it is in my imaginings. Tanned to match his swarthy face, his stubbled, square jaw and bright green eyes that have captivated me, and stolen my breath, from the first moment I saw him, standing like this at the front of the classroom, speaking to all one hundred of us, but reaching into my body and s
tirring everything up, swishing me around in a way that was instantly new and addictive.

  Frankly, I’m glad I don’t like him. I’m glad I don’t like the work he does. I’m probably the only person in here who doesn’t admire his meteoric trajectory to the top of the field. Sure, he started his own firm at twenty-six and grew it into one of the UK’s largest within five years. Sure, he’s worked on some of the most high-profile cases. But what good is being smart if you don’t use those powers for good?

  My derision of his professional accomplishments is so important to remember, because it’s the only thing standing between me and a crazed impulse to act on the desire that has taken over my body. Desire that makes my thighs tremble and my breasts ache. Desire that has turned Connor Hughes into the star of all my dirtiest dreams—dreams that I have no control over, because they fill my mind when I’m asleep and I can’t control that, can I?

  ‘Who wants to tell me why the chain of evidence is so important?’ He runs his eyes over the class and I wonder if he’s forgotten we’re in our final year, not first.

  It’s his ‘thing’, though. On the first day in class, he spelled it out for us. I’m going to act like you know nothing, because in the real world you don’t. I’m going to teach you how to follow the law and win cases.

  And he is very good at winning cases—cases that should have been open and shut.

  ‘Miss Amorelli?’

  Holy hell.

  It’s the first time he’s called on me directly. His tongue rolls over my name as though he’s kissing it down my body. My shiver is involuntary.

  Our eyes lock and the atmosphere charges with the force of a hurricane. Lightning dances between us, thunder rolls. His expression is a challenge and, despite the simplicity of the question, my mouth is dryer than desert sand. I feel like I’ve chewed on a box of chalk. I can’t find my tongue.

  ‘The chain of evidence,’ he prompts, lifting one brow with a hint of sarcastic mockery that makes me want to reach for his shirt and bunch it in my fist.

  ‘Obviously,’ I say, quietly, so that he leans forward a little, to catch my softly spoken word, ‘to ensure the authenticity of the evidence.’

  ‘Wrong.’

  My eyes flare wide and I feel heat in my cheeks. I don’t like being told I’m wrong. I’m not wrong. ‘Why?’

  His eyes lock onto mine. It’s just the two of us here now. Us and our major electrical storm, humming and buzzing through the room. ‘It doesn’t matter if the evidence has been tampered with.’

  ‘Of course it does,’ I say with a shake of my head.

  ‘No.’ His smile is the last word in sexual heat. My insides flip around, bubbling and aching, distracting me momentarily from what we’re discussing. ‘It matters what you can suggest. Facts are less important than the doubt you can cast.’

  My eyes narrow. He’s hit upon my biggest problem with his application of the law. Connor Hughes, while undoubtedly a genius, earned his name and his fortune wielding that mega-watt intelligence to get bad guys out of prison sentences that they definitely deserve. ‘Facts don’t matter?’

  He comes around to the front of the desk and props his ass on its edge, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He’s wearing a suit, but he’s taken off the jacket and pushed his sleeves halfway up his forearms. God, they’re nice arms. Tanned and leanly muscled. There’s a small tattoo on his inner wrist. A cross, but a Celtic-looking one. It is incongruous for a man like this, who must surely be Godless. He also doesn’t suit a suit.

  I mean, he wears it like it was made for him, but there’s such a savagery to him. I could see him in a loincloth, beating his chest... The thought heats my cheeks and almost makes me smile.

  ‘Facts don’t matter,’ he says with a nod. The class laughs. I don’t.

  ‘Why not?’ I’m challenging him. I’m pissed off and my voice shows it by quivering a little.

  ‘Facts are subjective, in law.’ His response is really deep and husky. Airy, and full of weight.

  ‘Facts can’t be subjective.’ I glare at him as though he’s lost the plot. ‘That’s oxymoronic.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because facts just are!’

  ‘Says who?’ His eyes are locked onto mine and the intensity of his scrutiny is doing funny things to my pulse. I suspect I’d find it easier to concentrate on what he’s saying if I wasn’t imagining him as a modern-day Tarzan, lifting me up and carrying me to his treetop den of debauchery. ‘Says who?’ he pushes insistently.

  ‘Says everyone.’

  He looks around the class. ‘There are forty-eight students in here. True or false.’

  I narrow my eyes then spin in my chair, with every intention of counting.

  ‘No,’ he says firmly, and his commanding tone sends a shiver down my spine. I imagine him being commanding in other ways, other places, and my gut churns with delicious desire. ‘Without looking.’

  I turn back slowly in my chair, crossing my legs beneath the small wooden desk. Holy shit. Did I just imagine the way his eyes dropped down to my bare legs? I uncross them to test the theory but his gaze remains steady, and now there’s just the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. My heart throbs.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘There are forty-eight students enrolled. Is anyone absent?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I sound frustrated because I am.

  ‘That’s reasonable doubt.’

  I roll my eyes. ‘It’s not my job to keep an attendance record. If it were, I’d know how many of us are here.’

  ‘What about the witness who swears he saw two men entering a bakery at two in the morning? It’s not his job to notice who goes where. How do you know he remembers accurately?’

  I expel a soft breath. ‘I guess you have to trust him.’

  ‘You have to trust him?’ His smile is curt. ‘I don’t. I don’t trust anyone’s recollection beyond reasonable doubt.’

  His eyes lock onto mine once more and then shift slightly lower, to the front of my dress, where a pretty row of white buttons dots downwards. He stares at them for a good three seconds. Long enough for my insides to begin quivering and heat to slick between my legs.

  Then he moves on, as though he hasn’t almost brought me to orgasm simply by flicking a glance at my dress.

  ‘We’re looking at how facts are represented in court.’ The class has his attention now and I try to level out my breathing. ‘How you can pull apart a prosecutor’s case, piece by piece. Nothing is too small for your attention. You check every detail. Why was there a fifteen-minute delay between a police officer arriving at the station and items being logged? What happened in those fifteen minutes? Did he stop to talk to someone in the corridor? Did he take a piss? Where’d he put the evidence while he was zipping up? Could someone else have touched it? Even for a moment?’

  Indignation spurts like a wave of angry heat in my belly. My jaw drops, and I know my cheeks are flushing pink. I hate everything about what Connor has just said. I hate that he’s teaching it to a whole room of us.

  He doubles down, leaning forward slightly to underscore his point, and when he speaks his voice is loaded with intensity.

  ‘That’s reasonable doubt. That’s uncertainty. The law is never black and white, no matter how much you might want it to be, Miss Amorelli.’ My stomach lurches, and it’s with desire now, not indignation. How can he send me from one emotion to the other in no time flat? No matter how much you might want it to be, Miss Amorelli. I want his tongue around more than my name. It’s his Irish accent and the way it lilts across the syllables, making it sound musical and illicit, somehow. ‘Not in the real world. It’s about a thousand shades of grey. It’s about making a jury doubt. About making a judge wonder.’

  ‘That’s disgusting.’ I say it quietly, with my head bent forward, so I don’t know if he hears. I don’t care.
My face is flushed bright red.

  I’ve seen what Connor’s thinking does to people. I’ve seen what it did to my dad, a senior detective who had a case thrown out because someone like Connor was able to discredit his work. I saw the way it pulled my dad apart—the knowledge that he’d let the victim down by not being above reproach. And it had all been bogus. A big, fat lie that had practically killed my dad.

  I grind my teeth and glare at him. Anger, apparently, is what I need. It trumps desire.

  Good. I’ll just have to stay angry for the next month or so.

  * * *

  ‘Miss Amorelli.’

  I’m almost at the door when he calls my name. It would be so easy to pretend I haven’t heard. I’m almost out—so close—albeit on legs that are a little shaky. It’s the end of the day and I just want to get home and have a cold shower and take myself to bed. And fantasise about this arrogant, sexy beast of a man.

  But he’s right here and he’s said my name.

  I’m not exactly in the business of ignoring my professors. I’m someone who does everything that’s asked of me. Besides, I’d be lying to myself if I pretended I wasn’t intrigued. The hurricane around us swells, cracks; a shiver runs the length of my spine in anticipation.

  He’s my lecturer. My teacher. So prohibited from me, from the things I want. But, oh, how I want them.

  And therein lies the problem. I don’t do illicit. I don’t do naughty.

  Ever.

  But Connor makes me want all the naughty, all the time.

  ‘Yes?’ I ask, the word throbbing with expectation despite my efforts to quell my racing pulse.

  ‘Shut the door,’ he murmurs without looking up from the paper he’s reading.

  It’s close to being an order, and I don’t particularly like his tone. I bite back on the desire to remind him to say ‘please’, settling for a noise of disapproval and impatience instead.

  I move back to the door and then click it into place.