The Discipline
By Jade A. Waters
How far would you go to fulfill a fantasy?
Maya Clery has taken risks before. Her relationship with Dean Sova started out as a risk—a series of sexual assignments, each hotter, wilder, more intense than the last. Exploring her submissive side with a powerful, trustworthy Dominant has been everything she hoped for, everything she needed.
Dean pushes Maya to her limits—it’s one of the things she loves most about him. But as they push the boundaries outside their sex life, meeting friends and family members, Maya realizes there’s still much she doesn’t know about the man with whom she’s sharing her bed.
And when a fantasy simmering between them becomes their latest challenge, past secrets begin to reveal weaknesses in their relationship that neither is ready to face.
Book two of Lessons in Control
This book is approximately 78,000 words
One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise! Find out more at CarinaPress.com/RomancePromise
Carina Press acknowledges the editorial services of Rhonda Edits, LLC
Dear Reader,
Happy March! This month marks Carina Press’s return to publishing anthologies. This is something that I’ve always loved to do—put out a call for submissions for a certain theme and see what rolls in. This month, we’re starting with erotic romances and, specifically, taboos. In the coming months you’ll see anthologies for shifters, capers & heists, and a holiday-themed anthology. Then, in 2018, we have even more coming your way. Anthologies are a great way for readers to test new authors while getting a complete, satisfying romance, and I hope you love what we’ve got in store as much as I do.
But first, let me tell you about a book that’s incredibly near to my heart. What It Takes: A Kowalski Reunion Novel is Shannon Stacey’s return to the contemporary world of the fabulous Kowalski family. This is a project I begged Shannon to do, because I wasn’t quite ready to let the Kowalskis go. To say I was thrilled she agreed would be a huge understatement. In this book, we get a new romance, along with cameos from all of our previous favorite heroes and heroines, including a secondary plot with Sean and Emma! Loved the Kowalskis since we first started publishing them in 2010? You are going to adore this book. Never read the Kowalskis before? No worries, this book was written to allow you to jump right in. What It Takes is available in print, in audio and in ebook format at your favorite online retailer.
Josh Lanyon is back with another male/male romantic suspense, Fair Chance. Elliot Mills thought he was done with the most brutal case of his career, having finally put the serial killer in jail, but when the lead agent on the case goes missing, Elliot has to play this killer’s twisted game to save the love of his life. Find out more about Elliot and Tucker in Fair Game and Fair Play, both now available.
Together, Maya Clery and Dean Sova have entered a decadent world of passion, pleasure and possibility—but while their love has grown stronger, and their play more intense, the intersection of fantasy and past will challenge their dynamic in the face of deeper, wilder desires. The Discipline by Jade A. Waters will get your senses steaming!
If you love a good paranormal shifter romance, I hope you’ve been following along with Kerry Adrienne’s fantastic series Shifter Wars. In Taming the Lion, the battle between the lions and bears decimates Deep Creek, and one of the heirs to the lions’ throne is saved from death by a beautiful bear medic who’s torn between her allegiance to her den and her attraction and obligation to the wounded lion. Want more? Waking the Bear and Pursuing the Bear can be on your reading device in minutes!
We’re pleased to welcome debut author Jules Court to the Carina Press team with a sultry new trilogy of contemporary romance novellas. Kicking off her trilogy is Hot in the City. Brian MacGregor busted his ass to make detective by age thirty. He doesn’t have time for a social life, not even for the pretty ER doc who sewed him up post run-in with a knife-wielding perp. He never expected that when he went looking for the witness to a gangland murder, the doc would be the best lead to his missing witness. Now if he can only keep his hands off her. Look for Enticing the Enemy and Tease Me Tonight coming this year!
Layla had only wanted to give Sid one hot, sweaty night of her well-planned life, but when these werewolves realize that they’re mates, Layla must accept that she’ll be giving Sid a lot more than she planned in Alpha’s Challenge, the next in Lauren Dane’s Cascadia Wolves series!
Too Taboo: An Erotic Romance Anthology contains three scorching-hot novellas. Purchase them together in the anthology or as individual ebooks:
Debut author Morgaine Cameron bangs out of the gate with an indescribably hot story in Absolve Me. A handsome, celibate man wants a licensed sex surrogate to help him exorcise the wicked desires he’s struggling to overcome—because as a priest he needs to play out his immoral thoughts or forever be a holy sinner.
Returning author Amber Bardan indulges us in some wicked ménage fantasies when an innocent trespassing turns into a lesson in obedience as the two property owners show their trespasser just how right punishment can feel. Twice as Hard is not to be missed.
When the most skilled operative in the secret organization known as the Seduction Squad is captured, her only hope of escape is to use her body to drive her sexy abductor wild...but, having unleashed his darkest fantasies, does Inge really want to get away from Jake? Amanda Stewart’s Seduction Squad: Captured teases us with the dark taboos of forced seduction and capture fantasies.
That’s all for this month, but whew, I think that’s more than enough. This is such a powerful lineup, I’m jealous of all of you getting to read these books for the first time. They are unputdownable (that’s totally a word only avid readers understand)!
Coming next month we have another full-length novel from the amazing author duo Alexa Riley; Rhenna Morgan is back with another to-die-for hero; and two male/male authors give us two amazing romances.
As always, until next month, my fellow book lovers, here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.
Happy reading!
Angela James
Editorial Director, Carina Press
Dedication
For Madeleine and Nick—my pillars, my people, my loves and my sanity.
Contents
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
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Acknowledgments
Also by Jade A. Waters
About the Author
Chapter One
Rain surrounded my car, streaking across my windows to make my drive home from Half Moon Bay miserable—but I didn’t have a care in my head.
Not after the Friday night I’d had at Dean’s.
I turned the stereo off to pay attention to the road, which wound out of the coastal hills and back toward the highway to Alameda. Our night had been pure magic. We’d been dating for almost seven months at this point, exploring the intense dynamic between us through so many assignments, challenges and sexy rewards that Dean thought up in that clever way he often did. But I still couldn’t believe what he did to me.
What he brought out of me.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and replayed the night from start to finish, even through the flurry of rain. First, we’d shared one of Dean’s delicious, home-cooked meals while we’d finalized plans for Christmas Eve dinner at his house, when I would meet his brothers for the first time.
Both of us coasting on that new step, we’d done dishes together before Dean had stripped me down in the living room, fucking me once in the slow, seductive manner I’d come to adore in the last few months. He’d whispered tantalizing words that had intrigued and caressed all on their own, then he’d turned everything around to drag me upstairs. There, he’d cuffed me to the bed straps that circled his mattress for the real play, winding me up in this game we’d built up between us and bidding me to submit while he teased, touched and tormented every inch of my body, inside and out. He’d drawn not one but four orgasms out of me, and I’d succumbed and begged all night—for more, for him, for this emotional surrender I loved to feel with him.
Despite the alarm breaking our sweet morning cuddle, I had nothing to complain about. My limbs were sore, my pussy ached and I was riding high.
So damn high.
Until I heard a loud bang reverberating through my car and what sounded like the flapping of a blown tire against the road.
“Oh, shit!” I grimaced and clutched the wheel as the car slowed, attempting to help maneuver it toward the shoulder it was already tugging itself into. The steering wheel vibrated in my grip. I never minded driving through the lush hills here, but December rain wasn’t ideal around these roads. I was pretty sure with the thump rattling beneath me that I had a flat.
Fuck.
There wasn’t much of a pullout on the shoulder where I parked and turned off the ignition, but what else could I do? I flipped on my emergency flashers, grabbed my umbrella and headed out into the storm. The wind kicked up my hair and blew it in furious whips around my face, and I pushed it aside when I circled the car to confirm the front passenger tire was indeed flat.
“Dammit,” I muttered.
I’d lived on my own since I moved out of Charlie’s and my apartment at twenty-three, so I’d had almost a decade to figure my way around a flat tire. In the rain like this, though? It wasn’t the ideal way to spend a Saturday morning in general, never mind with a body as blissed out as mine.
I was closer to Dean’s place than I was to Alameda, and I didn’t see a point in calling Alex and Selby. They were probably snuggled up in bed, talking wedding plans again—and I couldn’t very well ask Dean to delay his meeting in San Francisco to help me with a silly flat I could handle myself. With a huff, I threw my umbrella back in the car and got to work. I had a spare in the trunk, and with a mini hurricane’s worth of rain dumping on my head through the process, I finished as quickly as I could.
Satisfied, I went around to my door, careful to check for traffic. I didn’t expect much, not on a Saturday morning around here, anyway, but like most of the Bay Area, there was no telling. I thanked my luck for having an old car with upholstered seats that I gave up on not getting wet thanks to my sodden clothes. After I buckled up, I turned the key.
The car wouldn’t start. The engine didn’t make any noise, either.
“Oh, come on!” The only response I got was the pounding of buckets of rain over the hood of my car. I tried the key again with no change, then pressed my forehead to the steering wheel in defeat.
The same thing had happened when I’d left Selby and Alex’s last weekend. Alex, ever the mechanic, had come out from the garage with a wrench in hand. “I bet it’s the starter solenoid,” he’d said. He’d had it happen with his old Volkswagen in college, and sure enough, he’d tapped against the thing while I’d held the key in place, and the engine had turned over. “You can do this once, maybe twice. But get the car to the shop soon, okay?”
And in the chaos that was my week at Women Organized for Change, I’d spaced on it.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I tried again. Nothing. The rain poured down around me, a thick screen barring the road from view—not the best condition to be sitting on the side of a highway, even as empty as it was at the moment.
I dug my phone out of my bag. It was 8:05, and I was at least forty minutes from Selby and Alex, and fifteen from Dean. Like an idiot, I didn’t have any sort of roadside assistance program. Dean expected a text when I got home, even more so considering this rain...but that wasn’t happening any time soon. I sighed and dialed his number.
“Maya? Are you all right?” Dean paused, his voice a wash of worry. “You can’t be home yet.”
“Hi. No, I’m not. I had a flat—”
“Shit. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Totally changed it on my own.”
“Where are you?”
“In the hills.”
“You changed it in the hills? In this rain? Are you nuts?”
His tone came way sharper than necessary and I frowned. “Whoa, it’s all good. I can handle a flat!”
A moment of silence occupied the line while Dean processed this information. “I love that you handled the flat, but I don’t like the idea of you changing it out there in this kind of rain.”
“Well, that ship has sailed.”
Dean’s breath blew heavily through the phone. “Weren’t you supposed to take your car in this week? You mentioned the starter.”
“I did, and then I got too busy.”
“Maya.”
I sat back in my seat. He had this way of saying my name that always reached right into me and made me ready to jump in a million good ways. It was directive, dominant and oh-so sexy when he was bidding me to submit to some wild scene between us.
But right now, I felt more chided and scolded than anything. “It’s not a big deal. I got slammed this week, and I was going to try the tapping trick Alex showed me, but it requires two people. I know you have your meeting. I can call Alex and Selby instead—”
“No, you won’t. I’ll push back my meeting.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Yes, I can. It’s my business, and you’re my girlfriend. You trump business any day of the week—and I don’t like you there by yourself. It’s not safe.”
I paused to savor the way he put me above all else. His panic had to be sincerity and care, but he sure did seem fired up. It wasn’t like at thirty-two I hadn’t had a car break down before. His intensity almost made me feel inept, which couldn’t be further from the case, and he knew it. “Dean, I’m fine. I’ll stay in the car. There’s hardly any traffic.”
“Where are you?”
I described my location, which he sussed out having lived in Half Moon Bay for over a decade.
“Okay. I’m nearly to San Francisco, but I’ll be there as soon as I can. Please be careful, all right?”
“I will. Sheesh. Promise.”
“Maya...” His worry resonated as thick as the rain. “I’m serious. Be careful. And don’t open the door for anyone.”
Once his car speakerphone clicked off, I peered at my phone, incredulous. I was used to his firm command and tender concern.
But Jesus, you’d think I’d rung up my dad, not my boyfriend.
* * *
Dean pulled up behind my useless car not forty-five minutes later. The rain had started to subside, slightly, so I heard the sound of his B
MW before I spotted him in my rearview, and I dropped the phone I’d been mindlessly playing on to open my door. Dean rushed to my side, indifferent to the rain as he took me in his arms.
“Hi. You okay?”
I fell into him, pressing against the wide span of his chest while his hands slid up my back, and he stared over me with a furrow in his brow. In the brief distance from his car to mine, his short, dark waves of hair had started to stick against his forehead, but it was those slate-gray eyes of his, stormy like the skies around us, that made me melt. “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m sorry I messed up your meeting.”
“Don’t be.” The tense look on his face wouldn’t cease, so I stood up on my toes to kiss him. Dean’s lips met mine immediately, his body full and strong, pushing me against the back door of my car. It was impossible not to fall under his spell—a potent blend of the love between us, the rich, manly smell of his body against the backdrop of cooling rain and the swirls of his tongue that, heavy as they were, sent a drizzle of heat through my veins. When Dean arched back his shoulders, he kept his hips against mine. “Leave it to my stubborn girlfriend to get herself into this mess.”
“I’m not stubborn!”
His half smile lifted the sexy whisper of a scar he had from an old fumble on a sailboat. The mark was visible way up on his left cheek thanks to the sprinkling of black stubble on his face. “Sure you aren’t.” Dean kissed me again, quicker this time. When he backed away, my body drooped with how much of a chill filled the air around us. “But it’s dangerous here. People can’t see around these curves.”
I patted the side of his arm. “I didn’t have a choice. Seriously, I’m fine. Let’s do the tapping thing and get out of the rain already, okay?”
Dean gave a shake of his head while I described Alex’s trick and we moved along the length of the car. I offered him my umbrella after popping the hood, but he waved it off. Alex was adept at all things building and cars, and he’d suggested I throw a hammer in my car just in case—so I grabbed it from the backseat and handed it to Dean before climbing behind the wheel.
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